by Ty Drago
She sat back down. “There. Much better. Now, we have a few things to discuss. But before we do, there’s something I need you to grasp. No, more than grasp, I need you to accept it as absolute, unshakeable truth. Clear?”
“Clear,” he said.
She nodded. “The truth is this: I am not alone, Frank. Quite the contrary. There are many thousands of us now. Even I couldn’t tell you exactly how many … more are coming in every day. Thousands, Frank. And every last one of them reports to me. At my command, they’ve taken positions throughout this city. They’re policemen. They drive buses. They run shoe stores. They panhandle in the streets. Many work in this very building. You know quite a few of them, in fact.”
The mayor shuddered. “I do? I’ve never—”
“Seen one?” she finished for him. “We disguise ourselves. We don’t usually show Earth people what we really look like … what we really are.”
“Then why are you showing me?” he wailed, sounding like an angry toddler.
“Because the rules have changed. Until recently, we were about secrecy, about hiding in the shadows. My people are conquerors, but we prefer subtle, quiet conquest. Unfortunately, that’s no longer possible. So I’ve decided it’s time for conquest of a more direct and decisive nature. You’re my first step toward making that happen.”
The mayor looked smaller, as if the fear had shrunken him inside his expensive suit. Lilith loved the look on his face. Terror was so delicious. “I don’t understand,” he whimpered.
“Then I’ll be more specific. To launch this new, more direct phase in the conquest of your world, my first task is to make absolutely sure of your compliance. Well, either that, or kill you—”
“No …” he begged.
She held up one of Sarah’s fingers. “Interrupt me again, Frank … and I’ll tear out your throat, much the way I did to Sarah. You can see my neck, can’t you?” She tilted back her head to show him the damage. His secretary had died quietly, but she’d died hard.
“I see it,” he said, sounding even smaller.
“Good. That gives me hope that my first task will be successful. Now, as for my second task, I want you to stop questioning the police exercises going on around City Hall this evening.”
The mayor looked at her with watery eyes. “But…so many! I don’t see the point—
She was out of her chair and on him in a blur, grabbing him by his thick neck and lifting him off his feet. “You don’t need to see the point!” she hissed.
Then she carried him effortlessly to the nearest window and gazed out at the clueless humanity moving about in the courtyard below. “I went out a window like this two months ago,” she said. “On that day, Lilith Cavanaugh died … but the Queen of the Malum lived on. However, if I throw you out, I don’t think you’ll be coming back. Would you agree with that, Frank?”
“Please …” he gasped, his face reddening.
“Of course, this is only two floors. I fell from six. To even things out, I’ll have to throw you out and down, head first. Any witness might think you were trying to fly! Rather like that ridiculous comic book fellow in the red and blue pajamas. What’s his name? Superman?”
He didn’t reply. He just struggled uselessly.
“Yes, Superman,” she said. “Are you Superman, Frank?”
“No …”
“So, you’re just a normal human?”
“Y—yes …”
“Breakable? Fragile?”
“Yes … please …”
She threw him across the room, casually, using little more than a flick of her wrist.
The mayor hit the wall beside his office door and crumpled to the carpet. Lilith studied him for a long moment. Then she returned to her chair and sat down, her back to him. “Come and sit, Frank. Now.”
He came. He had to crawl to do it, but he came. A stronger man might have run for it. A stronger man would have failed, of course, but he might have tried. The fact that the mayor didn’t, proved to the Queen that she could use him, at least for a while.
He reached the chair and climbed feebly into it.
“Good, Frank,” she told him. “Now, where were we? Oh yes. You’re not going to question tonight’s police exercises anymore, are you?”
“No.”
“Instead, here’s what you are going to do. You’re going to call the governor and bring him to Philadelphia. You will tell him there’s an emergency, one that you are unable to handle on your own, and one that requires state-level attention. I don’t care what you say, but you will bring him here, to this office. Do you understand, Frank?”
“Yes?”
“Any questions or concerns?” She glared at him.
“No.”
“Good. Make the phone call. Do exactly what I’ve told you and you’ll survive the night. Betray me in even the slightest way, and I’ll peel the skin from your bones. Clear?”
“Clear.”
“Good. Do it now.”
As he staggered to his desk to obey, Lilith stepped into the outer office and raised her own cell phone to her dead lips. Her new assistant picked up—Randell or Robert or something. “Yes, Ms. Cavanaugh?” he asked.
“Remind me of your name again?”
“Richard, ma’am.”
Richard. Yes.
“Richard, the mayor is making the call. We’ll have the governor here tonight. I want you to bring the Pelligog to me now. Do it personally. I’ll remain on site to assure the mayor’s continued cooperation.”
“Yes, Ms. Cavanaugh. You asked to be reminded about your upcoming address to the attack force.”
“I can do that from here.”
“As you say, Ms. Cavanaugh. But may I ask a question?”
The Queen paused. “Be careful,” she told him.
He said, “Why not use the Pelligog on the mayor just now?”
