Judgment Stone (9781401687359)

by Robert Liparulo

  Owen. He had shown up this morning. Could they be after him . . . or both men? If they wanted revenge, it made sense.

  She got to her feet—Tyler asking, “Mom?” to which she whispered, “The gun”—and pressed her thumb to the biometric reader on the box above his head. The door popped open an inch. She opened it fully and pulled out the big revolver, a .44 magnum, dull steel with a molded black grip. She sat again, both of them staring at the gun. She cracked open the cylinder, saw the backs of six bullets, and snapped it shut.

  A knock at the panic room door. Incredibly, Tyler’s eyes grew wider.

  “Beth?” Nevaeh said. “I just want to talk, really.”

  “It’s true,” Jordan called.

  “Who’s that?” Tyler whispered.

  “Remember I told you about Jordan? He became immortal when he was eleven.”

  “And he still acts like a kid?”

  Beth nodded. Why would they bring him? With their numbers down, maybe they’d promoted him to more serious duties.

  “Go away!” Beth yelled through gritted teeth at the steel-covered door.

  “I want to talk about Ben, what you said to him.”

  “You could have called,” Beth said.

  “It’s not the same. I don’t think it was your words that did it, it was you.”

  Her eyebrows came together. “What are you talking about?” She looked at Tyler, eyes more normal now, calming down.

  “God forgave him. He called him home.”

  “That’s between him and God.”

  “I think you had something to do with it.”

  Beth leaned her head back against the wall. “I just told him to stop seeking God in his head and look for Him in his heart.”

  Silence, then: “There has to be more to it.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Let’s talk about it,” Nevaeh said. “Face-to-face.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “We can tear down this door.”

  Beth raised the barrel of the gun, pointing it at the door. She shifted to put her back against the rear wall, holding the gun between her bent knees.

  Tyler shook his head. “Don’t try to shoot through it. Dad got metal that bullets can’t go through.”

  She nodded, thinking, Then I’ll wait until they rip off the door, shoot them in their faces. Hoping she wouldn’t have to.

  [ 47 ]

  Jagger and Owen drove their rented BMW into the countryside southwest of Varna, Owen behind the wheel, driving fast. Except for the rock walls, which partitioned fields, and the tiny whitewashed houses, it reminded Jagger of rural Virginia: rolling hills, splotches of woods. It was serene, and Jagger had a hard time reconciling the locale with the evil he knew roamed it. It was a lot easier picturing the Clan loose in a city, plying their blood trade in filthy alleyways and the back rooms of opium dens. Imagining them here made him think of them as animals—except that animals killed for food or to protect their territory. The Clan was here with worse than malicious intent, not only to cause harm to man, but in doing so to strike out at God.

  Jagger had hated God after the crash, but the way that had played out was his turning his back on God. He hadn’t cared or even thought about it then, but he thought now that his response was pretty typical of people who’d felt God had done them wrong. He’d never, not even in a fleeting fancy, considered attempting to hurt God by hurting the things He loved. What Bale and the Clan were doing was almost beyond comprehension.

  Almost. Now that he knew their objective, it made weird, terrible sense. If you truly believed in God and truly hated Him—and had an evil disposition and a sociopath’s lack of regard for others—then, okay, you’re going to go after Him. And since you can’t actually reach God, you were left hurting the things He loved. Jagger had once read of a man who’d been rejected and ridiculed by a girl in high school. He went on to court her, marry her, and father her baby. He then killed the child and told his wife, “That’s how much I’ve hated you all these years.” Incomprehensible. Insane.

  But it was exactly what the Clan was doing to God.

  “It’s coming up,” Owen said. He’d entered the coordinates of the place Jagger had identified into the car’s GPS; the screen now said their arrival time was four minutes away. They were winding through a forest, no village in sight. Jagger reached into his pocket, touched the fragment. The beam appeared over Owen’s head and went through the car’s ceiling. He looked in the backseat, expecting an angel, then scanned out the windows. Nothing. He rolled down his window and stuck his head out. High above, two angels soared with them, glowing embers visible on either side and jutting out past their feet. Without appearing to slow, they shifted into a horizontal position and looked down at him.

