“Easy to say.”
“I know he had brothers named Matthew, Mark, and John. Their mother was into the Gospels. And you’re Thomas. Another apostle. Doubting Thomas. You still doubting me, Tommy?”
“I’m doubting you’ve got your head on straight. Get off my truck or I shoot.”
“Your family’s related to Joe Mulliner, the Robin Hood of the Pines, right? Would old Joe approve of that?”
He ran his fingers over the glyphs, outlining their shapes.
“Old Joe was hung in the seventeen hundreds.”
And then it hit Jack like a sucker punch to the gut.
“Oh, no.”
He rose and turned toward Tommy. He didn’t want that itchy trigger finger to twitch so he gave him a preview of what he was going to do.
“I’m getting off your truck and going to my car.”
“Now you’re talking.”
Jack jumped to the ground and pulled open the passenger door. He found the pen Weezy had given him on the seat.
“And now I’m going back to the truck.”
“No, you ain’t!”
Tommy made the mistake of stepping in and trying to club Jack with the barrel. He wasn’t experienced in this sort of thing and, before he knew it, the shotgun had changed hands.
Tommy raised his arms and cringed back as Jack pointed it his way.
“Hey, no! Don’t!”
Jack lowered the weapon, saying, “Not here to hurt anyone or anything. I need about two minutes with that crazy black thing and then I’ll be on my way.”
He took the shotgun with him when he climbed back into the truck bed. He took out Weezy’s drawing and laid the sheet over the glyphs, then began rubbing the pen over it. Gradually the writing began to appear. When he was finished he held the sheet up to the light. He leaped to his feet when his worst suspicions were confirmed.
“Shit-shit-shit!”
The same glyphs but in a different order. An optical illusion. The visible glyphs weren’t the same as the carved glyphs. A different name. Rasalom had hidden his true Other Name. Had all of the Seven done that, so that even if someone outside their circle found their sigils, he still wouldn’t know their Other Names? Over five thousand fake variations remained, after all. Or had Rasalom been the only one?
Didn’t matter. What did was the Lady using the wrong name in the Ceremony.
He had to tell them.
He opened the Mossberg’s breech and pulled out the two shells, tossed them over his shoulder, then closed it. He laid it at the foot of the sigil and hopped down to the ground again. Without a word, he jumped into the car and slammed it into reverse.
“What the fuck’s going on?” Tommy shouted as Jack backed around. Jack heard him repeating, “What the fuck?” two or three times as he roared down the driveway.
WTF, indeed.
14
When Jack turned back on to Carranza Road, he faced a straight shot back to 206, allowing him to make some quick calls. He speed-dialed Weezy’s cell number but her voice mail picked up immediately. He tried two more times with the same result. Another post-crash cell dead zone? They were happening less frequently, but still happening.
Or had she turned off her phone? She wouldn’t do that. Not unless they’d started the ceremony.
No-no-no. They wouldn’t start without hearing from him. Or would they?
Feeling a little frantic, he dialed her home landline: no answer. No surprise there—she had to be at the Lady’s—but he’d needed to give it a try. He dialed Glaeken’s apartment. He’d no doubt be down in the Lady’s place too, but he usually left a nurse with Magda. She’d answer and he could ask her to go downstairs and—
Glaeken’s voice mail picked up immediately too.
He wanted to smash his phone against the steering wheel. What the hell was going on?
He gunned the car around the traffic circle onto Route 70 and headed west, weaving through the traffic, but carefully. He faced a frustrating gauntlet of traffic lights between him and the freeways, and he couldn’t risk a cop stop for being too aggressive.
Every cell in his brain and body screamed at him to stop that ceremony. But why? As if some part of his subconscious—the primitive crocodile hind brain perhaps—was sensing danger but unable to explain it to the higher centers.
All right … what did he know? Why this gnawing feeling that they’d been gamed?
It all centered around the Other Naming Ceremony. Where had that come from? Discovered by Weezy in the Compendium of Srem.
