Black (29 page)

Tom opened his eyes and found they did not sting. Gold light drifted by. No part of the water seemed darker than another. He lost all sense of direction. Which way was up?

The water pressed in on every inch of his body, as intense as any acid, but one that burned with pleasure
instead of pain. His violent shaking gave way to a gentle trembling as he sank into the water. He opened his mouth and laughed. He wanted more, much more. He wanted to suck the water in and drink it.

Without thinking, he did that. He took a great gulp and then inhaled unintentionally. The liquid hit his lungs.

Tom pulled up, panicked. Tried to clear his lungs, hacking. Instead, he inhaled more of the water. He flailed and clawed in a direction he thought might be the surface. Was he drowning?

No. He didn't feel short of breath.

He carefully sucked more water and breathed it out slowly. Then again, deep and hard. Out with a soft whoosh.

He was breathing the water! In great heaves he was breathing the lake's intoxicating water.

Tom shrieked with laughter. He tumbled through the water, pulling his legs in close so he would roll, and then stretching them out so he thrust forward, farther into the colors surrounding him. He swam into the lake, deeper and deeper, twisting and rolling as he plummeted toward the bottom. The power contained in this lake was far greater than anything he'd ever imagined. He could hardly contain himself.

In fact, he could not contain himself; he cried out with pleasure and swam deeper.

Then he heard them. Three words.

I made this.

Tom pulled himself up, frozen. No, not words. Music that spoke. Pure notes piercing his heart and mind with as much meaning as an entire book. He whipped his body around, searching for its source.

A giggle rippled through the water. Like a child now.

Tom grinned stupidly and spun around. “Elyon?” His voice was muffled, hardly a voice at all.

I made this
.

The words reached into Tom's bones, and he began to tremble again. He wasn't sure if it was an actual voice, or whether he was somehow imagining it.

“What are you? Where are you?” Light floated by. Waves of pleasure continued to sweep through him. “Who are you?”

I am Elyon.
And I made you.

The words started in his mind and burned through his body like a spreading fire.

Do you like it?

Yes!
Tom said. He might have spoken, he might have shouted, he didn't know. He only knew that his whole body screamed it.

Tom looked around. “Elyon?”

The voice was different now. Spoken. The music was gone. A simple, innocent question.

Do you doubt me?

In that single moment, the full weight of his terrible foolishness crashed in on him like a sledgehammer. How could he have doubted this?

Tom curled into a fetal position within the bowels of the lake and began to moan.

I see you, Thomas.
I made you.
I love you.

The words washed over him, reaching into the deepest marrow of his bones, caressing each hidden synapse, flowing through every vein, as though he had been given a transfusion.

So then, why do you doubt?

It was the Thomas from his dreams—from his subconscious—that filled his mind now. He had more than just doubted. That was him, wasn't it?

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.” He thought he might die after all. “I'm sorry. I am so sorry,” he moaned. “Please . . .”

Sorry? Why are you sorry?

“For everything. For . . . doubting. For ignoring . . .” Tom stopped, not sure exactly how else he had offended, only knowing that he had.

For not loving?
I love you, Thomas.

The words filled the entire lake, as though the water itself had become these words. Tom sobbed uncontrollably.

The water around his feet suddenly began to boil, and he felt the lake suck him deeper into itself. He gasped, pulled by a powerful current. And then he was flipped over and pushed headfirst by the same current. He opened his eyes, resigned to whatever awaited him.

A dark tunnel opened directly ahead of him, like the eye of a whirlpool. He rushed into it and the light fell away.

Pain hit him like a battering ram, and he gasped for breath. He instinctively arched his back in blind panic and reached back toward the entrance of the tunnel, straining to see it, but it had closed.

He began to scream, flailing in the water, rushing deeper into the dark tunnel. Pain raged through his entire body. He felt as if his flesh had been neatly filleted and packed with salt; each organ stuffed with burning coals; his bones drilled open and filled with molten lead.

