“Not Bill. He’s still with a hospitalized friend. I don’t think he’ll be back today.”
He’d called last night to explain his absence and to relate what had befallen Nick. Glaeken had told him to do whatever he thought best for his friend.
But another call had come this morning—from Sylvia Nash. She told him what had transpired at her house last night. Glaeken had been shaken by the news. He had expected Rasalom’s forces to home in on the Dat-tay-vao eventually, but not so soon. Certainly not on the first night. The news increased the sense of urgency boiling within him.
Mrs. Nash had wanted him to come out to Monroe and see the damage, but Glaeken had refused. He wanted her—no, not her, the boy—here where he could watch over and protect him and the Dat-tay-vao residing within. With obvious reluctance, she had agreed to meet him here today.
“I must tend to my wife for a few moments,” he told Jack. “If the doorman announces a Mrs. Nash or a Mrs. Treece, tell him to send them up.”
Jack tore his gaze away from the window. “What? Oh, sure. Why are they coming?”
“I must explain the situation to them.”
“About the Conflict—the Ally and the Otherness?”
Glaeken nodded. “They need to know.”
“Tough sell.” He glanced out the window. “But after last night, maybe not so tough.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.”
Jack jerked a thumb toward the rear rooms. “Go do what you have to. I’ll take care of things here.”
Glaeken headed for Magda’s room. He knew Repairman Jack was very good at taking care of things.
WFPW-FM
JO: We’ve had a lot of requests for this next record here on F-Rock’s All-Request Weekend. It’s loads older than the stuff we usually play, but I guess it’s got something to do with what happened last night.
Jack wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing at the window, mesmerized by all the furious activity in the Sheep Meadow, when the doorbell rang. He glanced down the hall where Glaeken had gone but saw no sign of him.
Well, he’d said to answer the door, so that was what he’d do.
Jack found the Odd Couple standing in the hall. He didn’t recognize Bill Ryan at first—the Roman collar and priest garb threw him off—as did the funny-looking younger guy with unfocused eyes, a stitched lip, and a dazed look on his puss. And was that drool in the corner of his mouth?
“Jack?” Ryan said. “I didn’t expect you.”
“I didn’t expect to be here.” Jack stepped out of the way.
Bill Ryan was taller than Jack, lots older, but looked fit. His face was battered and haggard and his blue eyes had the haunted look of a guy who’d seen too much of a bad thing.
Jack figured he might have the same look.
He led his shell-shocked companion into the living room and sat him on the sofa. He almost had to bend the guy’s knees to get him to sit. Then he turned to Jack.
“Where’s Glaeken?”
“Back with Magda.” Although he’d met Ryan a few times, he didn’t know much about him. He pointed to the Roman collar. “Is Halloween early or are you really—?”
“The ex kind. You know, I don’t recall ever catching your last name.” He seemed anxious to steer talk away from the priest thing.
“Jack’ll do.” Jack wanted to steer the talk away from names, so he nodded toward the guy on the sofa, and yeah, that was drool on his chin. “What happened to him?”
“That’s Doctor Nick Quinn. He’s one of the scientists who went down into the hole yesterday—the one who survived.”
Jack stared at the man with new respect. “I saw what came out of there last night…”
Ryan put his hand on Quinn’s shoulder. “I’m afraid Nick saw something much worse.”
“Yeah.” Jack watched the poor bastard stare blindly into space. Went down a rocket scientist, came back a geranium. “I guess he did. Where’d you come from this morning?”
“Washington Heights.”
“How do things look up there?”
“Not too bad. Mostly you’d never know anything happened until you get to Harlem. And even there, you could convince yourself they had nothing more than a bad storm. But from the Nineties down it looks like we had a riot or something. And around here…” He shook his head in dismay. “There’s still blood on the pavement.”
Jack nodded. “It was worse when I walked over from the East Side.”
