GHOST_4_Kindle_V2 (47 page)

“Rezvani, is it?” Doctor Lacy asked, adjusting his thick-framed glasses. If he was shocked by our sudden appearance, he showed no sign of it. Thunder growled ominously outside. “But not a doctor, after all. Shame. Had you a clinical perspective, you might understand.”

“I understand that you are both murderers,” Rez said, her voice tight, words clipped as if she was biting them as they escaped her lips. She stepped beside me and raised the Beretta to aim at Jack, just as I’d hoped she would.

“Murderers,” Jack said slowly, as if chewing on the term. “That’s what people like you call all who support a woman’s right to choose, isn’t it?”

“It is their rhetorical stance,” Dr. Gary said. “And yet they come to kill us. Justifiable, they might say. Just as we justify what we are doing on behalf of womankind. Why don’t you come before the camera, officers? We are broadcasting live to hundreds…of millions.”

My shotgun blast shattered the moment…and the camera. Its black, modular casing splintered into jagged, smoking shards. What was left of the camera jolted from the tripod and clattered up against the far bulkhead. In that same moment, there was a clap of thunder. Only it wasn’t thunder.

Rez had fired her Beretta. As I tossed the shotgun away and ripped The Edge from my vest, I saw blood erupt from Jack’s shoulder.
The head,
Rez! I screamed mentally.
You should have shot her in the head!

But the Cain’s Dagger fell from Jack’s limp left hand. The young women swayed slightly and held their hands up to cover their ears.
 

“Move away from the girls!” Rez yelled. “NOW!”

“It’s far too late,” Dr. Lacy replied, his dark eyes flashing malevolently. “The message has gone out. The world knows.”

“I said, get up and move away from the girls!” Rez fired and put a dark hole not ten inches above the doctor’s right ear.
 

He didn’t even flinch. His upper lip curled into a snarl beneath his bristling mustache, making him look like some cornered feral animal. Now, I could see it plainly. I didn’t need to engage Netherview. Dr. Garrison Lacy had been taken by something more than a Shade.
 

Then, the lights went out.

Chapter 41

“Rez!” I cried out, lunging forward. “Protect the girls!”

Something barreled into me hard. I was thrown against the bulkhead. Blinking at the abject darkness, I tried to roll to a knee. But blunt force struck my side, and I toppled. The next thing I knew, something sat astride my chest and had a hand on my throat. A single hand.

But that grip was more than human. It was devastatingly strong, and I had little bodily strength to fight it off.
 

But I had The Edge.
 

And then there was light.

The words appeared as brightly in my consciousness as the weapon’s incandescent blade in the darkness. I carved a weak slash through Jack’s elbow, but it was enough. She shrieked and fell away from me. She rolled into the darkness.

I grabbed her dismembered forearm, pried her hand from my throat, and tossed the limb away. But Jack wasn’t finished. Her pale face and crazed dark eyes came out of the black. Her teeth flashed and she took me in an animal embrace that made it impossible for me to strike with The Edge.

 
I felt a sharp, stinging burn on my neck…an agony-inducing pinching of flesh as she bit into me. I dropped The Edge and tried to roll her. She clamped down even harder, and we fell backward into the cabin wall. I pushed at her shoulders, but it only caused the pain of her vice-like bite to intensify exponentially. If I forced her away, she would tear out my throat.
 

So I did the only thing I could. I wrapped my arms around her back and shoulders and thrust her into an even tighter embrace. My hands found her spine at last. I felt the bony knobs of vertebrae under my fingertips. I probed and prodded until I found the pressure points. Then I drove the points of my fingers in hard.
 

The stilling touch.

Her jaws lost pressure, and she went limp. I rolled her to the side. She wasn’t dead. Not yet. But I couldn’t linger. I grabbed up The Edge and cried out, “Rez!”

There was no answer. That’s when I saw the square of lesser darkness. A hatch had been opened in the ceiling above the corner where Dr. Lacy had been. In the bluish light of my weapon I saw the two young women laying side-by-side and clutching each other.
 

“Rez!” I yelled again. “Rez, where are you?”

“Up here!” came a voice from above. But the voice was muffled and distorted by the storm. It could have been anyone for all I could tell.

