The caravan departed Camp Whiskey at the break of dawn, six vans and two Jeeps packed with weaponry and ammunition, carrying some two dozen passengers down a winding, snow-encrusted mountain path. They traveled all through the day and the whole of the night that followed, arriving somewhere in the approximate center of Wyoming at dawn of the next day.
Allyson blinked and emerged from the drowse she’d fallen into some fifteen minutes earlier. She sat up straight and stared through a window at the gray sky and the passing countryside. The Jeep’s engine rattled and chugged, its big tires bouncing in and out of potholes as it followed the snaking stretch of rural highway. There were no houses to be seen anywhere. Just trees and more trees, their branches denuded by the season, pale and angling toward the sky like the outstretched arms of worshippers.
The Jeep was at the rear of the modest column of vehicles. Allyson shifted in her seat and peered between the front seats for a glimpse of the road ahead. The other vehicles were staying close, none of them separated by more than a car length. The van directly in front of them was old and painted olive green.
Just like a for-real army truck, Allyson thought, smirking.
But as far as she was concerned, the van’s color marked the end of any similarity between this insane glorified Boy Scout mission and any real military operation. They lacked strength of numbers, for one thing. In the wake of Jack Paradise’s murder and the imprisonment of Jim, the tenuous connections that had held together the always fragile Camp Whiskey community frayed and came apart. An attempt to repel the usurpers from the Order of the Dragon lacked cohesion and direction and was put down in spectacularly brutal fashion. The camp’s mysteriously cowed faux-military wing stood by and let it happen. The bulk of the people saw that the Order could not be overcome and a mass exodus ensued. Allyson had felt a strong urge to run with them, but could not bring herself to do so without Chad, who was riding now in one of the forward vehicles.
Only a small, hardcore group chose not to flee. These were mostly men, and mostly members of the paramilitary unit assembled by Jack Paradise. Most of Jack’s men died alongside him that night. The ones who remained took orders from the Order people, and did so without question. Chad was being held against his will by the Asian woman, but Allyson had a feeling he would have stayed regardless, at least as long as Jim remained alive.
Thinking of that stirred Allyson’s anger anew. The bitch treated him like a piece of property, or a pet, dragging him along wherever she went, striking him whenever he dared to open his mouth. Allyson felt embarrassment on Chad’s behalf any time she witnessed this behavior, and a part of her withered inside every time it happened, as she thought of how humiliating the ordeal must be for him. Doubly frustrating was her utter inability to do anything about it.
The Asian woman forbade any contact between them. Allyson initially wondered why Chad’s new keeper allowed her to stay at Camp Whiskey. She eventually realized the woman was deriving a sadistic enjoyment from Allyson’s predicament, taunting her by flaunting her ownership of Chad. It was a petty, cruel thing. But it was also a good thing. Proximity meant there would one day be an opportunity to exploit. She kept her eyes open. The chance to get away with Chad in tow would present itself. And she damn well intended to make the most of that opportunity.
But now things had changed. Again.
The order to saddle up and head out to the final battle of good versus evil (although Allyson had decided evil versus evil was a more accurate description at this point) had been handed down. Many hundreds of miles later, Allyson was still looking for that perfect moment. The circumstances complicated things. She no longer had an indefinite period of time to work with. She was separated from her man and surrounded by well-armed hostiles.
Still, she wasn’t ready to give up just yet.
She kicked the back of the seat ahead of her and said, “How much farther?”
The man in the seat turned to look at her. He was clad in camos and sported black shades despite the overcast sky. “Not sure. Maybe fifty more miles.” He grinned and licked parched lips. “And hey…k ick my seat again and I’ll come back there to teach you a lesson.”
The man in the driver’s seat-a black man also clad in camos-glanced at the rearview mirror and grinned broadly. “I’d like to tear me off a piece of that, my ownself.”
Allyson snorted. “Either of you pukebags touch me, I’ll tear your fucking eyes out. And anyway, you don’t have time for pussy. You’ve got a big battle to be dying in soon, remember?”
The driver laughed. “Listen to the mouth on her.”
The man in the shotgun seat leered at her. “Don’t worry, baby. I can always make time for pussy, one way or another.”
Allyson slid a hand into a pocket of the heavy winter jacket she was wearing. Her fingers curled around the handle of the big switchblade she’d stashed there earlier. She eased her hand out of the poc ket and clicked the little button on the side. The blade popped out and she lunged forward, slamming the blade into the man’s exposed throat. The man’s shades popped off his face as blood jetted from the hole in his throat. He gaped at Allyson in disbelief even as she yanked the blade out and slammed it into one of his eyes. Allyson did all of this without thinking, instinct driving her, a moment of pure awareness in which she understood on a primal level that the “perfect” moment she hoped for would never arrive. It was much like those fevered moments in the dark kitchen of Chad’s house as she’d slaughtered those men in black, her mind and body operating with surprising efficiency in stripped-down reptile-brain mode.
And brutal murder was like anything-it got easier with practice.
Blood spurted over her hands and soaked the front of her jacket. The man tried to twist away from her, but she grabbed the front of his shirt and held him close, yanking the blade from his eye and whipping it around again, punching it through his temple, somehow keeping her aim true as the driver screamed and swerved on the winding back road.
Allyson turned her snarling face toward the driver and said,“Slow down and let the others get around that bend.”
She pulled the bloody blade out of the dead man’s head and brandished it.
“Do it or die.”
The man was shaking and crying, robbed utterly of any remaining shred of bravado or machismo. “Y-y-y-yeah…o-kay… please…”
And he did it. The van ahead of them disappeared around the bend. The Jeep slowed and Allyson ordered the driver to park at the shoulder. Again, he did as instructed, tears streaming down his face as he mewled like a snot-nosed kid on a playground standing in the shadow of a bully. Allyson pushed the shotgun seat forward, threw the door open, and got out. She hauled the dead man’s body out of the Jeep and deposited it in the ditch beyond the shoulder. The whole time the Jeep was in gear and running, its engine chugging, exhaust kicking out steam in the winter’s air.
Allyson climbed back inside, assuming the position formerly occupied by the dead, would-be rapist. She pulled the pistol from the driver’s holster and jammed the barrel against his side.
“Drive. Now.”
The driver looked at the pistol she’d so easily taken from him. Then he looked at her, simple, numb disbelief in his eyes. “I could’ve killed you. Or left you. Or-”
Allyson jabbed the pistol harder against him. “But you didn’t. You fucked up. Because you’re not as hardcore as you thought. But I am, motherfucker. So now you’re gonna drive. Catch up to the rest of those assholes before they know anything’s wrong. Make me say it again, I’ll shoot your ass and do it my damn self.”
The Jeep lurched forward.
The engine rattled and ate up highway.
They caught up and kept rolling.
The spoon slipped from her fingers and landed with a small thump on the little card table. It landed upside down, its meager load of mashed potatoes dumped onto the scuffed and scratched black surface. Ellen groped for the spoon’s handle again, managed to grasp it at an awkward angle, and raised it again to her mouth. This time the spoon actually entered her mouth. A sound of simple triumph issued from the back of her throat.
Marcy sighed. “That’s something, anyway. You didn’t get any actual food in your mouth, but hell, you’re getting there.”
She settled back in her chair and stared at the thing that was supposed to be her sister. The creature was the spitting image of Ellen. Marcy was impressed by what Dream had accomplished, this godlike act of forming life out of seeming thin air. It had been Alicia’s idea, to see if Dream could deliberately do what she’d done with her, recreating a dead friend from a synthesis of memories, spiritual essence, and, for lack of a better word, magic. Dream had been wary at first, and then curious, as she became increasingly interested in testing the limits of her abilities. Marcy had been so numb, so grief-stricken, and so willing to gr asp at any straw.
So one night on their way to this place they stopped at a cheap motel on the outskirts of a rural community. Dream and Marcy crawled into bed together. They wrapped their bodies around each other, limbs entwined in the most intimate ways possible. There’d been nothing sexual about this, just an instinctual understanding that they needed to be as close to each other as possible in order to effect this unique process of creation. The darkness and relative silence served to enhance their concentration. Marcy’s mind filled with images and thoughts of Ellen and nothing else. She visualized her dead sister so well Ellen seemed to come alive in her mind. She fell asleep in Dream’s embrace, and thoughts of Ellen followed her into dreams so vivid, so lucid, they felt as real as anything from her waking life. As she awakened in the dim light of the following morning, she heard a sound like the scared whimpering of a lost puppy. Then she’d opened her eyes and there was her reborn sister, nude and huddled in a corner of the dingy room.
She’d felt such joy in those first moments, a feeling subsequently tempered by the realization the creature they’d created was essentially an empty vessel. But the reborn Ellen did seem to recognize Marcy and the others in a dim way, and it was this little thing that provided the shred of hope necessary to keep going. Dream had pledged to work with her every day until Ellen was fully restored. Marcy had faith in her friend and believed this would eventually happen.
She looked into Ellen’s stupid, vacant eyes again and sighed.
Eventually…
Marcy didn’t doubt the sincerity of Dream’s intent. They’d formed a strong bond over the course of those long, frequently surreal months on the road. The complicating factor, however, was Dream’s near-constant state of inebriation. She’d stayed drunk or high much of the time during their travels, but the camaraderie of the road had obscured the extent of her problem. Now, though, the truth of Dream’s dependency was plain to see. She had the perpetually dour aura of the clinically depressed. She was obviously self-medicating. In a way, it was understandable. It wasn’t as if she could seek the aid of a psychiatrist or any other type of mental health professional.
But knowing this failed to alleviate Marcy’s frustration. Her friend was a god. Or something very close to a god. And that was simultaneously very cool and fucked-up to the nth degree. Cool because it allowed Dream and her friends a level of freedom few people would ever experience. And fucked up because Dream inwardly remained so quintessentially human and frail despite her gift.
Ellen was eating with her fingers again, stuffing mashed potatoes and meatballs into her mouth with messy abandon. Marcy refrained from slapping her wrist this time. She watched the girl eat and tried to imagine a future in which her sister was functioning at a higher cognitive state, a time when she might exist as a reasonable approximation of the sibling she’d known. She tried to imagine having actual conversations with her, perhaps reminiscing about things from their childhoods.
Ellen’s teeth chomped down on her fingers and drew blood. The girl let out a squeal of pain and stared at her mangled fingers in dumb disbelief. A thin trickle of crimson slid over the heel of her hand and down her wrist. It wasn’t the first time Ellen 2 had injured herself. Marcy very much doubted it would be the last. And now she’d have to clean the idiot’s hand and swab the wounds with disinfectant. Her mind did that forward projection thing again, saw years of tending to this creature, and a black despair seeped into her heart.
Then Ellen held her hand toward Marcy. Her mouth opened and emitted a single syllable:“Hurt.”
Marcy’s mouth dropped open. The word was the first intelligible thing Ellen 2 had uttered since the morning she was conjured into existence in that dank hotel room. Ellen seemed to misinterpret her sister’s astonishment as a rebuke and uttered a second word: “Ssssssorrrrryyyyy…”
Then tears were streaming down her face and her body began to convulse with sobs. Marcy was up in a flash, her chair toppling to the floor as she hurried to embrace her sister. The girl folded herself into Marcy’s arms and clutched at her clothes with her clumsy fingers, that second word emerging from her mouth again and again. Marcy stroked Ellen’s hair and made cooing sounds in her ear.