The Compendium … it kept opening to the Ceremony—so often that Gia had remarked that it seemed to be “trying to tell you something”—a quip they could have brushed off had it referred to any book other than the Compendium. Because the Compendium was sui generis, and its page order seemed to be in constant flux. It frustrated you by making it almost impossible to return to a page after you’d seen it. And yet here it was, opening to the same page time and again … the page about the Other Naming Ceremony.
Yes, it did seem to be “trying to tell you something.”
But books don’t have awareness, don’t have a will. Not even the Compendium. At least not as far as anyone knew. Srem had used a long-lost technology to construct it, but Jack doubted she’d been able to imbue it with consciousness.
So that meant randomness or manipulation. He discarded randomness—first, because he couldn’t buy it, and second, because if that was the case, he had nothing to worry about.
But the manipulation possibility bothered him. A lot.
Two sources for that: the Ally or the Otherness. If the Ally, no problem. It wanted to frustrate the Otherness as much as Jack and Glaeken.
But what if the Otherness was the source?
Jack’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel as he remembered how the Order had put out a BOLO on Weezy a few weeks ago. Out of the blue. After months and months of disinterest—he now knew they’d been preoccupied with developing the Jihad virus—they suddenly wanted to locate Weezy. And according to Eddie, they’d found her.
But they did nothing. They left her alone. Or maybe not. Rasalom moved Dawn in across the hall. No one had yet to make sense of that. But Weezy discovered the Other Naming Ceremony shortly thereafter.
Connection?
Could Rasalom have sneaked in and altered the Compendium? Manipulated it to show the Ceremony page every time it was opened?
Jack stiffened in the seat. Could he have added the page? Neither Glaeken nor the Lady had ever heard of the Ceremony. Was it bogus? Could the words, written in the Small Folk tongue that only the Lady knew, have an effect that went beyond naming? Would the Lady’s reciting them harm her?
His mind whirled with possibilities.
What if discovery of the Ceremony was meant to spark memories of the broken sigil and send Weezy and him back to Johnson to find it?
No, wait … Rasalom couldn’t know they’d seen it …
Unless Drexler told him. Drexler had been living in the Lodge when they found it.
Jack tracked down Drexler’s number in his phone history and hit SEND. When Drexler picked up, he wasted no time.
“This is Jack. Did the One ever ask about me?”
A heartbeat or two of hesitation, then, “You flatter yourself.”
Not an answer.
“He never asked you about our interactions when I was a kid?”
“Why on Earth would he care?”
Still not an answer.
“Yes or no?”
“No. Never.”
“Okay.”
Jack ended the call.
Lying … Drexler was good at it. A good liar’s reflexes when withholding info were to avoid getting caught in a lie, so he dodged a yes-or-no answer whenever possible—just as Drexler had done until pinned down. And Jack had sensed an instant’s hesitation before the flat denial.
Pretty clear now that Drexler had been contacted by the wounded Rasalom, maybe even helped him. The One had survived and turned to Drexler, and s
o he’d switched sides again.
Why am I not surprised?
But it meant Drexler’s denial was bullshit. Rasalom had quizzed him on what he knew of Jack’s childhood.
The scenario took shape in Jack’s head:
Rasalom, knowing Jack was the Heir, probed Drexler about his childhood and learned that he and Weezy had seen the broken sigil. That may or may not have been important to him at first.
He knew finding Jack would be nigh impossible, but the Order knew what Weezy looked like, so he told Drexler to find her and then do nothing more than watch her—because maybe she would lead them to the Heir.
Once Rasalom knew her location, he could have floated to her apartment windows, entered, and found the Compendium. He could have altered the book—
Wait. The Other Naming Ceremony didn’t appear until after Dawn moved in. So …
He moved Dawn in across the hall—reason to be determined.
Then he changed the Compendium to keep opening to the Other Naming Ceremony—which he might well have added to the book.
