Reborn

3

The traffic light shifted to red, and Jonah Stevens braked to a stop on Park Avenue South at Sixteenth Street. It was late on a weekday night but traffic was still heavy. It never seemed to stop in this city.

For days he had been in a state of anxious depression, fearing that thirty years of fitting himself into the straitjacket life of a regular member of the smugly comfortable community of Monroe had come to naught. The adopted boy—the Vessel—was dead. The suddenness of it had caught him unawares. The Vessel had been Jonah's responsibility. If the Vessel had died before completing his purpose…

But the One still was. He sensed that. And now tonight, a vision… a crimson vision.

He was nearing his destination. Carol's aunt's apartment was not far from here. She lived in the area called Gramercy Park. That was where the vision was sending him.

He cupped his hand over his good right eye to see if there was anything perking in the left under the patch.

Nothing.

The vision had come a number of times during the day. He had seen Grace Nevins's head being crushed by a steel ripping bar. He had seen his own hand wielding that bar. The vision was assigning him a task.

Grace Nevins was to die.

Tonight.

Jonah wondered why. Not that he minded a bit. He had as much feeling for that fat biddy as he did for anyone else. He was just curious as to why her specifically.

Revenge? She hadn't had any direct involvement in Jim's death, so that didn't make sense. Why? Did she pose a future threat to the One? That had to be it. And the threat must be in the near future. That would explain the sense of urgency that had accompanied the vision.

He drummed his bony fingers on the steering wheel, waiting for the light to change. He had made good time in from Long Island, but still the sense of urgency plagued him.

Outside the car, the city sang to him. Its daily bumps and bruises, its long-term festering sores of agony and despair were contrapuntal melodies undulating through his head. Around him he heard the harmonies of the filth, the disease, the pain, the anguish, the misery of the people packed together here, humming from the alleys, cooing from the shabby apartments above the stores, shouting from the subway tunnels below the pavement. To his left, Union Square seemed to glow and seethe with the lyrics of a thousand tiny deaths as its drugged denizens destroyed themselves by slow degrees.

He wished he could stop and savor it, but there was work to be done. He reached over and patted the hexagonal shaft of the three-foot curved ripping bar that rested on the seat beside him.

Work.

At last the green. He pressed the accelerator and eased ahead.