“Shush. Everything will be okay. I promise.”
Tears filled her own eyes as she prayed for that to be true. She remembered with horrible clarity how she’d felt in the aftermath of Ellen’s death, that gnawing, soul-shredding grief. She couldn’t imagine anything more awful. It would be better to be dead than have to go on feeling that way. The train of thought made her think of the friends she’d killed after the incident in the bar, all those lives extinguished because she’d snapped or gone temporarily insane. Even now, months later, she had no reasonable explanation for what she’d done, just that sense of fate carrying her toward a dark destiny. A mad whim. She remembered every detail of that day vividly, the twitch of the gun in her hands as she squeezed the trigger again and again, the specific damage each bullet had done to the bodies of her friends, and the way those bodies had fallen. But she hadn’t allowed herself to think about how these deaths must have affected the loved ones of her victims. But now she was thinking about it. Oh, yes. And now she imagined the grief she’d felt for Ellen multiplied dozens of times.
The first sob began somewhere deep in her gut and tore out of her throat with wrenching force. It was followed by many more.
The two sisters held each other and cried for a long time.
Giselle awoke in darkness, as she had every day for the last two weeks or so. At first she’d tried to keep careful track of the passage of time. It seemed important, albeit for no immediately apparent reason. It’d merely been something to do, a simple task to occupy a mind that might otherwise obsess on things more disturbing. At some point she stopped trying to gauge the length of her imprisonment, and so now her best guess was two weeks. Two weeks of numbing existence in the dark and the cold.
She’d felt a deep humiliation upon being returned to the hanging cage, the prison she’d fought so hard to escape. A life had been sacrificed to make that happen. Her own conscience had died in the process. But it had all seemed worth it for a time. She’d had her revenge and for a while had known a kind of contentment. And in time contentment bred arrogance, which led to her downfall. She should have been so much more careful. How stupid she’d been to accept Schreck’s loyalty without question. That vile man. He was the reason she was in this awful place again, having suggested it when Dream and her friends had been debating about what to do with her. And he’d surprised her by knowing how to access the chamber. Just one more thing she should’ve guessed, one more example of how arrogance had blinded her. And now she ached for revenge again, but this time she knew she would never have it.
Her power was gone.
Well, not really gone. Not exactly. It still resided somewhere within her altered DNA, still floated in the microscopic spaces between molecules. She could feel the faint thrum of it in her every pore. That was the most maddening thing, that awareness, because the power was beyond her ability to reach. Dream had seen to that, infusing her body with a damping energy, an extraordinarily effective bit of blunt magic that blocked her every attempt to tap her own magical abilities. That Dream was able to direct energy so effortlessly boggled the mind. She was untrained. She’d never read any of the ancient texts Giselle had pored over during her years in service to the Master. She could accept the scope of Dream’s abilities as an accident of nature and genetics, a dormant thing stirred to life during her ruttings with the Master. She had a harder time understanding how the woman had come to direct that raw, wild energy with such precision and effectiveness. It was either a case of practice makes perfect, or Dream was some kind of magical idiot savant. Either possibility was equally galling. It meant her years of often tedious study had ultimately been for nothing.
As bad as that was, it was as nothing compared to the desolation she felt in the wake of Azaroth’s abandonment. She recalled her last communication with the death god and felt the same puzzlement she always felt. No words, just that mocking, echoing laughter. So unlike anything in her previous experience with the ancient entity.
Perhaps he’d been manipulating her all along, even all those years ago when she’d first invoked his name with a blood sacrifice after reading about him in one of the old texts. The death gods were old beyond human conception. It was presumptuous to assume to know why they did the things they did. Maybe Azaroth really had played her from the beginning, building her up with the intent of eventually betraying her. Wheels within wheels within wheels. Suffering begetting suffering down through the ages as the old ones spun out their endless, convuluted machinations. The death gods fed on suffering, this she knew. And she supposed Azaroth was feasting on her pain even now, enjoying the particular aged flavor of her despair.
An impulse caused her to call out to him. It didn’t matter that he probably wouldn’t answer, or that at best she would only hear that mocking laughter again. Her every fiber ached to know the truth. She realized it would not grant her peace, that it might even deepen her despair, but the need to know overwhelmed any other considerations.
She focused what she could of her will and called out to the void: AZAROTH! HEAR ME! I BESEECH YOU! WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME!
At first there was nothing. Just that darkness. That void. Then she felt a touch of warmth against her flesh, a subtle atmospheric shift, like the sigh of a lover against her neck. The warmth increased, displacing the cold that normally permeated the room.
Next, a pinpoint of light in the middle distance.
The light grew and pushed the darkness back. Giselle could see again, albeit dimly, the stone walls beyond the cage. The shimmering center of light in the middle of the room flared brighter still and grew to the size of a man. A mist billowed at the edges of the light and Giselle realized she was seeing a portal, a doorway between dimensions. She saw shadows within the light, forms moving, something coming closer. A shape resolved into the dark silhouette of a man.
The man stepped through the light into the dark chamber.
Giselle’s screams echoed off the chamber walls.
She screamed and screamed again. Screamed herself hoarse.
The man laughed softly and approached the cage. Giselle whimpered and scooted to the far end of the cage, making it rock wildly.
“Nooooo…” She moaned. Her mind rebelled, fought to deny the reality of what she was seeing. But he just kept coming closer, refusing to dissipate like any good hallucination should. “Noooo…nononono…”
The Master laughed again and said, “Yes.”
She groaned again. “How?”
He smiled. “I thrived in the afterlife, Giselle. You should have expected that. I destroyed the one you call Azaroth, usurped his position among the death gods. It’s me you’ve been communicating with during your recent troubles. I’m the one who demanded the blood sacrifice of your friend. You’ve belonged to me from that moment. You and your dead conscience.”
That mocking laughter again, filling the chamber, rattling her bones and triggering an ache behind her eyes.
Another whimper. “Kill me. Finish it.”
His expression shifted again, something that was almost sadness touching his handsome features. “No. Your final judgment is in the hands of others.” He stroked her cheek with the back of a strong hand. “I’m showing myself to you one final time to thank you. Your sacrifices have facilitated my return. For that, you have my eternal gratitude.”
Giselle wept. She was no longer capable of articulating her despair any other way. The light dimmed as the portal between dimensions began to close. The Master remained in the chamber with her a while longer, stroking her hair and delighting in the sound of her anguish as the darkness and cold enveloped them.
In the dream, things were as they had once been. She was years younger and her long hair was a vibrant shade of blonde. Her flesh was imbued with that deep, lovely tan all the boys found so sexy. She was in a park on a glorious summer afternoon, the sun a golden ball high in the perfect blue sky. She was stretched out on a blanket, soaking up the rays in a white bikini. Her friends were there, too. Alicia sat next to her on the b lanket, her long legs folded beneath her as she read a John Grisham novel. Karen and Chad tossed a Frisbee back and forth in the distance. The orange disc arced across the sky and Chad hurried into position to catch it. Music emanated from a nearby boom box, a big hit by a new band called Green Day.
It was a lovely dream, but tinged with a subtle undercurrent of melancholy. An aching sense of loss belied the purity of the images. Because this was nothing more than a snapshot of something that was gone and forever out of reach. Karen Hidecki was dead. The Alicia Jackson she’d known in those days was dead, too. The regenerated Alicia would never be anything more than an obscene approximation of the deceased woman.
And as for Chad…
The texture and tone of the dream began to change. The blue sky turned a shade of burnt orange bordering on red. The shape of the Frisbee was almost indistinct against that sky as a gust of wind too cold for summer carried it off course. Karen charged after the disc and for a moment it seemed she would catch up to it. But then her head tumbled off her shoulders and bounced across a patch of dead, yellow grass that moments ago had been a bright shade of green. Dream sat up and screamed, pointing at the headless body, which was still running at high speed toward a nearby line of dead trees. The sight of her pale forearm startled her. What had happened to her beautiful tan?
Then Alicia spoke in the creaking voice of a rotting corpse. “You’re just an old whore now. The girl you were is just as dead as that headless bitch.”
This was the regenerated Alicia now, looking as she had the moment she’d first appeared to Dream in that little shithole bar. Her flesh was bloated and covered with hundreds of weeping razor nicks.
Dream trembled and shook her head helplessly. “No…no…”
Alicia set aside the book she was reading-which had somehow morphed into The Satanic Bible-and began to crawl toward Dream on her hands and knees. The corners of her mouth stretched wide in a lascivious grin. The skin at the edges of her mouth cracked and a pale, dry nub of tongue emerged to lick uselessly at the new wounds. A brittle wheeze of laughter emerged from the back of her throat.
She reached for Dream with a bleeding hand and said, “Come show me some love, baby.”
Dream screamed.
Then her eyes snapped open and she was awake. Above her was the heavy velvet canopy of the four-poster bed. Her head swam and her first impression was she was still asleep, had merely transitioned from one layer of dream existence to another. The old false waking dream, a wicked, but familiar, trick of her fragile psyche. Then she recognized the sensation for what it really was-borderline intoxication. She hadn’t remained unconscious quite long enough to sleep off last night’s binge.
Which was just as well.
She rolled out of bed and swept the nearly empty bottle of tequila off the nightstand. She held the bottle up and shook it. There was enough left for one good swig. She put the bottle to her mouth and upended it. It slid down her throat as smoothly as water. There’d been a time when so much as a single sip of straight tequila had been enough to make her retch. She returned the empty bottle to the nightstand and stretched her limbs, rolling her neck to work out the kinks.
Images from the dream came back to haunt her. Not the predictable bit at the end when it had all turned to rot. Dream had known too much real horror to care about such nightmare images. What really bothered her was the dream’s beginning, which had been so vivid and true, a scene dredged from a store of long-suppressed memories. There really had been days like that. Many of them. Times when she’d been truly happy to be alive and surrounded by her friends. Happy and so young. Thinking about it triggered the old familiar ache in her heart. This was why she normally worked so hard to keep those memories locked down in her subconscious. The usual reflex to push them down failed to kick in this time. So stupid. Next would come the rush of tears…
Only that didn’t happen. Her eyes misted a little, but that was it. And instead of burning straight through to the core of her pain the old ache just fizzled.
Dream sighed. “Nothing stays the same forever.”
She looked around the huge, empty room and wondered to whom she was talking. But the answer was obvious. There was no one else around. She was alone most of the time these days. She’d granted Schreck the freedom to run the estate as he saw fit, with the stipulation that he and his men stay out of the way of Dream and her friends. So far it had worked out well enough. They were comfortable here. The law couldn’t reach them here. There was one downside, but it was a big one. The sense of camaraderie they had shared had diminished by a significant degree. Marcy and Ellen had commandeered a smaller room on a lower level of the mansion, from which they rarely emerged. Alicia, however, was taking an active role in the day-to-day operations of the place. She took such delight in meting out the kinds of tortures that had once been so mercilessly inflicted upon her, which Dream found ironic as well as mildly disturbing.
And that was another thing. The interior of this house was massive, containing hundreds of rooms. And in each of those rooms resided a sadist-in-training, an Apprentice, each of them committing acts of atrocity so vile the mere contemplation of which would once have made Dream want to vomit. But the part of her that might have cared had withered and died somewhere along the way. She couldn’t even feign offense at the institutionalized brutality that surrounded her. It was simply the way things were and would always be in this place-and the way they needed to be in order to sustain the dark magic that kept the place thriving.
