Reprisal

North Carolina

Ev was gone.

They'd removed what was left of him from the front of the truck, put him on a stretcher, and roared off to the nearest hospital. Lisl vaguely remembered being guided to the back seat of a State Police cruiser that then followed the wailing ambulance. Before the ride, and after while sitting in the waiting area of the hospital emergency room, she answered countless questions; but now she could remember neither the questions nor her answers. She only remembered that E. R. doctor coming out and saying what everybody already knew: Everett Sanders was DOA.

She'd prepared herself for the news and so she was able to maintain a calm front when it came. They wanted to hold her for observation, saying she looked as if she was in shock, but Lisl adamantly insisted she was okay. Finally they took her back to the truck step and her car. She drove away and got as far as the next rest area; she pulled in, stopped in a deserted corner of the parking lot, and went to pieces.

And finally, when she could cry no more, when her sob-wracked chest and abdomen could take no more, Lisl sat and stared blindly through the windshield. She kept her eyes open as much as possible because every time she closed them she saw the sad, defeated, accusing look on Ev's face in the instant before the truck slammed into him.

Never in her life, not even in the depths she'd plunged to after her divorce from Brian, had she felt so utterly miserable, so completely worthless.

All my fault.

No… not all her fault. Rafe's too. Rafe had played a major role in Ev's death. That didn't exculpate her one bit, Lisl knew, but Rafe more than deserved to share her guilt. He'd erased Ev's computer files, perhaps the final shove that had sent Ev on that fatal walk onto the interstate. Rafe should know that he'd contributed to a man's death.

Lisl reached for the ignition key. Her limbs felt weak, leaden, as if they belonged to someone else. She had to concentrate on every movement. She got the car started and headed back to Pendleton.

The morning sun was unreasonably bright, glaring in her eyes as she drove. Traffic was Saturday-morning light but she stayed to the right, not trusting her exhausted reflexes at the higher speeds. The sun had disappeared behind a low-hanging sheet of cloud by the time she reached Pendleton. The town was coming to life then but the Parkview complex was still quiet. She pulled up to Rafe's condo and didn't hesitate. She went straight to his front door and pounded on its glossy metal surface. Silence inside. She pulled out her key and unlocked the door.

"Rafe?" She stepped inside. "Rafe?" She stopped on the threshold of the living room and stared in shock.

The room was empty. Stripped. The furniture, the paintings, even the rugs—gone.

What's going on?

"Rafe!"

She hurried from room to room, the clack of her shoes on the hardwood floors echoing through the emptiness. Each was the same. All traces of Rafe's presence had been completely stripped away.

Except in the kitchen.

Something was on the counter. Lisl hurried over and saw that it was a slip of paper and… a test tube. She picked it up and sniffed its open end—a trace of the mild odor of ethanol. She knew this tube. The last time she had seen it she had just emptied its contents into Ev's orange juice.

She lifted the slip of paper with her other hand and peered at it. Numbers and code words in Rafe's handwriting—computer access codes.

Ev's codes.

Weak, numb, feeling lost and very much alone, Lisl turned in a slow circle and stared at the condo's empty rooms.

Gone. Rafe had packed up and vanished. No good-bye, no note of explanation. Just gone. Not even a snide, nasty note, telling her that she hadn't lived up to his standards—she would have preferred that to nothing. She now knew what his standards were and she wanted no part of them.

But the test tube and the access codes—they transfixed her. To take everything else and leave only them was calculated cruelty. Brilliant cruelty. Hard evidence of what she had done, reminders that she had made possible everything that had happened.

She stared down at them, then closed her eyes.

Ev's face stared back at her from the inner surface of her lids.

With a cry she gripped the cowrie slung from her neck and pulled, breaking the gold chain. She flung the necklace across the room and fled Rate's apartment.

She drove to Will's place but it was just as she'd left it in the early hours of the morning—empty. At least his furniture was still here, but where was Will? It didn't look as if he'd been back since she'd been here.

