Black (28 page)

Carlos reached the girl in four strides. He dropped to his right knee and slugged her with a quick chop to her temple, all the while keeping the gun trained on the American.

The woman moaned and sagged. Unconscious.

Carlos held his position for a count of three. The American's chest rose and fell. The 9-millimeter gun lay on the bed by his fingers.

Easy. Too easy. Almost disappointingly easy.

He rose, retrieved the American's gun, hurried to the door. Closed it quietly. He returned to the bed and studied the situation, gun hanging at his side. A windfall in any sense of the word. Two for the price of one, as the Americans would say. An unconscious woman and a sleeping man, helpless at his feet.

The man had several scars on his chest. Very well muscled. Lean fingers. The perfect body for a fighter. Perhaps he'd underestimated this one.

What was driving Thomas Hunter? Dreams? They would soon know, because he would take them both. The world would be looking for the crazed American who'd kidnapped Monique de Raison, never suspecting that they were both now in the hands of a third party. Svensson would wet himself over this one.

The air conditioner rattled steadily to his left. Outside, the street crawled with night business. The other woman could return at any moment.

Carlos walked to the Raison woman, removed her gag. Withdrew a marble-sized ball from his pocket. It was a product of his own making. Nine parts high explosive, one part remote detonator. He'd used it successfully on three occasions.

He pulled the woman to a sitting position, squeezed her cheeks to part her lips, and slipped the ball into her mouth. Using his left hand, he squeezed her windpipe with enough sudden force to make her gasp involuntarily. At the same moment, while her mouth gaped, he shoved the ball down her throat with his forefinger.

She gagged. Swallowed. He clamped his hand over her mouth, and she struggled against him, regaining consciousness. When he was sure she'd swallowed the ball completely, he brought his fist across her temple.

She slumped to the floor.

Monique de Raison now carried enough explosive in her belly to disembowel her with the push of a single button. Undetonated, the explosive ball would pass out of her system in roughly twenty-four hours, but until then she was his prisoner to a range of fifty meters. It was the only way to get both her and the American to cooperate. She would comply with his instructions for obvious reasons. And if Carlos judged the American correctly, Hunter would comply to protect the girl.

“Wha—” The American's head jerked in his sleep. He was mumbling. “What?”

Carlos stepped to the base of the bed. He considered waking the man with a bullet through the shoulder. But they still had to descend to the basement and walk to the car. He could risk neither the mess nor the time of a bleeding shoulder.

“Say them?” Hunter mumbled. “Say them . . . 179.47 degrees for two hours . . . the fifth gene and the ninety-third gene, cut and spliced. The back door as well.”

What was the idiot mumbling?

“.. . Now forget . . .”

An interesting sight, this American jerking about, mumbling in his sleep. His dreams. Fifth gene, ninety-third gene, cut and spliced. You'll need the back door. Meaningless. Carlos stored the information out of habit.

He lifted the gun and trained it on the American's chest. One shot and the man would be dead. Truly tempting. But they needed him alive if possible. It reminded him of the time he'd assassinated another American. The owner of a pharmaceutical company whom Svensson wanted out of the way.

Carlos let the moment linger.

Michal flew below the treetops and glanced back wordlessly from time to time. Tom plunged ahead, mind numb. Something very significant had just happened. He'd snuck away from the village. He'd met with Teeleh, a thought that sent a chill down his spine every time he saw the creature in his mind's eye. He'd actually agreed to betray—

No, not betray. He could never do that.

But he had!

And he'd seen a redhead named Bill, who was his copilot, barely alive. The horror of it all seeped into his mind, an indelible ink. He felt like a child stumbling through the streets of Manila.

Tom finally settled into a dumb hopelessness and lost himself in the drumming of his feet.

When they finally broke over the crest of the valley, Michal didn't turn down toward the lighted village as Tom expected. Instead, he turned up the valley where the wide road disappeared over the hill. Tom came to a panting halt and leaned over, hands on his knees, gulping the night air. The Roush flew on for a hundred yards before noticing Thomas had stopped. With a flurry of wings he turned and glided back down the hill.

“Would it be better if we walked now?” he asked.

Tom motioned toward the village. “Are we going?”

“Tonight you will meet Elyon,” Michal answered.

“Elyon?” Tom stood up, alarmed.

The Roush turned and began walking toward the path.

“Michal! Please. Please, I have to know something.”

“Oh, you will, Thomas. You will.”

“Bill. You saw him? The Shataiki said he was my copilot. We crash-landed . . .”

Michal turned back and studied him. “This is what the deceiver told you?”

“Yes. And I saw him, Michal.
You
saw him!”

“I will tell you what I saw, and you must never forget it. Do you understand me? Never!”

“Of course!” Emotion swelled in Tom's chest. He placed his palms on his temples, desperate for clarity. “Please, just tell me something that
makes sense.”

“I saw nothing but lies. Teeleh is a deceiver. He will tell you anything to lure you into his trap. Anything! Knowing full well that you would quickly doubt what he told you, he showed you this redhead you call Bill.”

“But if Bill is real—”

“Bill isn't real! What you saw was a figment of your imagination! A creation of that monster! From the beginning he was planted to deceive you.”

“But . . . Bill warned me! He ran out of the forest and yelled at me!”

“What better way for Teeleh to convince you that he was real? He knew that you would likely break your agreement with him to betray the others.” Michal shuddered with the last word. “But now that he has pulled this stunt and you're tempted to think Bill is real, you are more likely to return. It will haunt you until you finally return.”

The Roush stared at him with eyes that made Tom want to cry.

