by Ted Dekker
“That’s the idea, I know. But do you love her? Not like I love her— I don’t expect you to love her so exquisitely—but as the love of a man goes. Do you feel overpowering emotion for her?”
“Yes.” The Shataiki were here to bless his union? That might be a good sign.
“And this love you think you have for her, how can you be sure she will return it?”
“She will. Why wouldn’t she?”
“Because she’s human. Humans make their own choices about their loyalties. That’s what makes them who they are.”
“She will love me,” Woref said confidently.
“Or?”
He hadn’t really considered the matter. “I am a powerful man who will one day rule the Horde. It’s a woman’s place to serve men like me. I’m not sure you understand who you’re talking to.”
“I am talking to the man who owes me his life.”
Teeleh tossed what was left of his fruit to the ground and wrapped his wide, paper-thin wings around his torso. The Shataiki was taking credit for Woref ’s rise to power?
“Yes, she will be lured by your power and your strength, but don’t assume that she will give you her love. She’s deceived like the rest of you, but she seems to be more stubborn than most.”
They still hadn’t made any move against him. Clearly, the Shataiki, regardless of their fierce reputation, meant him no harm. Teeleh seemed more concerned with his marriage to Chelise than with destroying him.
“I’m not sure what this had to do with you,” he said, gaining more confidence.
“It has to do with me because I love her far more than you could ever imagine. I broke Tanis’s mind, and now I will have his daughter’s heart.”
Fear smothered Woref again.
“Do you hear what I’m saying? I will possess her. I will crush her and then I will consume her, and she will be mine.”
“I . . . How—”
“Through you.”
“You’re asking me to kill her? Never! I have waited years to make her mine.”
The night grew perfectly quiet. For a long time the bat’s red eyes drilled Woref. The Shataiki were growing restless, hopping from branch to branch, hissing and snickering.
“Clearly, you don’t understand what love is. I want her heart, not her life. If I wanted to kill her, I would use her father.” Teeleh rolled his head and momentarily closed his eyes. “You’re as wretched as she is. You’re all as blind as bats.” He unfolded his wings and stepped forward. “But you will win her love. I don’t care if you have to beat it out of her.”
Teeleh approached slowly, dragging his wings through dead leaves. Woref ’s limbs began to tremble. He couldn’t move.
“I don’t care if you have to club it out of her; you will earn her loyalty and her love. I will not lose her to the albinos. And then you will give her to me.”
Where he found the sudden strength to resist, Woref wasn’t sure, but a blind rage swept over him. “I could never give her to you. She would never love you!”
“When she loves you, she will love me,” Teeleh said. Louder now. “He will try to win her love, but she will come to me. Me!”
And then Teeleh leaned forward so that his snout was only inches from Woref ’s face. The bat’s jaw spread wide so that the only thing Woref could see was a long pink tongue snaking back into the black hole that was the bat’s throat. A hot, foul stench smothered him.
Teeleh withdrew, snapped his jaw closed with a loud snap.
“I have shown you my power; now I will show you my heart,” he said. “I will show you my love.”
Teeleh swept his wing around himself and grinned wickedly. With a parting razor-sharp glare, he leaped into the air, flew into the trees, and was gone. The branches shook as his minions scattered into darkness.
Woref felt hot tears running down his cheeks. He still couldn’t move, much less understand.
I will show you my heart. My love.
Then Woref was throwing up.
9
“FOLLOW ME,” Merton Gains said.
Monique followed him through a short hall to a conference room off the West Wing.
“Kara’s in with him. The president’s got his hands full with the crisis in the Middle East, and he’s got a room full of advisors, but he insisted you come in after hearing Kara. Just tread lightly. They’re pretty high-strung in there.”
The conference room that Monique walked into was large enough to seat at least twenty people around an oval table. A dozen advisors and military types were seated or standing. A few talked in hushed tones at one side. The rest were staring at three large screens, which tracked the unfolding situation in the Middle East and France.
“Sir, I have Benjamin on the line.”
“Put him through,” the president said.
The receiver buzzed and he picked it up.
“Hello, Mr. Prime Minister. I hope you have good news for me.”
Monique scanned the room for Kara. Their eyes met, and Thomas’s sister walked toward her.
“I agree, Isaac, and I don’t necessarily blame you for pushing this,” the president was saying. “But even in the remotest mountain range, you’re bound to have casualties. We don’t see how any further escalation will benefit you.”
Another pause.
“Naturally. I understand principle.” The president sighed. “It’s an impossible situation, I agree. But we still have time. Let’s not wipe out our cities before we have to.”
Kara stopped three feet from Monique, eyes wide. “You disappeared,” she said quietly.
“My car ran off the road.”
“You were hurt?”
“No. I just blacked out.”
“You did?”
Why was this so striking to Kara?
The president had finished his call.
“You were dead,” Kara said.
“You mean figuratively. My car slammed into a tree and knocked me out.”
“You remember that? Or did you just pass out before the car rolled off the road?”
