Stones: Theory (Stones #4) (42 page)

“No,” Matt says. “No more killing.” Pressing the heel of his hand against his chest, blue armor flows through his skin like a chameleon. Its surface tingles with the fleeting touch of thousands of dancing threads of blue light. He walks calmly forward and drops his Stone into a pocket.

As he comes within a few feet of Ryzaard, the old man holds his ground and allows one eyebrow to rise, lips curling with contempt.

They stand eye to eye and stare at each other.

At first, rage burns within Matt. His fists are like rocks on the end of his arms and his jaw drawn and tight. He fights back the instinct to lash out until the anger settles and begins to pull away like a black poison being broken down, molecule by molecule, by a carefully concocted anti-toxin.

Silence descends over him.

Staring into the darkness of Ryzaard’s eyes, Matt digs deep to find what he’s looking for.

Images begin to form in his mind.

A young Polish boy of eight in the baseball field across from his family home. Matt runs with the boy to catch a pop fly in deep left field and feels the sting of the ball as it drops into the leather mitt. The green pastel of freshly cut grass floats under a cloudless sky. Matt inhales its sweet aroma that sings of life and youth.

Ryzaard’s lips move without sound. Both his hands grope forward and grab Matt’s neck. The fingers tighten their grip, thumbs overlapping in front. The old man’s teeth grind and gnash beneath dry lips.

Taking a relaxing inhale, Matt sees an older boy standing in the doorway as men with swastika armbands march his father to a waiting car. Its backdoor opens. One of the Gestapo officers puts his hand on the back of his father’s head and roughly thrusts him down into the seat. Then the officer turns to the boy and flashes a grin and a two-fingered salute as the door slams shut. The car speeds away, its tires stirring up a cloud of dust that hangs in the air and drifts onto the baseball field. As the car grows smaller and smaller, the boy’s thin shoulders lean forward.

The muscles of Ryzaard’s forearms go taut as his fingers tighten their grip on Matt’s neck. Air no longer passes through his throat. The old man’s lips stretch thin to reveal almost canine teeth. His mouth opens wide, and he throws his head back in a primal scream that bleeds through the envelope of silence around Matt.

Letting his eyes close, Matt sees a grieving boy, older and thinner, kneeling at the side of his mother. Her jaw falls open below lifeless eyes. Bowing his head, great sobs shake the boy’s bony chest. His hands reach up to clasp his mother’s fingers. Then he stops. With effort, he lifts his face and stares upward with bloodshot eyes. Trembling hands reach to the top of his head and tear off the
yarmulke
. He wipes his tears with it and stares down as it slips through his fingers to the ground.

The image blurs into the tall figure of a teenager, bent over with a makeshift crutch under one shoulder. Walking with a limp, he moves past the open gates of a Nazi death camp, his eyes sunk deep into his skull like half-immersed ships going down to a watery grave in the ocean. He clutches a dagger in his left hand, still wet and dripping.

Matt reaches out to the boy, a figure of walking death. He senses the rage and despair that burns in the boy’s thin chest and holds his bones together. A connection forms between Matt and the boy, like filaments binding together into a cord.

Matt is inside Ryzaard’s mind.

It awakens his senses. New images, smells and sounds become a part of him. He inhales the smell of dust and ancient paper on the spring morning when a college-aged Ryzaard pulled a new copy of
A Guide to Field Methods in Archeology
off a library shelf and discovered his calling. He inhales the crisp spring air of the University of Warsaw campus and glories in the triumph of Ryzaard’s graduation at the top of his class. He cradles the lush diploma in his fingers, printed on fresh Italian vellum. His heart is heavy with the pain of knowing that Ryzaard’s mother will never witness her son’s rise in the world. He tastes the thrill as Ryzaard moves aside a trowel of dirt, reads a stone inscription and discovers the lost tomb of Genghis Khan. He sits with Ryzaard as he travels by train across Europe to Oxford where a new professorship awaits him.