His gut squirmed at the memory. He hadn’t slept much last night. Spent most of the time standing anxious guard over Gia and Vicky and watching the tube for word from Central Park. The cable news channels talked all night, but without visuals. Camera teams sent to the area were never heard from again. Shortly after sunrise he’d ventured out into the streets. Sutton Square was quiet, and the usual early morning traffic was rolling uptown and down on Sutton Place. No flying monsters anywhere about, so he’d jogged up the incline toward midtown.
Between Madison and Park he came upon police barricades. He slipped past and continued west. Fifty-ninth Street became a nightmare. Deflated, sunken-cheeked, desiccated corpses littered the pavements, body parts were everywhere—a limbless, headless torso on the sidewalk, a leg in a gutter, a gnawed finger atop a mailbox. The closer he got to the park, the thicker the carnage.
Central Park South was the worst yet—dead people, dead horses still harnessed to their carriages, overturned cars, a taxi halfway through the side doors of the Plaza. Every emergency vehicle and meat wagon in the city seemed to have converged on the area to remove the bodies.
Live people were about too. All on their way out. The cops weren’t allowing cabs or civilian vehicles into the area, so the surviving members of the Armani and Prada set were lugging their own suitcases out of the Plaza, the Park Lane, the St. Regis, and the rest and rolling them down the avenues to where they could flag a ride to the nearest airport.
Jack had picked his way through the area and hurried here.
The intercom buzzed then and Ryan answered it. He seemed pretty much at home. The doorman said that a Mrs. Nash had arrived. Ryan looked at Jack questioningly.
“It’s okay,” Jack said. “Glaeken said she’d be coming.”
Ryan said to send her up, then turned and looked back toward the bedrooms.
“Wonder what changed her mind,” he said to no one in particular. Then he shrugged and led Quinn to the kitchen. “I’m going to fix Nick something to eat. Want anything?”
“No, thanks.”
Actually, Jack was hungry but too edgy, too unsettled to eat. Maybe later, at Julio’s, over a pint of brew. A gallon of brew.
The doorbell rang. He opened it. The Addams family stood outside.
At least they reminded him of the Addams family: a slinky brunette in a dark dress, a Pugsley, and an Asian Lurch. But no Wednesday, and that wasn’t Gomez in the wheelchair.
A knot tightened in his chest as he remembered calling Weezy and Eddie Wednesday and Pugsley when they were kids.
Weezy … jeez. Something squeezed inside his chest, then released.
“Is he here?” said the blond kid, his blue eyes wide and bright. He poked his head through the doorway and looked up and down the hall. “He’s here! I know he’s here!”
“Please, Jeffy,” the woman said, placing a hand on his shoulder. She looked at Jack. “I’m Sylvia Nash.”
Jack liked her voice. You could fall in love with that voice. But he was already in love.
“Hi.” He stepped back and made way. “He’s expecting you.” A thought struck. “There’s a sculptress named Sylvia Nash…”
She inclined her head. “That would be me.”
He was impressed. “No kidding. I have one of your pieces. The Chrysler Building bonsai.”
“You do?” She looked surprised. “I’m so pleased.”
“Where’s Mr. Veilleur?” said the guy in the wheelchair as he rolled forward.
&nb
sp; Jack pointed toward the living room. “He’s around. Come on in. Have a seat.” Jack wanted to bite his tongue on that one. The guy already had a seat.
And he was staring at him.
“My name’s Alan Bulmer,” he said, extending his hand. “You look familiar.”
Jack shook the hand. Bulmer … the name had a vaguely familiar ring, but not the face.
“Name’s Jack and—no offense—you don’t.”
“I was a physician in Monroe until last summer. Were you ever a patient?”
Jack wondered about that. He’d been admitted unconscious to Monroe Community Hospital as a John Doe a couple of years ago but decided not to mention that. He’d left via a second-floor window to avoid the cop stationed outside his door.
“Don’t get out to Long Island much.”
Jack stood back and watched them as they all trooped toward the living room—all except the big Asian whose eyes never stopped moving. He stayed with the group as far as the end of the hall but halted at the threshold of the bigger room. He gave the living room the once-over, then stepped to the side and stood with his back against the wall, his big hands folded in front of him. The drawstring of a plastic Lord & Taylor’s bag hung from one of his fingers. Out on the street he might have passed as a tourist who’d been shopping, but Jack had spied the billy club handle protruding from the bag.