An awful thought struck her: Was he in on this too?

No, that was too crazy, too paranoid. Indeed, Rafe had something weird going on in his head, but Will wasn't part of it, she was sure. But where was he?

She gave up and headed for home. On the way, it began to rain.

For an instant, as she entered her apartment, she had the feeling that Rafe might be there waiting for her. But no, it was empty.

Empty… just like her, just like her whole life. She'd never felt so alone, so cut off. If only there was someone she could call, talk to. But she'd never had any really close friends here, and since becoming involved with Rafe she'd grown away from the few she might have called. And her parents—oh, God, she couldri't talk to them even about simple things, so how could she discuss this? Will was the only one, and he'd disappeared.

She went into the bedroom and fell across the rumpled sheets. Sleep. That might do it. Just a few hours respite from the grief, the guilt, the loneliness. She'd be able to function then.

But function at what? Go back to the math department? After what she'd done? Slide up in the pecking order with no fuss because Ev was no longer in the way? How could she do that?

Lisl sat on the edge of her unmade bed and tried to visualize her future. She saw nothing. It was as if she'd been struck blind. In a sudden panic she reached into her night table for the bottle of Restoril.

Sleep. I've got to get some sleep!

But no way was she going to get any with Ev staring back at her every time she closed her eyes.

She took the bottle to the bathroom and swallowed two capsules—twice the normal dose, but she was sure she'd need it. She looked at herself in the mirror, at her hollow, haunted face, her guilty eyes.

You worthless piece of shit.

Amid a rush of fresh tears, she poured a dozen more capsules into her hand and washed them down, then a dozen or so more, and again, until the bottle was empty. It had been almost full—maybe ninety capsules. She dropped it into the sink and shuffled back to her bed to wait for sleep, and for peace, permanent peace. This would fix it. No more guilt, no more pain.

She lay on her back and listened to the rain outside. She stared at the ceiling, forcing her eyes to fix on a crack above her, keeping them open to ward off visions of Ev's last moment alive.

Finally the growing lethargy tugged on her lids, closing them. As the silent, faceless darkness rose around her, engulfing her like warm water, she embraced it.

Peace.

She thought she heard a noise in the room. She tried to open her eyes but could barely part her lids. Someone was standing over her. It looked like Rafe. He seemed to be smiling, but she could not react. She was floating now, being pulled downstream…

… downstream…

As soon as they landed, Bill went to a phone. He called Lisl's number. No answer. He ran out to the parking lot and drove his Impala back to the terminal where he picked up Carol, Renny, and Mr. Veilleur.

"I want to check out Lisl's place first," he said.

When he reached Brookside Gardens, he left his three passengers in the car.

"I'll only be a minute."

He ran through the downpour to her front door and knocked. When he got no answer, he tried the latch. The door was unlocked. Bill stepped inside, calling her name. He didn't want to frighten her, but he had this feeling…

He found her sprawled across her bed. She looked dead. He leapt forward and pressed his hand to her throat. Still warm, and there was a pulse. But she was barely breathing. He shook her but couldn't rouse her. He ran to the bathroom for some water to splash on her and found an empty pill bottle in the sink. The label read: "Restoril 30 mg.—one (1) at bedtime as needed for sleep."

His heart broke for her. She took things so hard. She probably hadn't been able to find Ev and had come back here depressed. Probably thought her friend Will had deserted her too.

If I'd stayed here…

But there was no time for this. He had to get help. Bill ran to the phone to call an ambulance. She'd hate being admitted to the hospital where her ex-husband was on staff, but there was no choice.

No dial tone. He jiggled the plunger: dead.

Cursing the breakup of Ma Bell, Bill ran to the front door and signaled to the car for help. As Renny got out and ran through the rain, Bill returned to the bedroom. He skidded to a halt at the doorway. A man was standing by the bed.

Rafe.

"You bastard!" Bill said, starting forward. "What have you done to her?"

Rafe looked at him coldly. No pretense now, no attempt to hide the gleam of icy malevolence in those dark eyes.

