Authors: David Sakmyster
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Paranormal & Urban
Chapter 29
Without touching it, Mason heard the door ease shut behind him and felt a warm, salt-air breeze blowing from the direction of the occupant.
“You can call me Jack,” the man from his dream said. Now it was coming back to him. The frozen lake, the Central Park bridge.
“How are you real?” Mason asked, taking another step but keeping the bed between him and Jack.
Suddenly, the TV hanging from the ceiling turned on. Jack glanced at it and smiled back to Mason, who stared, amazed as the very image from his dream appeared there. Jack, digging at the ice, pulling up a body. And another staff—something he hadn’t noticed before. It looked like a giant icicle, but it was really—
“Benji’s staff,” Jack said, reaching down by his feet and retrieving something that he set on the bed.
Mason frowned. “What are you doing with it?”
“Why, this is yours now. Came all the way here to get it to you, I did.”
“Why?” Mason’s head hurt, his ears were buzzing and he kept glancing back to the TV, where now Jack was holding out the staff in both hands, grinning wildly and staring at the camera.
“’Cuz you need one, brother.”
“Why?” Again, none of this made sense.
“The battle’s here. You in the thick of it, you just don’t know it yet.”
“I’m clearly in the thick of something.” Mason shook his head, about to sit and ask for his own medication, but now on the screen there was a shift, like a rewind feature just sent time back, back to a scene with five people in a circle. The one commanding everyone’s attention was clearly Solomon.
Mason swallowed hard. “You said we don’t have much time. Then talk fast. What’s happening? What is all this? How do I know you? I only saw you in a dream, and now you’re here. My wife just had a brain hemorrhage and she’s all I can think about, not—”
Haitian Jack held up his hands, and now the screen shifted to an operating room where a woman—clearly Lauren, with her head bandaged, was being helped to a seated position. She was trying to smile.
Mason started for the door. “Lauren!”
“Not yet, my brother.”
Mason turned his head, glaring. “I’m not your brother. What’s going on? How are you doing this, and that…?” He pointed to the screen. “Is it real?” He dropped his hands to his sides.
“Is any of this real?”
Haitian Jack’s smile faded. “It’s real and your wife … she was never in any real danger. Not yet. Just like your daughter. They got dangerous methods, the people you work for, but they need your cooperation. You … you be like a loose cannon, going off at all angles. Potential you got, to muck up the works.”
Mason grit his teeth. “I’m set to muck up something if I find out someone was behind all this.”
Jack set his hands down flat beside the ivory staff on the bed. “Now hear me. You right, not much time. We need you to be calm, to act a part.”
“What part? Why? How can I be calm, and just who are you?”
“Told you, I be Jack. Haitian Jack, and once me and your new boss, we had called each other brothers. But that man, the one who called this staff his?”
“The one you pulled up from the ice?”
Jack nodded gravely. “Yeah, we … we worked behind the scenes, we guided and helped and cured and we … we thought of ourselves like shepherds.”
Mason frowned. “And your flock?”
Jack spread out his arms wide. “The whole wide world. And everything, everyone on it.”
“Okay …”
Jack made a sideways glance to the TV, and now Mason saw on it his approach to the Kansas farmhouse.
“What the hell? How did you film that?”
Smiling, Jack shook his head. “Nothing filmed. I only see what’s in your head right now. I know where you been, which means they know where you been. Which means, that be why your wife’s in here.” He pointed at the screen. “You ain’t s’posed to know what’s in there. Not yet, least.”
Mason frowned. “Yeah, I’m kind of guessing there were some secrets in there. I’m not quite clear though on just what happened.”
Jack leaned in close, eyes searching his. “Oh, I think you be knowing just right. You just don’t be believing. Not yet.”
He cocked his head, as if listening to the wind outside. And for an instant, Mason could sense it too. A different pitch, a sideways shift in convection, the currents moving slightly.
Jack made a clucking sound with his teeth. “Ah, I best be going. They know I’m here. Sent in help.”
“Just what are you? And these others you talked about. What the hell are these shepherds and how does Solomon and Solstice fit in? And the Department of Agriculture? Some guy named Palavar?”
At the mention of that name Jack’s eyes flashed. “Ah, then you know enough. Follow that lead when you can. There may be other allies, others … indisposed at the moment, who might be awakened to your cause. In case you lose me.” His eyes darted to the window.
“Why, where do you have to go?”
Jack sighed. “There was a battle between ideologies, and the White …” he tapped the ivory staff, “lost to the Grey. Now the balance is destroyed and we can’t stop what’s to come, can’t stop what he’s planning. Not alone.”
