Why was he up and about? Less exposure?
Whatever. They'd stashed Dawn in the basement before, so that was probably where they had her now. Trouble was, how was he going to get her out? If she was in any shape similar to those two in the foyer, he was going to have to carry her, and he could barely stand.
As he approached the basement door it opened. He stopped, pulled his Glock, and waited.
For a few heartbeats, nothing happened. And then a shaggy, bandaged head appeared near the bottom of the opening, gradually followed by the rest of a Kicker crawling out on his hands and knees.
Jack put a foot on his back and pushed him down.
"Hey!" His voice was barely audible.
"Where's the girl?"
"Gotta get help for Hank." His face was against the floor. "He's in a bad way."
Jack pressed harder. "The girl—she in there?"
"No. Scary guy took her." It seemed to take all his energy to talk.
"Who?"
"Guy with scary eyes."
Jack had a feeling he knew who he meant.
"And you just let him take her?"
"Paralyzed us."
No doubt about it now.
Rasalom.
Shit. What did he want with her?
No use in hanging around. He pushed his way back up the steps. The guys in the foyer were starting to twitch. Jack reeled past them and out into the night where he found Veilleur's car idling at the curb.
Jack dropped into the passenger seat.
"The girl?" Veilleur said.
"Gone. Your old friend took her."
When Veilleur said nothing Jack glanced at him and saw a worried look on his face.
"What?"
The old man shook his head. "I don't like this."
"Yeah, well, you can see him being drawn to a super oDNA being, I guess, being filled with a sort of Otherness and all, but what can he do with it?"
Veilleur's expression turned grim. "I don't know, but I can guarantee without hesitation that, whatever his plan, it is grim tidings for the rest of us."
18
"You're sure you're all right?" Veilleur said as he pulled to a stop on Sutton Square.
Beyond the East River, dawn was pinking the sky over Queens. The yellow front of Gia's townhouse beckoned.
Jack nodded. "Yeah." Then shook his head. "No. But I will be after I get inside."
Strengthwise he was maybe eighty percent, but emotionally he remained spent. The Kuroikaze had sucked something out of him and he knew of only one place where it could be replenished.
But that wasn't why he'd told Veilleur to drop him here. He wanted to make sure they were okay.
Veilleur sighed. "Count your blessings. It's wonderful to have people you love to turn to."
"You mentioned a wife…"
He nodded sadly. "Perhaps I should have said, People you love who recognize you when you step into the room."
So that was it. Poor guy.
"I guess tonight got to you after all then."
Veilleur looked at him. "Got to me?"
"You know—all the blood, death, and dismemberment. It looked like it was just rolling off your back."
"Why shouldn't it? This was nothing, Jack. Compared to what I've seen, this was a pinprick on a whale's hide. You have no idea, you cannot conceive of the atrocities Ra—the Adversary has perpetrated down the millennia. Too often I've had to wade through the aftermath, looking for him. Multiply what you saw tonight millions of times and you'll have the barest inkling of what we can expect if the Otherness is allowed in."
Dismayed, Jack shook his head. "You're a buzzkill even when there's no buzz."
Jack offered his hand and they shook.
"Thanks for the lift."
He got out with the katana and watched Glaeken drive off. Then he let himself into the townhouse as quietly as he could. As he closed the door and put the katana in the umbrella stand he heard someone crying upstairs.
"Vicky?"
He dashed up to the second floor where he found a terrified-looking Gia cringing on the bed with Vicky. She was wearing an oversized Iowa State T-shirt and little else; Vicky wore shorty pajamas.
"Jesus, Jack! You should have let me know it was you."
"Sorry. I thought everybody'd be asleep, and then I heard Vicky crying."
"She woke up screaming from a nightmare half an hour ago and she's just now calming down."
Jack knelt beside her. "What was it about, Vicks?"
"I don't know!" A sniff and a sob. "I was just sc-sc-scared!"
