Mia?
Mia came to him, her arms enfolding him as she buried her head in the nape of his neck. Justin felt transfused by the warmth of her, felt her heart beating steady against the wild cacophony of his own; as they breathed together, their two hearts came into sync, beating in tandem.
It’s you, he murmured. It’s really you…
Is it? she whispered back, and gently disengaged.
And it was then that Justin could see her clearly. She was the same age as he remembered her but had been subtly transformed, as if her suffering had deepened and ennobled her. Her eyes flashed silvery tears, like war paint dredged up from the core of her being to lace the minute striations of her face.
I can’t believe you’re here, she said. I missed you so much.
I missed you too, he told her. He leaned back, feeling suddenly light-headed. Mia opened his shirt, then leaned forward and placed her lips upon his chest, right over his wildly beating heart. As she did he felt a rush of warmth and strength infuse him. The wooziness passed; Justin sat up.
Mia unfastened the cloak, letting it fall away. She stood backlit and radiant, her naked skin glistening in the strange light of the room, shadows and fire glow dancing off the subtle curve of her hips, the gracious plane of her belly, the small, soft swell of her breasts. It was as though she had been refined and purified by this hellish place, becoming the primal embodiment of a feminine warrior principle, at once fertile and fierce. Justin wanted her more than he wanted one more breath; decades of savaged desire coursed through him like liquid fire, awakening every nerve ending with ravenous need. She slid into the small bed beside him. Her nipples were dark and ripe; Justin reached up with his one good hand to touch her.
And then stopped.
What is it? she said. What’s wrong?
Justin looked at his calloused hand, the corded veins and sinew of his forearm. He could feel the fissures that time and pain had etched upon him. Twenty years ago his world had crashed and burned and the best of him had perished in the flames; now she was here, phoenixlike, a goddess suddenly risen. They were together again. And he had never been more afraid.
This is wrong, Justin said. You haven’t changed, and I’m… he paused, embarrassed and ashamed. Mia took his face tenderly in her hands and kissed him deeply. Then she whispered in his ear.
Yes, I have, she said. She looked at him, green eyes lit with an inner fire. And no, you’re not…
All this time, she told him, the thought of you was what kept me going. When I close my eyes, it's still you that I see.
Josh told me he would find you, she added. I knew you would come.
I didn't come here to fight Josh's war, Justin confessed. I said I'd help him, and I will. But I came here for you.
Mia smiled her crooked smile again and climbed astride him.
Yeah? she said. Prove it.
They made love then with the abandon of the damned. In the distance the hellhounds bayed; their passion was a blood scent on the wind. Love was an aberrant blasphemy in this place, and it wreaked havoc on the bestial instinct of the hounds.
When the baying drew nearer, Justin and Mia huddled, holding themselves in check until the beasts passed.
This isn’t Josh’s war, Mia whispered. In a world of hate, love is the only weapon we have.
After a while, the howling died out. Leaving them to each other. And the next stage of the plan.
30
Friday, August 29th. Custis Manor. 7:47 p.m.
To put it bluntly, Clayton Pierce was bored out of his tits. He stood his post by the heavily padlocked outer gate, sucking Marlboro reds and taking in the empty swath of the parking lot, the flat black ribbon of road that extended, dark and unlit, in both directions as far as he could see. The woods on the other side of the road rustled thick with crickets, frogs, and fireflies. The sun was down now but it was still bitch-kicking hot. His cheap suit chafed and made him sweat. The bulge of the Colt Python snugged into his armpit pinched, shoulder holster binding. Mosquitoes tried to fly up his nose with annoying regularity; he blew plumes of smoke out his nostrils to ward them off. It made the filter bitter and soggy. He wanted a beer. He wanted something to eat.
But mainly, he wanted to kick some ass.
Clayton glanced over at Ellis DePugh, who seemed significantly less unthrilled. Ellis was amusing himself by hocking loogies into the night air. Like Clayton, Ellis was in his twenties, though Clayton guessed he had a good five years on the boy, judging from Ellis’s sunburnt baby face and relative maturity level; Ellis had been plucked by Jimmy Joe Baker from a do-nothing Klavern in Red Lion, PA, just over the Maryland line, much as Clayton had been handpicked from his own local streetside chapter of the Aryan Brotherhood. The AB’s motto, which was the jail tat stenciled across his solar plexus, by the way, was “Kill to get in. Die to get out.” Clayton had gotten in seven years ago, but at the moment he was considering renewing his vow on Ellis DePugh.
