Stones Unturned (41 page)

Though he knows what is to come.

Some part of him has begun to remember. The recollection is dull and shrouded in fog even thicker than the mist of the spirit world, but it is there.

The landscape shifts. They are on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Roger Alton Bennett gazes out across the city . . . his city. He takes out a cigarette and lights it. There is a scuffing noise behind him, and the mayor turns.

He grins. "Damn, Leonard, but it's good to see you."

The ghost of Dr. Graves watches himself step out from the shadows, face slack and expressionless, and grab hold of Mayor Bennett.

The murder is brutal and ugly and — as he hurls the man from the observation deck to twist and tumble down eighty-six stories to the street — spectacular.

The venom of hatred burns so hot in him now that Graves feels as though he will burst into flames.

"And afterward?" he asks without looking at the Whisper, staring out across the city, not looking down.

"Oh, I killed you." The words are followed by that soft, insinuating laughter. "I wasn't worried about being discovered. What could they do to a man already dead? But I so relished the pleasure of strangling you to death, just as I'd done to all of the other men whose minds I'd altered. Your bones cracked in my grasp. I chose a strong host for that. I wanted to feel your neck crack."

Graves shakes his head. "No. Something still doesn't fit." He turns to look at the Whisper. "They matched the DNA of the remains in the crypt with mine. Those were my bones. Why would you bother to put me there?"

Beneath the brim of that hat, the devil smiles. "I'm a man of my word, Doctor. When you were dead, I turned you over to Gabriella. I'd promised her, after all —"

"You're insane."

"True. But it changes nothing."

"I died in her arms. She was at the funeral. There were photographs in the newspapers, entire articles —"

The ether ripples around them, and now it is the featureless spirit realm at last. Wisps and ghosts pass around them like a thunderstorm rolling across the ground. The soulstream is deep here and its pull grips both specters with such force that they must set their feet firmly to avoid being dragged into the current.

"She was my creature by then," the Whisper says, and the pleasure he takes in those words drips from his lips. "I had haunted her for the better part of a year, whispering to her. It wouldn't be enough for me just to control her body. Vengeance demanded her mind. I was her ghost, the voice in her head, in her dreams. I went to bed with her every night, and so often you were not there —"

"I was —"

"You were a celebrity," Simon Broderick spits, and the muzzle of the pistol twitches with the word. "Do you have any idea how easy it was to convince her that you didn't love her, that you only loved the world and your ambitions for the future? That you lived not for her but for the spotlight?"

"Lies!"

"She was bitter and lonely, and she knew that eventually she would be forgotten completely, instead of merely going to bed alone. She gave you so much love, but she was so afraid that she could never be enough for you. I whispered into her mind the truth, that the only way to keep you to herself was if you died before you could alienate her completely. She wept and screamed when she held you in her arms not because you were dead, but because by then she hated you as much as she loved you."

"No —"

"The only condition she gave for helping to hide the truth was that when you died, she would claim your body and bury you in that damned crypt."

Graves shakes with hatred. He flexes his fingers. The Whisper narrows his eyes and watches his hands warily.

"You said it yourself, she was your creature. You mesmerized her. You put all of those thoughts in her mind, twisted her thinking."

"Some, perhaps," the Whisper says, with a wide, Cheshire cat grin that seems brighter than all of the gray otherworld, and darker than night. "But I only nurtured what was already there. And you'll never know how much of her betrayal was my influence, and how much your own negligence.

"One, last thing, Doctor. You should know that she was miserable forever after that day. Wracked with guilt. When she died, she took it as a mercy, and as she breathed her last, she did it wishing she had never met you."

The scream that tears its way out of Graves is pure anguish. Grief has overridden his hate.

He throws himself backward into the soulstream. Even as he falls he draws his guns.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Teatro del Maggio echoed with screams and discordant notes that could no longer be called music. Clay couldn't worry about Graves. He was a ghost. The people who were still breathing had to be his main concern.

Crowds rushed the exits, shoving and jostling and cursing each other. But some of the members of the audience had decided to intervene. Either they had not seen the bloodshed that had already taken place — the violinist murdering two people in the front row — or they thought themselves heroes. The last thing Clay needed right now was anyone playing hero while he was trying to keep anyone else from dying.

The musicians had slowed down a little, and that was helpful, but even if Graves was distracting the conductor, they were still following whatever commands he'd already given them, and they were still influenced by the soul tethers that linked them to him. There were dozens of them and only one of Clay. A tuba player and a fat man with a French horn kept playing, as did the cellist who went through the motions without a bow to draw music from the instrument. The others carried their instruments off the stage with dull, lifeless eyes and a homicidal urge.

"Back off!" Clay barked as the violinist grappled with him again. He backhanded her so hard she flew out of her shoes and hit the floor, rolling into the first row of seats. She lay unconscious, and he hoped she would wake up eventually.

Each of the members of the symphony was linked to the conductor with a soul tether. Somehow he — or whatever was inside of him — was controlling them all. Things would have been much easier if they were just mindless zombies. But the musicians were alive, and he wanted to try to keep them that way; not an easy task, given that they were trying to kill him and anyone else within reach.

A quartet of angry looking men ran out from back stage. One might have been some kind of manager, because he started shouting in Italian, directing the others. They ran at the musicians who were piling down off of the stage. A flutist grabbed a fistful of hair and dragged one of the men over the edge, then leaped on him as he struck the ground. The flute rose and fell, and blood spattered with each blow.

"Damn it!" Clay shouted.

He tried to push past the musicians around him, but there were just too many of them now.