No way, I’m sticking my head up through the hatch,
I thought, my mind racing. That was not going to be a part of any plan.

I glanced down at Jack. Her eyes found me, and somehow, I could feel the smile in her consciousness. I so wanted to pry the Shade out of her right then and there, to strangle it in my bare hands…but I couldn’t. Not yet.
 

I left her lying there, and went to the two girls. They whimpered softly watching the Edge in my hand. I switched it off for a moment, picked up both young women from the bench, and carried them aft. I left them in an alcove behind the cabin stair. “Stay here!” I commanded them, using a little Netherview to deepen my voice. And I flicked on the Edge. It was just enough for a glimpse, but I saw the blazing red Soulmark on each young woman. I prayed for their healing, turned, and left them.

I took the stairs and thrust myself out into the storm. Lightning lit the back of the sail craft. No one was there, but I saw something large out on the water. There was a pale shape and a red light, but that was all I could make out through the pitch and yaw of the waves and the windblown curtain of rain.

The boat leaned suddenly, and I was thrown to one knee. An icy cold blast of water smacked into me. I stumbled forward, spun, righted myself with a slick rail, and spun around. “Rez!” I yelled into the wind.

I heard something in reply, a cry maybe. Nothing intelligible.
 

I plunged forward, half-sprinting, half-sliding. I ducked under the boom and came face-to-face with a nightmare.

Chapter 42

In the ethereal blue light of The Edge, I saw Dr. Garrison Lacy holding Rez from behind. It was an eerily similar pose to all the Smiling Jack photos.
 

But no one was smiling.

The doctor looked as if he’d taken a sledgehammer to the face. His nose was mashed to one side, obviously broken. His left eye was swollen near to the point of being shut. Blood ran in rivulets from his temple, from the corner of his other eye, and like a flood from his ruined nose.

Somehow, Rez looked worse. Her cheeks, forehead, and jaw bore the swollen and bloodied abrasions that could have only come from being bludgeoned with the butt of a gun.
 

The same gun that Dr. Lacy now held with the barrel pointed under Rez’s chin.
 

“You…sssee,” he said, his gritty voice all the more choked with gobbets of gore. “It isss…too late.”

Just then voices came out of the night, and a dozen suns blazed around us. Or, so it seemed.
 

“SAILORS ABOARD OYSTER SIX-TWO-FIVE, BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE UNITED STATES COAST GUARD, YOU ARE COMMANDED TO STAND DOWN!”

Even in the raging storm, the voice sounded like a cannon blast. My eyes darted left and right. A large cutter heaved and rolled on either side of us.
 

“You called them,” I said. “Didn’t you, Rez.”

She looked up at me weakly and gave the slightest of nods.

“John Spector!” came another voice from the speaker of the portside cutter. “This is Deputy Director Barnes of the FBI! Put down your weapon!”

I didn’t move a muscle. I stared ahead and saw three tiny, bright-red dots appear on Dr. Lacy’s neck and face. I looked down and found three more dots darting around my chest. I was certain a couple danced on my head as well.
 

Laser sighted rifles in the hands of trained snipers. It was over. I deactivated and dropped The Edge.

Chapter 43

“Doctor Garrison Lacy!” Barnes bellowed from the speaker. “You are marked. Drop your weapon immediately!”

I watched the doctor look left. He tried to move Rez’s body as a human shield, but then he saw the red dots dancing on his right side. It didn’t matter which way he turned. The other would have a clear head shot.
 

He held out his right arm, let the gun dangle from a finger, and then, with a flick of his wrist, sent the weapon careening overboard. But he did not let go of Rez. He kept her pressed tight to his left side.

“Release Agent Rezvani!” Barnes commanded. “Now!”

“Even better,” Dr. Lacy said, lisping. He glanced down at the deck as if thinking. “A very public trial…weeksss on end. A new platform for our message.”

Our? What is he talking
—I saw movement. A head emerged from the hatch just a few feet away. Smiling Jack slowly clambered out. Her hair was wild and soaked, but it was her. She was missing the lower half of one arm, and the other arm, strewn with dark blood, hung uselessly at her side. Still she came up.

“You there!” came Barnes’ voice. “Don’t move!”

