‘‘We didn’t,’’ she whispered.
He followed her gaze inside the room to the old woman lying on the bed.
Marta’s eyes were open, staring at nothing. Her jaw was slack. Her body stiff.
She was dead.
Lisa was lost in thought as she boarded the elevator. She punched in the number for the penthouse, knowing that she could find Daniel there.
He was always there.
Lisa and Daniel had become ‘‘roommates’’ in a spare apartment on the floor beneath Grant’s place, where she was supposed to be helping him recuperate. But upstairs was where she continuously found him.
She couldn’t really blame him for it. Grant’s home was certainly where all the action was.
Still, they had that nice, cushy apartment all to themselves . . . and Daniel was only a handful of days out from the attempt on his life. He had a lot of mending to do. She couldn’t help wishing, as long as they had to be cooped up in this place, that they might use this time to become better . . . friends.
At least, to start with.
It didn’t all have to be about Grant, did it?
Lisa put her key in the door to Grant’s apartment. She half-expected to find Daniel napping in his wheelchair. She’d put a stop to that, it was time to get started with his physical therapy . . .
Instead, she found him at Grant’s computer, leaning, squinting into the screen.
‘‘Hey!’’ she called.
Daniel jumped, and turned off the monitor, knocking the mouse off of the desk in the process.
‘‘Hi,’’ he said distractedly.
‘‘What are you doing?’’ she asked.
‘‘Just . . . keeping up with the latest science journals,’’ he said, glancing quickly back at the now-dark monitor. ‘‘Seeing if there’s anything new in parapsychology. Figured it might help the cause.’’
‘‘Well,’’ she said, ‘‘there’s plenty of time for research later. Right now, it’s time to start working on retraining those muscles of yours.’’
His shoulders sank. Physical therapy was at the very bottom of his priority list. ‘‘All right.’’
Lisa had him successfully using power bands on his broken arm in under ten minutes. Considering Lisa had no training for this, other than some homework she’d done on the Internet, she felt this was a good beginning. And Grant had offered to help as well . . .
Where was Grant, anyway?
Daniel was beginning to complain that the work was hurting too much when the front door to the apartment burst open.
Grant stood in the doorway. His eyes were drooping, his hair a tangled mess, his clothes rumpled—and his hand was bleeding.
‘‘Grant!’’ Daniel shouted, losing his concentration on his work and accidentally firing the power band across the room like a slingshot.
‘‘He knew . . .’’ Grant mumbled, disjointed. ‘‘He knew who I am . . .’’ He staggered inside, ignoring the open door behind him, and threw his keys onto the kitchen counter. He seemed to be having trouble keeping his legs steady.
‘‘What’s wrong?’’ Daniel shouted. ‘‘What happened to your hand?’’
Grant looked up, noticing them for the first time.
‘‘How did . . . how did he know?’’ Grant said, barely intelligible.
He collapsed.
41
As he so often did—as he had done nearly every night since the Shift— Grant startled himself awake, screaming.
‘‘Easy!’’ cried a female voice. It was Julie. She had been sitting across the room, leaning back in a chair, her nose buried in a book, but now she was on her feet and at his side. ‘‘Take it easy, honey.’’
‘‘How long—’’
‘‘Ten hours,’’ she replied. ‘‘How do you feel?’’
‘‘Man, are you a snoozer,’’ came a voice from the door. Lisa stood there, hands on her hips.
Grant rose from the bed and walked to the bedroom’s picture window, looking out at the late afternoon sun covering the city below.
‘‘Ten hours . . . he’ll be coming soon . . .’’ he mumbled to himself.
What do I do?
Daniel wheeled himself into the room on his own, complaining about how sadistic Lisa was for refusing to help him get around for ‘‘at least two hours,’’ while Grant was sleeping.
Grant walked to Julie’s chair, grabbed the book out of it, and flipped to an empty page in the back. He found a pen on his nightstand and made a quick sketch, and then handed the book to Daniel.
‘‘You ever seen symbols like that before?’’ Grant asked.
