Green: The Beginning and the End (10 page)

Thomas felt his lifelines slipping. He’d expected any scenario but this. How could he offer up his own son?

“Do you believe Elyon will save your son?”

The cool night air had gone frigid.

“Elyon has no limits.”

“Father—”

“And if your son doesn’t agree?” Ba’al cut in. “Would that weaken your faith? Would you be frightened that Teeleh would steal your child the way you stole Qurong’s child?”

Chelise. Qurong sat with jaw fixed.

“Listen to me, you skinny little witch,” Thomas bit off. “My son, like Chelise, decides for himself whether he lives or dies. He’s not your bull to slaughter.”

“I thought Elyon and Teeleh were to decide who would live or die. I’m only asking if you, not your son, will give Elyon the opportunity to decide.”

Thomas’s face flushed with indignation. But he truly was ensnared by this pathetic wretch’s challenge. If he delayed in giving his consent, it would only show his doubt. He’d come to prove his faith in Elyon, and already he was flapping around like a wounded chicken.

But he couldn’t bring himself to say it. He couldn’t stand here and—

Do you want to swim with me?

Thomas’s pulse spiked.

Swim in my waters, Thomas.

The distant voice whispered. The same voice he’d heard on occasion in the deepest part of Elyon’s waters. A boy’s voice, so tender, full of mischief and life. Elyon . . .

“What did I tell you, my lord?” Ba’al said to Qurong. “I’ve handed you a victory with the slaying of one bull. The great Thomas of Hunter doesn’t have—”

“I accept your challenge,” Thomas snapped. “I would offer my son. But I can’t speak for him.”

“No. But I can.” Ba’al nodded.

Thomas twisted on his horse and felt the blood drain from his face. The Throaters had closed the gaps between the boulders fifty yards behind Mikil, Jamous, and Samuel. None of them had any weapons.

There was no escape, not even for a fighter of Samuel’s caliber.

Ba’al was going to bleed his son.

“Come, my master,” Ba’al whispered in a trembling voice. “Enter your servant.”

Six Throaters rode in from the left, swords drawn. They didn’t hesitate as they would have if facing an armed warrior of the Guard, but stormed straight toward Samuel, slamming into his horse. One of them whipped a long chain around his son’s throat and tugged.

“Father . . .”

“Let him go! Release him!” Thomas spurred his horse into the fray, took the butt of a sword on his chin and blindly struck out with a fist. He felt his knuckles sink into spongy Scab flesh. The warrior he’d hit grunted and swung his spear like a stick. It glanced off Thomas’s shoulder.

Panic joined his desperation. Even if there was a chance to overpower the Throaters, he would betray his own challenge by attempting anything so foolish.

The sound of a brutal blow to Samuel’s flesh made him recoil. A grunt. Then silence. They’d dragged Samuel to the ground and knocked him out.

Thomas spun back to Ba’al, swallowing against the dread rising in his gut. “This wasn’t my challenge!”

The dark priest was staring at the dusk sky, hands raised and trembling. He jerked his head down. “It is mine.”

Whimpers and murmuring spread through Ba’al’s priests, their eyes on the darkening sky. Thomas looked up.

At first glance it appeared as if a huge black cloud had drifted over the high place and was slowly rotating—a hurricane forming several miles over their heads.

But this wasn’t a cloud, Thomas saw. For the first time in many years, the Shataiki were showing themselves. Hundreds of thousands of the black beasts peered down with red eyes, having gathered to watch the butchery.

Elyon . . . Dear Elyon, help us . . .

10

The sky . . . there was something wrong in the sky.

“What?” Marie cried, whipping her head around as she shot past. She forced her horse to a tramping halt. “What is it?”

“I . . .” Chelise stared at the black cloud on the distant darkening horizon. Something about the sight spread a chill over her skull. “I . . .”

Marie followed her eyes and gazed with her. “What is it? A cloud?”

“It’s moving.”

“So clouds move. What’s gotten into you?”

“Over the high place, as if—”

“Shataiki,” Marie whispered.

The horses were breathing hard from their run, but this one word uttered by Marie felt like a kick to Chelise’s gut. She hadn’t put her finger on it, but now that Marie had labeled the huge, swirling vortex, the dreadful certainty that her daughter was right wrapped its claws around her throat.

Shataiki
.

“That’s impossible,” she finally managed.

Marie twisted in her saddle. “It’s over the high place, Ba’al Bek.”

“But . . . so Qurong accepted Thomas’s challenge?”

