Conspiracies

  "That narrows it down."

  "Try this then: Let us just say there is this dark intelligence, this entity somewhere that is—"

  "Where?"

  "Somewhere—somewhere else. Everywhere and nowhere. But put aside the where for the moment and concentrate on this force's relationship with humanity."

  "Wait, wait, wait. You started out a step ahead of me and now you want to take another."

  "How? How am I ahead of you?"

  "What is this 'dark intelligence'? Is it just there? I mean, is it Satan, Kali, the Bogey Man, what?"

  "Perhaps it is all of them, perhaps none of them. Why do you presume it must have a name? It is not some silly god. If anything, the Otherness is more of an anti-god."

  "Like Olive's Antichrist?"

  Roma sighed, his expression frustrated. "No. That is part of Christian mythology. Forget Olive's eschatological ravings, and every religion you have ever heard of. When I say anti-god, I mean something at the opposite pole from everything you think of when someone says 'god.' This entity does not want worshippers, does not want a religion set up around it. It has no name and does not want anyone assigning it a name."

  "What is it then?"

  "An incomprehensible entity, a huge, unimaginable chaotic force—it does not need a name. In fact, you might even say it wishes to avoid a name. It does not want us knowing about it."

  "If it's, so powerful, why should it care? And who's ever heard of a god that doesn't want believers?"

  "Please stop using the word 'god.' You are only confusing yourself."

  "Okay. Then why doesn't it want believers?"

  "Because of its chaotic nature. Once you believe in it, once you acknowledge it, you give it form. Assigning it a form, a shape, an identity weakens its influence. Identifying it and giving it a name or, worst of all, converting a host of believers to worship it, would shrink its interface with this world and push it further away. So it masks itself as other religions and belief systems and lets them front for it."

  "Sort of like a multinational conglomerate hiding behind lots of dummy corporations."

  Roma nodded slowly. "A mundane analogy, but you seem to be getting the picture. This force is in this world in many guises, but all working toward the same end: chaos."

  "A little chaos isn't so bad."

  "You mean, a little randomness? A little unpredictability for excitement?" He laughed softly as he shook his head. "You have no idea, no concept of what we are discussing here."

  "All right, what does it want?"

  "Everything—including this corner of existence."

  "Because why? We taste good?"

  "Really, if you refuse to be serious—"

  "Don't tell me to be serious when you've filled this hotel with a very serious group of otherwise sane adults who firmly believe that a horde of alien lizards is heading this way from space and is going to chow down on us big time when they get here. I didn't make that up—they did."

  "Well, they are right and they are wrong. Something is trying to get here but the 'chowing down,' so to speak, will be of a more spiritual sort. If you would listen without interrupting you might understand."

  Jack leaned back and folded his arms. "All right. I'll listen. But whenever I hear stuff like this I can't help thinking about how we all thought earth and humanity were the center of the universe. Then Galileo came along."

  "Point taken. It does sound anthropocentric, but if you will hear me out, you will see it is not."

  "Go."

  "Thank you. I will try to come at this from a different angle: Imagine two vast, unimaginably complex forces at war. Where? All around us. Why? I do not pretend to know. And it has been going on so long, perhaps they themselves have forgotten why. But none of that matters. What does matter is that all existence is the prize. Notice I did not say 'the world,' 'the solar system,' 'the universe,' 'reality'—I said existence. That means that all other dimensions, other universes, other realities—which, trust me on this, do exist—are included as well.

  This corner of reality is a minuscule backwater of that whole, but it is a part. And if you mean to call yourself the victor, you must have it all."

  Jack resisted quoting Rodney King.

  "Now," Roma continued, "one of these forces is decidedly inimical to humanity; the other is not."

  Jack couldn't help it—he yawned.

  "Am I boring you?" Roma said, his expression shocked.

  "Sorry. Just sounds like the old Good versus Evil, God versus dat ol' debil Satan sort of thing."

