IN THE WEE HOURS
Roma…
Salvatore Roma paced the narrow, ill-lit space between the antique boilers in the hotel basement.
It's beginning, he thought.
He could feel it, but it was building so slowly.
Patience, he reminded himself. Patience. You've waited so long already, you can wait a little longer now.
Mauricio had made room for himself on a low shelf. He rummaged in the white plastic shopping bag he'd brought along and removed a human finger. He held up the severed digit for Roma to see.
"Look at that fingernail," he said in the Old Tongue, his tone dripping contempt. The nail was very long, perfectly shaped, and painted a bright fuchsia with a diagonal turquoise stripe. "Where do they get the idea that this is attractive?" He bit into the nail with his sharp teeth and wrenched it free, exposing the raw nail bed. He spat it back into the bag. "I'm glad their time is up. I hate them."
Roma watched with amusement as Mauricio began to gnaw on the bloody stump of the finger, tearing off bits of flesh with quick, jerky movements. He could tell that his old companion was in a foul mood. Roma said nothing. He knew more was coming.
"As I am sure you can tell," Mauricio said finally, "I'm very upset with this recent turn of events."
"Really?" Roma hid a smile. He was fond of Mauricio but wished he had a sense of humor. "You hide it so well."
"I'll thank you not to mock me. You should not have admitted that stranger. The instant I laid eyes on him I knew he was trouble."
"And how, pray tell, did you know that?"
"I felt it. He is a wild card, an unexpected, unquantified element who spoke not a word of truth. You should have ejected him and not allowed him to set foot through the door for the rest of the weekend."
"That was my first impulse as well, but I had a change of heart."
"The hotel was supposed to be filled with sensitives—at least one in every room. He now has one of those rooms."
"True, and I believe he may be a sensitive himself."
Mauricio had gnawed the finger's proximal phalanx clean. He cracked the bone in half and began sucking out the marrow.
"Oh? And on what did you base that decision?"
"The fact that he is marked. You noticed that, I assume."
"Of course. Immediately. But he is not merely 'marked,' he is scarred, and that means he has fought the Otherness—fought and survived."
"'Fought' is a loaded term, Mauricio. He was most likely just an innocent bystander, a wounded civilian."
"Perhaps, but the very fact that he survived bothers me—bothers me very much. He could be working for the enemy."
Roma laughed. "Do not be such an old woman, Mauricio. We know the enemy's agents and he is not one of them."
"We know only of the Twins. How do we know there are not more? I say we should call this off."
Roma felt his amusement fade, replaced by irritation. "I wish to hear none of that. You have been against this plan from the start and you will latch onto any excuse to abort it."
Mauricio had finished with the first phalanx. He tossed the bone fragments back into the sack, then went to work on the rest of the finger.
"I've tried to discourage you for good reason. I was put here to advise you, remember?"
"To serve me, Mauricio."
The monkey glared at him. "I serve the Otherness, as do you."
"But I am The One. I decide, you facilitate. Do not forget that."
They'd had this argument before—many times. Mauricio had been sent to aid him, but over the years he had come to see himself as a mentor. Roma resented that. No one on this plane had worked longer in service of the Otherness than he. He had learned the hard way, through pain, imprisonment, even death, and the last thing he needed was someone offering half-baked advice, especially at this late date.
Mauricio said, "Why won't you listen to me when I tell you this whole plan is premature? You are too impatient."
"Impatient? I have waited ages—literally ages—for this. Do not dare call me impatient!"
"Very well then: You are not impatient. But you have not dealt with The Lady, and the signs are not quite right yet."
They are right, Roma thought, because I say they are right.
"The Lady does not matter."
"And why here?" Mauricio went on. "New York is too crowded. Too many variables, too many ways for something to go wrong. Why not somewhere in the desert? A hotel in, say, Nevada, or New Mexico?"
"No. I want it here."
"Why?"
"I have my reasons."
Mauricio hurled the partially eaten finger across the room and leaped to the floor. He shot upright to stand on his hind legs. His usually high-pitched voice dropped two octaves as he abandoned his capuchin monkey guise and expanded to his true self—a powerful, bull-chested, midnight-furred creature with blood-red eyes, standing four feet tall,
"You're not allowed reasons! You are The One. You are here to open the way. It is your duty and your destiny. Personal vendettas have no place in your life!"
"Then someone else should have been chosen," Roma said calmly, coldly. "Not someone with a past—a long past. Not someone with scores to settle. But there is no one else on this plane with the capacity to make the choice. So if I say it begins here, then here is where it will begin."