  Jagger pulled his head in and rolled up the window. He said, “There are some blue threads here and there over the trees. Nothing like the big one I saw.”

  Owen nodded. He was frowning, and Jagger knew he expected the worst.

  “Whoever was making the big beam,” Jagger said, “they could have just stopped praying. You know, service over, let’s go home.”

  “If it was a worship service of some kind,” Owen said, “I hope they broke up and dispersed before the Clan found them.”

  Jagger pulled a duffel bag from the back seat and placed it on his lap. Owen had carried it through customs as though it contained stuffed teddy bears—the security guy in the private-plane terminal was more interested in a TV game show than them. He pulled out a revolver, a semiauto, and a three-foot sword. “These are going to stop them?” he asked, and thought, Only if we catch them sleeping.

  “Not in a direct firefight,” Owen said. “We’ll have to follow them, try to get each one alone.”

  “The way lions pick off stragglers.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Is that likely?

  Owen shrugged. “They have to go to the bathroom sometime. I don’t think they’ll do that in a group.”

  “As soon as we get one that way, they will.”

  “As soon as we get one, they’ll hunt for us. Probably separate to find us.”

  “And we’ll ambush each one before they get us?” It didn’t sound like such a good idea. Now that they were two minutes from confronting the things that had seemed so far away when Owen described them, Jagger realized how stupid this was. What made Owen think they could take on the Clan?

  This is the guy who flew his jet into a mobile home, he thought, and shook his head.

  Owen glanced over. “Look,” he said, “we only have to get the Stone back. Bale probably has it. They don’t know we’re after them, so he’s not going to have his guard up. We find them, trail them, and as soon as Bale goes some place alone, we spring.” He made it sound easy.

  Jagger said, “And what if we find them about to kill some people? Are you going to hold back and watch, follow through with your plan?”

  “No, we’ll have to try and save their victims.”

  Jagger waited for more. When Owen remained silent, he said, “And?”

  “Let’s play it by ear.”

  “What? Get ourselves killed . . . for nothing?”

  Owen didn’t respond. Jagger rummaged in the duffel again. Another handgun and a lot of ammo. He got his hand around something and pulled it out. “Is this what I think it is?”

  Owen looked. “If you think it’s a hand grenade, then yeah. Should be four of them in there.”

  Well, okay then. If they were going to go down fighting, at least the grenades evened things up a bit. As long as the Clan didn’t have a few of their own.

  “The only advantage we have,” Owen said, “is the element of surprise.” He pulled out of his breast pocket a pair of aviator sunglasses and slipped them on. He smiled at Jagger, his crazy hair and beard fanning out from the glasses as though each hair was trying to get away.

  “Is that supposed to be a disguise?” Jagger said.

  “Just some
thing to break up my features. They haven’t seen me in a while. You, on the other hand . . .”

  “Steampunk . . . Hester got a good look at me.” He thought of Bale smiling up at him from his observation point on the rocks across from St. Catherine’s gate. “Bale too. Probably the others.”

  “They know you. That handsome face of yours hasn’t changed in centuries. I haven’t always had so much hair.”

  Jagger couldn’t imagine Owen clean-shaven, nattily coifed.

  Owen said, “If we see them, duck down. I’ll look away, like a tourist trying to find something.”

  Jagger felt like half of a bumbling duo in a mismatched-cops comedy. But if they messed up, they weren’t going to get a mere chewing out from their boss. He tried not to think about Beth and Tyler opening the box containing his head.

  They rounded a bend and drove through a small village. Two old guys sitting on chairs in front of a store. A woman carrying a wicker basket of something up the street. They slowed to let a dog pass. Past the businesses, they hit a stretch of road lined with houses. Two little kids were kicking a ball to each other across three front lawns—if hard earth and weeds could be called lawns.