The trumpet player swung his horn again. Clay snatched it out of his hand and flung it into the balcony. The trumpeter and a tall, wiry, white-haired woman grabbed his arms. Thick hands reached up from behind him and grabbed his head, clawing for his eyes. One finger found his right eye socket and plunged in.

Clay roared in pain as his eye popped, spouting blood and vitreous fluid that dripped down his face.

With his single intact eye he saw a fourth musician coming at him. The man held a golden cymbal in both hands, and as the others held Clay steady, he swung it toward his neck like a guillotine blade.

Enough.

Clay had held off this long because there were so many civilians still in the theater. It didn't matter anymore. With a single thought, he willed his body to change. His flesh flowed, and bone grew, a new eye replaced the ruined one. In a heartbeat he had shed his human guise and taken on his true form, the massive creature of hardened clay. The cymbal struck his chest with a hollow clang, gouging the earthen substance of his body.

With a shrug, he knocked away the trumpeter and the white-haired woman. He grabbed hold of the thick wrist of the large musician behind him, even as the man tried to hang on to his towering, monstrous form, fingers digging into hard clay.

In the thrall of the conductor, the man did not even cry out as Clay snapped his wrist. Other musicians started toward him. He slammed his fist into the trumpeter's face, shattering his nose, causing a spray of bright red blood. The man's eyes cleared, and even as Clay watched, the soul tether connecting him to the conductor dissipated.

The man began to scream in pain.

Finally
, Clay thought. The conductor's control was weakening. Whatever Graves was doing inside of the man must have been having an effect. The musicians were becoming more sluggish, their eyes duller than before. The conductor slumped across his podium, baton still lazily bobbing in his hand, head lolled onto his chest.

Several musicians started up the center aisle in pursuit of audience members who had not yet escaped. No one was still trying to interfere. Once they had seen Clay in his true, golem-like form, even the bravest among them had decided to quit the place. But even as he glanced toward the crowd pushing and trying not to be last out the door, a tuxedoed musician staggered after them, swinging a trombone like it was a club.

Clay plowed through a pair of musicians as if they were children and leaped a row of seats to get to the aisle. The trombone player had begun to beat at the departing crowd. He struck a young dark-haired woman in the temple, and she crashed to the ground. The horn swung again and a well-groomed, handsome man put up his arm to block it. The impact broke bone, and he clutched his arm, screamed, and staggered backward.

The trombone player swung again, but by then Clay had arrived. His patience had run out. He gripped the man by the head and hurled him back down the aisle. The audience members still inside the theater screamed louder than ever, more terrified of him than of the murderous musicians.

The orchestra stalked through the theater, soul tethers still linking them to the conductor. They prowled along the seats, streaming toward the central aisle, moving toward Clay. The dark-haired woman lay unconscious at his feet, and no one was stopping to worry about whether she would reach safety. He wasn't going to wait here for her to be killed.

Cracked, dry clay flesh shifted again. Black fur sprouted, and he hunched over, massive fists pounding the carpet. A mountain gorilla, he charged down the aisle at the musicians. As a wave they lunged at him. Instruments swung and stabbed at him. The gorilla batted a viola and a saxophone away. Hands twisted in his fur.

Clay backhanded one man. His foot shot out, and he kicked another in the chest hard enough to send him tumbling back down the aisle to collide with the stage. Then he was just fighting on instinct. Bones broke and blood spurted, but he did his best to make sure the injuries were not fatal.

There were too many of them.

Soon, he would kill someone, and he could not allow that to happen. As they piled on top of him, he shifted again, from gorilla to python. The huge snake coiled around three musicians in seconds, crushing them, cutting off their oxygen. With his serpent's eyes, he saw all three of their soul tethers dissipate.

It would help, but not enough. If he couldn't free them all, and soon, he would end up killing them.

The Whisper fires, phantom bullets punching through the swirling wisps and ghosts all around them. Souls cry out in pain they never imagined feeling again. One of the bullets strikes Graves in the left shoulder, and his roar of anguish turns into a snarl of pain as it tears away a piece of his soul, a bit of his spirit that is destroyed forever.

Then he is in the soulstream and the current takes him, sweeping him toward the Whisper. Graves thrusts his arms up out of the churning ectoplasm and fires both guns, pulling the triggers again and again.

Broderick fires one last time before the first phantom bullet strikes his chest. A second and third hit his torso. One creases his temple. A fifth hits his right shoulder, and he drops his pistol. It lands in the soulstream and is swept away, another piece of his soul gone for eternity.

He splashes into the soulstream, arms and legs moving, struggling to force himself to stand against the current. His hat is swept off and sails away toward the Ivory Gate. Graves does not turn but knows that those twin spires must be visible in the distance by now.

The ghosts all around them begin to whisper, a hiss of white noise like a rainstorm on a tin roof.

But the Whisper is the most focused spirit Graves has ever seen. Even with bits of his soul torn away, he thrusts himself out of the stream as Graves rushes by, carried on the current. He could manifest another gun, but that would take moments he does not have.

Broderick lunges. Graves pulls both triggers again. One phantom bullet strikes the Whisper in the throat but the other goes wide. And then the ghost is upon him, and Graves feels his true strength at last. The Whisper clutches him around the throat with one hand, and with the other grabs his right wrist. Graves drops one of his guns.

He raises the other, but the Whisper drives him down, submerging him completely in the soulstream . . .

A strange calm envelops him. This is how it was always supposed to be. Why has he fought so long to avoid this peace, this cradle of comfort and tranquility? This rest.

His hands open, and the other gun falls from his grasp, bits of his soul sucked away by the current. He could manifest the guns again, but for what purpose? He is traveling at last to the gate and beyond, to whatever awaits there. A smile touches his lips. Gabriella waits.

He hears the music again, the ghost sonata.