Darkness of the Soul (32 page)

Woods didn’t give him a lot of time to ponder, since he was already continuing. “Latents in the area are probably sitting around their houses and wondering why they’re dreaming about some fucking psychopath or keep hearing your name echoing in their head. Some of it may be Karim or the
talu`shar
—latents are immune to some of it, but they’re great receivers, and I’m sure he’s covered his bases there—but a hell of a lot of it is you, Drak. Kicking off waves like a high-power transmitter, and you’re getting louder and louder as this goes on.”

Drakanis raised a hand and shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Skip to the important part. Whatever it is didn’t end with you dropping Karim, apparently, so why don’t you tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do?”

Woods smiled a little and shook his own head. It wasn’t his usual smile, the one that conveyed arrogance and self-confidence. It was a rueful one that told them all what they needed to know. His admittance was just a confirmation. “Got me, man. Send the fucker home, trash the painting, sing ‘Kum Bah Yah’ to the asshole, I dunno. You’ll know when you know, and that’s all I can say about it. But we’re gonna have to work on a few things, and I’ve still got a little bit more to explain here.”

Parker arched a brow. “What kinds of things?”

Woods pointed to Drakanis and nodded. “He knows.”

Drakanis nodded as well, with a look that told Parker it’d be better if he didn’t ask any more questions.

Of
course
I
know.
It’d
be
funny
if
I
didn’t.
He
wants
to
tell
me
how
to
drop
that
bomb
and
what
to
do
if
it
doesn’t
work.
Drakanis had a sneaking suspicion that he knew what the last-ditch option was: throw himself into the painting, of course. Seal it up with one last tasty sacrifice. He wasn’t sure if it was his pessimism or the latent telepathy he seemed to be picking up on that told him that, but he knew it either way. This was a do-or-die situation, but that didn’t bother him much anymore. This had gone on for longer than it should have, and three of those claimed in the death toll had been people he’d loved, respected, and admired. His own life in trade for ending it didn’t seem so bad.

Woods could almost read all of that, both from Drakanis’s body language and from picking snippets of it from his mind. Though Drakanis wasn’t really aware of it yet, the broadcasting analogy was fairly accurate, and right then, he was like an AM station that someone had forgotten to power down for overnight, just blaring in Woods’ head—to say nothing of anyone else who might be sensitive to such things.

Going
to
have
to
get
him
to
turn
down
the
volume,
or
we’ll
be
fucked
long
before
he
gets
his
crack
at
the
thing
itself,
he thought. Out loud, he was far less pessimistic. “I just need to get him ready to rock and roll. Like Elvis or some shit, right? It’s probably for the best if you two—”

Sheila and Parker broke in, talking over one another but both of them expressing the same sentiment: “Oh, hell no!”

Sheila squeezed his hand, almost to the point of pain, and Woods ground his teeth for a moment as she hollered in his ear, her eyes ablaze with anger. “You’re not telling us to butt out, you asshole. You don’t give us this line and then tell the children to go on home before they get hurt.”

Parker smirked. “I think she just schooled you, Woods. But she’s right. We’re in. Period. So you get your shit together, teach Mikey whatever it is you need to teach him, and we finish this shit, okay?”

Woods had known they’d react that way. It wasn’t going to matter. He had a feeling time was a hell of a lot shorter than any of them might want to consider. They could spend that time chasing red herrings while he got Drakanis ready and then went out to take care of it before they realized where he’d gotten off to. It had to play out that way, or they were all screwed. It wasn’t going to matter much; by the time Parker and Brokov figured out what was up, things would either be over or the whole mess would be falling down around their ears anyway.

Woods shrugged. “Fine, have it your way. You thinking the same, Sheila?” He looked up at her and for a moment was absolutely certain there was nothing there to fear; the look she was giving him, the fact that she’d actually seemed worried banished any doubts.

She nodded. “You’re goddamn right I’m thinking the same. Just because I’m a glorified secretary around here—or they treat me like one, anyway—doesn’t mean I’m not part of this, and it doesn’t mean I can’t help you.”

Woods nodded and then pulled himself out of his chair. “Come on then, Drak. We’ve got shit to do and not enough time to do it in.”

Drakanis arched a brow as he came toward him. “What do you mean, ‘not enough time’?”

“Takes a lifetime to hone this shit; you’ve been ignoring it for almost that long. Now I have to get your ass up to speed in a week or less. So let’s hustle. Hope you run well on caffeine, because there won’t be much sleeping for any of us.”

Sheila arched a brow, taking her hand from his shoulder as he pulled away from her. “What do you mean in a week or less? Something else you’re not sharing?”

Woods shrugged. “I don’t know. Just a feeling. I think the clock is ticking, and we’re about out of time. The entrance to the brave new world of the new millennium sounds about right to set off the big one, doesn’t it?” In fact, Woods knew better; he’d dreamed it last night, when he’d fallen blissfully unconscious in Brokov’s bed. The date wasn’t in a week, not even in five days. He and Drakanis had to have their shit together by Christmas, and that just left forty-eight hours to pull it off. He wasn’t going to tell any of them that though, and he had a feeling once he broke it to Drakanis, the other man would feel much the same. Woods had seen the pain in his eyes and recognized the look as one of somebody who would do what he had to, if it kept someone else out of the line of fire.

“Now let’s get the hell out of here and get started. Peace.” Woods headed toward the door without another glance back, fully expecting Drakanis to follow him. He wasn’t disappointed, though he could feel the eyes of all three of them burning into the back of his head.
It’s
going
to
be
a
long
night.
Fuck.

