Soul Thief (Blue Light Series) (42 page)

“
Doug, listen, there are some people who believe that, yes. There are others who believe just the opposite: that your child will be a destructive force that could possibly be detrimental to humankind and they are determined to hunt it and destroy it before it can have an influence. Either way, your father-in-law must never be allowed to wield influence over him. Listen to me, there’s a battle going on, a battle between good and evil, a battle that started thousands of years ago, and somehow it involves you and your unborn child. Trust me when I say you must do everything in your power to protect that child.”

“
What if I fail?” Doug said.

Lucy
frowned. “Nobody said it would be easy. The future is never written . . . only penciled in. I have faith in you. You were a good kid, and I know you’re a great husband and father. You’ll do the right thing.”

Doug
was silent for a long moment. “Jesus, why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

“
You wouldn’t have believed me, and you would have left here too soon. It would have jeopardized everything.” She got up and went to a small locked cubby in the bookshelf, took a key and unlocked the door. Inside Doug saw a safe. She spun the combination lock and opened the safe’s door, reached inside and extracted a small automatic handgun, a handful of preloaded magazines and a thick envelope. She returned to the couch and handed the gun, the magazines and the envelope to Doug.

“What’s this for?” he said.

“The gun is for your protection and the money in the envelope is to give you a head start.”

Doug looked in the envelope and shook his head. “No, there must be ten thousand dollars in here.”

“There’s fifty thousand.”

“It’s too much,
” Doug said trying to hand the envelope back.

“It’s yours,”
Lucy said. “You’re smart, you know how to survive, you know how to protect yourself, and now you understand what’s at stake. It’s now up to you. I’ve done everything I can do. You should leave here tomorrow. Go out and find Annie and then disappear. I mean it, Doug, don’t ever look back.”

“Then what am I supposed to do
? What about my life?”

“You’re life is going to be about protecting your child. You can trust me on that.”

“What will happen to you?” Doug asked.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

There was something in her voice that betrayed her assurances and it made Doug uneasy. Sensing his thoughts she stood up and said, “You should get some rest. You need to be strong for what’s ahead.”

Doug
stood and put the envelope in his pocket. He picked up the handgun noticing that it was a compact little Beretta nine millimeter semi-automatic that fit snuggly in the palm of his hand. He was familiar with handguns and shooting. Over the years Rick Jennings had carefully tutored him in the fine art of marksmanship.

T
ogether they walked down the hallway to Doug’s bedroom where he placed the pistol and the extra clips on his bedside stand.

“How do you feel, Doug?”

He looked suspiciously at her. “Fine. Why?”

She
stared as tears coursed down her cheeks. “When you wake up you’ll know what to do.”

“
No . . .” Doug said as his voice trailed off. It was as if he’d lost the thought. In truth he hadn’t; he was just unable to speak any more of it. He knew then that she’d put something in his tea. His eyelids sagged. He tried to concentrate on the woman but saw three distinct copies of her. The room spun. “You bitch!” he said.

“I did everything for you.”

You’re about to be betrayed.

Suddenly he
felt like he was floating on a dark sea without a life raft. Doug tried to make sense of everything but it was no use; he could not connect his thoughts. He tried to speak but his tongue felt fat and he could not get the words around it. He was vaguely aware of the woman undressing him and leading him to the bed as the room spun around him.

“I love you, Doug,” she whispered. “I always
have and I always will.”

She became just a
form at the periphery of his vision. Then she was gone. The world grayed over and Doug went away into a dark place for what seemed a very long time. What happened next was beyond his ability to comprehend.

He w
oke to a small sound in the room. He sat up, his rapidly beating heart pumping adrenalin through his bloodstream. Bone-white moonlight burned through the windows and in its glow he saw the Nadia of his youth standing before him naked, watching him with deep-set eyes that seemed rimmed with some inconceivable darkness.
This is all wrong,
his swimming mind told him. Her lips were exaggeratedly large and they were smeared with blood-red color. The room floated around him and he knew that he was still under the influence of whatever drug she’d dumped in his tea.

Her body was beautiful, however. His eyes trailed down from her perfect breasts
—the nipples erect with arousal—to the dark shadow at the triangle of her sex. She touched herself there as if in invitation. Then his eyes went back to an area just above her pubic mound. He remembered something from their high school days. The first time he’d seen Nadia naked at the private beach where they and their friends frequently gathered to swim and party he’d noticed a red crescent moon shaped birthmark just above her pubic mound. He had marveled at it on that day and every day thereafter of their teenage love affair. He remembered touching the mark tentatively at first, examining it thoroughly, totally fascinated, before going down and tracing his tongue lightly over the spot, kissing it. And he remembered how Nadia had laughed wickedly with delight.

And now he could not
take his eyes off it.

“You remember, don’t you, Doug?” Nadia said thrusting her hips forward so that Doug could get a better look. “It’s there
, right where it’s always been, the only part of me not damaged by the fire, as though it were somehow immune. You believe me now, don’t you? Would you like to touch it? Would you like to kiss it like you used to? Remember how it turned you on? Remember how it turned
me
on?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I just didn’t want you to have any doubts. I wanted you to know that everything I’ve done
was out of love for you. When you save the world I want you to think of me and know that I will always be there with you.”

