The Edge of Ruin (2 page)

Resentment burned in his gut. He had given his life to the study and attainment of power, but not just the power of wealth and influence. Through long and arduous study he had become a sorcerer. Magic flowed through his hands and sang in his blood. He had worked hard to open the gates between the dimensions and allow the Old Ones to return, and
they had fucking succeeded
.

Then, because of one tiny miscalculation, because he underestimated the strength of will of Richard Oort, he forever lost his ability to do magic. He remembered that black blade swinging through the air, and the glitter of Richard’s pale blue eyes seen over the sword, and then Grenier’s hand was gone, the stump pumping a jet of blood into the air. There was a twinge of pain, and the memory of movement from his missing right hand. Grenier laid his remaining hand over the stump. It was as sore as his emotions.

Headlights swept around a broad curve in the road. Grenier stepped onto the edge of the pavement and frantically waved at the car. It was an older model Chevy; two doors, its white paint peeling in leprous gray patches. Grenier had an instant to see the driver’s reaction, an upthrust middle finger, before the car swept past. The wind from its passage blew his coat hard against his body, and a blast of exhaust set his eyes to watering. He
hated
pollution. Well, the Old Ones’ arrival would eventually put a stop to that. Unless they were thwarted, and that didn’t seem likely with Prometheus bound and all hope resting on one slender young man.

He plodded on for another mile or so before another pair of headlights swept across the verge. Light shattered against the ice-encased boles of the leafless trees lining the roadway. It was a big tan RV. To Grenier’s surprise it didn’t rush past, but instead pulled onto the shoulder.

The passenger-side window lowered. Grenier could barely hear the man’s voice over the dull rumble of the RV’s diesel engine. “How far you going?”

“As far as you’ll take me.”

“Hop in.”

Grabbing the handhold beside the door with his left hand, Grenier hauled himself onto the running board and into the RV. He tucked his stump under his coat, a protective if useless gesture. Grenier settled into the passenger seat and studied his rescuer. Early sixties, unusually fit for that age. Grenier noted the almost military haircut, short and tight over the ears, and the way the man canted slightly to the right. Grenier leaned forward slightly and spotted the holstered pistol on the man’s left hip. Cop or soldier. He was suddenly acutely aware that he was jumping bail.

He glanced back through the door leading into the body of the RV. A woman sat at the small table. She cradled a long rifle the way another woman might hold a child, or a child might hold a teddy bear. The woman looked to be in her late twenties with brown hair that brushed at her chin, a chin too square for real beauty. Straight, thick eyebrows frowned over brown eyes that welled with tears. Grenier checked, worried that the barrel might soon be facing him.

The man seemed to read Grenier’s concern. “It’s not loaded,” he said in a low voice. “She really freaks if she’s not holding it, so I let her.” The man put the RV back in gear, and they went bumping off the shoulder and back onto the freeway.

The man held out his hand. “Syd Marten.”

Grenier slid his arm from beneath the concealing coat and held up the bandaged stump. Marten jerked back his hand. “Consider your hand duly shaken,” Grenier said, stalling for time while he thought what name to offer.

Grenier had been a famous man. Preaching on the Christian cable networks, lending his support to various “culture of life” issues, leading prayer breakfasts at the White House, attacking scientists on the twenty-four-hour news channels, spouting his nonsense with neither challenge nor argument for the national media. He had been written up in
Time
and
Newsweek
as the most powerful voice of America’s evangelical movement. Would he be recognized? But while in jail he had grown a beard and mustache, and being assigned by a sympathetic guard to kitchen detail had enabled him to eat constantly as he alternately cursed at and wept for his lost power. He decided to offer a false name.

“Mark Jenkins,” Grenier said, using his mother’s maiden name.

“Where are you headed?” Marten asked.

“West.” It seemed a safe, if vague, response.

“Us, too,” Marten said. He gestured at the eastbound side of the freeway with its steady line of cars, their headlights like a chain of diamonds. “If they were smart they’d be hightailing it the other way, too, but their government isn’t leveling with them.”

“About what?” Grenier probed gently.

Beads of moisture popped out on Marten’s forehead, and a trembling shook his body. He wiped away sweat and sucked in a quick, deep breath. “What’s happening in Virginia,” came the choked reply.

