* * *
"Clever," said the Jaff.
"What's he up to?" Tommy-Ray wanted to know. "Why the noise?"
"He wants people to see the terata," the Jaff said. "Maybe he's hoping they'll rise up in revolution against us. He's tried this before."
"When?"
"On our travels across America. There was no revolution then and there won't be now. People don't have the faith; don't have the dreams. And he needs both. This is sheer desperation. He's defeated and he knows it." He turned to Jo-Beth. "You'll be pleased to know I'm calling the hounds off Katz's heels. We know where Fletcher is now. And where he is his son's going to be."
"They stopped following us," Tesla said.
The horde had indeed halted.
"What the hell does that mean?"
Her burden didn't reply. He could barely raise his head. But when he did it was towards the supermarket, which was one of several stores in the Mall whose windows had been smashed.
"We're going shopping?" she said.
He grunted.
"Whatever you say."
Inside the store, Fletcher raised his head from his labors. The boy was within sight of him. He was not alone. A woman bore him up, half-carrying him across the lot towards the litter of shattered glass. Fletcher left off his preparations and went to the window.
"Howard?" he called.
It was Tesla who looked up; Howie didn't waste valuable energy in the attempt. The man she saw emerging from the store didn't look like a vandal. Nor did he look anything like the boy's father; but then she'd never been very good with family resemblances. He was a tall, sallow individual, who to judge by his ragged gait was in as wretched a condition as his offspring. His clothes were drenched, she saw. Her stinging sinuses identified the fluid as gasoline. He left a trail of it as he walked. She suddenly feared the chase had taken them into the grasp of a lunatic.
"Keep away," she said.
"I have to speak with Howard, before the Jaff arrives."
"The who?"
"You led him here. He and his army."
"It couldn't be helped. Howie's real sick. This thing on his back—"
"Let me see—"
"No naked flames," Tesla warned, "or I'm out of here."
"I understand," said the man, raising his palms like a magician to prove them empty of tricks. Tesla nodded, and let him approach.
"Lay him down," the man instructed.
She did so, her muscles buzzing with gratitude. No sooner was Howie on the ground than his father took a two-handed grip of the parasite. It immediately began to thrash wildly, its limbs tightening around its victim. Barely conscious, Howie began to gasp for breath.
"It's killing him!" Tesla yelled.
"Take hold of its head!"
"What?"
"You heard me! Its head. Just take hold!"
She glanced at the man, then at the beast, then at Howie. Three beats. On the fourth she took hold of the beast. Its mouthparts were fixed on Howie's neck, but it loosed them long enough to chew on her hand. In that moment the gasoline man pulled. Body and beast separated.
"Let go!" the man yelled.
She needed no persuasion, pulling her hands free despite the sacrifice of flesh to its maw. Howie's father threw it backwards, into the market, where it struck a pyramid of cans, and was buried.
Tesla studied her hand. The palm was punctured in the center. She was not the only one interested in the wound.
"You have a journey to undertake," the man said.
"What is this, palm-reading?"
"I wanted the boy to go for me, but I see now . . . you came instead."
"Hey, I've done all I can do, guy," Tesla said.
"My name's Fletcher, and I beg you, don't desert me now. This wound reminds me of the first cut the Nuncio gave me—" He showed her his palm, which did indeed bear a scar, for all the world as though someone had driven a nail through it. "I have a great deal to tell you. Howie resisted my telling him. You won't. I know you won't. You're part of the story. You were born to be here, now, with me."
"I don't understand any of this."
"Analyze tomorrow. Do, now. Help me. We have very little time."
"I want to warn you," Grillo said as he drove Hotchkiss down towards the Mall, "what we saw coming out of the ground was just the beginning. There's creatures in the Grove tonight like nothing I ever saw before."
He slowed as two citizens crossed the path of the car, heading on foot to the source of the summons. They weren't alone. There were others, converging on the Mall as though heading to a Carnival.
"Tell them to go back," Grillo said, leaning out of his side of the car and yelling a warning. Neither his calls nor those of Hotchkiss were attended to. "If they see what I've seen," Grillo said, "there's going to be such panic."
