The Summoner: (28 page)

• • •

Grey once again paced back and forth in his apartment. Somehow the day had seeped into early evening, the afternoon a saturnine waiting room that had left Grey quivering with frustration.

Something must have gone wrong at the Ministry. He’d called Nya ten times and left five messages, and swung by her house in a taxi. He was getting worried. Very worried.

He didn’t know what else to do; he wanted to tell Nya about her father and Addison’s mutual MDC connection before he brought those facts to light.

He’d traversed the new information a million times in his head. Did William Addison’s disappearance have political elements, causes, ramifications? Of course it was possible, but… it didn’t sit right. The thought that the
N’anga
, the ceremonies, Fangwa, and Lucky were all involved in some sort of political maneuvering was a bit too much to swallow.

Did Nya know about Addison’s connection to the MDC and her father? Why would she not have told him?

He’d been pushing away that line of thought—that she was still withholding key information. He stopped pacing and went to the balcony. He leaned on the railing and gazed upon the corrugated skyline. Was he blinded by what he felt for Nya?

Because feel for her he did.

Grey knew he’d long ago taken the unmarked path through the wood, the trail of mercurial addresses and empty answering machines and relationships that ended before they began. His was not the life of cul-de-sacs and vacation homes and serendipity.

Whether or not he’d chosen his path, or had it thrust upon him by circumstance, wasn’t relevant. It was his to live, and had saddled him with the same eternal questions of the conditional tense that littered everyone else’s path.

But Nya. Nya represented, for the first time in his life, something different. Or perhaps she represented something so similar that it felt different. Nya, he knew instinctively, could handle his past, his choices, his present; she might even be able, given time, to understand them, and he hers. She saw life through the same polychromatic lens that he did; and yet, after having seen the blacks, the whites and the endless grays, she still
felt
. She, like him, needed to do something about the suffering and those who caused it—in Grey’s mind, the overarching theme of human existence. Even if it didn’t matter to anyone else, even if it changed nothing.

There was something unnamable about the way he felt for her, something apt, perhaps even something ineluctable. He’d never felt a connection in such a short time with anyone.

He grimaced. The truth was that he’d never felt such a connection at all.

And if she was keeping information from him, that allowed for the possibility that she was using him. That everything that had passed between them was a lie. He gripped the railing.

As much as he wanted to believe otherwise, he knew she was capable of using him, especially if he helped bring her closer to her father’s murderer. Had he been deceived? The possibility nearly brought him to his knees. Nya, he whispered, let it not be so.

He pushed away her serious face, the curve of her thigh, her willful spirit, the softness of her lips. He straightened, self-flagellating, years and years of emptiness and quietly retreating expectations propelling the whip, and then enclosing him once more within their familiar walls.

He released the railing, cool and detached once more.

43

S
nap!

Nya’s eyes opened—or had they been open already? She wasn’t quite sure. She wasn’t quite sure of anything. She stumbled forward, catching herself before she fell, as if she’d been sleepwalking. She had the exact sensation one gets when awakening from a strange dream in a place where one has never slept before. Where was she? More importantly,
how had she gotten here
?

Why had she been standing? Was this still a dream?

She looked up slowly, trying to gather herself. She cringed from the light source; for some reason her eyes had not adjusted to it. Where was it coming from? As she straightened she saw the flicker of a torch just off to her left, then one to the right, and then more, spaced evenly apart.

Torches?

A seed of awareness began to form in her mind, but she had yet to consciously accept it. She would have to see more. She couldn’t remember what had filled her head, her ears—any of her senses—before she’d awakened just moments ago, but she was now acutely aware of the powerful smell of unwashed bodies, and of a roaring that drowned her thoughts.

People screaming, yelling with abandon. Something even louder underlying the voices, something in the background, a deep throbbing.

Drums.

Less than a second had passed. She was still disconcerted, but the seed of realization came closer to sprouting. A massive shape loomed in front of her, fifteen feet away. She blinked and forced her senses into concert as the shape came into focus.

