Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller (48 page)

“Brikker,” he said. “He cut into us. Into our brains.”

~

He set his glass on the night table and then cast her an uncertain look. His expression was drawn and dark. He trembled, and she went to steady him. He nodded to her, and he sat up. And then, almost shamefully, he held his head down. Took his fingers and spread the hair on his skull.

Lynn gasped. “
Oh my God
—”

She helped; moved her fingers through his hair. There were at least two dozen scars, each precisely straight, each identical to the ones on his temples. And at the crown of his skull, his mark: a small, simple
3.

“More at the back,” he said sullenly, and straightened. He let his hair slip down over his shoulders.

She looked to him, incredulous. “
Why? Why would he do this?
”

Suddenly he looked sickly. And frightened.

“Samples,” he said, barely. Small tears had welled in his eyes. “To see what made us
tick
—”

That throbbing hammer came again. He held his head in his hands in fear. In shame. He looked to her one last time, and then shut his eyes, as if this would help. But of course … of course. He could see it, that damnable machine, its long spindly arms emerging from the shadows like the steely tentacles of some metallic monster. So too, could he hear it, that crippling sound, the terrifying swiftness of it, the
ffffft-ffffft ffffft-ffffft
as the tiny blades sliced into his skull and extracted what he was. His skin grew cold with sweat. He was coming undone. He brought his arms down to his chest, fists clenched, knuckles white, and only when he felt her soft touch to his cheek did they relax—and he screamed. He screamed and he screamed. She screamed, too, screamed his name, and only then did he open his eyes, tears streaming from them. He met hers, so blue and so beautiful, and let out a helpless cry … and finally fell into her arms.

~ 25

She held him close for as long as he needed. And when he could, when the darkness within him had found the light, he answered her question with one of his own.

“Why does
Ray
do what he does?”

She considered; she nodded. “Power.
Control.
”

He echoed her.

“But Brikker can’t control you,” she said.

“He did. He can.”

“The experiments. The time you spent in Texas.”

Kain’s expression chilled. “I’ve killed so many, Lynn. Everywhere I go … people die.”

“That’s not true.”

He regarded her wearily. “Beaks
died,
Lynn. So did your cats. Lee and your father were
this
close. What’s now—that doesn’t matter to me.”

“What’s now is what matters most,” she told him. “Make now count.”

He shook his head as if she did not understand. “He won’t stop until he has what he wants.”

“You can stay here, we can—”

“He’ll find me,” he said, cutting her off. “We both know it.”

She could only accept it with silence.

“The Project,” he said. “It’s so much more than you know.”

Her eyes grew.

“You’ve seen what I can do,” he told her. “What the Turn leaves in its wake. But to understand its power—do you remember what I said? About the future?”

“It’s not carved in stone.”

“I don’t know anymore,” he said, fearfully. “I just don’t know.”

“Kain, you’re scaring me.”

The drifter took some water, then set the glass down. “They always seemed like hallucinations,” he said. “The things I saw—it was like living in a nightmare. By the time I escaped, I honestly believed I was insane. Still … no matter what Brikker did to me, no matter how many beatings I took, no matter how many injections I got … I never looked. Not once. But somehow, alone in that chamber—I would slip. My thoughts weren’t my own anymore. Images … voices … they’d overwhelm me. I tried to block out all those horrible things in my mind, but I never could.” He paused, reflectively. “I thought those days were over.”

“The drugs,” Lynn said. “God knows what they’ve done to you. I mean, to your abilities. To your
mind.
And these headaches you’re having, all these dizzy spells—”

She cut herself off; cut off her thoughts.
Tried
to.

“It’s going to be all right,” he said.

“No, don’t.”

“Lynn … I’ve known since the beginning.” He chuckled ironically. “I’ve lived my whole
life
on borrowed time.”

“I’m glad you think this is so funny. But you don’t know … you don’t
know
—”

He held her a moment, held her tight; she could only struggle in vain. When he pulled back, she had tears welling in her eyes.

“Whether it’s the Turn or the drugs doesn’t matter,” he said earnestly. “I’m just a tool. In the end—when the Project is finished—Brikker will kill me. He’ll have what he needs.” He drew a disturbing pause. “Do you remember what Lee said? About copying people?”

