The Beholder (11 page)

He couldn’t survive more deaths. Just couldn’t. He’d hoped that with Emily close by, they might stop. But when he looked in her amber eyes they offered no hope. He felt suddenly drained.

“There will be more fusions,” she told him. “And they may show you where Pariah is.”

“So there will be more pain, new tortures.”

Emily patted his hand lightly but could say nothing to soothe him.

“But the real question is,” Jason said, wanting to move away from those thoughts, “why I see these fusions in the first place. Out of every regular Joe in the world, why me?”

“I have a few possible answers, but I’m not sure of any of them.”

“Go ahead,” he said, but Emily hesitated before she explained.

“The first version,” she said slowly, twisting her wrists as if she were plucking the right words from the air, “is that Pariah wants to intimidate you. Fear is the most dangerous emotion. It sucks positive Energy out of you and destroys you bit by bit.

“My second idea is that you see these fusions because of the difference between you and your surroundings. The fusions are Bundles of Energy that swirl around you, trying to re-establish the Librium by absorbing some of your Energy, then spreading it out smoothly.” She shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe both these are true. I believe, though, that when your Energy becomes more or less stable, the Beholder will wake up in you. That’s when you’ll see the world as it really is.”

Emily took Jason by the hand, sending a familiar warmth throughout his body. He closed his eyes, relaxing, letting his mind take a rest from all the new information. Before long, he drifted into a light slumber. A few hours later he woke to hear the airhostess announce they were about to land.

When they got off the plane, then out of the airport, he breathed in the fresh air, feeling like a completely different man from the one who had boarded the plane a few hours before.

Chapter 21

The Minsk sky was a film of dull gray, and its cool wind chilled their faces. Pools of water shone on the pavement, evidence of a recent rain. Nondescript blocks of flats, identical to each other, surrounded them, and though Emily glanced at the houses from time to time, looking as if she were unsure of where to go, she kept her thoughts to herself. Jason asked no questions.

The people they passed on the street seemed haggard and sullen. The farther they went into the city center, the surlier they seemed to become.

Jason couldn’t help himself. “What’s wrong with them?”

“Don’t pay any attention,” she said. “Slavic people never smile at each other on the street. They think it’s bad manners. The gloomier you look, the better they feel about you.”

Jason smiled reflexively, then decided to copy Emily’s expression of knitted brows and pouting lips.

“Where are we going?” he finally asked.

“First to the subway—“

“No,” Jason interrupted her. “I mean, why are we
here
?”

“Oh.” Emily sighed. “We have to visit one of the places where a mark was found.”

A gust of freezing wind tossed Jason’s hair, and goosebumps popped up all over his body, but he didn’t think they came from the temperature alone. “A mark? Does that mean a sign of where one of the Doomed was killed?”

“Not killed, but abducted,” Emily corrected, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “I don’t want to talk about it here in the open. I’m actually a bit suspicious about who created the mark. Let me ask someone the way.”

Emily approached a stranger, a skinny young man, and spoke to him.
“Izvinitse, pozhalujsta. Kak nam dobratsya do ulitsy Karla Marxa?”

The young man scratched his head, frowning, then pointed up the street.

“Spasibo,”
Emily thanked him with a smile.

After the stranger had walked on, Jason raised his hands in amazement. “What now? You know every language?”

“No,” Emily said emphatically, then gave Jason a wry smile. “Just French, English … and a little bit of the rest.”

“Hmph,” Jason said, flicking one eyebrow. Where did these powers of hers end? He shook his head, dismissing the thought. “And where are we going now?”

Emily pointed to an entrance that led to the Underground. “That way.” 

Jason didn’t like the cold outside, but the blackness of the Underground entrance made him cringe and hunch his shoulders. As they stepped inside, he accidentally bumped against Emily, jostled by nondescript, scowling people.

“Do they
ever
smile?” he whispered to Emily as they boarded the train.

“Yes, but not usually in public.”

A few minutes later, a short announcement blasted through the overhead speakers, and Emily informed him that they were getting off at the next station.

“Good,” he said, taking her hand and leading her to the door.

The train stopped, and they got out, threading their way through the labyrinth of people. “Do you think,” Jason asked, turning back towards Emily, “that we might—”

He froze, his eyes riveted to a spot just behind Emily. A swirling mass of blackness had swept in like a whirlwind from out of nowhere and now slid a little closer, prompting cold sweat to break out across Jason’s forehead. A shadow. It—No,
he
was getting closer. Jason found himself being swallowed up again, traveling to another mind, hunting—

To kill Emily.

Her body convulsed in agony, her delicate features distorted with the crushing pain, and Jason felt his mouth curve in a feral smile.

In a panic, Jason wrenched away from Emily’s hand, then stood between the shadow and Emily, blocking her from danger. Blood roared through his veins as the shadow was getting closer and closer.

That same second, a train on the other side of the tunnel clattered in. Jason’s eyes stung from the draft, and he blinked to clear them. When he opened them again, the shadow was gone.

Emily walked around and looked up at him, frowning. “What’s up?”

“The shadow.”

Emily’s frown changed to one of disbelief. She shook her head, smiling slightly. “It’s impossible. I’d have felt a Sighted long before they entered the Subway.”

“Maybe not. Because it was there, following us,” Jason persisted.

Emily’s smile vanished, and she looked around. The crowds were dwindling, and Jason felt uneasy.

She took his hand again and squeezed it. “Let’s get out of here. We have to get to that place as soon as possible, then leave.”

Her hand soothed, but didn’t relieve the nagging sensation of being followed. The suspicion and the tight space unnerved him. “Where is it?”

