Green: The Beginning and the End (19 page)

23

“Twenty-three minutes,” Monique replied, peering through a microscope at a sample of Janae’s blood. “It’s working. Thomas’s blood is destroying the virus.”

“Already?” The pace of its effectiveness was alarming. “You’re sure?”

“Take a look.” Monique straightened and looked at the isolation room where Billy and Janae still dreamed in fits and moans. Whatever was happening in their minds, they had to stop it.

Kara bent over the eyepiece and acquired the virus, a microscopic organism she’d always thought looked like a lunar lander. “How can you . . .”

“Dear God, help us,” Monique breathed in such a dreadful tone that Kara thought one of the two might have just died.

“What?” She jerked back from the microscope. “What is it?” They were too late, she knew it! Too late for what, she didn’t know, but this whole thing had been a bad idea from the start.

Monique stared, pale faced, at the isolation chamber. Two techs stood inside with their backs to the observation windows, fixated on the two gurneys. Only they weren’t any ordinary techs in white lab coats.

One was a man dressed in a long black cloak, like a gothic priest. The other . . .

Kara’s pulse went from heavy to a dead stop. She recognized the clothing worn by the second man, and his morst-coated dreadlocks. She hadn’t seen anything similar in three decades, but this image had haunted a hundred nightmares in that time.

Horde.

The one dressed in black turned around and stared out at her.

Kara felt faint. This was her brother looking at her. He was older, not much, and his face appeared hardened by time, but there was no mistaking Thomas, not in a thousand years.

“Thomas?” Monique breathed beside her.

“It’s . . .” Kara didn’t know what it was. Thomas—yes, Thomas!— or a vision of Thomas. The man with dreadlocks turned around. Gray eyes. Most definitely Horde, covered by the scabbing disease.

“We’re dreaming,” Kara said. She glanced at two lab techs to her right and saw that if she was dreaming, so were they. One had dropped his clipboard and left it by his feet as he gawked.

When she turned back to the room, Thomas was walking toward the door. He opened it. Stepped out.

Spoke.

“Kara . . . forgive me, I know this is a shock.” He gripped four books with bleeding fingers, the top book open and smudged with fresh blood. “I . . . I made it back,” he said.

She could hardly breathe. “Thomas?” A stupid thing to say, but nothing else would come.

His green eyes darted around, as wide as she’d seen them. He was as shocked as she. His lips slowly twisted into a quirky grin. “Wow.”

The emotion of seeing Thomas, who had been lost to this world, crashed over her like a pounding wave, and she made no attempt to stop the tears that flooded her eyes. She uttered one halting sob and stumbled forward.

She rushed the last three steps and hugged him awkwardly. There was so much to say. Endless questions. But at the moment her mind was blank. She could only cry.

The Scab crept from the isolation room in a crouch. “What magic is this?” he demanded loudly. “You’ve cursed me!”

Thomas eased away from Kara and addressed him. “It will be clear. I told you to trust me; now you have no choice. We’ve arrived.”

The door swung open and two guards burst in, saw the Scab, and leveled their handguns. “Steady . . . no sudden moves.”

“Lower your weapons,” Monique said, motioning the guards to stand down.

The laboratory adviser, a biological engineer named Bruno, spoke in an urgent voice from behind them. “Miss Hunter, I urge you to step back. The chance of contamination is unknown.”

The smell, Kara thought.

“Ma’am, I urge isolation immediately.”

The sulfuric stink of the Scab’s rotting flesh had filled the room. There was no telling if or how the scabbing disease would spread in this world.

“No,” Thomas said. “If the disease spread easily, I would have brought it back with me years ago, when I shifted realities.”

But Monique shook her head. “You were only dreaming then. And this . . . You’ve brought one of the Scabs with you?” But rather than backing off, she walked up to him, eyes fixed on his. “Seal the laboratory’s perimeter, Bruno. Leave us.”

“Ma’am—”

“Now, Bruno.” Eyes still on Thomas. “Out, all of you.”

They backed off and headed to the decontamination chamber like scurrying mice. The Scab was dressed in a leather tunic, not battle dress. Cracks on his face ran with sweat that marked the morst paste with long jagged streaks. His eyes, though gray, looked bright with panic.

