The Complete Adversary Cycle: The Keep, the Tomb, the Touch, Reborn, Reprisal, Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack)
Page 83
The flash preceded the thunder of the explosion. The poised rakosh was silhouetted in the white light that blotted out the stars. Then came the blast. The rakosh turned around and Gia knew she had been given a chance. She ran on.
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The pain was three glowing, red hot irons laid across his chest.
Jack had rolled onto his side and was just pushing himself up to a sitting position on the sand when the first explosion came. He saw the rakosh turn toward the flash from the ship, saw Gia start to run.
The stern of the freighter had dissolved into a ball of orange flame as the fuel tanks exploded, quickly followed by a white-hot flash from the forward section—the remaining incendiary bombs going off all at once. Smoke, fire, and debris hurtled skyward from the cracked and listing hull of what had once been the Ajit-Rupobati. Jack knew nothing could survive that inferno. Nothing!
The rakoshi were gone, extinct but for one. And that one threatened two of the beings Jack valued most in this world. He had gone berserk when he had seen it reaching through the windshield of the truck for Vicky. It must have been following a command given to it earlier tonight to bring in the one who had drunk the elixir. Vicky was that one—the rakoshi elixir that had been in the orange was still in her system and this rakosh was taking its mission very seriously. Despite the death of its Kaka-ji, despite the absence of the Mother, it intended to return Vicky to the freighter.
Splashing noises to his left… down by the bulkhead Jack saw Abe pulling himself out of the water and onto the sand. Abe’s face was white as he stared up at the rakosh atop the truck. He was seeing something that had no right to exist and he looked dazed. He would be no help.
Gia could not outrun the rakosh, especially not with Vicky in her arms. Jack had to do something—but what? Never before had he felt so helpless, so impotent! He had always been able to make a difference, but not now. He was spent. He knew of no way to stop that thing standing atop Abe’s truck. In a moment it would turn and run after Gia… and there was nothing he could do about it.
He rose to his knees and groaned with the pain of his latest wounds. Three deep lacerations ran diagonally across his chest and upper abdomen from where the rakosh had slashed him with its talons. The torn front of his shirt was soaked with blood. With a desperate surge of effort, he gained his feet, ready to place himself between Gia and the rakosh. He knew he couldn’t stop it, but maybe he could slow it down.
The rakosh leaped off the truck… but not after Gia and Vicky, and not toward Abe. It ran to the bulkhead and stood there staring out at the flaming wreckage of its nest. Shards of metal and flaming wood began to pepper the surface of the bay as they returned from the sky, hissing and steaming as they splashed into the water.
As Jack watched, it threw back its head and let loose an unearthly howl, so lost and mournful that Jack almost felt sorry for it. Its family, its world had gone up with the freighter. All points of reference, all that was meaningful in its life—gone. It howled once more, then dove into the water. Powerful strokes propelled it out into the bay, directly toward the pool of flaming oil. Like a loyal Indian wife throwing herself on her husband’s funeral pyre, it headed toward Kusum’s sunken iron tomb.
Gia had turned and was hurrying toward him with Vicky in her arms. Abe, too, wet and dripping, was walking his way.
“My grandmother used to try to scare me with stories of dybbuks,” Abe said breathlessly. “Now I’ve seen one.”
“Are the monsters gone?” Vicky kept saying, her head continually rotating back and forth as she stared into the long shadows thrown by the fire on the bay. “Are the monsters really gone?”
“Is it over?” Gia asked.
“I think so. I hope so.” He had been facing away from her. He turned as he answered and she gasped when she saw his front.
“Jack! Your chest!”
He pulled the shreds of his shirt closed over his ripped flesh. The bleeding had stopped and the pain was receding… due to the necklace, he guessed.
“It’s all right. Scratches. Look a lot worse than they are.” He heard sirens begin to wail. “If we don’t pack this stuff up and get out of here soon, we’re going to have to answer a lot of questions.”
Together, he and Abe dragged the slashed and deflated raft to the truck and threw it into the back, then they framed Gia and Vicky in the front seat, but this time Abe took the wheel. He knocked out the remains of the shattered windshield with the flat of his palm and started the engine. The sand was packed around the rear wheels but Abe skillfully rocked it out and drove through the gate Jack had rammed open earlier.
“A miracle if we make it uptown without getting pulled over for this windshield.”
“Blame it on vandals,” Jack told him. He turned to Vicky, who lay curled up agianst her mother, and ran his forefinger along her arm.
“You’re safe now, Vicks.”
“Yes, she is,” Gia said with a small smile as she laid her cheek against the top of Vicky’s head. “Thank you, Jack.”
Jack saw that the child was sleeping. “It’s what I do.”
Gia said nothing. Instead, she slipped her free hand into his. Jack looked into her eyes and saw there was no longer any fear there. It was a look he had longed to see. The sight of Vicky sleeping peacefully made all the pain and horror worthwhile; the look in Gia’s eyes was a bonus.
She leaned her head back and closed those eyes. “Is it really over?”
“For you, it is. For me… there’s one loose end left.”
“The woman,” Gia said. It wasn’t a question.