“It’s not far,” Emily said, tugging him to the escalator. They ascended the stairs, taking two steps at a time, and soon disappeared in the throngs of people. For a change, Jason felt safe in the crowd.

He followed Emily under the arch of an old brick building, then into the yard beyond. The façade of the house was well kept and painted a pale ochre, but the rear seemed to have been left unattended for years, even decades. Bleached and graying from the rain, the building seemed to gape at Jason and Emily with despair.

“It’s on the third floor,” Emily told him.

The ancient door crumbled at its edges, then groaned with effort when Jason wrenched at the handle. Emily paused on the threshold as if unsure whether or not she should enter.

“A fifteen-year-old boy named Alexei is missing.”

Jason’s palms were suddenly slick at Emily’s words. A fifteen-year old boy was gone because of him.

“Let’s go,” Emily said.

They climbed the disintegrating stairway carefully, led by what scant light the cobwebbed windows allowed. The gray walls were splintered in places, as if it had barely survived a bombardment, and most of the tiles were missing from under Jason’s feet, turning the floor into an unfinished puzzle.
Nice setting for a horror movie.

They reached the third floor, then faced the cracked face of an old door. Emily pressed the button by the frame, and a muffled bell rang on the other side. Jason listened intently for any sound, but heard only silence. Emily pressed the button once more.

“Idu! Idu!”
The voice sounded exasperated, but also alarmed.

“She’s coming,” Emily translated, then the door opened a crack, and a gaunt, colorless face appeared.

“Zdravstvujte,”
Emily said in greeting, then spoke more in the woman’s language.

The woman pursed her lips but listened. Jason could understand nothing of what Emily was saying to the woman, but he saw suspicion and despair quickly replace her initial spark of hope. Casting a distrustful look at Jason, she finally nodded and removed the safety chain to let them in. An intense stink of cabbage and fried potatoes hovered in the stale air, and Jason felt closed in on all sides. Not even one window was open, and all the curtains had been lowered to shut out the light.

The woman raised a hand, inviting them into a tiny kitchen, then pointed to two rickety chairs. Tears glistened in her eyes.
“Prisazhivajtses,”
she said, then shuffled out of the room.
“Ya sejchas.”

Jason glanced at Emily. “Well?”

“She said to sit down and that she’ll be back soon. I’ll fix it so you’ll understand her Russian, and she’ll understand your English.”

“Where’d she go?”

“I made her think she needed to get her handkerchief.”

The woman’s footsteps grew louder, and soon she reappeared. “I’m sorry,” she said in Russian, though Jason understood her perfectly. “You see, it’s my son. I have no idea where he has gone,” she muttered, putting a kettle on the stove and lighting a match. “I thought maybe you …” She turned to stare at Emily. “Do you think he’s alive?”

“Yes, I’m sure he is,” Emily lied, leaning closer and reaching for the woman’s hand. “Can you show us the mark that appeared after his disappearance?”

The woman cringed at Emily’s touch, unused to such gestures of sympathy. “It is still in Alexei’s room. I don’t go there often.” She stood up. “Follow me, please.”

They went down the narrow corridor, and the woman gestured for them to step into a small room. The place was what Jason would call the epitome of chaos, but only the amount of chaos one would expect from a fifteen-year-old boy. Clothes, books, and CDs were strewn around, the single bed was unmade, and a bookshelf hung aslant on the opposite wall. The curtains were torn and neglected, paled over time by sunlight. And there, on a massive wooden wardrobe, shone a mark.

Jason’s heart raced. He’d seen the marks in the pictures of dead victims. Now he saw one in reality. He stared at it, then stepped closer, entranced. He moved yet closer, and Emily grabbed hold of his sleeve.

She turned to the woman cringing in the doorway behind them. “Can you leave us for a minute?”

The woman nodded and stepped away without saying a word.

Emily quickly drew the curtain aside, letting light seep through, and making the mark flare.

“We don’t have much time,” she said, moving closer to the mark. “Come here and press your hand on it.”

Jason recoiled. “What? Are you sure?”

She nodded. “As soon as you saw it, you felt its pull, didn’t you? Now touch it. That’s what we’re here for.”

“Why? Do you think that if I touch it I can become Sighted?”

“I’m not entirely sure, but there’s a small possibility.”

Needing no further encouragement, he stepped closer, and the mark burned with a more intense light. When he was close enough, he could discern two letters flaring in the center: CD.

The first letters of the owner’s name,
Jason guessed.

He stretched his hand towards the mark, then applied his palm to the letters. The mark felt cool, and, incredibly, seemed to squirm under his touch. Jason flinched at the strange sensation, but didn’t pull away.

“So?” Emily asked.

“Nothing,” he said. Then several things happened.

Visions rushed in: living, burning fusions of a boy being hurled through a tunnel. Closer to the Circle. He screamed, pleading for help, but no one was there.

Jason jerked his palm from the mark, and the window beside Emily exploded. Jason went cold with panic, and raised his arms to shield his face from the jagged shards of glass. His perception of reality sharpened, and the tiny pieces that pierced his skin thickened, feeling more like nails. And all the time this was happening, his mind worked frantically, knowing he had to get to Emily. Had to save her. With his eyes squeezed shut he battled the wicked onslaught, then bolted towards where he knew she had been.

But as soon as he took the first step, the entire world faded to black.

Where was she?

“Emily!” he screamed.

Like a blind man, he stretched his hands forward, trying to get hold of something. Of anything. But they found nothing. Just as he was about to scream again, his left shoulder burst into flames, and he fell to his knees.

This is what death feels like,
was his last thought.

The pain let go, and Jason sprawled onto the floor, studded with shards of glass.