It’s late at night in the bowels of the Bodleian Library where Ryzaard stares down at a low-relief sculpture found at the burial site of Sargon the Great of Akkad. Ryzaard draws his fingers across its bronze surface and sees the man holding a claw-shaped object. With Ryzaard, Matt struggles to decipher the Akkadian characters carved into its side, and then stares down at the result, scribbled in a notebook with his own hand.

The world will be remade by the one who finds the Stones that shine in darkness.

Matt feels the cool wooden grip of the Boker knife as Ryzaard tries to stab Varanasi, the holy man in Northern India who possessed a Stone and used it to heal the sick. He is there when Ryzaard pulls the Stone from the ashes of Varanasi’s funeral pyre after poisoning him several months later.

The connection is strong.

In a few nanoseconds, the old man’s life roars through Matt’s mind and touches all of his senses. He
knows
Ryzaard because he
is
Ryzaard. Like the old man, Matt thrills with the realization that the Stones are not just legend, but actual objects, still in use, available for exploitation. The only way to rid the world of evil and chaos. It all makes sense.

It has to be done.

There will be obstacles. There will be non-believers. There will be Stone Holders unwilling to give up their power. All of them must be swept aside without mercy or hesitation. They are the guardians of the status quo and must be eliminated.

There is no other way.

And then another realization hits Matt. He, himself, has become the chief obstacle in Ryzaard’s way.

Fibers of brilliant light dance across his skin as Matt stares into Ryzaard’s eyes. From somewhere behind him, the sound of a pulse rifle detonates. The old man’s voice echoes in the silence of Matt’s mind.

Do you finally understand?

He stares at himself through Ryzaard’s eyes. He wraps Ryzaard’s fingers around his own throat. He watches as the blood drains out of his cheeks, leaving them pale and white. He feels the muscles of Ryzaard’s face and lips tense with rage. Screams rip through his throat with a burning hunger to wipe away the last remaining stumbling block to Paradise.

Himself.

Join me. Now that you understand, stop resisting. Join me.

Matt looks down at his feet. He stands at the top of a white cliff. Just beyond his toes, a chasm opens up. Its depths are filled with warmth and longing. A wave of cold passes through him. Ryzaard’s voice comes again.

I am the way. Follow me. You will find comfort and peace. Jump.

Lifting a foot, he holds it over the open pit. His weight begins to shift forward.

Then he pulls back. The cliff and chasm vanish. He opens his eyes and looks squarely at Ryzaard. “No,” Matt says. “There is a better way.”

One by one, against the old man’s will, Matt uncurls Ryzaard’s fingers and forces Ryzaard’s shaking hands back down to his sides.

“No more force. No more killing.”

Dozens of Stones burn brilliantly on Ryzaard’s chest like cat eyes waiting in the dark. Waiting to pounce and destroy.

The old man struggles to engage the muscles of his legs and arms, but Matt holds him frozen in place, like the Zeus statue on Ryzaard’s desk, arms at his side.

Reaching out his finger, Matt touches the Stones on Ryzaard’s chest one by one. As his skin makes contact with the hard surface of each one, their light dims and fades to black.

With the loss of each Stone, Ryzaard’s rage and helplessness grow, like pressure in a boiler.

Matt moves on, slowly and deliberately, running his fingers over the Stones as if playing an old-fashioned keyboard.

When the last Stone goes out, Ryzaard folds and drops to the ground like a discarded paper doll. Matt pulls his senses and awareness back into himself and stares down at the still form.

Behind him, as if on the other side of a thick wall, he hears Jessica’s voice.

“W
hat’s he doing?” Jessica whispers to Alexa.

Yarah lies on the ground at their feet, eyes closed and still, clutching a white Stone in her hand.

Jessica understands that, somehow, Matt is connected to Yarah’s Stone and is using it with his own to fight Ryzaard.

But now Matt walks forward and stops just a foot away from the old man. They stare at each other.

“No idea,” Alexa says. “All I know is that Ryzaard can’t be trusted. If he can’t kill Matt outright, he’ll wait for an opening and exploit it without mercy. Just like with Jhata.” She grips the barrel of her pulse rifle, presses it into her shoulder and lowers the sights onto Ryzaard’s forehead. “If he drops his defenses, maybe I can get lucky and finish him off.”

