Max could almost taste his own disgust. "Holier. How can you think of what I've done -of what you must have done, too, when you were like me- as holy!"
"I don't, Max, you asked me if it gets better. I don't know if you can understand what I'm saying. It's a matter of balance, of tension. The beast is horrific and more. But, yes, you can bend the dregs it leaves behind in you to something holy."
Maxwell paced away. "I can't accept that."
David shrugged. "You're the one who asked."
Max was ready to say he would never understand, never. By God, he'd refuse. But in the quiet of pre-dawn, he heard the distant din of cans snag and scatter. He dropped to his knees as if bullets had pierced the shack's warped, gray walls.
David dropped, too. "What is it?"
"Someone's coming. David, get out of here."
"Not yet--"
"David, get the hell out of here!"
"There's still time, that had to be the first line you heard."
"Where's the gun?"
"My cot. Between the frame and the mattress."
Max looked at David. "Did you think I was going to sneak up on you in your sleep?"
"The world's full of possibilities."
Another flurry of metallic alarm, much closer this time. It clattered up the path toward them. Max looked at David angrily. "Now!"
Still David hesitated, his eyes never leaving Max's. Then, he tore himself from the floor, snatched up his backpack and fled out the door. Max rushed up to close it again.
He noticed at last that he was trembling, and leaned against the door until he could collect himself. He thought wildly, Damnit, I'm not going to die in my skivvies, and made it to the duffel bag that held his meager belongings. He had a couple of minutes, maybe three, before they would be at the door. He wrestled on a pair of blue jeans before groping under David's mattress.
There it was, cool and darkly shining in his right hand. Was it loaded with silver or were the bullets a coarser metal? It wouldn't matter if he aimed right, made sure the bullet pulverized the brain. Max sat on David's cot, leaning his back against the wall.
He heard a motor now and what must have been a few of the cans still caught on a fender. Glasses on or glasses off? Leave them on, he decided, and had to pull the gun toward his mouth with both hands.
But the sound of a single car door slamming made him hesitate. One car. One door. He lowered the gun to listen to the sound of a single pair of footsteps, brisk but not running, coming toward shack. The door opened hesitantly. Mrs. Tebbe's eyes flew wide when she fixed on Max, sitting cross-legged on the cot, gun in hand.
"Don't do it!" she cried. "Not yet."
/ / / /
"I couldn't do it, Captain. I don't know why. By the time I had gotten back to Tulenar, I had myself convinced I should wait for the proper time to turn you in. That somehow, I could figure out a way to save those boys and still give you and Mr. Alma Curar a chance to see this through."
Mrs. Tebbe paused and sipped from her cup. It was the three of them, once again, sitting around the shack's table. The sun hadn't even crested the cedars yet, but it wasn't coffee in the old tin mugs set before Mrs. Tebbe and Max. David had emerged from the forest line seconds after the C.A.'s entrance, having waited to see exactly what was behind him before moving on. He looked like he could use a bourbon shot, too, but the healer had declined.
"When is this supposed to take place?" David asked her.
"This weekend. There's a school dance planned and afterward, there's bound to be an increase in mischief. It happens after every social function. The next morning, Shackley's going to use that excuse to arrest any Nisei boy suspected of belonging to the Inu Hunters. Once they're in custody, he plans to announce a connection between the boys and the murders and have them shipped off to federal prison."
Max's stomach lurched. He could almost see his report in the man's hand, that damnable report he had so meticulously plotted, the conclusion he had so eloquently talked himself into actually believing. It was all there. Simple, logical, clean. So much more believable than what Max himself had refused to accept, let alone someone like Shackley; under the gun, pressed to mop up the messy trail of the killings.
His report was pure conjection. There wasn't a lick of physical evidence to back it up. But, as much as he wanted to believe Shackley couldn't arrest the boys on conjecture alone, he knew better. This was going to happen. He looked across the table at David, and knew the healer understood that, too. The expression on David's face also told Max that he knew what Max was thinking.
