Davis: Blood Brotherhood (14 page)

Dolin had no idea. But someone was helping them. These people were not this smart. He and Ward were well beyond their intelligence and everyone knew it.

“How is Randall coming along anyway?” Dolin only shook his head at that. It had been a major disappointment as well using this man. “He still complaining about everything?”

From the first moment he’d opened his eyes, he’d done nothing but bitch and moan. He wanted more drugs. There were too many people around him all the time. The clock was too noisy. Dolin had been so stunned to hear that complaint that he’d gone to ask the man about it.

“Could you please explain to me how the clock could be too loud? I’ve never…not in all my years as a lab tech have I ever heard such a complaint. Do you have, perhaps, better hearing than most?” He hadn’t meant to sound so…snotty, the man had called him, but it was a good question.

“The constant tick-tock, tick-tock is just going on and on. Can’t you hear it?” He could and started to point out that was the way clocks worked, but Randall continued. “Turn it down or I’m out of here.”

“There is no way for you to get out of here, Mr. Randall. Should you do that, you’d surely die when you crossed back over the realms. It is all that is keeping you alive, you being here until this change is complete. And it is not complete, not at all, and leaving now would make it so we’d have to start all over in the process. We would very much like to have this done and soon. We have money riding on this. Rembrandt and the others will surely—”

“You lied to me then.” Dolin was shaking his head as the man tried to get from his cage. It had become necessary to cage him days before when he’d become too much for the lab technicians to handle. His temper was worse than a rabid animal that had been cornered. “I want to leave here now. I want out of this cage and out of this place.”

They’d drugged him then, and he’d been that way since. Dolin had never figured out the clock and didn’t bring it up again. He had, however, had it removed from the room and put somewhere else. He realized he’d not answered Ward and mentally shook himself to remember what it was they’d been talking about.

“Randall?” Ward nodded. “I have not been down there since we’ve had to keep him sedated. The man is coming along well, I’ve been told. Just a few more weeks and he’ll be ready to unleash on the other realm. They will not have a clue that he’s part of our team and not with them, as he’d been all along. His sister, we’re hoping, will welcome him into the house with open arms. Then it will be easy from there.”

“Nothing about this has been easy. And nothing has gone even close to the way we had hoped it would. The only thing that has gone right so far is the death of Hector’s wife. The rest has been nothing but a disaster.” Dolin could agree on that. “I just hope Randall is as able to talk to his sister as he says. I just…I’ve begun not to trust anything with this.”

“As much as I hate to admit it, so have I. I think the man is a pain in the ass, and there is no way that he will be as much help to us as we’d been told. There is something so very wrong about him. I wish now that I could contact the man that we sent to get him. There has been no word from him…he was my first attempt at the creatures that we sent to earth. I was fond of the man. And now…well, now I fear that he is dead as well.” Each of the men in the lab had told him and Ward several times that Randall had the ability to do great things, if and only if they were able to finish what they’d started. But no one, not one of them, would say for sure what his greatness would be. Only that he was going to be that. Dolin thought perhaps they were lying as well, just to make them look good in light of what the man was doing.

As they talked about the issues that they’d run into, not complaining but going over them one by one and of course blaming Hector for each of them, Ward’s phone went off. He got up to go to the other side of the room after looking at it. It was more than likely the lab. Days ago, when it became apparent that someone was coming into his house, Dolin had refused to leave his house. Now they were instructed to call Ward instead of him. When he came back, Ward sat on the couch again and Dolin knew that something was wrong.

“He’s gotten away.” Dolin was afraid to ask who because he was pretty sure he knew. “Randall got out of his cage and destroyed most of the work that had been started on him. Killed four of the men working there, as well as the guard at the door. They—whoever is left—are out looking for him. But him killing those men, the ones that worked for us? We have no one to replace them, Dolin. We’re going to have to do something soon, or we will be the only people left here and no one to rule. I want to rule, damn it.”

As did Dolin. He was almost embarrassed to think about the scepter that he’d bought a few months ago, and the beautiful crown that he’d commissioned to have made for him. It was bejeweled and made of the best gold. There had been several smaller agates that he’d put on it that had since been taken out to use for their work. Yes, Dolin thought, he wanted to rule more subjects than just Ward. He looked at the worried look on Ward’s face and nearly just asked him to go home.

“There’s more, isn’t there?” Ward nodded his head. “Tell me. I’m sure I don’t want to know, but you have to tell me. If not, I will worry about it for days until you come back here and tell me anyway.”

“He’s taken all the magic we had in the building. And he’s…he’s taken it.” Dolin asked him what he was talking about, his temper no longer easy going with this thing. When Ward, usually a strong man—stronger than him anyway—burst into tears, Dolin felt his own fill his eyes.

“Taken it as in he’s now holding all the power that we had? Everything that was in the building? He has taken it into his body? Tell me.” Ward sobbed more, and Dolin was on his last bit of patience when he finally looked at him.

“Randall is now…Christ, he’s the strongest thing ever to come from here. Ever. Do you have any idea what that means?” Dolin did but said nothing. “He can destroy us. He can…he will harm us, and we’ve done nothing wrong. We just wanted them gone so that we could be rich and this is how…they’re not playing fairly, Dolin. Not fairly at all.”

“We have to plan. We must hide now.” Dolin stood up. “I have my shelter. We’ll go there. Everything we need for years is there. I have it ready. There is food and money there, as well as water. There is…you must come with me now. We’re in danger.”

He didn’t tell his friend that in the last week he’d been stocking more things than was necessary down there. More food stuffs than he could eat in a year’s time; more than enough time, he thought, for things to be back to normal. There were batteries enough to fill a large room. All of it had been delivered to the garage over time and taken down by himself. Dolin had wanted to move down there without the fear of the stone. Now…well, he’d have to make room for Ward now. He supposed he could just send him home and move in without telling him, but he would be lonely and he needed someone to talk to.

