The First Prophet (29 page)

Slowly, Mason said, “There are always limits.”

“In protecting children? I don’t think so.”

“Life always gives us limits,” he insisted. “We can only do…so much. Be responsible
for so much.”

“So where do we draw the line?” She looked at Mason with an unblinking intensity that
disturbed Tucker, and he was standing several feet away; he could only imagine how
fierce those too-dark eyes appeared to Mason. But the older man didn’t flinch or look
away from her.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, when do we decide we’ve done enough? When we’ve saved one child? Two? All
of them? When we’ve defeated the people who take them?”

“Shouldn’t we leave that to the police?” he suggested. “They’re the best equipped
to deal with…crimes.”

“Not crimes against humanity.”

Mason smiled. “Is that what we’re talking about?”

“Oh, I’d say so. Children abducted, disappearing never to return. Adults killed—or
supposedly killed. Because what they can do is important to someone. So
they’re taken away from their homes and families, from the people who love them. From
their lives.”

“Taken? Taken where?”

“You tell me.”

“I?” He laughed quietly. “How would I know?”

“Because you were taken. Once.” Her head tilted to one side in that listening posture.
“A long time ago, I think.”

Tucker felt his fingers close over the gun at the small of his back before he was
even aware of moving. But he remained still, gripping the pistol but not drawing it.
His eyes never left Mason’s slowly whitening face.

Mason drew a breath as if he needed one, then said lightly, “I don’t know what you’re
talking about, Sarah.”

“Yes, you do. What is it they want you to do to me, Neil? Why are you trying so hard
to crawl inside my head?”

Tucker glanced at her quickly, realizing for the first time that something else had
been going on far beneath—or above—the level of his own awareness. Something deadly.
Sarah’s face was as pale as Mason’s and held the taut look of someone concentrating
intensely. Or someone in pain.

“I only want to help you, Sarah,” Mason said softly.

“You want to help them. You have to help them.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Them. The other side.”

“There is no mysterious enemy, Sarah. Do you hear me? No battle. Just your imagination.
Your fears. Your inexperience.”

“Stop it,” Tucker said.

Neither of them looked at him.

In a gentle tone, Mason said, “I can help you. I can teach you how to use your abilities,
how to protect yourself.”

“I’m protecting myself now.” Her voice was strained but steady.

“But look what it’s taking out of you. I can show you a better way, Sarah. I can make
it less painful for you.”

“Is that what
they
taught you?”

“What does it matter who taught me? I can teach you. I can make the pain go away.”

“And keep me alive?”

“Of course.”

“And what’s the price, Neil? What did you sell them to keep yourself alive?”

“Isn’t life worth any price?”

“No. Not any price.”

“That’s what you think now. But one day—soon—you’ll discover you’re wrong. Life is
worth whatever you have to pay for it, Sarah. Life is worth any price.”

“What did it cost you?”

He smiled suddenly. “What if I said my soul?”

“Then I’d say you paid too much,” she whispered.

“I said
stop
it.” Tucker crossed to Sarah’s chair in two long steps and grasped her arm, holding
the pistol pointed at Mason with his other hand. “Sarah, we’re leaving.”

She rose to her feet readily enough, but her gaze remained locked with Mason’s and
she was trembling.

In a conversational tone, Mason said, “Go on running if you have to. But it’s no use,
Sarah, you know that. They’ll win. They always win.”

“You mean the mysterious enemy that doesn’t exist?” Her voice was still only a whisper.

His mouth twisted. “Yeah. Them.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Mason looked away suddenly. “So am I. Oh, put the gun away, Mackenzie. You have nothing
to fear from me. Go on, get her out of here.”

Tucker got her out of there. But he didn’t take Mason’s word for it that he was no
threat, keeping the gun in hand until he and Sarah safely reached the street. He was
wary even then, half-expecting long black cars to be waiting for them out there. But
the neighborhood looked as quiet as before.

He put Sarah in the passenger side of the Jeep, one glance at her face telling him
that she was in bad shape. She was so pale that her skin had a bluish cast, and her
too-dark eyes were enormous and unseeing, the pupils so dilated that only a rim of
gold showed around them. He got a blanket from the backseat and covered her because
she was shaking so violently, then quickly got in the driver’s seat and got the engine
and heat going. He also didn’t waste any time in driving away from Mason’s house.

“Sarah, are you all right?”

She didn’t move, didn’t look at him.

“Sarah? Goddammit, say something or I’m taking you straight to the nearest hospital.”

As if the effort demanded was almost too much, she turned her head and looked at him
then, and her voice was whispery when she said, “They couldn’t help me. The doctors.
They wouldn’t know what was wrong. I just need…to rest. Sleep. I’ll be fine after
I sleep.”

He wasn’t so sure about that, but in any case he had to ask, “What the hell went on
back there?”

“It was…a skirmish.”