Jack fixed Mason with a hard look. “It’s you, it has to be you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you got talents I can’t even attempt. You came to me …”
“That was a dream.”
Jack shook his head. “Would that I, then, could dream myself elsewhere. No, I had to come here in person, in great danger to myself. But you …”
“Me. Again with that, what am I going to do? I can’t even forecast a tornado’s approach five minutes away.”
Jack laughed. “When you figure all this out, you won’t have to.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Follow Palavar, get help. But first … Go back to work.”
“What?”
“And play nice.”
Jack was suddenly behind Mason, his hand grasping his shoulder reassuringly. “Let them trust you, and—just like you found out about Kansas—find out what they’re really up to. The U.N., the data, this weather gambit.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.”
He tapped his shoulder, and then again he was in the far corner behind the bed, retreating into the shadows. “If we meet again, we will share a bottle of century-old rum, my brother. Until then …”
But whatever he said was lost in the sound of the door opening, and a doctor coming in. He clasped Mason’s shoulder, and his eyes were bright.
“Good news, Mr. Grier. Just came out of surgery, and your wife’s going to be fine. It was much less invasive than we thought at first. And in fact, the hemorrhage was …”
But Mason was barely listening. He glanced at the TV, which for a moment before it shut off, displayed a scene from the hallway outside, where Haitian Jack, his white scrubs flowing behind him like a cape, strode toward an exit.
“I know,” Mason said, turning back to the doctor. “I had a feeling she’d pull through. Can I see her now?”
Chapter 30
Haitian Jack strode toward the exit sign with the inescapable feeling that he wouldn’t make it there. He could sense it in the changing barometric pressure. Someone strong was nearby. At least one, and then possibly more outside.
Had they already constructed a cage? Trapped Jack like a flightless bird?
He was about to find out, but didn’t want to tip his hand. He had time, and patience. And he had to win out, if not … there was no one left.
No one but Mason. The new blood, on his own to prevent the Green Kingdom.
The brother had no chance, not alone, not this late in the game.
Jack had to survive.
A red light flashed on the outside of a room up ahead and a nurse came running out. “You, doctor, in here now!”
Jack cursed; he had forgotten to remove the coat and before he knew it she had grabbed his arm and brought him into the room. By that point, it actually occurred to him, this could work in his favor. He could hide out here, buy some time until the defenses outside tired, and then …
He looked at the bed, a withered old man, gasping for air.
Well
, Jack thought,
may have to cure this one first. Or at least, ease his suffering.
He stepped in, then felt a cold blast of air, turned and saw the nurse, a dazed look on her face, sliding out the door and into the hall before the door slammed shut.
And the skeletal man on the bed sat up, wrinkles pulling back as his face changed slightly and the features rearranged into a familiar leering visage of hate and arrogance that only came a lifetime misusing power.
Damn it all.
Old Man Stanwick.
O O O
Jack had a moment to react, and it was just enough. He pulled out his staff, created a whirlwind shield out of the air and blocked a barrage of sharp thorns the old man sent his way, scattering the pellets into the ceiling and walls.
Over the wind and the thunking of the thorns into metal and glass, Stanwick’s cackling laughter filled Jack’s ears.
He cursed, knelt low and slammed down his staff, and out of the vents in the walls and the ceiling erupted a horde of locusts, cascading down onto Stanwick. The old man tried to scream out a counter attack, but the insects flew into his throat and sealed up his lips.
The whirlwind vanished and Jack leapt onto the bed, about to strike down with his staff and end Old Man Stanwick for good—when he sensed something else. Behind him.
He spun, and out came a hulking brute of a man from the closet where he’d been hiding. A scar on his face and dual-colored eyes, the man pulled a gun and aimed—
Not one of us
, Jack thought gratefully. This, he could deal with, but almost got one in the back.
Two shots rang out, missing where Jack had been seconds earlier, and was now just a blur, moving about the room like the wind. Here, then there, and the brute kept firing, shouting, and then a shot punched through the window.
A gust of wind, like they had just depressurized an airline cabin, and Jack swooped down, grabbed hold of Stanwick and let the winds tug them both outside, crashing through the window and dropping.
O O O
Victor ran to the window’s edge, still aiming his gun, looking for a target and cursing the Haitian’s trickery. How could he miss from point-blank? He saw the target and the old man strike the ground in a pair of whirling cyclones, flopping, rolling and spinning. Jack was quicker to gain his feet as the old man wearily stood, shaking his head and coughing his lungs free of bugs.