“End this!” he thundered.

“I don’t think you understand, Qurong,” Thomas said. “This isn’t just a vision that I or you can end. We’ve unlocked time with the books and are now in . . .” He stopped and glanced around. “Where exactly are we?”

“Raison Pharmaceutical,” Monique said. “Bangkok. Hello, Thomas.”

His eyes settled on her. “Monique.”

“In the flesh,” she said. “As, it seems, are you.”

“Why did we come to this location?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long has it been?”

“Over thirty-five years here,” she said. “And there?”

“Ten years since I last came. But why would I return
here
, to this exact spot?”

Qurong wasn’t following them in the least. “How can this be? We were just in my library. I’ve awakened in a land of albinos.”

“Listen to me, Qurong!” Thomas seemed downright perturbed by the Horde leader. “What have I been saying all along? There’s more to the world than your little city and gray water. In this world you’ll find no Horde. We’re all albinos, as you call us. Not albinos, but human, without your skin disease.”

“How is that poss—”

“You’ve had a thick skull to deny Elyon, but now you’ll face the truth. Am I delusional or is this really happening?”

Qurong stared about, but it was impossible to know what he was thinking.

Kara stepped up to Thomas and touched his cheek. “It’s really you. You’re alive.” Her mind was still spinning, trying to make sense of what was happening. Dreaming was one thing, but this . . . he’d just appeared out of thin air!

“Your blood,” Monique said.

“What about my blood?”

“Maybe you returned here, and now, because of your blood.” She glanced at the room behind them, and Thomas followed her eyes.

“You . . .” He spun back. “They have my blood in them?”

“Yes. They . . .”

But he was moving already, flying past a startled Qurong, into the room, up to Billy’s gurney. He slapped the redhead’s face with his open palm.
Crack!

“Wake up! Wake up, get out of there!”

He bounded over to Janae and slapped her cheek hard. “Up, up, up!”

“What are you doing?” Monique demanded. But they knew.

“Wake them! You can’t let anyone into my world. The books . . . it’s far too dangerous!”

“We did it once.”

“Never again.”

“They’re dying!”

“Then let them die,” Thomas snapped, spinning back. “Who are they?”

“My daughter,” Monique said. “And Billy, the one who first wrote in the Books of History.”

“What is this madness?” Qurong raged.

As if in answer, Billy’s eyes opened and he groaned. He pushed himself up and looked around groggily.

“What . . . what’s happening?”

“Billy?”

They turned to Janae, who was trying to sit up.

Monique rushed to her daughter’s side. “Lie down, both of you. You’re in no condition to get out of bed.”

Recognition slowly dawned in Janae’s expression. Like a deflating balloon, her face wrinkled with scorn and bitterness.

“No!” she cried. She yanked the IV needle from her arm, pushed her mother away, and staggered from the gurney. “You have no right! Where is it?”

“You woke us up?” Billy shouted, red-faced. “You meddling—!”

“What on earth?” Monique looked from one to the other. “We saved your lives, you ungrateful little beasts!”

“Where’s the blood?” Janae was by the counter, trembling like a drug addict, searching for the vial of Thomas’s blood. “Where is it?”

“Janae!”

She whirled to face Monique. “I was there, Mother. What have you hidden from me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Tell them who I am, Billos. Tell them!”

And he did, blinking. “She’s Jezreal, lover of Ba’al, who is also Billos of Southern. Me.”

Qurong grabbed the IV pole, jabbed the air as if it were a spear, and backed out the door. “Stay! Stay or I swear by Teeleh’s blood I will kill the first one who comes for me.”

Thomas walked toward him, unfazed. “Then kill me. And your way back home will die with me.”

The threat gave the diseased man some pause.

“Put the weapon down.”

“Tell me what’s happening to me. And by the gods, don’t tell me I’ve traveled to another world. No one’s heard of such a thing.”

“What would you like to hear? That this is a nightmare? That your greatest enemies, Eram and Ba’al, don’t really exist? That your daughter, Chelise, really isn’t your daughter?”

“Silence!”

“I’ve told you the truth and in time you will accept it. Now put the weapon down!”

But Qurong didn’t appear interested. “Enough magic. Wake me up or I swear I’ll kill you all in my dreams!”

