The Devil Colony (58 page)

Gray remembered the bastard’s last words.

This isn’t over.

His and Seichan’s voices must have stirred Gray’s father, who raised an arm, stretched. He opened his eyes and slowly focused, blinking a few times, then cleared his throat. It took him an extra moment to get his bearings, looking around the room, eyeing Seichan up and down, lingering there a bit, in fact.

“Seichan, isn’t it?” he asked hoarsely.

“That’s right.” She stood up, ready to leave.

It always surprised Gray what his father remembered and what he didn’t.

Bleary eyes turned to Gray. “Where’s your mother?”

Gray took a deep breath, facing the confusion and anxiety in his father’s face. The small bubble of hope inside his chest popped and deflated.

“Dad . . . Mom’s—”

Rather than leaving, Seichan leaned between Gray and his father. She squeezed the old man’s hand. “She’ll be by later. She needed some time to rest, to get her hair done.”

His father nodded and leaned back into his bed, the anxiety draining from his face. “Good. She’s always doing too much, that woman.”

Seichan patted his hand, turned to Gray and nodded toward the door. Then she straightened, said her good-byes, and drew Gray out of the room with her.

“Where’s breakfast?” his father called after them.

“It’s coming,” Gray said as he left, letting the door close behind him.

Outside, Seichan moved him into a quiet side hall.

“What are you doing?” Gray said, anger rising, gesturing halfheartedly toward his father’s room.

“Saving you, saving him,” she said, and pushed him against the wall. “You’re just punishing yourself, torturing him. He deserves better than that—and so do you, Gray. I’ve been reading up on situations like this. He’ll work through it in his own time. Quit forcing him to remember.”

Gray opened his mouth to argue.

“Don’t you see, Gray.
He knows.
It’s in there, buried where it doesn’t hurt as much right now. He’s working through it.”

Gray pictured the anxiety in his father’s face. It had been there every morning. Even the relief he’d shown a moment ago hadn’t completely erased it. Buried deep in those eyes, a trickle of fear remained.

He rubbed his face with his palm, scratching stubble, unsure.

Seichan pulled his arm down. “Sometimes delusions are a good thing, a
necessary
thing.”

He swallowed hard, trying to accept these words. He was enough of his father to want to fight, to dismiss what wasn’t solid and graspable with a callused hand. Just then his phone chirped in his pocket, allowing him a moment to collect himself.

He pulled it free, his fingers trembling with everything inside him. He fumbled the phone open and saw he had a text message. The caller ID read
BLOCKED
. But the message made clear who had sent it.

IT WAS NOT OUR INTENTION

Those few words were like a bomb dropped in his gut. The trembling inside him grew worse. He slipped down the wall, the world narrowing. All the conflict inside him flared for a breath, then collapsed like a dying star into a burning, dense ember. He went cold and hollow everywhere else.

Seichan followed him down, grasping his cheeks in both of her hot palms, holding him and staring into his face, inches away. She had read the message, too.

Her words gave voice to what was inside him. “I will help you. I will do whatever it takes to hunt them down.”

He stared into the emerald of her eyes, flecked with gold. Her palms burned on his cheeks. Their heat spread into those cold empty places inside him. He reached to her face and pulled her closer, narrowing the distance between them until their lips touched.

He kissed her, needing her.

She resisted at first, her lips tense, hard, unsure.

Then they slowly softened, releasing, parting.

Each of them needed the other.

But was this real—or just a necessary delusion for the moment?

In the end, Gray didn’t care.

It was real enough for now.

11:45
A.M.
San Rafael Swell

It felt good to be back . . . to shake off the ghosts that haunted her.

Kai Quocheets stood on the pueblo’s porch as the sun hammered the canyon and badlands of San Rafael Swell. Dust devils danced up through the gulches and ravines. She smelled the scent of juniper and hot sand as she stared out across its expanse of buttes, stone reefs, and fluted canyon walls, striated in shades of gold and crimson.

Even after only a week, it was beginning to feel like home again.

She’d be spending her summer at the pueblos, earning college credits from Brigham Young University. She was taking a Native American studies class on the ancient Pueblo peoples. It involved recording petroglyphs, helping with the restoration of old ruins, and learning the old Hopi customs.

