Dust to Dust (5 page)

Maggie smiled slowly as Melanie's voice trailed off. She said firmly, “You drew the four elements.”

“And you called Lucien, and told him that he had to come here because of something I drew on a napkin?”

“I told you—Lucien
knew
the minute the quake occurred.” She turned away, suddenly sweeping with new industry.

The way Maggie was behaving was scary, Melanie thought. Like Lucien, it seemed that Maggie simply
knew
things.

“Maggie?” Melanie asked. “What's up?”

“I don't know,” Maggie said. She stopped sweeping and stared at Melanie again. “Okay, I'm concerned. Jade said that Lucien hadn't been sleeping well.”

“He never sleeps well,” Maggie said. “I…we never sleep deeply.”

Maggie shook her head. “He's been having dreams.”

“About what?”

“He hasn't really told her. But she thinks he's
worried. It's just…Lucien having nightmares, you drawing weird things on cocktail napkins. And then a quake,” Maggie said.

“I think that Lucien is…informing some of our other friends before he comes,” Maggie said. “I think something…
big
might be afoot.”

Melanie knew that Maggie wasn't referring to just any friends. She meant that Melanie had somehow started something that would require the presence of many members of their loosely knit group.

The group they called the Alliance.

“It's important that we find out if this does all mean something, don't you think?” Maggie asked.

“I was just sketching,” Melanie said. But her protest sounded weak even to her own ears, and she felt an odd mix of both anticipation and dread.

“Tonight, that man you saw? He wasn't one of the Alliance?”

“Definitely not. I would know.”

“Then for all we know, he's part of what's going on. It will be good to have Lucien and Sean here.”

“Sure. It will be great to see them, no matter what,” Melanie agreed, then picked up a bag of dog food and put it back on a shelf, trying to behave normally.

Just what the hell was going on?

And who the hell was the tall dark stranger who had come to the rescue, just like a modern-day knight in denim armor?

Whoever he was, he was not like her, but there
was…
something about him.

 

It had seemed easy enough to Scott when he had been chasing the lowlifes who had decided to use the earthquake as an excuse for robbery, and attempted rape and murder.

But after the burst of energy he'd expended disappearing as the cops closed in on the mausoleum, the walk home seemed to be a long one. It was bizarre the way one block showed so much damage, while the next appeared almost as if nothing had happened at all. But ever since he'd made L.A. his home, he'd become well acquainted with earthquakes and their aftereffects.

As he made his way down Santa Monica, he stopped occasionally to help people. He managed to help a guy lift the end of his Mini Cooper off his front porch, and he moved a broken gargoyle that had landed on a woman's steps, imprisoning her in her house. People were still out on the streets, but as he walked along, it seemed that they were already coping better with the crisis. Lights from streets with power cast a pale glow over streets that had none, neighbors were out helping one another, but mainly people were just standing around talking, trading information from cell phones with Internet capacity and calls to friends in other neighborhoods as to what had happened in the rest of the city.

As he turned toward his own neighborhood off Sunset, a woman came running toward him. “Sir, do you have a phone?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Do you have service?”

“I do,” he told her. She was in her forties, and attractive, but her features were filled with pain and fear—some of it that her request might be rejected.

“If I could—I can pay you.”

“Please,” he said, and handed her the phone. She glanced at him gratefully and then began to punch in a number with shaking fingers.

“Tommy?” she said. He heard the male voice on the other end. Tommy had apparently answered. Tears streaked down the woman's face, and as he listened to her side of the conversation, he realized that she had reached her son, who was attending a local college. He moved a few steps away and let her talk as long as she wanted.

It wasn't as if there was anyone waiting for him at home.

She finished her call and handed the phone back to him, tear tracks still wet on her face but a smile on her lips. “Bless you,” she told him. “Thank you. Thank you so much!”

“Not a problem,” he said, smiling as he took his phone back. “I'm glad to hear that Tommy is okay. There hasn't been a single fatality reported.”

She nodded. He could tell that she wanted to care about the rest of the world, but she was just too relieved that her son was alive and well to think about anything else.

“Only child?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“I'm so glad he's fine,” Scott said again, then offered a casual wave as he started walking again.

Strength wasn't everything, he thought, as he kept heading toward home. It never had been. An oldie went through his head. Dionne Warwick, he was pretty sure:
What the world needs now is love, sweet love.

It was corny, but it was still true, and never more so than tonight.

There were undoubtedly more bad guys out—a natural disaster like this one was sure to bring them out of the woodwork. But on his way home, he was encouraged to see that the best of mankind seemed to be on show.

Just as he had the thought, he saw a man—bearded, and wearing jeans and a ragged denim shirt—standing in the middle of the road. He was wearing a homemade placard and shouting, “Death is upon us! The bowels of hell are waiting. Repent, sinners, repent! Scorn music, dance, drink, sex and drugs, for the end is coming. Hellhounds will rip out your throat, and demons will slice your flesh and gnaw on the innocence of your infants. Repent!”

