“Couldn't
see
there, in the Hidden—like something was covering it up. Some parts especially. So something is hiding that guy from us. Maybe because we're not on the same side as he is.” “You chose a...a side?”
“Sort of. And sort of not. Neutrality is good. But you don't want to play ball with anything flat- iaa out evil, either. And some things are flat-out evil.”
They fell silent as he turned left toward a subway entrance, and she went calmly along, matching his pace, as if they were old friends.
He said, “Well, here's someone I know.” He stopped at a little kiosk next to a newspaper stand. In the kiosk a small, dark, middle-aged woman sold ice cream. She wore a sparkly blue sari and had a little red dot on her forehead and melancholy black eyes. But her eyes lit up when Bleak approached her.
“Mr. Gabriel!” Her accent was southern India. “How good to see you, I don't see you at Grand Central!”
“Of course you don't,” he said, smiling. “You moved out of Grand Central.” She shook her head sadly. “Rent was too high for me, there, even so little a shop, that one. But more customers there.”
“I just happen to be passing through and here you are. Have to have my rocky road. You still got some?”
“Sure I got some rocky road! One for the lady?”
Bleak turned to Loraine “You like rocky road? Maybe chocolate-chip mint?” “How'd you know I liked chocolate-chip mint?” “Just a guess. A scoop of each, Sarojin.”
Sarojin made up two ice cream cones. Bleak paid, dropped $2 into the tip box, and chatted with the woman for several minutes as Loraine ate her ice cream and nervously watched the sky.
Some abduction,
she thought ruefully.
After a moment she found herself enjoying the ice cream, enjoying Bleak's company the way someone would enjoy the sound of the sea though only half aware of hearing it.
Finishing the ice cream, they walked on toward the subway entrance. They ate companionably, and another thought came to her. “Was that woman—one of yours? ShadowComm?”
He seemed surprised by the question. “No. Just someone I used to buy ice cream from at Grand Central. Kind of a friend of mine.” He stopped halfway down the grime-blackened steps. She paused— just like a regular companion who wondered why the other had stopped—and he dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a folded napkin. “You're getting clown makeup from ice cream. There.”
They looked at one another for a moment. Then he shrugged and continued down the steps. She went with him.
Loraine felt a powerful impulse to trust Bleak. But that feeling might have a supernatural cause. He might be using his abilities to influence her in some subtle way. The CCA didn't know the full extent of his power.
But she didn't really believe he was “influencing” her—not that way. Somehow...she simply trusted him. She felt as if she'd known him for years.
Maybe,
she thought, as they walked up to the machine selling subway cards,
it's the other kind of magic.
Loraine shook her head.
I'm being stupid. Like an adolescent girl.
It occurred to her that after being with Bleak for only a few minutes she'd already found herself breaking CCA regulations: she'd told him about Gulcher. She hadn't told him everything. But still— she'd blurted classified data to Bleak. And she'd broken situation protocol by not using the beeper; not calling for assistance. Why?
Then she realized that CCA might be coming anyway. Dr. Helman had hinted she was under surveillance. She glanced around—and saw a nondescript van parked nearby, its windows dark. For all she knew they might be sitting in there, watching, right now. A helicopter was flying over—it seemed on its way somewhere. But who knew for sure? It could be them.
Were there listening devices in her apartment? They could have heard some of the conversation she'd had with Bleak.
General Forsythe liked to project cheery comradeship. But she didn't trust him—and she knew Forsythe didn't trust her. That beeper in her purse itself might be something more. It had been issued to her in-house. They could be using it to listen to her right now.
Loraine made up her mind. She took the beeper out of her purse and dropped it into a trash can.
After they'd walked on a few more steps, she said, “Bleak—we'd better get into the subway—and get out of the area fast.” She was a little amazed at herself for saying it. “I mean...
really fast.
Otherwise...this trip could end up taking you someplace you weren't expecting to go.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
That same night. Upstate New York. Special Facility 23.
“It's almost a sad thing, really,” General Forsythe was saying, as he and Gulcher walked ahead of the six black berets, the armed guards escorting them into the big, square, concrete courtyard. Their footsteps echoed in the hard-edged, empty space. He didn't immediately explain what was “sad, really.”
