By the Sword

  But in the long run, nothing is reliable, nothing is worthy of trust.

  He dropped the Glock, pulled the Kel-Tec from its ankle holster, aimed, pulled the trigger.

  Nothing.

  He tossed that aside and continued his crawl. He’d strangle the son of bitch.

  But as he closed on him he felt a formless wave of fear and horror emanating from the shoten. If it was bad out here, what must it be like inside him?

  “It’s just no use,” he heard himself say. He’d never reach him. “Just no use.”

  He forced his arms to slide forward, stretching them to their limits, but they fell half a foot short. Needed to move closer, but the wind was so strong here Jack’s sapped muscles could not push him forward another inch.

  …you may need it…

  The katana.

  He reached back and struggled it free of its scabbard. The wind howled louder, blew harder, but he edged the blade forward until its point rested against the side of the shoten’s throat. And then, with the last of his strength, he rammed it home.

  As he saw a jet of blood arc toward the cloud, he released the handle and let his head drop against the roof.

  16

  “No!” Dawn heard Mr. Osala scream. “No! Not yet!”

  Way down the street she saw the weird black cloud begin to shrink.

  “What’s happening?” he shouted to the sky.

  As the streetlights began to brighten again, he lowered himself back into the car and sat silent and staring through the windshield.

  Dawn tried again to move and found she could sit up.

  “Mister Osala?”

  The figure in the passenger seat turned and flipped on the overhead courtesy light.

  “Finally awake, I see.” His expression wasn’t exactly welcoming. “I’m not in the mood for you now.”

  “Sorry.”

  Something about his face…changed, and yet the same…more than the start of a mustache…somehow he looked younger…softer…sexier.

  Sexier? Mr. Osala? Sexy was so not the word she’d ever have associated with him, but looking at him now caused a stir within.

  “Do you see now why I wanted you to stay off the streets and out of sight?”

  She nodded meekly. “Yes.”

  “I’m sure you thought I was being overprotective and exaggerating the risk. But I’ve been proven right, haven’t I? Consider what has happened to you since you escaped Henry. You have been living a nightmare, am I correct?”

  Dawn bowed her head. Had she ever.

  “Totally.”

  “Home, Georges,” he said.

  That reminded her. She looked up. “Where…where’s Henry?”

  “Henry has been…sacked. Discharged for dereliction of duty.”

  “But it was totally my fault. I—”

  “No”—his voice turned to ice, taking on a tone that pressed her back into her seat—“it was not. He made choices. Bad ones. You will never see him again.” His tone softened, just barely. “You almost had the baby aborted, didn’t you.”

  The car glided uptown.

  He wasn’t asking a question. Obviously he knew the answer, so she simply nodded.

  “Do you realize that you might very well be dead now if you’d succeeded? You’d have been no further use to Bethlehem and he would have killed you.”

  “I never saw him.”

  “Then he would have ordered you killed. And his equally vicious and deranged brother would have done it.”

  Speaking of deranged…

  “Who were those monks and why did they kidnap me? I totally thought you’d sent them to rescue me.”

  A cold smile flickered. “Me? Send them? I hardly think so.”

  “But how did you get me out?”

  “Bethlehem’s people came to steal you back, and while they were all otherwise engaged, I simply carried you to my car and we drove away. Isn’t that right, Georges.”

  “Correct, Master.”

  Master, she thought. Here we go again.

  “Was Jerry there?”

  Mr. Osala shook his head. “Unfortunately not. A fair number of his brother’s followers were killed, but he was not among them. You can read the details in the paper tomorrow.”

  “But what were you doing on the roof of the car?”

  He reached up and turned out the courtesy light. “Be still now. I wish to be alone with my thoughts.”

  He turned and stared out the windshield as the car moved uptown.

  Dawn hugged her arms around her. Back to Mr. Osala’s penthouse. Another sort of prison, but at least it was safe.

  And safety had a lot going for it right now.

