Faces in the Fire (32 page)

Yes, after this he would disappear. Somehow, he would think of a way to do it. Somehow he knew Fate, or God, or whatever, was going to show him a way.

He fished in his pocket, took out his prescription bottle, shook a few tablets into his mouth. Wasn't sure whether it was the painkillers or the sleeping pills. Like it mattered. Either one, he hoped, would keep away the dreams that continued to haunt him. The old dreams of Sherman, of Grampa Mick. Of Kurt Marlowe. And the newest sensation on the dream scene: that woman in the hotel room. The one who had lived after his touch. The first and only person to do so since he'd become an adult. What did that mean?

Maybe most of all, the dreams of her needed to be quieted.

Some time later—couldn't have been more than a few minutes—he was jolted from a stupor by the sound of the flight attendants running through the obligatory safety check. He must have been dozing.

He sat up in his seat, noting that the plane was about half-full. The first-class seat next to him was empty, but both seats across the aisle had passengers.

Stan turned and looked at other passengers behind him, taking note of whom he saw. It wouldn't be unlike Viktor to send along someone to keep watch, especially after the . . . unfinished project.

He didn't spy anyone taking an unhealthy interest in him, although the guy behind him, in row 6 of first class, seemed nervous. Sweaty. Maybe afraid of flying.

He turned, thinking he could maybe take another sleeping pill. Or pain pill. Or whatever. No way he was afraid of flying.

A few minutes after everyone had boarded the plane, the pilot informed them their departure had been delayed.

No worries. No worries at all. Stan was already flying, thanks to the pills.

But the pills couldn't control his thoughts, occupied now by the woman in the hotel. Her hand tugging on his arm, pulling him to his knees. Her arms wrapped tight around her, her eyes staring at him in wonder.

She'd felt the touch, too, hadn't she? Something inside it had scared her as much as it had him. (You got the dead blood in you, child)

His eyes opened once more as his foggy brain made a connection it should have seen before. They had connected, he realized, because she carried a curse like him.

The Dead Blood, as her inner voice had told him. He most certainly was haunted by it, but she, in some fundamental way, was haunted by it as well. And so his touch had no effect on her.

Finally the plane began to roll. Stan checked his watch and was surprised to discover they'd been delayed more than forty minutes; maybe the drugs had made the time pass quickly for him. In a few minutes they were airborne, banking and turning west.

He let his lids flutter shut once more, concentrating on nothing, embracing the emptiness of the drugs in his system.

A scream woke him.

Stan's eyes sprang open. His vision swam in lazy circles a few moments. No worries; he was in a hotel room, surrounded by cool air and emptiness, stretched out on the cool sheets of the bed and—

Sobbing filtered through his consciousness. No, he wasn't in his hotel room. His vision came into focus, and he remembered: he was on a plane, bound for the West Coast. In the aisle, the flight attendant appeared; behind her, a man held a knife at her throat.

“Move to the back of the plane,” the man hissed, staring at Stan.

Stan stood from his seat slowly. Eye contact seemed to make the man nervous, so Stan looked down as he moved into the aisle and toward the back of the plane. A few other people, five or six at the most, stumbled down the aisle ahead of him. At row 23, Stan turned and sat slowly, awkwardly, in a new seat. The rest of the passengers—a couple dozen at most—had all been pushed to this area at the back of the jet.

He looked up the aisle at a hijacker. That's what he was, wasn't
he? Had to be.

As if to confirm, a voice came over the intercom. “Ladies and gentlemen: here the captain, please sit down keep remaining seating. We have bomb on board. So sit.”

The voice spoke in a heavy accent, broken English. Like Viktor's brother, only more broken.

Stan tried to access his memory banks. From what he remembered, the captain hadn't spoken in broken English when they were sitting on the tarmac in Newark.

“That's not the captain,” he heard someone hiss from behind him, as if to confirm his own thoughts.

He leaned into the aisle. Three men, all of them wearing red bandanas, had moved the rest of the passengers behind row 20. But now only one of the hijackers, wearing a red belt with wires sprouting from it, was visible.

