Black Sun

CHAPTER 59

Back in her own clothes, with her shoulder bandaged but still bleeding, Danielle hiked to the church with Hawker by her side. She carried the pack with the stone in it. Hawker carried the first-aid kit, with McCarter’s antibiotics.

As they walked, she tried to bottle up the waves of emotion running through her, pushing aside the feeling of having Hawker hold her and kiss her. She needed her wits about her now; she needed to be a professional again.

The tiny object buried under her skin turned out to be a radioactive pellet, an isotope that with the right equipment could be sensed from a distance. The fact that it wasn’t a transmitter made sense. If Kang knew about the stones, he knew that a small microtransmitter would not operate long in their presence. But the pellet was a simple solution. Danielle guessed and hoped it was a low-grade isotope, with a short half-life and capable of little damage, but she didn’t know.

She wrapped the pellet in a cloth and slid it into the lead-lined case that contained the stone. Then she and Hawker hustled to find McCarter. The plan was to go now, to lure Kang’s forces away from the town and ditch the pellet along the way, hopefully distracting him further.

They entered the church and immediately made their way to the wine cellar.

As they descended the stairs, she called out to McCarter. “Professor?”

She heard a crash and raced down the remaining stairs. She spotted McCarter in the far corner, the table overturned next to him. They ran to him.

“Professor,” she said, helping him up.

He was drenched with sweat.

“He’s burning up,” she told Hawker.

“Are you all right?” she asked him.

“I couldn’t …,” he mumbled. “I can’t …”

She pressed her hand against his forehead. His temperature had to be over a hundred. McCarter reached into his pocket and produced five days’ worth of antibiotics, which he had been pretending to take.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wanted to see her again. I thought that the stone could bring her to me. Make it real.”

“I’ve got to get you upstairs,” Danielle said, as she and Hawker helped him up.

With Hawker under one arm and Danielle under the other, they began to move. “I tried to figure it out, but I don’t know,” McCarter said. “I can’t think.”

“What did you find out?” Hawker asked.

“The stones, they heal the earth,” he said.

“The earth?”

“The ground,” he said meekly. “The land.”

“What about the Black Sun?” she asked. “What does the sun do?”

“Not the sun,” he said. “The land.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The land blackens the sun,” he said.

She looked over at Hawker. He shrugged.

“It comes …,” McCarter sagged, almost unconscious. “From down here,” he said.

They were holding him up now, a two-hundred-pound rag doll. He seemed on the verge of delirium.

They’d made it to the top stair and out into the church.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wanted to see her again.”

“You will.”

The words came from Hawker, surprising to her as so many things about him were. She didn’t know if he was just trying to put McCarter at ease or if he believed them, but the way they’d been spoken, filled with conviction, seemed to indicate that he did.

“Outside,” she said. “The cool air might help his temperature a bit.”

They dragged and carried him outside, laying him down on the church step. He looked horrible.

“Can you do anything for him?” Hawker asked.

“I can force-feed him some antibiotics, I can jury-rig an IV with fluids, and I can clean out that damn wound again,” she said, then looked up at Hawker. “What I can’t do is leave him here alone.”

“What about the stone, the destiny?”

“I came back for a friend,” she said. “I realized that last night. Whatever other reasons there were, whatever the stone programmed me to do, I came back for McCarter. I’m not leaving him now.”

Both of them knew what that meant. Hawker would go for the Temple of the Jaguar alone.