Sinner (38 page)

“I wouldn't do that,” Johnny said, easing toward a boulder half his height.

“You don't think they know exactly where we are?”

Johnny suddenly had a pistol in his hand. “Problem is, so do I.” He spun the weapon and caught it neatly in his palm. “I suggest you tell them to give us some space.We need to talk.”

Billy hesitated. Judging by the way Johnny handled the gun, the rumors about him were true. Darcy had no doubt that he could kill them both before they had the time to notice.

“I could shoot the phone out of your hand, but you might lose a finger—it's been awhile. Please, Billy, tell Kinnard you're fine. We're just trying to understand some things.”

Billy frowned and spoke into the phone. “Yes, we're fine. No, leave us here in the canyon.”

“Pull back any observation posts,” Johnny said.

“Pull back the spotter on the north face. I'll call for a chopper when we're ready.” He snapped the phone closed.

Johnny tossed the gun into the sand and held up his hands in a sign of good faith. “Thank you.”

Darcy clasped her hands behind her back and walked to her right, gazing at the piles of rock, trying to imagine the old entry to the monastery. “You really think dragging us back here will help you? I hate to disappoint you, Johnny, but we're here about our future. Clearly, our past is buried.”

“On the contrary, this is all about the past,” he said. “It's about what happened two thousand years ago. What happened twelve years ago. What happened last week. The truth doesn't change over time.”

“Is that what lies under that pile of rocks? The truth? I think we were fed lies.”

“Then why don't we put it to a test?”

She knew immediately what he had in mind.

“You want us to remove our glasses and see what happens, is that it?”

“I want you to use your gifts. They were given to you for good, not evil. Billy, search my mind, show me where my doubts hide. Darcy, persuade me of the errors in my way of thinking. I'll remove my glasses and let you speak to me clearly.”

The notion put Darcy on guard. Why would he subject himself to such a baring of his soul?

Then she remembered Holly down in Paradise.

“If you don't see the sense of our way,” she said, “you only prove that your deception runs all the way into your bones.”

“Who cares about that?” Billy said. “He intends to make us look into
his
eyes.” To Johnny: “Do we look like morons to you?”

“You do. But looks can be deceiving. My eyes are harmless. They will expose only truth, unless I decide to show you more.”

“More?”

He hesitated. “Nothing that will hurt you. But I want you to see your souls, the way they really are, and that sometimes can be painful. You're not afraid of yourselves, are you?”

Darcy found the idea of staring into her own soul a bit esoteric but nonetheless unnerving.

“No,” Billy said. “No, Darcy, I'm telling you this is a bad idea.”

She looked at Johnny. “You heard him. It's a bad idea.”

“Why?”

She faced Billy again. “Why, Billy?”

“Because he's not telling us something. He knows that his eyes can do something . . .” The tightness in his voice betrayed his fear.

“My eyes can show the truth. And only then if you are open to it.”

Johnny lifted his hands and removed his glasses.His eyes were as blue as the sky. Nothing that looked threatening.

“You're not seeing my real eyes,” he said. “I have the power to do a few tricks, like turn my eyes blue. Basic illusions. But that's not what we're interested in here, are we?”

“It doesn't matter what we see, then,” Billy said. “How would you expect us to think that anything you show us isn't just an illusion? A hundred false faith healers have turned the world into cynics. So what are you, the ultimate miracle worker for the entire world to see? You're a fake!”

“Then you'll be fine, Billy. You'll know if what you see is just an illusion. Skeptics aren't easily won over.”

Darcy stared at his blue eyes. Here it was then, three grown children with special powers facing off in the very canyon where they had been granted those powers. The world gathered on the Net for one of the largest global ideological battles it had yet faced, but this was the epicenter.

In the end there was Billy, Johnny, and Darcy.

Johnny took a step toward her, eyeing her with deep pools of impossible blue. “You've rejected the faith, but surely you remember your lessons. The account of the leader who swore to kill every follower of the Way, these so-called Christians, after they'd crucified Jesus. He rounded them up wherever they could be found, do you remember?”