Jack admired the way he moved—smooth, silent, graceful for a guy his age and size. Everything about him said he’d been trained for hand-to-hand combat and security. As he studied the big guy, he realized the big guy was studying him.
Jack wandered over to where he stood. He put out his hand.
“Name’s Jack.”
The big guy bobbed a quick bow and gave Jack’s hand a brief shake.
“Ba,” he said in a deep voice.
While Jack tried to figure if that was a personal assessment or a name, he noticed that the big guy’s eyes did not stray from the living room for more than a heartbeat.
“It’s safe here,” Jack said. “You can relax.”
Another bob from Ba and a fleeting, yellow-toothed smile. “Yes. I see. Thank you so very much.”
Jack noted with approval that Ba did not relax one bit.
“Where’d you train?”
“In my homeland—Vietnam.”
Jack wondered if he’d been a Cong.
“Army?”
His dark eyes never left the living room. “Help from Special Forces.”
Knew it.
“What’s in the bag besides the billy?”
Ba glanced at him, his eyes searching his face for a moment, then he handed the bag to Jack.
Jack took it and loosened the drawstrings. From its weight he guessed there wasn’t much more inside but checked anyway. He pulled out the club and stared dumbfounded at the hundreds of tiny, gleaming, glasslike teeth protruding from the final ten inches of its business end.
“Jesus. These are chew-wasp teeth.”
Ba said nothing.
Jack gave the club a few short test swings. He’d seen what those little teeth could do. A club studded with them made one hell of a weapon.
“How many did you kill?”
“A few.”
“How about the glob things? Get any of those?”
Ba shook his head.
“Watch out for them.” Jack lifted his partially eaten-away sneaker for Ba to see. “The glop in their bellies does this to rubber. It’s even worse on skin.”
Ba’s eyes flicked to Jack’s bandaged arm, then away.
Jack slipped the club back into the sack and held it out to him.
“Think you could make me one of those?”
Ba pushed the sack toward Jack. “You may have this.”
Reflexively, Jack began to refuse. He didn’t accept gifts from strangers. He didn’t like to be indebted to anyone, especially someone he’d just met. But he caught himself. They’d met only a few moments ago, had spoken only a few words—Ba hardly any at all—yet he sensed a kinship with this man. Something like this had happened only a few times in his life. A good feeling. Ba must have sensed it too. The big guy was making a gesture. Jack could not refuse.
“What about you? Won’t you be needing it?”
“I will make myself another. Many, many teeth where I live.”
“All right. I accept.” Jack hefted the bag and tucked it under his arm. “Thank you, Ba. I have a feeling this might come in very handy.”
Ba nodded silently and watched the living room.
Alan glanced over at where Ba was standing with the dark-haired, quick-eyed man who looked familiar. Something going on between those two, communication on a level he was not privy to. Odd … Ba related to almost no one outside the household.
Alan hauled his attention away from the pair and directed it toward Sylvia and Jeffy.
“He’s here, isn’t he, Mommy?” Jeffy was saying. He was bouncing on the seat cushion, his head swiveling this way and that. “Isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Sylvia said patiently. “That’s what we were told.”
“I bet he’s in one of those rooms back there. Can I go back and see?”
“Jeffy, please sit still. It’s very bad manners to go wandering around someone’s house.”
“But I want to see him!”
She put an arm around the boy’s shoulders and hugged him against her.
“I know you do, sweetie. So do I. That’s why I’m here.”
Poor Sylvia. She’d been having such a hard time with Jeffy since Veilleur had shown up two days ago. And now that he was here in the old man’s home, the boy was like an overwound spring.
Alan could understand it. He too felt wired. Maybe it was the stress of last night, maybe it was all the coffee he’d poured down his throat this morning. But he had a feeling those were just a small part of it.