“Who is this brute?” Janae demanded. “The old fool Qurong himself. You see, Mother”—she pointed at Qurong—“this is who I am. I belong in his world. Give me the blood, send me back, and kill my body here.”

“Stop this!” Monique’s face had gone white. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Janae; you can’t just die in one world and live in another!”

“We don’t need to die,” Billy said. They turned to him and saw that his eyes were glued to the books in Thomas’s hand. “Give us the books.”

But Thomas was more interested in Qurong at the moment. “Step back in here. Lower the weapon. Let’s be reasonable about this.” After a moment’s hesitation he added, “Please. My lord, please.”

The Scab leader said nothing, but he seemed to be considering a different course. Kara’s mind spun with the shocking reality of a very real future to which Thomas had gone and returned.

“He has the lost books, Janae,” Billy said, slipping from the gurney. To Thomas: “If you want to be reasonable, let us use them. You’ll be rid of us forever.”

“Qurong?” Thomas was still fixated on the leader, who finally drew a deep breath and set the pole down.

“Thank you.” Free of concern about Qurong, Thomas stared the redhead down. “You have no right to enter our world. We have one Ba’al, we hardly need another.”

“And you, Thomas Hunter, have no right to deny me anything. You’re here because of me.”

“Now you’re barking mad.”

“I was the first to write in a blank Book of History when they were discovered under the monastery in Paradise, Colorado. More important, I was the one who wrote into history the fact that you traveled to the other world. You went because of me.”

Thomas looked shell-shocked.

“You could even call me Father. Now be a good son and give me the books.”

“That’s not possible. I went long before the books were found in the Paradise monastery.”

“No, Thomas,” Kara said in an apologetic tone. “I mean, yes, you did go before, but the books reside outside of time. Whatever is written in the books is fact: past, present, and future. At least as far as we’ve been able to learn.”

He seemed to soak that in.

“So then, you’re the one who started all of this. Bill. You’ve been to the Black Forest?”

Billy shrugged. “All I can tell you is that I belong there. I have a purpose there.”

“And I have a purpose here,” Thomas said. “It does not include sending even more wickedness back to my world. I’m here to find a way for a land that’s lost all hope. Unless you have a message of profound hope, I doubt you qualify.”

“You don’t know us,” Janae said. She walked toward Thomas, wearing a faint smile of seduction. “Good or evil, it doesn’t matter. We belong there, Thomas. It’s Billy’s world as much as it’s yours. And now it’s mine.”

“Get back from him,” Monique snapped.

Janae had other things in mind. “Is that what you want, Thomas? You prefer the old mother over the daughter?”

“Back!” Monique grabbed Janae’s black dress between her shoulder blades and jerked her back as if she were a feather. She shoved her onto the gurney and aimed a long finger at her nose. “Sit!”

“You tell me to trust you, Thomas,” Qurong muttered, “but I’m telling you I can’t trust my own eyes. If the magic is in the books, then we should use them.”

Thomas backed away from them all, untying the rope that tethered the books to his arm. “Kara, if you don’t mind.”

She walked up to him and accepted the books.

“Step through the door.”

The isolation room was only twenty feet square, and the doorway was open, five feet beyond Thomas. Kara retreated from the room and faced them through the doorway.

“Monique, help Kara.”

“I—”

“Now! Please.”

She glanced at her daughter, who stood by the gurney, then hurried past Thomas, who had his eyes on Billy.

The redhead pieced it together first. “So what, you’re just going to lock—”

“No!” Janae threw herself forward, possessed by a desperation that was quite literally of another world.

But Thomas moved like a cat, slammed the door shut, and shoved the outside bolt down. That he’d had the presence of mind to notice the outside lock was testament to refined instincts, but the way he’d moved . . . Kara wasn’t sure it was entirely human. Long ago he’d displayed some astonishing fighting skills that he claimed to have learned from his dreams, but this speed and strength was new, maybe because he had lived it rather than dreamed it.

Janae slammed into the glass with little effect, mouth wide in a scream Kara could not hear. See, Janae had only gone to the other world in her dreams. As for Qurong . . . now, there was a man who must have the power of a bull in both realities.

Qurong peered out, mystified. This was undoubtedly the first time he’d seen such strong, clear glass.