For the first time in his life, Tom wanted desperately to die.

Then he saw the images streaming by, and he recognized where he must be. Images from the Crossing, from his dreams, strung out here for him to see.

Images of him spitting in his father's face. His father the chaplain.

“Let me die!”
he heard himself shrieking.
“Let me diiiieeee!”

The water forced his eyes open and new images filled his mind. His mother, crying. The images came faster now. Pictures of his life. A dark, terrible nature. A red-faced man was spitting obscenities with a long tongue that kept flashing from his gaping mouth like a snake's .Each time the tongue touched another person, they crumpled to the floor in a pile of bones. It was his face he saw. Memories of lives dead and gone, but here now and dying still.

And he knew then that he had entered his own soul.

Tom's back arched so that his head neared his heels. His spine stressed to the snapping point. He couldn't stop screaming.

The tunnel suddenly gaped below and spewed him out into soupy red water. Blood red. He sucked at the red water, filling his spent lungs.

From deep in the pit of the lake a moan began to fill his ears, replacing his own screams. Tom spun about, searching for the sound, but he found only thick red blood. The moan gained volume and grew to a wail and then a scream.

Elyon was screaming! In pain.

Tom pressed his hands to his ears and began to scream with the other, thinking now that this was worse than the dark tunnel. His body crawled with fire, as though every last cell revolted at the sound.
And so they should,
a voice whispered in his skull.
Their Maker is screaming in pain!

Then he was through. Out of the red, into the green of the lake, hands still pressed firmly against his ears. Tom heard the words as if they came from within his own mind.

I love you, Thomas.

Immediately the pain was gone. Tom pulled his hands from his head and straightened out slightly in the water. He floated, too stunned to respond. Then the lake was filled with a song. A song more wonderful than any song could possibly sound, a hundred thousand melodies woven into one.

I love you.

I choose you.

I rescue you.

I cherish you
.

“I love you too!” Tom cried desperately. “I choose you; I cherish you.” He was sobbing, but with love. The feeling was more intense than the pain that had racked him.

The current suddenly pulled at him again, tugging him up through the colors. His body again trembled with pleasure, and he hung limp as he sped through the water. He wanted to speak, to scream and to yell and to tell the whole world that he was the luckiest man in the universe. That he was loved by Elyon, Elyon himself, with his own voice, in a lake made by him.

But the words would not come.

How long he swam through the currents of the lake,
he could never know. He dived into blue hues and found a deep pool of peace that numbed his body like Novocain. With the twist of his wrist, he altered his course into a gold stream and trembled with waves of absolute confidence that come only with great power and wealth. Then a turn of his head and he rushed into red water bubbling with pleasure so great he felt himself go limp once again. Elyon laughed. And Tom laughed and dived deeper, twisting and turning.

When Elyon spoke again, his voice was gentle and deep, like a purring lion.

Never leave me, Thomas.
Tell me that you'll never leave me.

“Never! Never, never, never! I will always stay with you.”

Another current caught him from behind and pushed him through the water. He laughed as he rushed through the water for what seemed a very long time before breaking the surface not ten meters from the shore.

He stood on the sandy bottom and retched a quart of water from his lungs in front of a startled Michal. He coughed twice and waded from the water. “Boy, oh boy.” He couldn't think of words that would describe the experience. “Wow!”

“Elyon,” Michal said, his short snout split with a gaping grin. “Well, well. It
was
a bit unorthodox, diving in like that.”

“How long was I under?”

Michal shrugged. “A minute. No more.”

Tom slopped onto the shore and dropped to his knees. “Incredible.”

“Do you remember?”

He looked back at the waterfall. Did he remember?

“Remember what?”

“What village you come from. Who you are,” Michal said.

Did he?

“No,” Thomas said. “I remember everything since falling in the black forest. And I remember my dreams.”

Where he was sleeping, he thought. Waiting to awake. But he knew that he wouldn't wake there until he fell asleep here. It could be two days here and one second there. That's the way it worked.

