Premonitions (32 page)

Genevieve sat cross-legged next to the rope and used a Sharpie to draw a diagram on the matted surface of the cheap carpet right in front of the window. It must not have been her usual rigmarole, since she kept referring to a page torn out of the phone book as she worked. Anna didn’t want to think about that.

At length, Genevieve finished the diagram and shoved the coil of rope on top of it with a grunt. She glanced quickly up at Anna and Karyn, then back to the work. Anna heard her let out a long, shaky breath.

“It’s gonna be fine,” Anna said.

“Shh.”

Genevieve started chanting. For over a minute, Anna stood and watched, enduring the hot wind and the growing sense of concern that the night security guard would come by any time. Genevieve’s chanting seemed to have
no effect on anything, and Anna began to worry about that, too. If she fucked this up, the plan was DOA. Even Karyn was getting anxious, shifting her weight from one leg to the next and darting glances at the door.

After a long, nerve-racking wait, the end of the rope moved. It picked itself up, snakelike, and climbed out the hole. Genevieve’s eyes widened, but she didn’t break off the chant. The backs of Anna’s arms and neck prickled with gooseflesh.

Anna and Karyn both walked to the window and watched as the rope paid itself out. Moments later, Anna saw the end of the rope appear clear across the way. The rope had wriggled across the street, and now the other end was slithering up the side of Enoch Sobell’s office building. It was a profoundly unsettling sight, and suddenly the breeze coming through the hole didn’t feel so warm at all.

This was the dangerous part. If anybody on the street saw this, they probably wouldn’t be able to resist fucking with it. Anna prayed that the security cameras at the corners of the building weren’t of high enough resolution for the rope to show up on them.

As Karyn and Anna watched, the rope climbed to the ESE sign across the way, twenty feet or so down from their position. It disappeared behind the sign and began hauling itself up. Soon, the coil had run out, and the rope began tightening. Anna wondered again how good Sobell’s security cameras were, and how attentive his guards.

The U-shaped arc of rope got shorter and higher. No alarm sounded. No security personnel ran out into the street, pointing.

Then the rope was tight, a nearly straight length connecting the two buildings.

Genevieve stopped chanting. “Holy shit,” she said. “It worked.”

* * *

Nail slumped against a couple of trash bins in the alley behind the apartment building, breathing fast. Somebody had lit a fucking fire in his guts. Drew crouched next to him, on the verge of panic—basically a liability at this
point. Any minute now, the people from the Brotherhood would come running, waving their guns around, and overrun the two men, but for some reason it hadn’t happened yet.

Over the sound of blood rushing in his ears, Nail heard a car engine cough its way to life. Two more, maybe three, started up after it.

No way. It can’t be this easy.

Drew heard it too, and hope dawned on his face. “I think they’re leaving,” he whispered.

“Fucking . . . great.”

“How you holding up?”

“Guts aren’t in my lap.” Nail pushed himself upright and winced. “I guess the guy ahead of me slowed the bullet down some.”

“Um. OK. I’m gonna go out and see if they’re gone.”

“Give it a minute, huh?”

Drew leaned forward, trying to peer around the trash bins. They weren’t very big trash bins, and they were plastic besides. If somebody saw him, they wouldn’t be much good for cover.

“Get down, dumbass!” Nail said.

“I don’t see anybody.”

There was surprisingly little blood, and no exit wound. Hurt like a motherfucker, but he’d had worse. Pulse was good, skin didn’t feel clammy, best as he could tell, so at least he wasn’t going into shock. Probably. Still, this was nothing to fuck around with.

“Okay,” he said. “Take a quick look. Then we get the fuck out of here, if we can.”
And find a fucking doctor.

The alley was empty so far, as best as Nail could see from where he lay. Drew crept out, gun at the ready. His hands were shaking.
Boy’s gonna get his ass killed. Mine, too.

Drew walked down the alley, nearly to the end, and stopped. The apartment building stuck out, blocking off the view at the end, and he’d have to jog right to come around the end of that building. If somebody was waiting for him, that’s where they would be.

Drew disappeared behind the little turn. Nail waited for shots.

Nothing.

Shouldn’t the cops be getting here pretty soon?
Nail wondered, and the thought surprised him so much he almost laughed aloud.
First time I can remember wishing for some cops.
If they were coming, though, they were taking their time. Or hell, maybe gunfire was so common down here that nobody’d bothered to call them. Wouldn’t that be funny?

Yeah. Like a heart attack.

Still no sounds. A minute passed during which Nail’s wound seemed to stiffen up, such that every breath grew more painful. Where’d the fucking bullet end up? Kidney? No, probably be bleeding worse if they’d hit a kidney.

