Bleak was already stretching his senses out, looking for Loraine.
There—he sensed her down the hall, past the soldiers. “General—will you trust me a little more?”
Swanson nodded, as he lowered Erlich to the floor. “You men let him go...help me with this man. Did you call for that medic?”
The guards reluctantly stepped out of the way to let Bleak hurry past them.
He hurried off to find Loraine Sarikosca, thinking,
Now I've killed someone else. Zweig. Right then, he needed killing. But it really should bother me more than it does.
A voice spoke, then—in his mind, but not from his mind:
“Gabriel Bleak. There's hope for you. “
“Is that you, Michael?” Bleak asked, muttering the question aloud.
But the voice said nothing more, and Bleak was running, had to slide panting to a stop when he got to Room 32.
***
SWANSON WAS AFRAID THEY were losing Erlich. He could still feel his hands on Erlich's neck. His heart still thumped from the inward panic he'd felt, when he'd choked Erlich, aware of what he was doing and unable to stop.
The calls had been made, and in less than two minutes a medic rushed up, a woman in an army nurse's uniform pushing a gurney from the facility infirmary.
General Swanson and the soldiers lifted the wheezing Erlich on the gurney.
Then Swanson gave a set of terse orders to the three black berets. “You three bust into that room. You'll find a dead man—and you'll find General Forsythe...and you take General Forsythe prisoner. And that boy with him. You will ignore every single word Forsythe says to you
and that is an order!
You'll bring him to me in restraints, right outside the infirmary. He's under arrest. I believe the boy in there is out of commission now, but you'd better give him a sharp knock on the head before he can do anything to you.”
“That Billy Blunt kid? Yes, sir, it'll be a pleasure.”
“Zweig is in there, dead, by the way. Send a detail to clean that up.” Swanson walked off with the medic, helping push the gurney. “Hold on, there, Larry, we'll get you to oxygen.. just lay still.”
It took the three sentries a full minute to get the door to the conference room open. A final kick sent it swinging smartly inward, and they stepped nervously into the dark room. One of them switched on a flashlight...to find Billy Blunt curled up on his side, next to the corpse of Drake Zweig. The boy was staring into Zweig's dead eyes. Billy was breathing...but seemed, otherwise, as lifeless as Zweig. No need to hit him.
“You okay, kid?” the sergeant asked.
Billy only said one thing, and it's all he would say, for a long time after. “The light. The light looked right at me.”
“Jesus!” the youngest of the three sentries blurted, gawking at Zweig's body. “That's ol' Zweig with his head shot half off!”
“Yes, it's what remains of him,” said someone sitting rigidly in a chair, in a dark corner of the room. He stood up, stretched, and stepped into the light. General Forsythe.
“The boy's useless, now, I'm afraid,” Forsythe said, looking regretfully at Billy. “Damaged. Probably for good. Saw too much of himself, in that light.” Forsythe looked back at the sentries. “You boys took your time getting in here.”
“Sir,” said the sergeant, swallowing, “you're under arrest. By order of General Swanson. Please come with us.” He couldn't quite bring himself to point his weapon at Forsythe.
“All right, son—we'll get this straightened out.” Forsythe smiled genially. “I won't hold anything against you. You're under orders.”
Forsythe strode across the room as if he were still in charge, walked out the door. The sergeant stepped out behind him—and encountered the heel of the general's hand, flat on the black beret's forehead.
The sentry went rigid—the general jerked the submachine gun from his hand, reversed it, and shot him through the sternum, point-blank.
He squeezed off two more bursts, killing the other sentries before they could get their weapons in play.
Then General Forsythe walked away, humming tunelessly to himself.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
Bleak had to burst the lock on the door of Room 32.
He walked in, finding the air stale, and the room looking almost barren, with no furniture, no windows; yet complex with the geometry of magical symbols on every wall. And two people waiting in it. Loraine was sitting in a corner next to a dozing middle-aged man in glasses, suit and tie. The tie was painted with flowers.
She sat up, beaming when Bleak came in—then remembered to seem less glad to see him. “You finally made it,” she said, standing.
“What made you so sure I was coming?”