Damn it
, Victor thought, weighing his options and feeling useless up here. He had no such talents, despite years of training. Years left to go before he could manage anything but some minor mind clouding and temperature manipulation. No, he’d be better used up on the roof. Where he could survey the battle and lend a hand if needed.
He turned, and ran for the stairs.
O O O
Haitian Jack leapt to his feet, sent a volley of flying beetles to assault Stanwick, then again summoned a whirlwind.
Time to test the containment
. He launched in a spinning drill form and raced for the sky, zeroing in on the crescent moon like a beacon. He spun faster and faster and chose his trajectory—only to rebound hard and painfully off an invisible barrier and come crashing down over the parking lot. He slammed hard onto the roof of a Chevy Minivan. Rolled off in a rain of glass and metal, and held out his hand.
His staff fell right into it and he was up, bruised and bloody, but fully in control. The car’s alarm was shrill and repetitive, and would draw security quickly.
He’d have to move fast, have to seek out the totems—markers enchanted with powerful runes that contained his magic within. He could go that way, he thought in a moment, or he could test the upward confines. If it wasn’t done properly, then there should be an exit at the top, a point at which the dome hadn’t been sealed skillfully enough.
He’d need a launching point.
The roof …
He eyed the building, preparing himself for another jaunt to the apex, when he heard the shuffling footsteps, impossibly quick, of Old Man Stanwick. He loomed up like Nosferatu himself, and just as frightening with crazed eyes and blackened teeth. He raised his staff and ball lightning shot from over his shoulders, twin orbs racing ahead like catapulted boulders.
Jack leapt into the air, his left foot stepping on the first ball and vaulting over it just as he swung his staff at the other. He struck it with a fast baseball-swing hook and knocked it back at Stanwick. The old man held out his staff and absorbed the entire purple-lightning globe and sucked it harmlessly back into himself.
Landing in front of the old man, Jack crouched, his staff ready.
Stanwick lowered his head. “You can’t win, Jack. Should have joined us.”
“And you, old man, should know when to retire.” He struck the ground again, and this time it unleashed a fury of snakes and enormous burrowing centipedes. They quickly ensnared Stanwick’s ankles and pulled him down. But this time he was ready. He hissed and spat and the ground burst into flame, searing the reptiles and freeing his legs and feet—as he calmly walked free, kicking off the flames and the charred reptile bones clinging to his pants.
He raised his hand and tree trunks speared up from the ground, sharp angular vines stabbing and swinging. One cut through Jack’s left arm, nearly slicing it off at the elbow, and another gouged into his right calf.
Howling in pain, Jack writhed and then spun and struck the bark with his staff, shattering it in an explosion of ice. Freed of one, then the other just in time, he struck out at Stanwick and landed a blow on the old man’s cheek. Then he took to the air, floated up on a current and as he saw Stanwick recover and start mumbling another spell, Jack flung himself backwards and up on another gust that carried him away.
Awkwardly, much less in control, he used some of his energy to heal his wounds, close up the calf and repair tissues in his arm, so that when he landed with a thud on the rooftop beside one of many exhaust fans, he was ready.
He breathed deep, figuring he’d have a few moments to prepare and locate the weak points in the cage. He looked up, and adjusted his sight, shifting into avian eyesight, gauging wind currents and air movements, and he saw then the unnatural bend of the cage, keeping out various frequencies of power, letting in others. And there it was, a man-sized hole just off the center.
That, he could make. No problem, mon, as they said back home. He would live to fight another day. Regroup and help this novice Mason, the brother who could become much more than he knew. There was still time. But then a nagging thought crept into his mind. Nagging that maybe the gap existed right above the roof just so that he’d be maneuvered here.
No that couldn’t be, no such trick to play on ol’ Jack
. He just had to act fast. He just …
But that’s when he sensed something else.
Someone else.
Not the brute, who he saw now emerging from the rooftop entrance, gun in hand, but someone else … behind him.
Haitian Jack spun, staff up—but not in time.
Damnit, mon.
It was the younger one. The son.
Gabriel smiled as he stepped from the shadows, wearing a black hooded sweatshirt. He traced a quick sigil in the air with his staff and then exhaled. A burst of icy arctic wind slammed into Jack and hurtled him clear across the roof, slamming him hard into the metal grating beside the door Victor had just stepped out from moments ago.
Pinned there, Jack tried to clear his head.
Just a second. All I need to take you down, just …
But then the brute pressed the muzzle of his gun against Jack’s temple. “Dodge this, asshole,” he said and squeezed the trigger.