Jack nodded, thinking about Kolabati sitting in his apartment, and about what might be happening to her. He reached across Gia to get Abe’s attention.
“Drop me off at my place first, will you, Abe? Then take Gia home.”
“You can’t take care of those wounds by yourself!” she said. “You need a doctor.”
“Doctors ask too many questions.”
“Then come home with me. Let me clean you up.”
“It’s a deal. I’ll be over as soon as I finish at my place.”
Gia’s eyes narrowed. “What’s so important that you have to see her so soon?”
“I’ve got some personal property of hers”—he tapped the necklace around his throat—”that has to be returned.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“Afraid not. I borrowed it without telling her, and I’ve been told she really needs it.”
Gia said nothing.
“I’ll be over as soon as I can.”
By way of reply, Gia turned her face into the wind coming through the glassless front of the truck and stared stonily ahead.
Jack sighed. How could he explain to her that “the woman” might be aging years by the hour, might be a drooling senile wreck by now? How could he convince Gia when he couldn’t quite convince himself?
The rest of the trip passed in silence. Abe wended his way over to Hudson Street and turned uptown to Eighth Avenue, which took him to Central Park West. They saw a few police cars, but none was close enough to notice the missing windshield.
“Thanks for everything, Abe,” Jack said as the truck pulled up in front of the brownstone.
“Want me to wait?”
“This may take a while. Thanks again. I’ll settle up with you in the morning.”
“I’ll have the bill ready.”
Jack kissed the sleeping Vicky on the head and slid out of the seat. He was stiff and sore.
“Are you coming over?” Gia asked, finally looking at him.
“As soon as I can,” he said, glad the invitation was still open. “If you still want me to.”
“I want you to.”
“Then I’ll be there. Within an hour. I promise.”
“You’ll be okay?”
He was grateful for her worried expression.
“Sure.”
He slammed the door and watched them drive off. Then he began the long climb up to the third floor. When he reached hi
s door, key in hand, he hesitated. A chill crept over him. What was on the other side? What he wanted to find was an empty front room and a young Kolabati asleep in his bed. He would deposit both necklaces on the nightstand, where she would find them in the morning, then he would leave for Gia’s place. That would be the easy way. Kolabati would know her brother was dead without his actually having to tell her. Hopefully, she would be gone when he got back.
Let’s make this easy, he thought. Let something be easy tonight!
He opened the door and stepped into the front room. It was dark. Even the kitchen light was out. The only illumination was the weak glow leaking down the hall from his bedroom. All he could hear was breathing—rapid, ragged, rattly. It came from the couch. He stepped toward it.
“Kolabati?”
There came a gasp, a cough, and a groan. Someone rose from the couch. Framed in the light from the hall was a wizened, spindly figure with high thin shoulders and a kyphotic spine. It stepped toward him. Jack sensed rather than saw an outstretched hand.
“Give it to me!” The voice was little more than a faint rasp, a snake sliding through dry straw. “Give it back to me!”
But the cadence and pronunciation were unmistakable—it was Kolabati.
Jack tried to speak and found his throat locked. With shaking hands he reached around to the back of his neck and removed the necklace. He then pulled Kusum’s from his pocket.
“Returning it with interest,” he managed to say as he dropped both necklaces into the extended palm, avoiding contact with the skin.
Kolabati either did not realize or did not care that she now possessed both necklaces. She made a slow, tottering turn and hobbled off toward the bedroom. For an instant she was caught in the light from the hall. Jack turned away at the sight of her shrunken body, her stooped shoulders and arthritic joints. Kolabati was an ancient hag. She turned the corner and Jack was alone in the room.
A great lethargy seeped over him. He went over to the chair by the front window that looked out onto the street and sat down.
It’s over. Finally over.
Kusum was gone. The rakoshi were gone. Vicky was home safe. Kolabati was turning young again in the bedroom. He found himself possessed by an insistent urge to sneak down the hall and find out what was happening to Kolabati… to watch her actually grow young. Maybe then he could believe in magic.
Magic… after all he had seen, all he had been through, he still found it difficult to believe in magic’ Magic didn’t make sense. Magic didn’t follow the rules. Magic…
What was the use? He couldn’t explain the necklaces or the rakoshi. Call them unknowns. Leave it at that.
But still—to actually watch it happening…
He went to stand up and found he couldn’t. He was too weak. He slumped back and closed his eyes. Sleepy…
A sound behind him startled him to alertness. He opened his eyes and realized that he must have dozed off. The hazy skim-milk light of predawn filled the sky. He must have been out for at least an hour. Someone was approaching from the rear. Jack tried to turn to see who it was but found he could only move his head. His shoulders were fixed to the wing back of the chair… so weak…
“Jack?” It was Kolabati’s voice—the Kolabati he knew. The young Kolabati. “Jack, are you all right?”
“Fine,” he said. Even his voice was weak.
She came around the chair and looked down at him. Her necklace was back on around her neck. She hadn’t got all the way back to the thirty-year-old he had known, but she was close. He put her age at somewhere around forty-five now.