“I...” She raised her eyebrows. She blinked. “Urn—I'm not sure. But I knew.”
“Who's he?”
She looked at the man slumped in the corner. “Dr. Helman. Head honcho here—under Forsythe. Seems to be in some kind of trance.” She turned to Bleak. “Gabriel—we need to get away from here fast. I thought I heard shooting, but—”
“You're right about Helman, but wrong about leaving,” Sean said, coming into the room and closing the door behind him.
Bleak spun toward his brother, Sean, thinking he should simply tackle him and try to knock him cold, before he could do any magic. Or he could set the floor on fire around him, with a couple of energy bullets, to hold him off—and maybe get Loraine out of here. Or...
Or nothing. He couldn't do anything. Not yet. Bleak just stared at him.
This is my brother. Sean Bleak. In person.
Not an astral projection. This was his brother in the flesh, after being gone all those years.
Embraces were out of the question. Everything about Sean, that sickly grimace of a smile, the hunched shoulders, the burning eyes...
Everything said that Sean would not permit himself to be touched by his brother. He stood, motionless, near the closed door, emanating raw hatred.
I should make a move,
Bleak thought. But he felt paralyzed. Straitjacketed by emotion.
That's my brother.
Slowly, Sean turned his head to take in Helman. “I planted a little something in his pocket, earlier. Used it to send him a trancing spell. Helman did surprisingly well at resisting. Babbling on and on for quite a while. I always despised him. But he's a rag doll now. Never was anything but a silly little pawn.” Sean ducked his head to look balefully at Bleak. “It's no accident you're here, Gabriel— you know that, don't you? You were supposed to be here a little earlier...you got rerouted. Apparently we should have swept for ghosts when we got rid of that Scribbler of yours. But you're here now....
And you will help me. You
will
work with me. Our two opposing forces will open the doorway and Moloch will be here—and the Great Wrath will do as I command.”
“That's not what Helman thought,” Loraine put in. “He says your Outsider will do as it pleases, once it's fully here. It's just using you.”
Sean chuckled. An unpleasant sound. “You'll see. The plan is great, and grand. Forsythe appreciates me. He's been there for me—not like our old man, Gabe. He's made me part of the big design.”
“I can't help you, Sean,” Bleak said, his voice hoarse. “Not that way. I can help you by taking you away from here. We can get you therapy. You've been traumatized by what happened to you.”
“ Everyone's
been traumatized!” Sean snapped, taking a furious step toward them, arms rigid at his sides. “Everyone! They look around at the world and they go, 'Oh my God, it's full of cruelty and parasites and disappointment and abandonment and sickness...and then you die!'
Everyone
breaks, inside, when they realize that!”
“You know there's more to it than that,” Bleak said.
He had to
do
something to stop this. But that was little Sean—grown big...
“What 'more to it'—our glorious life after death?” Sean jeered. “But first—you have to die! You choke to death from lack of oxygen...your heart stops! Cancer, emphysema, a stab with a knife! Dying hurts...and it seems to take an eternity, Gabe. And then!
Then
you get that glorious afterlife...to be a confused ghost, walking in circles! Or if you leave this world, most of you fades away, and what's left reincarnates! Back to the same dreary old grind! Life after death isn't much consolation, Gabriel. Best you can hope for is to be the slave of some angel somewhere!” Sean snorted with contempt.
Bleak shook his head. “There are other ways to see life. And death. You've been surrounded by some pretty twisted people, Sean. You don't get the chance to meet the other kind. Not everyone is damaged—not everyone has given up. A friend of mine survived the Nazi death camps—survived it in every way, Sean. It's possible to heal.”
Sean snorted. “I don't want to heal! I like what I am! Now you think about this. Not only are you not in this room by
accident...
but neither is
she.”
He pointed his left hand at Loraine. “Something's right there, in the room beside you, girl—invisible. Waiting for me to give it more life.”
And from the tips of his fingers issued a stream of blue energy, infused with crackles of red. Bleak started to summon up energies to block it—but it had already infused the shape of the invisible being that had been waiting in the room all this time. The outline of something big, and sinuous—a
familiar,
one of Sean's “especialities.” Its glossy brown-black insect head was the first part to visually materialize, spitting and hissing close to Loraine, making her gasp and flatten back against the wall.