“Now?”

Dolin grabbed up the pillows from the couch. He was headed to the door when the first pounding came. Ward stood there staring at the door as the wood began to splinter, and the man on the other side began to taunt them.

“Dolin, my man? Wardy, my buddy dear? Are you in there? I need to speak to you.” It was Randall, and he was talking to them in a singsong voice that made the hair on the back of Dolin’s neck dance and tingle. “Dolin? Answer me, you cock sucker. I want you to see what I’ve done to myself.”

The voice had changed now. Slurred words made him think that the man was inebriated, or full of drugs. Dolin had an idea that was just it. Not the kind that he’d been taking on earth, but the kind that would make him into a monster. He’d be bigger now, stronger than he’d been before. And they had no way of knowing what sort of magic he’d have. Dolin had been mixing things together for days before leaving the lab for good. If he had even a tenth of Dolin’s creations, Randall would be something horrific to see.

“Hurry.” Dolin finally had to grab Ward’s arm and drag him behind him as Randall continued talking to them. “The door won’t hold much longer. And if he gets in here while we’re up here, he’s going to kill us both. You have to hurry or I shall leave you here, Ward. Come with me now or face him alone.”

Ward nodded and started after him. The door to the front of his house shattered just as they rounded the corner to get to the shelter. Dolin was running now, dragging his friend for all he was worth. They weren’t going to make it, he kept telling himself. They were going to die, and that would be horribly unfair. Running faster when he heard nails, like those of a large cat, on the floor in the other part of the house, Dolin pressed the necessary buttons to have the door opened.

The door to his shelter opened with a small puff of air. Stepping into the shaft, a smallish elevator really, it was closing when he saw the creature that they’d made. Good Christ, it was worse than he’d thought. The man was more than a monster, but several of them at once.

The doors closed just as the creature saw them. His claws scraped across the steel of the door just as it was closing. Dolin was sure he’d never forget the look of it for as long as he lived when the thing—Randall—threw back his head and roared. The elevator moved to the lower levels, and above them they could hear the house being destroyed. Dolin was sure that things were not going to be the same when he got to go back above ground.

“Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. He nearly got us.” Dolin only nodded, his own fear making it hard for him to breathe, much less speak. “That thing…that monster. What are we going to do with it? Surely he’ll…what are we going to do now?”

“Live here. We can for as long as we need to.” Ward looked around as Dolin continued. Dolin looked at his shelter through Ward’s eyes as he exited with him from the elevator.

“This is…you’ve been very busy getting ready for this, haven’t you?” Dolin told him he had. In truth, while the shelter itself had been there, he’d never done a thing to prepare it until the stone started to move about. “We can live here, you think? Stay down here until the monster up there is gone?”

“I didn’t want to be caught unawares. And stocking this place gave me something to do when I was grieving for my Mary.” A lie again, but Ward patted him on the back as if he knew what he meant. He hadn’t wanted to be killed was what it was. “I’ve been expecting something like this. Not Randall, but an uprising. I didn’t want either of us to be hurt when it came right down to it.”

When he’d been filling the shelter with things lately, he’d never thought of anyone being with him. Ward was his friend, his best friend actually, and he was glad now that he’d been here when it became necessary to use it. His plan, if he ever really had one, was to use this for him and Mary if needed. But she was gone now, thanks to those people. They had so much to answer for, and he was going to make sure that they did. Dolin looked at Ward when he realized he’d been speaking to him. Asking him to repeat it, Dolin felt embarrassed.

“And all this. How did you manage it?” Ward waved his hand over the green house he’d put in. It was huge, and the plants he’d started a few weeks ago to keep himself from starving were coming along nicely, if he did say so himself. “You’ve been preparing for this to come soon?”

“Yes and no. I’ve been…I wanted to be eating better and this was here. I thought to myself that I could get the hang of it where no one would be able to see that I’d failed should I not be a good farmer.” Partly true. He did want to eat better, but the rest was a lie. “You should see the rest of the place before we begin working around things.”

“Whatever will I do for clothing?” Good question. All the clothing that was here was mostly for him. But he took Ward to the second bedroom and showed him the clothing that was stored there. “I could wear these. They’ll be a little snug, I think. You never were good at guessing my size. Remember the sweater you gave me several years ago? I still laugh about how large it was on me.”

Dolin nodded. He’d not guessed at his size at all, but he was all right with Ward thinking that he had. And the sweater he’d given him had actually been a gift from someone else to him. Dolin hated sweaters, and when Ward had shown up with a gift for him, it had been easy to give him that one. The thing had still been in the box and had a bow on it.

“You have a look around. If you have any questions, I’m going to be monitoring the outside world with my system.” Dolin had been quite proud of himself for thinking of that. If the world, their world, went to shit, he wanted to have a first-hand view of it. He never expected that they’d be the cause of the world falling apart, but it wasn’t just his fault. It was Hector’s and Rembrandt’s. Had they just…well, he was sick of saying it, even to himself. As he entered his little office, he realized that Ward had followed him.

It took him several moments to get the hang of the controls. He’d been playing with them, of course, but the cameras that he’d had installed all those years ago had been replaced in recent years, and he still had to think before moving them. One such move nearly made him throw up; it was like being on a boat with rough waters. When he finally got it to move in the right directions, he found his home…or what was left of it.

The house—his house—looked like someone had taken a large wrecking ball to it. His little garden was gone, covered in debris from the patio surrounding it. The windows, all of them, were broken out and glass was everywhere. He had to think where his door had been because of the destruction that had occurred. Even his garage, although it was empty, looked bad. Dolin just stared at it, thinking how he could have been there among the rubble.