Marie turned her jittery mount back to Chelise, casting an eye at the Shataiki. “Unless they’ve gathered in defiance of Thomas’s presence on their sacred turf. He would be the first albino to enter the cursed place of worship.”

“But no one’s seen the Shataiki for years. Have you ever seen one?”

“I may have. At one time I thought I had, but it could just as easily have been a shadow. This is . . .” Marie couldn’t seem to form her thoughts around the idea that they were actually seeing Shataiki. But there could be no doubt. It was a massive cloud of black bats, each the size of a bloodhound if the legends were correct, packed so closely together that they looked from this distance like a solid mass. “So many . . .”

Chelise had finally convinced the council that Qurong and Ba’al would accept Thomas’s challenge only if they intended to double-cross him. She argued that Qurong would never stoop so low in his mind to go with Thomas if he lost the challenge. The only person remotely capable of winning Qurong’s heart was his very own daughter. Chelise.

Marie earned the right to go because she had defended Thomas’s honor by fighting Samuel in Vadal’s place.

They left Jake with Susan, who complained bitterly that a fighter of her caliber should go with them.

After eight hard hours of riding they were less than halfway there. But they had the fruit; they would not stop.

“We’re not going to make it,” Chelise said. Her heart pounded in her ears. “If they’ve already started this ill-advised game, we’re going to be too late.”

“I’m not sure there’s anything we could do if—”

“Then go home,” Chelise snapped. “It wasn’t my idea that you come.”

“Easy. I’m not second-guessing our decision. I’m just stating the obvious. We don’t stand a chance against that.” She nodded at the cloud of Shataiki, slowly rotating in the dusky sky.

“You’re forgetting about Elyon. You nearly killed your brother for his honor—”

“I would never kill Samuel.”

“—yet you doubt Elyon’s power?”

“If it’s up to Elyon, then why does he need us? He’s got Thomas out there. What good will two more be?”

“Qurong—”

“Can be won by Elyon much more easily than by you,” Marie cut in. Then with less bite: “So it would seem to me.”

“You’re far too much like your father,” Chelise said. “Everyone should take care of themselves, is that it? Your independence is only cute when there’s no real danger.” She kicked her horse, and the beast surged forward. “If Elyon could snap his fingers and win anyone’s heart, the Horde would have flocked to the red lakes long ago,” she cried. “That’s obviously not the way it works.”

Marie urged her mount into a full run and pulled abreast. “I’m not suggesting we don’t go, Mother, but Thomas and I aren’t the only ones who are stubborn. Father knew that your love for Qurong might jeopardize his mission, not to mention your life. I think that cloud only raises the stakes. Don’t do anything rash.”

“Now the youth are giving the advice?”

“I’m not a child! I’m the one who’s here to keep your backside out of trouble.”

“I’m not a fool.”

“No, but love is blind. And you, Mother, are blind when it comes to your father.”

There was some truth to what Marie said. Chelise would give her life to save Qurong, if Elyon required it. But her love for Qurong didn’t make her stupid.

Chelise pushed her mare into a full gallop. “Fine, save my backside. At this rate you’re not going to be given that opportunity, because it’ll all be over by the time we get there.”

She breathed a quick prayer, begging Elyon to keep them all alive until she could show up and make things right. She immediately chided herself for such arrogance.

“How far?” she breathed.

“We can’t push the horses like this all night. Daybreak. At best.”

Thank Elyon they’d brought the healing fruit.

11

They called it Ground Zero, home of some of the world’s most potentially destructive biological materials. Raison Strain B for starters.

Janae swiped her security card through the reader, heard the magnetic locking mechanism disengage, and looked back at Billy. Sweat beaded his forehead. His eyes darted to hers, then back to the metal door.

She pushed it open and walked into the hall. “Close the door behind you. And hurry. Just because it’s midnight doesn’t mean security doesn’t already know my card was used to gain access. I wouldn’t put it past my mother to have instructed them to alert her every time I enter.”

“She’s that distrusting of you?”

“No. Not normally. But you’re here, aren’t you? The redheaded bloodhound who can climb into people’s minds.”

“With the bloodhound who uses her tongue to steal the minds of men,” he said.

“Whatever.” But he was right.

He followed her down the hall, past several doors where supplies were kept. The passage ended at another steel door that again required her card for access. She could hear Billy’s steady breathing behind her. He’d questioned her no fewer than a dozen times since she first suggested they call Monique’s bluff by infecting themselves, though his obsession with reaching the Books of History was reason enough for him to follow through. After all, he explained, he’d grown up with them, used them. He might even be
responsible
for them. He’d been pushed to the outer limits of himself and found nothing more than the blackness he’d come to recognize in his heart.