Chapter
28
 

11:30 pm, December 22, 1999

They were coming. Lintar could smell it in the wind, the way the air took on a new flavor, one ripe with rot and venom that begged to be plucked from the ether like fruit from the tree. Once, the smell might have driven him to worry and fear, making him behave like a rabbit scenting the wolf, but those times were lost in the swirl of his forgotten past. Now it only pushed him on to greater deeds and better planning.

He knew that they would come for him, but he also knew where and when it would be. The Disciple would try to arrange it so they arrived just as the
talu`shar
was opened—at least he would if there was any brain left in that pretty little skull—but he was sorely underestimating the force of the being that dwelled within it. He was underestimating the Warden and what he had done for his charge. Woods might have had the power to triumph in the past, but now he was a blown-out candle, and regardless of what Woods or the man himself thought, Drakanis wasn’t ready to deal with what was waiting for him, and Lintar thought it might even break his mind completely to witness it. Then he could be hollowed out, made a puppet for the will of the
talu`shar
, and all might yet be well.

Since his apparent resurrection and the feeding frenzy—he knew no other way to describe what he had done—at the morgue, Lintar had claimed this place as his own; one of hundreds of hotel suites in the Silverado, nice and unassuming, had been stained with his essence so deeply that it could no longer be called a room at all. He preferred to think of it as a lair. The painting itself had been moved from the old church that the previous Warden had stored it in—that
he
had stored it in, if he believed the voice in the darkness—and now hung on the wall, overlooking the room. The obnoxious painting that had formerly occupied the space, one of those stupid things with dogs playing poker that people seemed so fixated on, was currently sitting in the bathtub. He’d split the frame and crushed it to little more than kindling and then had torn the painting in half and turned on the hot water over it. He’d pissed on it, laughing while he’d done so.

If asked about it now, he couldn’t say why he did any of those things. Something else had been in control, some dark and capricious thing that lived less for the ascension his service promised, cared less about bringing the
talu`shar
’s inhabitant to the world than it did for simple destruction. That inner thing had gone back to whatever cell it had come from and seemed content to stay there for the moment, but Lintar was concerned. His service was to the beast within the painting, not to whims of destruction. Wasn’t it?

Perhaps
it
does
not
matter.
Perhaps
the
two
are,
in
the
end,
one
and
the
same.
Lintar shook his head and resumed pacing in front of the window, uncaring if anyone could see him up there. Thinking such things was not the road to proper service, and he knew that well. To think such things was to invite punishment, and to seek that when the time was so close was to invite only his own destruction. He did not think the creature within the
talu`shar
would be as forgiving a second time.

When he had come to claim the room, paying with the cash he had found in the doctor’s wallet, he had felt an overwhelming sense of coming home. Walking into the suite was as comfortable as walking into a place that had been made uniquely for him, as he imagined it might feel to at last lie down in the coffin in which you were supposed to be buried; he had felt no need to hide there, and no desire to hide from himself.

He had shrugged off the stolen clothes, pausing for long enough to suckle at the bloodstains and relish the memory of the kill, of how the doctor and his aide had tasted, and then strode naked through the living room and into the bedroom; that was when he had found the dogs and had dealt with them. In the process, he had cut himself rather badly on the glass and had an uncountable number of splinters driven into his flesh, but those wounds were nothing more than faded gray scars already, and given another hour—perhaps even another minute—even those would be gone from him.

Now he stood like a king viewing his kingdom, the
talu`shar
hanging behind him as they both stared out the window at the city below. Down in that mess, in the ant’s nest of scurrying idiots, he could feel the waves of anger and frustration radiating up, coming in small doses as he scanned the streets and sending up brighter flares, which reminded him of the fireworks the Americans were so fond of, in the places where many individuals were gathering and giving way to mob mentality.

Soon,
my
child,
the voice inside his head comforted him.
Very
soon,
indeed.
You
know
what
must
happen
now.
Lintar did, of course. He had been trained—programmed, if you will—for this evening during hundreds of hours of prayer and supplication, small slices of his previous life that still left their mark in his mind to say nothing of the final agony when he had floated at the mercy of his master in the void. It had been a meeting of the minds, an impression made by brute force, stamping rather than education, but Lintar had come to believe—or been programmed to believe—that such truly had been the only way, and thus he had accepted it. Perhaps in a way, it was even better; apparently, however he’d been taught in his previous existence, he hadn’t learned it properly and had allowed himself to fail. Now he had the knowledge, undiluted and perfect in his mind, and would not fail a second time.

The time of the opening was coming. The time of the
talu`shar
was here. Nothing could change that, or stop it. Not that bastard Woods—and why thinking of the insignificant cop caused such anger in him, he could not say—and most definitely not Drakanis. Chosen one or not, he was fit only for fodder when the beast arrived. It would be hungry, and what a meal the police would make!

He stepped back from the window and pulled the curtain closed slowly; he would need his rest, all that he could get. The gifts of the
talu`shar
were mighty, but using them put a great drain on him, and to enter battle with his foes while not properly prepared would mean disaster. He returned to the bedroom, laid his head on the pillow, and fell asleep to the sounds of water running constantly into the drain, and the smell of rancid meat. He paid no mind to the dozens of eyes and eyeless sockets that watched over him as he dreamed, and if they touched him or cried out during his time of rest, he did not notice.

The
talu`shar
pulsed steadily with crimson light, and coming from the walls throughout the building, a slow chuckle like water in a drainpipe could be heard.