"Not what I was thinking. There might be a seasonal change coming in Turquoise that will pick the wind up. There might be a way to tap the energy of the Toussaud dimension. My father and Will are out looking for more places to get the power we'll need."
Sin felt a shiver run through Rajani and brought his head up. "You okay, kid? Your father will do fine."
"I know, but that's not really what I'm worried about." She traced the knuckles of her right hand down his spine. "You know why I went into stasis, right?"
He nodded. "You spent the time in isolation so you could attune yourself to Fiddleback and eavesdrop on his thoughts. The fact that he got close to coming through in Phoenix last July brought you out early, because he was very close and you picked him up. You're our secret weapon."
"I may not be that much of a weapon, Sin." Rajani's fingers dug into his neck and worked over a stiff muscle. "What I don't like is that I've been picking nothing up from Fiddleback lately. I have to assume that when he's out of my range, he's plotting against us. We all know he cannot be trusted, then I get thinking about how much he could hurt us, and who he could hurt."
Sin heard the unspoken adjunct to her statement. "And your father is out there with Will in a very vulnerable position. I wouldn't worry about him, though, because Fiddleback can't get to him there. Your father will be fine."
"I know, I just..." Her voice trailed off, then stopped in what Sin heard as a suppressed sob. "I can't read Fiddleback, and I can't read him either.
He eased himself over and sat up, hugging her knees to either side of his chest. "Who him?" He reached out and took her chin in his right hand, tipping her face up so he could look her in her teary eyes. "You're going to have to tell me because I can't ferret it out."
Rajani sniffed once, then frowned. "It's just that, well, I'm confused. My father and I, we are different than we were. We used to be much like Tadd and Mickey and Dorothy, but now we are distant." Gold highlights glittered in her eyes. "How do you deal with your relationship with your father?"
Sin chuckled lightly and flopped back on the couch with a thump. "Well, mostly I ignore my father."
"Why?"
"Keeps me from remembering how much I hate him."
Sin swallowed against a lump rising in his throat. "My father did some things that hurt me a great deal. Like most folks, I wondered what I had done to deserve such treatment at his hands. I mean, he was my father, he had always cared for me, and now he was punishing me. I had to wonder why, and it ate me up inside."
He propped himself up on his elbows, "it wasn't until I'd been in Japan for a while that I realized he did what he did because it was his way of controlling me. I defied him, he made concessions, and I returned home. He kept me under his thumb, allowing my little rebellions because they kept me close to him and within his control. Finally, when Coyote brought things to a head with my father, we parted, and I realized there could never be any reconciliation."
Rajani shook her head. "But that is not the problem I have with my father. We have grown apart and cannot find common ground."
Sin sat up again and rested his elbows on Rajani's knees. "That's not true, you've just not yet found common ground. Your father is trying, though. You just have to look at what he's doing, not what he says, and you can see that."
"Really?" Rajani frowned. "He has been paying more attention to you than he has to me lately."
"You have to avoid reading that wrong." Sin gave her a half-smile. "Since returning from that first expedition to Turquoise, he's been talking to me a lot for two reasons. The first is that you and I are close, and he can learn about you through me. More importantly, though, because we are close, he wants to get to know me to see if I'm good enough for you."
"Do you think so?"
"I know so." Butterflies beginning to navigate clumsily through his stomach, Sin reached down and took Rajani's hands into his. "I can't read someone else's emotions. I have a hard enough time understanding my own, but you're very special to me." He half-laughed. "Here I am, sitting in the dark, holding hands with a woman from another planet..."
"I was born here, in Utah."
"Okay, as good as being born on another planet, and I feel more at ease and more, well, complete, than with any other woman I have known." He shook his head. "Her father is the guardian spirit of a Tibetan monastery, and she has incredible powers. Because of her, I survived a death trap, and because of her and others associated with her, I'm looking to help stop a tarantula with pituitary problems from taking over reality."
Rajani gave his hands a squeeze. "I don't like what you're saying, Mr. MacNeal, but I like your actions." She sat forward and kissed him lightly on the lips.
Sin smiled. "I like your actions as well, Ms. Rajani." He kissed her more fully, and she did not pull away. "I'm falling for you, and falling hard, you know."
"I know. I felt attracted to you when Natch and I broke into your suite in Japan. Just from the impressions you had left in the room, I knew you to be strong and kind and wise." She looked down for a second, then glanced up mischievously. "That's why I took your cufflinks. They became a connection to you."
"As you used them to get to me and save me when the Galactic Brotherhood wanted me dead, I'm very glad you took them."
She caressed the left side of his face. "I share your feelings, Sin, and I share your doubts. We both must question if what we feel is genuine or part of the pressure cooker we're living in. With the threat to our lives that exists in Pygmalion and Fiddleback, it is natural to want to cling together, to want to fight off death together."
"You're right, it is natural. It's also natural that you and I are closer to each other than we are to our parents." Sin leaned forward and kissed the side of her throat. "For me, it's because my father is a jerk who's uniquely suited to use Preparation-H as a body lotion. For you, well, your father has become something more than mortal. He cannot know the same fears we do, nor can he view them the way we do."