Movement at the end of the alley. It was Drew. He walked quickly to Nail.

“It’s clear,” he said.

“Come on, then. Get me the hell out of here.”

* * *

Once, in Dublin in the seventies, Enoch Sobell had gotten clipped in the head by a piece of debris from an exploding house. One moment, he’d been strolling down a calm street in an expensive neighborhood, enjoying the sun and the clear sky and, for once, not up to anything more complicated than stretching his legs. Then came a mighty roar, and something that felt like a meteorite the size of a school bus smashed into the back of his head.

The next time he was conscious, it was four days later and the pain was a constant, slightly muted screaming that turned into five-alarm agony if he did anything so foolish as to touch the back of his head in any way.

He should have been killed, they’d told him. He’d been standing a hundred yards or so from some rich muckety-muck’s house when the IRA blew it up for reasons he neither understood nor cared to, and a quarter of a brick had hurtled in a straight line from beneath the window casement to a spot on the back of Enoch Sobell’s head, somewhat on the left.

If not for having taken a few magical precautions, it would surely have killed him. Even so, the wound had
hurt like a bastard and taken weeks to heal, and he’d had little patience for the IRA ever since.

His current injury made that earlier one feel like a paper cut.

My head. Ohhh, my fucking head. The top of my head’s off, I know it. The whole top. Brain’s probably got flies on it, laying eggs. And it’s drying out, most certainly. What happens when your brain dries out? Is that a problem?

He instinctively moved his hands toward the pain, but caught himself before he did anything stupid.
Like prodding my exposed brain with my filthy bare hands. Idiot.

He needed to get up. He wasn’t entirely clear on what had happened over the last—how long?—but he could see nobody in the room other than a couple of lumps that were almost certainly dead bodies. That meant even more violence than the shot he’d taken to the head, which meant police, who, of course, were all in Greaser’s pocket. If they found him here, he was fucked.
More fucked, rather.

His head felt like somebody had taken an auger to it, drilled out a nice hole, packed it with gunpowder, and lit the fuse. At least when the IRA had blown him up, he’d gotten to spend four days in a coma and miss the worst of it.

Nonetheless, he sat up. The room spun and nausea seized his gut. A slow bead of thick blood oozed down his forehead. Sweat popped out over his whole body. With a grunt that came out alarmingly close to a wheeze, he used the dresser to pull himself to a kneeling position. The room not only spun now—it turned upside down and actively tried to shake him off. He gripped the edge of the dresser with both hands until his fingers ached.

Eventually the room settled down to a low, rolling motion. Sobell forced himself to stand. He had a bad moment when his unsteady feet buckled, nearly dropping him back to the ground, but sheer terror of the pain that would ensue if he bumped his head helped him regain his balance.

Breathing like he’d just run half a marathon, Sobell
stood and looked at himself in the reflection from a framed photo of a bland landscape.

So much for my rakish good looks.
Still, it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. It only
felt
like the top of his head had come off. In reality, it appeared the bullet had entered just above his right eye, skidded along his skull, and traced a red-hot line beneath his skin about six inches long before exiting and blowing a hole in the wall. Part of his forehead hung down in a gruesome flap, and his head hurt like hell, but he’d gotten off lucky.

Nothing a couple of safety pins won’t fix.
His stomach convulsed at the thought. That wasn’t, apparently, something he was ready to even joke about.

He straightened, and another bad dizzy spell sloshed through his head. Again, he steadied himself against the wall, and when the moment passed, he took a cautious step toward the door.

As expected, the room was over its quota for dead bodies—three of them. Two were men Sobell didn’t recognize, presumably members of the Brotherhood. Brown was the third. His body leaned against the wall, eyes open, torso shot full of holes.

Sobell sighed. This had not been one of his finest moments. He’d badly misgauged the Brotherhood’s motivations. Either rational self-interest wasn’t among the Brotherhood’s virtues—which he could well imagine—or they were playing a different game. Maybe they thought if they knew the location of the bone, they could get it themselves. Hell, maybe they were right.

He opened the door and walked out, one shuffling step at a time.

* * *

Nail didn’t scream when Drew helped him up, impressing even himself. He
wanted
to scream, and if he’d been a hundred percent sure it wouldn’t get him shot, he’d have cut loose with a roar that would have woken people up in Long Beach. He almost passed out instead, but after a blurry few moments during which he couldn’t tell
what
the fuck was going on, he found himself on his feet, leaning against the building. A few moments after that, he was
half draped over Drew, hobbling down the alley. A brief pause for Drew to check around the corner, and then they were out in the open.

