Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) (66 page)

Manhattan

“Where’s my Glenn?”

Startled by the words, spoken in Hungarian, Glaeken looked down and found Magda awake, staring at him. Their litany was about to begin. Her memories were mired in the Second World War, when they both had been young and fresh and newly in love.

“I’m right here, Magda.”

She pulled her hand away. “No. You’re not him. You’re old. My Glenn is young and strong!”

“But I’ve grown old, my dear, like you.”

“You’re not him!” she said, her voice rising. “Glenn is out there fighting the darkness.”

The darkness.
Some part of her jumbled mind was aware of the horrors outside, and knew Rasalom was involved.

“No, he isn’t. He’s right here beside you.”

“No! Not my Glenn! He’s out there! He’d never let the dark win! Never! Now get away from me, you old fool! Away!”

Glaeken didn’t want her to start screaming, so he rose and left her.

“And if you see Glenn, tell him his Magda loves him and knows he won’t let the darkness get away with this.”

The words stung, setting their barbs into the flesh of his neck and shoulders and trailing him down the hall toward the living room.

The living room … it looked like a wake. The seven silent occupants, though separated by only a few feet of space, were miles apart, each closed off, locked behind the walls of their own thoughts. And fears.

Even here.

Nick and Jeffy stared at the air. Ba sat cross-legged against the far wall, eyes closed, silent. Jack and Sylvia stood at opposite ends of the long window, each gazing out at the eternal blackness. Even Bill and Carol sat apart, silent and separate on the couch.

And here am I, he thought, separated from them and from my wife, as cut off from the rest of humanity as I’ve ever been.

Rasalom had won outside, and he was winning in here.

And then Glaeken saw Jeffy move. The boy approached the coffee table and dropped to his knees before it. He gripped the hilt where it lay and pressed his cheek down against it, as if some part of him knew that what he was missing was locked within the cold reaches of the metal.

All their sacrifices … all their faith in him … Rasalom eternally victorious …

Anger erupted within Glaeken like one of the long-dormant volcanoes in the Pacific, exploding in his chest, engulfing him in its fiery heart.

Rasalom winning … having the last laugh …

It comes down to that, doesn’t it? Me against him. That’s what it’s always been. Always the two of them pitted against each other.

He couldn’t allow Rasalom to win. If there was one chance, no matter how slim, he had to take it.

He found himself moving, crossing the room toward Jeffy, lifting him gently away from the hilt.

“Sylvia,” he said, keeping his voice calm. “Take him and stand back.”

Sylvia rushed over and pulled Jeffy away.

“Why? What’s happened?”

“Nothing yet. And perhaps nothing will. But just in case…”

Glaeken stared down at the hilt.

Is this what it wants? he said, speaking silently to the power within the metal, wondering if it could hear him. It let me go and now it wants me back? Will no one else do?

The hilt lay silent, gleaming coldly in the flickering light of the breathless room. Wondering which he hated more, Rasalom or the power to which he had allied himself ages ago, Glaeken reached down and wrapped his gnarled fingers around the hilt.

Memories surged through him at the metal’s touch. Yes, the hilt was alive. The entity that had been the
Dat-tay-vao
welcomed him back. The smallfolk had done their job well.

And as much as he hated to admit it, the hilt felt as if it
belonged
in his hands.

He turned toward the blade.

“Everybody back.”

What is that?

Rasalom is disturbed by another ripple through the enveloping chaos above. Bigger. A wavelet this time.

He spreads his consciousness. It’s that instrument again. And this time Glaeken himself is holding it. It’s the reunion of the man and the living metal that is disturbing. No matter. A minor ruffle, and short lived.

“Too late, Glaeken!” he shouts into the subterranean dark. “Too late!”

“Don’t look,” Glaeken said.

But Carol had to look. For as soon as Glaeken had touched the hilt the air of the living room became charged.

She’d risen and followed Bill to the far side of the sofa where they now stood with their arms wrapped around each other watching as Glaeken poised the hilt over the butt spike.

Something was going to happen. How could she turn away?

She watched the old man set his feet, take a deep breath, then ram the hilt downward.

Light
such as she had never seen or imagined,
light
like the hearts of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Bikinis and all the Yucca Flats bombs rolled into one,
light
like the Big Bang itself exploded from the hilt, engulfing Glaeken and searing the room. Hot light, cold light, new light, ancient light, it blasted through the room in a wave.

In that initial flash Carol saw Glaeken’s bones silhouetted through his flesh and clothes, saw the springs and inner supports of the sofa before her, then the
light
was upon her, making her retinas scream and her irises spasm and her lids clamp down tight to shut out the
light
but it was no use because the
light
would not be denied and it poured through her, suffusing each cell of each tissue in a perceptible wave of warmth as it passed.

She heard cries of wonder and astonishment from the others and was startled by a deafening crash as the glass in the picture windows blew out. Gusts of night air stormed through the room as Carol fought to open her eyes against the glare.

The light was still there, more diffuse now, and splotched with purple from the afterburns on her retinas. It had stopped expanding and had begun to contract, rushing back from the edges of the room to concentrate again at the center, coalescing into a column with Glaeken at its heart. Carol had to raise a protecting arm across her face and half turn away as it consolidated and amplified its power into a narrower beam, shooting upward, burning through the ceiling, through the roof, into the blackness above. And faintly through the brilliance she could still make out the figure of a man standing in the heart of the light.

She turned to Bill. “The roof! We’ve got to go up to the roof!”

He blinked at her, half dazed. “Why?”

She didn’t know why exactly. A deep part of her was responding to the light, almost as if she recognized it. Whatever the reason, she felt compelled to be up where she could watch this beam of light challenge the darkness.

“Never mind why.” She grabbed his hand. “Let’s go!” She turned to the others in the room. “Everybody—the roof! The roof!”

Rasalom writhes in his chrysalis.

What is happening? A sudden squall of light in the upper reaches of Glaeken’s building.

The instrument! He’s activated it!

Rasalom remains calm. The light being shed is a discomfort, an irritant. No more.

This is not a setback. Glaeken may be able to cause some trouble with this, but he can be no more than an inconvenience. The Change is too far along. It cannot be reversed.

The Bunker

Finally, Abe’s voice, weak and shaky, filtered through the door.

“I’m okay, but don’t come out.”

Relief flooded Gia. “Why not?”

“Because the things, the burrowers … they’re still here.”

Gia pressed her ear against the door. She didn’t understand.

“Then why…?”

“Why am I not shooting? Because they’re not doing anything. They’re just…”

Gia couldn’t stay in the bathroom. She had to see, had to know what he was talking about. She pulled open the door … and gaped.

Abe, drenched in sweat and slime, slumped on the floor with his back against the wall. A rearing burrower loomed over him … but was facing away. Gia looked around and saw that the two dozen or so surviving burrowers had all reared up and were facing in the same direction.

“What … what happened?”

“I don’t know.” Abe didn’t try to rise, just lay there panting. “They had me. I’d emptied every weapon I have, and then suddenly they stopped and turned.”

“What are they doing?”

“I don’t know. It almost seems as if they’re waiting.”

Gia noticed that they all faced the wall to the right of the hatch chimney. She did a quick calculation of the direction.

“They’re facing east.”

“What? They’re Muslims?”

“Toward New York.”

Jack … Glaeken …

Someone had done something. But was it enough?