So she supposed she liked it her e well enough.
But it would be nice not to feel so alone.
Fuck.
It was insane that she could still feel such depression. She was so powerful. There was nothing she couldn’t do. She could will life into existence just by thinking about it hard enough. She could change the temperature in a room with a small flex of her will. She could send a hail of fucking bullets off course by doing the same thing. She suspected she was even capable of altering her own body chemistry, of rolling back the years to erase age lines and reverse any age-related infirmities. Disease could take root inside her and it wouldn’t matter because she would be able to burn it away just by thinking about it. For all practical purposes, she was now immortal.
So why was she still so unhappy? She didn’t know. What she did know was she was fucking tired of thinking about it. So she strode across the room, crossing the large expanse of open floor to the area at the opposite end that functioned as both a library and den. The walls here were lined with tall bookcases. There was a fireplace and plenty of expensive-looking furniture. And there was a well-stocked bar tucked away in the corner. She stepped behind it and scanned the rows of gleaming bottles. After a few moments of debate, she selected a bottle of Stolichnaya. She opened it and knocked back several big gulps of vodka.
A slight semblance of well-being returned immediately. It felt good just to have a full bottle in her hands again. She moved away from the bar and examined the shelves of books. Many of them were classic titles she recognized. Many others were unfamiliar. Some titles weren’t in English.
She saw one that called to her, the words THE SATANIC BIBLE etched in gold print along its spine. She recalled her dream and pulled the book off the shelf. Then she settled down in a plush recliner, set the bottle on the little table next to it, and flipped the book open. Her fingers moved over the pages and her lips moved slightly as she read the words. She frowned. This book was not the famous Anton LaVey tome with which she’d been fleetingly familiar in her youth. It appeared to be an actual bible for Satanists, a genuine dark equivalent to the Christian Bible, but that was…
“It is what you think it is, Dream.”
Dream’s fingers stopped moving. The intrusion of the familiar voice had surprised her, but she felt no fear and that was strange. She had helped to kill him, after all. He was standing so close, but she hadn’t heard or sensed his arrival. She could hear the soft, unlabored sound of his breathing. He was alive again. Somehow. Or was he? Maybe he was like Alicia and Ellen, a manifestation manufactured by her subconscious, this time a conjuration of shameful desires she’d worked to ignore through the years. She had been thinking about him a lot of late, especially at night as she lay alone in the dark in that big bed.
Then he moved into view and she knew it wasn’t true.
It was really him. The Master.
She closed the book and looked up at him. “How?”
He smiled. “Does it matter?”
And now she smiled. “No. It doesn’t matter at all.”
She set the book on the table next to the vodka bottle and stood up. She stepped into his outstretched arms and laid her head on his shoulder. She felt his calm strength and reveled in the warmth of his bare flesh.
Her voice was a whisper:“I’m sorry.”
“Shush.” He stroked her hair with one hand while the other slipped to the small of her back. “Things were different then.”
She lifted her head and looked into his eyes again. “Yes. And I think I’ve become the woman you needed me to be back then. I think I could be your Queen now.”
His hand slipped beneath the thin fabric of her halter top and roamed over her trembling flesh. She felt herself grow wet and moaned as his mouth met hers. The kiss made her knees shake and she gripped his shoulders hard to remain upright. It went on for several moments, his warmth suffusing her as their bodies began to writhe in tandem. Then he broke off the kiss and smiled again.
And he said, “You are already my Queen. I knew one day you would be ready.”
Dream thought, You have no idea how ready I am.
And perhaps he knew her thoughts, because in the next moment he swept her into his arms and carried her across the room to the big bed. And within the next few moments Dream again experienced the thing she’d secretly longed for all through her years of private torment.
Her screams filled the room.
And after the screams, tears of joy.
The collar was too tight and chafed at his skin. Chad fought an urge to stick a finger under the strip of leather to relieve the pressure against his throat. For one thing, it wouldn’t really help. But mostly he just didn’t want to feel the back of Bai’s hand again. She had a quick temper and would not abide even the mildest affront to her will.
The physical discomfort was only part of the problem. More aggravating was the humiliation he’d been living with every day for weeks. A masochist with a taste for bondage and discipline and a weakness for hot Asian chicks would be in heaven, but Chad didn’t roll that way. He burned with the need to be free of this despicable woman, to be his own man again, able to do as he pleased whenever he wished.
He didn’t know how to make that happen. Bai was too strong. Too smart and too fast by far. She was like some kind of superwoman. She anticipated his every move, seemed to know his thoughts. He looked at the long black leash hooked to his collar. It was looped around the minivan’s driver’s-side door handle. He imagined ripping the thing free and wrapping it around Bai’s neck. The fantasy took shape in his mind, and he saw how the leash would dig into her slender throat as he drew it tight, Bai’s eyes bulging out as she clawed helplessly at him and gasped for air.
Of course, the minivan would go hurtling off the road, perhaps to crash into one of the big trees beyond the ditch. The impact would send him through the windshield in a hail of safety glass. He might even die. He thought maybe it would be worth it.
He felt the heat of her gaze on him and turned timidly in her direction, tensing for the blow he imagined was imminent.
But she only smiled at him in that soft, enigmatic way. “We are almost there, Dogshit. If you wish to kill me, your best chance will come in the confusion of battle.”
Chad grunted. “We both know it’ll never happen.”
Her dark eyes gleamed in the morning sun. “Of course. You are too weak, Dogshit. Too much the coward. Too much the sniveling little faggot. You are worthless.”
This was another thing that incensed him. She hadn’t addressed him by his given name since the night of the coup. To her, he was primarily known as Dogshit. A prime example of what passed for her sense of humor. One day he’d stepped in a pile of fresh shit dropped by one of the stray pooches that hung around Camp Whiskey scrounging for scraps. Bai had immediately bestowed the hated nickname. The collar and leash was her idea of a fun way to embellish the joke. It was embarrassing as hell, but there was nothing he could do about it. He’d learned not to object the hard way.
But there was a change on the horizon. The battle they’d prepared for would commence soon, perhaps within the hour. Bai wasn’t saying much, but he knew they were very close to their destination. He had a feeling the end of his servitude to Bai was coming one way or another. Either he would die during the conflict, or she would finish him off once the Order had killed or apprehended Giselle Burkhardt.
Or he would find within him the courage to try to kill her during the battle. He would be outfitted with a combat-appropriate level of weaponry prior to the storming of the remote farmhouse. It should be an easy thing to turn that weaponry on his true oppressor. But Bai and the two Order men moved with a speed and deadly grace that was eerie, almost supernatural. Should he attempt to use a gun on Bai, she would be behind him within the space of a heartbeat, well before he could squeeze the trigger, her sword at his throat, ready to take his head off before he could even think to turn around.
There was just no percentage in it. Any such attempt would be tantamount to suicide. Chad figured this was part of the reason the surviving members of Jack Paradise’s paramilitary unit had surrendered and accepted the Order people as their new leaders. He also suspected these men had been promised a large reward upon successful completion of this mission. Hell, you could never underestimate greed as a motivating factor for anything.
Bai’s gaze went back to the road ahead. The minivan was following a large vehicle that had once been a package delivery truck. It had been repainted, the old logos covered over. The truck disappeared around a sweeping curve for a moment, then reappeared as Bai guided the minivan around the same curve.
Bai glanced at Chad. “We are almost there, Dogshit. Are you ready?”
Chad grunted. “No. Not really.”
Bai’s smile became a smirk. “Typical American weakness. No wonder your country isn’t what it once was.”
Chad chose not to reply. She was just baiting him again. Should he open his mouth and say the wrong thing, he could get his nose broken for his trouble. Or lose another tooth. He looked out the window on his side and watched the flashing, denuded trees. Several moments passed and Bai seemed content to let the exercise in verbal humiliation lapse. Chad felt a bitter gratitude.
Then the line of trees began to thin and soon after that the minivan began to slow. Chad could now make out the twisting line of a narrow dirt side road and, beyond that, the small, dark shape of an old house sitting atop a gentle rise. The house was dilapidated and surrounded by acres of forest on all sides. Its seclusion triggered memories of another house, one high in the mountains of east Tennessee. This added to the already strong sense of déjà vu he was feeling. He’d done this before. But this time was very different. He felt no righteous sense of purpose. This time he was nothing more than a helpless puppet along for the ride.
He looked at Bai and said, “I have to ask something before we do this. I realize you probably won’t tell me, but the hell with it. What’s the deal with you fucking Order people?”
Her brow creased slightly. “I don’t understand.”
Chad just managed not to roll his eyes. “What is your purpose? What function does your organization serve? Why go to such lengths to exact revenge?”
Bai smirked. “You could never understand. These are not things for men of low nature to comprehend. All you need to know is we are an ancient Order. Our lives are sustained through centuries through the ritualized sacrifice of innocent lives. And foremost among the codes that govern us is an unswerving loyalty to the Order. When one of us is cut down, it is an attack against us all. To not exact revenge, as you put it, is not an option.”
“Wait a minute…low nature?”
“Unpure. Unclean.” Bai smiled. “And stupid. Low.”
Chad thought about that a minute. He was too used to Bai’s insults to be overly offended by the “low” comments, but something else she’d said triggered a faint association. He puzzled over it a moment. Then he had it and his eyes went wide. “The Master did the same thing. Was he of the Order?”
Bai shook her head as she twisted the minivan’s steering wheel and followed the package truck onto the dirt road. “No. But he had a close association with us, as he practiced many of the same rituals. It is how Evelyn Wickman came to be in his employ.”
“Huh.” Chad settled back in his seat and felt a strange sense of completion steal over him. Learning this small piece of the puzzle after all these years meant very little in the larger scheme of things. Ms. Wickman was dead and gone. But that small sense of satisfaction was there regardless.
It didn’t last long. The package truck reached the top of the driveway and rolled to a stop. Its brake lights came on, then turned off. Bai guided the minivan to a stop several feet behind it and switched the engine off.
Chad felt a lump rise into his throat as his pulse quickened.
This is it, he thought. The end.
But no, that wasn’t quite right. The true end of his journey lay beyond the frail-looking wooden door on the other side of the house’s rickety porch. Chad tensed and the fear began to steal over him. It was about to begin. The noise. The explosions and gunfire. The screaming and the death. He wasn’t ready for it. Could never really be ready for it. But it was happening anyway.
He sucked in a startled breath as Bai reached behind his neck. Then the pressure around his throat was gone. She tossed the collar and leash to the floorboard and said, “This is your chance. Fight and emerge victorious. Then freedom will be yours. It is up to you.”
She held his gaze for an intense moment and he felt that familiar tingling behind his eyes, as if she could see into his brain and know his every thought. Then the moment was over and she was turning away from him. She opened the door and stepped out of the minivan.
Chad allowed himself another moment to compose himself, then did the same.
The back of the package truck was open and the store of weaponry inside was being rapidly unpacked. A man clad in camos thrust an M-16 and ammunition into his hands. Chad numbly began to load the weapon as he watched other men haul out two cylinders that vaguely resembled the bazookas he’d seen in old war movies. But he recognized them as AT7’s, shoulder-launched antitank weapons. Jack Paradise had schooled him on the subject.