The figure in front of her filled her vision, filled her mind, filled every facet of her being.

She was staring into the face of a fiend. A fiend with a horned, misshapen head resting atop blood-red robes. She knew the name of this fiend, and she knew where she was.

Her eyes darted from side to side, taking in the pounding drums, the bodyguards, the throngs of crazed worshippers surging behind the torches. Comprehension came with paralyzing clarity.

Ohmygod
.

• • •

Grey looked at his watch in disbelief. Nine p.m. and still no word from Nya. The entire day had passed with agonizing slowness; yet, as often happens when one is consumed with waiting, he couldn’t recall the details of the day.

He told himself things at the Ministry had gone poorly, and that she was pursuing other options, but he knew that wasn’t it. She should have called by now. She should have called hours ago.

He’d now worked himself into a frenzy of unease, his stomach corkscrewing every time he looked at a timepiece.

The worst part was that he had no idea what to do besides wait for her to contact him. He’d driven by her house again; the house had lain empty and silent. He called out from the gate, and then mumbled to the taxi driver to return him to his apartment. He’d even tried to phone her at the Ministry. The clerical worker who answered had no idea where to find Nya, and claimed no one at the Ministry had seen her all day.

He paced, trying to suppress a thought that had crept, like a scabrous disease, to the forefront of his thoughts.
Had Fangwa gotten to her?

He’d suppressed it because he couldn’t bear to think about it, and because he kept expecting her to call. He snarled and punched the wall. Why had he let her go off alone today? How stupid, how naïve, he’d been. A monster like Fangwa, who was willing to traffic in human body parts, would not sit and watch as someone tried to bring him down.

All other potential reasons for Nya’s failure to call, even his fear of manipulation, fled as shadows from the light of Grey’s distressed logic. He stood. Waiting was one thing, but waiting while suspecting Nya had been harmed or taken by Fangwa was another.

He would knock on Fangwa’s front door and look him in the eye, and judge for himself whether or not Nya had been compromised. And if nothing came of that, he’d stand on Fangwa’s doorstep until he heard from Nya.

Grey went to his dresser and opened the second drawer. He shoved aside the poorly folded shirts, and saw a gleam of steel. Damn the protocol. Things had changed. He donned his holster, strapped in his gun and shoveled spare rounds into his pockets. He threw on an oversized black sweatshirt that concealed the weapon.

He grabbed his cell phone and his wallet, turned off the lights and left the apartment. He stepped into the hallway, and then the left side of his face exploded with pain.

44

N
ya fled. She darted to her right—she went for one of the torches. Perhaps she could use it to fight her way through the crowd. She knew it was useless as soon as the thought hit her, but she had to do something. Time seemed to stand still, and she was dimly aware of a troubling thought: why weren’t the bodyguards moving to stop her, or the
N’anga
himself? She sprinted forward and began to believe she might reach one of the torches unhindered.

Just before she reached the torches she caught sight of a red swath on the ground, and she instantly processed what it was—the circle of blood she’d seen the
N’anga
draw at the ceremony.

That was her last thought before she slammed into a wall.

A wall
? She rested on her knees for a split-second, dazed. There had been no wall there. Had she looked away? Had one of the bodyguards rushed her? She sprang to her feet, looked up—and saw only air.

Dread, unwholesome and certain, engulfed her.

The wall of air above the circle of blood—the empty space the last captive had somehow, impossibly, been unable to breach.

It wasn’t possible
.

Eyes wide, she reached forward with a tentative hand—and there it was: solid, invisible, whole. She pushed on the phantom barrier as hard as she could, probing up and down like a deranged mime, but she couldn’t budge it.

It was real. It was happening to her. It wasn’t a trick.

She heard a surge in the noise level of the drums and the crowd as they chanted for Esu. She walked, and then sprinted, along the edge of the circle. She circumnavigated the entire damnable perimeter, unable to find a break.