Around him, other passengers chattered nervously. The drugs made it difficult for him to concentrate on individual voices, and they all coalesced into a constant din. As if they were voices of ghosts, speaking to him. Some of them cried, which was a sound he'd heard more than a few times on assignment. A few were on cell phones, or the air phones built into the plane's seats.

Above the babbles and sobs, another announcement blared over the intercom.

“Ah. Here the captain. I would like to tell you all remain seated. We have bomb aboard, and we are going back to airport. We have our demands. So, please remain quiet.”

The English seemed marginally better this time; was it a different person speaking? Still not the captain, though.

His plane had been hijacked. Would Viktor orchestrate such a thing, to get back at him for the botched hit on his brother?

No. It made no sense. No sense at all. Even Viktor wouldn't go this far; the other passengers, the plane itself, were too much collateral damage. Too visible.

He turned and caught the eye of a man who had just hung up his cell phone.

The man said something, but Stan couldn't make out what it was.

“What?” he asked.

“I said, two planes just crashed into the World Trade Center.” The man's face looked tired, gray.

For a few moments, the area around them went quiet and still. No more screaming. No more sobbing.

Outside, the thin atmosphere rumbled past their windows as the jet set its new course.

Another man crept up the aisle on his knees, leaning down to speak to them. Stan chanced another glance toward the front of the cabin, where the lone hijacker continued to clutch the neck of the flight attendant. That red belt couldn't really be a bomb. Stan was no explosives expert, but the belt wasn't very convincing.

“That's not a real bomb,” the man in the aisle said. “We gotta do something.” Crouching in the aisle, the man looked at each of them in turn. “We know what's happening here.”

Stan nodded, swallowed hard, still trying to process it all. He looked at all the other scared faces of passengers around him, recognized the people across the aisle from row 5 in first class.

But Stan wasn't scared; he was a disinterested participant, a mile high on the plane and a mile high on the pills he'd popped before boarding the flight. Let the plane crash; he would welcome his personal slide into oblivion.

Wait. People from row 5 in first class. He sat up straight as the first numbers clicked into place. Three fives: him, and the two others in row 5.

“What row were you seated in?” he asked the man in the aisle.

The man looked at him, a puzzled look on his face. “Fifteen,” he said.

Stan turned the numbers over in his mind. A fifteen and three fives. “Anyone from row 9?” he asked. A woman raised her hand.

“What about 44?” he asked.

A man behind him spoke. “Only thirty-four rows—I was in that one.”

Stan closed his eyes. “Row 4?” he asked, then opened his eyes again. Two people raised their hands. He didn't recognize them, though they'd been in the row directly in front of him. Probably part of the haze created by the pain pills—a haze that had now burned away as all the numbers glowed in his mind: Fifteen. Nine. Five. Five. Four. Four. Five. Thirty-four.

1595544534.

The number on the napkin, once again. He hadn't seen the napkin since . . . since the woman in Seattle. But still, he knew the number. From somewhere else. He looked at the other passengers, and a strange sense of calm descended on him. Now it made sense. He was meant to do this; his mother had seen something, scribbled the mysterious numbers on the napkin as a warning. As a command to do something.

“I'm in,” he said to the man in the aisle.

In answer, the man in the aisle held out his hand. Stan raised his own hand, his gloved, latexed hand, and shook.

“I'll lead the way,” he said, beginning to peel the latex off his fingers. Like shedding an old skin.

“You sure?” the man asked.

“I'm sure.”

“How we gonna get in the cockpit?” he asked.

Stan stopped, looked at the man. “No idea,” he said.

From somewhere behind him he heard a man utter the words “You guys ready? Let's roll.”

Stan rose, feeling the air rush around his face, feeling the wheels of the universe click into place, feeling whole for the first time in his life. The drugs had somehow sharpened his senses now, making him more alert, more aware.

He pushed down the aisle, feeling the plane shift. The man with the red belt screamed something unintelligible at him, but Stan merely smiled as he reached out with hands, hands now bare and exposed. The bomber swung his metal knife—

(not a knife, not a knife, a box cutter)

—at him, and Stan let the cutter bite into his bare skin, because with his other hand he grasped the man's bare arm, stopping the movement.