The men with the AT7’s were setting up to begin the first thrust of the assault even as the remaining caravan vehicles rolled up behind the minivan. A Jeep at the end of the column swerved around the van ahead of it and skirted the edge of the dirt driveway as it rattled toward them. Chad felt a knot form in his stomach as he glimpsed Allyson at the wheel. He frowned. He was sure there’d been two paramilitary men with her in the Jeep, but they were nowhere to be seen.
Allyson stomped on the brake and emerged from the Jeep a moment later. There was a handgun tucked in the waistband of her jeans. She wasn’t wearing the heavy jacket she’d had on earlier. She looked Chad in the eye and strode purposefully toward him.
Bai’s lips pursed as she observed Allyson’s approach. “Where are the men who were with you?”
Allyson pulled the handgun from her waistband and thumbed the safety off. “One of them bailed. Kept talking about how he didn’t want to die for something he didn’t give a shit about. He ordered the other guy to pull over at gunpoint. Far as I know he’s making his way back to that podunk little town on foot. The other guy, he lost his nerve a little later. Maybe his buddy taking off got to him, I don’t know. He blew his brains out with this thing.” She waved the gun around and Chad flinched, expecting to see the flash of Bai’s sword at any moment. “I could’ve run after that, but you already know I’m not going anywhere without Chad.”
She said all this fast, as if she’d been frantically rehearsing it in her head for the last leg of the journey. He was sure there was only a small thread of truth in it. She had the determined air of one on the cusp of a brave and dangerous act. He couldn’t fathom why she would’ve killed the men rather than allowing them to bring her here as planned.
Bai’s expression was openly skeptical. But then she smiled and said, “No matter. The time has come. You will fight with us.”
Allyson didn’t bat an eye. “You bet your ass I will.”
Bai spun about on her heels. She unsheathed her sword and waved it at the sky. “Begin.”
Suddenly free of Bai, Chad hurried to Allyson and leaned close, whispering frantically, “What the hell’s going on?”
Allyson touched his face. “I love you. I’ll do anything for you.”
Chad frowned. “But-”
Allyson leaned closer, her lips grazing his ear. “It’s simple. We’ll follow them in. We’ll fight and stay alive, hanging back at the rear, staying close to each other. Then as the others press on we’ll get the hell out.” She inclined her head very slightly toward the Jeep. “Then we’ll take that thing and r un for our lives.”
Chad didn’t know how to reply to that. Her plan was dangerous, but maybe it could work. Hell, they didn’t have a lot of other options. Then Bai was shouting again and he looked her way, half-expecting her to have somehow heard their muted conversation with her super ninja hearing. But she was facing the house and waving her sword around.
The rear lights of the package truck came on again and an instant later a blast of hugely amplified music boomed like an explosion. Chad recognized it as something early by Metallica, but he didn’t know their stuff well enough to identify the particular song. He gulped as the front door of the house began to creak open. He saw dark shapes come into view, hands clasping weapons.
Then there was a loud WHOOSH of sound, followed immediately by another identical sound. The AT7’s. Heavy shells passed through the front door and the bone-bruising sounds of explosions followed.
The AT7’s weren’t reloadable. The men dropped the spent weaponry and cleared the zone for two more men wielding AT7’s. There was that WHOOSH again. And again. Followed by still more explosions. They were softening up the enemy, paving the way for the initial push into the house, which would begin within seconds. Chad kept expecting the fragile old house to collapse beneath the brunt of the heavy ordnance, but somehow, almost miraculously, that didn’t happen.
Then Allyson was in front of him, moving to the rear of the package truck. An M-16 was thrust into her hands by a man in camos. Like all of them, she’d been trained on the weapon in preparation for this moment. She took it and hurried back to Chad’s side. Then Jim emerged from the back of the truck, hair ruffled as if he hadn’t slept in days, eyes bleary and haunted. Chad had barely seen the deposed Camp Whiskey leader since the night of the coup. But like the rest of them, he was armed to the teeth. He looked Chad’s way and acknowledged him with a nod. Then he turned and hurried to a forward position.
Chad wanted to call after him, but it was too late.
He dimly heard Bai’s screamed exhortations over the buzzing in his ears.
And then they were moving forward, all of them.
Gunfire erupted from both sides.
Chad lifted his weapon, aimed quickly, and squeezed the trigger. The weapon chugged and the scent of blood was heavy in the air as Chad and the woman he loved rushed into the thick of battle.
They were out on the long balcony overlooking Razor City as they heard the muffled thumps of the first explosions.
Dream frowned. “Something’s happening.”
The Master stood with his forearms balanced against the balcony railing. He looked just as he had the last time Dream had seen him, and she understood that what she was seeing was part illusion. He had a chameleonic ability to shift his appearance at will-it was one of the traits of his race-and he’d chosen to present himself the way she remembered him. He was handsome, with fine, chiseled features, and a muscular body with a deep tan. The same thick, broad shoulders that had so turned her on the first time. The same intense, passionate eyes. The strength, confidence, and poise he’d possessed in such abundance was still there too, perhaps even to a greater degree than before.
Because something serious was definitely happening somewhere in the house and he didn’t seem the least perturbed by it. Dream heard more explosions and a rapid, snapping sound she assumed was automatic gunfire.
Still looking at the red sky of the alien world beyond the balcony, he said, “Do you know what this place is, Dream? That world out there?”
She frowned again. “No, but-”
He stood erect and turned toward her, took her gently into his arms. She shuddered and slid with a sigh into the embrace. He stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head. “That red-sky world is where my kind originated. Our race thrived there for many thousands of years. Then some ravaging disease blighted it and the survivors took to the stars in silver ships.” He glanced over her shoulder at the barren landscape beyond Razor City. “It is still a dead world, all of my kind are long perished, but for some reason it calls to me. See that pyramid in the distance?”
Dream looked at it. “That’s new, isn’t it? Or relatively new. The slaves were working on it for a long time before I got here.”
The Master nodded. “New, yes. However, it is being built according to ancient specifications. When finished, it will be a precise replica of the pyramids my ancestors used as holy temples. I believe Evelyn intended to eventually use it in an attempt to resurrect my mortal form.”
Confusion creased Dream’s brow. “Evelyn?”
“You knew her as Ms. Wickman.”
Dream stiffened slightly. “Oh.”
Dream stiffened slightly. “Oh.”
“Of course, she had no way of knowing how close I was to achieving that goal on my own.” His smile this time had a rueful quality. “It isn’t easy to send information through the veil separating the mortal world and the various afterlife dimensions. Even those skilled in such things frequently get it wrong. Poor Giselle, for instance.”
Dream shivered and turned her head against his chest again. “What will happen to her?”
“Those sounds you’re hearing? The approach of invaders. They have come for her.” He lifted her head from his chest and stared into her eyes. “And they will have her.”
Dream felt a fresh sense of alarm. It had been so easy to allow herself to be hypnotized by the sound of his voice, to slip into a cocoon of comfort while wrapped in his arms. She pushed away from him a little and said, “Shouldn’t we be doing something? They’re coming here.” She nodded at the open French doors. “She’s in there, in that nasty chamber on the other side of that wall.”
He smiled and stroked her hair again. “We will do nothing.”
Her eyes gleamed with sudden fright. “Why?”
His smile remained unwavering. “We are in no danger. We could repel the invaders, if we so chose. You are strong enough to do it on your own, in fact. But we will not do this. They will take Giselle and de part this place, never to trouble us again. Then we will rebuild this kingdom, perhaps even expand our presence in the land of my ancestors. And we will reign as king and queen for a thousand years.”
Dream laughed. “A thousand years?”
“Yes. It is part of the bargain I made with the death gods.”
Dream stopped laughing. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
The Master shook his head. “I am not.”
Dream shivered. It was a strange thing to contemplate. Suicidal impulses had plagued so much of her younger years, and now she was looking at a potential lifetime stretching across centuries. The concept was initially jarring, but the more she thought about it-and the more she stared into her lover’s intense eyes-the more right it felt.
She smiled and touched his face. “Okay.”
He took one of her hands in his, kissed the back of it. “I love you, Dream.”
She tugged at the sash around her bathrobe and pulled open the flaps, exposing the front of her body.
Her breasts were pale in the alien sunlight. The sound of the gunfire was growing louder as she said, “Come fuck me.”
The Master smiled again.
And did as his Queen bade.
Marcy was in the bathroom with her sister. Ellen was perched on the toilet, with her jeans down around her ankles. Marcy knelt in front of her and coaxed her sister with words she almost certainly didn’t understand. Hygiene was a big problem for Ellen. It had been hard to get her to understand that she couldn’t just squat and shit on the floor any time she felt the urge to go. Nor had it been easy to instruct her on proper use of the toilet. You had to watch for signs indicating she was on the verge of needing to take a dump. She would get restless and start pacing about their room, panting and whimpering like a dog in need of going outside. In fact, the process had been very similar to potty-training an animal.
Ellen whimpered again. “Muhmuh…muh-”
Marcy sighed. “Come on Ellen. Squeeze. You can do it.”
“Muh…muh-”Tears of frustration welled in Ellen’s eyes. “Muh-”
“Oh, the hell with it.”
“Oh, the hell with it.”
Marcy stood and extended a hand to her sister, who accepted it with dumb gratitude, a drool-flecked smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Ellen stood, and Marcy helped her get her jeans tugged back up and snapped shut. They had just reentered the bedroom when Marcy heard the faint sound of something she needed a moment to recognize as heavy metal music.
She frowned.
It was the first time she’d heard recorded music of any sort since arriving at this place. Though the music was muffled, she had a sense that it was coming from somewhere outside the house. She was moving toward the bedroom door to investigate when the boom of the first explosion sent a hot spike of fear through her heart, freezing her hand on the doorknob. The sound was massive and the concussion seemed to rattle the whole house. It was followed immediately by more explosions, just as big and loud, which was followed by the stuttering sound of gunfire. Ellen screamed and threw herself against Marcy, jarring her hand away from the doorknob. Her hands clawed and scrabbled against Marcy’s clothes as she mewled inarticulately. Marcy shoved her away, sent her tumbling to the floor. Ellen landed on her ass and let out a pained squeal. The sound ripped at Marcy’s heart, but the panic engulfing her was too immense to allow any room for coddling her simpleton sister. She had to figure out something to do, and fast, before whatever was happening downstairs got any closer.
Then she had it. The only answer possible.
Dream. We’ve got to get to Dream.
“Upstairs.” She looked at Ellen. “Get your ass up. We’re going upstairs. NOW.”
She hurried over to the nightstand beside the bed, yanked the drawer open, and pulled out her Glock. She checked the magazine. Full. She popped it ba ck in and turned around in time to see her sister moving toward the door. Ellen’s hands fumbled with the doorknob for a moment before seizing it. A burst of adrenaline sent Marcy dashing back across the room.
The door came open and the sound of gunfire grew abruptly louder. Screams and confused shouts echoed down the hallway.
Ellen stepped into the chaos and Marcy followed.
The straight razor felt good in her hands, like it belonged there. Alicia flicked it open and moved to the head of the bed, where she stared down into the wide eyes of the girl tied to the headboard. She was a young thing, slim and blonde, with a cute face and a nice figure. The ball gag affixed to her mouth and face enhanced her prettiness in a perverse way, emphasizing her youth and vulnerability.