Ellis hocked another one and let fly, a thick, ropy stringer that arced and twirled on its way down to smack the pavement. Ellis seemed inordinately pleased, but Clayton had more than once considered the pink-faced Yankee boy’s brain a single-celled organism, smooth and unblemished by serious thought.
“Knock it off,” Clayton growled. Ellis looked at him and grinned, showing poor dental hygiene. Brotherhood be damned, one of these days Clayton was apt to pop him good. It vexed him greatly that they were considered on the same tier, organizationally speaking, which was to say that they were the shit-shoveling grunts manning the Custis trenches, risking life, limb, and liberty on behalf of their presumably shared cause, only to be left out of the loop when the real fun started. Which at the moment was set to happen down the road and around the bend at the big house. Jimmy Joe had promised advancement pursuant to effort, but hell, what was enough?
It was unclear. While others were having at it in a full-on firefight at that church, wasting jigs, Jews and race-traitors with righteous fury, Clayton had been assigned to idiot Ellis, who at best was a hopeless retard whose sole redeeming quality was loyalty born of witlessness, and then sent to do some grade-B scut work, namely snatching some little black bitch from a trailer park on Route 17, all the way across the friggin’ river in Portsmouth. Taking the kid was no big deal, logistically speaking: she was maybe six and none too bright, so all he had to do was roll up, make like a nice man asking for directions, and then spike her with a few cc’s of Seconal choline and Pavulon. Down she went, paralyzed and mute, but still aware. Jimmy Joe had been explicit: it was important she remain aware. But he never said why.
Even with Ellis driving, they were gone in less than sixty seconds, down the road and heading home, and they delivered their bundle in a little over an hour simply because the eastbound Bridge-Tunnel traffic had been a bitch.
Clayton felt no remorse for the girl. He had been raised in the sweltering flatlands of St. Augustine and steeped in the fiery oratory of Christian Identity, the old-school edge of Charles Conley “Connie” Lynch — and the Klan there was noteworthy for its tough-minded unwillingness to suffer the weak of spirit. When Clayton was eight, his daddy had played him scratchy tapes of a rally back in ’63, after some notable church bombings in Birmingham had claimed some collateral casualties in the form of four little girls. Lynch had exhorted the crowd with unflinching logic, demanding to know why people should be forced to feel sorry for them: “They weren’t children,” Lynch had insisted, “Children are little people, little human beings, and that means white people… There’s little dogs and cats and apes and baboons and skunks and there’s also little niggers. But they ain’t children. They’re just little niggers…”
Pretty much said it all: one more coon on a milk carton, as far as Clayton was concerned, and to hell with her. But Clayton had been born to fight white and do right, in the spirit of his elders and betters — men like Gerald L.K. Smith, founder of the Christian Nationalist Crusade and later Christian Identity, and he wanted to make his mark. C
layton had grown up knowing that the ten lost tribes of Israel were actually the predecessors of Nordic, British, and American Whites; as an American, he was part of the Manasseh, the mystical thirteenth tribe, excised from common knowledge by nefarious Jews, who weren’t true Israelites at all — as indeed, the so-called state of Israel itself was a hoax — but rather the outcast seed of a historically separate kingdom (and fathered by guess who? Clayton seldom failed to remind himself). He knew in his blood and bones that the nonwhite races were pre-Adamic mutations, fashioned by God to live outside the Garden before the Fall (and engineered again by guess Jew/who?), and when God gave Adam and Eve the boot Eve was implanted with two seeds — one of Adam’s, and one of the wily Serpent’s. From Adam’s seed sprang the strong and noble Abel and the whole white race; from the Other came the wicked and conniving Cain and his hooknosed, kosher kin. God then, in His infinite wisdom, decreed eternal racial conflict, leaving it to the sons of Abel to fight and earn their way back to Paradise.