He really does hate me!

"As I told you yesterday, Father Ryan—I've done nothing. Lisl has done everything herself. I've merely offered her"—he smiled—"options."

"I know all about your 'options,' " Bill said, "and I'd like to introduce you to a few of mine, but right now I've got to get her to a hospital."

As Bill passed him on his way to the bed, Rafe pushed him back. He was so much smaller than Bill, his physique almost delicate, yet Bill grunted with pain as a crushing impact on his chest sent him staggering back against the wall. He sank to the floor, gasping for breath.

"She'll be all right," Rafe said in a bored tone. "She didn't take enough to kill herself." He shook his head disgustedly. "Couldn't even do that right."

Bill rose to his knees, ready to hurl himself at Rafe, when Renny burst in.

"Hey, what's going on? What happened to her? And who's this guy?"

"That's Rafe Losmara—the one I told you about."

Renny's eyebrows lifted. "Yeah? The guy who supposedly passed as the broad five years ago?"

Bill saw a questioning look pass across Rafe's face. Veilleur's warning echoed through his mind. He wanted to warn Renny about saying too much.. But Renny had his hands on his hips and was walking around Rafe, studying him.

"Yeah, I can see where he might have been able to pull it off," Renny said, then looked at Bill. "This is the guy we're supposed to be afraid of?"

Bill glanced at Rafe to see his reaction. He watched in shock as the mustache above the arrogant smile began to thin, the individual hairs falling out and sprinkling the floor like tiny pine needles from a dying tree. His features softened, rearranged themselves ever so slightly until, seconds later, Bill was looking once more into the face of Sara Lorn. The face smiled and cooed in Sara's voice.

"You're not really afraid of me, are you, Danny?"

Bill could not move. It was all back—all the horror, all the grief, the self-doubt, the guilt. He was helpless before this creature.

Then a voice spoke behind him. Carol's voice.

"Oh, Jimmy! That can't be you!"

Sara's sweet face turned rotten, hideous with anger as it glared at Bill.

"Her? You brought her here? How did you find out?"

Bill's mind was working again, racing. He had to get poor overdosed Lisl to a hospital—now! But he had to be very careful here. He could feel the naked evil in the room like a cold sickness in his marrow, growing, strengthening, as if layers of insulation were peeling away, setting it free. With each passing minute, Mr. Veilleur's story was becoming less and less improbable.

"I figured it out," Bill said quickly, spinning the lie as he sidled toward Lisl's inert form. "The inexplicable things that happened to Danny and Lorn—I knew there was something unholy going on. Then I remembered all the Antichrist hysteria about Carol's baby. You resemble Sara and you're the right age. I put everything together."

"Don't flatter yourself. You haven't put a thing together. I'm not your pathetic Antichrist."

"I never thought you were," Bill said as he reached the far side of the bed.

Rafe made no move to block him. He no longer seemed interested in keeping him away from Lisl. Bill knelt beside her and gripped her arm.

Cold! Good God, she was cold! He dug his fingers into her throat, probing for a pulse, but her arteries were still, her waxen tissues inert, doughy… lifeless.

"Lisl?" He shook her. "Lisl!"

Bill pressed his ear to her chest—silence. He pushed back an eyelid—a widely dilated, sightless pupil stared back at him.

"Oh, good God, she's dead!"

No! He sagged over her, his forehead resting against her cold skin. Oh, please, no! Not again! He straightened and began pounding on the mattress in a wild rage, incoherent curses hissing between his clenched teeth. When he noticed that Lisl's body had begun to pitch and roll with his pounding, he stopped and let his head slump down onto the bed.

He felt so leaden, so useless. His parents, then Danny, now Lisl—all because of him. When was it going to stop?

He glared up at Rafe.

"But you said she hadn't taken enough to kill her! That she—"

As he looked down at Bill, Rafe shook his head and smiled—an infuriating mixture of pity and derision.

"Did you really expect the truth from me, Father Ryan? Won't you ever learn?"