“A story,” she said.

“Verified by numerous historical documents. An accurate account.”

“So what?”

“He took a journey to Damascus to bring followers of the Way to justice, just like you and Billy are doing here. But that journey changed his life dramatically. Instead of stomping out the Way, he vowed to spend his life speaking the truth about Jesus. What happened to bring about such a radical transformation from hatred to devotion, Darcy? Do you remember?”

“Of course she remembers,”Billy snapped.“What are you now, an angel of light?”

Johnny kept his eyes on Darcy.“That's right, Billy, the apostle Paul saw a light on the road. A blinding shaft of truth that bared his soul and threw him to his knees.”

Darcy reached up and snatched her glasses from her eyes. “Fine, Johnny. Show me your light. Do your tricks. The world's waiting.”

He stared at her for a moment, then looked at Billy.

“And you?”

Billy's voice was laced with bitterness. “You think dragging us through the mud, shoving our pitiful failures in our faces, spitting on us when we're down will do anything more than prove what Darcy convinced me of a week ago?”

He meant that freedom from hate speech was grounded in hate, not love. But at the moment, Billy seemed to have cornered hate speech. He'd lost a bit of perspective, Darcy thought.

“Just because the truth disturbs someone doesn't make speaking that truth hate speech,” Johnny said.

“It's nothing more than
your
version of the truth.”

“Then take off your glasses, Billy, and see if it should be your version as well . . . or not.”

Billy ripped his glasses off, and Johnny's thoughts flowed into his mind like a torrent. They locked eyes for a few long seconds that stretched into ten.

Darcy guessed by the deepening scowl on Billy's face that he was learning what they already knew: Johnny was indeed deceived by his own rhetoric. To the marrow of his bones he believed that he was speaking not only the truth but the only truth.

“Look at me, Johnny,” Darcy said.

He blinked and turned his eyes to her.

She started to slowly walk toward him, light on the sand. “You will not use your eyes on me, Johnny. You respect me too much to force me against my will, and really, I don't want to hear any more of what you have to offer.”

He took a step back, undoubtedly unprepared for the power in her voice. She pressed.

“Even if your version of truth has merit, you have to respect those who dislike it. Speaking of it in any arena where it is uninvited, such as in this country, is wrong.”

Johnny's blue eyes did not blink. She wondered what it was like to see the way he saw, in lights and shapes rather than in color or texture.

“I do not want you to be rude to me, Johnny.”

“Was Jesus rude to the money changers he drove from the temple?” Johnny asked.

“Yes. As a matter of fact, he was. And I don't want you to treat me that way. This is America, not ancient Palestine. We've grown up since then, don't you think?”

“The world has fallen into a dark pit. Is it rude or hateful to point the way to the light?”

She reached him and lifted her hand to his face. Rubbed her thumb on his cheek. His flesh was hot to her touch, closely shaven, smooth.

“I think the world likes this dark pit. So please shut up and let us all grope around in the dark if that's what we want to do.”

He was feeling the full brunt of her words; she could see it in the sweat on his forehead. But she hadn't tested him yet, not really.

“I must follow that light,” he said softly.

“You should join us, Johnny.”

Why did she keep coming back to that? Because she liked Johnny, deep down where she had no business liking him. He was so wrong, so misguided, and so deceived, but she found his conviction nearly irresistible.

“Would you like to kiss me, Johnny?”

He didn't respond, so she turned back to Billy, smiling. “Does he want to kiss me, Billy?”

She realized in a flash that this tack was entirely inappropriate. Billy frowned bitterly and his eyes were dark with anger. But before she could backpedal, his frown morphed into a wide scream of raw terror.

It was as if a bucket of black fear had been thrown in his face, so sudden was the change. He stumbled back a step, threw his hands to his face, and shredded the air with a scream that made her hair stand on end.

She spun back to Johnny. His eyes were fixed over her shoulders on Billy. Black eyes, as black as polished coal.

She'd asked him not to use his eyes on her, but she'd said nothing about Billy, and now Billy was seeing whatever Johnny showed him.

