“Do you have enough fuel to take me to Paradise?”
The pilot glanced at her and grinned. “I'm sorry, do I look like a taxi to you?”
She snatched her glasses off and drilled him with a ruthless gaze. “You will fly me to Paradise or you will choke on your own vomit tonight in your sleep.”
His eyes went round.
“And you'll do it without filing a report.”
Three minutes later they were in the air.
BILLY LEANED over the light table, staring at the map of Paradise valley,which highlighted the location of the forces as currently deployed.
Small blue circles indicated the location of each of the thirteen snipers and scouts hiding in position around the hills and cliffs. Four larger green squares represented the units that waited inside the perimeter near the roads that had been blown.
The bulk of the forces waited on the plateau above Paradise and would be airlifted in if needed.
“I would strongly suggest we cut off their links now,” said Ranger Captain Adams, speaking of the impulse generator they'd installed on the mesa. It would interfere with all conventional wireless communications within a ten-mile radius, cutting Paradise off from the world. The guard would rely exclusively on laser communications, a military-grade system that bounced beams off of satellites and back to receivers at specific GPS coordinates. Scrambler/transceivers gathered the signals and channeled them to tactical units within line of sight.
“For tactical reasons, but you might want to also consider the public relations side of things.”
“Do it,” Billy said.
Kinnard nodded, effectively under Billy's thumb.
“There's a call for you, sir.” A staffer of some lower rank handed Billy a phone. He took it and walked from the table, grateful for the distraction. He couldn't just stand around and let his mind itch the way it had ever since Black had forced himself on him.
The clock was ticking. Forty-one minutes and counting.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Billy.” A woman's voice. “How are you holding up?”
The voice was only vaguely familiar.
“Who is this?”
“I'm waiting for you in your room, Billy. We don't have much time.”
He glanced over at the light table and saw that Kinnard was watching him through those annoying obsidian sunglasses.
“I'm sorry, who did you say this was?”
“I didn't.” She paused. When she spoke again, her voice sent a chill through him. “You know me, Billy. You know me better than you know yourself.”
The air left his lungs and the room seemed to tilt. Billy jerked the phone from his ear and disengaged the call.
“You okay, Billy?” Kinnard had walked over to him.
“I just need a minute.”
“Who was that?”
“I . . . Nothing. Just Darcy. I'll be right back.”
He took a breath, frozen by indecision. The compound comprised half a dozen buildings including the armory and officers' quarters, where they'd been put up for the last two nightsâDarcy must have retreated to one of them. She wouldn't be standing outside where he'd left her twenty minutes earlier.
But the voice wasn't Darcy's, was it? This itching in his mind was clouding his thoughts.
“You're sure you're okay?”
He headed for the door and crashed through it without giving Kinnard an answer. An old barracks on the north side of the compound had been renovated to accommodate VIPs and visitors. Billy glanced around, saw that he was alone, and took off for his room.
It's you, Billy. You're the sinner
.
Black's voice had washed into his body yesterday like a cool drink after a long hike through the desert.
I'm you and you're me, baby. And you know what we want, what we need.
Blackness had filled him from his mouth, chilling his body from the inside out. Billy didn't know if the man who'd shoved his mouth against his own was real or notâhow could a person know that? But he did know that something had changed in that moment.
You know you wanna trip, baby. It's just you and me and we're going to
slam this town
.
A slight buzz had settled into the base of his mind with that voice, the cause of what he'd come to call the itch. The cold had reached down into his bones. But more than either of these had been the hatred of Johnny, the self-appointed prophet who'd forced Billy to face his past once again.
He thinks he's Johnny the Baptist, Billy Boy. He thinks he's come to intro-duce
the world to salvation.
Billy shuddered and ducked into the dark hall that led to his room, number 105, on the left. He swiped his key card through the lock, pushed the handle down, and swung the door open.
“Hello?”
No answer.
He flipped the light on. Nothing. She'd lied to him. Billy felt a sting of bitter disappointment. There was no way anyone could have gotten in. He was hearing voices now. That buzz at the base of his brain wasn't only itching, it was whispering lies.
The clock on the nightstand glowed red. Thirty-three minutes till six.
Billy was about to turn when she stepped out of the corner shadows next to the curtains. He jumped back, startled, half expecting her to morph into Black and kiss him. Dump more of that cold blackness in his belly.
“I knew you would come,” Kelly said.
Kelly. Yes, it was Kelly. She'd come with terms of surrender from Johnny.
The woman wore a sleeveless white dress that hung to her calves and swung evenly with each step. Her bare feet were white and her neck was pale even in the dim light.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I think you know, Billy.” She smiled. “I'm here to make sure you don't fall apart at the last minute.”
“Johnny's surrendering?”
“No,” she said. “But we both know that he isn't going to use force.”
It occurred to him that he couldn't read her thoughts. She was staring at him with bright eyes, and he didn't have a clue what she was thinking. How was that possible?
“No we don't.”But the likelihood that Johnny would not use any force had gnawed at him all day. Johnny himself had never suggested he would use force, which Billy suggested was an intentional omission for the attorney general's sake.
“He said it would get bloody. He didn't say that Johnny would draw that blood.”
Billy felt the blackness creeping in. “Who said that?”
“
He
did.”
“Black did? How do you know what Black said?”
“Because he and I go way back, honey. Not as far back as you do, but far enough.”
“You're . . .”
Then Billy knew that he was looking at another person like Black who'd stepped into human form with the stroke of a pen. Kelly, Johnny's Kelly, was from the pages of Black's book.
She walked up to him and reached for his face, smiling. Her fingers were hot. Flesh. She leaned forward and kissed him with soft warm lips.
Fleshy lips. She was more flesh than he'd ever known flesh.