Kara was right. Monique had no memory of actually flying over the edge. “I passed out first.”
“I was there, Monique. With Mikil. I dreamed as Mikil. Rachelle was killed by the Horde thirteen months ago. Because of your unique connection to her, I think you died when she died. You believed that you were Rachelle, right?”
“Rachelle’s dead?”
“Thirteen months ago.”
“But I’m alive. I’m not sure I follow.”
“I’ll explain later, but I’m pretty sure you were dead.”
“And Thomas?”
“Thomas is alive. At least, in the desert he’s alive. Rachelle found him dead in the Horde camp and healed him with Justin’s power. You know about Justin’s power, don’t you?”
“Yes. And is Thomas alive here?”
Kara looked deep into her eyes. “You’re alive, aren’t you?”
“Excuse me,” the president said. “You’re saying that Monique died last night?”
“Sir?”
He held up his hand to silence his chief of staff.
“Monique?”
“Yes, I think she’s right. I know it sounds crazy, but if Rachelle was killed in the other reality, I would have died here. We were . . . connected.”
“Connected how?”
“Belief. Knowledge.” Monique looked at Kara. A small part of her still remembered Thomas’s first lieutenant, Mikil, from the short time she’d lived as Rachelle.
“Sir, I think you should take this call,” Ron Kreet pressed.
“Who is it?” the president demanded without removing his eyes from Monique.
“He says he’s Thomas Hunter.”
The president turned around. “Thomas Hunter?”
“I knew it!” Kara whispered. “The Horde didn’t kill him!”
“He says he has information critical to the standoff with Israel.”
“Put him on speaker.”
The chi
ef of staff punched a button and set the receiver in its cradle. “Mr. Hunter, I have the president on the line. You’re on a speakerphone. Your sister and Monique de Raison are here as well.”
The line remained silent.
“Thomas?” the president said.
“Hello, Mr. President. Monique is alive, then?”
“She’s standing right here with Kara.”
“The Book works.”
“What book?” the president asked.
“I’m sorry, Mr. President. Kara can explain later. Did the others escape?”
“They’re safe,” Kara said.
“What’s this about?” President Blair asked.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Thomas said. “I know it isn’t making a lot of sense, but you have to listen carefully. The French intend to offer the antivirus to Israel in an open-sea exchange five days from now. The offer is genuine. If Israel calls their bluff and launches another strike, Fortier will retaliate by taking out Tel Aviv.”
The president slowly sat. “You’re sure about this?”
“Yes sir, I am. I can also tell you that they won’t tolerate the existence of a United States postvirus. Can you get me out of here?”
Blair glanced up at a general, who nodded.
“I’ll let General Peters give you some coordinates. Are you sure you can make it?”
“No.”
Blair paused, then said, “I’m giving the phone to Peters. Godspeed, Thomas. Get back to us.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The general picked up the phone and talked quickly, feeding Thomas with basic instructions and coordinates for a pickup point fifty miles south of Paris.
“Get the Israeli prime minister on the phone now,” the president instructed Kreet. Then to Monique and Kara: “I think I deserve an explanation.”
Kara was staring at the floor. She lifted a hand and pulled absently at her hair. “I have to get back and tell Mikil that he’s with the Horde.”
“You know how to get back?” Monique asked.
“Yes.”
Thomas hung up the phone and took two steps toward the stairs before stopping short. Voices drifted up from the basement.
They were on the stairs!
They would find the guard. Then they would check his cell and find him missing.
He sprinted for the back of the house, through an old kitchen, over a couch in the living room, up to a large window. No guard on the back lawn that he could see. He flipped the latch open.
The window slid up freely. He tumbled to the ground and had the window halfway down when the first alarm came. A loud klaxon that made him jerk.
“Man down!”
Thomas ran for the forest.
Carlos heard the alarm and froze on the bottom step. An intruder? Impossible. They’d evacuated the house only yesterday when the Americans had inserted their special forces in an attempt to locate Thomas. They’d learned of the mission in advance, naturally, and they’d stayed clear long enough for the team to satisfy itself that Monique de Raison’s information was simply wrong.
Any intrusion at this point couldn’t be part of the American effort. There had been no word. There was always the possibility that their contact had been compromised, but Monique wouldn’t have been able to tell them who the contact was, only that they had one. And that was Fortier’s mistake, not his.
His radio squawked. “Sir?”
He unclipped the radio from his waist. “Close the perimeter. Cover the exits. Shoot on sight.”
He took two steps and stopped. A thought filled his mind. The cut on his neck. The impossible wound from the reality that Thomas claimed to have come from. A bandage now covered the small cut.
Carlos dropped back to the basement and ran toward the back room where the body was kept. The body of Thomas Hunter. He crashed through the first door and inserted his key into the cellar door. He shoved it open and hit the light.
He roared in anger and threw his keys at the wall. They’d taken the body. But how could a team have penetrated his defenses, broken into this room, and taken the body in the space of ten minutes? Less!
