The Ninth Dominion (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (8 page)

As it turned out, Peet was right. The turn of fate cast them as allies, and when it was over, Kimberlain owed the giant too much to return him to The Locks. So he had brought Peet here to a cabin he had built himself in the woods of Maine to live out his life alone and in peace. He visited the giant at sporadic intervals, more for his own needs, he had to admit, than Peet’s.

Winston Peet was turning around now, facing him with ax in hand and massive bare chest muscles rippling.

“Let’s talk about Tiny Tim, Ferryman.”

Chapter 8

“HE’S NOT WHAT I
came about.”

Peet rested the ax against the log pile and started forward. A man his size should have pounded the earth with each step, but Peet’s stride was light and graceful, the moccasins he had sewn himself barely grazing the hardened ground. His bald dome glimmered with sweat. He stopped a yard away from Kimberlain and didn’t offer his hand.

“But he is out there, Ferryman, and only you can bring him in.”

Kimberlain gazed up at the giant, and his eyes locked briefly on the neatly lined scar that he had put through the left collarbone with a meat cleaver. “How’d you know I was coming?”

“You need me again. Your need reaches me like a rope that would pull me back into the world you helped me leave.”

“The FBI came to see me, young lady from behavioral science with her own theory about Tiny Tim. She figured out you may be still alive. She thinks you’re him.”

“Does she?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you think?”

“Like I said, that’s not what brought me here.”

“You can check my feet if you want.” He gazed at the ax still held by his side. “Perhaps I chopped part of my left one off by accident since I’ve been here.”

“Someone clever wouldn’t need an ax to leave behind whatever clues they wanted.”

“Someone like you, Ferryman.”

“Except the young lady doesn’t suspect me.”

“Because she doesn’t know you as well as I do.”

“Meaning?”

Peet’s face was expressionless. “Accept what you are, Ferryman. Stop using me for scale to place yourself at the level you desire. Even the young woman from the FBI looked at you and knew.”

“Knew what, Peet?”

“That she was facing what she was after. Perhaps not in name, but certainly in feeling. The other level, Ferryman. She knew that only one who dwells there could do what her quarry has done. You, me, and now Tiny Tim. She accused me, but she might just as easily have accused you.”

“I don’t want to believe her.”

“Why?”

“Because it would mean I was wrong about you.”

“No—because it would mean you were wrong about yourself. Your misjudgment of my character would mirror your misjudgment of your own. If I could still be guilty of such an act, then so could you.”

“And could you?”

The faintest hint of a smile crossed Winston Peet’s lips. “My eyes, however strong or weak they may be, can see only a certain distance, and it is within the space encompassed by this distance that I live and move. The line of this horizon constitutes my immediate fate, in great things and small, from which I cannot escape. Around every being there is described a circle, which has a midpoint and is peculiar to him. It is by these horizons, within which each of us encloses himself as if behind prison walls, that we measure the world… .”

“And how does Tiny Tim measure it?”

“The evil of the strong harms others thoughtlessly—it
has
to discharge itself; the evil of the weak
wants
to harm others and to see the signs of the suffering it has caused.”

“You’re saying Tiny Tim is weak.”

“Physically, he is a match for us, but in no other way. How many now?”

“Over two hundred. Two separate towns in less than a week.”

Peet seemed to dwell on that briefly. “He likes what he does, Ferryman. I have felt him out there, a black vacuum sucking in what little it can accept.”

“But you didn’t send for me. You didn’t want to …”

“Help?” Peet completed. “I didn’t because I can’t. I can’t help you with Tiny Tim because the dark world he inhabits lies on the fringe of our own. To pursue him I will have to cross over, and once over I fear I will never come back.”

“In other words, you’re afraid of becoming the man you used to be.”

“Because I never stopped being him, Ferryman. I merely redefined his essence. To pursue Tiny Tim, I would have to redefine it again.”

“In hunting a monster, one must avoid becoming one,” said Kimberlain, paraphrasing Nietzsche.

The giant smiled broadly. “And when one stares into the abyss, the abyss stares back.”

“I’ve just come from there,” Kimberlain told him. “And it’s empty.”

