The First Prophet (30 page)

She had gone to sleep with the suddenness of an exhausted child just moments after
telling him that Mason had sold his soul for life, and Tucker let her sleep. He needed
to concentrate on getting them out of Syracuse, and he needed to think.

There was a lot to think about, not the least of which was Sarah’s clearly expanding
abilities. She had begun by having visions of the future, but unlike any precognitive
psychic Tucker had ever heard of, she was also, at the very
least, telepathic to some extent. And that was becoming more obvious as time passed.
Last night she had accused him of failing to keep his promises and had cited a broken
promise to Lydia—which she could only have known by looking into his own mind telepathically.
Or reaching across distance and possibly time to look into Lydia’s mind, as she had
appeared to do once before.

Lydia. Jesus Christ.

He pushed that away, concentrating on what Sarah had done this morning. She had, she
said, heard the mental scream of a child being abducted—and she had managed to hide
her shock and distress from him. And as for Neil Mason, she had somehow managed to
block his efforts to influence her telepathically. And she had looked inside him to
find nothing.

He did pay a high price for life. He paid with his soul.

Tucker hoped she hadn’t meant that literally. He really hoped so. He wasn’t at all
sure he believed that some evil entity could capture a soul—or even take one in payment
for…anything.

No, surely she hadn’t meant it literally. She’d meant it the way anyone would, using
the phrase as a yardstick to measure how badly someone could want something. Mason
willing to sell his soul for life meant simply that he was willing to give up just
about everything else that mattered to him in order to live.

That was what she’d meant.

Except that Tucker had a crawly feeling it wasn’t. Because the look on Sarah’s face
when she’d said it wasn’t a price she was willing to pay had spoke of something
truly terrible. More than the loss of possessions or even a way of life. The loss
of a soul.

Literally the loss of a soul.

Which means—what? That we’re fighting the devil?

No. No, there was nothing supernatural about the other side. So far, nothing that
had been done by them could not be explained logically and rationally. In fact, everything
he’d found out about this conspiracy—with the exception of its bizarre focus on psychics—smacked
of all-too-human violence, and felonious intentions rather than mystical behavior.

Sure, the other side was or appeared to be all around them—though that perception
was probably more paranoid than real. And they did seem to have vast, even limitless
resources. But Tucker was still convinced that what lay at the heart of this conspiracy
was a very ordinary and even unimaginative (if presently inexplicable) plan to profit
in some way. To gain something—power, perhaps.

Even as those thoughts took form in his mind, Tucker was reminded of crossing a graveyard
at night as a young boy. Whistling, as boys would, to prove to himself there was nothing
wrong. Not looking to the left or the right, and surely to God not looking back, but
only straight ahead. Marching briskly. Because there was nothing hiding in the graveyard,
nothing about to jump out at him from behind a headstone.

Nothing was going to get him.

Half-consciously, Tucker turned up the Jeep’s heater.

They had been on the road about an hour when Sarah
stirred and opened her eyes drowsily. Tucker had been waiting for her to wake and
spoke immediately, hoping to use the unexpectedness of the question to tap into that
odd well of knowledge she couldn’t seem to reach into deliberately—or, at least didn’t
admit she could.

“Sarah, where are we going?”

“Hmm?” she murmured.

“Where are we going?”

“Holcomb. It’s a little town northwest of Bangor.”

The answer surprised him, but he tried to keep his voice calm and without any particular
inflection. “Why there?”

“Because that’s where it ended.”

“Ended? Past tense?”

Sarah’s eyes opened wider and she turned her head to look at him. For a moment she
looked a little lost and more than a little puzzled, the pupils of her eyes wide like
a cat’s in the dark as they always seemed to be now. Then she shrugged and half-closed
her eyes. “I don’t know what I meant. A slip of the tongue, probably.”

Tucker didn’t think so. Her too-dark eyes were veiled against him, and her voice held
an evasive note. He wanted to push, to insist that she tell him whatever it was she
was holding back. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to, not now. She was still exhausted,
strained, and even in the delicate bones of her face was the finely honed look of
unspeakable stress and pressure; he was afraid that if he pushed her now, forced her
now, she would simply break.

So he forced himself to be patient. For now.

“But it is Holcomb we’re headed for?”

“I— Yes. Yes, I think so.”

Tucker thought about it, then shook his head. “The only city of any size roughly between
here and Bangor is Portland.”

“But that’s on the coast.”

“Yeah…but from there it’ll be less than a hundred and fifty miles to Bangor. We can
be in Portland in a few hours, spend the night there. Then go on to Holcomb tomorrow.”

“On the last day of September,” Sarah said.

“We’re safer in large cities, and you’re in no shape to drive straight through to
Bangor.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. You need to sleep about twelve hours.”

“I don’t want to sleep that long. It wouldn’t help anyway.”

He glanced at her, then turned his gaze forward once again. “All right. But you do
need to rest. And we need to decide if we want to look up another psychic. There are
three on the list who presently live in Portland.”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was evasive again. “We’re running out of time.”