He’s been to my compound. He’s seen. What a strange coincidence.
Grenier wondered if some vestige of his magic was still working. Or perhaps it was one of those flukes of quantum coincidence that scientists struggled to explain. Whatever the reason, Grenier would have to be careful. He thanked the cautious instinct that had led him to give a false name.

“What’s happening to our world?” Grenier asked.

“Damned if I know. Whatever it is, it ain’t good. I’ve seen this thing, and I went nuts. Ended up locked up in the booby hatch. Look at her.” He gestured back toward the woman. “That’s my daughter, Samantha. The girl who had to outjock every jock in the FBI. Prove to me it’s okay that she’s a girl and not a son … like I care, but she just won’t accept that.”

It was a gift, Grenier thought. He’d always had this ability to engender trust in people and elicit their confidences. His career choices had been obvious, politician or preacher. Preacher had paid better.

“Anyway, she volunteered to go out there. She’s in the FBI, just like me. She’s a trained sniper, and since she went there all she does is sit and cry. I think this thing, this effect … whatever it is, is going to spread. So I loaded up the RV and we left.” The man fell silent, but Grenier could tell he was eager to talk more. Grenier inclined his torso forward, softened his expression, begged to receive the confidence. Marten obliged.

“I didn’t give notice or anything. The last guy who tried to leave got locked up. Jacobson. They say it’s because he refused to go out there, but I can’t help but wonder if he got locked up because he’s a Jew. Next it’ll be the blacks. All the old hates and distrusts are coming to the surface. The world’s gone a different kind of nuts.”

The same old nuts
, Grenier thought, but what he said was, “You seem very sane.”

“Yeah, now.”

“What did they do for you?”

“Who?”

“The doctors.”

“Not a damn thing.”

For Grenier a certainty began to grow. It was all too perfect. He was going to do his bit to try to fuck his former masters.

“It wasn’t the doctors who fixed me, but this young guy, Richard Oort. I don’t remember much about him, but there was this sword.”

“With a blade as black as space, shot through with glittering points of light like the swirl of stars, and when it’s drawn you feel the bass tones growling and reverberating in your chest like the notes of a massive organ,” Grenier said softly as he remembered.

“You know him,” Marten said.

“Oh, yes.” Grenier softly stroked the bandage over his stump.

“I’ve got to reach him. Have him help my Sam like he helped me.”

“I’d like to find him, too.” And Grenier clenched his left fist, and felt his phantom right hand also close. “For a lot of reasons.”

* * *

The bar wasn’t nice enough for Bourbon Street. It was a few blocks and a universe away from the French Quarter, especially the new Disneyfied version of the French Quarter. It was dark and, even in January, hot, and it stank of spilled booze, cigarettes, mold, and infrequently washed bodies.

Doug Andresson couldn’t pay for the shot and the beer that stood on the bar in front of him. He’d used what remained of his money on the last round. He watched the head of the beer go sliding down the side of the glass, and for some reason it reminded him of the white foam that would run out of the horses’ mouths when his uncle broke the new broncos. Sometimes the fat old bastard would apply the bit so hard that the foam would turn red with blood. He was just as mean of a bastard as his brother, Doug’s father.

The memory brought other memories, of a belt laid hard across his back and thighs. It was after his father’s beatings that his mother would send him off to Uncle Frank’s ranch, separating the father and son. Doug had vowed he’d kill the man. Cancer had done it first.

Doug fumbled in his pants pocket for the can of tobacco. Pulling off the lid, he pinched off a plug and thrust it between lip and gum. The bottom of the can showed silver through the rich mahogany of the tobacco. He was almost out of that, too. He needed money, and he needed it fast. He weighed the pros and cons between a B&E in the Garden District or a mugging on Bourbon Street. Big, fancy houses often had dogs or alarms, and drunks were usually easy. He’d make up his mind after he finished his drink.

It wasn’t supposed to have been like this. He was supposed to be on easy street. Grenier had promised him power, respect, and money, but those dickheads couldn’t find their asses with both hands, and when the FBI had shown up they’d either dithered or fought. Only Doug had had the brains to head for the property line the minute that big helicopter had come roaring in. All those promises about how he was going to be taken care of, looked after—it was just more crap. He was broke in New Orleans, Grenier was in jail, and eventually the cops would come after him again. They always did.