Jack punched the steering wheel. And we played right into his hands. We remembered the name on the sigil, we went and found it, and now we’re ready to perform the Other Naming Ceremony on a not quite human baby—
He almost hit a divider as the truth hit him.
That’s it! That’s why Dawn was moved in across the hall. So we’d go looking for the baby. Because the baby’s such an obvious choice to take on Rasalom’s Other Name.
Except it isn’t his Other Name. It’s bogus.
But what was all this supposed to accomplish?
Jack hadn’t a clue, but he did know that, for whatever reason, Rasalom wanted the Lady to perform the Ceremony.
He called Weezy again, and again got her voice mail. Then he remembered Eddie. He’d probably be with Weezy, and even if not, he could run over and tell them to wait for him.
But Eddie’s voice mail came on immediately as well.
Jack tossed the phone into the backseat—worthless piece of crap. Wait. Could be a local cell outage in the city, or was the Internet down again?
He retrieved it and called Gia. She picked up almost immediately.
“Is everything okay there?” he said. “The Internet and the phones?”
“Yes. I’m on the computer now. Why?”
“I’m not sure. Can’t get hold of Weezy or Eddie.”
“I thought they were with you.”
“Long story. Are you going out at all tonight?”
“No plans. Schools are open tomorrow. Why?”
“Good. Stay in. Don’t go anywhere.”
“Should I be worried?”
“I don’t know. Just … stay in. I’ll call you later.”
He cut the call and stepped on the gas. He didn’t know what Rasalom was up to, but he knew he had to stop the Ceremony.
15
“It’s been two hours, Weez,” Eddie said. “We should have heard from him by now.”
Eddie was really on her nerves with his constant bugging to start the Ceremony.
“How can we hear from him when our phones say ‘no service’?”
“I believe we should get on with it,” Glaeken said. “The One has regained his strength.”
Weezy looked at him. “You’re sure?”
He nodded. “I sense it. He’s back in the city and he’s damaged, but he is strong again.”
“Where in the city?” Eddie said. He looked frightened.
Glaeken shrugged. “I’ve never been able to pinpoint his location. I know only that he is here.”
“Weezy…” Eddie drew out her name. “If he’s nearby and he finds out what we’ve got planned, no telling what he’ll do.”
“I told Jack we’d wait.”
Eddie gave her a look. “Is that really what this is about?” He nodded at the baby. “Or are you just postponing the inevitable?”
Was that it? Was she delaying the Ceremony just because of the baby?
“Jack could be in jail, for all we know,” Eddie added. “We’ve got to get this done.”
“I agree,” the Lady said. “We have all we need here to perform the Ceremony.”
Weezy looked around the room. Looked like she was outvoted.
She sighed. “All right. Let’s do it.” She looked at the Lady. “What’s the first step?”
“According to the Compendium, the baby must be seated on the lap of whoever recites the Ceremony. That would be me.”
While Eddie pulled one of the wooden chairs away from the table, Weezy stepped to the playpen and lifted the baby. He loosed one of his ear-piercing shrieks as he lost his grip on his bone. Weezy quickly retrieved it for him and returned to where the Lady was seating herself on the chair. Weezy set the baby on her lap. The Lady faced him outward and wrapped her arms around him.
“Now … hold the Compendium before me so I can see the words…”
16
Perfect.
Rasalom removed the earphones and paused to marvel at how everything had fallen into place. His original plan had gone off track in seemingly disastrous directions, and yet somehow …
His original intent had been simply to locate Glaeken.
He’d known for years the identity of the Heir, although not where he lived. The plan had hinged on one all-important assumption: that the Heir knew the whereabouts of Glaeken. If that were so, Rasalom could use Dawn’s baby as a means to locate Glaeken through the Heir.