It was, she thought, a fair question. She could indeed have gone into the mayor’s office, overpowered him, and then planted one of the mind-bending creatures at the base of his spine.
“Because, Richard, terrorizing him was much more fun.”
She broke the connection.
Richard had some sense.
He might actually last a week or two.
Chapter 32
COMMUNION
Tom
Tom moved through Haven.
It was seven o’clock. Two hours before the earliest estimate for the Corpses’ attack. Two hours since he’d given his speech in front of almost three hundred scared, brave teenagers, plus one terrified mom and one confused six-year-old.
His army.
Karl’s army.
Except that it had all gotten so much—bigger—since Karl had died.
Now, Tom went from worksite to worksite, checking on progress, making suggestions, and, when necessary, bolstering courage. He hadn’t fudged the numbers. His best guess was fifteen hundred deaders rapping on their doors as soon as it turned dark.
A big number.
Too big.
He stopped outside the Shrine, the room reserved for, and dedicated to, the memory of Karl Ritter, founder of the Undertakers. Karl had been the first of them to die. Well, that wasn’t quite true. Seers had been lost. Plenty of them. But they hadn’t been Undertakers, at least not yet. Until Kenny Booth had murdered Will’s father, no one calling themselves by the name “Undertaker” had been killed.
Ain’t that way anymore, though.
Tom slipped through the tattered curtain. The room was dark. A candle and lighter sat on a nearby table, but he ignored them. He knew, down to the inch, where every stick of furniture stood and where every picture hung. He knew this place better than he knew his own bedroom.
After all, the only thing he ever did in his bedroom was sleep.
Here he—what? Prayed? No, that wasn’t the right word. “Communed” might be better.
He communed with Karl or, more accurately, with his memory.
“Chief,” Tom said in the darkness. Back in the day he’d called Karl by that title, so much so that it still secretly sounded a little odd when others used it on him. “We’re at the end.”
The darkness, of course, didn’t reply.
Tom said, “They know where we are. And we know how to pull their plug. So it’s come down to a race. And, like I always figured, it’s come down to Will.”
He stepped deeper into the darkness, sensing more than seeing Karl’s old cot and the even older footlocker that the former chief had picked up at an Army/Navy surplus store. On the wall were photos, exactly twenty-three of them, all taken in the early days of the war—or before. Back then it had seemed like a crazy adventure, not quite real. Of course, back then, he and Sharyn had been fourteen instead of seventeen, and there’d been a “grown-up” to take care of things.
For a time, Tom had hated Karl for dying—a grim fact that he rarely admitted to himself, and never to anyone else. Part of the grief process, he supposed. But that hadn’t made the feeling seem any less real, or any less poisonous.
It had taken him a long time to get past that.
“Your son. He’s …” Then he shrugged. “There ain’t no words. He’s the bravest man I ever knew, and that’s sayin’ somethin’. I don’t figure he’s had a selfish thought since he came to us. Everything he does, he does for someone else. Sometimes, it pisses me off, or used to, back when he first showed up. He does the kinda things you used to do, charges into trouble without thinking, without a plan. Except, somehow, he always gets out of it again. Maybe he’s saved by somebody, or maybe he’s visited by that lady in the white room, whoever she is. Or maybe he squeezes by on luck or brains. But, one way or another, he always survives.
“Which is why … maybe … we got hope tonight.
“Officially, it’s Sharyn’s show. She’s the Angel Boss. She’s in charge. But she knows as sure as I do that … once again … it’ll come down to Will. And, when it does, I figure she’s smart enough to get outta his way.”
Tom rubbed his face with hands he could barely see.
“And all the while, I’ll be here, in Haven, where I belong. Our only job is gonna be to buy time. To keep out the Corpses and stay alive long enough for Sharyn’s crew to pull the plug and send every single one of those alien wormbags to wherever I sent Gardner this afternoon.
“Thing is: it ain’t gonna be easy, and while we’re doin’ it, some kids are gonna die. Kids who shouldn’t be here. Kids who should be in school, or cuttin’ school, or doin’ chores, or ditchin’ chores, or playin’ ball, or sittin’ in front of the tube with a video game controller in their hands. Courageous kids who only wanna go home.
“Some o’ them are gonna die tonight … buyin’ time.
“So, listen … I ain’t never asked this before. But if you got any pull, any at all, with whatever Powers-That-Be … I could really use a break. It don’t gotta be a big break. I ain’t expectin’ armies of winged angels to come swoopin’ in with blazing swords. Just, you know, a small break, maybe a few minutes at the right time. That’d be enough. I could work with that.”
He fell silent then, wondering if it would be appropriate to finish up with an “amen.”
Probably not.
Someone said, “I’m sorry.”
And Tom Jefferson, Chief of the Undertakers, almost jumped out of his skin.
He spun toward the cot, where one of the shadows moved.
Then a flame lit the darkness, making him wince.
The candle began to glow—
—and Jillian looked up at him.
Tom said, “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Yeah,” she replied. “I kinda got that.”