  “See anything?” Owen asked.

  Jagger shook his head. “Few side streets, more like rutted dirt roads. Maybe we should try them.”

  “Look at the map again,” Owen suggested. “See if this still looks right.” He made a U-turn and headed back into the village.

  Jagger put the weapons away, pushed the duffel into the foot well, and retrieved the iPad from Owen’s satchel in the back. He studied the map, then closed his eyes to picture the sight from the cockpit windows. Angels and demons over the city. The column of light catching his eye; when he was looking at it, it was through the windshield in front of Owen. He’d followed it down to the ground. Villages, trees, roads like varicose veins. He snapped his eyes open and immediately saw the problem.

  “We’re one village over from it,” he said. “I’m sure of it. We didn’t go far enough.”

  Owen pulled to the side of the road. “Let me see.”

  Jagger held up the display and tapped the village just west of their current position. A pop-up box displayed the place’s longitude and latitude.

  “Hold it there,” Owen said, looking from it to the GPS and back, punching in the new coordinates. “These rural areas,” he said. “The roads go around fields; some look like roads but are really mile-long driveways. We’ll let the GPS tell us how to get there.”

  “If it does, then backwoods Bulgaria has better maps than the US.”

  “Lots of tourists, places to see out here. Ten minutes ago we passed a road leading to the ancient stone baths where they say a Roman soldier, on orders from Nero, drowned Marcus Tullius.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “That’s because he drowned. Rumor was he was going to attempt a coup.”

  “And you know this how?”

  Owen shrugged. “Trivia.”

  “There’s that terrible memory again.”

  “Point is, Bulgaria has all sorts of sights interesting to history buffs. If everyone gets lost, half their tourism income goes with them. Places like this are fanatic about their maps, GPS and otherwise.”

  “Good to know. Now, you ready to go?”

  Owen got the car moving and honked and waved as he passed the kids with the ball. Just another leisurely drive through Bulgaria. Jagger half expected him to stop for a game of checkers with the old guys in front of the store.

  [ 48 ]

  Nevaeh had stopped talking. Beth suspected she didn’t really want to know what she’d told Ben, at least that wasn’t all she wanted. It was a ruse to get to her, to use her to get to Jagger.

  She heard mumbling out there, in the bedroom. Then: “Hey, Tyler?” It was Jordan. “Tyler, can you hear me?”

  “What?” Tyler said. Beth shook her head, gestured for him to stay quiet.

  “I know things about your dad. I knew him before you did. Want me to tell you?” He paused. When Tyler didn’t respond, he said, “We can play in the monastery. I know hidden places I bet even you haven’t found yet.” Trying everything. “I know something about you, a secret. If you come out, I’ll tell you.”

  Tyler looked puzzled.

  Beth whispered, “He doesn’t know we already told you about Dad being an Immortal. That’s all.”

  Silence.

  Someone kicked the door again, and they both jumped, Tyler letting out a little scream.

  “They’re just mad they can’t get us,” Beth said to him. “Daddy did a good job.”

  Right outside the door, Phin said, “Come out here right now! If I have to come in and get you, I’ll hurt the kid. I mean it.”

  Tyler propelled himself into Beth’s arms. He squeezed her hard. She comforted him, then turned her face toward the door.

  “What’s the knockout drug for?”

  “You,” Nevaeh said, “and Tyler.”

  That got Tyler whimpering, pushing his face into her shoulder.

  “Look,” Nevaeh said, “if we’d wanted to kill you, we wouldn’t have brought drugs to put you out. I’ll be honest with you, Beth. I want to take you with us. Just for a little bit. I need to know what happened with Ben, how he found forgiveness.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want it for myself. I need it.”