"It'd be foolish to do it," David said.
"Not foolish."
"What are you talking about?" Mrs. Tebbe asked.
David reached over and took a swig out of Max's cup. "He's thinking of turning himself in."
"It'll save those boys," Max said.
David looked at him a moment, then nodded. "Very likely."
"Then how would it be foolish?"
"The very thing that makes you want to sacrifice yourself for those boys is the thing we have to preserve."
"At their expense? The price is too high for my one, lousy life."
"If all we've been struggling for was your one life, I'd agree. That's one of the easy choices, Max. But if you live, you aren't just saving yourself."
"Ah, come on, David, that doesn't make any sense."
"If you see this through, it will." David looked at Mrs. Tebbe, then back to Max. "What's happening to those boys is within her circle. You have to give them into her care. And you, Mrs. Tebbe. You have to trust yourself."
Max rose from the bench. "It doesn't feel right, letting those boys suffer..."
"You can't possibly know if what you're feeling is right. You're too entangled with --"
"Don't play word games with me, David! It's wrong and you know it."
"I know no such thing."
"The hell you don't!" He all but barked the words, and there was a curious relief in feeling he didn't have control over his own voice.
David's expression screwed up with frustration. "Speak up, Max, you're not shouting loud enough."
"Goddamn you, I'm scared, can't you see that! I'm scared! I'm scared!"
Max drew in a breath, ready to shout it again, but the realization of what he was saying suddenly thundered into his head.
The silence dragged on until David said, "How clever. It's very clever. Who do you suppose is more afraid now, Max? You or the beast?"
Max sat down again, looking at Mrs. Tebbe before shaking his head. He glanced away and said into his cup, as if asking the bourbon instead of her, "What do you think? What do you want me to do?"
"I don't know," she replied, her voice strained.
"Why'd you come back?"
"I don't know that either. But I'll see this through until I do."
Everyone ran out of words again. Finally David took a deep breath of his own and rubbed his face before saying, "Then it's time for you to see this. You better understand who you are to the beast."
He took Max by the forearm, urging him to lay his hand on the table, palm up. Max looked into his hand as Mrs. Tebbe did, knowing what was there, recalling how he had always explained it to himself as an illusion, a trick of his wounded vision. Until Mr. Satsugai had noticed it.
It wasn't visible immediately. One had to gaze at the creases a moment before recognizing what was being seen. A circle, irregularly formed within the palm's natural folds and creases. It could be mistaken as a stain this morning, but would grow darker as the moon grew fuller. A ragged five-pointed star lay within it. A pentagram. He looked at Mrs. Tebbe, saw the shock in her eyes.
But when he looked at his palm again he saw the pentagram take on a trait he'd never noticed before. There was a sheen to it. A silver sheen. And though Max had never seen the mark take on such a glow before, didn't think he understood it, he reached to the hand Mrs. Tebbe was resting on the table and gently turned it upward.
The pentagram's mate was silvery in her palm.
Mrs. Tebbe wrenched her hand away, holding it against her heart as if Max had tried to steal something from it. But after a moment, she lowered her hand again, palm up, to the table.
She closed her eyes and asked in a voice filled with dread, "What does it mean?"
"If this were the prey's mark," David replied, "it would simply mean you're the next feeding. But the prey's mark doesn't take on a sheen as the moon increases. That only happens to those chosen. Like me. Like Max."
Mrs. Tebbe's eyes were still closed and she shook her head, saying, "I can't believe that. It wasn't there before." But it was clear that she knew her denial was pointless.
"How could you have known to look for it before now?" the healer asked. "I only saw it after you started coming here. By the full moon, though, it'll be difficult to miss."
David exposed his own palm then. The pentagram formed there slowly, but never as darkly as Max's or Doris's, never with the silver sheen.
"It's always with you, once bitten. "
"I don't want to hear anymore," Mrs. Tebbe said.
But David continued. "You're the Chosen. If it can, the beast will wound you and take you as its host."