“Yes,” she said, sniffling. “I …
no.
That isn’t possible—” She stopped herself and wiped the tears from her eyes. “You’ve seen it. Haven’t you.”

She pressed him.

“It’s called
cloning,
” he said, with clear reservation. “It’s not new. Scientists have been working on this for decades. It’s become Brikker’s Holy Grail.”

“They can’t really do this. They
won’t.
”

“Like they wouldn’t build the Bomb.”

“… And use it,” she added.

“It used to be science fiction,” he said. “I couldn’t begin to explain how it works. But from what I know, a simple animal—a tadpole, if I remember right—was cloned about ten years ago. In time, they’ll clone other animals. More complex ones. Mice. Cats. Cattle. They’ll clone a sheep in about thirty years.”

“And a human?”

“Not long after,” he said. “Maybe fifty years … but that doesn’t matter. Not with time.”

“But you said you can’t go forward. That means Brikker can’t … right?”

Kain said nothing.

“
Right?
” she asked again.

~

“You can’t get a butterfly from an egg,” he said.

She gave him a look.

“Something Gramps told me,” he said. “There’s always a caterpillar in between. The Turn … the Sense … Brikker has the Sense. But he has more.”

“More? Are you saying he
can
go forward?”

“No. But his Sense is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. He remembers everything after a Turn. Everything. Things even I can’t.”

“So he’s what—some missing link?”

“Between people like you … and people like me.”

“But he can’t Turn.”

“No. But he can see the future.”

“But even I can, that’s what you said. So can you.”

“We see what
could
be. The things we see are fuzzy. Like a dream. My visions—for lack of a better word—are far clearer than yours. But Brikker? He sees more. Deeper. Much more clearly. Much more
accurately.
His ability is astonishing. It’s frightening.”

“Which is why he wants
you.
”

“Yes. In that sense, I’m the missing link. The Turn.”

He stirred with a small groan, the throb in his brain rising. He waved her off when she went to steady him.

“Brikker’s seen the future, Lynn. He knows what I know, and a good deal more. But his knowledge is incomplete.” He paused. “His ability to see—it only happens when I Turn. If he captures me again, I don’t know if I can stop him.”

“But you said it rarely happens, even for you.”

“I’m not Brikker,” he said. “He has visions every time.
Every
time.”

Lynn was reeling. “I still don’t understand any of this. It’s scaring me, Kain.”

He regarded her gravely. “Do you remember what happened when I Turned? What happened to you?”

Her gaze faltered. “We melted.”

“And then?”

“Blackness,” she said, remembering. “Emptiness.”

“Nothingness,” he said. “But it really isn’t. It’s more like a window. A gateway through time.”

“But it’s one way, right? Backwards.”

He took her hand and held it gently. “We’re in the here and now,” he told her. “But think about it … we’re just part of someone else’s past.”

“But you said the future hasn’t happened yet.”

“
Our
future,” he said, and saw her confusion. “Einstein was a genius, no question. He was right when he said it was impossible to separate the past from the future … or the now. They’re all happening at the same instant. It’s hard to accept, I know. The trouble with time is that it doesn’t have three sides you can touch. It’s not a box you can hold in your hand. It flows, back and forth, like water … it just
is.
”

He sighed solemnly. It was the sound of inevitability.

“When I had those visions—when I realized that what I was seeing was the Coming—I finally understood the true madness of the Project. The madness that drives Brikker.

“Once he has me, those gaps in his knowledge will begin to close. What would have taken decades of research he’ll have in a few years. But once Brikker clones me, make no mistake. He’ll clone him
self.
”

“What? What on Earth for?”

“A better mousetrap,” Kain said. “He’d only be a step away from altering that clone.”

“
Alt
ering?”

“… And with Brikker’s Sense …”

Lynn Bishop gasped. “This isn’t about changing the past,” she said. “Brikker wants to change the future.”

“Or create it.”

“My God, Kain … what if … if he were able to Turn … if he could go back and forth through time—”

His eyes met hers.

