Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) (63 page)

Cement!

She looked up in time to see a burrower break through the ceiling directly above her. They were coming from all directions!

She screamed and lifted the shotgun. As she rammed the muzzle into the snout she thought of Jack’s call. No way they could answer. She prayed he was calling with good news, to say he’d been successful. But if so, she saw no sign of a letup here.

Whatever he was involved in had to work, and work soon.

Very soon.

Or she and Vicky and Abe were goners.

Manhattan

Jack finally stepped into the room carrying the longer package. Something in his face …

Bill gripped his arm. “Everything okay?”

He shook his head. “No … don’t know. Couldn’t get an answer. Let’s get this done.” He hefted his burden. “What’s in here?”

“The rest of the instrument,” Glaeken said. “Be careful. It will be sharp.”

Another intake of breath across the room as the layers of blanket fell away to reveal a gleaming length of carved steel.

“The blade,” Jack breathed.

The muscles in his forearm rippled as he held it by the butt spike and raised it in the air, turning it back and forth, letting the light leap and run across the runes carved along its length.

The blade … magnificent. The sight of it warmed one part of Bill and chilled another. Something alien and unsettling about those runes. He slipped his arm around Carol and held her closer.

Bill still held the hilt in his free hand. He’d noticed a deep slot in the center of its upper surface—a perfect receptacle for the blade’s butt spike.

“Should we put them together?” he asked Glaeken.

The old man shook his head. “No. Not yet. Please place the hilt on the table.”

As Bill complied, Jack lowered the blade.

“This too?”

“Drive its point into the floor, if you will.”

Jack shot him a questioning look, then shrugged. He upended the blade, grabbed the butt spike with both hands, then drove it through the carpet and deep into the hardwood floor beneath. It quivered and swayed a moment, then stood straight and still.

Glaeken turned to Sylvia. His eyes opaque, his expression grave.

“Mrs. Nash … it is time.”

Sylvia stared at the gold-and-silver cross gleaming on the table not five feet away and felt all her strength desert her in a rush.

Everything was happening—changing—too quickly. She’d gone to bed last night thinking she’d been freed of the burden of deciding. Jack had only one necklace and it wasn’t enough. The instrument could not be reassembled, Jeffy would not be called on to give up the
Dat-tay-vao.
She had been frightened, terrified of the near future, and ashamed at the relief she had felt at being spared the burden of risking her son’s mind.

This morning she’d awakened to find everything changed. Glaeken had both necklaces and the original plan was back in motion.

Sylvia had been preparing herself for this moment all day but still wasn’t close to ready. How could she ever be ready for this?

She sensed Ba looming behind her and didn’t have to look to know that whatever she decided he would be with her 100 percent. But the rest of them … she glanced around the room. Carol, Bill, Jack, Glaeken—all their eyes intent upon her.

How could they ask her to do this? She’d already lost Alan. How could they ask her to risk Jeffy?

But they could. And they were. And considering all that was at stake, how could they
not
ask?

Jeffy too seemed to notice their stares. He drew his gaze from the hilt—he’d been fixated on it since Bill had unwrapped it—and turned to Sylvia.

“Why are they all looking at us, Mom?”

Sylvia tried to speak but no sound came. She cleared her throat and tried again.

“They want you to do something, Jeffy.”

He looked around at the expectant faces. “What?”

“They want you to—” She looked up at Glaeken. “What does he have to do?”

“Just touch it,” Glaeken said. “That is all it will take.”

“They want you to touch that cross. It will—”

“Oh, sure!”

Jeffy pulled away from her, eager to get his hands on the shiny object. Sylvia hauled him back.

“Wait, honey. You should know … it might hurt you.”

“It didn’t hurt that man,” he said, pointing to Bill.

“True. But it will be different for you. The cross will take something from you, and after you lose that something you … you might not be the same.”

He gave her a puzzled look.