Alicia sat next to her and pushed sweat-soaked strands of blonde hair away from the girl’s forehead. The girl shivered at Alicia’s touch.
Alicia smiled. “Once upon a time, girl, I was in your place. Tied up for no good reason other than the pure hell of it. A damn shame, ain’t it? That there are people in this rotten world who get their kicks this way?”
Tears welled in the girl’s eyes and spilled down her flushed cheeks.
Alicia wiped the tears away and licked them off her fingers. “Mmm. Anyway…as I was saying, it’s a shame there are people like me in the world.” She laughed and placed the blade flat against the girl’s white belly. “A shame for you, anyway.”
She pressed the blade into the girl’s flesh, penetrating just slightly, perhaps an eighth of an inch, and drew a red line all the way down to her hip. It wasn’t a mortal wound by any means, but the girl squealed and rocked against her restraints. Then she was panting in agony behind the ball gag. Her whole face was red and Alicia wondered whether it was possible to scare a person this young enough to induce a heart attack. It didn’t seem likely, but she supposed it was possible. It would be regrettable.
She was just getting started on her.
It was funny. This thing she was doing to this girl, some anonymous runaway she didn’t even know, was exactly what she’d planned for Dream back when she’d first recorporealized. But things had changed somewhere along the way. Being with Dream made her stronger and made all sorts of interesting things possible. The time she’d spent on the road with Dream and those kids had even been kind of fun. So she’d stuck with them, resisting the sometimes powerful urge to kill them all, and things had worked out just fine. She was in a perfect situation now, in just the right place for indulging the dark compulsions that were always lurking in the back of her mind.
Strange.
She’d never had impulses like these in her first life. The original Alicia Jackson had been just as tough and no-nonsense, but she’d also been a highly moralistic person. That conscience had not made the journey back from the other side of death with her. It bothered her a little, that some piece of her essence was missing, but not enough to matter.
There were three black-clad Apprentices in the room with her. Two young men and a slender girl about the same age as the runaway tied to the bed. The men were lounging in chairs. They looked bored. This wasn’t anything they hadn’t seen a thousand times by now. The girl, though, was sitting in a chair close to the bed, an avid expression on her face, her eyes glittering with a dark, eager hunger.
Alicia smiled again. “Sophie? Could you do me a favor?”
Sophie looked at her. “Yes, Mistress?”
“There’s a bottle of perfume over there.” She nodded at the vanity sitting against the wall behind Sophie. “Fetch it for me, would you?”
Sophie grinned. “Of course.”
She hopped up and bounced over to the vanity, displaying an adolescent enthusiasm Alicia found charming. She found the bottle and brought it over to Alicia. “Here ya go.”
“Thanks, Sophie. Now sit down again and watch. This will be fun.”
Sophie did as ordered and Alicia looked into the bound girl’s eyes again as she removed the stopper from the bottle. She moved the bottle into position over the long incision. “This is another thing that was done to me years ago. Let me tell you something, girl. You may think you’re hurting now, but-”
The blast of bludgeoning heavy metal riffery startled Alicia and the bottle slipped from her fingers. The music was very loud. Very close. She thought about it a moment and realized she’d been hearing another, lower sound prior to the intrusion of the music, a sound she now recognized as the rumble of engines.
Alicia stood and moved toward the bedroom door. “Just what the fuck is going on out there?”
She opened the door and stepped out onto the second-floor landing. She peeked down the stairs and saw a number of Black Brigade soldiers heading into the foyer. Curiosity got the better of her and she started down the stairs. The gunfire was already starting by the time she was halfway down. Then the first AT7 shell slammed through the door, passed through the foyer, and detonated when it struck the wall arch outside the living room. The explosion ripped apart bodies and rocked Alicia off her feet, sent her tumbling down the stairs.
She was just getting to her feet when the next shell came streaking in. The next explosion knocked her off her feet again and for a moment all she felt was a stunned confusion. She heard loud voices and bullets buzzing by everywhere. Then she felt an immense pain and lifted her head to look at her stomach. A piece of shrapnel had ripped through her abdomen, eviscerating her.
Then the black boot of a fleeing Black Brigade soldier came down on her face as she died a second time. In the last moment before she expired, she experienced a surprising-and intense-feeling of relief.
The invading force stormed through the demolished entrance to the house and spread out through the ground floor. The sound of gunfire was ceaseless, the stuttering eruptions blending into a cacophonous din.
Chad and Allyson were among the last through the entrance. They came in charging, then fought not to stumble over the strewn body parts and debris. The large foyer had been transformed. It was now a hellish slaughterhouse. Blood and pieces of bodies everywhere. Chad had seen the aftermath of brutal, violent death before, but never in such abundance, not even during that seemingly endless firefight through the tunnel to the Master’s house years ago.
He saw the body of a brown-skinned woman lying still in the middle of all the carnage. He frowned and moved closer. “It can’t be.”
The dead woman looked just like Alicia Jackson, Dream’s long-dead best friend. And it wasn’t just a strong resemblance. That wouldn’t have troubled him. No, this woman was a precise replica of the woman Chad remembered. He knew Alicia had no siblings-identical twin or otherwise-so he was unable to make sense of what he was seeing on any level. He stared at Alicia’s slack features and forgot his surroundings. The moment nearly cost him his life.
He detected a blur of movement in his peripheral vision and looked to his right in time to see Allyson raise her weapon and send a burst of automatic fire at the second-floor landing. Red dots blossomed across the black shirts of two armed men. The men fell backward against more black-clad men behind them. Allyson hurried to the foot of the staircase and kept firing the whole time. More men in black fell dead before they could get a bead on Allyson with their own weapons, and in a moment the landing was clear, the surviving enemy combatants retreating to a safer position.
The sound of gunfire became more sporadic and eventually died down to the occasional pop. Allyson seized Chad’s arm and tried to tug him back toward the front entrance, leaning close to whisper into his ear. “Come on, goddammit, this is our chance, let’s get out of here.”
Chad was numb. Part of it was the mystery of Alicia. The wall-to-wall gore was another part of it. But a bigger factor was this firsthand experience of Allyson’s total willingness to kill anyone in the way of what she wanted. She’d done it before, of course, starting with the men who’d broken into his house. Then again on the way up here, dispatching the men who’d been her traveling companions. But now he’d watched her mow down at least four more men, acting with deadly precision and concentration, not stopping until she was certain the threat was gone. In a flash, Chad realized no one had ever cared for him as intensely as Allyson did. No one had ever been so willing to step into harm’s way and sacrifice for him.
So he let himself be dragged toward the door. He would follow her anywhere now. They reached the door and would have stepped through it if not for the presence of the older Asian man and his younger male sidekick on the porch. The men regarded them with even, unreadable expressions. Each held an identical silver sword. Chad immediately understood that they had assumed this position to prevent the very thing he and Allyson were attempting.
“Fuck. We’re not going anywhere yet.”
Allyson started to raise her weapon. “Goddammit.”
Chad pushed the barrel down. “Don’t. You’d be dead before you could squeeze the trigger.”
Allyson made a sound of frustration and twisted away from him. “Fine. Fuck them. Let’s finish this thing.”
A number of the Camp Whiskey soldiers had filtered back into the foyer. Jim was among them. There was a bright splash of blood across the front of his shirt, but he did not appear to be wounded. Chad assumed he’d killed someone in close combat. Bai reappeared, too, her sword dripping blood. She pushed her way to the middle of the throng and rattled off a quick set of instructions. “The ground floor is clear. Now we advance. You. And you.” She pointed at two of the camo-attired men. “Up the stairs. Get close, but not close enough to draw fire. You know what to do.”
The two men nodded and wasted no time following her orders. They unclipped gas masks from their belts and slipped them on. Then they crept up the stairs one careful step at a time. They stopped at a point about halfway up and hunkered down. One man kept his weapon trained on the second-floor landing while another man unsnapped two stun grenades from his belt. He tossed one up to the landing. It landed with a loud thump on the hardwood floor and rolled down the hallway. The second one bounced off the wall beyond the landing and for one tense millisecond Chad was sure it would come tumbling back down the stairs. But the grenade caught a funny bounce as it hit the floor and went backward down the hallway. This all happened in the space of maybe five seconds. Terrified screams resounded in the second-floor hallway as several people saw the bouncing black objects and recognized them for what they were.
Then there came a loud, teeth-jarring BANG!
And another.
Then smoke was billowing from the hallway and a number of Camp Whiskey soldiers went racing up the staircase as Bai screamed at them:“UP! UP! UP! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”
To Chad she seemed like a madwoman herding human cattle. Then she was at his back, the heel of her hand slamming between his shoulder blades, driving him forward. “GO! FIGHT!”
Chad’s feet found the staircase and he began to move up even as he heard gunfire erupt anew above him. He fumbled with his own gas mask and somehow managed to get it on. Then Allyson was racing up the staircase, hurrying past him to put herself between him and the bad guys yet again.
Chad ran after her.
Marcy burst through the bedroom door into a hallway choked with black-clad Apprentices and a handful of Black Brigade soldiers who were attempting to herd the frightened sadists back into their rooms. She looked to her left and right and saw no immediate sign of Ellen. Shit. She went up on her toes and lifted her chin in an attempt to see above the heads of the babbling morons in her way. Sometimes it was a real pain in the ass being a short girl. Then she finally caught a glimpse of the bobbing head of a person weaving between the gathered Apprentices.
Ellen.
She was heading toward the staircase to the second floor. Toward the source of all that gunfire. Marcy shoved people aside with one hand and waved the Glock around with the other as she set off in desperate pursuit. She ignored the frequent shouts of protest and pushed her way forward with reckless abandon. One big male Apprentice glared at her and moved back into her path. He was opening his mouth to say something when she shot him between the eyes. She hopped over his falling corpse and continued forward with greater ease, the Apprentices and Black Brigades shrinking away from her, creating a wide path straight down the middle of the hallway.
Marcy caught sight of Ellen’s back. She had reached the staircase landing and showed no signs of slowing down. Marcy put on a burst of speed as her sister started down the stairs. Some part of her was aware of how crazy this was. The thing she was risking her life for wasn’t really her sister. Dream could conjure another one into existence if it died. But some deep, familial instinct drove her forward anyway.
She reached the staircase and went full-throttle down the stairs. The second-floor hallway was choked with smoke. Ellen reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped into that billowing white cloud. God alone knew what was driving her. She was heading into the worst of the danger rather than away from it. The only thing Marcy could figure was she was trying to get out of the house. Too bad she lacked the intelligence to recognize the impossibility of escape by that route.
Marcy leaped over the last four steps and landed hard on the floor. Pain exploded in her ankles, but she ignored it and moved into the hallway. A lot of Black Brigade men were in front of her now. And Ellen. Bullets whined in the air, punching holes in the walls, blowing out lights, and occasionally shredding the flesh of the soldiers. The smoke wasn’t as thick at this end of the hallway, and Marcy was grateful for that. She figured they had a few moments of relative safety, a narrow window of opportunity of which she meant to take full advantage.
She grabbed Ellen by the wrist and spun her around. The girl yelped and looked at her with eyes wide with fear. She didn’t seem to recognize Marcy at first. Then she cried out and threw her arms around Marcy in a rough embrace. Tears welled in Marcy’s eyes. She broke the embrace and grabbed Ellen by the wrist again. “Come on, girl, back upstairs. We’re gonna go see Dream.”