As if he has heard her, Ryzaard turns and shoots a blast of jagged golden fire in their direction, but it makes no dent in the lacy white film that hangs around them, falling away like water breaking against rocks.

The old man raises his hands and reaches out to Matt. With slow deliberation, he puts his fingers on Matt’s neck and visibly begins to squeeze. To their horror, Matt calmly stands still with arms at his side and makes no effort to get away, as if he is offering himself up for slaughter.

“Why isn’t he doing anything?” Jessica’s heart beats against her ribcage. A sickening sense of desperation settles on her, causing her imagination to race. Jessica gazes at Yarah lying still on the concrete. “Ryzaard has so many Stones. Maybe he’s found a way to control both Matt and Yarah.”

Alexa shakes her head. “I have no idea what’s going on.” She eases the point of her pulse rifle through the white lace shield shimmering in the night air.

Nothing happens.

Next she ventures the tip of a finger into the white matrix with no shock or heat or pain of any kind. Without warning, she steps through and emerges on the other side.

“What are you doing?” Jessica says.

Alexa turns back. “I’m not going to sit here and watch Ryzaard strangle Matt to death.”

A feral scream breaks from Ryzaard’s lips as he opens his mouth and thrusts his head up into the falling rain. His white knuckle grip on Matt’s throat grows tighter. His eyes close.

“Stay here with Yarah.” Alexa pumps the pulse rifle and walks out into the rain.

“Wait,” Jessica says. “I’m coming with you.” She grabs her own rifle and pumps it with a quick up and down motion.

Shoulder to shoulder, they cross ten meters of wet pavement and stand behind Matt. Small fibers of dancing light swim across his blue skin. His chest isn’t moving in and out.

Ryzaard’s eyes shoot open, but he doesn’t focus on them.

Alexa steps forward just off Matt’s left shoulder. “I’ve always wanted to do this.” She points the rifle at Ryzaard’s forehead and pulls the trigger.

The black projectile appears between his eyes frozen in its forward motion a millimeter from the surface of his skin. For a full minute, they watch it spin as if it were attempting to drill into his skull. As its spinning winds down, it drops to the street.

Alexa lets off two more shots. They fall to the ground with the same result.

And then the old man’s fingers lift from Matt’s neck, one by one, as if they are being peeled away by an unseen entity. His hands tremble in the rain and return to his side.

Matt’s eyes come open.

“Can you hear me, Matt?” Jessica says.

No response.

His hand reaches out to Ryzaard and touches a Stone floating above his chest. Its neon gold glow bleeds away until its flat black. It drops to the street, bouncing and spinning like an empty artillery shell.

One by one, Matt extinguishes the Stones until the pavement is littered with them. As the last one slips away, Ryzaard’s eyes snap close and his head drops down. His legs buckle beneath him, and he falls hard to the concrete, his forehead striking with an audible thud.

Matt stares down at the crumpled form.

“Are you OK?” Jessica touches Matt’s shoulder. The tiny filaments of light still cling to his skin, coiling and twisting like snakes. She draws her fingers back in pain and looks at Alexa. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Neither do I.” Alexa steps forward and looks into Matt’s face. She waves her hand in front, but his eyes aren’t tracking. “It’s like he’s in a trance.” She pokes Ryzaard with the tip of her rifle and gets no reaction.

As the rain beats on their heads, Matt collapses to the pavement, just like Ryzaard. Jessica catches his shoulders just before his head hits and gently lowers him.

A few seconds later, Yarah rushes to their side. “What’s going on?” She stares down at Matt and Ryzaard lying on the street.

“I don’t know.” Jessica kneels down and lays her finger on the blue skin of Matt’s neck. She holds her breath as she searches for a pulse. Then she looks up.

“He’s alive.”

“What about Ryzaard?” Alexa walks over to the old man, slips her foot under his belly and rolls him over onto his back. Blood mixed with rain runs in rivulets down his temples and into his ears. She bends down and feels for a pulse. Her fingers move across the neck and press down. “Nothing,” she says.