I cringed inwardly. Barnes couldn’t tell if Jack was a victim or something else. He wouldn’t fire, not unless Jack did something provocative. But Jack did nothing like that. She stumbled out of the hatch, got to one knee, and stood just to Dr. Lacy’s left.

Then, I watched Dr. Lacy turn his body, so that Rez was now shielding his right side. I knew what he was doing. And I knew what I had to do.
 

“You know what your trouble is, Rez?” I called out.
 

“What’s that, Spector?” she groused, her voice just a thin cry.

“You just don’t listen!” I said.

“Everybody, get down on the deck!” Barnes bellowed.

I thought maybe Barnes saw too, and thought maybe, he didn’t like the positioning either.
 

“Get down on the deck!”

“I listen when it makes sense,” Rez said, glaring at me. I saw a glimmer in her eyes, that same cunning I’d seen before, but now with a hint of mischief.

I heard boots on the deck far behind me. The Coast Guard, the FBI—whoever—they were boarding. Time was running out.

“Nah, Rez,” I continued, tensing my legs. “You don’t listen at all. First, I told you this was all beyond your pay grade. You didn’t listen. I told you to protect the victims. You didn’t listen.”

“Lacy was getting away!” she barked back at me. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Get down on the deck, NOW!”
 

“Worst of all, Rez,” I said quietly. “I told you to kill him, not fight him.”

“You do it!” she cried out. In that moment, several things happened.

Voices behind me cried out, “Freeze!” and “Get down on the deck!”

Machine gun fire erupted from somewhere, knocking out four of the Coast Guard’s spotlights.
 

Lightning flashed, and Rez drove her head back sharply, slamming her skull into Dr. Lacy’s pulverized nose. He staggered backward, and the little red laser dots scattered and disappeared. Rez bolted toward the starboard rail.
 

I thought I heard someone shouting in Spanish amidst the chattering gunfire, but I rushed forward, sidestepping the open hatch and a knot of rigging. I took Jack under the arm, hoisted her off her feet, and kept going.
 

“You cannot win,” Dr. Lacy cried out, but it was not Dr. Lacy’s voice. It was not a single voice. A chorus of hideous, rasping voices slithered out from his lips, “…not against us. We are Legionnnn! We are—”

“Save it!” I barked, barreling into Lacy and charging toward the port rail. “I’ve heard it before. ‘
You are many.’
Like I care. I’m taking all of you down!”

With machine gun rounds raking chunks out of my shoulders and upper back, I took the Smiling Jack killers overboard and down, down into the dark, storm-tossed water.

Chapter 44

It is no small feat to drag two semi-buoyant human beings beneath the water and propel them into the depths. I squeezed them both at the ribs, forcing the air from their lungs. They struggled against me, and their combined strength was formidable. Too formidable for what I had left in the tank. It might end me, but I took a chance.

I went to that deep inner place, and let my mask fall away. It wasn’t easy, and there was no massive burst of energy or light. But I felt my wings free. Using their propulsion, I kept going down.

As the pressure in my ears increased, so too did the realization of what I was doing. I had never extended The Offer to Garrison Lacy or Jacqueline Gainer, and I was taking them to die. Somewhere in the far corner of my consciousness, it was suggested that the two killers had lived long enough on the earth, that they had each had other offers and had refused them repeatedly.
 

I had to hope in that because I wasn’t turning back.
 

I felt the fleshly structures in my ears burst, but I kept going down. I squeezed the killers and squeezed again, and I began to feel the last reservoir of my strength draining away.

I held on but felt the acidic burn from exertion in my arms fade into something closer to numbness. I wondered if I would black out before the killers would die.
 

But then, they stopped struggling and went very still. I watched a single translucent appendage emerge from Jack’s open mouth. It was like a thick jellyfish tendril, but it had eyes and teeth, more like an eel or a leech. It wriggled free and fled into the murk.

More than a dozen Shades likewise burst out of Dr. Lacy’s body. They came from his eyes, his nose, and his mouth. They scurried away in the water.

My vision graying out at the edges, I smiled at the thought of the Shades that deep in the saltwater. They hated water worse than I did, and better still, they have no sense of direction. They might never find their way to the surface.

My last thought as I lost consciousness was,
Neither will I.