It was a warm summer evening, gnats and mosquitoes buzzing in the open air above their heads, but there was something chilly about this half acre of courtyard. The high, floodlit concrete walls seemed to suck up the warmth. The glare from the blue-white lights blotted out the stars. The night sky was like a black ceiling.
The courtyard was part of a sprawling, gray, obscurely institutional facility that, to Gulcher, had a “black budget” feel to it. Black budget, because driving up here he'd seen no signs, nothing but a number, and a gate, and razor-wire fence. And armed guards. “Sad how the yubes need human beings to do their work in this plane of being,” Forsythe continued. He sounded to Gulcher like he was acting all the time. Reading lines from a script. “But they can't do that much without people, not in this world. Because this is the world principally designed for embodied humans. Sad they're stuck with human beings to work with.”
“Is that right?” Gulcher never wasted any time thinking about what was sad, and what wasn't. What was boring, what was frustrating—
those
were his concerns. He had been both bored and frustrated since surrendering to Forsythe. They'd gone to a federal prison overnight, with the whisperer refusing to respond to him the whole time and Gulcher thinking he was in for hard federal time—but this afternoon he'd been escorted in chains to a military-green bus, most of its windows tinted too dark to see through, with these same unspeaking armed guards, and bused fifty miles north to meet Forsythe here. Just him and the silent marine driver and the six guards on that bus.
Gulcher was having a hard time feeling relieved not to be in prison. He understood prison. But this—it was too much like the stories you heard about extraordinary rendition, or people taken to secret CIA prisons.
Now they stopped in the center of the courtyard, and Gulcher glanced around, thought the courtyard looked disturbingly like some place they stood people against a wall to shoot them.
They sure hadn't hesitated about shooting Jock.
Bang,
down he went. Going to miss that noisy son of a bitch.
My
turn now?
Were they going to shoot him here? Enough guys with guns were standing right behind him. He tried to ask the whisperer about it—and got a reply, finally, but nothing helpful.
“Hold on, just wait, Greatness is here and Greatness is on its way”
was all it would say. “Ya see,” Forsythe went on, “your average yube has to work through humans, most o' the time.”
Something about General Forsythe was bothering Gulcher, something that came out of the mysterious place the whisperer came out of. But Gulcher couldn't put his finger on it. And what was this talk of...
“Yubes? What's a yube?” Gulcher asked. “That like a noob?”
“No, no. Sorry about the jargon—slang really. Messin' with the acronym.
U-B-Es—
Unconventionally Bodied Entities.”
“Oh, okay. Spirits. Elementals. Subtle bodies and stuff. Sure. I read about it in one of Aleister Crowley's books, first stretch I did in state.”
“Did you read about it in Crowley! Well, I'll be damned. We had Crowley's spirit in a session with Soon Mei, there.” Forsythe nodded toward a nervous, little Asian woman, missing some of her hair, being escorted into the courtyard through a metal door opposite. Her escorts were two guards, a short, heavyset white guard and a tall black one, both with the same corps patches, the same black berets, same nonexpressions. “But Crowley just wanted to whine about things. Didn't care for his situation, inside some big, hungry critter in what they call the Wilderness. Some call it hell, I guess. Old Crowley! He was no use at all. Soon Mei there, though, she's useful. One of the only real mediums we can find. And that peanut-headed fella there, Krasnoff—coming behind her—he's useful as all hell. He's got second sight he can share with you like you were in a movie theater.” Forsythe said
theater
like
thee-ate-er.
“It's somethin' to see. And here's our adorable little Billy Blunt.”
Billy Blunt, the only one with his hands cuffed, looked to Gulcher like a middle-school kid. A sour-faced, plump little kid of maybe thirteen, with a bowl haircut, gray sweatpants, flip-flops, and a too-small T-shirt emblazoned with BRAINSUCKER in Gothic letters. Brainsucker was a video game, Gulcher remembered, he'd seen an ad for it on TV.
The kid glared at Gulcher and mimed snapping with his teeth, as if he'd like to take a bite out of Gulcher's face. Then he winked and stuck out his tongue.