"The weird thing is," Gia said, "when her screams woke me up, I was in the middle of some horrible nightmare myself."
Half an hour ago… The Kuroikaze had been going strong then. Could it be…?
Yeah. Most likely.
He put an arm around Vicky's shoulders. "It's okay, Vicks. I'm here. I won't let anything scare you. Got that?"
She nodded and sniffed; her sobs seemed to have passed.
"Jack?"
"Yeah, Vicks?"
"You sorta kinda like smell bad."
He had to laugh. "Yeah, I probably do. One hot shower coming up."
19
"You do smell better," Gia murmured as Jack spooned against her in the bed.
"Rough night."
"Do I want to know?"
"No way."
"Then don't tell me."
He snuggled closer, pressing the fronts of his thighs against the backs of hers.
"Let's just sleep, Jack. I'm really tired."
She was tired? All he wanted was to be close enough to feel clean again. Or at least cleaner. With what he knew floated in his DNA, he'd never feel completely clean.
She hadn't a clue as to what had happened downtown a little while ago. That would change in the morning.
"I'm more tired than you. I could sleep for a week."
"Oh, yeah? I could sleep for a month."
"Really? I could sleep for a year"—he tried to think of the loudest thrash-metal band he knew—"at a Polio concert."
She laughed. "Okay. You win. You're more tired." She pushed her butt back against him. "See you in the morning."
"Love ya."
"Love ya too."
20
"Like a zombie, you look," Abe said as Jack approached the rear counter.
Which meant he looked lots better than he felt.
Jack leaned the katana, wrapped now in one of Gia's paint-stained drop cloths, against the base of the counter and slumped onto a stool.
"Coffeeeeeee… coffeeeeeeee."
God, he needed sleep. Usually he could go days on a few hours, but he couldn't seem to shake the effects of the Kuroikaze. And every time he'd dozed off, images from the abattoir the Kakureta Kao temple had become would flash through his head, waking him.
As Abe turned to fill a cup from his bottomless coffee pot, Jack glanced at the screaming headlines on the front pages of the morning papers. The Daily News:
SLAUGHTER ON STATEN ISLAND!
And the Post:
KILLINGS IN THE KILLS!
Abe handed Jack a steaming cup. He took it and sipped. He'd already had four cups but they hadn't helped.
"You've read?" Abe said, pointing to the Post.
Jack shook his head.
He held it up. "You want?"
Another shake.
He snorted. "You want I should read it to you?"
"No, thanks."
Abe's eyebrows rose, ridging his forehead and part of the infinity pool of his bare scalp.
"I don't get it. You love stories like this. All the details, you want. You…" His voice trailed off as he looked down at the headline, then back at Jack. "They say almost fifty bodies were found by press time and probably more to come. That dwarfs even the number found in the Red Hook warehouse." His expression slackened. "Oy! You again?"
Jack shrugged. "Mostly as a nonparticipant."
Unlike Red Hook.
"Mostly?"
Jac
k shrugged. "Would've been completely non if someone had given me a choice at the end."
Abe looked worried. "What set you off? Please tell me Gia and Vicky are—"
Jack raised a hand to stop him. He didn't want to go there—didn't want even to consider the slightest possibility of anything happening to Gia and Vicky again.
"They're fine. I told you: nonparticipant. I was simply the party planner. Not my fault if the crowd got rowdy."
Abe turned his hands palm up and waggled his pudgy, stubby fingers. "Give-give."
Jack didn't feel like talking about it, so he pointed to the giant soft pretzel on the counter. From the amount of crumbs—Abe's parakeet Parabellum was swiftly diminishing their number—he figured Abe had started out with more than one.
"Pretzels for breakfast?"
"Breakfast was hours ago. This is lunch."
"Oh. Right."
He tore off a loop and bit into it. The salt tasted good. He was hungrier than he'd thought.
"Last night?"
"Okay, okay."
Jack gave him a moderately detailed account of what went down up to the point where he regained the katana.