“Stop it!” she cried. But he stared on, unaffected.

She slapped his face. “Stop it, I said!”

He blinked and looked at her, now with white eyes.

“It's just the truth, Darcy,” he said, swallowing hard. “Please let me show you the truth. For their sakes, for the sake of those in Paradise. For all of our sakes!”

“Oh, God!” Billy wailed behind her. “Oh, my God, my God . . .” He sounded like a father who was helplessly watching his children being brutalized. Weeping uncontrollably.

“God, God, God!”

She whirled back and watched Billy fall to his knees, gripping his hair with both hands, eyes clenched.

“What did you do to him?”

“The truth . . .”

Darcy spun back. “If that's the truth, the world doesn't need it! Let him go!”

“I don't—”

She slapped him again. “Let him go, now!”

“I don't have him!” Johnny yelled. His eyes flashed blue.

“Oh, my God, my God,” Billy sobbed. “What . . . what was . . .”

“Me, Billy.” The voice came low, guttural like a rolling boulder from the direction of the cabin behind Johnny, flattening all other sound in the canyon.

Darcy's heart crashed into her throat at the sound of his voice. A voice she couldn't possibly forget. The one that had haunted her nightmares for thirteen years and made her weep on the therapist's couch so many times.

Black.

Johnny jerked around, and she saw Marsuvees Black over his shoulder even as he turned.

Black stood in the cabin's opened doorway, dressed in a black trench coat, black polyester pants, black Stetson hat. Silver-tipped black boots.

He stood there, leaning on the doorjamb with one ankle crossed over the other, chewing on a small twig. The left corner of his mouth suggested a grin, and his sparkling eyes confirmed it.

“You do remember me, don't you? Billy?”

He looked at Johnny and the grin faded.

“Keep your tricks, John-John. I've been staring at myself for thirteen years and I'm getting to like what I see. Granted, some of the older mes didn't cut the mustard, so to speak, but I do think I've hit upon the right ingredients this time. Don't you?”

“Tell him to tell you who he really is, Darcy,” Johnny said. “At least give me that much.”

“I know who he is.”

“Pray, do tell,” Black said, and stepped from the cabin, strutting toward them. “Who am I, Darcy?”

“You're something written from the books, words that have taken flesh.”

“More, baby, more. Don't shortchange me now after all we've been through.”

She said what was on the top of her mind. “You're an incarnation of evil.” Then louder: “The demon in the dark, the ghost who whispers in the night. The bogeyman, if you want. One iteration of the figment of all our imaginations.”

He stopped at that, as if disappointed, then walked on. “You reduce me to something that goes bump in the night? I expected more from you, Darcy. I'm not that plastic, not by a long shot.”

“I want you to stop where you are,” she said. But he continued as if he hadn't heard her, impervious to her voice. She began to fear him in earnest.

“Raw evil,” he said. “Like a raw steak, just meat and blood. The devil incarnate. But there's more, baby, so much more. You've gone and saved the juiciest detail for last, you naughty little girl.”

Darcy was struck by the undeniable fact that Black's very presence validated at least part of what Johnny had claimed.

“Tell me who I am!” Black snarled, lips twisted and wet. Darcy wanted to run. Her hands went cold and her breathing stopped.

Only then did she realize that he was staring past her at Billy. He was demanding that Billy confess the full truth.

“Tell me, you worthless brat. Tell me!”

“You're me!” Billy cried.He was on his knees and his arms were spread and his face was twisted in anguish. “I made you!”

Black strode past her and Johnny as if they didn't exist.His focus bore into Billy, who cowered on the ground, shaking.

“Almost. Let's be precise here.
You
are
me
, Billy. Say it.”

“I am you!” Billy cried. “I am you!”

“You need me, Billy. Tell them.”

He shook, robbed of breath.

“Leave him!” Johnny yelled. “You have no right to him.”

Black halted midstride, slowly turned around, black eyes like holes in his face, head tilted to one side. “
Au contraire
. I
own
him.”