With that much behind him, and dreams of Valhalla ahead, Clayton was impatient with politics and pecking orders, and itching to prove himself. So he was sorely pissed that his contributions seemed ill-noted of late, and while perhaps not as glamorous as going in guns blazing at the Church of the Open Door, they were no less risky, especially in an era of Amber alerts and ZOG-inspired public surveillance and all. But he did his duty like a good white warrior.
And his big reward? Guard duty. With Ellis DePugh. It truly sucked.
So when Clayton spied the figure shambling through the shadows down the road, precisely the right chemical combination of boredom, hate, heat, resentment, adrenaline, and ambition crystallized into focus. Something sparked deep in his brainpan: the kind of stray, fleeting impulse that, if seized upon by appropriate force of will, might be transformed into something more than a devil’s workshop in hot and idle hands… and which might be even be seen by those whose opinion mattered as something inspired.
“Ellis,” he muttered. “Check it out.”
Ellis paused in his nasal revelries long enough to follow Clayton’s gaze. The man was stumbling and mumbling down the edge of the road. As he came within range of the gate lights, they saw more clearly: he was a black man, in dark, baggy cargo pants and a hooded sweatshirt. He looked wasted, drunk or high or both. A bum.
“What the fuck?” Ellis snickered.
“’Boo’s too fuckin’ dumb to live,” Clayton said. But what he was thinking of was the length of heavy chain stowed in the trunk of his car, a mint green El Dorado parked just inside the gate, and of other dark country roads, in other states and times. He was thinking Jaspar time.
Just then a minivan appeared in the distance, headlights glaring, moving toward them at near-highway speed. As it approached, the bum weaved perilously, almost tumbling into a narrow grassy ditch by the side of the road, then weaving back into the oncoming lane. Clayton and Ellis grinned, anticipating high-impact splat.
But at the last instant, the driver swerved, leaning on the horn as the minivan passed within inches of the teetering drunk. Clayton got a glimpse of a panicked soccer mom-type at the wheel, her mouth a perfect “O” of shock as the minivan sped by then laid on the brakes, screeching past the gate to stop some two hundred yards to the other side.
The minivan sat in the middle of the road, engine running. Clayton looked at Ellis. “Goddam it, go see if they’re alright,” he told him. “I’ll deal with him.”
Ellis nodded like a bobble-head doll and took off, unslinging his gun as he headed for the minivan. Clayton turned his attention to the backwoods homeboy who now stood like a scraggle-assed scarecrow squarely in front of the fresh-painted sign that announced Welcome to Custis Manor, and apparently oblivious to how he had just cheated a richly deserved death. It pissed Clayton off. He moved away from his post and closed the distance, walking, not running, toward the bum.
“Hey!” he called out. “Hey, boy!”
But as if to add insult to narrowly averted injury, the bum ignored — or was too fucked up to hear — him, and instead turned toward the sign, legs spread, head tilted back. And before Clayton’s disbelieving eyes, the bum unzipped his fly, whipped it out, and started to pee.
“Motherfucker,” Clayton hissed, picking up his pace. He called back to Ellis, who was at the minivan now. “Get them OUTTA HERE!” Ellis nodded and knocked on the driver’s side window.
Back at the sign, the bum laughed, a golden stream arcing up to tag the neat, cursive script. It sparkled in the glare of the floodlights and made Clayton’s blood boil. He felt the heavy Colt slap against his ribcage as he moved closer, thought about unleashing it. But no, this buck he wanted to take apart the old-fashioned way.
“Hey BOY!” he spat, almost upon the bum now, a stream of invective coursing through his mind. “Boy, you fuckin’ deaf?”
Clayton glanced back. Ellis was gone. The minivan’s reverse lights winked on, gears whining as it backed up.
Clayton turned back to the bum, who had whirled to face him. A primordial part of Clayton’s intellect kicked in, screaming Not drunk! Not a bum!
Not good.
Clayton had time to reach for his gun and pull it free. Then something small and sharp flashed in the black man’s hand as it arced up, caught Clayton in mid-solar plexus and punched through. The impact stopped Clayton dead in his tracks; his knees buckled like a cheap card table and he went down, the blade staying in to saw a red divot across his AB motto, bisecting it neatly between the “In” and the “Die” before it popped out with a wet, puckering sound.