‘‘No . . .’’ Daniel studied it carefully. ‘‘Never. They’re suggestive of the markings on your ring, though.’’
‘‘Yeah . . . they really are . . .’’ Grant said, turning to look out the window again, lost in thought.
‘‘Collin, what’s going on?’’ Julie asked. ‘‘How’d you get that gash on your hand?’’
Grant glanced down at the bandages they’d applied to the cut. ‘‘A man attacked me as I was leaving this morning. I couldn’t even touch him. He used this sword . . . And those symbols were on it.’’
‘‘A sword. Really?’’ Lisa mused.
The others turned to look at her.
‘‘If you want to kill somebody, there are easier ways,’’ she said into their stares. ‘‘If he chose a sword over a gun, he must’ve had a reason for it.’’
‘‘He’s good at it,’’ Grant summed it up. ‘‘That’s reason enough.’’
Grant looked back at Daniel. ‘‘The way this guy talked, he was . . . formal. He let me go because I was too tired to fight. It was like an ‘honor’ thing. But he’s coming back, and he expects me to be ‘prepared’ when he gets here.’’
‘‘You have to run,’’ Julie said, as if it was obvious and she couldn’t believe she was the only one saying it. ‘‘Collin, you have to get out of here, leave town, and don’t look back. I’ll come with you, we’ll go somewhere he can’t find us—’’
‘‘No,’’ Grant said, stern but resigned. ‘‘Running won’t help. This guy . . . he’s not like Konrad. He’s different.’’
Daniel nodded. ‘‘Well,’’ he said, eyes darting back and forth in thought, ‘‘I’ll help you practice your skills until he shows up. But being prepared also means knowing all you can about your opponent. And the only real clue we have to his identity is the sword.’’
‘‘That’s not the only clue we have,’’ Grant said, taking a moment to look each of them in the eye, in turn. ‘‘He was wearing a ring. He’s one of the Loci.’’
Daniel whistled. ‘‘So that means—’’
‘‘He has some sort of mental power, yeah. Thing is . . . he moved fast. Like, impossibly fast. I don’t see how something like that could be a mental power.’’
‘‘You think maybe he works for this ‘Keeper’ person Alex told you about?’’ Julie offered.
‘‘The sword is the key,’’ Daniel repeated. ‘‘We need to find out everything we can about it.’’
‘‘Research girl to the rescue,’’ Lisa chimed in, turning to leave.
‘‘Wait,’’ Grant said. He took the book from Daniel’s hands and ripped out the page he’d drawn on. ‘‘Could you get a copy of this to Morgan? She might know something about these symbols.’’
‘‘Okay.’’ She left.
Daniel held up the small device he’d used the day before to test Grant’s brainpower. ‘‘I can adapt this to alert us if anyone else with mental powers enters the building.’’
Grant nodded. ‘‘Good. That’s good.’’
‘‘You should rest,’’ Julie said, trying to maneuver him back to the bed.
‘‘No, I can’t, there’s no time—’’
‘‘There’s never time! Morgan was right! You need to slow down.
You’re running headlong from one thing to the next, when you need to stop and deal with what’s happened to you.’’
Grant f
ixed her with a stare. ‘‘Tell that to the maniac with the sword who wants to run me through.’’
Daniel watched the two of them in silence for a moment, before gesturing with his good arm toward the living room. ‘‘If everything else is settled, we’d better get started.’’
Three hours later, Grant and Daniel paused for dinner. Daniel was pleased at how quick a study Grant had proven to be. Yet he was his own worst critic as well, never feeling that his efforts were powerful enough to beat this new foe.
They started with simple things—books, matchsticks, CDs, picture frames. Before they’d stopped, Grant was stretching out his arm to ‘‘grab’’ larger, more complex objects. Tables, bookcases, even the sofa.
At the very least, Grant relished that no panicking was required in his efforts, and those mind-blistering headaches vanished as well.