“Johnny isn't going to cooperate, Billy. But he's destined to die. He needs to die. And you're going to kill him.”
She kissed him again, longer this time, with more passion. Her lips smothered his. Once again he felt the chill pour into his belly and begin to fill him up. But this time he didn't resist. He welcomed it.
“You know why, Billy,” she whispered into his mouth. Her arms reached around his back and she pulled him closer as she kissed his lips passionately, feeding on him. “You know why. Tell me why. Come on, baby, tell me why.”
“Because I'm the sinner.”
Sorrow engulfed him and he felt himself go.
“Because I was born to sin.”
“That's right, baby. Say it again, tell me like you mean it. Tell me who you really are. Say his name.”Her hands were in his hair, pulling him so hard against her lips that he could hardly speak.
He started to cry.
“Tell me! Tell me!” She pulled back just long enough to slap his face with an open palm. Then she gripped his cheeks in her fingers and kissed him again, biting his lip.
“Black,” he whimpered.
“Say it like you mean it!”
“Black!” The full truth slammed into his mind, crushing him under its weight. Any self-pity weakening his resolve was rolled under by rage.
“I am Black! Black came from me.
We
are the sinner!”
“Yes! Say it again.”
“It's me, I made him!”
“And you love him.”
“I love him . . . I love him.”
“You love me because I'm like Black. He made me. You made me. Tell me, tell me.”
Billy felt it more than he could remember feeling anything. The authenticity of his confession brought such relief, such . . .
“I love you. I love you because I am Sinner.”
Kelly immediately relaxed. Kissed him gently now, just barely touching his lips. “And so am I, Billy. I didn't even know he'd made me until just a few days ago. I didn't understand why I felt the conflict, the temptations, the inevitable pulling at my soul. Then he came to me, and I knew that he'd made me just like you made him.”
He stepped back, panting. Trembling.
“Johnnyâ”
“I hate Johnny.” Kelly ground out the words as if they were dirt. “Now that I know the truth, he makes me want to throw up. Black put me there to love him so that he would end up hereâand that's all I knew until Marsuvees came to me. So I loved Johnny, and now I hate him for it. The Johnnys of this world have to die, Billy. They stand in the path of humanity. But we all know who will win.”
Her words cut deep into his mind, cold steel penetrating flesh.
“You wrote Black because he was already in you.” She flung her arm behind her, pointing at some imaginary enemy. “Now this kingdom of light, or whatever they insist on calling it, wants you to think that this is all your fault!”
Kelly was pulling at the air through her nostrils. He'd never seen a woman quite so enraged.
“That's why you have to kill him, Billy,” she said. “You have to kill this Jesus freak or die with all those he condemns. I can't stand his bigoted, hateful nonsense about the narrow gates of heaven.”
Kelly's hands trembled and her pale face had turned red.
“You made Black. Johnny's defying your creation. Now you kill him, you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Kill him!”
He felt his face screw up in hopeless acceptance. “I will.”
“Kill him!” she yelled.
“I will, I'll kill him!”
“Kill them all, Billy. Do whatever it takes. Swear it to me!”
“I swear it.” And he meant it with all of his heart. She was like a lover to him, and he would follow her to hell if he must. He didn't understand why he felt this way, but he embraced the sentiment and let the confusion fall away.
“I swear it on my life.”
“Order a preemptive strike on the town. Kill them all.”
“I will.”
Kelly stared at him hard for a full ten seconds. Slowly the hard lines in her face softened. A smile tugged gently on one corner of her mouth.
She stepped forward, placed her mouth against his, and bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.
“I'm with you, lover. I'm with you all the way.”
KATRINA KIVI stood on Main Street in the same spot she'd stood for the last half hour, facing the makeshift stage they'd built against the old theater, listening as first Father Yordon and then Paula Smithers spoke to the gathering about love.
The kind of love she'd seen with her own eyes when Johnny had opened them. She could feel it now, not like she had the first night three weeksâseemed more like a year to herâago, but here, very much here, like static on the charged air.
She looked around, unable to wipe the slight grin from her face. Home, she thought. I've found my home. How else could she describe the feeling of knowing without the slightest shadow of a doubt that she had found what she'd been made for?
They'd called the meeting that morning because they all knew that the government had given them until sunset to throw up their hands and go home. Four people had already flown out by helicopter. But a strong resolve to stay here, where Holly and the others had fallen on their faces and cried out for mercy, had swept through the valley yesterday afternoon. News spread about what had gone down when Billy Rediger and Darcy Lange delivered their ultimatum, and the town quietly prepared for whatever might come.
Now three thousand gathered in the town center, crowding the space between the stage on which Johnny stood and the trees that bordered the church lawn a hundred yards away. Kat sat on the Smithers' porch and watched those who hadn't taken a spot on the lawn earlier in the day trickle in. By four thirty the town center was a sea of people.
News came an hour ago that all wireless reception in the valley was gone. Joseph and the other crews were filming from both sides of the stage, but their footage was not going out live.
Her small friend with the toothless smile had taken up his spot next to the porch, grinning up at her. Paula kept busy, hemming and hawing about supper, but no one seemed interested in when or how dinner would be served. Claude paced the front of the stage, assuming the local-law role, which, as far as Kat could tell, was simply to assure those who asked that, yes, he supposed that they were breaking the law.
Steve had been tapped to handle sanitation, control the crowd, and make sure traffic didn't become a problem. Which meant he pretty much sat on the porch outside Smither's Barbeque, because apart from Mary Mae's clogged toilet, neither sanitation, crowd, nor traffic had presented anything remotely similar to a problem.
The town had remained hushed all afternoon as they gathered. Everyone knew something was going to go down. Something big.