She
was talking nonsense and Doug had serious doubts that any of this was even real. He knew that certain drugs cause hallucinations. Suddenly he didn’t care. Lust flamed in his loins. Nothing mattered in that moment; not Annie, not his unborn child, not that Nadia had deceived him, not that he was probably dreaming this; not even that the fate of the world lay in his hands and that his unborn child was destined to be some sort of savior.

The woman
slipped between the sheets and pressed herself to him. The room spun and Doug drew in a breath. His cock felt enormous as he rolled on top of her and slipped effortlessly into the slick triangle of sex between her spread legs. He concentrated on his breathing as she eagerly met his thrusts, eyes closed, her breath coming in quick gasps. Her face burned white in the moonlight, eye sockets black wells in their lunar radiance. Like an x-ray image Doug saw the terrible scars beneath the façade of Nadia’s reconstructed face. He knew it was an illusion—had to be something his mind was conjuring, perhaps even a symptom of the drug in his system. But down deep he understood that it was Nadia’s way of proving her sincerity.

T
he next few moments were a blur as the sex fed his body and the drug fed his mind. Images that could not possibly be real populated his psyche: two massive skyscrapers crashing down onto the streets of Manhattan, pushing a cloud of dust and smoke all the way up into the stratosphere; the Collector staring at them from the corner of the room, his posture rigid and unyielding, his single red eye burning like a ruby-colored rent in the very fabric of space and time.

In
Doug’s mind he was making love to a teenage Nadia Ziegler in the back seat of his car, her long legs locked snugly around his torso as she worked her vital young body in a rhythmic dance.

I love you, Doug. I’ll always love you.

In
the ensuing moments Doug was consumed beyond all reason, and when their orgasm came in a simultaneous explosion of pure sensation it seemed that everything in his life was concentrated in that one singular moment of ecstasy.

When it was over he
let the drug have its way with him. His sleep was populated with images beyond his understanding, however. He saw the child—the golden haired messiah—young but growing—leading flocks of disheveled and defeated pilgrims into shafts of intense blue light that seemed to grow up out of the earth like exotic crystal spires. The pilgrims were stepping willingly into the light and thus being transported heavenward by some amazing and mysterious force, while high up above earth’s decimated atmosphere thousands of fiery blue plasma trails crisscrossed the blackness of space like needle scratches on some cosmic blackboard, each transporting its cargo of precious human DNA to some undetermined destination.

What are these things?
Doug asked his young daughter through his dream sleep. He had never felt such awe.

Something wonderful
,
answered the child.
They are part of me, I am part of them.

Doug
thought his heart would burst with love and pride as people with enraptured expressions on their soiled and scarred faces thanked the child before stepping into the shafts of sapphire blue light.

But the
se were just drug dreams, Doug reasoned. None of this could be real. Man barely had the technology to get beyond the inner planets, let alone climb to the stars in hundreds, perhaps even thousands of mysterious interstellar transporters.

From somewhere inside the dream Doug
recognized a familiar presence.
All you see will come to pass,
the Collector said, although he did not speak in the conventional sense. It was more a melding of thoughts, his with Doug’s.
But only if you follow the true path.

What is the true path
?
Doug replied.

T
rust that you have already found it.

How can I trust
anything you say after the terrible things you’ve done?

There was
purpose to it all,
replied the Collector.

No
,
Doug said.
You’re saying that the murders of my parents had purpose? You’re saying that Lance and Janet and Jimmy Johnson all died for a reason?

Your survival was paramount
,
the Collector replied.
The survival of each and every one of these individuals—and many others
—
would have, in some way, jeopardized your continued existence, and therefore the future of your child would have been in jeopardy. I was sent here to make the selections. I was sent here to protect you.

By terrorizing me?
I don’t believe it. Why did you let me see all those terrible things?

“
Because you needed to see. You needed to understand. Here, I will show you.

No,
Doug said.
I don’t want to see any more.
But even before he’d formed the words, his mind was cluttered with images from across space and time. Some made sense, some were chaotic, but in the end he came to realize that one way or another, the survival of each and every person the collector had taken, including Doug’s own parents, would have, in some way, jeopardized his life or the life of his child. Finally, in resignation, Doug said:
What about Tommy and Savannah?

It was no accident that you knew them. It was no accident that Tommy hit you in the face. The
y were special in ways that you will someday understand. Their combined spirits live on inside you and in turn will live on inside your child. Their heart and their intellect are vital to your child’s development.

What about Ariel?
Who is she?

She is
God’s lion.

But I don’t believe in God.

God believes in you. The object you wear around your neck is proof of that. You will keep it and covet it. When the time comes you will pass it to your child.

What is it? Where did it come from
? I mean really. No more lies. No more crap. Why is it so important?

It is
one of the keys that will unlock the salvation of your race.

One?

There are three others and you must find them all. Together they will unlock the future.

I don’t understand any of this.

You do not have to understand now. Trust that you will when it is time.
Now I must bid you farewell.
I have accomplished what I was sent here to accomplish. My time on this earth is over. For such a very long time I have been lost, forsaken and forgotten. Now it is time for me to go home.