"All this for a rotten old sword?" Abe said.
"And a pregnant teenager. Everybody wants her baby. Damned if I know why."
"Where is she now?"
"That's another story."
"There's more?" He rubbed his hands together. "Goody."
So Jack gave him a rundown of the Kuroikaze and Rasalom ending up with Dawn.
"A busy night you had." Abe opened the Post and began flipping pages. "So that's what happened downtown."
Jack broke off another piece of pretzel.
"What does it say?"
"First page it would have made if not for your party. They're blaming some 'yet-to-be-identified toxin' that made people weak and sick. Might be related to a strange cloud a few folks saw, might not."
"Any deaths?"
"A couple. They don't know how many yet. They were still canvassing at press time. They say the dead folks were old, so it could have been natural."
"Or accelerated by the Kuroikaze."
"After what you say it was like, I shouldn't be surprised." He looked up. "What now?"
Jack lifted the katana and hefted it.
"In a little less than an hour I'm meeting with the guy who hired me to find it. I'm going to hand it to him and say, 'Sayonara.' If I knew how to say 'good riddance' in Japanese, I'd say that instead. This thing has been nothing but trouble."
21
"There's a guy here says you want to meet with him."
Rage bloomed in Hank as he looked up to see Darryl standing at the door to his room.
"I want to meet him? Didn't I tell you I didn't want to see anyone? Any- one?"
"Yeah, I know, but it's that weird Lodge guy and he won't take no for an answer. Says he can help us out of this mess."
"Which one?" Hank could think of so many.
Darryl pointed to the window. "That one."
Hank didn't need the window to know what was out there, but he forced himself to his feet and made his way over to peek around the edge of the shade.
Below, the near and far sidewalks were packed with reporters. They'd have been blocking the street if not for the cops there.
He staggered back to the bed and sat, cradling his head in his hands. He just wanted to be alone, but he couldn't stiff the Septimus Order's point man—its "actuator." Couldn't risk getting kicked out of this place.
"Send him up."
"He's got someone with him."
"Send them both up, but it turns out the other guy's a reporter, your ass is grass."
As Darryl left, Hank closed his eyes and swallowed against a rising gorge. He felt like a warmed-over cow pie. Wanted to puke so bad, but had nothing left in his gut. What had happened last night? That wind, those feelings of hopelessness and helplessness… they went entirely against the take-control message of the Kicker Evolution.
The only good thing was it was gone and it hadn't sucked all the life out of him. Just some.
His thoughts drifted further back, to that insane building on Staten Island and all the men he'd led into it—well, not in to, but to—who wouldn't be coming back. They'd given as good as they'd got until those hit men showed up.
Thirty men gone… and what had he to show for it? Not a goddamn thing. The hit men probably had the sword, and the guy with the infinity eyes had Dawn.
Thirty dead Kickers, and the cops and the press wanted to know how and why. Hank hadn't the faintest idea what to tell them.
A vaguely accented voice from the doorway: "Mister Thompson?"
Hank looked up and saw a hawk-faced Ernst Drexler. The white of his suit in the morning light hurt his eyes. Hadn't Darryl said he had someone with him? Hank didn't see anyone else.
"Come in, Mister Drexler. What can I do for you?"
Drexler glided to the window and tapped it with the silver head of his black cane.
"It's more a matter of what I can do for you."
"In particular?"
"We have people."
When Drexler didn't go on, Hank said, "So do I."
"Not the kind of people we have. Allow me to introduce Mr. Terrence McCabe."
Hank turned as a true-blue, briefcase-toting suit came through the doorway. A gray business suit, black shoes, white shirt, and striped tie. The guy inside it all was short, with shiny black hair, a round face, and a rounder body. He reminded Hank of an actor he liked… from a movie about a giant alligator. Oliver somebody.
He strode forward, hand extended. The guy seemed to fill the room.
"An honor to meet you, sir," he said in a booming voice
Remaining seated on the bed, Hank raised his hand and shook. McCabe's grip was like a vise.