Bill launched himself from the floor, straight at Rafe, ready to kill. And Rafe bounced him back. He seemed to do little more than flick his wrist but Bill was sent sprawling again.

"Jimmy!" Carol shouted.

"Yeah, Jimmy," said Renny, stepping up and standing nose to nose with Rafe, "or Sara or Rafe or Rasalom or whatever the fuck you call yourself, you're under arrest—"

Rafe's hand shot out and grabbed Renny by the throat. He lifted him off the floor.

"What did you call me?"

Bill saw the shock and fear in Renny's mottling face. He shook his head.

"Only one living being knows that name!" Rafe said. "Where is he? He's here, isn't he? Tell me where he is!"

Renny shook his head again.

Bill heard Rasalom—he began thinking of Rafe as Rasalom then—make a noise like a growl, a sound somewhere along the echoing hall between fury and panic. He seemed to expand, grow larger, taller.

"Tell me!" He took his free hand and rammed it through Renny's ribs, sinking it to the wrist in his chest cavity. "Tell me where he is or I'll tear your heart out and feed it to you!"

Bill saw the agony in Renny's face, saw the life fading from his terrified eyes. He had to know then that he was a dead man, but he offered no answer, made no plea for mercy.

Instead, he spit in Rasalom's face.

Rasalom staggered back a step as if he'd been sprayed with acid instead of spittle, but an instant later he'd shaken it off. With a howl of insensate rage, he hurled Renny from him, sending his body spinning, spraying, dappling the walls and ceiling with crimson as he arced over Lisl in her deathbed and thumped to the floor on the far side.

Carol was screaming as Bill regained his feet and ran to the detective's side. Blood bubbled from the hole in his chest; his eyes were glazing. Bill pressed his hand over the wound to stop the flow of blood, knowing it was useless but trying anyway.

The detective was going fast. Bill wanted to give him something to take with him.

"Renny!" he whispered. "That was the bravest thing I've ever seen. You hurt him. He can be hurt, and you hurt him!"

A smile wavered on Renny's blanched lips.

"Fuck him," he said, then he was gone.

Another one—another good one gone.

Bill straightened up and turned. Rasalom looked huge now, but Bill was too angry to be afraid.

"You bastard!"

As he started toward him, Rasalom grabbed Carol by the throat and held her in the same death grip.

"Where is he?"

Carol! Would he really kill Carol?

"She's your mother!"

"My mother has been dead for millennia. This"—he lifted Carol clear of the floor as she struggled in his grasp—"was no more than an incubator."

"Who are you?" Bill cried.

Rafe turned on him, his voice rising, his face changing again. And his eyes—the pupils widened into unsounded darkness, like windows into hell.

"Who am I? Why, I'm you. Or parts of you. The best parts. I'm the touch of Richard Speck, Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy in all of you. I am the thousand tiny angers and fleeting rages of your day—at the car that euts you off on the freeway, at the kid who sneaks ahead of you in line at the movies, at the old fart with the full basket in the eight-items-only express checkout at the supermarket. I'm the locker-room residue of the names, the scorn, the pain heaped on all the pizza-faced, flat-chested, pencil-dicked, lard-assed geeks, nerds, and dumbshit bastards who had to change clothes in front of their peers. I'm the nasty glee in the name-callers and the long-suffering pain, the self-loathing, the smoldering resentment, the suppressed rage, and the never-to-be-fulfilled promises of revenge in their targets. I'm the daily business betrayals and the corporate men's room character assassinations. I'm the slow castrations and endless humiliations that comprise the institution called marriage. I'm the husband who beats his wife, the mother who scalds her child, I'm the playground beatings of your little boys, the back seat rapes of your daughters. I'm your rage toward a child molester and I'm the pederast's lust for your child, for his own child. I'm the guards' contempt for their prisoners and the prisoners' hatred for their guards, I'm the shank, I'm the truncheon, I'm the shiv. I'm the bayonet in the throat of the political dissident, the meat hook on which he is hung, the cattle prod that caresses his genitals. You've kept me alive, you've made me strong. I am you."