“A
skirmish
? Jesus, Sarah…”

“Just a skirmish,” she insisted wearily. “He wasn’t even one of them, really. He was
a tool they tried to use against me. A…pale echo of what they are. And even so, as
ineffective as he is compared to them…look what it did to me to fight him. Look what
it cost me just to hold my own with one of their tools.”

“It was your first…skirmish,” he reminded her. “You’ll be better at it next time.”

A little sound escaped Sarah, not a laugh or a cry but something in between. “No,
I won’t. I can’t do that again.”

“Sarah—”

“I can’t. You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what it does to me.”

Tucker was beginning to understand but nevertheless said, “What was all that about
kids?”

“I wanted to find out if he knew,” she murmured.

“Knew what?”

“That they’d taken another child. Early this morning.”

“How do you know?”

Starkly, her voice full of horror, Sarah said, “I heard him scream. In my mind.”

Tucker nearly pulled off the road, every instinct urging him to put his arms around
Sarah and offer some kind of comfort. But he kept driving. For one thing, something
in her posture warned him that right now she didn’t want to be touched by anyone.
And since she had kept from him this knowledge of another abducted child, he was even
more sure that she especially didn’t want to be touched by him.

But he could, and did, change the subject to what he thought was a lesser horror.
“You said that Mason was trying to get into your head—why?”

“To…convert me. To try to make me think the way they want me to.”

“Which is?”

“That I can’t fight them and win. That they’ll always be stronger. That I already
belong to them. That I’m…destined to lose.”

Tucker glanced at her quickly, then turned his attention back to the road ahead of
them. “But he failed.”

“He didn’t get inside my head.”

“Did you get inside his?”

Sarah was quiet for a moment, then said, “Not enough to help us.”

Tucker sent her another glance, this one a bit hard. More secrets. “What are you not
telling me?”

“Nothing that matters.”

“On a need-to-know basis, I think I need to know.”

Again, she was silent, minutes passing before she finally said, in a curiously hollow
voice, “It only matters to me. I know something I didn’t know before. I know what
it will cost me to survive if they get their hands on me. And it’s not a price I want
to pay.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I looked inside Mason’s head, inside
him
, and there was nothing there.”

“I don’t—”

“He was telling the truth, Tucker. He did pay a high price for life. He paid with
his soul.”

Neil Mason sat there on the couch for some time after Gallagher and Mackenzie left
and gazed at nothing. He was a little tired. More than a little, if the truth be told.
He lifted one hand, holding it out in front of him and, dispassionately, watched it
shake.

I’m getting too old for this. Hell, I was always too old for this.

His hand fell to rest on his thigh, and he looked around the living room almost curiously.
Had it been worth it? Funny that he hadn’t asked himself before. Hadn’t been able
to, maybe. Afraid of the answer, probably.

The phone rang, and Mason rose to get the portable from its place out in the hall.
“Hello?” Idly, he walked back into the living room.

“Report.”

That cool, incongruously pleasant voice had the usual
effect of removing the solid bone and cartilage from his knees, and Mason sat down
abruptly in the chair Sarah Gallagher had occupied.
God, how did I let him do this to me?

“I have nothing to report,” he said formally.

“Then you have something to explain.”

“She’s stronger than I was told. Much stronger.”
Maybe stronger than you knew, you son of a bitch.
“And smarter. She managed to block me very effectively.”

“And the drug?”

“She never touched the coffee.”

“You should have put it in something else.”

Mason smiled, glad he was not visible to the other man. “When I offered coffee, she
accepted. Took the cup—and set it down. She wouldn’t have tasted anything I gave her.”

“What made her suspicious of you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Unless it was the fact that her abilities are just about the best
I’ve ever encountered. Lots of raw talent there.”

There was a short silence. Mason waited patiently.

“I see. Is she aware of her own potential?”

“I’d say not. Still scared of it. And that says something, you know. Even scared,
she did pretty damn good. When she gets her feet under her, she won’t be a tool you
can use. She’ll be a weapon. If, that is, she’s brought over by then.”

“And how long do you estimate we have before she…gets her feet under her?”

“Hard to say. If the status remains quo, maybe a week
or two. If you keep her rattled and off balance, maybe longer. On the other hand,
she’s awfully close to the edge now. Push her the wrong way and that weapon won’t
be yours—it’ll be hers. And she’ll be out of your reach for good.”

There was a soft click, and then the dial tone.

Mason turned off his portable phone and set it on the coffee table. Half to himself,
he muttered, “Don’t ask if you don’t want to know.”

Then he sat there looking absently around his pleasant living room and waited for
them to come for him.

“A tool may fail even in the hand of a master,” Varden said.

Duran turned from the window and gave him a look that warned him not to bother sucking
up, but all he said was, “Bring Mason in.”

“Yes, sir.” Not making a second mistake, Varden left.