She slumped to the ground, mouth open and prayers spilling forth. She had no explanation for what she was experiencing other than the supernatural.
Father Cowden,
she cried,
help me
.
Be my intermediary with God
.

A white mist rose out of the ground. She spun on her knees. The mist was confined within the circle, just like at the other ceremony. She leapt to her feet as the fog obscured the lower half of her body, not wanting to be trapped within it.

But she had no choice. The fog rose ever higher, until it disappeared above her head and encased her in a surreal, hoary cocoon. She almost felt relieved to be hidden, even artificially, from the
N’anga
and the maddened faces of the crowd. But then she remembered what happened next.

She began to panic, and a surge of claustrophobia overcame her. She must get out of this circle, even if it meant facing the
N’anga
and his horde.

Her body tingled, a vibration in the nerve endings, and she had the sudden feeling that another… presence… had entered the circle. She could think of no better description, simply that there was
something else there
.

She raced around the circle, probing in vain. The mist obscured everything outside the circle except the
N’anga
. She pounded on the invisible wall, still able to hear the cacophony of the crazed crowd. She imagined the leering faces of the worshippers. Damn them all!

There was an abrupt silence. The crowd, the drums, nature itself—everything hushed as if a soundproof veil had been dropped.

Fear like Nya had never before experienced welled up within her. She slumped, unwilling to turn and face whatever it was she sensed was behind her. She had not let forth a single scream, she would never back away from a mortal enemy, but this she couldn’t bear.

The
N’anga
punctured the silence with his roaring salutation to Esu, and Nya wondered if his hated voice would be the last thing she would ever hear.

• • •

Grey heard a sudden and familiar noise as he crumpled to the ground: the hollow, metallic ring that accompanies a heavy blow to the head.

After a split-second of shock and intense pain, he drew his body into a tight shell, tucking his chin and bringing his knees to his chest, protecting his vital organs. He saw a pair of heavy boots in front of him, and he started to get up as a fighter does: one elbow down for balance, one arm and one leg up for protection, the other leg swinging backward to start bringing the body up.

Another heavy boot, one he hadn’t been able to see, slammed down on his back, pinning him to the ground. Grey’s eyes roved as far to the side as they could; he saw at least five pairs of boots.

He heard a throaty chuckle, one he recognized. He swallowed bitterly.

Lucky walked to where Grey could see him, his boot nudging the edge of Grey’s chin. “You once said we had unfinished business, Mr. Grey. I am so pleased you were correct.”

“Where’s Nya?”

Lucky’s chuckle turned into a belly laugh. “Someone has unfinished business with her as well.”

Grey started to respond, but Lucky stepped to his side and kicked him in the ribs. Grey gasped and coughed, and spat his words at Lucky. “You and me, Lucky. That was the deal. Let’s go.”

Lucky kicked him again. “Regrettably, you will never have that opportunity. You will never have the opportunity to do anything else in your short, pitiable existence. Except scream. Oh, you will scream. You will scream until pain loses its meaning, until all thoughts of rescue, all thoughts of life itself, will flee.”

Grey gave a final burst of strength and tried to wedge out from underneath whoever had him pinned to the ground, but this time he didn’t have Nya to distract anyone. He writhed as Lucky laughed again.

“The only person that will suffer more than you,” Lucky said, leaning down, “is your lovely Ms. Mashumba. Even I shudder to think what will be done to her. Think about that as you are dying.”

Grey didn’t reply; words had no more meaning. He’d moved beyond reason, into a primal world where he was better able to cope with his present reality.

Lucky kneeled next to him, grinning as he shoved his perfect white teeth and his musky cologne into Grey’s face. Lucky savored the moment, matching the hatred that poured forth from Grey’s eyes with amused nonchalance.

He snapped his fingers, and one of his men handed him an elongated brown syringe. He ordered his men to hold Grey tighter, so that as Lucky methodically pushed the needle into the flesh of Grey’s shoulder, Grey could only seethe in silent rage, twitching as the drug forced him into unconsciousness.