For a moment, the bomber looked into his eyes. Stan felt the current building inside, and then . . . nothing.

For the first time, Stan wanted the curse. And for the second time, it had failed.

The bomber struggled to break his grip, but Stan's body coursed with strength he'd never felt before. His fingers found the windpipe and blocked the man's air, his hands tight, unmoving.

Finally, the bomber collapsed.

Stan stared at his hands. Somehow, the curse had left him. At this, of all times. And yet, he felt . . . perfect. As if his whole life had been preparing him for this moment.

And in a way, it had.

Blood pouring from his cut hand, Stan stepped over the bomber's unmoving body, catching a glimpse of the wires on the man's belt. No way those wires would complete a circuit and detonate a bomb of any kind, even if—

Stan stopped, and the man behind him, the man in the aisle whose hand he had shaken, bumped into him.

A circuit. That was the explanation. When he had touched the woman in the hotel room, he had felt the electrical connection. She had felt the electrical connection. But it wasn't the normal connection he usually felt; it was a short circuit. Both of them had the dead blood, the curse, which meant both of them were like positively charged batteries. Somehow, touching her, connecting with her dead blood, had killed his curse inside.

He smiled. And somehow he knew, the woman now had the napkin with the numbers on it. Someday, perhaps it would lift the curse from her.

Ahead of him he saw the door to the cockpit. Everything was falling into place so perfectly. He had escaped his curse. He could escape this existence. And his mother could escape her prison.

The numbers had led
him here, and all he had to do was bust through the final doorway blocking his path.

The plane tilted hard to the left, then to the right. Behind him, Stan heard a few more screams from people being thrown around.

Chaos surrounded him. Two of the men who had followed him down the aisle had worked their way around him while he choked the fake bomber, and now they were pounding on the cockpit door. Finally the door cracked, coming off its hinges and gaping as the plane continued a hard roll. The air around smelled like blood and smoke, felt like hammers and knife blades, sounded like terror and destruction.

The door was fully open now, and Stan pushed his way toward it. As he came through, the man at the plane's controls turned, locking gazes. It was the one who had been sitting behind him in row 6, the one who seemed afraid of flying.

Now he seemed more afraid than ever. Anger flashed in the man's eyes, followed by terror as Stan grasped his shirt in his bare hands.

Stan understood his entire life for the first time. When his voice had changed, he hadn't become a man. He'd become a victim, because he'd let the curse take over everything about his life. He let it define him. He let it swallow him. He let it
become
him.

But ironically, that curse, with all of its pain and anguish, had brought him to this very moment in this very airplane on this very day.

He had seen the bait through the murkiness, and now he would rise for it. Perhaps he would die in the effort, burn in the flames like Grampa Mick's catfish etched forever in his mind, but for a few brief moments, he would never be more alive.

The fake pilot struggled to pull free, but Stan's hand became a vise; with his other hand, his right hand, he reached for the man's face, grabbing it by the jaw, feeling the bristling whiskers of the unshaved skin as he twisted the man's face toward him again.

He tightened his hands into a chokehold, smiling as the man's eyes rolled back into his head, leaning down to whisper one word into the fake pilot's ear.

“Catfish.”

14.

He awoke, the stench of fire and fuel in his nostrils. He opened his eyes to see a blue sky overhead, punctuated by thick, roiling smoke. Somewhere behind him, a monster roared.

Dazed, he sat up and looked at his surroundings. The roaring monster was a fire, a giant curtain of flame several yards away. Chunks of metal hung on smoking trees. Searing wind pushed the flames toward him. The panorama spun wildly for a few seconds, then steadied again. He lifted a bloody hand to his head, pushed himself to his knees, and stood. Immediately he fell again; neither of his legs wanted to work.

Hell burned around him.

He pushed himself to standing again, and his legs worked this time. He had no memory of what had happened—something horrible, certainly—but he had to get away. He began to walk, trying to ignore the wreckage around him.