  17

  Still.

  Jack lifted his head and looked around. The wind had died and the night was brighter. Stars shone and the cloud was gone as if it had never been.

  His left fingers felt wet. He looked and saw that a pool of blood from the dead shoten’s throat had spread to his hand. He struggled to his knees and waited until the roof steadied and the stars stopped spinning. Then he wiped his fingers on the dead man’s pants leg, and did the same with the sword.

  He forced himself to his feet and sheathed the blade. As he staggered toward the roof exit he picked up his Glock and Kel-Tec.

  Had to get downstairs and find Dawn, then get the hell out of this building.

  He made it to the first floor, almost falling a couple of times along the way. The first sign of life he saw was the two pseudoguards in the front foyer. They looked dead at first, then he saw their chests move. Alive, but barely.

  Why was he up and about? Less exposure?

  Whatever. They’d stashed Dawn in the basement before, so that was probably where they had her now. Trouble was, how was he going to get her out? If she was in any shape similar to those two in the foyer, he was going to have to carry her, and he could barely stand.

  As he approached the basement door it opened. He stopped, pulled his Glock, and waited.

  For a few heartbeats, nothing happened. And then a shaggy, bandaged head appeared near the bottom of the opening, gradually followed by the rest of a Kicker crawling out on his hands and knees.

  Jack put a foot on his back and pushed him down.

  “Hey!” His voice was barely audible.

  “Where’s the girl?”

  “Gotta get help for Hank.” His face was against the floor. “He’s in a bad way.”

  Jack pressed harder. “The girl—she in there?”

  “No. Scary guy took her.” It seemed to take all his energy to talk.

  “Who?”

  “Guy with scary eyes.”

  Jack had a feeling he knew who he meant.

  “And you just let him take her?”

  “Paralyzed us.”

  No doubt about it now.

  Rasalom.

  Shit. What did he want with her?

  No use in hanging around. He pushed his way back up the steps. The guys in the foyer were starting to twitch. Jack reeled past them and out into the night where he found Veilleur’s car idling at the curb.

  Jack dropped into the passenger seat.

  “The girl?” Veilleur said.

  “Gone. Your old friend took her.”

  When Veilleur said nothing Jack glanced at him and saw a worried look on his face.

  “What?”

  The old man shook his head. “I don’t like this.”

  “Yeah, well, you can see him being drawn to a super oDNA being, I guess, being filled with a sort of Otherness and all, but what can he do with it?”

  Veilleur’s expression turned grim. “I don’t know, but I can guarantee without hesitation that, whatever his plan, it is grim tidings for the rest of us.”

  18

  “You’re sure you’re all right?” Veilleur said as he pulled to a stop on Sutton Square.

  Beyond the East River, dawn was pinking the sky over Queens. The yellow front of Gia’s townhouse beckoned.

  Jack nodded. “Yeah.” Th
en shook his head. “No. But I will be after I get inside.”

  Strengthwise he was maybe eighty percent, but emotionally he remained spent. The Kuroikaze had sucked something out of him and he knew of only one place where it could be replenished.

  But that wasn’t why he’d told Veilleur to drop him here. He wanted to make sure they were okay.

  Veilleur sighed. “Count your blessings. It’s wonderful to have people you love to turn to.”

  “You mentioned a wife…”

  He nodded sadly. “Perhaps I should have said, People you love who recognize you when you step into the room.”

  So that was it. Poor guy.

  “I guess tonight got to you after all then.”

  Veilleur looked at him. “Got to me?”

  “You know—all the blood, death, and dismemberment. It looked like it was just rolling off your back.”

  “Why shouldn’t it? This was nothing, Jack. Compared to what I’ve seen, this was a pinprick on a whale’s hide. You have no idea, you cannot conceive of the atrocities Ra—the Adversary has perpetrated down the millennia. Too often I’ve had to wade through the aftermath, looking for him. Multiply what you saw tonight millions of times and you’ll have the barest inkling of what we can expect if the Otherness is allowed in.”