“Leeds is out,” Kimberlain said when they were inside the cabin, watching as Peet’s features became tense. “He escaped from The Locks three days ago with the rest of the population of MAX-SEC.”

“How many?”

“Eighty-three.”

“I did not feel them, Ferryman. Strange.”

The cabin’s interior was furnished with a combination of the furniture Kimberlain had built before abandoning the project and that which Peet himself had constructed. The lines of Peet’s pieces—a couch with handmade cushions, a kitchen table made of birch, bookshelves only sparsely filled—were much rounder and softer. Kimberlain realized the hard squareness of his own work mirrored the difficult times that had seen its construction. He sat on the couch, dwarfed upon it. Peet, of course, had built everything to his own massive scale. The giant stood motionless in the open kitchen area, suspended between the task of making breakfast and the chore of accepting Kimberlain’s words. On a nearby counter lay a powerful shortwave radio that was Peet’s only contact with the outside world. Kimberlain figured the batteries would probably last him a lifetime.

“Leeds came to my house,” he continued. “Walked right up to my door and left me a note.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“Violated.”

“Yes, Ferryman, but not because he invaded your property as much as your mind. Have you forgotten everything you have learned from me, Ferryman? For Leeds the end is without worth. His essence lies in the means. Not the kill, but the chase leading up to it. Only a game, but no fun unless there is someone to play with.”

“You’re saying he wants me to go after him again.”

“More, that he expects you to and he wants you disadvantaged by the illusion of his own superiority.”

“Maybe it’s not an illusion.”

“And that’s what this is about, isn’t it? For the first time you, the Ferryman, must face someone getting the better of you. If anyone given a whole sack of advantages finds in it not even one grain of humiliation he cannot help making the worst of a good bargain. Leeds has humbled you not once, but twice.”

“Twice?”

“A man like Leeds, once beaten, would never taunt the one who bested him. He would taunt him only if he wanted the other to know he had not been bested at all.”

“Meaning …”

“We sit within our web, we spiders, and we can catch nothing at all in it except that which allows itself to be caught.”

“You’re saying I caught Leeds because he
wanted
to be caught? So he could end up in The Locks?”

“And now, Ferryman, he is out of The Locks with eighty-three others.”

“Then he leaves me a note… .”

“His way of letting you know he was the better all the time.”

The sense in Peet’s argument was twisted, perverse, but undeniable.

“Why?” Kimberlain asked.

“A purpose we cannot see.”

“Why me, I mean.”

“Predictability. A great strength but also a profound weakness. There is more, though. Leeds would never have bothered with his taunting visit unless he feared you. You occupy his thoughts because of that fear. Sometimes one attacks an enemy not only so as to harm or overpower him but perhaps to test how strong he is.”

“He could have just killed me.”

Peet smiled. “Just as you could have killed me when given an even better opportunity that lifetime ago. Simple, Ferryman. He who lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in seeing that his enemy stays alive. Leeds needs you. You provide him with an object of hate that drives the madness within him.”

“How can I make that work for me?”

“By finding his purpose, the truth behind what brought him into The Locks … and what brought him out. It lies in his past, and it is there you must go.”

“Alone, Peet?”

The giant’s expression looked suddenly sad. “I’m sorry I cannot help you.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“Enter that void and maybe you revert to the monster you used to be.”

“Or simply redefine the monster I am now.”

“So you could have been Tiny Tim?”

“As easily as you could have.”

Kimberlain started for the door.

“You could stay for breakfast,” Peet called after him.

“I’d better get started,” Kimberlain said, looking back at him.

“But you’ll come back.”

“I already have. You gave me your answer, and I accept it. It was wrong of me to come here.”

“I am here because of you.”

“A payback, Peet. I owed you. We’re even. We can leave it at that.”

“We can never leave anything, Ferryman. You swore I was your last hunt, but then Leeds came along. Now Leeds is loose again, and you must take up the chase. And after that you will come here seeking my council with another.”

“Tiny Tim, Winston?”

Peet came out of the kitchen area, his huge bulk blocking a measure of the light shining from inside. “We are so much the same, Ferryman. Doomed by qualities we alone share. Doomed to live apart in the shadow of society’s judgments of us. Doomed to grow in power that others don’t understand and thus fear. Accept that and beware of it.”