  "That is how some people interpret it, and Cosmic Dualism is rather trite. But that is not the case here. Please note that I did not say that the opposing side—the anti-Otherness, if you wish—is 'good.' I said it is not inimical. Frankly, I doubt very much that it gives a specific damn about humanity other than the fact that this territory lies on its side of the cosmic DMZ, and it wants to keep it there."

  Wow, Jack thought. He'd heard some wild theories this week, and he'd become convinced that something—not aliens, not the Antichrist, not the New World Order, but something—was going on, but this ... this Otherness stuff took the blue ribbon for being the farthest out.

  "So ... " Jack said. "We're all caught up in a giant game of Risk."

  Roma shook his head slowly. "You have an uncanny knack for reducing the empyrean to the mundane."

  "So I've been told."

  "But then," Roma said, "taking everything I've said into account, we must not overlook the big 'or.'"

  "Or?"

  "Or ... everything I have just told you is completely wrong because there is no way a human can understand the logic and motives of this totally 'other' reality."

  "Swell," Jack said, wanting to scour the smug look off Roma's face. "Then all this talk's got nothing to do with"—Jack mimicked Roma's three-fingered gesture again—"this."

  "On the contrary. Your scars were made by a creature of the Otherness."

  "The ones you say you watched being conceived."

  "Watched? A piece of my flesh was used in their genesis." Roma's expression clouded. "Not that I had much say in the matter. But they turned out to be rather magnificent creatures, didn't they."

  "Magnificent isn't quite the word I'd choose."

  But perhaps magnificent wasn't so far off. Magnificently evil, and so alien, so ... other, that Jack remembered how his most primitive instincts had screamed for him either to run or to annihilate them.

  Jack also remembered what he'd been told about the origin of the rakoshi. He could almost hear Kolabati's voice ...

  "Tradition has it that before the Vedic gods, and even before the pre-Vedic gods, there were other gods, the Old Ones, who hated mankind and wanted to usurp our place on earth. To do this they created blasphemous parodies of humans ... stripped of love and decency and everything good we are capable of. They are hate, greed, lust, and violence incarnate ... "

  Could Kolabati's Old Ones be Roma's Otherness?

  Roma rose from the table. "Well, I'm satisfied," he said.

  "About what?"

  "That all you know of the Otherness is what I've just told you. I thought you might be a threat, but I am now convinced you are not."

  For some reason he couldn't quite grasp, Jack felt offended by that. "Threat of what?"

  Roma went on as if he hadn't heard. "But there might be others who are not so sure. You would do well to take care, Mr. Shelby. You might even consider returning to your home and locking your doors for the rest of the weekend."

  The warning startled Jack, and before he could reply, Roma turned and strode away. Jack wanted to run after him, grab him, shake him, and shout Tell me what you mean! But he fought the urge. That would only cause a scene, and was unlikely to make Roma more talkative.

  Feeling as if he'd been sucker punched, Jack headed for his room.

  19

  On the way back upstairs, Jack cursed himself for not telling Roma he'd been spotted in Monroe with Melanie last week. He w
ould have loved to have seen his reaction. Damn. Why hadn't he thought of that?

  What did Gia call it? Esprit de Vescalier, or something like that.

  As soon as he stepped into the room he saw the red message light blinking on his phone. He followed the directions for message retrieval and heard a low, raspy voice: "Wondering where Olive Farina is? Check the hotel basement."

  That was it. A mechanical sounding female voice announced the time the message had been recorded: 6:02. Seven minutes ago. Just about the time he'd left the bar.

  He didn't recognize the voice, but he'd bet his last dollar it was one of the goons in black. Jack knew about Olive's death—he was probably the only one who did. That made him a loose end, one that needed tying up.

  And they think I'm just going to go trotting down to the basement and into their tender loving arms?

  He was insulted.

  Of course, he was going—whoever spirited Olive away probably had something to do with Melanie's disappearance—but he wasn't going alone. Mr. Glock would come along.

  He pulled the pistol from his gym bag and hefted it, considering a silencer, then discarding the idea. The increased length would make the pistol harder to handle in close quarters. If he needed to fire, he would, noise be damned. He slipped it under his belt, inside his shirt, then headed for the elevators.

