From Black Rooms (34 page)

Steeped in ambivalence, neither of them could look at the other. Calvin picked at a hangnail he didn't have.

"I'm sorry. You've done so much for me already--I don't have the right to ask anything more than that. I only wanted to let you know that...no matter what happens tomorrow...you're more than a friend to me, Natalie."

"You're so much more than a friend to me, Calvin," she admitted, her voice barely audible. "That's why I'm so scared. But I'm wil ing to try again."

And she leaned toward him, brought her face within an inch of his. He quivered as she drew close, opened his mouth for hers, but turned his head aside before their lips touched.

Natalie flinched back, mortified. "My fault. I shouldn't--"

"No, no, no! I want to," Calvin hastened to say. "I just wondered...could you give me a little head start?" His adolescent embarrassment al eviated her own.

"Sure."

"I
believe in Natalie," he whispered. "I believe in
Natalie...I believe in Natalie...

She touched her mouth to his moving lips in the most delicate of kisses, and though he could not speak, she knew he continued the mantra in his mind. Natalie cupped a hand to his face as they drew out the kiss, and Calvin did not pul away, and not a soul, either living or dead, interrupted them.

It was the only kiss--the only contact--they braved that night, but it was enough. As they lay down side by side on their bedrol s to sleep, they rested with the promised bond of a future together...no matter how long or short that future might be.

Her mind racing with the implications of that bond, Natalie lay awake for more than an hour before final y nodding off. She had not been asleep long when she felt someone shaking her shoulder.

"Ms. Lindstrom? Ms. Lindstrom?"

Natalie awoke to find Amalfia bending over her.

"I...I think I feel them." The teen tapped her shaven temples, her mouth quivering in an uncertain smile. "I think they're knocking."

Not a trace of brown remained in her violet eyes.
30

Violets in Bloom

AS SOON AS HE HEARD THE NEWS, CARL

PANCRIT SENT TACKLE AND Block to escort them

al to the examination room, even though it was past three in the morning. Serena frowned as they emerged from the lounge into the hal way.

Natalie had never seen her friend look so tired or so old, even when she'd worn the makeup to go undercover at the convalescent home. "How long has it been since you slept?" she asked.

"Four days," Serena said. "I'm working on a personal best."

"How can you do that to yourself?"

Serena regarded her with eyes suddenly sad. "It's easy when you got problems to keep you awake."

As always, she brought up the rear of the procession to make sure that no one got behind her. That included Evan, who waited for Serena to go first, then

grudgingly preceded her when she prodded him with her .45.

Pancrit greeted his patients like a solicitous barber, inviting Calvin and Amalfia to seat themselves in the latex-covered chairs. This time, however, he took the precaution of fastening the straps and cuffs once they were seated.

"Seeing as how you're good friends with Dr. Wax," Pancrit said as he secured Calvin's restraints, "perhaps you could summon him long enough for me to check

how your node points are shaping up."

Calvin did as he suggested, holding Wax in his mind until Pancrit could affix the electrodes of a SoulScan to his bare cranium. Bursts of scribbling fuzzed the three green lines that ran along the bottom of the monitor's screen.

"Looks good," Pancrit remarked. "Now...can you get rid of him?"

Calvin initiated his protective mantra, although Natalie noted with a smile that he didn't say it loud enough for Pancrit to hear. She watched the SoulScan readout and saw that the inhabitation lines flattened to inactivity.

"How do you feel?" she asked Calvin.

He paused in the repetition of his mantra, listening for whispers. "Better, I think."

Carl Pancrit exhibited little interest in Calvin's cure. Once he saw that the gene therapy had evidently

endowed Calvin with the filtering mechanism he'd

lacked, the physician quickly moved on to his true test subject.

Even though her wrists were cuffed to the arms of the chair, Amalfia stil held her compact mirror in her right hand, angling it to see her reflection.

Pancrit grinned. "Wel ? What do you think?" Her newly violet eyes became dewy with elation.

"They're even more beautiful than I thought they'd be."

"Those are merely the cosmetic improvements, my dear," he told her. "It's time to determine if you're a Violet within as wel as without."