Mrs. Tebbe clutched her marked hand in the other and turned away from Max. "No, you're wrong about this. God in Heaven, I could never do what he's done, never! What could he want with me..."
"You're perfect for the beast, Mrs. Tebbe. You're filled with denial."
Now she stood, facing Max and David. "I can't do this. I'm sorry, I thought...but I can't. If what you say is true...then the best thing for me to do is go."
Max felt his stomach knot. "Go where?"
"Away. Just go away. I'm not needed at Tulenar. For the love of God, I might even do those people harm, if what he's said is true. The most help I can be is gone."
"Mrs. Tebbe," David said, "the Chosen isn't the beast's only pick, just its best. You're also our best choice, our best ally --"
Max laid his hand on David's arm, stopping his plea. He tried to speak himself, but the knot in his stomach gave him such a cramp of pain, Max had to swallow hard before finding his voice.
"We won't make you stay," he said at last. He could feel the thing inside struggle against his words even as he spoke. "But just think about why you won't stay, what...what's making you leave before you do. It's hard to be afraid. It's hard to see it, I know. But maybe if you can get past it... Ah, hell. Never mind. I just want you to understand we won't blame you if you go. We know it's hard. But, we also know..." Max's throat thickened and he couldn't go on. Then he shook his head and chuckled with sour humor. "I don't even know what the hell I was going to offer you. Peace of mind? Salvation? There's none of that left for any of us now."
"But, there is," David replied. "It's just not easily won. Mrs. Tebbe, this may be the only place you'll gain it. We need you. We want you to stay."
Max looked at Mrs. Tebbe just as her face tilted upward and her knees buckled. Max moved a fraction of a second faster than David to go to her aid, but Mrs. Tebbe stumbled back and thrust both hands toward them as if warding off an onslaught.
"Stay away," she demanded in a voice surprisingly strong. Somehow, she had staid on her feet. "I'm not going anywhere. Just don't either of you touch me."
Chapter 35
David Alma Curar's Shack
Morning. Waxing Gibbous, Nearing Full Moon.
Doris wasn't sure what had awakened her first: the smell of coffee, the pounding of something being nailed or the gentle nudging at her shoulder. They all seemed to come at once. She propped up on one elbow and looked into Pierce's bespectacled eyes.
"David asked me to wake you before the hammering did," he said.
From her place on the floor, the shack gained a little height. The men had insisted she have the mattress from one of the cots; thin, but better sleeping than the captain's bedroll or the metal webwork of the narrow bed, padded with blankets.
Doris sat up, clad only in blouse and slip, but modesty in such close quarters was inconvenient. There was privacy enough in turning her back to the men as she pulled on her skirt, leaving the girdle and those oh-so-rare stockings where they lay rolled in a corner. She would be changing clothes soon, anyway, would be back in flannel and dungarees. Likewise, she didn't bother to fix her hair into the snood, balled and bunched against her discarded lingerie. She finger-combed her hair as best she could, tying it into a ponytail with some twine.
Tucking her blouse into the skirt's waistband, she turned to see what Mr. Alma Curar was hammering. Upon the weathered wallboard to the right of the doorjamb, he was nailing thin silver plating, each sheet about two inches wide and twelve inches long. She helped herself to the coffee and watched in silence as he finished up that board, then began lining another, leaving one board bare between.
She looked over at Pierce, in jeans, his plaid shirt unbuttoned, exposing his undershirt. He sat on his skeletal cot. He was edgy, though obviously trying to remain calm. His forehead had a fine sheen of perspiration. The place where he sat was the farthest point from the silver- lined wallboard.
Alma Curar stopped hammering a moment to face Doris. "If you don't mind," he said, "there's a small mallet in the chest. We need to line the interior with silver. Every other board should do."
Doris set her cup down. She looked at Pierce again, and thought about asking if he were all right. The best she could manage was, "You look like you need some air."
He shook his head and raked his fingers over the bright silver fluffs at his temples.