"Don't call me 'sir.' It's Hank."
"Very well. Calling a man I admire by his first name… that won't be easy."
"Work on it. Just not so loud. Lower the volume." McCabe's voice was worsening the pounding ache in his head. "So who are you?"
"I have a law degree and I'm a member of the bar, but my work—my forte, you might say—is public relations. A famous director gets caught DUI, a big-name actor gets caught with an underage fan, a country singer gets caught with his best friend's wife—or worse yet, his best friend—who do they call?" He jabbed a thumb against his chest. "Yours truly. Because my subspecialty in PR is damage control."
Damage control… Hank had known he'd needed it but hadn't wanted to think about it now, hadn't wanted to think about anything. But somebody had to, and he'd been it.
Until now.
"And you want me to hire you?"
He grinned. "No need. The rest of the world pays an arm, a leg, and rights to all earnings of their firstborn. For you, it's all taken care of."
"Yeah? Who by?"
McCabe glanced at Drexler.
Drexler said, "We have a wealthy sponsor who's willing to do that."
"Who?"
"He wishes to remain anonymous for now."
Hank looked at McCabe. "And how are you going to control all this damage?"
"Spin, Hank. I'm going to spin it in another direction."
Spin… yeah, what had happened since midnight was going to need major, major spin. But…
"I'm not a spin guy. It is what it is—that pretty well sums up my approach."
"And it's an admirable approach, Hank, but the Kicker Evolution has grown too big for that, and it's growing bigger by the day. 'It is what it is' isn't going to work in this case because everyone can see what it is, and what they see isn't good. I'm going to get them looking the other way."
"I was thinking of playing dumb," Hank said. "I mean, I can truthfully say that I don't keep track of every Kicker's every move. They're all free men and women who act on their own, and what led them to become involved in this terrible tragedy is anyone's guess. I'll say I'm just praying the perpetrators will be brought to justice."
&nbs
p; "Lack of firsthand knowledge will definitely be part of the game plan, but we need more. We need to play the blame game as well. We must paint your fallen followers as victims. Any idea as to whom we may point to?"
"Well, the Dormentalists and Scientologists have it in for me." In fact, the three groups were waging an Internet war, crashing each other's sites and all. "They're losing members left and right to the Kicker Evolution and—"
McCabe jabbed a finger in his direction. "Perfect! Perfect!"
He started wandering around the room, waving his arms in the air as he riffed about older, more established, more organized belief systems—little more than corporatized cults, really—becoming increasingly jealous and finally desperate as their numbers dwindled…
As Hank listened he remembered how he'd been feeling the need for a right-hand man, a smart, loyal second in command. Darryl fit the loyal part and, despite appearances, was no dummy, but he'd never cut it. He needed someone who was into spin and details. Hank hated details. He was a big-picture guy.
And in walks Terrence McCabe, a detail man and spinmeister if he ever saw one. He had a feeling Terry was going to work out just fine. Not just in spin, but in cleaning up the Kicker image, and maybe getting things in order, getting operations organized. Right now everything was helter-skelter.
Yeah. Terrence McCabe was just what the Kicker Evolution needed.
He glanced at Drexler and found the man's piercing blue gaze fixed on him.
"Excuse me, Terry," Hank said, holding up a hand. "But I'd like to ask Drexler here what's his angle in all this?"
Drexler smiled—sort of. "As I've mentioned in the past, the Order's Council of Seven senses a certain commonality of interests. We wish to explore that further. But to do so we first must remove your organization from the limelight. Once that is done, we shall initiate certain ventures that will be to our mutual benefit."
"Like what?"
"We shall discuss them soon. I assure you they will be in line with the tenets of the Kicker movement. And they will happen. I shall see to it."
He seemed pretty confident. But then his card said he was an "actuator." Wasn't that what an actuator did—made things happen?
By the Sword rj-12 Page 33