  He smiled and nodded at the SESOUPers who rode down with him. All but one got off at the second floor for the reception. The straggler departed at the lobby level, leaving Jack alone as he descended to the final stop.

  He pulled the Glock and chambered a round as the car slowed, then held the pistol tight against his right thigh as the doors slid open. He stepped out into a narrow corridor. Its ceiling was tentacled with pipes and ducts, a closed door on either side, opening into a wider, darker space at its end where machinery clanked and whirred. Warm and dusty. The Clinton Regent was old enough to have boilers.

  "Hello?" he called once, then again. No reply.

  He raised his pistol as he edged up to the first door and tried the handle. Locked. With the dock's muzzle ceilingward, he slid his back along the wall until he was opposite the second door. He reached over and tried that knob—also locked. But locked didn't mean unoccupied. Someone could pop out of either at any time.

  Keeping his back to a wall, and an eye on those doors, Jack slid to the end of the corridor. Hotter here, darker and noisier too—a wide dim space, its floor lower than the corridor's. Light spilling from behind him glinted off hulking elephantine shapes snared in a maze of pipes and ducts.

  Jack darted his head out and back, twice, checking left and right. Visibility was the pits, but at least no one was hovering just around the corner. And he'd spotted a light switch on the right. He reached his left hand around and flipped the single toggle.

  The two naked bulbs that came to life far to the left and right in the ceiling did little to chase the gloom. Jack stepped onto a small platform that sat a couple of feet above the floor of the bigger space. Leaning against the low pipe railing, he scanned the walls for more switches. The place had to have better light than this. As he looked for more bulbs so he could follow the wiring back to a switch, he spotted a large dark lump attached to one of the pipes against the ceiling almost directly above him. He immediately moved to the side and peered up at it.

  The way it was stuck to the pipe reminded him of some huge barnacle. But as his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, he could see that it was covered with either fur or some sort of black fuzzy mold. No details, just a big lump of black fur. In fact, from this angle it looked like someone had attached a sable coat to the pipe.

  Jack blinked and suddenly it was coming his way—not simply dropping from the ceiling, catapulting at him. With a hoarse bellow, a hurtling mass of bared fangs, extended claws, and bright crimson eyes was on him before he could raise his pistol for a shot. The Glock was knocked from his grasp, clattering away along the floor as he went down under the brain-jarring impact.

  The thing was all sinew and muscle and utterly savage in its attack, raking him with its claws and snapping at Jack's face. He got his hands around its throat and held it off, but the first three seconds told him how this was going to go—he was going to lose. He needed a weapon or a way out. The Glock was gone and the Semmerling was out of reach in his ankle holster.

  Jack tried to match the creature's ferocity, roaring at it as he pushed it to arms length. He bent his knees, got his feet against its torso, and kicked out with everything he had. The creature went flying, slammed against the platform railing, and slipped through, falling to the floor below. Jack looked around, spotted the Glock on the corridor floor, and dove for it. But the creature had already recovered and, screaming with rage, was on him again before he reached it.

  The force of the impact against his back drove Jack to the floor. In that instant he felt strong fingers grab a handful of his hair and yank his head back, glimpsed extended fang-filled jaws gape wide and slash toward his exposed throat, and he knew he was done. No time for any thought other than sick dread and a silent No!

  And suddenly the weight was off him. Jack hesitated through a heartbeat of confusion, then rolled over in time to see the creature hurtling through the air, slamming back first against the corridor wall.

  What the—? How'd I do that?

  The thing sprawled against the wall an instant, dazed, shaking its head, and now Jack had his first good look at it—a hellish cross between a rottweiler and a baboon, but bigger and heavier.

  Then it was rushing at him again—

  Only to hurl itself back against the wall before it reached him.

  Jack had no idea what was going on and wasn't going to waste time pondering it. Get the Glock! He rolled toward the pistol as the thing came for him once more, only to veer away and slam itself against the wall a third time.