"Might do them some good," Hotchkiss said, bitterly. "All those years they thought I was crazy, because I closed the caves. Because I talked about Carolyn's death as murder—"
"I don't follow."
"My daughter, Carolyn . . ."
"What about her?"
"Another time, Grillo. When you've got time for tears."
They'd reached the Mall's parking lot. Maybe thirty or forty Gravers were already gathered there, some wandering around examining the damage that had been visited on several of the stores, others simply standing and listening to the alarms as if to celestial music. Grillo and Hotchkiss got out of the car, and started across the lot towards the supermarket.
"I smell gasoline," Grillo said.
Hotchkiss concurred. "We should get these people out of here," he said. Raising his voice and his gun he instigated some primitive crowd control. His attempts drew the attention of a small, bald man.
"Hotchkiss, are you in charge?"
"Not if you want to be, Marvin."
"Where's Spilmont? There should be somebody in authority. My windows have all been smashed."
"I'm sure the police are on their way," Hotchkiss said.
"Pure vandalism," Marvin went on. "Kids up from L.A., joy-riding."
"I don't think so," said Grillo. The smell of gasoline was making his head spin.
"And who the hell are you?" Marvin demanded, his shouts shrill.
Before Grillo could respond somebody else joined the hollering match.
"There's somebody in there!"
Grillo looked towards the market. His stinging eyes verified the claim. There were indeed figures moving in the murk of the store. He began to walk through the shards towards the window, as one of the figures came clear.
"Tesla?"
She heard him; looked up; shouted.
"Stay away, Grillo!"
"What's going on?"
"Just stay away."
He ignored her advice, climbing in through the hole in the shattered pane. The boy she'd gone to save lay face down and naked to the waist on the tiles. Behind him, a man Grillo knew and didn't know. That is, a face to which he could put no name, but a presence which he instinctively recognized. It took him moments only to work from where. This was one of the escapees from the fissure.
"Hotchkiss," he yelled. "Get in here!"
"Enough's enough," Tesla said. "Don't bring anyone near us."
"Us?" said Grillo. "Since when was it us?"
"His name's Fletcher," Tesla said, as if in reply to the first question in Grillo's head. "The boy is Howard Katz." To the third question: "They're father and son." And the fourth? "It's all going to blow, Grillo. And I'm going to stay till it does."
Hotchkiss was at Grillo's side. "Holy shit," he breathed.
"The caves, right?"
"Right."
"Can we take the boy?" Grillo said.
Tesla nodded. "But be quick," she said. "Or it's over for us all." Her gaze had left Grillo's face and was directed out to the lot, or to the night beyond it. Somebody was expected at this party. The other wraith, surely.
Grillo and Hotchkiss took hold of the boy, and hauled him to his feet.
br /> "Wait." Fletcher approached the trio, the smell of gasoline intensifying with his proximity. There was more than fumes off the man, however. Something akin to a mild electric shock passed through Grillo as the man reached to his son, and contact was made through all three systems. His mind momentarily soared, all bodily frailty forgotten, into a space where dreams hung like midnight stars. It was gone all too suddenly, almost brutally, as Fletcher dropped his hand from his son's face. Grillo looked towards Hotchkiss. By the expression on his face he too had shared the brief splendor. His eyes had filled with tears.
"What's going to happen?" Grillo said, looking back at Tesla.
"Fletcher is leaving."
"Why? Where?"
"Nowhere and everywhere," Tesla said.
"How do you know?"
"Because I told her," came Fletcher's response. "Quiddity must be preserved."
He looked at Grillo and the faintest murmur of a smile was on his face.
"Take my son, gentlemen, " he said. "Keep him out of the line of fire. "
"What?"
"Just go, Grillo," Tesla said. "Whatever happens from here on it's the way he wants it to be."
They took Howie out through the window as instructed, Hotchkiss stepping ahead to receive the boy's body, which was as limp as a fresh cadaver. As Grillo relinquished the boy's weight he heard Tesla speak behind him.