  Dismayed, Jack shook his head. “You’re a buzzkill even when there’s no buzz.”

  Jack offered his hand and they shook.

  “Thanks for the lift.”

  He got out with the katana and watched Glaeken drive off. Then he let himself into the townhouse as quietly as he could. As he closed the door and put the katana in the umbrella stand he heard someone crying upstairs.

  “Vicky?”

  He dashed up to the second floor where he found a terrified-looking Gia cringing on the bed with Vicky. She was wearing an oversized Iowa State T-shirt and little else; Vicky wore shorty pajamas.

  “Jesus, Jack! You should have let me know it was you.”

  “Sorry. I thought everybody’d be asleep, and then I heard Vicky crying.”

  “She woke up screaming from a nightmare half an hour ago and she’s just now calming down.”

  Jack knelt beside her. “What was it about, Vicks?”

  “I don’t know!” A sniff and a sob. “I was just sc-sc-scared!”

  “The weird thing is,” Gia said, “when her screams woke me up, I was in the middle of some horrible nightmare myself.”

  Half an hour ago…The Kuroikaze had been going strong then. Could it be…?

  Yeah. Most likely.

  He put an arm around Vicky’s shoulders. “It’s okay, Vicks. I’m here. I won’t let anything scare you. Got that?”

  She nodded and sniffed; her sobs seemed to have passed.

  “Jack?”

  “Yeah, Vicks?”

  “You sorta kinda like smell bad.”

  He had to laugh. “Yeah, I probably do. One hot shower coming up.”

  19

  “You do smell better,” Gia murmured as Jack spooned against her in the bed.

  “Rough night.”

  “Do I want to know?”

  “No way.”

  “Then don’t tell me.”

  He snuggled closer, pressing the fronts of his thighs against the backs of hers.

  “Let’s just sleep, Jack. I’m really tired.”

  She was tired? All he wanted was to be close enough to feel clean again. Or at least cleaner. With what he knew floated in his DNA, he’d never feel completely clean.

  She hadn’t a clue as to what had happened downtown a little while ago. That would change in the morning.

  “I’m more tired than you. I could sleep for a week.”

  “Oh, yeah? I could sleep for a month.”

  “Really? I could sleep for a year”—he tried to think of the loudest thrash-metal band he knew—“at a Polio concert.”

  She laughed. “Okay. You win. You’re more tired.” She pushed her butt back against him. “See you in the morning.”

  “Love ya.”

  “Love ya too.”

  20

  “Like a zombie, you look,” Abe said as Jack approached the rear counter.

  Which meant he looked lots better than he felt.

  Jack leaned the katana, wrapped now in one of Gia’s paint-stained drop cloths, against the base of the counter and slumped onto a stool.

  “Coffeeeeeee…coffeeeeeeee.”

  God, he needed sleep. Usually he could go days on a few hours, but he couldn’t seem to shake the effects of the Kuroikaze. And every time he’d dozed off, images from the abattoir the Kakureta Kao temple had become would flash through his head, waking him.

  As Abe turned to fill a cup from his bottomless coffee pot, Jack glanced at the screaming headlines on the front pages of the morning papers. The Daily News:

  SLAUGHTER ON STATEN ISLAND!

  And the Post:

  KILLINGS IN THE KILLS!

  Abe handed Jack a steaming cup. He took it and sipped. He’d already had four cups but they hadn’t helped.

  “You’ve read?” Abe said, pointing to the Post.

  Jack shook his head.

  He held it up. “You want?”

  Another shake.

  He snorted. “You want I should read it to you?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Abe’s eyebrows rose, ridging his forehead and part of the infinity pool of his bare scalp.

  “I don’t get it. You love stories like this. All the details, you want. You…” His voice trailed off as he looked down at the headline, then back at Jack. “They say almost fifty bodies were found by press time and probably more to come. That dwarfs even the number found in the Red Hook warehouse.” His expression slackened. “Oy! You again?”