"I see I have no say in the matter," Mauricio said sullenly. He shrank into the capuchin guise again. "But mark my words well: I still think this is premature—the wrong time as well as the wrong place—and that it will end badly. I also think allowing that stranger in was a mistake. He's an enemy. And a terrible dresser."
Roma laughed, glad to ease the tension between them. Mauricio needed to be put in his place every so often, but he was too valuable an ally to alienate. "Admit it, Mauricio. That is what really bothers you about him, isn't it."
"Well, after all, did you see that hideous warm-up he wore? Absolutely dreadful." He looked Roma up and down. "How about your new suit? Any compliments on it?"
"Many." Not that he cared in the least.
"See? I told you—"
Roma held up his hand. "Wait!" A tingle began running over his skin. "Feel it? It's happening…the power is growing, building. Any moment now."
A portal would be opening soon. And as it did, he could only imagine what was going on with the sleeping sensitives racked on the floors above him. The last place he'd want to be right now was in their dreams. He almost felt sorry for them.
Almost.
Olive…
…awakens to the sound of chanting. She forces her eyes open and gasps.
Hooded forms, thirteen of them, crowd around her bed, each holding a thick black candle. She screams but only a muffled squeak struggles past the cloth gag bunched in her mouth. She tries to move but her hands are tied behind her and she's bound to the bed.
Panic detonates within as she realizes her rings are gone, and the crucifix has been taken from around her neck.
"Did you think you could be saved, Olive?" says a voice.
It echoes from one of the forms but she can't tell which because their faces are lost in the inky shadows within their cowls. It sounds like her father's voice, but that can't be…he's dead—he died ten years ago.
She begins to pray. Our Father, Who art in Heaven …
"Yes," says the voice, "I really do believe she thinks she's saved. Pathetic, isn't it."
Laughter from the other forms, male and female voices, mocking her.
"Let us remind you why you can never be saved," says the voice. "Let us take you back and show you why the face of God will be forever turned from you."
Olive screams through her gag. Not that! Oh, please, not that again!
She feels herself shrinking, the gag popping out of her mouth, the cords on her hands and feet falling away, to be replaced by bands of duct tape winding around her body, pinning her arms to her sides and her legs together. She tries to scream again but she has no voice here. The hotel room melts away, leaving her in a dank subcellar lit by smoky torches.
And she knows this place, oh, dear God, she remembers every detail of the horrors that were perpetrated here. For years, decades, she had no memory of these events, but gradually, through many sessions with her memory recovery therapist, she unlocked doors that had been sealed shut by her protective brain. One after another they opened and she learned what had happened to her.
And her father was the villain. After the divorce, her Bible-toting mother had filled her ears with maledictions about his drunken, no-account ways, yet still Olive had to spend every other weekend with him. And on one of those weekends, he and some of his friends dragged her along to one of their "services"…
And now she sees the subcellar more clearly than ever before…almost as if she's there…
Suddenly she realizes that she is here. They're not going to make her remember…she's five again and she's going to relive the horror.
No-no-no-no-no! PLEASE NO!
But she cannot turn away, cannot even close her eyes. It's all here—the pentagrams and inverted crosses painted in blood on the walls. Straight ahead lies a huge marble block, dripping red. In the high, deep fireplace to the right, something that looks like a monkey is turning on a spit.
A goblet is pressed to her lips.
"Drink!" says her father's voice.
When Olive sees the thick red fluid within, and sniffs the coppery odor, she turns her head away in revulsion.
"Drink!" the voice commands.
Her head is grabbed and tilted back, her jaws forced open; thick, warm, salty liquid pours into her mouth. She coughs, gags, but they keep pouring. She feels it running over her face, clogging her nostrils, she must swallow or drown, swallow or drown…
Olive swallows, gasps, tries to vomit it back up, but they squeeze her throat and keep it down.
Then she's dragged to a table—a rough wooden bench, really—and watches as one of the hooded figures slices flesh from the monkey turning on the spit…a chubby little thing with an unusually large head for a monkey. The flesh is laid before Olive. They don't even give her a chance to refuse it. The greasy meat is thrust into her mouth, then her jaws are forced shut and her nostrils pinched.
Again—swallow or suffocate.
She swallows.
Still gagging, she is carried to another corner of the room where a huge sow lies spread-eagled on a stone block. Its throat has been slit; its many-nippled abdomen has been opened and all the organs removed. Olive is folded into the red stinking cavity, her head in the pelvis, her feet against the diaphragm. She kicks and screams and twists as they sew the skin flaps closed, but to no avail. Soon she is entombed in the wet, suffocating darkness.