“You may be like you were before, in the time you can’t remember.” How to explain autism to a nine-year-old? “You didn’t speak then; you barely knew your name. I … don’t want you to be like that again.”

His smile was bright, almost blinding. “Don’t worry, Mommy. I’ll be okay.”

Sylvia wished she could share even a fraction of his confidence, but she had a dreadful feeling about this. Yet if she held him back, didn’t let him near the hilt, then what had Alan died for? He’d gone to his death protecting Jeffy and her. How could she hold Jeffy back now and condemn him—condemn everyone—to a short life and a brutal death in a world of eternal darkness?

Yet the risk was Jeffy losing the light of intelligence in those eyes and living on as an autistic child.

Certain darkness without, a chance of darkness within.

What do I do?

She forced her hands to release him. She spoke before she had a chance to change her mind.

“Go, Jeffy. Do it. Touch it.”

He lurched away from her, eager to get to the bright metal thing on the table. He covered the distance in seconds, reached out and, without hesitation, curled his tiny fingers around the grip of the hilt.

For an instant his hand seemed to glow, then he cried out in a high-pitched voice. A violent shudder passed through him, then he was still.

What is that?

A disturbance. An aberrant ripple races across Rasalom’s consciousness, disrupting the seething perfection of the ambient fear and agony.

Something has happened.

Rasalom searches the upper reaches, sensing out the cause. Only one possible place it could have originated—Glaeken’s building.

And there he finds the source.

The weapon. Glaeken has managed to reassemble its components. He has actually recharged it. That is what Rasalom felt.

But even now the sensation is fading.

Such hope concentrated in that room, an unbearable amount. Yet exquisite misery is incipient there. How wonderful it will be to catch the falling flakes of that hope as it crystallizes in the cold blast of fear and terror when they realize they have failed.

For it is too late for them. Far, far too late. This world is sealed away from Glaeken’s Ally. Let him assemble a hundred such weapons, a
thousand
. It will not matter. The endless night is upon the world. A dark, impenetrable barrier. There can be no contact, no reunion of Glaeken with the opposing force.

Let him try. Let his pathetic circle hope. It will make their final failure all the more painful.

There now. The disturbing ripple is gone, swallowed by the thick insulating layers of night that surround it like a shroud.

Rasalom returns to his repose and awaits the undawn.

“Jeffy?”

Her little boy stood stone still with his hand on the hilt, staring at it. His cry of pain had pierced her like a spear and she’d leapt to his side. Now she hovered over him, almost afraid to touch him.

“Jeffy, are you all right?”

He did not move, did not speak.

Sylvia felt a rime of fear crystallize along the chambers of her heart.

No! Please, God, no! Don’t let this happen!

She grabbed him by the shoulders and twisted him toward her, caught his chin with her thumb and forefinger and turned it up. She stared into his eyes.

And his eyes …

“Jeffy!” she cried, barely able to keep her voice under control. “Jeffy, say something! Do you know who I am? Who am I, Jeffy?
Who am I?
”

Jeffy’s gaze wandered off her face to a spot over her shoulder, lingered there a few seconds, then drifted on. His eyes were empty.
Empty.

She knew that face.

She fought off the encroaching blackness that her mind hungered to escape to. She’d lived with that vacant expression for too many years not to know it now. Jeffy was back to the way he used to be.

“Oh, no!” Sylvia moaned as she slipped her arms around him and pulled him close. “Oh, no … oh, no … oh, no!”

This can’t be! she thought, holding his unresisting, disinterested body tight against her. First Alan and now Jeffy … I can’t lose them both! I
can’t
!

She glared across the room at Glaeken, who stood watching her with a stricken expression. She had never felt so lost, so alone, so utterly miserable in her life, and it was all his fault.

“Is this the way it has to be?” she cried. “Is this it? Am I to lose everything? Why? Why me? Why Jeffy?”

She gathered Jeffy up in her arms and carried him from the room, hurling one final question at Glaeken and everyone else there as she left.

“Why not
you
?”