"Not even close," Bill said, approaching warily. He wondered if he could instill a little fear into Rasalom himself. "The one you're looking for is up north, getting ready to crush you!"

Bill crouched to leap as Rasalom poised his free hand over Carol's chest. Suddenly Rasalom stiffened.

"No! He's here! He's—!"

He dropped Carol and brushed by Bill on his way into Lisl's living room. Bill hurried after but stopped at the doorway. A few feet ahead of him, Rasalom had stopped too, half crouched in a wide-legged stance. In the center of the living room stood Mr. Veilleur, leaning on his cane.

Their eyes were locked.

"Can this be you?" Rasalom said in a hushed voice. He began to circle Veilleur as a snake hunter might approach a cobra. "Can this really be you, Glaeken?"

Veilleur said nothing. He stared straight ahead as Rasalom moved behind him. Finally, they stood face-to-face again. Rasalom's smile was ugly as he towered over Veilleur's gnarled, shrunken figure.

"This explains everything!" he said in a half whisper. "Since my rebirth I've sensed that I've had this world to myself. I had no awareness of you. But I didn't trust my perceptions. You've tricked me before, so I was wary. I stayed out of sight, avoided anything that might draw attention to me." The smile faded. "All for nothing! Decades of soaking up power for this final confrontation—wasted! Look at you! You've been aging since you thought you killed me at the Keep. Glaeken, the great warrior, the champion of mankind, the wielder of Light against Darkness, of Reason against Chaos, is nothing now but a pathetic old man. This is wonderful.1"

As he edged closer to Veilleur, Bill felt a touch on his arm. Carol was beside him, watching her son in horror. Bill put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. He had a feeling something awful was about to happen in the next room. He didn't want to see, but he could not look away.

"The power's left you, hasn't it?" Rasalom said, his face only inches from Veilleur's. "It's deserted this entire sphere. Which means I'm completely unopposed here." Rasalom laughed and backed away, spreading his arms and turning. "What an Armageddon this is! There's only one army here. The field is mine!"

He stood silent for a moment. Bill watched him stare at Veilleur—or Glaeken, if that was the old man's real name. The only sound was the gentle patter of rain outside. But there was a growing storm in Rasalom's face as it darkened with rage. Suddenly he screamed and lunged at Glaeken, each hand a blur as it knifed toward the old man's throat. Bill squeezed his eyes shut as Carol buried her face against his shoulder. But when there was no sound of impact, he chanced a look.

Rasalom's fingertips hovered a hairbreadth from Glaeken's unflinching skin.

"You'd welcome this, wouldn't you?" Rasalom said. "Then it would be all over for you. But as much as I would love to reach inside you and rip out your spine one vertebra at a time, it's not going to be that easy. No, Glaeken. I'm deferring that pleasure. I'm going to break you first. You've fought me for ages to protect this so-called civilization of yours, so I'm leaving you alive to watch how quickly it crumbles." He held a balled fist before Glaeken's eyes. "Your life's work, Glaeken"—he flicked his fingers open and snatched his hand away—"gone! And you're helpless to stop me. Helpless!"

Bill felt a tremor in the floor, then. He looked into Carol's frightened, troubled eyes and knew she felt it too. The tremor graduated to a shudder. Outside he heard a roaring sound, in die skies, growing louder. Suddenly all the windows exploded inward. Bill dove for the floor, taking Carol with him as a million shards of glass knifed through the air.

From the floor where he huddled with Carol, Bill chanced a peek at the two men in the front room. They were barely visible through the tornado of debris that whirled around them. And then there was another explosion, this one outward. It slammed Bill's head against the floor, stunning him for an instant. He was aware of masonry cracking like rifle shots, of wall beams snapping like bones. And then the walls blew out.