People were simply walking past him, ignoring him for the most part. But then the prophet of doom ran right up to a young woman. “Repent!” he roared, spittle flying from his lips.

Scott paused, then started to walk toward her, in case she needed help, but she only smiled and managed the situation herself.

“Repent? I'm in the church choir, where I sing for God, and guess what? I think he likes my voice,” she said, and walked on by.

The fire-and-brimstone preacher leapt in front of
Scott. “Repent! The bowels of hell will burst open, and you will face the death-spewing demons of the deep!”

He reached out to touch Scott, then flinched and drew back. His silence struck Scott as more disturbing than his diatribe.

“I think the Lord and I are good,” Scott said, and hurried quickly on. He could feel the man watching him go and winced, afraid the man would start shouting about the Oracle.

But the man remained eerily silent.

In another minute, Scott turned onto his own block. His new design shop was right on Sunset, but he'd purchased a town house down a side street. The lights were out on his block, but the houses were all standing, though there was some broken glass on the sidewalk, and a couple of small trees were down.

He paused one last time to help a man drag a palm tree off his car, then moved on. As soon as he was inside, he turned on the large Coleman lantern the neighbor had suggested he should go out to buy. The guy had been right, and Scott mouthed a silent thank-you.

The pale glow from the lantern displayed his new living quarters in a surreal light. Simple, sparse. He could probably use a few throw pillows or something, he thought, as he looked around the living room. But the place was gaining some character. He'd done some posters for rock bands over the years, and he had several up on the walls. The sofa was an old chesterfield he'd found on eBay, and the throw rug on the hardwood living room floor was a Navaho design. His worksta
tion was an old oak bank desk with tiered files in a lighter wood. The room was finished out with a rocker, TV, end tables and a few photographs—himself and his folks, more family, his friends. For some reason, he'd blown up a picture of himself, Zach and Emory, taken earlier on the night when they'd gone to the rescue of the couple being attacked in the alley, the night that had changed his life. The kitchen, which opened onto a small den, was pretty much bare. On the counter, he had a coffeepot and a can opener. The range—which so far he hadn't even used—had come with a microwave, which had come in handy. He couldn't be bothered cooking, because he spent a lot of his time—when not getting the new business going, because superhuman strength had not come with a superhuman income—staring at the computer and trying to ascertain just what had happened to him. And not only what, but
why?

He strode through to the kitchen, grabbed a still-cold beer from the fridge and returned to the chesterfield to sit. The situation that had plagued the back of his mind since he'd started his long walk home returned to haunt him.

What the hell had really happened out there tonight?

Who was she, and more importantly,
what
was she?

She was tall, just a few inches shorter than his own height, but slender and angelic in comparison to his own dark appearance. She was a stunning woman who would have looked great strutting a catwalk, modeling the latest fashions. Her hair was rich and lustrous, but pale. Her eyes were light blue, he was pretty certain—but emphasized by strikingly honey-toned brows and
lashes. Her bone structure was delicate, but she hadn't betrayed a blink of fear as she faced down a gang of street thugs, completely confident that she could win.

Had she also touched a dying man's hand in an alley and been told that she was Capricorn?

He would probably never know.

He returned to his ongoing examination of his own powers. He was fast, and he was strong. Once he had literally pulled his door off its hinges, an expensive annoyance, but in the end a—good thing. It had taught him that he had to be careful. But, he had to admit, despite his old friends looking at him a bit strangely now, he had found a certain satisfaction with what had occurred, and he'd taken advantage of it. He'd always gone to the gym now and then, and he'd loved playing football and tennis. But since that night, he'd taken up yoga, karate and kickboxing, trying to learn to harness his mind, agility and strength.

Oh, yeah, he was fast. But the platinum-blond beauty had disappeared so quickly that she might have flown away, even disappeared into thin air.

He stretched his legs out on the coffee table and stared at the laptop on the desk, realizing that it still had battery power. He rose slowly, walked over and sat down, then pulled up the site he'd been looking at before he'd gone out. The words swam before him for a moment. Since that night in the alley, he'd been studying astrology, hoping it would take him somewhere, help him to understand Capricorn—and the Oracle.

And the dream. The dream that had recurred several times since then….

That first time had been the most bizarre, though, when another person had been there, as startled to run into him at the juncture of the corridors as he had been to see someone else inside his dream.

So many times he had lain awake at night, staring up into the darkness, trying to make sense of what had happened. His whole place in the world had been changed that night.

A man dying in an alley.

A command to find the Oracle.

And a tall, seemingly very real stranger, suddenly joining him in a bizarre dream.

No matter how real he'd seemed, the man must have been part of the dream. Logic told him so.

Now, tonight…

So was the blonde another Capricorn? Or maybe another earth sign? Or maybe she was the Oracle who was supposedly looking for him. Right. She was looking for him about as much as she was looking to contract the bubonic plague.

He leaned back as he hit a link to a recent article. The header read: The Oracle and the Zodiac: Earth, Wind, Fire and Water—and the Puzzle that can Save the World from the Darkness of the Solstice in 2012.

He bolted forward and started to read.