She simply said:
"The Jaff!"
The other escapee, Fletcher's enemy, was standing at the perimeter of the parking lot. The crowd, which had swelled to five or six times its earlier size, had parted, without being overtly requested to do so, leaving a corridor between the enemies. The Jaff had not come alone. Behind him were two Californian perfects Grillo could not name. Hotchkiss could.
"Jo-Beth and Tommy-Ray," he said.
At the name of one, or both, Howie raised his head.
"Where?" he murmured, but his eyes found them before there was time for a reply. "Let me go," he said, struggling to push Hotchkiss off. "They'll kill her if we don't stop them. Don't you see, they'll kill her."
"There's more than your girlfriend at stake," Tesla said, leaving Grillo once again wondering how she'd got to know so much so quickly. Her source, Fletcher, now stepped out of the market, and walked past them all—Tesla, Grillo, Howie and Hotchkiss—to stand at the other end of the human corridor to the Jaff.
It was the Jaff who spoke first:
"What is all this about?" he demanded. "Your antics have woken half the town. "
"The half you haven't poisoned," Fletcher returned.
"Now don't talk yourself into the grave. Beg a little. Tell me you'll give your balls if I let you live. "
"That was never much to me. "
"Your balls?"
"Living."
"You had ambition," the Jaff said, starting to walk towards Fletcher very slowly. "Don't deny it. "
"Not like yours."
"True. I had scope."
"You must not have the Art. "
The Jaff raised his hand and rubbed thumb and forefinger together, as though preparing to count money.
"Too late. I feel it in my fingers already," he said.
"All right," Fletcher replied. "If you want me to beg, I’ll beg. Quiddity must be preserved. I beg you not to touch it. "
"You don't get it, do you?" the Jaff said. He had come to a halt some distance from Fletcher. Now the youth came, bringing his sister.
"My flesh," the Jaff said, indicating his children, "will do anything for me. Isn't that right, Tommy-Ray?"
The boy grinned. "Anything."
Intent on the exchange between the two men, Tesla had not noticed Howie slipping free of Hotchkiss until he turned to her and whispered: "Gun."
She'd brought the weapon out of the market with her. Reluctantly she passed it into Howie's wounded hand. "He's going to kill her," Howie murmured.
"That's his daughter," Tesla whispered in reply.
"You think he cares?"
Looking back, she saw the boy's point. Whatever changes Fletcher's Great Work (the Nuncio, he'd called it) had wrought in the Jaff they'd taken the man over the brink of sanity. Though she'd had all too short a time drinking down the visions Fletcher had shared with her, and had only a tenuous grasp of the complexities of the Art, Quiddity, Cosm and Metacosm, she knew enough to be sure that such power in this entity's hands would be power for immeasurable evil.
"You lost, Fletcher," the Jaff said. "You and your child don't have what it takes to be . . . modern. " He smiled. "These two, on the other hand, are at the cutting edge. Everything is experiment. Right?"
Tommy-Ray had his hand on Jo-Beth's shoulder; now it moved down to her breast. Somebody in the crowd began to speak out at this, but was hushed as the Jaff looked in their direction. Jo-Beth pulled away from her brother, but Tommy-Ray was not about to relinquish her. He pulled her back towards him, inclining his head towards hers.
A shot stopped the kiss, the bullet plowing the asphalt at Tommy-Ray's feet.
"Let go of her," Howie said. His voice was not strong, but it carried.
Tommy-Ray did as he was instructed, looking at Howie with mild puzzlement on his face. He slid his knife from his back pocket. The imminence of bloodshed was not lost on the crowd. Some backed away, especially those with children. Most stayed.
Behind Fletcher, Grillo leaned over and whispered to Hotchkiss.
"Could you take him out from here?"
"The kid?"
"No. The Jaff."
"Don't bother to try," Tesla murmured. "It won't stop him."
"What will?"
"Christ knows."
"Going to shoot me down in cold blood in front of all these nice people?" Tommy-Ray said to Howie. "Go on, I dare you. Blow me away. I'm not afraid. I like death and death likes me. Pull the trigger, Katz. If you've got the balls."