  Jack shrugged. “Mostly as a nonparticipant.”

  Unlike Red Hook.

  “Mostly?”

  Jack shrugged. “Would’ve been completely non if someone had given me a choice at the end.”

  Abe looked worried. “What set you off? Please tell me Gia and Vicky are—”

  Jack raised a hand to stop him. He didn’t want to go there—didn’t want even to consider the slightest possibility of anything happening to Gia and Vicky again.

  “They’re fine. I told you: nonparticipant. I was simply the party planner. Not my fault if the crowd got rowdy.”

  Abe turned his hands palm up and waggled his pudgy, stubby fingers. “Give-give.”

  Jack didn’t feel like talking about it, so he pointed to the giant soft pretzel on the counter. From the amount of crumbs—Abe’s parakeet Parabellum was swiftly diminishing their number—he figured Abe had started out with more than one.

  “Pretzels for breakfast?”

  “Breakfast was hours ago. This is lunch.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  He tore off a loop and bit into it. The salt tasted good. He was hungrier than he’d thought.

  “Last night?”

  “Okay, okay.”

  Jack gave him a moderately detailed account of what went down up to the point where he regained the katana.

  “All this for a rotten old sword?” Abe said.

  “And a pregnant teenager. Everybody wants her baby. Damned if I know why.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “That’s another story.”

  “There’s more?” He rubbed his hands together. “Goody.”

  So Jack gave him a rundown of the Kuroikaze and Rasalom ending up with Dawn.

  “A busy night you had.” Abe opened the Post and began flipping pages. “So that’s what happened downtown.”

  Jack broke off another piece of pretzel.

  “What does it say?”

  “First page it would have made if not for your party. They’re blaming some ‘yet-to-be-identified toxin’ that made people weak and sick. Might be related to a strange cloud a few folks saw, might not.”

  “Any deaths?”

  “A couple. They don’t know how many yet. They were still can
vassing at press time. They say the dead folks were old, so it could have been natural.”

  “Or accelerated by the Kuroikaze.”

  “After what you say it was like, I shouldn’t be surprised.” He looked up. “What now?”

  Jack lifted the katana and hefted it.

  “In a little less than an hour I’m meeting with the guy who hired me to find it. I’m going to hand it to him and say, ‘Sayonara.’ If I knew how to say ‘good riddance’ in Japanese, I’d say that instead. This thing has been nothing but trouble.”

  21

  “There’s a guy here says you want to meet with him.”

  Rage bloomed in Hank as he looked up to see Darryl standing at the door to his room.

  “I want to meet him? Didn’t I tell you I didn’t want to see anyone? Any- one?”

  “Yeah, I know, but it’s that weird Lodge guy and he won’t take no for an answer. Says he can help us out of this mess.”

  “Which one?” Hank could think of so many.

  Darryl pointed to the window. “That one.”

  Hank didn’t need the window to know what was out there, but he forced himself to his feet and made his way over to peek around the edge of the shade.

  Below, the near and far sidewalks were packed with reporters. They’d have been blocking the street if not for the cops there.

  He staggered back to the bed and sat, cradling his head in his hands. He just wanted to be alone, but he couldn’t stiff the Septimus Order’s point man—its “actuator.” Couldn’t risk getting kicked out of this place.

  “Send him up.”

  “He’s got someone with him.”

  “Send them both up, but it turns out the other guy’s a reporter, your ass is grass.”

  As Darryl left, Hank closed his eyes and swallowed against a rising gorge. He felt like a warmed-over cow pie. Wanted to puke so bad, but had nothing left in his gut. What had happened last night? That wind, those feelings of hopelessness and helplessness…they went entirely against the take-control message of the Kicker Evolution.

  The only good thing was it was gone and it hadn’t sucked all the life out of him. Just some.