"I wish I knew of a way to let him know I still love him." Rajani looked up at Sin. "Do you think he knows that?"
"I think it's something he carries proudly in his heart." Sin kissed her on the tip of her nose, then looked down as his stomach rumbled mightily. "As for me, I'm running on empty."
"Are you done here? Can you go for food?"
Sin leaned back, freeing Rajani's legs, then looked over at the computer. "Yeah, that monster will be crunching numbers for a couple more hours. We can go for Mexican and you can fill me in on what PsyOps has put together on Pygmalion."
"Done, but only if you put going to bed on your schedule."
Sin raised an eyebrow at her.
Rajani smiled. "Telepathy is not needed to read that thought, Sinclair." She stood and pulled him up off the couch. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she laid her head on his chest. "I actually meant you needed some rest, but given what we're facing, security, love and happiness are not things I would deny either one of us tonight."
Damon Crowley did not let the two days he needed to heal up in the Titan's dimension go to waste. In between his periodic checks of Coyote's progress and the occasional scouting missions to the surrounding proto-dimensions, he worked hard. Using a small knife, he cut a cross into the nose of each any every .45 caliber bullet in his Mac-10 clips.
When he finished the last one, he surveyed his work. He saw it was good and he smiled.
He made one last check of Coyote's cave. After the first day, Coyote had ceased needing the oxygen, which turned out to be fortunate because it ran out soon thereafter. The intravenous drip proved equally unnecessary within the first day. Coyote's regenerating body sucked it dry, then attacked and expelled the needle as a foreign body.
Squatting down so he could look closely at Coyote's legs, Crowley stripped the blanket away from them. In the half-light, he saw a number of reddish lumps dotting the man's legs as if he had the measles. Passing his hand above them, Crowley could feel the heat as the body worked the bits and pie
ces of grenade shrapnel out. At the rate with which Coyote seemed to be progressing, Crowley assumed his body would be free of debris inside a week.
Crowley rose up and looked at the stump protruding from the left arm of the hospital gown. Already the stitches that had closed it had been consumed by Coyote's body, and the livid red scars had all but disappeared. The stump had already grown past the mark on the cave wall that Crowley had made to measure it, and he thought he could see a bud at the end that looked akin to a fetal hand. Before long, the occultist had no doubt, the arm would again be whole and healthy.
"The coma. That will be the tricky part." Crowley concentrated and tried to pick up Coyote's thoughts, but he got nothing. Coyote's brain still functioned, and had even exerted itself when the bed almost crashed, but since his arrival in the Titan's proto-dimension, Coyote had shut down.
Crowley smiled. "I understand that, my friend. Recover quickly. We need you." He tugged the gray blanket up to Coyote's neck and headed back out of the cave. At the entrance, he rolled a couple of small rocks over the opening. The irony of blocking a cave in a Mediterranean setting with stones and hoping for the resurrection of the one inside did not escape him, though Crowley was more than willing to grant Coyote in excess of three days and was willing to have him return as nothing more than a man.
Flexing his left arm and finding it completely healed, Crowley reached out and ripped a gaping hole between the Titan's dimension and the Earth. He stepped through into the Terran dimension in a wooded courtyard in the heart of Eclipse. Looking up through the leaves of the trees, he saw the black steel and plastic panels that sucked energy from the sunlight and fed the vast desert city of Phoenix. Existing in a little box-canyon created by City Center, Crowley's home recalled a time when sun- light freely fell on the city.
Two huge canine beasts came out of the two-story house and stood at the top of the stairs on the back porch. Colored like Doberman pinschers, but with the size and wiry pelt of Irish Wolfhounds, the red-eyed dogs bared their fangs and growled a menacing caution at him. Each dog tensed, ready to spring and tear him apart.
Crowley remained rooted in the midst of the white-stone ocean that dominated the courtyard. "Kara, Amhas, it is only me." He did not move, but let his voice reassure them.
The two dogs sniffed the air, then leaped from the porch and landed in a spray of stones. As they bounded forward, Crowley dropped to one knee and greeted each dog with a hug. Thumping them heavily on their flanks, he stood and let them escort him to the back door. He opened it, not being surprised that it was unlocked and that his belongings had remained unmolested in his absence. The last trespasser to enter his property had done so on a dare from another gang member. He escaped with his life, but earned the nickname "Kid Alpo."
Crowley quickly descended the stairs to the basement. He opened a utility closet then hit a hidden switch at the rear of it. The back wall withdrew into the ceiling to reveal a collection of weapons both comprehensive and deadly. From the spot above the Mac-10's outline, he took down the heavy, cylindrical sound and flash suppressor and screwed it into place. He also fitted the gun with a laser-targeting beam and slung the weapon over his shoulder by the sling he clipped into place on it.
He pulled the Mac-10's holster from the web-belt he wore and replaced it with a more slender holster fitted with a silvery cylinder. He pulled the foot and a half long baton out and switched it on to check the battery monitor light. Satisfied that the modified cattle-prod was fully charged, he turned it off again and reholstered it.