  “This is how you go about looking for God’s grace?” Beth said, surprised to hear the words coming out of her mouth. The Tribe’s quest for grace—by killing sinners—was insane, utterly against the word of God and the word grace itself. But in a twisted way, it made sense. All you had to do was forget about Jesus Christ. The Tribe claimed to be Christians, but other than their reading about faith and Christ, paying them lip service, and possessing a few religious icons, Beth didn’t see it. No fruit. An unsummoned thought danced into her head: Boy, does that describe half the Christians I know, or what? At least they weren’t going around killing people. Except themselves.

  So, yeah, the Tribe was starting off on the level marked Out of Your Mind—and jumping deeper into the loony hole from there. Beth thought she understood what was happening here: Nevaeh didn’t want to talk to her, she wanted her, her body, her presence, as though Beth were a talisman, a magic something that could confer grace, or through which God conferred His grace. Subtle but huge difference.

  “Taking me won’t end well,” she called through the door.

  “If I thought that, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Think about it,” Beth said. “If you don’t get what you want from me—and you won’t, because I don’t have what you’re looking for—what then? Are you going to just let me go?”

  “Moot point,” Nevaeh said. “Ben got it from you; so will I.”

  “He didn’t ‘get it’ from me! That’s your problem! You’re looking everywhere but where you should be. Look to God, Nevaeh, not to me!”

  “I have been,” she said more quietly. “For thirty-five centuries.”

  “So now you’re looking anywhere, everywhere. And when you don’t get it from me?”

  “I will.”

  Talking to a brick wall.

  “How long will you try?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  Beth closed her eyes. Nevaeh intended on keeping her. Gone from her family forever. She had no illusions about Nevaeh finally tiring of her, letting her go. What were the fifty or sixty years Beth had left to an Immortal? A blink of an eye. A notation in her journal.

  “What about Jagger?” Beth said. “You think he’ll just let you take me? Haven’t we played this game already?”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  “No!” Beth screamed, really screamed.

  Tyler’s muscles tightened. He squirmed in her arms. “Mommy.”

  She was done trying to reason with a person who’d lost her mind. Jagger would go after them, as he had before, and Beth wasn’t so naive to believe the outcome would be the same. This time he
could be killed—if the Clan didn’t kill him first, but she pushed that thought out of her head. Any way you cut Nevaeh’s plan, you got a big stinking plate of rot.

  She lifted Tyler, said, “Go sit down again, Ty.”

  “Don’t go with them.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Don’t let them scare you into going. What the man said about hurting me—”

  “He won’t. I won’t let him. And I won’t go with them. Okay?”

  He nodded, backed off of her, and sat.

  Beth cocked the gun.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Calling for help. Plug your ears.”

  [ 49 ]

  She pointed the revolver at the ceiling and began firing, her muscles straining to keep the recoil in check. The shots were loud and deafening. She squeezed the trigger over and over until the hammer fell on spent shells. Plaster rained down on them, chunks and dust. They lowered their heads against it. Beth looked up, past the high shelf loaded with supplies. She’d blasted away an area in the sloping ceiling the size of a large pizza, revealing planks of wood chipped away by the bullets. Through one broken chunk she saw the aluminum-colored sky.

  “Tyler,” she whispered, excited. She didn’t wait for him to look up, his head covered in white plaster dust. She rose up, opened the gun safe, and retrieved the only other item in it: a box of shells. Reloading, she heard the Tribe yelling on the other side of the door. Gunshots sounded, and little bumps appeared in the metal skin of the door. More yelling. Everything was muffled—their voices, the gunshots—and she realized her own shooting had caused a ringing in her ears.

  She raised the gun again, aiming this time. “Plug your ears,” she said again. Six quick shots, each chipping at the planks, putting holes in them. Plaster chipped off around the hole she’d already made. Wood splinters fell down on them, Beth squinting to see through the debris. She opened the cylinder, dumped the shells, slipped new bullets into each chamber, her hand working like a machine: box to gun to box to gun . . . She closed the cylinder and fired again.