Never in her life, before or since, has Olive been so terrified, so mortally sick with fear and loathing. She is sure she is going to die. Past her sobs and whimpers she hears muffled chanting around her. The rotten air clogs in her throat. She can't breathe.
As a roaring grows in her ears and bright spots flare before her eyes, she feels a pair of hands gripping her head, the fingers curving under her jaw and pulling. Darkness still engulfs her. Where did the hands come from?
The hands pull, harder and harder, until she is sure her head will come off. She kicks toward the pressure and suddenly she's moving, squeezing through a tight, tight passage, and then there's air! Who'd have thought this dank subterranean air could smell so sweet? She sucks deep drafts as the rest of her body is pulled free of the sow through the space between its legs.
The chanters cheer and tear off their robes. They are naked beneath, and now they dance and drink and go into a rutting frenzy—men with women, women with women, men with men.
Child Olive squeezes her eyes shut while adult Olive thinks about all that followed after she regained these memories. She remembers confronting her father as he lay dying of cirrhosis—despite his toxic state, he gave a great performance of wounded incredulity. And even his mother, who hated the man and never had a good word to say about him, declared that he never could have been a part of such horrendous doings.
Lies, all lies.
Olive went to the local police. They investigated but could find no evidence of such a cult. Of course not. How could they? The evidence was three decades old.
Then she heard that the FBI was investigating the wave of reports of Satanic ritual abuse sweeping the country. Olive told them her story. The agents were properly sympathetic, and dutifully took down her information, but their investigation also yielded nothing.
How could that be? she wondered in all her naivete. How could one of the finest crime fighting organizations in the world find no evidence of such a widespread cult?
When she went back to the federal office and insisted that they keep looking, one of the investigators took her aside. He told her that they'd investigated hundreds of these claims and had yet to find any corroborating evidence. They'd combed through houses where others with recovered memories claimed that dozens of children had been ritually abused and sacrificed, and had found not a trace of blood. He even went so far as to suggest to Olive that what she remembered most likely never happened, that it was something called false memory syndrome, instilled by suggestions from her memory recovery therapist.
Olive thanked him very much…and fled the building.
Because then she knew…the very people she was turning to for help were part of the problem. This was bigger than she ever had imagined. Higher-ups in the government were linked to a powerful worldwide network of murderous satanic pedophiles and pornographers who destroyed all evidence when they could, and planted disinformation when they could not. And when that didn't work, the Lord of Evil protected them—Satan himself implanted distortions in the brains of survivors, to make them seem like poor delusional fools.
A filigree of deceit encasing the world, concealing the truth…
Abruptly Olive is no longer lying on the floor. She feels sheets around her, a mattress against her back. And she is no longer a child.
She opens her eyes. She is back in her hotel room, and the Satanists are gathered again around her bed.
"So you plainly see, Olive," says her father's mocking voice, "why you can never be saved. You have drunk human blood and eaten human flesh. In God's eyes you are a blight on His creation, you are anathema. You will be cast into hell where we can all be together—for eternity!"
"No!" she cries. "I'm saved! I've been born again!"
Vicious laughter all around as her father says, "Born again? Olive, dear, you cannot be born again into the Spirit, because you have already been born again—of a sow!" The laughter grows louder. "And when did you last hear of a pig entering heaven?"
Olive sobs. She squeezes her eyes shut and claps her hands over her ears—for some reason, her hands are free now—to shut out the laughter. Soon the laughter fades. Hesitantly, she opens her eyes…
She was alone.
Olive sat up in her bed and rubbed her eyes. She looked around in the darkness. Across the room, next to the square shadow of the TV, the red glowing numerals on the alarm clock read 4:28.
Relief flooded through her. A dream…an appalling, horrifying dream, but only a dream. Her father was dead. He couldn't hurt her anymore. He—
Olive froze. The glowing numerals had disappeared…as if someone had stepped between her and the clock. She sensed movement on both sides of her.
Oh, no! Please, God, NO!
She couldn't bear to relive that again. She opened her mouth to scream but a leather-clad hand slithered across her face and sealed her lips…
Jack…
…awakens to a sound…a scratching noise…
He sits up and focuses on it. Coming from the door. He reaches under the pillow and finds the Glock; he works the slide to chamber a round, then pads to the door.
As he reaches it, he notices the odor.