Ellen opened her mouth and said, “Muhmuh…muh-”
Marcy began to drag her back toward the staircase. “Yeah, yeah. Tell me later, okay?”
Then Ellen let out a startled wheeze and Marcy turned to look at her. The front of Ellen’s shirt was red, and there was a big, ragged hole between her breasts. A stray shot had caught her when Marcy had her back turned.
Ellen dropped to her knees and Marcy dropped with her. She put her hands on her dying sister’s shoulders and tears filled her eyes again as she said, “Ohno. Ohnononono. Not again. Not again.”
Then Ellen sagged forward into her arms and Marcy guided her gently to the floor. The battle continued to rage ahead of them, but for the moment Marcy was oblivious to it. She stroked Ellen’s hair and continued to utter her desperate denials. Ellen’s breathing was shallow and uneven. Blood spilled from the corners of her lips. Her eyes were glassy and Marcy could see the life seeping rapidly out of her. She would be gone within moments and there was nothing she could do about it. Not a single goddamned thing. It was that night in that fucking hotel room all over again.
Ellen’s eyes cleared for a moment and focused on the distraught face of her sister. Her lips moved and a soft sound emerged: “Muh…muh-”
“Shush. It’s okay. Don’t try to talk.” Marcy sniffled and hot tears spilled down her cheeks. “I’m gonna take care of you, okay? Just like I’ve always done, you’ll see.”
But Ellen wasn’t listening. She grabbed the front of Marcy’s shirt, seized it with surprising strength, and struggled to lift her head off the floor. She opened her mouth one last time and this is what she said:“Muh… muh…Marcy.”
Then she was dead. Again.
Marcy felt a moment of total despair. Her mind replayed Ellen’s last moments, that heroic struggle to speak her sister’s name for the first and only time.
The despair evaporated.
Marcy stood and did a quick appraisal of the situation in the hallway. Many of the Black Brigade men had fallen, were either dead or dying on the hallway floor. Some went racing past her, heading for the staircase and the third floor beyond. A handful remained behind, valiantly defending their position against all hope of success. The smoke at the far end of the hallway was beginning to dissipate. She could make out the forms of the invaders as they drew steadily closer. She saw red bursts from the muzzles of their weapons. A stray round from one of those guns had ended the life of her reborn sister.
Marcy acted then on instinct, without even considering the implications of what she was doing. She raised the Glock and dashed into the fray, rushing past the Black Brigade men hunkered down in doorways. She squeezed the Glock’s trigger over and over and some of the bullets found soft flesh. She saw one round penetrate the throat of one of the camo-clad men. The man dropped his weapon and clamped his hands over the wound. Blood pulsed over his fingers as he sank to his knees. Another bullet punched through the faceplate of another man’s gas mask, sending him lurching into the arms of a startled comrade. She kept firing and two more men fell. The enemy returned fire, of course, but they kept missing, seemed somehow unnerved by the sight of the young girl coming straight at them. Marcy felt invincible. It was just like those months on the road with Dream. She was killing at will and nothing could stop her.
Then a bullet caught her in the thigh and spun her to the floor. The pain was immense and startling. Not invincible after all, then. The hell with it. This was the end for her. But she would not go down easy. She rolled to her side, lifted the Glock, and fired again.
Another man fell.
And another.
Then the Glock clicked empty and a moment later a burst of automatic fire tore apart her chest. The Glock slid from her suddenly numb hand and she rolled onto her back. She was still alive, but just barely, could feel the strength leaving her body. A fleeting thought crossed her mind in those last moments, the possibility that Dream might try to conjure her back.
She hoped not.
Then a man in camos was standing above her. He peeled off his gas mask and shook his head. The hallway was almost quiet now. The remaining Black Brigade fighters on this floor had been vanquished. The camo-clad man’s tone was incredulous as he said, “Any of y’all see that shit? That bitch was crazy.”
A small woman in black appeared next to him. She unsheathed a long, gleaming sword and said, “She is a warrior and deserves a warrior’s death.”
Marcy anticipated the arc of the sword and closed her eyes as it flashed through the air. It hurt for only a fraction of a second as the blade chopped through her neck.
The fiercest fighting was happening well ahead of their position. Chad was glad of that. But they were by no means out of harm’s way. Stray rounds whizzed by intermittently. Most of them thunked harmlessly into the walls, but one found the head of a man just behind and to the left of where Chad was standing. Chad felt a tightness in his chest and dropped to the floor, unable to breathe for a moment.
Then Allyson was kneeling over him, gas mask pushed atop her head, panic etched into her strained features. “Chad! Can you hear me? Are you okay? Are you hit?”
Chad sucked in a deep breath and sat up. “I’m fine. I-”
The smoke was thickest at floor level. But now some of it rolled away and he saw a black-clad man prone on the floor. The man had been shot multiple times, including one round that had passed through his cheek. At a glance, anyone would assume the wound to the face had been a mortal one. It was ugly and spectacularly gory. But a closer look revealed the truth. The round had passed through one cheek and out the other, leaving behind a mangled face and a mouthful of shattered teeth. But he was alive. And clutched in his right hand was a 9mm pistol. He raised it and aimed it at the back of Allyson’s head.
Chad snapped out of his stupor and shoved Allyson aside a moment before the 9mm discharged. The bullet smashed into the wall. Chad leaped to his feet and kicked the gun out of the man’s hand. It went skittering down the hallway, disappearing beneath the curling tendrils of smoke. Chad switched the M-16 to semiauto, jammed the barrel against the man’s forehead, and squeezed the trigger. The bullet punched a hole through his forehead and blood fanned out around the base of his skull.
Allyson was on her feet again. She looked at the dead man. Then she looked at Chad and smiled. “You saved my life.”
“I owed you.”
A figure emerged from a doorway to his right and Chad lifted his weapon again. Then he saw who it was and heaved a sigh. “Fuck, man, you scared the shit out of me.”
Jim’s weapon was slung over his shoulder. He wasn’t wearing a gas mask and his eyes were bloodshot and watering from the smoke. Eyes that projected a deep sadness. “All this madness, there’s got to be an end to it.” The continuing sounds of battle failed to mask the haunted tone. He sounded like a man contemplating the end of the world, like a president on the brink of launching nuclear warheads. He looked Chad in the eye and said, “It ends here. I’ll see to it.”
And with that he turned from them and continued down the hallway.
Chad glanced at Allyson. “The hell’s that supposed to mean?”
She pushed her gas mask down and shrugged. “No idea. Let’s keep moving.”
And move they did, following the advance guard to the end of the hallway, then up the stairs to the third floor. They continued to encounter resistance as they progressed through the house, but it thinned out as they gained each floor and they stopped using the stun grenades to pave the way. It just wasn’t necessary and only served to slow them down. Chad followed Allyson’s lead and removed his gas mask. He remained vigilant, but he had a feeling his time as an active participant in the battle was at an end.
Chad didn’t fire a single shot as they moved more quickly through the fourth and fifth floors. The gunfire ahead of them was sporadic, limited to occasional pops. Chad felt almost giddy for a time, buoyed by the apparent quick success of the invasion. Then something troubling occurred to him, the notion that success had come too fast and too easily. Yes, the enemy was fighting back, had even killed a number of the Camp Whiskey men, but the defending force was less formidable by far than Chad had anticipated. There didn’t seem to be that many of them. Thinking about it, he began to feel a touch of paranoia. It was almost as if the enemy was holding something back, only offering a token resistance. Chad looked at Allyson and saw the intent look on her face. He wondered if any of this had occurred to her. Probably not. She was too focused on the task at hand.
He cleared his throat and said, “Hey, there’s something-”
The thought went unfinished as something peculiar caught his eye. There was a bullet hole just below one of the wall sconces. It appeared to be…healing itself. The hole was filling in, the fabric of reality-or appearance of reality-reassembling itself. There was some sort of sorcery at work. If he survived to make a return journey back through this house, he thought it likely he would eventually arrive at the foyer to find it perfectly restored. Upon reflection, this shouldn’t have surprised him. This place was just like the Master’s house in many ways. Bigger by far on the inside than out, for one thing. Populated by a coterie of wayward psycho children turned professional sadists, for another. And sustained by a brand of magic so powerful the mere contemplation of it was staggering. Surely anyone capable of wielding that kind of power was also capable of swatting aside the Camp Whiskey invaders like so many gnats.
Allyson shot him a puzzled, impatient look. “What?” Her gaze remained on the hallway ahead, occasionally drifting to the left or right as they passed open doorways. “Keep your head out of the clouds, Chad. Stay focused.”
The formerly ragged bullet hole had dwindled to a small black speck on the wall. In another moment even that was gone. “Yeah. Right.” Chad shook his head and poked the barrel of his weapon into the open doorway on his right. He peeked around the doorjamb and saw a shivering, terrified Apprentice huddled beneath a desk on the far wall. He moved past the doorway and said, “It’s not important.”
She shot him another puzzled look. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, with little blonde tufts hanging loose at her temples. Her face was grimy with sweat and soot. But it was funny. He felt a sudden and powerful urge to kiss her. She was so amazingly beautiful. He didn’t think he’d ever fully appreciated just how beautiful until this very moment. Somehow she even managed to make combat look sexy.
She arched an eyebrow. “Are you okay? Would you get that goofy grin off your face. We’re fighting for our lives here.”
Chad forced the smile away and nodded. “Right. Sorry.”
They ascended another set of stairs to yet another floor. Chad had lost track of how many floors they’d climbed, but he knew it was a ridiculously high number for a house that looked like a one-story wreck from the outside. But there was something different about this floor. It was wider and better-lit. The light fixtures and wainscoting were more ornate. And at the end of the long hallway stood a massive set of double doors that seemed to reach for the sky. Chad noticed now that the ceiling curved upward, rising dramatically toward the end of the hallway.
One of the men ahead of them said, “Goddamn. I hope we ain’t goin’ in there.”
The man to his immediate left snickered. “No shit. Look at them fuckin’ monster doors. Giants must live in there.”
The other man shuddered visibly and said, “Fuck. Don’t say that. This shit’s been weird enough already.”
Bai was at the head of the decimated column of fighters. She arrived at the double doors and turned her back to them, waited with arms crossed beneath her breasts for what remained of the Camp Whiskey force to assemble before her. Only now, clear of the smoke and exposed in this wide hallway, did Chad realize just how little was left of this force. Their numbers had been reduced by more than half.
Bai spoke. “Victory is our s.”
Then she unsheathed her sword and waded into the loose circle of surviving Camp Whiskey fighters. She was a black, untrackable blur moving side to side across the hallway, the long blade a flashing silver streak of light. The soldiers fell in rapid succession beneath her blade. Most were too startled to put up a fight. One or two tried clumsily to resist, but died in the attempt. It was over almost as soon as it had begun.
When Bai returned her sword to its sheath, the only people she’d left alive were Chad, Allyson, and Jim.
Chad gaped at her. “Why the hell did you do that?”
Bai’s expression was serene. The anger and terror in his tone failed to move her. A little smile darkened the corners of her mouth. “They were no longer necessary.”
Chad’s heart was slamming in his chest. “Yeah? And what about us? Why are we alive?”
