Primal Fear (21 page)

John struck again, this time making contact with Harry’s jaw.  Harry felt the inside of his cheek split and tasted his own blood.  A renewed sense of urgency swelled within him. 

He reached out blindly into the darkness to his left, his hand making contact with John’s arm by pure chance.  Grunting with the effort, Harry seized John’s wrist and held off his next blow, his other hand rising to the center of John’s chest and pushing him violently away.  At the same time, he hooked his left foot behind John’s leg.

John went down hard, colliding with the night stand beside the bed and flipping it onto its side.  It crushed the bedside lamp against the floor, its ceramic base shattering in a shower of glass.  As John tried to regain his footing, Harry twisted the young man’s right arm up behind his back, forcing him onto his stomach.  He placed his knee in the small of John’s back and held him there.

John struggled beneath him, all the while snarling incoherently, his muscles rippling under Harry’s weight.  He was slick with sweat, his flesh slippery and difficult to hold.  From upstairs, he heard Laurie pulling open the door to the master bedroom, stepping into the hall.

“Harry?” she called.  “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he shouted.  “Something’s wrong with John.  Get me the flashlight.”  After a moment’s consideration, he added, “And bring my handcuffs, too.”

“Your handcuffs?  Harry, what—”

“Honey, just hurry up, please.”

John seemed to be tiring, though not by much.  His struggles were still quite violent, and it was all Harry could do to hold him down.

“Another couple of minutes and we’ll be in business,” he murmured, more to ease his own strained nerves than to offer John any sort of consolation.  But no sooner had he uttered the words than John ceased his movements completely, going limp on the floor beneath Harry’s weight.

Harry’s first instinct was that it was a trick, little more than a poor attempt on John’s part to get him to let his guard down.  He peered carefully at the right side of John’s face, but in the darkness he couldn’t make out a thing.

He could hear Laurie descending the stairs now, her pace frantic.  The dim glow of the flashlight began to penetrate the gloom, and within seconds, its bright beam was arcing across the bedroom as she reached the bottom of the stairs.

Harry turned towards her and held out his hand, careful not to look directly into the eye of the flashlight.  “Now I need the cuffs.”

“Oh my God, Harry, what are you doing to him?  What’s going on?”

“Laurie, please.  Just bring me the cuffs.”

Laurie took two steps towards him and the lights came on in the hall, followed quickly by the sound of the furnace kicking in. 

The power had come back on.

“Turn on the ceiling light,” he told Laurie.

She complied, flooding the room with light.

Harry turned back to John, examining the exposed right side of his face.  The young man’s eyes were closed, and Harry had to peel open his right lid with his thumb.

The whiteness had vanished.  The eye was back to its original dark brown, the same as it had been when he’d first met John the morning before.  The room itself seemed warmer now, too, as if whatever had held influence over John had taken the iciness away upon its departure.

“Is he all right?” Laurie asked timidly, still holding the flashlight.

“I hope so.”  Harry swung John’s left arm down to join his right and cuffed both hands behind his back.  John seemed to be unconscious, his muscles slack, his limbs showing no resistance.

Harry turned him onto his side.

“What do we do now?” Laurie asked.  “Should I call the station?”

“Not yet,” Harry said, turning towards her.

“Jesus, Harry,” she spat out, “you’re bleeding.”

He flicked his tongue out, tasted fresh blood on his lips.  His bottom lip had split, but it didn’t seem serious.

“I’ll get the first aid kit,” Laurie said.

From the floor, John let out a groan.  Laurie stopped in her tracks, turned in the doorway to see what was happening.  Harry could see fear in her eyes, but she held her ground, more concerned with his own well- being at this point than her own.

He turned to John, just in time to see the young man’s eyes open.

“Harry?” John muttered.  “Was I—”

His voice sounded normal, all of its earlier menace gone completely now.

“Do you remember anything, John?  Anything at all?”

John nodded slowly.  “Almost all of it.  But it wasn’t me.  You have to believe me.”

“I know.”

John was silent for a long moment.  At last, with a strength in his voice that belied his current condition, he turned his head as far in Harry’s direction as he could manage, and spoke quietly.  “You have to take these off of me,” he said.  “I have to call Doctor Morris as soon as I can.”