Rakoshi stink.
Not again. But that was a dream. This is real.
He puts his eye to the peephole and peers into the hall. Something wrong out there. All the lights are out. It's like peeking into a coffin…but it smells worse.
Then he sees the eyes, pairs of glowing yellow almond-shaped slits floating in the darkness, and he knows.
Rakoshi!
No time to wonder how as a huge weight slams against the other side of the door. Jack jumps back. The weight hits the door again, and again, until the wood shatters, sending splinter missiles hurtling toward him.
Jack backpedals across the room, firing all the way. He jumps onto the bed. With his back to the wall he blasts wildly, down and around, everywhere he sees the eyes.
When the clip is empty, he stands there panting, sweating. The eyes are gone and he can't hear anything past the ringing in his ears. Slowly, cautiously, he bends, gropes, finds the switch on the bedside lamp, and turns it.
Blinking in the sudden glare, he gasps at the sight of a dozen or more hulking, cobalt-skinned creatures milling about the room, unharmed by the fusillade he's just loosed at them. They turn their shark-snouted heads his way, bare their teeth, and rake the air with their talons, but they do not approach. They merely watch him with their yellow basilisk eyes, as if waiting for him to fall over dead. No hurry. He's not going anywhere.
How? How did they get to his room without causing a panic and leaving a trail of bloody carnage in their wake?
And what the hell are they waiting for?
He should be glad they're waiting. His extra clips are in his gym bag over by the door. Not that they would do much good—bullets never seemed to have much effect on these things. But fire…yeah, fire works.
He glances at the lamp. If he broke the bulb, could he spark a flame with the exposed innards?
He's reaching for it when he hears a voice.
"Do not be afraid, Jack."
He jerks around. Who—?
One of the rakoshi, larger than the rest, has moved closer, gesturing to him.
"We are your brothers."
The voice seems to be coming from the rakosh. But that's impossible.
"What?" he says aloud, feeling like an idiot.
The rakoshi he knew had the brains of pit bulls and the deadly homing instincts of Tomahawk missiles—and were about as explosively destructive. The ones he killed could say a word or two, but were far behind the dumbest parrot in the vocabulary department.
And yet the voice is there, calling him by name.
"You are half rakosh, Jack. You have denied your true nature long enough. It is time at last to come out of the closet."
What the hell is it talking about?
"Purge your human side, Jack, and come the rest of the way over. It is just a step. Just one easy step."
"You're crazy," he says, and it sounds so lame.
"Still in denial, then? We feared that. We know what is keeping you from embracing your true nature, and because you are our brother, we will help you cross over."
Jack notices a commotion over by the shattered door—the rakoshi there seem suddenly agitated. Jack pauses, then feels his blood crystallize as Gia and Vicky are dragged into view. All the air seems to rush from the room, leaving him gasping.
"Jack!" they scream in unison as they see him.
He moves toward them but the big rakosh slams him back against the wall and pins him there.
"Wait," it says.
Jack watches in horror as Gia is driven to the floor. Half a dozen rakoshi surround her, blocking her from view. He struggles frantically to get free, clubbing at the big rakosh with his empty pistol, but he's pinned like a moth to a board. He shouts in rage and anguish as he sees their talons rise and fall, going down clean, coming up red. He hears Gia's wails of pain, Vicky's cries of horror. Gia's blood spatters the wall and Jack goes mad—black closes in around the edges of his crimson vision. With a joint-popping lunge he breaks free of the rakosh's grasp and makes a diving leap toward the melee.
In the air he has a glimpse of Gia's torn body, her wide blue eyes beseeching him as the life fades from them. He shouts in horror, but is batted away—powerful arms grip him and hurl him toward the window. He crashes through the glass but manages to twist and catch the sill. He's hanging by his fingertips, kicking for purchase on the brick wall, unable to see into the room but hearing Vicky's wails of terror turn to screams of pain, and then end with a gurgle and he knows she's gone and it's too late to save her, too late for both of them, and without them, what's the point of going on? Because if he can't save them, if of all people he can't protect Gia and Vicky, then his whole life is a sham and he might as well end it here.
He looks down and sees a gaping hole in the street below, growing larger, swallowing the asphalt pavement, then the sidewalk.
A hiss above him—the big rakosh, hanging over the sill. It raises its three-taloned hands, dripping red.
"They are gone. Nothing stands in your way now, brother. Join your true family."
"No!" Jack shouts.
"You must!" The rakosh hops up onto the sill, poised like a diver. "Come! We are going home."