He studied the rest of the weapons, but decided he was satisfied with what he had so far chosen. Almost as an afterthought, he pulled on a pair of black leather gloves that both had bladders filled with lead shot sewn into the backs and knuckles. He snapped his right hand out and slammed his fist into the plasterboard wall. He left a dent, then rubbed the plaster dust off his knuckles.
Closing the closet, he retreated to the center of his basement. He drew in a deep breath and centered himself. He worked his mind down beyond the Damon Crowley identity and approached his true core. A blue-gray pearl tinged with green, it expanded outward to greet him. Once again feeling true to himself, he allowed himself a brief smile, then set about his grim task with cold efficiency.
The first thing he did was to visualize the Warriors of the Aryan World Alliance headquarters. Because of his interest in the city, and his association with the current Coyote's predecessor, he knew the location well and had even helped the other Coyote with a soft penetration and reconnaissance of the site. They had gotten in and out undetected, but Crowley had not forgotten what he had seen and felt and smelled.
Reaching out with his mind, he sought to make his current surroundings match his mental image of the Warriors' lair. He added detail after detail in a carefully calculated equation that brought him through a nearby dimension and back into Earth at the site he had chosen. He materialized within the Warrior stronghold with an agonizing sloth, but remained undiscovered.
As he had planned, he appeared in a darkened comer of the garage area. For all of the time it took him to check his Mac-10, he regretted not being cloaked in the shadowform he affected when away from his home dimension. A second after the birth of that idea, he killed it because he knew that what he had come to do was a job that had to be done by a man, not a shadow.
Two tall, blond Aryan men bearing MP-7 submachine-guns paced the catwalks surrounding the garage's upper level. Crowley stepped from the shadow and snapped two quick shots off at the man on the far side of the area. One slug took him in the chest, and the second blew through his stomach. The Aryan slammed back against the wall and slid down on a red slick before falling to his side on the catwalk.
The second guard saw his friend fall. He started to turn toward Crowley, bringing his gun up. The 240-grain bullet the Mac-10 coughed out completed the spin for him as it entered his thigh and powdered a four-inch-long segment of his femur. The slug exited up and to the right from the entry wound, drawing blood, tissue and bone after it. The Aryan grabbed at the catwalk railing to slow his fall, but before he could scream, two more bullets pierced his body. One popped a lung like a balloon, and the other pounded his right cheekbone back out through his brainstem, spraying blood and gray pulp against the wall. He flopped unceremoniously on his back and shuddered once before lying still.
Crowley waited in silence, listening for any sound beyond the hissing of air escaping from rapidly deflating lungs. The scent of blood and feces reached him through the cordite. He'd smelled it before and often allowed it to trigger regret in him, but this time he forced it away. He did not want to acknowledge those he had killed as human beings, because they were not. They wore the flesh and hid within the shell. They could do the walk and do the talk, but they could never truly pass for human beings. Their ideas took them beyond humanity, turning them into monsters.
There was nothing to regret about killing monsters.
As if the biblical avenger out to destroy the first-born of Egypt, Crowley moved through the Warrior headquarters razor-sharp and whisper-quiet. The two Aryans with their eyes glued to the external camera monitors died without warning. Six more Hitler Youth died as they slept dreaming about the White Empire their leader had promised them. Another three, including the two who had attacked Natch and Coyote, met death while singing off-key in the communal shower facility. Crowley found four more in the canteen and killed three with a single shot each. The fourth died when she learned through two quick examples that a coffee-urn, though opaque, is not bulletproof.
Reloading as he moved up the stairs to the second level, Crowley found no one in the two classrooms at the southern end of the building. Wary of a trap, he cautiously approached the open doorway at the northern end of the corridor that ran the length of the second floor. From outside he could see what appeared to be a relatively unobstructed room covered with thick pads on the floor and walls. Kneeling in the shadows at the far end of the room, he saw a slender man.
Ready for an ambush, Crowley entered the room on cat's feet. He stepped quickly out of line with the doorway, but discovered the kneeling figure was the room's only other occupant. Inside the room, he saw an honor gallery of portraits with a huge painting of Adolf Hitler surrounded by smaller images of Evan Mecham, Tom Metzger, David Duke and Pat Buchanan.
He kept the man covered with the Mac-10, but the man's utter lack of concern about the gun surprised him.
"I sensed you coming."
"Did you?" Crowley's green eyes narrowed. "Then you will have sensed why I came."
The small man nodded solemnly. "I have been expecting someone, especially after Loring disappeared from the hospital. I had people watching — the snatch was good." He canted his head to the right. "I had not expected you — rather, I had expected they would send the Polack."
"I did not give him that choice, Heinrich."
"Of course you didn't. You are of a superior race Mr.... Crowley, is it?" Heinrich straightened his head and sat a bit taller, "It is a pity that an operative of your skill will die having been tricked by the Zionists to betray your own race. Did you leave anyone alive down there?"