Julie watched the news as the two of them practiced, and was pleased to report that most of the media had pushed him back to brief ‘‘still at large’’ mentions over halfway into the evening broadcasts. At this rate, she suggested, he’d be forgotten by the weekend.
As they sat eating, discussing Grant’s progress and theories on who the mysterious man with the sword could be, Grant’s phone rang. Morgan’s name appeared in the display.
‘‘Hello, Grant. How are you holding up?’’
‘‘Morgan, hi. Did Lisa find you okay?’’
‘‘Yes, she left here to return to your place some time ago,’’ Morgan replied. She took a deep breath. ‘‘We’ve turned up a few answers about this man with the sword, but there’s very little that’s definitive.’’
Grant put the phone on speaker, so Julie and Daniel could hear.
‘‘Tell me.’’
‘‘Well, to start with, I compared the stone tablet with these symbols you sent me—the ones you saw on the sword.’’
‘‘And?’’
‘‘The symbols from the sword are on the tablet as well. If I could translate the rest of the tablet, we may find out more about both of you, but I feel like I’m hitting a brick wall here. You’re positive this man was one of the Loci?’’
‘‘Yeah. I could feel him.’’
‘‘Hmm. The fact that these particular symbols are on the tablet means that whoever this man is . . . he has a part to play in all of this.’’
She paused, silence lingering in the air. ‘‘I heard a story once—I rather thought it was embellished—from one of the private detectives I hired to find the stone tablet fragments. He said he saw a man carrying a sword, dressed in black, who exterminated an entire police squadron in Chile. They called him ‘the Thresher.’ ’’
‘‘The Thresher . . .’’
‘‘Grant, there’s something else. Over the years, during my travels and then here at the asylum, I’ve heard whispers of a group—a society—that exists. They are rumored to know everything about our rings: where they come from, how they work, and why they exist. But we have no understanding of their agenda.’’
‘‘Why didn’t you mention this before?’’
‘‘Because I had no reason to believe it was true before,’’ replied Morgan.
It was only a second before Grant caught on. ‘‘You think Mr. Slice-and-Dice is a member of this secret society? That what—he’s acting on their orders to kill me?’’
‘‘I don’t even know if they exist. But the symbols from the tablet appearing on his sword clearly suggest that there’s a much larger plot at work. I wanted you to be aware.’’
‘‘All right,’’ he said with a sigh.
There was a knock at the door.
‘‘She’s back,’’ Daniel said, breathing a sigh of relief.
‘‘What about the name?’’ Grant asked, walking to the door. ‘‘What’s a ‘thresher’?’’
‘‘There’s a species of shark called the thresher, of the genus Alopias,’’ Morgan said in a schoolteacher tone. ‘‘They keep mostly to themselves, though they are predators. The thresher has an exceptionally long, thin tail that it uses as a weapon.
He turned the knob to let Lisa in.
Wait, Lisa wouldn’t knock, I gave her a key . . .
And suddenly he was standing toe-to-toe with the Thresher.
They both froze.
‘‘You look rested,’’ the bald man said, sizing him up. ‘‘Thank you.’’
The sword appeared in a flash. Grant took a swing at his opponent, but the man vanished. Then when he jerked his head to the left he found the man with the sword standing right beside him.
42
Daniel looked up as he heard a sharp bang from a few feet away. The front door had been blown off its hinges and the Thresher was lying out in the hall.
‘‘Better,’’ said a voice at the door. The Thresher stood there, but none of them had seen him rise from the floor.
At his side stood Grant, breathing fast with a panicked look on his face. Julie crouched behind Daniel’s chair and helped him right it.
He’s losing control again . . . Daniel thought.
The Thresher made a counterclockwise twist, sword extended. The blade made a deep gash in Grant’s left shoulder.
No, not just one gash. There were three of them, like bloody military stripes down Grant’s arm.
How is he doing this? Daniel wondered.
Grant gestured toward the coffee table with an outstretched hand and it flew up off of the floor toward his attacker, but the Thresher pivoted in place and sliced it down the middle. He ducked to avoid the two halves, and Daniel used the opportunity to move.