“No, you’re not! There’s blood all over the chair and the floor!”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Here.” She produced the second necklace—Kusum’s. “Let me put this on you. “
“No!” He didn’t want anything to do with Kusum’s necklace. Or hers.
“Don’t be an idiot! It will strengthen you until you can get to a hospital. All your wounds started bleeding again as soon as you took it off.”
She reached to place it around his neck but he twisted his head to block her.
“Don’t want it!”
“You’re going to die without it, Jack!”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll heal up—with out magic. So please go. Just go.”
Her eyes looked sad. “You mean that?”
He nodded.
“We could each have our own necklace. We could have long lives, the two of us. We wouldn’t be immortal, but we could live on and on. No sickness, little pain—”
You’re a cold one, Kolabati.
Not a thought for her brother—Is he dead? How did he die? Jack could not help but remember how she had told him to get hold of Kusum’s necklace and bring it back, saying that without it he would lose control of the rakoshi. That had been the truth in a way—Kusum would no longer have control of the rakoshi because he would die without the necklace. When he contrasted that against Kusum’s frantic efforts to find her necklace after she had been mugged, Kolabati came up short. She did not know a debt when she incurred one. She spoke of honor but she had none. Mad as he had been, Kusum was ten times the human being she was.
But he couldn’t explain all this to her now. He didn’t have the strength. And she probably wouldn’t understand anyway.
“Please go.”
She snatched the necklace away and held it up. “Very well! I thought you were a man worthy of this, a man willing to stretch his life to the limit and live it to the fullest, but I see I was wrong! So sit there in your pool of blood and fade away if that’s what you wish! I have no use for your kind! I never have! I wash my hands of you!”
She tucked the extra necklace into a fold in her sari and strode by him. He heard the apartment door slam and knew he was alone.
Hell hath no fury…
Jack tried to straighten himself in the chair. The attempt flashed pain through every inch of his body; the minor effort left his heart pounding and his breath rasping.
Am I dying?
That thought would have brought on a panic response at any other time, but at the moment his brain seemed as unresponsive as his body. Why hadn’t he accepted Kolabati’s help, even for a short while? Why had he refused? Some sort of grand gesture? What was he trying to prove, sitting here and oozing blood, ruining the carpet as well as the chair? He wasn’t thinking clearly.
It was cold in here—a clammy cold that sank to the bones. He ignored it and thought about the night. He had done good work tonight… probably saved the entire subcontinent of India from a nightmare. Not that he cared much about India. Gia and Vicky were the ones that mattered. He had—
The phone rang.
There was no possibility of his answering it.
Who was it—Gia? Maybe. Maybe she was wondering where he was. He hoped so. Maybe she’d come looking for him. Maybe she’d even get here in time. Again, he hoped so. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to spend a lot of time with Gia and Vicky. And he wanted to remember tonight. He had made a difference tonight. He had been the deciding factor. He could be proud of that. Even Dad would be proud… if only he could tell him.
He closed his eyes—it was getting to be too much of an effort to keep them open—and waited.
PRAISE FOR THE ADVERSARY CYCLE
“[Not] a horror novel in the usual sense, and variations on this idea have been used before, but rarely with the skill and entertainment value of this fine novel.”
—San Francisco Chronicle on The Touch
“This accomplished thriller, the first in a projected trilogy, is a page-turner—fast-paced, violent, provocative.”
—Publishers Weekly on Reborn
“Very unsettling…scary…one of Wilson’s best.”
—San Francisco Chronicle on Reprisal
“First-class horror novel…Wilson’s most gripping yet, with his strongest characterizations.”
—Kirkus Reviews on Reprisal
“[A] strong sequel to Reborn and Repris
al…Wilson has written a terrifying horror that is also a solid old-fashioned morality tale.”
—Publishers Weekly on Nightworld
“Part horror, part adventure, Nightworld is a thrilling and worthy successor to Wilson’s earlier works…. Horror and fantasy fans will enjoy this one.”
—Library Journal on Nightworld
ALSO BY F. PAUL WILSON
Repairman Jack Novels
The Tomb
Legacies
Conspiracies
All the Rage
Hosts
The Haunted Air
Gateways
Crisscross
Infernal
Harbingers
Bloodline
By the Sword
Jack: Secret Histories
The Adversary Cycle
The Keep
The Tomb
The Touch
Reborn
Reprisal
Nightworld
Other Novels
Healer
Wheels Within Wheels
An Enemy of the State
Black Wind
Dydeetown World
The Tery
Sibs
The Select
Implant
Deep as the Marrow
Mirage (with Matthew J. Costello)
Nightkill (with Steven Spruill)
Masque (with Matthew J. Costello)
The Christmas Thingy
Sims
The Fifth Harmonic
Midnight Mass
Short Fiction
Soft & Others
The Barrens & Others
Aftershock & Others
Editor
Freak Show
Diagnosis: Terminal
THE TOUCH
F. Paul Wilson
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
New York
For Peter and Lu
Acknowledgments
The following individuals, all with doctorates in various fields, helped with the writing of this book in ways great and small in matters related and unrelated to their fields of expertise.