The parking lot was almost empty. Sure enough, the Brotherhood had split.

“Fuck yeah,” Nail said—and then he remembered. “Shit. Brown. He make it?”

Drew gave him a blank look. “Huh?”

“Brown. Is he alive?”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

“Come on. We gotta go check.”

The blank look turned incredulous. “You gotta be shitting me.”

“Nope. Never leave a man behind. Guy’s a dick, but he pulled some Sylvester Stallone shit in there, and we’d probably both be dead if he hadn’t.”

“Unfuckingbelievable,” Drew said, but he started hauling Nail toward the apartment.

A moment later, a figure lurched out of the apartment. Drew let out a terrified squawk and went for his gun before Nail put a hand on his arm and stopped him.

“Jesus!” Drew said.

Sobell took half a step and then slumped against the doorframe. “No, but that wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been a victim of a case of mistaken identity.”

“Brown?” Nail asked.

“Dead.”

“Shit. We gotta get out of here.”

“I’m shambling as fast as I can. This may look like a mere scratch, but, surprisingly enough, it’s actually rather painful.”

“Well, come on,” Nail said. “We ain’t got all day.”

“No. I expect not.”

“Mr., uh, Sobell?
Um, sir?”

Gresser tried to lift his head, but it wouldn’t go. Something grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head up for him. He felt gratitude for that, despite the pain.

He was supposed to say something. Words. There were some words he needed, but he couldn’t seem to find them. It had gotten hard to think. His back and shoulders hurt—well, no. They didn’t hurt at all. But there was a strange stiffness to them, and they didn’t want to move, and somehow that stiffness, that nonsensation of pain, was a source of constant distraction. And his hips, too. They didn’t quite . . . go.

“Sir?”

The wide-eyed lieutenant stared at him, expecting some kind of response. But what did he want? Gresser wasn’t Sobell, so why was this asshole bothering him?
No, wait. I
am
Sobell. Right?

He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t have any words anyway.

A thin, bony hand, sticky with some kind of viscous fluid, crept around his head and seized his jaw.

Yes,
he heard in his mind. The hand pulled his jaw open, puppetlike, and somehow the word came out.

“Yes?”

“A whole bunch of people just showed up down front. Like, twenty or so guys. They say they’re looking for you.” The young man, a broken-nosed bruiser who must have gone two-forty and probably made a habit of
picking a fight with the biggest guy in any given bar, just for fun, shuffled his feet and kept his eyes down, daring only the briefest glances at Gresser.

“Who are they?” The hand worked his jaw again, and words came into his head and out his mouth at almost the same time. They sounded oddly doubled, as though he were speaking and whispering simultaneously.

“The Brotherhood.”

Gresser had no idea who that was or what it meant, but he straightened in his chair. A sound of grinding, crunching things came from his spine, and he almost screamed before he remembered that it didn’t hurt. “Good,” he said. “Send them up.”

* * *

“Shit. Looks like the distraction’s arrived.” Anna looked out the hole in the window where a bunch of cars had roared up and parked in front of Sobell’s building. She couldn’t see most of them from here, but from the look of the stragglers at the end, it wasn’t the cops or Sobell’s guys. Had to be the Brotherhood, then.

“Nail with them?” Karyn asked.

“I can’t tell.”

“We gotta go,” Genevieve said. “Like, now.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Anna knelt and clipped her harness to the zip-line trolley. She didn’t get to use this stuff often, but it was her favorite part of any job that needed it. Hell of a rush, and probably the next best thing to flying. She didn’t feel great about the small crowd moving toward the front of the building, though, but there wasn’t any time left to fuck around. She just had to count on all the spotlights out front wrecking their night vision.

“See you on the other side,” she said, and she pushed herself out the window.

The harness caught, and the trolley took off, speeding down the length of rope. It was maybe a hundred feet across and twenty down—a good-sized drop that rocketed her forward. It was all she could do to keep an exultant yell smothered in her chest.

She made most of the drop and slowed as the rope started to sag toward the far end. By the time she reached
Sobell’s building, she’d dropped enough speed that she was able to catch herself against the wall, legs absorbing the shock so well she barely made any noise above the squeak of rubber on glass.

She hung from the bottom of the sign. From here, she could see the complex mess of brackets and angle iron that held the sign in place, as well as the spot where the rope had coiled itself after it finished its work. She waved back at Genevieve and Karyn and pulled herself up behind the sign. Then she busied herself with more of the climbing gear. Unfortunately, the sign was too high above the nearest window to simply hang from the existing line—she’d need to set up a belaying system to get down where they could get in front of a window. Pain in the ass, really.