Her smile deepened a little. “Because I am of the Order. I am merciless and I do not care about you. But I am true to my word. Survive this and you and your woman will be free.”
Chad’s chin jerked in Jim’s direction.“And what about my friend?”
“He has also cut a deal with the Order.”
Chad’s expression turned quizzical as he moved closer to Jim. “What’s she talking about?”
Jim sighed. “You wouldn’t understand. You don’t need to understand.” He turned away from Chad and looked at Bai. “Let’s end this.”
Bai nodded and moved to one of the huge doors.
She took the knob in one of her small hands, turned it, and pulled the door open. A brilliant white light made their eyes water.
Then Chad glimpsed what was waiting for them inside and gasped.
Down in the depths of a fevered sleep, Giselle’s body shook as she dreamed of blood. Blood everywhere. Spouting from freshly opened wounds. Jetting from the stumps of severed limbs like semen ejaculated from a throbbing cock. A great, crimson ocean drained from the bodies of hundreds of victims, a deep red tide filling the hallways of a very old mansion that only vaguely resembled the one she’d ruled over so mercilessly for a handful of months. Then a flashback, a jump backward in time, and the blood she sees is weeping from the wounds in her little brother’s body. Wounds she inflicted at the Master’s behest in order to save herself. He’d rewarded her for that blood betrayal, using his magic to arrest the aging process in her body, freezing her in an image of perfect late adolescent beauty. She had lived for more than fifty years, but she would never look any older than seventeen or eighteen. But the psychic price for this dubious gift was high indeed. The look of agony on her dying brother’s face was always lurking at the back of her mind, perpetually threatening to rise to the surface with its screaming accusations.
And so of course he returned to haunt and taunt her now.
Giselle awoke gasping, her psyche still reeling from the long-suppresed images of her decades-dead brother. Wakefulness failed to banish the memories. Her body shook and her heart raced like an athlete’s at the end of a series of sprints, a manic thump-thump-thump that made the blood sing in her ears. Or was that just the memory of her brother’s wailing pleas for mercy? Hot tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cold cheeks. She remembered it all now. How he’d called out for his mommy and daddy over and over, even though they were already dead. Even though he’d watched them die. As if some part of him really believed their mutilated bodies could reanimate and come to his rescue. Because that’s what mommies and daddies did. They came to your rescue. They kept the boogeyman away and held you and rocked you when you were feeling bad. He was just a little kid and he’d been unable to accept that there was no one to play that role for him anymore. Not even his beloved older sister, who had turned against him so cravenly, just to save her own hide.
Giselle’s scream echoed in the dark chamber.
She shook her head hard, her sweat-soaked, stringy hair flailing in the darkness. She cried and jibbered like a madwoman locked in the padded room of some asylum.
NO!NO!NO!
NO!NO!NO!NOOOOOooooooo…
But the images refused to recede. It was as if, having thought of them, having allowed them room to breathe in the haunted cavern of her mind, she couldn’t not dwell on the awful memories.
She let out another keening cry of grief, raised her hands to her face-and felt the stumps prod her cheeks.
A moment of perfect stillness elapsed. In this moment, she held her breath, not daring to breathe. Not daring to acknowledge existence itself. Her mind was blank. Then she released that breath and gently touched the stumps to her cheeks again… There was a faint phantom limb sensation, but it diminished as her mind accepted the simple physical evidence of her mutilated flesh.
Her hands were gone again. She experienced a moment of desperate, yawning disorientation, as if she were standing at the edge of a great abyss. One more step and she would plummet into forever darkness. She struggled to comprehend what had happened. There was no pain. No throbbing ache of infection. These were not fresh wounds. Rather, these were wounds that had healed over time. Months, maybe. Her “restoration” had been a kind of illusion all along, an elaborate trick played on her by the Master while he masqueraded as Azaroth and awaited her inevitable downfall. She’d even half-suspected it near the end of her reign here.
She was as she’d once been.
Completely.
Her body was real again. Not whole, but real. Unenhanced by magic. In fact, she felt not the faintest trace of magical energy lurking anywhere within her. Whatever abilities she’d possessed were gone, beyond any hope of recapture. The damping energy Dream had wrapped her in was gone, too, no longer needed.
She was as she’d once been.
Completely.
With a broken body.
And a fully functioning conscience.
This realization at last banished the memories of her brother, but there was no relief in this. Because now her mind was flooded with a ceaseless series of images of the horrible things she’d done over the last few months. A nonstop film loop of atrocity with her in the starring role. And Ursula in a second-billed role, always by her side, inflicting pain and death because they enjoyed it, because they reveled in the screams and cries of their victims. Had she really thought she loved Ursula? Because she felt no connection to that emotion now. It, too, had been an illusion.
Giselle pressed the backs of her forearms to her face and cried some more, her chest heaving with the force of emotions artifically held in check for too long.
She thought of Eddie, her blood sacrifice to “Azaroth.”
Sweet, trusting Eddie.
And that look of confused betrayal on his face in his last moments.
The crying only began to dry up as she felt the subtle vibrations in her bones. She sat very still for a moment and waited. And felt the vibrations again. Then she drew in a series of deep breaths and felt herself grow calm.
She then situated herself in a corner of the swinging cage and awaited the arrival of the ones who had come for her. She thought about them and wondered what they would do with her. She supposed they would torture her. And then kill her, of course. There would be much pain. But contemplating this failed to disturb the new, sudden sense of peace that had settled over her. She supposed she deserved whatever they had planned for her. She thought about the dragon tattoo. If she could see herself in a mirror, would she still see the dragon? She thought not.
She was as she’d once been.
Completely.
She closed her eyes in the darkness and thought of a time when she’d done heroic things. Memories that were bittersweet now, but no less true than the memories of horror. When the tears came again, they were the soft, noiseless tears of a black-clad mourner at the grave site of a long-estranged former lover or friend.
The room was enormous, a large, open space big enough to encompass some of the smaller rural homes Allyson had seen on the way to this place. A portion of it functioned as a library and den. At the far end was a living space, with a canopied four-poster bed, wardrobe, and vanity.
A man in a black uniform stood in the center of the room, hands upraised, lean body in a stiff pose of surrender. Allyson tightened her grip on the M-16 as they moved deeper into the room. Something about the atmosphere here didn’t seem right. It was warm. And yet she felt a bone-deep chill. She shivered slightly as they advanced on the man who looked to be all that was left of the pathetic security force they had just vanquished.
The man was smiling as they neared. There was something unsettling in the man’s steady gaze. His dark eyes were the cold, unblinking eyes of a lizard. Allyson, seized by the absurd notion that he would have a forked tongue, suddenly didn’t want him to open his mouth. She imagined that tongue flicking out between teeth too sharp and too white, the only sound emerging from his mouth a low, sibilant hiss.
The image was so vivid she drew in a startled intake of breath when he opened his mouth to say, “Welcome, honored representatives of the Order of the Dragon.”
He bowed slightly at the waist as he said this.
Bai bowed in return and said, “I am Bai, designated by the Order to retrieve Giselle Burkhardt from your custody. And are you Schreck?”
The man in black straightened and nodded. “I am.”
Bai sheathed her sword. “At ease, then.”
The man called Schreck lowered his hands with deliberate slowness, as if he did not yet trust that he was safe in their presence. He looked at Allyson, then, a glance so quick she almost missed it, and her sense of unease deepened. It wasn’t just that oily, insincere smile that bothered her. She thought she’d detected something in that glance, something inscrutable directed at her. But that was crazy. And paranoid. She’d never met this man before, had no knowledge of him prior to walking into this room.
Then he spoke again, a comment directed at Bai.
“Shall we finish our business now?”
Allyson frowned.
There was something familiar in the timbre of his voice, a faintly insinuating and mocking quality. She had heard this voice before, she was sure of it, but the connection eluded her as, for some unfathomable reason, Schreck and Bai approached a drab and blank expanse of wall opposite the big bed. Schreck leaned close to Bai and said something she couldn’ t make out, a mumbled whisper. Then Bai nodded and extended a hand to the wall. Her forefinger described a vague shape on the wall. It might have been a door. She spoke in a whisper and Allyson moved a step closer, straining to hear. The words became slightly more distinct, but Bai was speaking an Asiatic language, so the meaning remained elusive.
She turned and looked at Chad, who was staring past her at the far end of the room. She followed his gaze to an open set of French doors. Beyond the doors was a balcony. And on the balcony, their backs turned to the people in the room as they leaned against the railing, were two people, a man and a woman. The man wore only black slacks. He had long, sandy brown hair and a sculpted physique. The woman wore a small robe that barely reached the middle of her shapely thighs. She had long, slender legs and a tapered waist. She had short, jet-black hair.
No…wait.
She blinked hard and rubbed at her eyes. Then she looked at the couple on the balcony again. The woman’s jet-black hair was gone. She now had long, flowing blonde locks. Allyson decided her eyes were playing tricks on her. It had been a long day. A combination of fatigue and a trick of the light had conspired to make her initially think the woman’s hair was shorter and black.
A nice theory. Except it was pure bullshit and she knew it. The woman’s hair had grown and changed color in the blink of an eye. She was seized by a sudden conviction-she didn’t want the people on the balcony to turn around. Didn’t want to see their faces. That nagging sense of familiarity she’d felt while listening to Schreck had returned. She thought she knew who that woman was. It made no sense that she was here. Or maybe it made as much sense as anything.
She looked at Chad again and the look on his face pierced his heart. It was a combination of disbelief and longing.
He took an unconscious step toward the balcony.
Allyson hated herself for the tears that came then. She had no right to feel this sense of betrayal, not after the things she’d done. Maybe this was what she deserved in return for all those months she’d deceived Chad. Maybe this was karma.
Then Jim clamped a hand on Chad’s shoulder, stopped him in his tracks. He turned Chad toward him and locked eyes with him, spoke a single w ord:“No.”
Chad blinked rapidly. “But…I think that’s-”
Jim shook his head, his expression stern. “Doesn’t matter. You have to leave the past behind.” He looked at Allyson now. “You both do.”
Allyson shuddered, feeling again that bone-deep chill that belied the room’s temperature. She opened her mouth to reply, but whatever it was she’d been about to say went unspoken as her attention was drawn to the wall where Schreck and Bai had been standing moments ago.
She frowned again. “What the fuck?”
The men followed her gaze and saw the vertical, black rectangle in the wall, a door to some dark place. It hadn’t been there before. And Bai and Schreck had vanished, presumbably into that darkness. Looking at the darkness beyond the opening triggered a sensation of creeping dread. Allyson felt it crawling through her intestines like a tapeworm. She didn’t know what that dark place was, but she did know she would sooner die than set even one foot inside it.
Then there was movement within the darkness and a moment later Bai and Schreck reemerged into the room. Between them was a young woman, maybe seventeen or eighteen. Allyson’s heart leaped at the sight of her charred wrist stumps. Some monster had mutilated her. She was nude, except for a very small pair of black panties. She was pale and her long black hair was tangled. The girl was pretty, but there was obvious madness in her jittering eyes. She shivered and leaned close to Bai.
“What the hell? This is the person you came for?” Spittle flew from Allyson’s lips, each word a jab, imbued with an implied sneer. “Look what’s been done to her. She’s pathetic. I don’t care what she’s done. Now you’re going to torture her? You fucking animals.”