Veilleur was the major factor. For no good reason, something within Alan responded positively—no, enthusiastically—to the man. It had to have something to do with the months Alan had played host to the Dat-tay-vao. After reducing him to a comatose vegetable, the power—entity, elemental force, whatever it was—had deserted him. But it must have left some sort of residue, whether clinging to his peritoneum, coating his meninges, or riding the neural currents along his axons, he couldn’t say. All he knew was that he was drawn to that old man, trusted him; he still remembered the warm glow he’d felt at first sight of him.
And if that’s how I feel, what must Jeffy feel?
For Alan had no doubt that the Dat-tay-vao had chosen Jeffy for its new residence.
He saw the priest from yesterday, Father Ryan, walk from the rear of the apartment. Mr. Veilleur followed, wiping his hands on a towel as he entered. At the sight of him Alan felt that warmth again, glowing at his center, seeping through his torso and into his limbs.
And Jeffy … Jeffy was on his feet. He ran to the old man and clasped his leg in a bear hug. Veilleur stopped and smiled down at him as he smoothed the boy’s hair.
“Hello, Jeffy. It’s good to see you again.”
The boy said nothing, merely looked up at Veilleur with glowing eyes.
Alan glanced over at the sofa where Sylvia, alone now, sat with a rigid spine and a tight, tense expression, chewing her lower lip as she watched the scene. Her eyes flashed with hurt—and anger. Alan knew the core of anger that coiled within Sylvia like a living thing. It had been quiescent the past few months, but he vividly remembered how it used to bare its fangs and strike out at the unwary. He sensed it waking and stirring within her now.
His heart went out to her. She had taken Jeffy in when he’d been abandoned at age three by unknown parents defeated by his autism. She had slaved over him with psychotherapy, physiotherapy, nutritional therapy, occupational therapy, butting her head and heart against the unyielding barricades of his autism without ever once entertaining the thought of giving up. And then, a miracle: The Dat-tay-vao smashed through his autistic shell and released the child trapped with
in. Sylvia at last had the little boy she had been seeking.
But now all that little boy seemed to care about was the mysterious old man who had appeared on her doorstep two days ago.
Alan felt her hurt as if it were his own. He wanted to go to her side and put an arm around her to let her know he understood and was with her all the way, but he couldn’t reach her with his hand, and his wheelchair couldn’t squeeze by the coffee table to where she sat, and these damn legs wouldn’t carry him the lousy half-dozen feet to her side.
His legs. They infuriated him at times. Yes, they were getting stronger—slowly, steadily, he’d progressed to the point where he could stand unsupported for a few seconds. But that wouldn’t help him now when Sylvia needed him. So he had to sit here, trapped in this ungainly wheeled contraption and watch the woman he loved suffer. At times like this he—
A harsh voice broke through his thoughts.
“You!”
Alan twisted in his chair, searching for the source. He saw a tall, stoop-shouldered man with unruly dark hair covering a misshapen skull standing in the hallway that led to the kitchen. His head was in constant motion, twisting back and forth, up and down.
Frozen silence all around. Even Jeffy fell quiet. The room had become a tableau. Finally the newcomer steadied his gaze and fixed it on the man called Jack.
“He hates you!”
Jack didn’t look too worried. “Who?”
“You took his hand!”
“Oh, him.” He shrugged. “It’s mutual. More than mutual.”
Father Ryan came up behind the man and gently took his arm, saying, “It’s all right, Nick. Come back here with—”
“No.” The man snatched his arm out of the priest’s grasp and turned on him. “He hates you too! You almost killed him!”
“Nick—”
He turned again and pointed a trembling finger at Veilleur. “But he hates you most of all! He hates you so! He wants everyone to suffer, but he wants you to suffer the most!” He pointed to his head. “Here!” Then to his heart. “And here! And then he plans to make you suffer the tortures of the damned!”
Alan glanced at Veilleur and saw no sign of shock or fear in his wrinkled features. He looked like a man who was hearing exactly what he’d expected to hear. But his clear blue eyes narrowed ever so slightly.