She set up the pulley and readied another section of rope.

Genevieve hit the wall a few moments later with too much speed and a muffled curse.

“Shh!” Anna whispered, looking down at where Genevieve twisted below her. “You OK?”

“Hit wrong. Twisted my ankle.”

“How bad?”

“It’ll be all right. Just hurts.”

“Christ. Get up here, would you?”

Genevieve clambered up onto the bracket system next to her. Even in this light she looked pale. “Conjuring up monsters? Sign me up. Hanging from a rope a hundred feet above concrete? Not so much.”

Anna hooked her to the new rope and tried on her best reassuring smile. “It’s all right. Just a few more minutes, and you’ll be on solid ground.”

Below them, Karyn stopped herself against the glass. She was even quieter than Anna had been, so much so that Anna might not have noticed her if she hadn’t been looking in that direction. A few moments later, and she joined them behind the sign.

Anna pulled on the rope holding Genevieve. “Ready?”

“I guess so,” she said. “This seemed a lot less scary when I was thinking it up.”

“You’ll be fine,” Anna said, touching her hand.

“I’m gonna hold you to that.”

Genevieve slid off the bracket and rappelled down eight feet or so, favoring her ankle but not badly. Once she’d gotten situated, she pulled a roll of double-sided tape out of her satchel. She slapped it on the glass in four places, the corners of a square about four feet on a side. Then she got out a few pages from the phone book that Sobell had scrawled on and stuck one in place at each corner.

She looked up at Anna one last time, a question on her face. Anna shrugged and gave her the thumbs-up. What else did she expect? Anna didn’t have any better idea than Genevieve of whether Sobell’s shit would work as advertised. There simply wasn’t anything else to go on.

Genevieve tapped the center of the square. The window blew inward in a soundless explosion, the draft of its passage pulling Genevieve in after it. She grabbed at the edges of the window frame, steadied herself, and looked up at Anna, eyes wide. Her mouth widened in a grin, and she returned the thumbs-up.

Moments later, the three of them were inside. The room was a small office, the pictures on the wall vague dark spots, a small desk pushed back against the corner. Powdered glass crunched like sand underfoot.

Anna checked her gun. “Ready?” she whispered.

Genevieve nodded.

Karyn closed her eyes, then opened them again. Her face was pale against the darkness. “Genevieve, you . . . Maybe you should stay here.”

Anna cut in before Genevieve could do more than look puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean maybe she should stay here. I think . . . I think this could be really bad for her.”

“You think, or you know?”

Karyn studied the floor, kicked at the sand there, then looked back up. “I know,” she said softly. “As much as I know anything.”

Silence greeted this pronouncement. Anna looked
from Karyn’s anguished face to Genevieve’s worried grin. She thought of Tommy. Judging from Karyn’s expression, she wasn’t the only one. “Gen, maybe you should sit this one out.”

“Right. And just how do you plan to get past the seventh seal and the magical gatekeeper at the end of level nine?”

“The what?”

“You know what I mean.” She held up a sheaf of papers. “I’m only about halfway through the phone book here, so unless you’ve been hiding your light under a bushel, I’m all you got.”

There was no answer for that, so Anna looked back to Karyn.

“Genevieve, can Anna and I have a minute alone?” Karyn asked.

“No.” Genevieve shifted her weight, but she didn’t back away. “You just told me I’m toast real soon, unless we do something about it, and now you want me to step out into the hall alone? No way.”

“They’re already in the building,” Anna said. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

Karyn cast a despondent look out the window, where the rope still hung between the two buildings. The faint pull of wind dragged her hair across her forehead. “If she goes up there with us, she’ll be in real danger.” She took a quick look at Genevieve, then resumed staring out the window. “This shit comes true, Anna. Tell her to stay here.”

“She doesn’t
tell
me to do anything,” Genevieve began, and Anna cut her off.

“It doesn’t always come true,” Anna insisted. “We can stop it this time, like we have a million times. This is what you
do
, Karyn. You see it coming, and you get us out of the way.”

“Not every time.” Karyn’s face crumpled, and even in the low light reflected from the building across the way, Anna saw the bright bubble of tears threaten to burst.

She pulled Karyn to her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Tommy wasn’t your fault. I never should have said those things.”
Karyn’s body convulsed with sobs, and Anna felt the hot streaks of tears wet her collar.

“I can’t . . .” Karyn’s words were lost in a fresh flood of sorrow, and she clung to Anna with a fierce desperation that Anna had never expected. Anna’s heart felt like it was being wrung out like a wet dishcloth—but they didn’t have time for this now.