The fear and horror of a dozen years had turned him into a rag doll at the mercy of that blackness, he’d said, pacing with both hands in his hair. The chance of finally understanding what had turned him into the person he was, however dangerous, was worth the risk of Monique hanging them out to dry. For that matter, maybe he’d only find what he was looking for in death.

But what drove Janae to the same desperation? Nothing Billy could see in her mind. So what was it? He wanted to know. What?

She guessed. “Maybe because I have that same blackness in me. I always have. From the time my father vanished, I’ve hated my life. That same blackness is calling me. You can’t see it in my mind because it’s beyond my mind. I don’t even understand it, but today, for the first time, hearing about the blood and the Books of History, and my own mother’s involvement—I feel alive, Billy. I’ve come back from the dead.”

“And so now you’re willing to risk death again?” he’d challenged.

She turned away. “Mother won’t allow that.”

“But if she does.”

“Then she does. But she won’t. On occasion I may be the child she wishes she never had, but my mother loves me.”

She unlocked the metal door and led Billy into the heart of the facility: a white laboratory blinking with a hundred monitoring lights. The door closed softly behind them, and she gave him a moment to study the room.

A dozen workstations were positioned under fluorescent lights, perfectly ordered with flat touch-screen monitors. Not a pen or piece of paper out of place. Not a single paperclip or piece of lint on the shiny-mirror black floor.

Her mother was obsessive compulsive when it came to research. Two large liquid-cooled servers provided the room with enough computing power to run the Pentagon, but Mother controlled the real brains behind what happened here. Her own.

Then again, there was little her mother knew that Janae did not.

“This is it,” she said.

“Impressive. What are all those machines?” His eyes were on a wall lined with high-voltage equipment.

“Nothing you and I need. Magnetometers, electron microscopes, cryogenics, homogenizers . . . too much to explain now. What we need is in the subzero refrigeration system.”

She walked to a small room with a skull-and-crossbones symbol under a sign that read
Quarantine
, punched a code into a small pad, and pushed the glass door wide. Inside lay four gurneys with restraining straps. Each had its own life-support system, now disconnected.

“So this is it,” Billy said, stepping into the room beside her.

“We won’t need all the technology. A syringe will do the trick. But yes, we do need to seal ourselves in. Can’t risk additional contamination, right?” She forced a grin.

“Right.”

“Please try to relax, Billy. You do realize the real risk here, don’t you?”

“I think I do, yes.”

“It’s not my mother. It’s that what
you’ve
told me isn’t the truth. Frankly, seeing you sweat like this makes me wonder.”

“It’s the truth,” he insisted. “Your mother may love you, but how do we know the blood exists? That’s the real risk.”

“The blood exists. I saw it in my mother’s eyes. Like I said earlier, you’re not the only one who can read minds. My intuition has never failed me.”

“Then you should know that I’ve told you nothing but the truth,” Billy said.

She frowned. Her hands were tingling with energy and the fact that Billy seemed reticent only added to her eagerness. She turned from the quarantine room, crossed to a panel in the wall, and entered a ten-digit code she’d written on her palm: 786947494D. Motors hummed to life as the retrieval mechanism went for the sample in question.

“It’s in the wall?”

“The ground, actually. Twenty feet under us. All of the sensitive stuff is.”

He looked a little lost, standing there in his jeans and T-shirt. She stepped over to him, stood on her tiptoes, and gave him a light peck on the lips.

“Ready to commit suicide, darling?”

He reached his right hand behind her head, pulled her close, and kissed her long. When he pulled back, his green eyes sparkled. “I am. More than you know.”

Interesting. Not the reaction she had expected. Perhaps she’d underestimated him.

A small beep indicated that the sample had been delivered. Janae slid the door of the caddie open and withdrew a Plexiglas tube that contained a glass vial of amber liquid. She habitually flicked the tube with her nail.

“Raison Strain B. No known antivirus.”

“How’s it different from the original Raison Strain?”

“Well, for starters, it kills in about a day, not thirty days. Never mind the details, let’s just say this one is much harder on the body. We’ll be bleeding internally within an hour. The only saving grace is that like most viruses, this strain isn’t airborne. It requires an exchange of bodily fluid. So even though strain B is stronger, it doesn’t present the same threat as the first strain.”

“How much do we need?” he asked, eyeing the vial in her fingers.

“Need? The smallest drop. But I don’t want to play around. One cc should do the trick. We won’t feel anything anyway, not after the sedatives we take kick in. We’ll be out.”