“Never!” he said. “I would never return if that's true!”

Michal didn't reply right away. He turned and waddled down the hill.

“Even now you doubt,” he said.

Tom let Michal walk on, suddenly sure that the Roush was both right and wrong. Right about the Shataiki's deception, wrong about him going back. How could he? He wasn't from the histories; he wasn't from some distant planet called Earth. He was from here, and here was Earth.

Unless Teeleh was right.

He followed the Roush at a respectable distance. They walked over the hill and into a second valley. Here a new landscape unfolded before his eyes. The gentle roll of the hills gave way to steep grades covered with trees much taller than those behind them.

Tom gazed at the landscape in wonder. The steep grades became cliffs and the trees grew massive, so the light they shed brightened the canyon to near daylight. Every branch seemed to carry fruit. It must have been from this forest that the huge columns of the Thrall had been harvested. Flawless pillars that shone in hues of ruby and sapphire and emerald and gold, lighting the path with an aura that Tom could almost feel.

This was his home. He'd lost his memory, but this incredible place was his home. He quickened his pace slightly.

Red and blue flowers with large petals covered a thick carpet of emerald grass. The cliffs looked as though they were cut from a single large, white pearl, which reflected light from the trees so that the entire valley glowed in the hues of the rainbow. Tom could hear the rushing of a river that occasionally wound its way close enough to the path that he could see the green, luminescent water as it rushed by.

Home. This was home, and Tom could hardly stand the fact that he'd ever doubted it. Rachelle should be here with him, walking up this very path.

They had walked no more than ten minutes when Tom first heard the distant thunder. At first he thought it must be the sound of the river. No, more than a river.

A tingle ran over his skin. The thunder grew. He picked up his pace again. Michal also moved faster, hopping along the ground and extending his wings to maintain balance. Whatever was drawing Tom also drew him.

The foliage to his left suddenly rustled and Tom stopped. A white beast the size of a small horse but resembling a lion sauntered into the path, eying him curiously. Tom took a step back. But the lion walked on, purring loudly. Tom ran to catch Michal, who hadn't stopped.

He saw other creatures now. Many looked like the first, others like horses. Tom watched a large white eagle land on a lion's back and fix its eyes on him as he stumbled down the path.

The thunder grew, a rumble low and deep and powerful enough to send a faint tremor through the ground. Michal had left his hopping and skipping and had taken back to the air.

Tom sprinted after the Roush. Vibrations rose through the earth. He ran around a sweeping bend in the road, heart pounding.

And then the path ended. Abruptly.

Tom slid to a halt.

Before him sprawled a great circular lake, glowing fluorescent with the same emerald water that contained the black forest. The lake was lined with huge, evenly spaced, gleaming trees, set back forty paces from a white sandy shore. Animals circled the lake, sleeping or drinking.

On the far side, a towering pearl cliff shimmered with ruby and topaz hues. Over the cliff poured a huge waterfall, which throbbed with green and golden light and thundered into the water a hundred meters below. The rising mist captured light from the trees, giving the appearance that colors arose out of the lake itself. Here, there could hardly be a difference between day and night. To his right, the river he had seen along the path flowed from the lake. Michal had descended to the lake's shore and lapped thirstily at the water's edge.

All of this Tom registered before his first blink.

He took a few tentative steps down the shore, then stopped, feet planted in the sand. He wanted to run to the water's edge and drink as Michal drank, but he suddenly wasn't sure he could move.

Below, Michal continued drinking.

A chill descended Tom's spine, from the nape of his neck to the soles of his feet. An inexplicable fear smothered him. Sweat seeped from his pores despite a cool wind blowing across the lake.

Something was wrong. All wrong. He stepped back, mind grasping for a thread of reason. Instead, the fear gave way to terror. He spun and ran up the bank.

The moment he crested the bank, the fear fell from him like loosed shackles. He turned back. Michal drank. Insatiably.

In that moment, Tom knew he
had
to drink the water.

There on the beach, his feet spread and planted firmly in the soft white sand, his hands clenched at his sides, Tom's mind snapped.

He was vaguely aware of the low groan that broke from his lips, barely audible above the falling water. The animals loitered. Michal drank deeply below him. The trees stood stately. The waterfall gushed. The scene was frozen in time, with Tom mistakenly trapped in its folds.

The waterfall suddenly seemed to crash a little harder, and a large surge of spray rose from the lake. Mist drifted toward him. He could see it coming. It billowed over the shore. It hit him in the face, no more than a faint sprinkling of moisture, but it could have been the shock wave of a small nuclear weapon.

Tom gasped. His hands fell to the sand. Eyes wide. The terror was gone.

Only the desire remained. Raw, desperate desire, pulling at his aching heart with the power of absolute vacuum.

No one watching could have been prepared for what he did next. In that moment, knowing what he must do—what he wanted most desperately—Tom tore his feet from the sand and sprinted for the water's edge. He didn't stop at the shore and stoop to drink as the others did. Instead, he dived headlong over the bent posture of Michal and into the glowing waters. Screaming all the way.

The instant Tom hit the water, his body shook violently. A blue strobe exploded in his eyes, and he knew that he was going to die. That he had entered a forbidden pool, pulled by the wrong desire, and now he would pay with his life.

The warm water engulfed him. Flutters rippled through his body and erupted into a boiling heat that knocked the wind from his lungs. The shock alone might kill him.

But he didn't die. In fact, it was pleasure that racked his body, not death. Pleasure! The sensations coursed through his bones in great, unrelenting waves.

Elyon.

How he was certain he did not know. But he knew. Elyon was in this lake with him.