"Sure she is!" Cal ie rooted from the sidelines. "You show him, Amalfia! You're one of the team now." Pancrit took the mirror from Amalfia and set it on his supply table, then picked up a folded hospital gown. Natalie realized what he was about to do. "Wait! Is that a touchstone? You shouldn't--"

"I can handle it," the teen declared. "I have a spectator mantra." She turned her palms upward and shut her eyes, chanting, "From the world you know to the world
you knew! Come to me, come to me, come--"
The couplet never reached its rhyme. As soon as Pancrit draped the dressing gown across her open hands,

Amalfia stiffened and jittered as if struck by lightning, eyes popping wide. Her trapped breath coughed out in great, heaving retches, and her twisting arms and legs threatened to wrench her joints from their sockets as they strained against the cuffs that held them.

Natalie rushed to her side, afraid Amalfia might choke on her tongue, but Amalfia's fit did not faze Pancrit.

"She'l be fine." He picked up the first of the nearby SoulScan's electrodes and pressed it to her head as if testing the ripeness of a cantaloupe. "See, she's settling down already."

Amalfia stopped convulsing, although she did not look in the least settled. The baby-fat sweetness of her adolescent features hardened into an anthracite ferocity when she saw the man beside her. "Pancrit." He smiled. "Harold? We've missed you around here."

"L
ying bastard!" Amalfia snapped forward like a
Doberman at the end of its leash. "You conned me into that cursed experiment. If Wax hadn't got me first, I would've kil ed both of you--"

"Look, Harold, I'd love to catch up on old times, but I'm a little busy right now." Pancrit signaled Block, who grabbed Amalfia's head and pried her jaws apart so that Tackle could stuff the wadded hospital gown in her mouth. Together, they managed to hold her stil long enough for Pancrit to continue locating her node points.

"Blast these sil y tattoos!" He peeled off an electrode that he'd mistakenly taped to one of the black spots on her scalp. "Don't I have enough distractions to deal with?"

His querulous mood did not improve until he finished hooking Amalfia up to the SoulScan and looked at the dancing inhabitation lines on the green monitor. "Ah!

That's better."

He nodded to his assistants. They let go of her, leaving red pressure fingerprints on her chin and cheeks.

"The node points seem to be in place. Let's see how the filtering mechanism works." Before Natalie could say anything, Pancrit smacked the large red disk of the SoulScan's Panic Button.

The jolt caused Amalfia's body to buck, and blanked Harold's hostility from her expression like a DELETE

key. When the voltage final y dropped her back into her seat, she sat rigid, mewling, fearful that any movement might increase her pain. Pancrit tugged the dressing gown from her mouth, uncorking the sob behind it.

"Yes. Yes." An unwholesome eagerness crept into his reaction as he watched the SoulScan's inhabitation lines, which remained flat. "The filtering mechanism seems to be protecting the node points from immediate reoccupation. Congratulations, Amalfia! You are

official y a Violet."

The news only made her cry more, as if he'd

pronounced sentence on her.

"Haven't you done enough to her--to al of us?" Natalie asked. "You've got what you want. Let us go."

"Not quite yet." Pancrit took off his blue blazer, unbuttoned the cuff of his left sleeve, and rol ed it up past his elbow. With dreamlike fascination, he affixed a fresh needle to his vaccine gun and plugged in another vial of green fluid. "No more interruptions." He jammed the injection into his arm, head bowed in reverence, as if accepting the Eucharist.

"Very wel ." Pancrit set the gun back into its niche in the attache case and snapped the lid shut. "I'm done with you."

Natalie took that as permission to unbind Calvin. She only got his right hand loose before she saw the figures in her peripheral vision begin to move, like a flock of crows about to take flight. Block. Tackle. Serena. Evan. It al happened with the simultaneity of disaster. Upon hearing Pancrit's cue, Tackle and Block quick-drew their side-arms. Serena anticipated their treachery and raised her .45 before their handguns even cleared their leather holsters. Stil strapped to her chair, Amalfia shrieked at the crack of the shot that zoomed over her head to explode into Block's heart, while Natalie dived to shield Cal ie. Block fel back against the wal , leaving a crimson streak on the paint as he slid to the floor.

Serena swung the gun around to his partner. She would have kil ed Tackle, too, but she hadn't counted on the appearance of Corporal Johnston. Perhaps Pancrit had stationed her outside the room, for at the first sound of gunshots, the soldier shouldered the door open and began firing her own .45.