In a heartbeat, four more yards of the familiar filled in, from the head down along its twisting, its interior parts first, then its armor-plated body—thick as a giant anaconda—with thousands of little sticklike, clawed arms threateningly waving. The familiar was a giant centipede—its faceted eyes, big as silver dollars, glittering with malevolent intelligence.
The supple creature was already whipping twice around Loraine, squeezing her like a python. The sharp hooks of its glossy brown-black mandibles snapped at her neck, its clawed legs clutched at her clothing, yanked at her hair. Its coiled body compressed her right arm crushingly to her ribs; her left arm was free, and she tried to tug the jointed coils from her, looking desperately at Bleak, eyes wide.
Bleak started instinctively toward her—and the giant, demonic centipede admonished him by tightening its grip on her, making her squeal with pain. It snapped at her hair—snipping away a piece of it, chewing it meditatively in its mandibles.
Bleak got the message. He stepped back. “I...Loraine...just...”
Sean chuckled. “Just
what? Oh,
don't look so anxious, Gabey! If you don't try that again, it won't hurt her! If you don't try to jump me and you do what I tell you—why, you'll get your Gothy little hottie back alive and only a little bruised! Just do the working, complete the summoning with me”— Sean's voice dropped a guttural octave as he finished the sentence—
“and she will not have her eyes chewed out.
“ Sean glanced musingly at Loraine, squirming in the familiar's tightening grasp. “It'll go
for the eyes first...then the brain. But—not as long as you behave yourself, Gabriel. Look—it's holding off!”
The centipede familiar snapped its mandibles near her eyes, making her draw her head back an inch, all the room she had. She bit her lip to keep from screaming. The creature had a strong grip on her—but didn't increase it. And it turned to look at Bleak, spitting and clicking, as if to await his decision.
Bleak felt waves of sick loathing and fury—loathing for what Sean had become, fury at himself for walking into this, for not getting Loraine out of here sooner.
He should never have taken that cup from Shoella. He should have been looking for this woman. For U.S. Central Containment Authority agent...Loraine Sarikosca.
His senses keening now, he could sense her connection to him—feel in the deep core of his being that she was The Other. He'd been trusted with the jewel of all rarities. The possibility of perfect love. And he'd let this happen to her.
“The familiar responds to my thoughts, Gabriel,” Sean said, taking up a place in the center of one of two interlocked silver pentagrams etched on the floor. “So if you try to interfere with it—or me— I'll make it kill her—bang!” Sean snapped his fingers. “Just like that! In a split second! You really have no choice in this. This is your
soul mate,
Bro! Something ordained by the universe itself. And it says you are driven to take care of her, no matter what.
You can't let her die.
Emotionally”—he spread his hands and tilted his head, his squiggling smile almost comic—”you're incapable of it! We're counting on that. So—shall we start?”
“Gabriel...” Loraine's voice was almost inaudible. “I have to die sometime. It's something I can bear. Don't.”
“What exactly do you want me to
do,
Sean?” Bleak asked. Desperately thinking that he could do the ritual—and somehow reverse it later. Send the thing they were to summon back.
But deep down, he doubted it. He'd need Sean's help, to send the thing back—and Sean would never give it.
Sean made a sniggering sound of triumph.
“Excellencio!
Now, Gabriel...move to the center of that pentagram opposite me.”
Bleak moved to the point opposite—and heard a slithery thump. He looked at Loraine, saw she'd shifted, pitching on her right side, taking the twisting coils of the serpentine insect with her, so that it snapped at her in anger, cutting her cheek slightly with its mandible. She was lying close by the still-tranced Dr. Helman.
“Don't make it angry,” Sean warned her. “I control the familiar—but it has a certain amount of autonomy. It might just choose to take a bite out of you.”
The centipede's mandibles snapped at her face; she squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head. “Gabriel...”
“Hang on,” he told her, inwardly calling for guidance. But he was a forest fire of emotion, inside —the roaring of the flames made any contact with the Spirit of Light impossible.