“Maybe we should risk spending a few extra hours in Portland, Sarah. Visit at least
one more psychic. If we go on to Holcomb with no idea of what to expect there…”

“What if the next psychic is…another of their tools? What if they all are?”

That hadn’t occurred to Tucker, and he felt a chill. “They can’t all be on the other
side. Surely…”

“No?” Sarah closed her eyes again, and added softly, “But what if they are, Tucker?
What if they are?”

Duran glanced back over his shoulder when Varden came into the room, then turned and
faced the other man. “I’ve decided to deal with Mason myself.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Which means you’ll be continuing on to Portland without me.”

Varden nodded. “I understand.”

“Do you? Then don’t fail me, Varden. I want Sarah Gallagher.”

“I will get her for you, sir,” Varden said coolly.

“Will you? We’ll see, Varden. We will see. In the meantime, I’ll rejoin you at the
next stage of the operation.”

“Yes, sir.” Alone at last, Varden went to the window for a moment and looked out.
But there was nothing
much to look at, and he turned back into the room with a faintly irritated shrug.

He was pleased, though. It had worked out better than he could have hoped for. He
had time now, and a chance to run the operation the way he wanted, the way it needed
to be run.

He picked up the phone and placed a call to a number he knew well. “Astrid. I want
you in Portland, immediately.”

“You want me?” Her voice was, just faintly, mocking. “Does Duran know about this?”

Varden kept a rein on his temper. “Of course.”

“Well, in that case, I’m on my way.” Definite mockery now.

Varden allowed the disrespect to pass unchallenged. It hardly mattered, after all.
When his plan worked, Astrid would have no doubt at all who was her superior.

And neither would Duran.

By four o’clock that afternoon, they were checked into yet another chain hotel in
another small suite. Sarah, who had said nothing else after their brief conversation
and had at least appeared to sleep all the way to Portland, agreed only reluctantly
to eat something before retreating to the bedroom and going to sleep once again. Despite
what she’d said about sleep not helping, it seemed her body or mind demanded it.

Tucker checked on her several times during the next few hours, only to find her so
deeply asleep that she never
even changed position on the bed. That the depth of her sleep bordered on unconsciousness
disturbed him, but he was reluctant to force her awake before she was ready. Especially
given what lay ahead of them.

He was left with far too many hours alone in which to brood. He tried to occupy himself
in searching for and gathering more information about the conspiracy surrounding them,
but everything he found was more nebulous confirmation of his beliefs and theories—but
no proof whatsoever. He finally turned off the laptop and slouched back in the uncomfortable
chair at the desk near the window, staring across the room at the muted MSNBC on television
without noticing what had gone on in the world today.

It was maddening that he’d been unable to find a shred of solid proof to confirm what
they suspected. Yes, psychics had seemingly died or disappeared, all over the country
and for years, yet each instance appeared accidental or at least explicable. There
had even been people convicted in abduction cases and put away—and in at least a couple
of cases executed—for murders, despite the absence of bodies. As far as the legal
system was concerned, each was an isolated incident. Despite all the various databases
beginning to connect diverse law enforcement agencies across the country, none had,
apparently, noticed any kind of pattern.

There was no evidence of a conspiracy. No evidence, that is, that anyone not involved
in this would believe.

Tucker began to feel some sympathy for the conspiracy “nuts” he’d heard about for
years, those who insisted
that someone else had fired at JFK from the grassy knoll, or that the government was
hiding the existence of extraterrestrials, or that Elvis was alive and well and living
in Topeka.

The very idea of yet another vast, inexplicable, and secretive conspiracy sounded
so absurd that the tendency was to laugh or shrug it off, or at the very least greet
each new conspiracy theory with a roll of the eyes and patent disbelief. You could
pile the facts one on top of the other, list a long string of events too similar to
be coincidence, and come up with a neat (if bizarre) theory to explain it all—and
there was absolutely no concrete evidence to back up your claims.

Even more, there was no explanation, no
reason
you could offer to add weight to the theory. Psychics were being taken. Why? Who
was taking them? Where were they being taken?

And—oh, by the way—how come nobody but you noticed them being taken?

For something so vast and long-lived, this thing had left few tracks for anyone to
follow and no fingerprints at all. There was no clue as to who was behind it. No clue
as to the reasoning or purpose behind it. No evidence other than speculation, and
precious little of that.

There was just this growing list of dead and vanished people whose only connection
to one another was the fact that each was reputed to have some sort of psychic ability.
And in most cases, even that connection was very nebulous for the simple reason that
psychic ability was difficult, if not impossible, to prove.

Tucker was also just beginning to realize that, one way or another, he and Sarah were
nearing journey’s end. September was all but over. Whatever Sarah had foreseen for
herself, it seemed clear that the conclusion was due to take place sometime in October,
possibly in the first few days of the month.

And in, apparently, a little town called Holcomb. A town where something had ended,
or would end.

Sarah’s life?

Tucker rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers, vaguely conscious of the
dull ache there. He felt damned helpless, and it wasn’t a feeling he was accustomed
to. In most areas of his life, success was a frequent if not constant companion, but
he had one very bad failure haunting him, and he was beginning to fear that Sarah
would be another.