The Messiah Choice (1985) (34 page)

For, inside that head, inhabiting that form, was still Angelique, the vulnerable girl he'd gotten to know on Allenby, an unwitting pawn in a very deadly game. And now, here it was—the cold logic of national interest on one side versus a permanent and bizarre involvement on his part.

Homicide from the other side, or Angelique and him in a kind of permanent union—not the Angelique of the island, but
this
Angelique, looking as she did now, cut off from any real communication. Pip Frawley might be certain, as the Bishop had mocked, but Frawley hadn't stood on the deck of a trawler and watched her call a storm to herself and manipulate the lightning as if it were sets of ropes and cables to bring down two helicopters. He did not doubt her power now, whether it was mystical or some kind of ESP or whatever, and he did not doubt she'd lose it the moment her cherry was broken if only because, as Frawley said, she
believed
she would lose it.

But she also believed that such an act would bind him, at least sexually, to her for a lifetime. As she had controlled Maria and as she had manipulated that storm, there wasn't a doubt in his mind that she could do it to him in a last act of power.

Somehow he'd known it would come down to the idea of killing her. His own deductive mind always led to that conclusion, but he'd always rejected it or put it aside in his mind, confident that if no other way could be found, someone else would do the deed, and efficiently, out of sight and mind.

And now, here it was, with only the Bishop standing in the way of Frawley's cold rationalism.

Frawley's way was the most efficient, of course, but it did leave several unknowns. Right now, they knew the names and location of the enemy. That enemy wouldn't die just because the computer erased itself. All the data was backed up somewhere, in a thousand different places, and they had the talent and skills to put SAINT back together again by this point, surely, although it might take years. And if Angelique died with no heirs, Magellan might be shaky, but the projects would continue because so many nations and financial institutions depended on it.

The Dark Man might well be the key there, and his importance was doubtless the reason he kept his identity so secret. He would probably become, if need be, a major figure and take managerial control in the crisis. Who would know?

He could think of a half a dozen ways this nasty group could survive either alternative, and both Frawley and Whitely agreed on that themselves. There was, however, the mind set of the leaders on Allenby. He had relied on that for many of his actions, and now the Bishop was doing the same. They had planned for Angelique; they wanted Angelique, and had gone to some risk and great pains to prepare her. To remove her from the game would be as devastating to them as killing her. In fact, the two alternatives were clear. Both would set them back, both would buy a fair amount of time, neither would be fatal to them . . .

. . . but one would be fatal to Angelique.

They stopped for gas and some carry-out food in Lake Tahoe, and were able to find restrooms in the back of a carry out that allowed them all to use the facilities without being seen more than necessary. It was quite cold in late September at this elevation, and there were even some flakes of snow in the predawn air. They had driven long through stiff winds, rain, and fog and it was still no picnic where they were. MacDonald made a call from a pay phone, then came back to them.

"The house in California was raided shortly after we left," he told them gravely. "They got a few of our people, although most of them and all the important stuff got away or was destroyed."

"How could they have known that quickly?" Bishop Whitely asked. "You said the car couldn't be traced."

"Maybe it couldn't. It makes no difference how they found it, the point is that they found it and they found it in time to get some of our people. The fact is, it wasn't a raid by officials. It was clearly a private deal, and they were nasty and well armed and prepared. If our people were in the hands of the cops, they wouldn't crack, but Magellan's not bound by the rules of procedure and the rights of the accused. They may know we're in a blue van, but they don't have a real description or license number or anything like that, so I'm not too worried on that score. They'll have good descriptions of
us,
though, so Carson City's too hot now. Our people want us to lay low for a day or so until they can work something else out. That means we find a couple of motels, split up and stay in more than one so there's no group portrait, and wait."

"That sounds all right to me," said the Bishop, yawning. "I feel as if I could sleep for a week."

They selected two motor inns about a half a mile apart on the highway. One was rather posh and had a small casino attached. This would be for the Bishop and the Rook, who looked the part for such a place and could comfortably go about there. The other was a small motel with two blocks of outside-opening rooms and a small detached coffee shop. It was a budget motel catering to transients. Greg was taking no chances on this one, though; he would stay in the same room there with Angelique and Maria.

The floor was carpeted, but the staff had been on the ball and Angelique's slippers were easily found to help with that. They had also packed two sets of silk bedding—one clean and one dirty—which meant that they could remake one of the twin beds for her.

Maria took a shower and changed clothes, and for the first time in these past busy weeks MacDonald noticed a real change in her. She had been well built but thin on the oil platform; now she was having a lot of trouble getting her jeans on. She had put on a considerable amount of weight in a very short time.

"I'm dead tired but I'm really starved," she told them. "I'm going over to that little coffee shop.

Can I bring you anything?" She asked the same of Angelique. Both indicated no, but Greg told her to go ahead, that they'd probably be asleep when she came back.

Maria left, and for the first time since this all began, Greg and Angelique were alone together.

She sat on the side of the bed, completely undressed, and watched him remove his own clothes.

He just went down to his jockey shorts, but he felt her gaze and looked back at her. He stared into her big brown eyes and for the first time he saw beyond the shell, and sensed the woman within, the Angelique he'd first seen trapped in a motorized chair. She was a lonely, pleading, tragic figure, and he felt great pity for her and much ashamed of himself. She looked, even
smelled
so very different, yet her spirit, so lacking in the joys of life, still shined there. He thought of that time back on the beach at Allenby, where she'd reached out to him so desperately and asked for a kiss.

He sat down beside her, and put his arm around her and held her close to him. She shivered a bit and responded, then looked up at him. He looked into those big brown eyes and could see no one but Angelique there, and he kissed her, long and passionately.