  That seemed to be enough for the thing. As Jack reached the pistol, the creature turned and fled the corridor. Before he could take aim, it was gone, lost amid the pipes and tanks.

  Jack sat alone in the middle of the floor, panting, almost retching. He'd been as good as dead less than a minute ago. What had happened? And what was that hell thing? Obviously it had been sent to kill him, but why hadn't it finished him off when it had the chance?

  Shaken, weak, he struggled to his feet and staggered back toward the elevator.

  20

  Jack crouched among the rhodos in the Castlemans' backyard, trying to find a comfortable position.

  I shouldn't even be here tonight, he thought.

  Still rattled and hurting from his earlier encounter with that monkey-dog creature, the last thing he felt like doing tonight was babysitting the Castlemans. But he didn't exactly have anybody to sit in for him. So after soaking his wrenched muscles and ligaments in the tub in his hotel room, he'd dragged himself out to Elmhurst. He ran into traffic along the way, and Ceil was already home by the time he reached his post among the rhodos.

  Even here, far away from the Clinton Regent basement, Jack couldn't shake the memory of the utter ferocity of that creature. He'd never seen anything like it. Not a rakosh, but just as bloodthirsty.

  And why me, damn it? I'm not supposed to be a target. This isn't about me, it's about Melanie Ehlers.

  Jack was spooked, he admitted it. Every shadow held menace now.

  He forced himself to concentrate on Ceil. She was sipping what looked like a vodka but she wasn't slicing and dicing. The casement windows over the kitchen sink had been cranked out an inch or so, and music from the stereo seeped into the backyard. When Donna Summer and Barbara Streisand finished caterwauling "Enough is Enough," Laura Branigan started singing about "Gloria."

  Jack grimaced. Disco ... Ceil still listens to disco.

  She took her drink upstairs. Jack couldn't see into the bedroom, so he waited. And then for a moment or two he had the feeling that he was being watched. That thing again? Coming back to finish the job? Carefully he studied the shadows but didn't see anyt
hing. Eventually the feeling went away, but it left him on edge.

  Got to shake this, he thought. Got to focus here.

  When Ceil reappeared, she had changed into a dress. Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" was thumping now and Ceil did a little dance around the kitchen, her dress swirling around her skinny legs as she made quick graceful turns this way and that.

  Remembering the good old days? Jack wondered.

  Finally she finished her drink, put on a coat, and headed for the door to the garage.

  Don't forget to turn off the stereo, Jack wanted to shout. Please don't leave that music on!

  Her hand was on the doorknob when she stopped, turned, and hurried back to the stereo.

  "Thank you, Ceil," he whispered as the music died.

  She drove off, and Gus didn't show up, so Jack assumed Ceil was meeting her husband for dinner or a party. He debated whether or not to pack it in and call it an early night, or hang on and wait.

  Jack chose waiting. He'd leave after seeing them safely to bed.

  Waiting. This was always the lousy part. It could be put to good use. A perfect time for deep cogitation—or ratiocination, as Sherlock Holmes would say—but he was tired of thinking about Melanie and Olive and the SESOUPers. His brain needed a rest.

  Jack had trained himself to fall into a light sleep under almost any circumstances. Now was an excellent time for a catnap. Normally he'd adjust his gym bag under him, lean back, and close his eyes. But not tonight. No snoozing in the dark tonight.

  21

  Miles Kenway sat behind his steering wheel and wondered where the hell he was. Somewhere in Queens, according to his map, but exactly where, he couldn't say.

  He'd started out following this Jack Shelby character and had wound up out here.

  Jack Shelby ... not likely. Miles didn't know who the man was, but he wasn't Jack Shelby.

  One thing he did know for sure about the mystery man was that he was some sort of pervert.

  And that irked Miles no end. He'd followed this character all the way out here thinking he was going to meet with whoever had sent him. And when Miles saw him creep into the shrubbery of a home down the street, that was exactly what it looked like he was doing. But then Miles sneaked around the other side for a look and found him watching some woman dance around inside her house.