“Beware of what, Peet?”

“The higher we soar, Ferryman, the smaller we seem to those who cannot fly.”

Librarian sat in the darkened room, gazing up at the camera mounted on the ceiling above him.

“You disappoint me, Mr. Chalmers,” said a voice through an unseen speaker.

Chalmers made sure his own speaker was facing the camera before responding. The cord connecting it to his throat dangled limply down to his lap.

“It was … unavoidable.”

“Really? Then I am to believe that Hedda’s escape was due to your negligence.”

“My men should … have opened fire … earlier.”

“You should have ordered them to.”

Chalmers remained silent.

“Do not play me for a fool, Mr. Chalmers.”

“Do not play … me for one … either.”

“I’m afraid you leave me no choice. There is, after all, the additional matter of the remainder of your operatives having not arrived at the island yet.”

“Recalling … them has taken … longer than … expected.”

“I’m losing my patience, Mr. Chalmers.”

Chalmers’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair.

“Your operatives are important to me. I need them. They are vital to my plan. You will send them to the island, Mr. Chalmers.”

“Yes.”

“And you will dispose of Hedda.”

“Yes.”

“Do not disappoint me again.”

Chalmers stared into the camera and said nothing.

Chapter 9

“ARE WE GOING
to die?”

The boy’s question shook her alert, and Hedda tried to sound sure when she answered him.

“We’ve come too far for that.”

“I’m scared,” he said as he tightened his pants belt. His leg was stiff and lame from the wound and ached with pain.

“We’ll be safe soon. I promise.”

Hedda made herself smile confidently and shook her head. Her mind spiraled backward, struggling to keep the last twenty-four hours clear.

That was what it had been now, almost to the moment, since she and the boy had taken their plunge from the bridge.

She had lost her hold on Christopher as they fell, then heard him hit the water an instant after her. He had already slipped below the surface when she reached him. He was unconscious yet trembling, evidence of shock. She knew the Kevlar shirt she had given him had prevented what would have been instantly fatal wounds, but depending on where the bullet had lodged in his leg it might not matter. She swam to the boy and tucked an arm under his throat. The water could not hide the scent of blood, both his and hers. Ignoring her own wound, she began to swim away. She supported the boy so his face rode even with the surface. As for herself, a breath every thirty seconds or so was all she required.

With the breaths came glimpses of the activity occurring upon the bridge above. The gunmen struggled for sight of her first and then searched for a quick route down to the river bank. By the time they found it, Hedda was well downstream.

Her own shoulder had begun to throb. Worse, she knew that Christopher Hanley’s blood was still flowing from his leg wound. Immediate action was required if he was to survive the night.

He was still her responsibility, after all. In Hedda’s mind her assignment had not ended with the bizarre turn of events at the bridge. The plunge into the icy waters might have saved their lives, but it was only temporary. Librarian would know they were alive,
she
was alive, and respond accordingly. The thing Hedda had to do was seize the advantage the enemy’s present confusion provided.

The enemy … her own people.

Why? And why had they lied about the boy to begin with? Deerslayer had kidnapped him, and then she had been charged with getting him back. It made no sense!

For the moment all that mattered was treating Christopher’s wound. Hedda gently dragged him up on shore into a covering nest of shrubbery. The night was warm and breezeless, a blessing for the necessity of maintaining their body temperatures at levels required for survival. There was also a half moon, which would aid her significantly in her work.

She removed a leather pouch strapped to her belt and then yanked the belt free of her pant loops. Resting the pouch on a rock beside her, she tied the belt around the boy’s thigh above the wound to form a makeshift tourniquet. Almost instantly the flow of blood was stanched. Hedda then opened her pouch to reveal various swabs, suturing equipment, and a number of painkillers and sedatives. The small penlight tucked against the pouch’s bottom was a hundred candlepower strong in an adjustable beam. Hedda wiped an alcohol-rich towelette across her hands to clean them as best she could. Her right hand closed on the penlight, and she checked the boy’s vital signs. The pulse was slow but active. His skin was horribly pale. If she wasn’t too late, it was very close.