The creature leaps over Jack and plummets toward the ever-widening maw of the hole. With a chorus of shrill cries, the rest of the rakoshi do the same, arcing over Jack in a dark hellish cataract, cascading toward the bottomless pit yawning below.
And finally they're gone, and all is still. But Jack can't bring himself to crawl back into that room and see the torn bloody ruins of the two most important people in his life.
In complete despair, he lets go and begins to fall, crying out not with fear but with the pain of incalculable loss as he tumbles through space, eager for the dark embrace that will blot out the horror of his failure—
But he lands softly…on a mattress…
Jack twisted violently and almost fell out of bed. "Wha—?" Dark. He was in his hotel room. No scratching at the door, no odor. He turned on the light—the room was empty. He checked the pistol under the pillow—full clip; a sniff of the muzzle showed it hadn't been fired recently. He looked around the room: everything in its place, the drapes still drawn as he'd left them.
He sagged and moaned, "Oh, Christ!" A dream—it had been a dream. He was so filled with relief he almost sobbed.
He glanced at the clock. 4:32 A.M.
Another rakoshi-mare. And this time Gia and Vicky were in it—torn to pieces in it. The dream had had a premonitory feel. Jack's stomach roiled at the thought. But it couldn't be. The rakoshi were gone. What the hell was going on then?
He shook himself and, pistol still in hand, left the bed. Thirsty. He flipped the bathroom light switch. As the fluorescents flickered to life he jumped back.
A crate, dark, dark green, five feet long and a foot high and wide, floated in the center of the bathroom, maybe three feet off the floor. Smoky wisps trailed off its surface like steam, white tendrils drifting toward the floor like dry ice fumes. Cold air seeped around his ankles…flowing from the crate.
Jack's first instinct was to point his pistol at it. Then he realized…
"I'm still dreaming. Got to be."
A glance left showed that the room door was still locked, the sturdy swing latch still in the closed position. But that didn't mean a whole hell of a lot. Jack knew those could be bypassed—he'd done it a few times himself. The gym bag was the clincher—it was still snug against the door, right where he'd left it.
He didn't feel as if he was dreaming. He slapped his face. It stung.
And then with a crash that sent him diving for cover, the box dropped to the floor.
Bomb was the first thought to flash though his head. But who'd leave a bomb in a big green crate in a bathroom? And it hadn't exploded when it dropped.
He peeked around the corner. The box sat cold and quiet on the tiles. Looked completely harmless. But Jack was in no hurry to see what was inside.
He checked the door again. No way it had been opened. So how—?
He stopped himself.
Wait. What am I thinking? This isn't happening. It's no more real than those rakoshi of a few minutes ago. I keep forgetting I'm still asleep.
This felt pretty damn real for a dream, but what else could it be? Which meant he shouldn't be wasting his time trying to answer unanswerable questions when all this would be gone when the dream ended.
He headed back to the bed, closed his eyes, and waited to wake up.
Roma…
"Where is it?"
Roma stood in the center of the basement and turned in a slow circle, arms spread in bafflement. The portal had opened and closed—he knew it, he'd felt it—but he had nothing to show for it.
Anger mixed with new, unfamiliar emotions: confusion and, strangest of all, uncertainty.
"Where is the device? Why was it not sent?"
"It was sent," Mauricio said, tying up his plastic bag. 'I sense it somewhere in this building. But not here."
"But it was supposed to be delivered here. To me."
"Obviously it wasn't."
The creature's serene tone rankled Roma. "Mauricio…"
"Something has gone wrong—as I predicted."
Roma felt his anger flare to incandescence. "I want no more talk of your predictions! I want that device. You say it is somewhere in this building—find it! Now!"
Mauricio stared at Roma a moment, then hopped down to the floor.
"It's that stranger," he said. "I'm sure of it."
"Then find him. Let him be a stranger no more. Learn about him—where he lives, who he knows, who he loves—especially who he loves. A man who loves is vulnerable. Love is an excellent lever, one we should not hesitate to use should we need to."
Mauricio nodded and, without another word, trotted off, dragging his plastic bag behind him.
Disquiet nibbled at the base of Roma's spine as he watched him go. Could Mauricio be right? Was it not yet his time?
No. That was not in question. Then what had gone wrong? Was he right that the stranger—the insect who called himself Jack Shelby—was the problem?
He would have to learn more about him. And if he proved to be the source of interference, Roma would see to it that he sorely regretted the day he had dared to insinuate his insignificant presence into something so momentous.