When he lifted his head, Bill saw Glaeken and Rasalom standing as they were before. Rasalom turned and looked at Bill, and in that instant he saw what was to come, a world of eternal darkness, a nightmare existence devoid not only of love and compassion, but of logic and reason as well, a night world of the spirit.

Rasalom smiled and turned away. He made a mocking bow toward Glaeken, then strode toward the blown-out front wall.

"I'll be back for you, Glaeken. When civilization is dead and the remnants of humankind are little more than maggots feeding upon its putrescent corpse, I'll be back to finish this."

And then he was out and into the rain and gone.

Carol began to sob against Bill's shoulder. He moved her away from the canted doorway to the ruined living room, away from the bodies of Renny and poor, twisted, tormented Lisl. As she huddled beside him, Carol looked up into his eyes.

"That's not Jim's son," she said with a quaking voice. "That's not my child."

"I don't think he ever was," Bill said. Holding her close, he turned his attention to the old man who still hadn't moved or spoken.

"Glaeken?" Bill said finally. "Is that what I should call you?"

"It will do," the old man said. It was almost a shock to hear his voice after his steadfast silence before Rasalom.

"What happens now? Can he do what he says?"

"Oh, yes/' Glaeken's blue eyes locked with Bill's. "From the start he has sought to claim our world for the power he serves, to make it a fit place for that power. So many of you these days think of this world as a terrible, violent place, but it is better now than it has ever been—believe me, I've seen the changes. But there is still more than enough hatred, bitterness, malice, violence, viciousness, brutality, and everyday cruelty behind our closed doors to make Rasalom strong enough to convert this world into a place suitable to his sponsor's needs. He will provide a fertile environment in which to germinate the seeds of evil in all of us. Love, trust, brotherhood, decency, logic, reason—he will sap them from humanity until we are all reduced to tiny islands of wailing despair."

"But how? Maybe he can cave in these walls, but that doesn't mean he can wave his hand and turn us all into beasts. We're tougher than that."

"Don't count on it. He will start with fear, his favorite weapon. It brings out the best in some, but in most by far it brings out the worst. War, hate, jealousy, racism—what are they but manifestations of fear?"

Carol lifted her head from Bill's shoulder.

"And nothing can stop him?" she said. "You stopped him before. Can't you—?"

"I'm not quite the same as the last time Rasalom and I met," Glaeken said with a sad smile. "The opposing power was tricked into going elsewhere."

"Then there's no hope?" Bill said.

He'd already been down where there was no hope. He didn't want to go back there again.

"I didn't say that," Glaeken said, his blue eyes focusing on Bill again. "We may be able to find someone to draw the power back. I'll need help. I think it would be quite fitting if you joined me. And you, Mrs. Treece? Will you sign up for our little army?"

Carol seemed to be in shock, but she managed a nod.

"Yes. Yes, I will."

"Excellent." Glaeken turned toward the door. "Let's go then."

"What about… them?" Bill said, glancing toward the bedroom door.

"We'll have to leave them."

Lisl… Renny… lying there like slaughtered cattle.

"They deserve better than that."

"I don't disagree, but we can't afford to become involved with the police who are undoubtedly on their way as we speak. They'll detain us, perhaps even jail us, and we haven't a moment to lose."

Reluctantly, Bill was forced to accept the old man's logic. He and Carol followed Glaeken outside into the rain. He shivered with the chill of it.

"When will he begin?"

"I don't know," Glaeken said. "But I believe it will start in the heavens. That's his way. He may start subtly, so we must keep watching the skies so we won't miss his opening shot. We want to know when the war begins, and we have to be ready."

Bill glanced up and saw only the low, gray lid of clouds pressing down on them.

In the heavens… what would happen up there? He had a feeling that looking up would become a reflex in the weeks to come.

"But what can we do against a power like his?"

"There are a few things we can try." The old man's eyes narrowed with anger as he tapped the tip of his cane on the pavement. "He called me helpless," Glaeken said in a low voice, his blue eyes blazing for an instant. "No one has ever called me that. We'll see how helpless I am."