“What is it?”

“I think Mahuk is dying.  If I’m right, we don’t have much time.”

Chapter Eighteen

John sighed into the telephone, his face a mask of frustration.  Laurie stood over him, applying antiseptic to a small cut above his left eye.  He winced, but didn’t pull away, and Laurie mouthed an apology before continuing.

Harry sat at the opposite end of the table, idly toying with his handcuffs but otherwise completely engrossed in John’s end of the conversation.  The young man had been arguing with Dr. Morris for the better part of ten minutes, and still seemed to be getting nowhere.

John’s expression became grim and he paused, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece, speaking as quietly as he could.  “Mahuk just had another episode, the worse one yet.  They’ve got him in intensive care, listed as critical.  Dr. Morris says that he’s setting up an around-the-clock watch, but he doesn’t think the old man will make it through the night.”  He met Harry’s stare.  “He’s in a coma.  They don’t think he’ll regain consciousness.”

Harry looked away, letting his thoughts drift as John continued to discuss the case with Dr. Morris.  If what John had told him was true, then they had very little time left to find the tupilaq’s body and destroy it.  Only Mahuk’s health stood in the way of the demon’s resurrection, and now it seemed as if even that was dwindling fast.

John shook his head, talking into the phone again.  “Look, there’s one more thing that I need you to do.  I know you’re going to think I’ve lost it when you hear this, but please, I can’t stress this enough: you have to believe me.”  He took a deep breath and plunged on.  “I have to ask you to restrain Mahuk’s movements.  I know how that must sound—”

Even from the other side of the table, Harry could hear the doctor’s outraged voice over the phone.  His words came through clearly and Harry could hear within them the same anger he’d felt himself the day before.

To his credit, John jumped back into the conversation, defending his request against the doctor’s protest.  “Goddamn it, Sidney, I’ve never given you a reason to distrust me before.  What makes you think I’d try to mislead you now?  What I need from you is a promise that you’ll strap that old man’s hands down as firmly as you can.  I don’t care how you do it or what you have to say to justify your actions, but it has to be done.  Tell them that the restraints are there for his own protection, to keep him from hurting himself, if you think that’ll make a difference.  They’ll buy it, but only if it comes from you.  Sidney—”

John stopped and stared at the phone.  “Hello?”

“What happened?”

“I think he . . . shit, he hung up on me.”  He slammed the receiver back into its cradle, and when he pulled his hand away from the phone, Harry noted with no small concern that it was shaking.

Hoping to bring John’s anger down a notch or two, Harry said, “So.  That went well.” 

John grinned in spite of himself, a tiny bark of laughter fighting its way from his lips.  “That’s what I’m starting to like about you, Harry.  No matter what happens, you always know just what to say.”

“At least what you told him makes sense,” Laurie put in.  “Mahuk really could hurt himself during another seizure.”

“He already did.  During his last seizure, he went into convulsions and managed to dislocate his right shoulder.  And a day and a half ago, a stab wound was found in his left side.  They still can’t explain that one.”

“Oh, my God,” Harry whispered.  “I think that’s my fault.”

“How can that be?”

“At the morgue,” Harry said, “I fought Slater off with a shard of glass from the broken picture frame.  I stabbed him in the left side.”

John picked up his line of thought.  “And we know that it was Mahuk that was controlling the body, at least at first.  He must have still been linked to it . . .”

“And what happened here tonight?  Was that Mahuk again?”

“I believe so.  But I think it was just his power, not his will.  If what you described to me was right, I was performing the same ritual of summoning that’s required to raise Wyh-heah Qui Waq.”

“I don’t understand.  I thought it was coming back whether we wanted it to or not.  Now you’re saying that it has to be physically summoned?”

“No, it’s coming back all right.  The moment that Mahuk dies, it’ll be free.  But it’s very eager.  It wants to escape now.  And as Mahuk grows weaker, the demon’s strength becomes greater.  I think Mahuk was trying to contact me again through Atae, maybe even to warn me.  But then the demon must have seized that power and tried to influence me to perform the ritual.  It’s the same thing it’s been trying to do to Mahuk, to use his own weakness to free it.”