Assuming he ever dreamed again. He certainly didn't want to. The lake had revived him completely. He felt like he'd slept a week.

He dropped to his back and lay on the sandy beach, gazing up at the moon.

21

M
onique blinked. Her head throbbed. She was lying on her side. Her vision was blurred. Her cheek was pressed into the carpet. She could see under the bed ten feet away. She'd fallen asleep?

Then she remembered. Her pulse spiked. Someone had broken in while Thomas was sleeping! He'd come in like a whirlwind and smashed her head before she could do anything. Something else had happened, but she couldn't remember what. Her throat was sore; her head felt like a balloon.

But she was alive, and she was still in the room.

She had to wake Tom!

Monique was about to lift her head when she saw the shoes under the end of the bed. They were connected to pants. Someone was standing at the end of the bed.

She caught her breath and froze. He was still here! Tom's breathing sounded ragged. He was hurt? Or sleeping.

Monique closed her eyes and tried to think. The strips of bedsheet still bound her arms and feet. But her mouth. He'd taken the gag off. Why? Was this her rescuer? Had the police come to take her away? If so, then why had the man knocked her unconscious?

No, it couldn't be anyone who had her safety in mind. For all she knew, he was crossing the room at this very minute, knife in hand, intending to finish the job.

She opened her eyes wide. The shoes hadn't moved. She rolled her eyes upward as far as she could, desperate for a glimpse of her attacker.

Black shirt. There was a long scar on his cheek. His arm was extended. He had a gun in his hand. The gun was pointed at Thomas.

Monique panicked. She jerked up as hard as she could and screamed. “Thomas!”

The man spun to her, pistol leveled, eyes wide. Thomas bolted upright on the bed, like a puppet on strings. The man dropped to one knee and whipped the gun back toward Thomas.

“Don't move!”

But it was too late. Thomas was already moving.

He threw himself to his left. The gun spit. A pillow spewed feathers. Monique saw the American fall from the bed, hit the floor on the other side. He moved with lightning speed, as if he'd bounced off the carpet.

Then he was in the air, flying for the black-clad intruder.

Phewt!
The gun spit again, ripping a hole in the headboard. Tom entered a scissors kick, like a soccer player lining up for a goal. His foot connected with the man's hand.

Crack!

The gun flew across the room and slammed into the wall above Monique's head. It fell to the floor at her side.

She was powerless to get it. But she swung her legs to cover it.

Thomas had rolled up onto the bed after his kick and now stood by the ruptured pillow, facing the attacker in a familiar ready stance.

The man glanced at her, then at Thomas. A smile twisted his lips. “Very good. I did underestimate you after all,” he said. Mediterranean accent. Schooled. Not a thug. Monique pushed herself up, ignoring a splitting pain in her head.

“Who are you?” Thomas demanded. His eyes were wide, but otherwise he was surprisingly calm. “I don't want to hurt anyone.”

“No? Then perhaps I did underestimate you.”

“You're the one who wants the vaccine,” Thomas said.

The man's left eye narrowed barely. Enough for Monique to know that Thomas had struck a chord.

“How did you know?” Thomas asked.

“I have no interest in a vaccine.” The man's eyes darted to a jacket lying by the door. Tom saw it as well.

“I tipped you off, didn't I?” Thomas demanded. “If I hadn't said anything to anybody, you wouldn't be here. Isn't that right?”

The man shrugged. “I only do what I'm hired to do. I have no idea what you're talking about.” He eased toward the front door. Brushed his hands against each other and raised them in a show of surrender. “In this case, I was hired to return the girl to her father, and I must tell you that I fully intend to do that. I have no interest in you.”

Thomas shook his head. “No, I don't believe you. Monique, 375,200 base pairs. HIV vaccine. Am I right?”

She stared at him. They hadn't published that information yet. How could—

“Am I right?” he demanded.

“Yes.”