Maria had told them that Angelique would demand a ceremony, a marriage ritual she respected and considered binding, before she would take the ultimate step, as it were. Since the Hapharsi ritual was out of the question, that meant Catholic, but no Catholic priest would perform this marriage without a lengthy period of time and all sorts of other formalities. Angelique, however, knew that Whitely was a priest, and he certainly looked to be the right kind and she had regarded him as such, using the term Father-Elder to Maria. Whitely could and would perform a simple ceremony, giving a religious if not a legal and civil marriage validity in her eyes. He'd do it to save her life.

But MacDonald had had no doubt, on talking to King's base, that they had finally decided that the pressure was too great to take any more risks. They had Frawley to do the grisly work that had to be done to make her virtually unrecognizable, yet eminently identifiable to a pathologist. The fact that she didn't know this made her sacrifice and her obvious affection for him all the more poignant.

She was a wild, intensely erotic lover, who seemed to know just what he wanted done and where and how to do it, although she could have had no experience whatsoever. She would not allow penetration of her own body, but she brought him pleasure so intense that when they were done he was thoroughly convinced of her true wishes.

There was no spell or supernatural magic—at least, he was pretty sure there wasn't—but there were other ways of communicating than speech and writing. She wanted him to marry her or kill her, but in either way to release her from Hell's bondage, and he had clearly given her his choice.

* * *

Maria seemed startled that he would actually marry Angelique, conditions or not, and it seemed as if she was fighting back a tinge of jealousy. She certainly didn't have to tell Angelique of Greg's decision, and she half suspected some sorcery was involved no matter what the protestations. When they'd awakened in mid-evening, they'd called the Bishop at the other motel and told him, and he had been absolutely delighted.

The remnant of the mountain storms had caught up with them as Maria went and picked up Whitely in the van and took him back to her motel. "Why so glum, my dear? It's a happy solution and a happy occasion."

"Yeah, well, what kind of marriage can it be? She keeps looking and being like that forever, with no kind of funny powers at all, and she becomes a thing—a sex slave, and he'll need her

'cause he can't do it with anybody else. They'll have to always live in hiding in someplace like Africa or Brazil, afraid that every shadow will contain the Dark Man. Some kind of life."

"I talked to him at length on the telephone. He doesn't see her that way any more. He's in love.

He's willing to pay the price."

"Yeah, sure. She can make you do or feel or believe anything—for a while. But once it's done those spells won't work any more and he'll be stuck and so will she."

"You believe it's magic, then? Perhaps it is, but perhaps it isn't her kind of magic. Do you think she wants this, truly?"

"I don't know. She wants him, that's for sure, but she also wants Daddy. She never had one, but since she got paralyzed she's always had somebody to push her around, feed her, change her, do all that for her. I think she'd do most anything to have him as her old self, whole and white, if you know what I mean, for she hates the way she is and she hates the idea of being that way for the rest of her life. The only thing that makes it O.K. for her is that she gets Daddy and someone to be wholly dependent on for the rest of her life. She'll still need special care and he won't be able to live without her, if you know what I mean. No, I'm not real happy."

"You'd prefer her dead, then?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I think it would be best for everybody. At least it would be only her and not two of them being screwed up. But, no, I really love her, Bishop. I don't want her dead."

It was not to be a fancy sort of ceremony, if only because no one had much in the way of fancy things to wear. Whitely used an abbreviated Catholic service, which was very close to the rite of his own church, with Maria doing the basic translation. As the ceremony progressed, the wind whipped up outside and they could hear lightning and thunder, unusual for this area at this time of the year.

The service seemed to please Angelique. The clergyman pronounced them husband and wife and blessed them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and it was over.

Whitely seemed relaxed and pleased by it, but he was also ever mindful of the business at hand.

"I regret not having rings nor cake, but those can come later. I think now, though, we'd best end this tension. Bless you both. Maria—you may take me back to the motel now and I will see how much expense money Pip has lost in the casino."

For Angelique, the moment was particularly emotional. When the priest had run through the ceremony, which she could follow by form though she couldn't understand the specific words and phrases, she'd felt a sense of distance, of unreality, but when he'd pronounced them married and blessed them, she'd felt a sudden inward rush and a concentration of spiritual power from him to the two of them and she knew that this choice was
right.

For MacDonald, the whole thing had been calming somehow, had given him an inner peace he'd never really known before. There was nothing spiritual about it to him, but for now he really wanted her and he did not wish to think about tomorrow.

For a while they just stood there, then turned and hugged and kissed, and ran their hands soothingly over each other's bodies. Words were unnecessary. She had a tense excitement tingd with real fear inside her, and she wanted to prolong this moment.

As the storm raged on, the lights flickered several times, then went out entirely. They hardly noticed, as they began to undress each other. The room was in near darkness in spite of the early evening hour thanks to the blackout.

"Quite a touching performance," said the Dark Man.

They both jumped, and as they did the lights flickered again and came on, and for the first time Greg MacDonald was face to face with the Dark Man. That is, if face to face was the term for it, since the looming shape near the door was more the animated negative of a man without any features. It was eerie, like a cinematic special effect, but he cast a nebulous shadow on the wall and in his hand he held something not at all blacked out.

"This is a Hallenger S-27 automatic pistol," the Dark Man pointed out. "It carries a twenty shot capacity in two parallel magazines and, while not well balanced, can spray all twenty throughout this room in less than one second. I can also fire one individually, Mr. MacDonald. It may not kill you, but if it doesn't the spin on it will keep you hospitalized for months."

Damn!
MacDonald swore to himself, everything except the specter in front of him fading from his mind.
Finally I'm face to face with the bastard and I don't even have my pants on!

Angelique just stared at him in horror, her joy and commitment crumbling within her.