Like discovering how to roast piñon nuts.

“Who burned my best tray?” a voice shouted from inside.

Kai cringed, knowing she had to face the consequences of her crime like a woman. She’d been doing that a lot lately. Two days ago, she’d been officially pardoned for any wrongdoing involving the events in Utah. It seemed that her role in saving the world had evened her karmic balance with the Justice Department. Plus, having the likes of Uncle Crowe and Hank Kanosh as character witnesses never hurt.

But this was one crime she could not escape so easily.

Kai turned to the screen door and entered the deeper shadows of the main room. Iris Humetewa wore oven mitts and held up a scorched tray.

“You have to wait for the coals to burn off.”

“I know, but Kawtch was chewing at his stitches, and by the time I caught him and got his cone put in place . . .”

She sighed, done with excuses.

Kawtch had lifted his head upon hearing his name, wearing a plastic funnel around his neck. They’d had to amputate his front leg. The rifle shot had left little bone and not much nerve, but he was recovering well.

They all were.

Alvin Humetewa’s burns were mostly just deep red splotches against his tanned ruddy skin. The pair of old Hopi Indians had survived their encounter with Rafael Saint Germaine through sheer stubbornness and their wily knowledge of the local terrain.

The Hopi tribe had a saying:
Never try to hunt an Indian loose on his own land.
It was a harsh lesson for the early pioneers to learn—and one Rafael Saint Germaine had never known about.

Iris had suspected that the Frenchman’s soldiers might come after them. So when she took off with her husband on the ATV, she aimed for the closest sandy bowl and kicked up a cloudy dust storm to hide their flight. Then once she heard the potshots, she rode into an old mine tunnel and trusted Rafael would not stick around long enough to find her and Alvin. She knew he was anxious to go after Kai’s uncle Crowe. Even if he had left men behind, she could cover her tracks and reach help, if necessary.

It seemed there was much Kai could learn from that old Hopi woman.

“I’m sorry, Auntie Iris,” she said. “I’ll polish the tray and make up for it by cooking the next two nights.”

Iris nodded, satisfied, and gave her a wink, expressing forgiveness and love in such a small movement.

The growl of engines drew both their attentions to the front door.

“Looks like the boys are back from their joyriding,” Iris said.

The two headed out to the porch to greet them. A pair of dust-caked figures climbed from ATVs that looked more like fossilized stone than fiberglass.

Jordan peeled off his helmet and wiped his face with a gingham handkerchief. Kai felt her heart stutter as the beam of his smile reached her and grew even wider.

Beside him, his companion popped off his helmet, red-faced and grinning. “I could get used to this,” Ash said.

Major Ashley Ryan and Jordan had become close friends after the events in Yellowstone. It seemed that the National Guardsman had developed a newfound respect for Native Americans.

Jordan reached over and patted the man’s chest, hard, knocking dust off his T-shirt. It read
I LOVE INJUNS
, and it depicted a cartoon V8 engine wearing a feathered headdress.

“Tacky and offensive,” Jordan said. “Both at the same time. That’s going to get our asses kicked out here one of these days.”

“Kid, that news just made this my
favorite
shirt.”

With his chest puffed out proudly, Ash climbed up to the porch.

Jordan smiled over at Kai. “Oh, by the way, I think I beat your best time on the Deadman’s Gulch run.”

Iris nudged Kai with her elbow. “Are you going to take that?”

Hell, no . . .

Kai slipped the helmet out from under Ash’s arm and leaped off the porch, her hair flying. “Let’s go see about that!”

2:17
P.M.
Salt Lake City

From one temple to another . . .

Professor Henry Kanosh, a member of the Northwestern Band of Shoshone, was the first Mormon Indian to stand at the threshold of this temple’s
Kodesh Hakodashim,
the Holy of the Holies’ chamber at the heart of the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City.

Starting at dawn, he’d prepared himself: fasting and praying. He now stood in a vestibule of polished rock, before a door few men knew about. Pounded of raw silver, the portal rose fifteen feet high and eight wide, split down the middle.

In Hank’s hands, he held the one gift he had to offer, the key to the temple’s inner sanctum.