“I know,” he said, forebodingly. “Hell on Earth.”

~ 26

Later, he knelt by the window and watched her go. He could still savor the tease of her soft perfume, and at that moment, had never wanted her more. But he knew. He knew. Barely stirring, he waited for the longest time, for her light to go dark—she passed her window just the once, and he felt his heart rise and slip—and then he slipped into bed, the hammering in his brain killing him. He lay there, fighting it, but then he surrendered to it as a groan escaped him. He rolled onto his side, curling in agony. He quivered, his muscles aching, his flesh burning. It came, came quickly, and Time spun itself into a maelstrom … if only for an instant.

He felt sick and weak and threw up. At the sink, he stared blankly into the mirror and saw the Little Ghost staring back at him. He had aged a life poorly spent; there was nothing familiar here. He turned off the light and crawled into bed, reeling. They were gone now, tangled and lost in the delicate web of mind and memory, but they lingered. Strange, distorted sounds he could not hope to understand. Voices, just as undulating and complex; just as confounding. Fleeting sensations of the possible. And yet, as before, there had been stunning moments of clarity, terrifying glimpses of what might be.

The Coming had never been so clear.

He rose in a cold sweat into the darkness. Brought his hands to his temples. Let his fingers slip across the perfect lines of his scars.

Perhaps … just perhaps … he
was
insane.

~

He saw.

Saw Frank Wright, eyes lost and dead, that sickly skin darker and leaner. Saw that cigarette dangling from ghoulish lips, saw him finish it and flick the spent death-stick through the open window. Saw that crimson river stream from his nostril, saw it slip along his lips and his chin. Saw him draw the last of the whiskey, saw the pickup amble down the rails and into the sunset.

Saw Henry Roberts falter to his knees; saw him shove his trusty .30-.30 in his mouth.

Saw Jimmy Long, lying there on that dark road, his head beaten and bloodied.

Saw Lee—precious Lee—her frightened eyes so telling.

Saw the slow rise of the brim of Number 23’s ball cap; saw the cool determination of Ryan Bishop.

Saw Big Al Hembruff draw a pair of Schlitz from his barrel, crack one open and raise it in toast. Saw the big man smile with a playful wink.

Saw Brikker, that twisted evil; saw that black form stirring against the rising flames.

Saw the coming darkness; saw its hunger.

Saw it swallow him.

~ 27

Back then, he never aimed to hurt him. He aimed to kill him.

And when Ray Bishop, bearing the freakish scar that the half-breed’s old man had laid on him way back when—with his own knife, goddamnit—turned north down that dirt road toward Spirit Lake, he brought his hand up to his cheek. Let his fingers remember.

He remembered all too well.

The big Sioux had put up a good fight: sonofabitch must have been seven feet if he was a foot, had a reach like a monster. Fists like rock. Tough as nails, too, a goddamn oak. Even after Jake and Frankie had softened him up, the big bastard had managed to pile his sorry ass into his pickup and make it halfway to Spirit. Down this very road … not far from where he was right now. He could still see those taillights in his mind, how they’d burned like those big Sioux eyes. How they’d tortured him. Oh, yes. The crazy sonofabitch had had it coming, the second he’d stepped foot inside the bar. Had it coming.

He took a stiff one from the bottle he had crammed in between his legs. He remembered, all right.

Remembered ramming this very pickup into those lights, those
eyes,
like a fist. How the Sioux’s pickup had slammed into the ditch, how he’d dragged him from the cab and started pummeling him. How when he’d pulled out his switchblade the sonofabitch had somehow snatched it from him, sliced him clean across the side of his face, how he’d kicked the big
Sioux’s
face in until there was no face left … how he’d nearly thrown his back out trying to stuff that dead Indian back in the cab. Well … far from dead. The sonofabitch was still breathing, probably would have lived to be a hundred if he’d left him. Fucker was tough as nails.

He remembered how he’d fallen over bass-ackwards, stone drunk, blood gushing from his wound, bare breaths after stuffing his shirt inside the gas tank and lighting it up. How he’d laughed at that, just him and the trees and the stars and that dirt-stupid Indian, how he’d laughed at his genius.