“May I?”

She handed him the sample, struck again by the fire burning in his bright eyes. He was like a kid next in line at an amusement-park ride.

She plucked the sample from his hand and walked toward the quarantine room. “Why don’t you let me do this? I doubt my mother would take any terrible risk to save you. It’s me she’ll move heaven and earth to keep alive.”

“No,” he said. “It doesn’t work like that. The point is to get Thomas’s blood into our own bloodstream. His blood is what should allow us to cross into his world.”

“Thomas’s world, even though he originally came from Denver, Colorado.”

“I mean the Black Forest. The future, where I sent him by writing in the Book of History. Call it whatever you want, that’s not the point. Your own mother was able to follow him by injecting herself with some of his blood. That’s the point. If you’re infected and she injects you with his blood, you’ll cross over, at least in your dreams. I didn’t come all this way to stand by your bed and watch you cross without me. If Monique uses the blood on you, she’ll use it on me as well, assuming we’re both infected.”

“Don’t say I didn’t offer.”

“How will she know?”

“That we’ve infected ourselves? When the resident technician does his rounds in the morning, he’ll call her. Assuming she isn’t alerted earlier that I’ve been in here all night.”

Janae retrieved a syringe from the cupboard, slipped on a needle, and set it in a three-foot glass chamber with a bottle of sedative and the vial of Raison Strain B. She closed the chamber and inserted both arms into the sleeves that gave her access to the airtight compartment. Billy stood by her, watching.

The vial was sealed with a soft, nonpermeable glue, which broke free with a firm twist. “There it is, Billy. Nasty, nasty stuff.” She set the vial in a tray that held it upright. “The wonder drug that’s going to take us to a whole new world.”

“Actually, the virus is the killer. Thomas’s blood is the drug.”

Blood. Even now, faced by death, the thought of the blood made her pulse quicken.

Janae inserted the needle into the vial of Raison Strain B, withdrew two ccs of the fluid, and repeated a similar operation with the sedative. She capped the syringe with a rubber sleeve and rotated the glass, giving the two fluids time to mix. She could have done it all without the isolation chamber, but habit compelled her. There was always a chance of spilling and contaminating the room.

She pulled the syringe out of the chamber and faced him. “So, darling. Are you ready for this?”

He glanced at the white-sheeted gurneys. “Just lie down?”

“Go ahead.” She winked at him. “I’ll be gentle.”

Billy gazed into her eyes. “I still can’t figure you out. Why aren’t you afraid?”

“Thomas found my mother, and his life changed forever. Now you’ve found her daughter, and your life is about to change. Maybe Thomas isn’t the only one with something in his blood.”

“Right.”

“Lie down,” she said.

Billy walked to the nearest gurney, rolled onto the mattress, and looked up. He looked so disarming with his big green eyes and disheveled red hair. A jeans-and-T-shirt guy with worn Skechers and fair skin. It occurred to her that she might be staring the fate of the world in the face. Isn’t that what they’d said about Thomas Hunter?

Janae leaned over Billy and touched her lips to his. She impulsively bit his lower lip, and when he didn’t pull away, she bit it harder.

The fresh taste of his blood sent a faint tingle through her tongue. She was surprised that he still didn’t jerk away. Instead he pressed up into her mouth, then calmly settled back down.

“Let’s do this.”

“Turn your arm over.”

She formed a tourniquet of surgical tubing above his elbow, gently traced the median cubital vein on the inside of his arm, and brought the needle to the skin. Billy stared into her eyes.

Then she inserted the needle into his vein and shot one cc of Raison Strain B into his bloodstream.

Damage done.

She withdrew the needle and released the tourniquet. “Lie still.” But she wasn’t thinking of him lying still as much as she was her own need to follow him.

Janae had drawn her own blood more times than she could count and now decided to dispense with the tourniquet. Disinfectant was a bit of a joke considering what they were putting into their arms. And it seemed proper now to share the same needle, however unclean.

She opened her arm, found the faint line of her vein, plunged the needle through her white skin, and pushed the rest of the amber liquid into herself.

Damage done.

A sting, nothing more.

She set the syringe back into the isolation chamber, sealed it, and took her place on the gurney next to Billy’s. Her black dress had ridden up, and she pulled it down so that it covered most of her thighs.

“Now what?” Billy asked.

Janae turned her head and faced him. “Now we fall asleep and slowly die.”

“Twenty-four hours.”

“More or less.” She could feel the deadening effects of the sedative already. “See you on the other side, Billy.”