Bul ets slammed into Serena's right shoulder and chest, throwing her off balance and causing her gun hand to slacken and drop the pistol. As she fel to the floor, weaponless, both Tackle and the corporal sighted their guns at the only other mobile enemy targets: Natalie and her daughter.

Then came two consecutive puffs--pop pop--like the spitting of an Amazonian blowgun. Evan's tranquilizer darts. As if stung by insects, Johnston slapped her neck, Tackle grabbed his arm, and both col apsed,

unconscious.

Recognizing that the battle had inexplicably turned against him, Carl Pancrit lifted his attache case to cover his face just in time, for another pop lodged a dart in the case's leather lid. He held the case up to deflect further fire as he ran to the door.

Before he could make it out of the room, Serena rol ed onto her right side, her shoulder shattered and bleeding, and with her left arm took something that resembled a grenade from the pocket of her leather jacket. She pul ed the pin with her teeth and lobbed it toward Pancrit, but when it landed ahead of him in the corridor outside the room, it did not explode. Rather, a cloud of gray smoke like tear gas burst from it, causing Pancrit to cough and rasp as he inhaled the strange fog while fleeing down the hal .

"I knew he'd try and welsh on me," Evan Markham commented, calmly watching his former boss escape. He chucked the empty tranquilizer dart gun aside and snatched Tackle's 9mm automatic off the floor, smiling at Natalie and Cal ie. "But I couldn't let him kil you. Especial y now that you're mine."

31

Deathdreamer

A MINUTE. THE BRIM-STONE aroma of gunpowder

saturated the air, and Natalie's ears stil rang from the shots. Evan had saved her and Cal ie from being

exterminated by Pancrit's goons, but only for something worse.

The fal en corporal's gun lay a couple yards from Natalie, and she considered making a grab for it. Evan saw the object of her gaze and directed the barrel of Tackle's 9mm at Cal ie. "Uh-uh."

Keeping the gun trained on the girl, he sidled over to stomp on Serena's good hand as she reached across the floor to retrieve her .45. She bel owed in agony, and he kicked the automatic out of her reach.

Desperate for rescue, Natalie glanced at Calvin, who was stil strapped to his chair, except for the one hand she'd managed to free. He made a shush sign with his lips and slipped his fingers into his right hip pocket. Stil lashed to her chair, Amalfia hiccoughed sobs as she tried to plead with Evan. "Deathdreamer...you don't want to hurt us. Let us go, and we'l help you get away. We won't tel anyone about you."

"Oh, I'l get away, al right," he replied, "but I'm not going alone. So, Boo...about the offer I made earlier. Because I'm feeling generous, I'm prepared to increase it."

"And how is that?" Natalie asked in a hoarse voice. If she could keep him talking long enough to give Calvin time to do whatever he had planned...

"Not only wil I be a good father to Cal ie," Evan said,

"but I'l also refrain from shooting everyone in this room."

Afraid to speak for fear of triggering his threat, Natalie cringed when Cal ie raised her voice.

"I have a father."

"Had," Evan corrected her. "You need a new one."

"I'd rather die," Cal ie jeered.

"Oh? You mean like this?" Evan pointed the 9mm at the passed-out corporal and fired. Johnston's body jiggled as the bul et tore through her forehead, the exit wound spraying scarlet on the linoleum behind her head. Cal ie yelped and pressed closer against Natalie's back, her defiance quashed.

"Who's next, Boo? Your fearless protector here?" He sauntered over to where Serena moaned and bled.

"Seems like a waste of a good bul et. Or maybe my charming Amalfia?"

She squealed as he aimed the gun at her.

"Leave them alone, Evan," Natalie said quietly. "I'l go with you."

Cal ie tightened her grip. "Mom, no!"

"I've got a better idea, Deathdreamer," Calvin said.

"Why don't you leave us al alone?"

Evan strutted to stand over Calvin's chair. "Ah! Our brave artist final y speaks up. Being the gentleman you are, I thought you were going to let me kil al the ladies first. But now that you've reminded me...you are the perfect choice."

As he raised his gun to Calvin's head, a smal metal ic
click sounded, and Calvin lunged his free fist toward
Evan's solar plexus. The blow seemed to knock the wind out of the Violet Kil er, so much so that his shot went wide, grazing Calvin's ear. Evan doubled over, eyes wide in bewilderment, and flinched as Calvin jerked his bal ed hand upward.