“Can it do that?  I mean, is it really that powerful?”

“Yeah, I think it is.  We saw the proof, right here, a half hour ago.  We’re very lucky you were able to get through to me before the ritual was completed.  But it’ll try again, I’m sure of it.  By forcing the last of Jha-Laman’s descendants to perform the ritual to free it, Wyh-heah Qui Waq’s resurrection will be a personal affront to the power of the shaman.  That’s why I asked Dr. Morris to restrain Mahuk.  His hands must not be allowed to move again.”

Harry was silent for a moment, digesting everything he’d just learned.  In essence, he’d just been told that the demon could conceivably force John to work magic on its behalf, using the strange link the young man still held with Mahuk and his knowledge of the ancient rites as a weapon against them.  That made him a walking time-bomb, one that could turn on Harry at any time.

“John, look, no offense, but do you really think it’s a good idea—”

“I know what you’re thinking,” John said.  “But I don’t think you have to worry.  I’d have to be asleep or unconscious again for the demon to have any sort of pull over me.  My own will is enough to hold it back, at least until it grows much stronger.”  He hesitated, and with a small smile added, “I think.”

“You think.  That’s comforting.”

“Either way, it doesn’t make a difference at this point.  We have to go out to the quarry right now.  We don’t have any other choice.”

Harry glanced up at the clock.  “It’s still another two hours until sun-up.  I already told you, we’ll wait until then.  If we go out there in the dark, we’ll get ourselves killed before we even make it into the cave.”

“But you don’t understand.  If we don’t—”

“John, don’t even bother.  I’m not budging on this one.  You can pack up anything you think you’re going to need, but try to keep it light.  Don’t forget that piece of bone from the tupilaq; that’ll definitely help us locate the cave again.”

John fell silent, deep in thought.  “I don’t think it’ll be safe to bring it along this time,” he said at last, almost to himself.  “I’m not sure how much power the demon has by now.  It might be too dangerous.  To be honest, I’d prefer to leave it behind.”

“All right, if that’s what you think is best, I’ll take your word for it.  Either way, you should probably start to pack, just to be sure we’re not forgetting anything.  I’m going to do the same thing and then give Charlie a call.  He’s into climbing; he’s got enough equipment to scale Mount Everest.  I’m sure I’ll be able to get him out there to give us a hand.  By then, it’ll be close enough to dawn that we can head out towards the Stratham.”

John nodded, relenting to the logic of Harry’s decision.  He stood up and flexed his right arm, his left hand kneading the sore muscles of his shoulder.  It was the same arm Harry had forced behind his back when he’d been trying to restrain him.

“Sorry about that,” Harry said, rising to his feet and pushing his chair back in.  “I was trying not to hurt you.”

“No problem,” John said.  “Let’s just hope you don’t have to do it again.  I’ve only got one good arm left.”  He slapped Harry on the shoulder and strode off towards the spare bedroom to pack.

“Doesn’t look like we’re going to get any more sleep tonight,” Harry said, turning towards Laurie.  She had turned to face the window, her shoulders hunched and her head down.  Harry could tell by her body language that she was close to tears. 

“What is it?  What’s the matter?”

“I don’t want you to go,” she whispered.  “Look at the storm.  Jesus, Harry, you’re going to get yourself killed out there.”

His eyes moved to the window, where the single spotlight fought valiantly against the stifling blackness.  The visibility was ridiculously bad, certain to be near white-out conditions by the time the sun came up.

“I have to go,” he said.  “And it’s not like I’m going out there unprepared.  Believe me, I’m not going to take any unnecessary chances.”

“But all this talk about demons and rituals . . . you expect me not to worry?”

Harry managed a small smile.  “I’ll be careful, hon, I promise.  I’ll be back before you know it.  You just stay warm, you hear me?”

He crossed to her and held her close, trying to maintain a tone of confidence in his voice, hoping it would alleviate some of her fear.  But inside, he could feel a knot of dread twisting in his stomach, not about the storm but about what they might find waiting for them if they were lucky enough to reach the cave beyond it.

His eyes centered on the window.

Outside, the snow continued to fall.