As he spoke he slowly walked towards Howie, who was barely keeping himself upright. But he kept the gun pointed at Tommy-Ray.
It was the Jaff who brought the impasse to an end, seizing hold of Jo-Beth. His grip brought a cry. Howie looked towards her, and Tommy-Ray charged him, knife raised. It took only a push from Tommy-Ray to throw Howie down. The gun flew from his hand. Tommy-Ray kicked Howie hard between the legs then threw himself upon his victim.
"Don't kill him!" the Jaff commanded.
He let Jo-Beth go, and advanced towards Fletcher. From the fingers in which he'd claimed he could already feel the Art quickening beads of power oozed like ectoplasm, bursting in the air. He had reached the fighters, and seemed about to intervene, but instead simply cast a glance down at them, as at two brawling dogs, then stepped past them to continue his advance upon Fletcher.
"We'd better back off," Tesla murmured to Grillo and Hotchkiss. "It's out of our hands now."
Proof of that came seconds later, as Fletcher reached into his pocket, and pulled out a book of matches, marked Marvin's Food and Drug. What was about to happen could not have been lost on any of the spectators. They'd smelled the gasoline. They knew its source. Now here were the matches. An immolation was imminent. But there were no further retreats. Though none of them comprehended much, if any, of the exchange between the protagonists there were few among the crowd who didn't know in their guts that they were witnessing events of consequence. How could they look away, when for the first time they had a chance of peeking at the gods?
Fletcher opened the book; pulled a match from it. He was in the act of striking when fresh darts of power broke from the Jaff's hand and flew at Fletcher. They struck his fingers like bullets, their violence carrying match and matchbook out of Fletcher's hands.
"Don't waste your time with tricks," the Jaff said. "You know fire’s not going to do me any harm. Nor you, unless you want it to. And if you want extinction then all you have to do is ask."
This time he took his poison to Fletcher rather than letting it fly from his hand. He approached his enemy, and touched him. A shudder went through Fletcher. With
agonizing slowness he turned his head far enough around to be able to see Tesla. In his eyes she saw so much vulnerability; he'd opened himself up to perform whatever end-game he had in mind, and the Jaff's malice had direct access to his essence. The appeal in his expression was unambiguous. A message of chaos was spreading through his system from the Jaff's touch. The only way he sought to be saved from it was death.
She had no matches, but she had Hotchkiss's gun. Without a word she snatched it from his hand. Her motion drew the Jaff's glance, and for a chilling moment she met his mad eyes—saw a phantom head swelling around them; another Jaff in hiding behind the first.
Then she aimed the gun at the ground behind Fletcher, and fired. There was no spark, as she'd hoped there'd be. She aimed again, emptying her head of all thoughts but the will for ignition. She'd made fires before. On the page, to catch the mind. Now one for the flesh.
She exhaled slowly through her mouth, the way she did when she first sat down at her typewriter in the morning, and pulled the trigger.
It seemed she saw the fire coming before it actually ignited. Like a bright storm; the spark the lightning that ran before. The air around Fletcher turned yellow. Then it sprang into flame.
The heat was sudden, and intense. She dropped the gun and ran to where she could better see what followed. Fletcher caught her gaze through the blistering conflagration, and there was a sweetness in his expression that she'd carry through the adventures the future had planned for her as a reminder of how little she understood the workings of the world. That a man might enjoy to burn; might profit by it, might come to fruition in fire, that was a lesson no school-marm had come close to teaching. But here was the fact, made true by her own hand.
Beyond the fire she saw the Jaff stepping away with a shrug of ridicule. The fire had caught his fingers, where they'd touched Fletcher. It blew them out, like five candles. Behind him, Howie and Tommy-Ray were backing off before the heat, their hatred postponed. These sights held her only a beat, however, before she returned to the spectacle of the burning Fletcher. Even in that brief time his status had changed. The fire, which raged around him like a pillar, was not consuming him but transforming, the process throwing out flashes of bright matter.