Bai’s smile was thin and strained. “It is no concern of yours.” She placed a hand on the hilt of her sword. “Unless you would like me to r escind the Order’s deal with your lover. Then I suppose we could-” Her smile broadened. “-discuss it.”
Allyson watched the woman’s hands curl around the sword’s hilt. There was something almost sensual about the gesture. A vaguely sexual eagerness. Allyson recognized the futility of her indignation on the girl’s behalf and bit back any further expressions of rage. She sighed. “That won’t be necessary. Could we please just get out of here now? No offense, but I’d like to never see any of you fuckers ever again.”
Schreck laughed softly.
Allyson glared at him. “Something to say, asshole?”
Chad reached for her, brushed a hand across her arm. “Allyson, stop this. There’s no need-”
Allyson shrugged his hand away and approached Schreck, halving the distance between them. “Do I know you?”
Schreck’s dark eyes glittered. “Certainly, Ms. Vanover.”
Then she had it. The wheels in her mind stopped spinning as the connection clicked. Hearing him say her name did the trick. It was him. The voice on the phone. Her contact during the months she’d spent spying on Chad. How that voice had haunted her during her months at Camp Whiskey. She heard it in her dreams and like a whispered promise of pain in idle waking moments.
She managed one word, pushed through gritted teeth: “You.”
Schreck grinned, baring rows of horrible, too-white teeth. He looked like a shark. “Have you told your boyfriend about-”
Allyson looked at Bai as she jabbed a finger in Schreck’s direction. “What about this son of a bitch? Has the Order made any deals with him?”
Bai kept her expression neutral as she said, “None that have not already been fulfilled.”
And now it was Allyson’s turn to grin like a crazy person. The sight of it must have unnerved Schreck. He frowned and glanced at Bai. “What’s the-”
Allyson moved with explosive speed, reversing her grip on the M-16 and raising it above her shoulders. Schreck cringed and shuffled backward. But the black door was gone, the blank wall restored. His back met the wall and he could move no further. He raised his hands to cover his face, but he was too late-the stock of the M-16 crashed into his mouth, pulping his lips and shattering teeth.
Allyson moved out of his way as he tumbled to the floor and rolled onto his back. She tossed the M-16 aside and pulled the 9mm from her waistband. She set the safety and moved to where Schreck was sprawled. She avoided Chad’s gaze, not wanting to look too long at his expression of horrified astonishment. Jim remained stoic, his hand on Chad’s shoulder again.
Schreck opened his bleary eyes and saw her standing over him. He let out a wail and tried to scoot away. Allyson seized a handful of his black shirt and lifted him a few inches off the floor. Then she adjusted her grip on the pistol, raised her hand, and brought it around, smashing the nickel-plated butt against the side of his head. Shreck shrieked and bucked on the floor, but Allyson held on to him with ease, galvanized now by the most righteous sense of rage that had ever possessed her. She raised her hand again and whipped the pistol across Schreck’s face another time. Then another and another. Again and again. Mashing flesh and pulverizing bone. The man barely looked human by the time she stopped swinging the pistol back and forth. He sagged in her grip, unable to resist, barely alive.
She let him go and stood up straight. Schreck’s blood-filled eyes looked up at her. Whether he could see her or not she didn’t know. She hoped so. She hoped he saw an avenging angel about to hand down judgment.
She hoped he was afraid. Of her and his impending rendezvous with the denizens of hell. She switched the 9mm’s safety off and aimed the barrel at the center of Schreck’s ruined face. His lips twitched, seemed to curl upward. A last, mocking smile of the damned.
Allyson pulled the trigger and Schreck died.
Back outside, now.
It wasn’t yet noon, which didn’t seem possible. Allyson felt as if a lifetime had passed since they’d gone charging into the strange house. So much had happened. So many people had died. It didn’t seem right that a space of little more than an hour could encompass the extinguishing of all those lives. But it had. The sun was obscured by clouds and the air was tinged with winter’s chill. But Allyson didn’t mind that. It was a clean chill. Natural. She remembered her glimpse of that black room and shuddered.
The girl called Giselle had been loaded into the minivan parked behind the package truck. She was in the rear, her wrist stumps bound with a thick layering of silver duct tape. The girl looked numb, her eyes staring at something beyond this place. The young Asian man was sitting beside her. He sensed Allyson’s scrutiny and his head swiveled slowly in her direction. A very small smile darkened the edges of his cruel mouth. Allyson turned away and moved to the Jeep.
Chad and Jim were there, arguing in low voices. Chad was doing most of the arguing, though. Jim kept his head down and stared at the ground as he listened to his friend rant.
“Jim, you just can’t do this. You can’t go with them. It’s insane.”
Jim sighed-an immensely tired sound-and at last lifted his head to look Chad in the eye. “Perhaps. Regardless, I am going.” He looked at Allyson and managed a tired smile. “Hello, Allyson. I want you to know how proud I am of you.”
Allyson flushed with embarrassment. She smiled and abruptly threw her arms around the old singer. He laughed and after a moment returned the embrace. Then she broke the embrace and stepped back, saw that he was smiling, too. It transformed his haggard features, making him look decades younger. For a flickering moment, she glimpsed the rock god of old, the impossibly good-looking and intelligent young lion who had taken the world by storm.
She swiped tears from her eyes with the base of a palm. “Chad’s right, you know. You should go with us. There’s nothing you can do for that girl.”
Jim’s smile slipped some, but didn’t fade entirely. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that.” He glanced at the minivan and the last of his smile evaporated as he looked at the frail form of the girl huddled against the door. “Giselle has made mistakes. She’s done bad things. Unforgivable things. But there was a time when she did amazing things. A time when we worked toward a common goal. She was incredibly brave then, and her actions ultimately saved the lives of thousands. Including-” He indicated Chad with a tilt of his chin. “-your man here. For that alone, I owe her my company for what’s left of her journey. I owe her whatever comfort I can give her, meager though that may be.”
Chad made an exasperated sound and shook his head. “Look, I get what you’re saying, okay? I understand it. But you’re putting your life on the line here.”
Jim’s smile this time was smaller, sadder. “It won’t be the first time.”
Chad opened his mouth to respond to this, but hesitated at the sound of the minivan’s front passenger door slamming shut. The old Asian man was ensconced in the shotgun seat now. Bai was standing outside the open side door, watching them expectantly.
“Leaving now!” she called to them.
Jim shuffled a few steps in that direction. Then he turned toward Chad and Allyson, addressing them one last time as he walked backward. “I wish you both the best of luck with whatever the future holds. You can be happy, but you should stay underground.”
He reached the minivan and turned away from them.
He slipped into the rear compartment and settled into the space between the younger Asian man and Giselle. Bai threw the door shut and moved to the other side of the van. She slipped behind the wheel and pulled the driver’s-side door shut. She didn’t so much as glance Chad’s way. There was something dismissive about this. He was already a part of the past for her. A toy she’d amused herself with for a time and was now discarding. The lack of even token acknowledgment made Allyson hate the bitch more than ever.
The minivan’s brake lights came on and the engine purred to life. It was a well-maintained car, easily the best-running vehicle in their meager fleet, so of course Bai had commandeered it for the drive up here. But Allyson’s resentment on that count faded as she watched Bai quickly execute a three-point turn and start down the hill. The sooner the Order people were gone from her sight the better.
Chad sighed and slumped against the side of the Jeep, watching with numb resignation as the minivan quickly made its way down the winding dirt path. “I can’t believe he’s going with them. How could-”
The explosion made Allyson stagger backward. Chad dropped to his knees and screamed. The minivan’s interior was on fire. The roof had been blown out, its mangled remains a soot-gray mess. A column of black smoke rose into the air. Allyson’s mind reeled. She couldn’t begin to process what had happened. And then the fire ignited the gas tank and a second explosion demolished much of what was left of the minivan. Allyson’s knees went weak and she clutched the Jeep’s side mirror to remain upright.
Chad got to his feet and rushed down the hill. He was screaming something. Useless words of denial. Allyson watched him stumble and fall, banging his knees on the hard ground. And then he was on his feet again, charging full-out toward the smoldering wreck of the minivan. Allyson regained her composure and shoved herself away from the Jeep, hurrying down the hill after him.
Chad stopped a dozen yards from the burning van. The heat was too intense to get any closer. He was on his knees again and sobbing by the time Allyson reached him. She dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around him, forcing his head away from the awful sight. He buried his face against her breasts and wailed. Allyson stroked his back and cooed to him. Nonsensical things. The things a mother might whisper in a baby’s ear. She felt useless and stupid. She looked over his shoulder and was able to make out smoking remains in the minivan’s seats. A scent of burning meat permeated the air. Allyson’s stomach did a slow roll.
She gripped Chad by the hand and stood up, pulling him upright against his will. He looked at the minivan again, a stricken look contorting his features. Allyson turned him away from it and they began a grim march back up the hill. They reached the Jeep and Allyson helped Chad into the passenger seat. He was pliant, now, acquiescing to her every instruction without resisting.
Allyson climbed behind the wheel, dug the Jeep’s keys out of her pocket, and twisted them in the ignition. The engine sputtered a few times, then came to reluctant life. She goosed the gas pedal a few times, and when the Jeep was running more smoothly, she put it in gear and started down the hill.
They gave the ruin of the minivan a wide berth.
They drove in silence for miles, leaving the house on the hill far behind.
Chad spoke up when they at last left the rural road behind and started down a much busier state route. “Jim planned that, didn’t he?”
Allyson hesitated a moment before replying. She’d been working toward the same conclusion, but it was nonetheless a hard thing to admit. “Yeah,” she said at last, “I think he did.”
Chad slumped in his seat and stared blankly at the road ahead. “Hell. It makes sense, in a really fucked up way. He couldn’t take out the Order people in a direct confrontation. So he waited until he had them where he wanted. He sacrificed himself to avenge the deaths of his friends and to save Giselle from whatever sick thing they had planned for her.” He laughed, a short, sharp, bitter sound. “I’ve got to hand it to him, I guess. I’ll bet those arrogant assholes never saw it coming.”
Allyson frowned. “Okay. But how did he do it?”
Chad looked at her. “You saw that big jacket he had on, right? There was a lot of ordnance in that truck. I bet he helped himself to some grenades before we went into the house. Hid them deep in that jacket. It must have been so easy to just reach in his jacket and slip the pin out of one of those grenades. All he had to do then was wait a few seconds.”
Allyson’s eyes misted. “That…shit, that really took some guts.”
Chad nodded and said, “Yeah.”
They drove in silence for several more miles. Traffic thickened as they neared the exit that would carry them back to the interstate. Allyson thought of something as she hit the turn signal. “He said we should stay underground. “Why do you think he said that?”
Chad shook his head. “Jim spent most of his life underground. Probably he just thinks…thought it would be the smart thing to do.”
“Or maybe he thought we might still be in danger somehow. Either from the Order or…whoever’s in charge now at that house we just shot up.”
Chad shrugged. “Could be.”
Allyson steered the Jeep along the curving interstate ramp. “So what do you think we should do?”
“Right now?” Chad grunted. “Let’s just keep driving and figure it out later. All I want at the moment is to get to a hotel somewhere, preferably one at least a hundred miles from here, then shower, have sex with you, and sleep for a day.”
Allyson smiled. “Sounds good.”
The Jeep hit the interstate and Allyson put the pedal down.