‘‘No!’’ Julie screamed.
‘‘RUN!’’ Daniel yelled, crashing his wheelchair into the Thresher from behind, knocking him over.
Grant hesitated only a second. Then he propelled Julie forward with his mind, grabbed her by the hand when she was close enough, and the two of them were gone, out the door and down the hall. They jumped into the elevator just as the doors were closing.
The Thresher was on his feet and spun in the air, sword in hand once again . . . when he stopped, the blade was less than an inch from Daniel’s neck.
But he held it there, examining Daniel in his wheelchair for the first time.
He brought the sword up above his head and then swung it down hard against the gasket bolt attached to the chair’s left wheel. The wheel immediately fell off of the axle and the chair collapsed.
He turned and stalked out the door after Grant, leaving Daniel helpless and immobilized, all his injuries crying again in agony.
Grant swung into the driver’s seat as Julie was already buckling herself into the passenger’s side. She flicked the switch that mechanically extended the top until it was up, covering the cab, as Grant brought the engine to life.
‘‘Um,’’ Julie said, her eyes growing as she stared straight ahead, across the parking aisle to the next row, ‘‘now would be a good time to go.’’
Grant followed her gaze just in time to see a man on a high-powered motorcycle racing down the row parallel to them at dangerous speeds. The man on the bike had a sword hanging from his hip.
Grant put the car in reverse and jammed the pedal, swinging out in a right-reverse turn. He threw the Corvette into drive while they were still moving backward, causing the tires’ rubber to spin against the pavement. They began moving forward just as the motorcycle turned down their aisle and raced toward them from behind.
The two vehicles remained only a few feet apart as they drove in circles, spiraling down through the parking garage until they came to the street level. Grant was immediately reminded of the snake strangling him in his dreams but there was no time to dwell on it. The electronic gate ahead allowed only residents to enter or exit the garage via a keycard.
Grant floored it, racing toward the gate at fifty miles an hour.
‘‘You do see that, right?’’ a nervous Julie said, leaning back in her seat.
‘‘Down!’’ Grant yelled.
She ducked and they crashed through the gate and
kept going.
Julie turned around to look. ‘‘Well, you own the building, so I guess it’s okay.’’
Grant swerved into the left-hand lane, which was unusually empty, and the man on the motorcycle broke out from behind them and came around to the right lane, appearing at the car’s passenger side.
‘‘Down!’’ Grant screamed again.
Her head ducked just as the sword came slashing across the side window, shattering it. Grant swerved right to slam into the motorcycle, which veered away. Julie sat back up to see them racing ahead of the motorcycle, which was falling behind in the midday traffic.
‘‘Who is this guy?’’ she breathed.
Grant poured on more speed as they entered a busier downtown street, darting dangerously around other cars, trucks, and buses. He glanced into the rearview mirror and saw that the motorcycle was further back now, but keeping pace.
‘‘I thought the rings only give you enhanced mental abilities,’’ Julie went on, bracing herself against the side of the car as Grant turned again, ignoring a red light. ‘‘Why would extra brainpower let him move super-fast?’’
‘‘I don’t know!’’ Grant replied, jerking the steering wheel to the right and narrowly missing the rear fender of a pickup truck that was slowing down to turn. ‘‘Maybe he can manipulate time or something.’’
Julie looked back. ‘‘His motorcycle isn’t going any faster than the regular variety.’’
Grant turned left, running a red light and flying through a narrow gap in the oncoming traffic. Julie screamed as the oncoming cars swerved and fishtailed into one another. Straight ahead was the ramp for the 110. The motorcycle quickly appeared and closed the gap between them.
‘‘He’s catching up,’’ Julie warned, watching behind again and clutching the door handle with white knuckles.
The Corvette rocketed up the on-ramp and hurtled onto the freeway, finding just enough of a gap between cars to race to an open lane. Grant swerved wildly in and out of the traffic, and immediately the man on the motorcycle shifted lanes to the left to come up beside Grant.
‘‘Hold on!’’ Grant shouted.
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