There was always a level of rage that bubbled all along his nerve endings, but now a new emotion twined around that life-sustaining feeling—melancholy and loss. He studied the fading bruises on his knuckles, legacies of the blows he’d delivered to the cop’s face. Grenier had said Doug was special, but because of that little faggot Doug had never found out if he actually
was
special.

It was time to drink. He spat out the plug. It hit the stained wood of the floor between his feet with a wet splat and formed a starburst pattern. It was kinda pretty. He picked up the whiskey and downed it with one quick swallow. The heat from the alcohol burned the hot place on his gum where the plug had rested, and it felt like he’d swallowed smoke. He chased away the fire with the cold of the beer, draining the mug in five long swallows. He then pushed back from the bar and started for the door.

“Hey!” The bartender’s basso shout almost hurt Doug’s ears. “You haven’t paid for that.” The Cajun accent made musical mush of the words.

Doug turned slowly back to face the man. The bartender was big, red faced, and fat, with a sweat stain at the neck of his T-shirt. The sandy hairs on his forearms stood up like the bristles on a pig and blurred the anchors and mermaid tattoos that adorned the freckled skin.

“Not going to.” He patted his pockets. “No money,” Doug said. And then he smiled. His special smile.

The big man’s glare faded into nervous confusion, and he lost some of his color. Suddenly he seemed like a flaccid balloon. “Well … well, you get out of here, now. Don’t want deadbeats. You just go on.”

With a jaunty little half wave, half salute, Doug left the bar. Maybe he was special. He had a special kind of crazy that made people afraid. And someday he’d use it again on Richard Oort.

* * *

Rhiana Davinovitch nervously touched the earrings running from the tops of her ears down to the lobes. Where once they had been cheap Kmart junk, they were now real diamonds, emeralds, and pearls. She walked over to the hotel window, reveling in the play of muscles and tendons in her legs.

In her father’s dimension she wore a different form, and it wasn’t a comfortable one. She was glad to be back in the universe that housed Earth. Maybe it was because this world had birthed her. Her mother had been human.

Rhiana looked over to where her father, Madoc, sat watching CNN. Madoc wore his human form, but with the impossibly narrow face, upswept brows, and glittering eyes he still didn’t look human, not really.

Rhiana looked back out the window at a sunny California day. Droplets of water from the sprinklers glittered on the leaves on the avocado tree that offered privacy to their cabana at the Beverly Hills Hotel. It seemed weird to be back in California. Her foster parents were only a few miles away, sitting in their tiny 1940s tract house in Van Nuys. Years ago they had driven onto the grounds of the famous hotel just off Sunset Boulevard, and hotel security had reacted to her dad’s built-up pickup truck. Her father had blustered, but ultimately they had left without ever crossing the portals of the lobby. Now she was staying here.

There was a knock. Rhiana opened the door. The warm air blew into the over-air-conditioned cabana, carrying the scent of clipped grass and star jasmine and the heavy aftershave of the man at the door. Jack Rendell wasn’t what she had expected. Since he had been presented as the replacement for Mark Grenier, she had been expecting another unctuous, older man. Someone to play the role of reverend-as-daddy, but Rendell was young, early thirties at most. He topped six feet, and the tall frame supported an athlete’s musculature. His features were regular and handsome in that corn-fed, all-American way that you expected to see in a war movie from the 1940s. But there was an expression deep in his hazel eyes that belied that impression. Something cold and hungry and calculating lived beneath the pleasant exterior.

Rendell was a wildly popular spiritualist with a cable show, the occasional special on network television, and lucrative speaking tours where he put grieving people in touch with the “beloved departed.” Unlike many of that ilk, he was not a fraud. Instead he was a major magical talent. Even as introductions were made and handshakes exchanged, Rhiana could feel the power coming off him in waves. It was to be her task to teach him control of his magical ability.

Rendell held her hand an instant too long, stood a fraction too near, and allowed his gaze to drop lasciviously to her bosom. Rhiana longed to be older and sophisticated and know how to handle this. Instead she jerked her hand away and retreated.