Unless this man truly had escaped death before. Unless . . .
But he refused to consider that possibility. Some things pushed a man too far, and the thought of a dead man walking after three days under the sheet was one of them.
Carlos ran from the room, snatching up his radio while he sprinted down the hall.
“Check the windows for footprints. Search the house. Hunter’s body is missing. I want him found!”
Now he had a serious dilemma. More serious in some ways than any he’d yet faced. Thomas crouched in the forest watching the frenzied search of the house and its perimeter. They’d found the unlatched window and had concentrated their search on that side of the house. All well and good from his perspective on the opposite side of the property. He had escaped cleanly. They had no idea which direction he’d headed. All he had to do now was reach the coordinates in southern France.
But there was still the Book. There was no way he could leave France without the Book. Not because it might prove useful in his hands, but because it could be devastating in the wrong hands. Assuming the Book still worked. They hadn’t tested the Book here yet, but surely . . .
The guards had been searching the house under Carlos’s direction for half an hour. What were the chances that they wouldn’t find the Book? Very slim.
If he waited until the activity in the house settled down, attempted to recover the Book, and headed south within a few hours, he could still make the pickup.
“Anything?” one of the guards yelled.
“Nothing,” a man dressed in the uniform of a high-ranking French military officer answered. He stepped into an old Bentley and slammed the door. “Unless you consider an old empty diary with an entry or two something. It must have been lost by an old patient. Found it under the mattress.” He stuck the Book out the window. “Beautiful cover though.”
The Book? It was right there in the man’s hands. The blank Book of History.
The car roared to life. Thomas rose and almost yelled out without thought. He caught himself and dropped back down. Never mind getting caught—anything he did to draw attention to the Book would be a mistake.
The car sped off with Thomas peering hopelessly after it.
The Book was gone.
He stood still, dumbstruck. The officer had no clue what he’d stumbled upon—Thomas’s only small consolation.
Thomas spent the next ten minutes considering his predicament before finally concluding that there was no reasonable way to pursue the Book at this time. For the time being it was simply lost.
Unless Carlos . . . Carlos would know the officer.
Carlos. And who could get to Carlos?
Johan. Carlos had connected with Johan once, when Thomas had cut his neck in the amphitheater. Maybe he could get Johan to dream as Carlos . . .
Thomas turned and ran south. He had to sleep and dream. And he would, but he had only twenty-four hours to reach a helicopter that would transfer him to an aircraft carrier in the Atlantic. They were waiting for him in Washington.
10
CHELISE OF Qurong stood on the balcony of her father’s palace and stared at the procession winding its way up the muddy street. They’d captured more of the albino dissidents. Why the people found this a reason for such celebration, she couldn’t understand, but they lined the street ten deep, peering and taunting and laughing as if it were a circus rather than a prelude to an execution. She understood their natural fascination with the albinos—they looked more like animals than humans with their shiny hair and smooth skin. Like jackals that had been shaved of their fur. There was a rumor that they might not even be human any longer.
The beast Woref had caught these jackals. He was parading the fruits of his hunt for all the women to see. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He was uncouth, but not necessarily in a way that was intolerable. So she’d told herself a
hundred times since learning his eyes were for her.
She’d never marry him, of course. Father would never allow his only daughter to fall into such hands.
Then again, marriage to such a powerful man who exemplified all that was truly honorable about being human might not be such a bad thing. Every man had his tender side. Surely she could find his. Surely she could tame even this monster. The task might even be a pleasurable one.
Chelise lifted her eyes to the city. Nearly a million people now lived in this crowded forest, though “forest” no longer accurately described the great prize the Horde had overtaken thirteen months ago. At least not here by the lake. Twenty thousand square huts made of stone and mud stretched several miles back from the edge of the lake. The castle stood five stories and was required to be the highest structure in Qurong’s domain.
The morning wail still drifted from the temple, where the priests were spouting their nonsense about the Great Romance while the faithful bathed in pain.
She would never speak those thoughts aloud, of course. But she knew that Ciphus and Qurong had fashioned their religion from agreements motivated by political concerns more than by faith. They kept the name and many of the practices of the Forest Dwellers’ Great Romance, but they incorporated many Horde practices as well. There was something for everyone in this religion of theirs.
Not that it mattered. She doubted there ever had been such a being called Elyon in the first place.
The lake’s muddy waters were considered holy. The faithful were required to bathe in the lake at least once every week, a prospect that had initially terrified most of the Horde. Bathing was a painful experience traditionally associated with punishment, not cleansing.
The fact that Ciphus had drained the red water within a week of Justin’s drowning and redirected the spring waters into its basin hardly helped—pain was pain, and no Scab relished the ritual. But as Ciphus said, religion must have its share of pain to prompt faith. And bathing in these muddy waters had none of the red waters’ adverse effects. In fact, the bathing ritual was currently in vogue among the upper class. Cleanliness was to be embraced, not shunned, Ciphus said, and this was one teaching that Chelise was beginning to embrace.