“Later,” Anna said. She gently pulled Karyn’s hands from her. “We have to do this now. The others are counting on us.”

The naked misery on Karyn’s face was almost too much to bear, and Anna felt a rush of relief when she wiped her face and nodded. “Yeah. OK.”

Anna turned to Genevieve. “You OK with this?” It would be OK, she thought. Karyn would keep her from getting hurt. That’s what she did, for everybody. Except once.

Genevieve summoned up one of her wry grins. “Long as you two are in front.”

* * *

“Ah. Home sweet home.” Sobell stood at the front stairs of his building, doing his best to bask under the glare of the floodlights rather than wince. “I suppose I should be happier to see it.”

“That’s it, then?” Drew asked, the sound of hope unmistakable in his voice. He’d been anxious ever since they left Nail at the emergency room. Sobell couldn’t blame him.

“That’s it. Unless you’d care to stick around for the finale?”

Drew shook his head. “No, thanks. The Brotherhood—they’re done after this? I won’t have to worry anymore?”

“No more worries,” Sobell said. He twisted his hand a certain way and spat out a nasty syllable. The spreading grin died stillborn on Drew’s face, and he fell to the ground. His eyes were still open and frantic, darting left and right in rolling arcs, but he made no sound as Sobell leaned over him.

“I’m sorry, young man. Truly.” One swipe from St. George’s sword, and blood flooded forth from Drew’s
open throat, the pool spreading quickly to a shallow groove in the marble. Sobell stepped over it just as it reached the edge and spilled over. Drew gurgled, but scarcely moved—the paralysis was thorough.

Another short incantation. Nothing happened visibly, but the next unwanted visitor to attempt to cross that line would be the recipient of a particularly unpleasant surprise. And the next after that, and so on.

“So much for Bill Mendez and his boys,” Sobell muttered. He dipped his index finger in Drew’s blood and drew three runes on his own face—one on his damaged forehead, one below each eye—and then followed up with yet another incantation. He imagined he could hear the clamor of hungry, sharp-toothed mouths swell around him.

Is this the last one? The one where I finally step over the line, and they take me?

It seemed not. Nothing stirred in the flat, hot air.

He wiped his hand on his pants and walked to the front door.

* * *

The halls were empty, to judge by Anna’s expression, but as far as Karyn could tell, there was a party on this floor. The lights were simultaneously on and off, bright and dark, and the corridors were choked with traffic. Men and women in suits raced down the halls, shuffling papers, muttering to themselves, shouting at each other, talking excitedly, or simply walking straight ahead at a rapid clip, as though they were late for an important meeting. She startled as a naked man and a woman with her skirt missing fell out of a side office, laughing.

“Are you OK?” Genevieve asked.

“Fuck you.” Nothing was OK. She couldn’t tell if what she was seeing was tomorrow or the day after or yesterday, or twenty-six possible Thursdays rolling around together in the Great Thursday Orgy, or all of them jammed together at once.

“Sorry.”

Karyn glanced back. Half of Genevieve’s face was gone, a ruin of blood and bone. Gunshot, probably.
How
am I supposed to stop this? We’re walking right into it.
In her mind, she saw Tommy on the ground, clutching his stomach and screaming, his eyes rolled up to look accusingly at her. It was a lie—his eyes had been gone, hadn’t they?—but it felt like the truth.

Keep walking. Keep walking.

Anna stopped at the next intersection and peeked around the corner. Satisfied, she turned and waved at the others to follow. The hall ended after a few dozen steps. There was a door in the wall on the left and another on the right, but the space ahead was blank. It should have been the outer wall of the building—almost.

Anna motioned for Genevieve to do her thing. Then she looked to Karyn.

The cul-de-sac was light and dark, and people went in and out of the office doors on either side, but Karyn saw nothing else. She shrugged.

Anna nodded, then went back to the mouth of the hall, gun at the ready, while Genevieve got to work. Karyn turned slow circles and tried to watch everywhere, awaiting the inevitable. Maybe it would reveal itself in time—
it always has,
she reminded herself without much effect.

Genevieve’s flashlight burned white-hot in the darkness, then vanished the next moment as the whole hall lit up. In the stretched oval of the light, weird characters took shape under Genevieve’s marker. Tomorrow somebody would get a hell of a surprise when they came in to find the place vandalized, Karyn thought, but tomorrow was the least of anybody’s concerns.

Genevieve will be dead by tomorrow, and, if this keeps up, I won’t be sane.
And Anna? What about Anna?