From his discussions with Drexler he’d known of the Connell woman’s relationship to the Heir. So he had paired Dawn with the Connell woman, knowing the girl would be needy and would attach herself. He would eventually allow Dawn—with the Connell woman’s help—to find her way back to her baby. The Connell woman would show the q’qrlike child to the Heir. The Heir, if he knew Glaeken’s whereabouts, would want him to see the child. And Rasalom would follow.
But the revelations in North Carolina had made all that unnecessary: Glaeken turned out to be an impotent mortal and no threat.
Which freed Rasalom to devote all his energies to eliminating the Lady.
That was when he realized that Dawn’s baby could be used as a means to that very end.
Through the Connell woman, he had learned where the Heir lived—a bit of information crucial to the plan. Once he had established that, he entered her apartment while she was out and inserted a new page about the Other Naming Ceremony into the Compendium, arranging for it to appear whenever the book was opened. The Connell woman couldn’t help but find it, and couldn’t help but bring it to Glaeken’s attention. And to the Lady’s as well, since she was the only living being—aside from Rasalom—who knew the Small Folk’s language.
He had worded the page with caveats carefully tailored to leave the q’qrlike child as the only safe recipient of the Other Name.
The Heir and the Connell woman would go in search of Rasalom’s ancient sigil, would find what they’d believe was his Other Name, and the Lady would perform the Ceremony.
Everything had been working perfectly until the Heir’s ferocious assault almost ruined everything.
Almost.
Because even though Rasalom had been maimed and had nearly lost his life, it had been worth it. The child had followed the path he’d originally set for it: straight to Glaeken and the Lady.
He went down on one knee and opened the case.
After all these millennia … time to end this.
17
Weezy held the Compendium open before the Lady while she in turn held the baby on her lap. The Lady was perhaps half a minute into the tongue-twisting, larynx-torturing vocalizations that made up the Ceremony when the apartment door slammed open.
Jack?
Weezy looked around in time to see a disfigured stranger emerge from the shadows behind Eddie who was himself in the midst of turning.
Time seemed to slow …
The stranger’s arm blurred as he swung something through the air. Eddie’s eyes widened and
she watched in horror as his head tipped to the side and toppled free of his shoulders.
She screamed at the twin jets of red pumping from his neck stump as the stranger shoved him aside in his headlong rush into the room.
His eyes blazed in his scarred face … they fixed on her as he raised his right arm again.
A sword … he carried a sword …
She saw it arc toward her and instinctively raised the Compendium for protection. The blade bit into the metal of the cover and Weezy recognized the pitted blade of Jack’s katana—the Gaijin Masamune—before it pulled free.
Another swing of the blade, lower this time. She tried to block it again but was too slow …
She felt it slice across her belly, parting the fabric of her shirt and the skin beneath as if they were paper …
No pain at first, and then a burst of staggering agony, deeper and more intense than she’d ever felt or imagined possible, as the point gouged through her intestines.
She dropped the book and slumped to her knees, doubling over as the stranger rushed by, raising the sword again.
From the corner of her eye she saw it ram through the baby and into the Lady.
The baby screamed, the Lady’s mouth opened wide but no sound emerged as blue light began to glow where the blade pierced her chest.
Leaving the Lady and the baby skewered on the sword, the stranger released his grip and stepped back to watch.
The Lady’s eyes rolled up in her head and she began to shudder as the blue glow grew brighter, spreading until it enveloped her and the baby, covering them like a second skin. The baby stopped shrieking, stopped moving as he began to press back against the Lady’s chest and abdomen.
No … not press back … the baby was melting into the Lady … or the Lady was absorbing him. Weezy couldn’t tell. But either way, the baby was disappearing into the Lady. And when he was gone, the Lady’s shuddering became more violent. The feet of the chair legs beat a tattoo on the floor, then went silent as it began to rise into the air. The Lady’s mouth hung open, emitting a long low moan as the enveloping blue glow brightened and brightened until it flashed with intolerable brilliance.
The Dark at the End (Repairman Jack) Page 33