“Billy there, we've had him almost two years now, bought him from his parents out in Arkansas. They were glad to be shed of him, I can tell you. They tried behavioral therapy, everything, to no avail. Billy liked to set small animals on fire with kerosene, watch 'em run smokin' around the neighborhood. Got the family into some lawsuits. He can do something like you do—he can take control of people, sometimes. Not quite the same way. They tend to die, soon after. Something about blood clots in their brain. He doesn't control spirits to do the possessin'—he kinda steps out of his body and does the possessin' himself. Killed two of our guards. We're hoping he'll be useful... eventually.”
Right behind Billy was a man who made Gulcher think of one of those old game-show hosts from the 1960s you saw late at night on the Game Channel. He wore funny little glasses and had a contemptuous little smile on his face like he thought everybody else was an idiot. Clearly he was staff around here. He was pushing something that looked like a portable heater, or maybe an air purifier, on a dolly. A long, orange extension cord trailed from the thrumming device, back through the door, and a tiny green light was glowing on it. The dolly, with a waist-high steel handle, made regular squeaking sounds with its wheels, the squeaks reverberating like dolphin noises in the courtyard spaces.
“And that's Dr. Helman with the suppressor. He keeps that little machine pretty close to Billy. The boy might be our most dangerous resident.”
“I think that's unlikely, don't you?” said someone, behind them. A soft, teasing voice that sounded like it was coming through clenched teeth.
Gulcher turned around, thinking one of the guards had spoken out of turn.
But it was somebody new. He was a lean, medium-size young man, with shoulder-length sandy hair, bright blue eyes—and a funny mouth. Kind of a squiggle, that mouth. Like it was struggling to keep its shape. He wore army-style cammies, boots, a khaki shirt, a short military jacket—same jacket the men with black berets had, but without any insignia except that same patch, on the left shoulder, that showed the knight shielding the world. The guy tilted his head a little bit forward, just a little, but you felt like he was going to butt you with it.
“So who the fuck are
youT
Gulcher didn't like people sneaking up on him.
“Aren't you the rude one,” the stranger said, with that squiggly smile, lazily scratching his head— and not sounding offended. “My name's Sean, is all you have to know.” He didn't open his mouth much when he spoke. Almost kept his lips shut. “You'd be our new protege—Mr. Troy Gulcher.”
“I'm nobody's
protege,”
Gulcher said.
“He means you're our new student, really,” Forsythe said.
“You don't have to say what I mean,” Sean said, in the same soft voice. He smiled at Forsythe, then turned to look at Dr. Helman. His look became sleepy, as if he were about to nod off, as he gazed at Helman.
The doctor seemed to trip, would have fallen except he had a grip on the dolly handle. Helman shot a glare at Sean, as he got his feet under him again. Sean chuckled.
Gulcher watched him—and Sean, aware of the scrutiny, gave his twisty little grin and started to stroll around Gulcher, circling him just out of reach. Walking all the way around so that Gulcher had to turn around to keep an eye on him.
Forsythe looked at Sean with hooded eyes and spoke with an edge in his voice that Gulcher hadn't heard before. “Sean—we need to keep ourselves contained, and directed. We do not wish to waste energy. This man is valuable to me. To all of us.” Forsythe had sounded friendlier when he'd warned that the sharpshooters might take Gulcher out.
There was that feeling, again, Gulcher got, looking at Forsythe. Like someone was hiding behind Forsythe, peeking over his shoulder; like something on the Nature Channel—the way a wolf would peer over the stump of a tree. Only there was nothing you could see. Not quite.
“Sure, he's valuable,” Sean said, still circling, still looking Gulcher over. “He's another valuable machine, like the rest of us.” Said with a hoarse whimsicality through clenched teeth.
Sean ended his circling by standing beside Forsythe, looking toward Billy Blunt. “We're like those cell phone towers that pick up signals and send them on. That's all we are.”
“The hell you say,” Gulcher snorted.
“Funny you should use that expression,” Sean said lightly.
“In certain respects, Sean is right, with his phone-tower analogy,” Forsythe said, watching as soldiers set up folding chairs for the three freakish “containees.”
Gulcher had heard the word
containees
in an earlier conversation with Forsythe. And he didn't like the sound of it.