Ahead, the doors parted, and a single figure stepped out.

Hank knelt, bowing his head.

Soft footsteps approached, unhurried, calm.

Once they stopped before him, Hank raised his arms and offered up his gift. The gold plate was taken from his grasp, slipped from his fingers, and gone.

He had recovered the plate at the Old Faithful Inn. While everyone had been distracted by NASA’s call, announcing that they had found a match to the landscape depicted on the canopic jar, Henry had been standing next to the Frenchman’s case. He dared not take
both
plates, as Rafael would then have noted the theft much sooner. So setting aside greed, he satisfied himself with slipping
one
free and pocketing it in the back of his pants.

The gold plate belonged with the church. After seeing the re-creation of Solomon’s Temple, he knew that for sure.

Footsteps retreated, again unhurried and calm.

Hank risked a glance up as the doors started to sweep closed.

Brilliant light flowed out from that inner sanctum. He caught a slivered glimpse inside. A large white stone altar. Beyond it, gold shone forth, coming from shelves that seemed to stretch forever.

Were they Joseph Smith’s original tablets?

A tingling washed over his skin, awe prickling the small hairs over his body. Then the doors shut—and the world seemed a far darker and more ordinary place.

Hank stood, turned, and walked away.

Carrying some of that golden brilliance with him.

5:45
P.M.
Washington, D.C.

Alone, Painter headed across the National Mall, needing some fresh air, but also to follow up on a growing concern.

Everything was quieting down on the global level—at least, geologically speaking. Iceland had stopped erupting, doubling the landmass of Ellirey Island and birthing a small new atoll. Yellowstone remained quiet after a few swarms of quakes following the hydrothermal explosion. To be safe, Ronald Chin was still out there with a team of volcanologists, monitoring seismic activity. Dr. Riku Tanaka, out in Japan, had reported no new neutrino activity.

Still, while they had avoided triggering an apocalypse, the supervolcano still remained—and as Chin had warned, it was still overdue to erupt on its own. A frightening thought.

But there was nothing to be done about that today.

In the end, Yellowstone had a new crater lake, but all signs pointed to nothing worse brewing deeper underground for the moment. Kowalski petitioned to have the lake named after himself:
Kowalski Krater Lake
.

For some reason, the petition got squashed.

Painter attempted to investigate the remaining Saint Germaine clan in France, but within twenty-four hours of Rafael’s death, fourteen of its most influential members were found murdered. No one else in the family seemed to have any knowledge about the Guild. It seemed the True Bloodline had set about to erase its connection to that family.

Even the site in Belgium where they’d picked up the other neutrino trace in Europe revealed only a firebombed and gutted mansion, one leased by a corporation that proved to be a shell, a false identity that evaporated upon inspection. The Guild clearly wanted to destroy any remaining evidence—fingerprints, papers, DNA—from that place.

So that trail also came to a dead end.

Leaving only one path open.

Painter reached his goal at the east end of the mall—the U.S. Capitol—and set about climbing the steps.

Though the building was open to the public only for another fifteen minutes, the place was a noisy jumble of life: kids ran up and down the stairs; tourists posed for photos; protesters shouted, carrying placards. He enjoyed such exuberance and chaos after being cooped up in his offices below the Smithsonian Castle.

Here was American life in all its glory, warts and all, and he’d have it no other way. It was more representative of democracy than all the stately parliamentary rules and political games going on under that neoclassical dome.

So he enjoyed his walk, despite the stifling humidity of the day.

He had plans to have dinner with Lisa later, but for now he needed to clear his mind. He had to see the painting for himself first, before committing to any course of action. Besides, he did not even know where to start. He had told no one of his discovery, not even his inner circle at Sigma.

It was not that he didn’t trust that circle, but they had enough burdens at the moment. Monk had his new baby girl, Harriet. The man had proffered his resignation early that morning. Painter had agreed to keep it on file but convinced him to take family leave and use the time to reconsider. Hopefully, the life of crying children, diaper changes, and a long stretch of downtime would change Monk’s mind, but Painter doubted it. Monk was a family man at heart. And a week ago, they’d all seen the consequences of his trying to live a double life.