His heart was hammering. With an effort, he steadied it. For a few moments, bitter embarrassment filled the back of his throat like bile. But then he pushed the useless feeling away. He had more important things to worry over.
“Saw you at the briefing,” Tom said. “But you split right after.”
“I didn’t belong there,” the girl told him. From the way the flickering candlelight caught her eyes, he could see she’d been crying. “I’m not an Undertaker.”
Tom didn’t reply. At that moment, he didn’t trust himself enough.
But his silence seemed to hurt her more than his words might have. “I was lying from almost the minute I came to this place.”
Again, he didn’t reply—this time because he honestly had no reply. What she’d said was true.
She added, “But I really am sorry.”
He could have told her: “So what?” Because of what she’d done, the Corpses were out there, right now, waiting for the signal to attack. Because of what she’d done, kids were going to die. Who cared if she was “sorry?” What did that help, besides her conscience?
But, instead he said, “You made a bad call. You trusted Mitchum and he trusted the wrong people.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she said, sobbing between sentences. “He was supposed to help us. Save us. We’re kids. He’s an adult. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work?”
Tom sighed. Maybe it was the way things were supposed to work. But he’d been living with the Sight and its crazy rules for so long that he couldn’t really imagine the world any other way.
She said, “Nice trick, pretending you’d lost your Eyes. It fooled me.”
“That was kinda the point.”
“How did you know that I was … um … wasn’t …” Her words trailed off.
“I didn’t,” he admitted. “Not at first. But the way y’all got outta D.C. made no sense. The Feds had you. They had you and Will and Helene and they just let you go. That don’t happen. With all that went down in the Capitol that day, you three shoulda been interrogated for weeks! The only way it worked was if somebody down there, somebody big, decided to let you go. I didn’t know who and I didn’t know why, and the notion of a spy didn’t hit me ‘til later. But when it did, I figured … of the three … it had to be you.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I’ve known Helene for years. And Will’s … Will. He’d cut off his own head before he’d turn traitor. But you were … a stranger.”
“A stranger! What about all that time growing up together in Mr. P’s dojo?”
“Another life,” Tom said. “A long time ago.”
More tears.
He almost went to her. He almost dropped the whole “strong detached leader” thing, put his arms around the girl, and finally said all those things he’d wanted to say from the minute she’d come back into his life. He almost told her how his heartbeats would kick into high gear whenever she walked into a room, so much so that he’d actually gone to Susan about it, worried that something might be physically wrong with him. But Haven’s medic had only smiled knowingly, and told him he was fine.
“Why are you here, Jillian? In this room, I mean. You never knew Karl. I get why you hid out, but why here?”
She shrugged. “It’s quiet. Almost nobody comes in here but you, not even the Ritters. Besides, it made me feel … I dunno … closer.”
“Closer to what?”
“Closer to you, I guess.”
You betrayed us, he thought. Maybe you did it innocently, but you did it.
So … given that … how can I tell you what I’m feeling?
I can’t.
“Jill …”
“I know you hate me!” she exclaimed. “And I don’t blame you. I don’t expect to be forgiven. But I want you to understand … really understand … how sorry I am. And I want you to believe that when the fighting starts, I’ll be right there, in the middle of it. I’ll die to defend Haven. I will!”
“I do believe that.” He said.
She’d done what she thought was right. It hadn’t been her decision to make, but she’d done it with what Karl used to call a “true heart.” Problem was: plenty of the world’s evils were
committed by folks with “true hearts.”
But I ain’t in the judgment business. Leastwise, not tonight.
“Then get yourself over to the southern entrance and report to Katie. That’s where your parkour will work best, I figure.”
“Does Katie know about … me?”
“No,” Tom told her. “Just Helene and me. I ain’t even told Sharyn or Will. They got enough to deal with.”
She looked relieved—very relieved. “Thanks.”
“I didn’t do it for you.”
“What about Sharyn and her team?” she asked. “How are you going to sneak them past the Corpses?”
Tom studied her, wondering if she should tell her.
Then he did. “There’s an old maintenance door, one that leads up into City Hall. It would be hard … very hard … to get a lot of people out of Haven that way. But a small group can manage it.”
“Maintenance door,” Jillian echoed.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know about that,” she said.
“Which means the Corpses don’t know about it either,” he replied. “Probably.”
She studied him for a long moment. The silence between them felt heavy—painful.
Wordlessly, Jillian stood up and left the Shrine.
Tom stayed where he was for a few minutes, now truly alone in the dark.
As he was about to leave, his satellite phone rang. Ramirez.
“What’s up, Hugo?” Tom asked.
“I want to help.”
“You can’t. You know that.”
“Mitchum’s offered to contact the state police. Maybe the governor’s office.”
“And tell ‘em … what? No one’s gonna believe him, leastwise not in time.”
“Tom … this is my fault.”
“That’s what Jillian just said. Thing is: it don’t matter. Not now. It is what it is and we gotta deal with it.”
“There has to be something I can do!”
Tom considered for a few moments. “Can you get your hands on some explosives?”