Clayton collapsed to his knees. The mysterious black man stood over him, his eyes sharp-focused and clear, and pulled back the hood of his sweatshirt. “Name’s Henri, douche bag,” he said.
Clayton tried to speak, but all that came out was froth and bile. Henri gave him a little nudge with one knee, and Clayton Pierce fell over to suck wind and die, a few steps short of Valhalla.
Henri wasted no time, searching the carcass for keys and then dragging it into the weeds. As he emerged, the minivan pulled up. Caroline was at the wheel, Josh riding shotgun, the others waiting in the back with the no-less surprised and rapidly cooling remains of Ellis DePugh. Josh looked at Henri nervously.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Henri held up the keys, jingling.
And they were in.
31
Custis Manor. Underworld.
Silas Custis emerged from the manor house cloaked in swirling milky mist. He was concentrated evil, compressed into form, and everything about him conjured impressions of death and decay: a sinister figure descending the manor steps and heading for the wharf. His charnel kingdom sprawled before him, hellhounds baying in the distance, punctuated by the piteous shrieks of slaves dying in abject terror again and again.
Justin watched from his hiding place on the banks of the murky water as Silas boarded a small skiff on the distant side and pushed off, heading into the heart of the swamp. Justin’s strength was returning, his missing hand now bandaged at the wrist, less as a therapeutic measure than simply to blunt the bloody distraction of it. With Mia’s assistance — and the macabre feedings she had expertly administered — Justin had practiced moving, first around the shack, then eventually venturing out into the strange nocturnal landscape, acclimating himself to the odd physics of the place. The air itself was thin and strangely scented, and seemed to move and crawl within his lungs; the ground too seemed alive, like some great beast lost in a deep and impermeable slumber. The sky overhead churned and roiled continuously, a dense gunmetal gray. Everything was tinged with an eerie electric glow. It reminded Justin of bad trips gone by; worse yet, it reminded him of their last night in the manor.
Justin looked at his watch, saw the hands spinning and twirling madly, counting nothing. He took it off and tossed it into the black water, where slithering things chased it to an unseen bottom. Time meant nothing here.
But elsewhere, oh yes… Back in the world, their f
riends awaited and plotted their turn. They were coming soon, but when and how he would know, Justin could not say.
Fortunately, Lucas did, or said he did, and they were not in much of a position to argue. Justin did not like it; he felt uncharacteristically helpless, a babe abandoned on the doorstep of an obscure and unforgiving Hell. But as his strength grew, he felt more of a sense of, if not impatience, then certainly urgency. And after Lucas showed him the ways of Underworld, much as he had originally initiated Mia, Justin knew: this place must end. And somehow, they must help.
Justin watched Silas depart, hating him. Suddenly Lucas sounded behind them. Do not stare too long, he admonished. It is not safe.
Justin nodded, hunkering down. But he couldn’t stop watching the hideous figure. Sure enough, Silas turned just as his boat was swallowed by the trees, his gaze seeming to seek them out in their hiding place. Justin shrank back involuntarily.
Come, Lucas said. We must go.
Justin nodded.
No shit, he thought.
32
Friday, August 29th. Custis Manor. 7:56 p.m.
The plan, such as it was, was as simple as it was unforgiving: Get in. Free the spirits. Destroy the manor. And get out. Taken as a whole it was also either breathtakingly bold or stark raving stupid. It was a tossup as to how any of the former Underground members would have cast that vote, had they been given one, which they weren’t.
The first part was comparatively easy, if “easy” included rapid lethal force. After breaching the gate, Henri and Russell commandeered Clayton’s El Dorado and drove down the winding road to the manor. The rest of the team hung back in the minivan with the headlights off, watching.
The Custis vehicles were parked in front of the manor and guarded by two drivers, who stood idly smoking and chatting. They looked up, perplexed, as Clayton’s car glided up; as the drivers approached, the passenger-side window rolled down, revealing Russell. On his face was a toothy grin; in his hands was a Heckler & Koch MP5SD, a short, lightweight assault weapon with a telescoping buttstock and extra-capacity clip. An integrated aluminum silencer/flash suppressor wrapped around its stumpy muzzle and protruded from the window like a fat black cigar.
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