Cabal (20 page)

But the monsters were forever. Part of her forbidden self. Her dark, transforming midnight self. She longed to be numbered amongst them.

There was still much she had to come to terms with; not least their appetite for human flesh, which she’d witnessed first-hand at the Sweetgrass Inn. But she could learn to understand. In a real sense she had no choice. She’d been touched by a knowledge that had changed her inner landscape out of all recognition. There was no way back to the bland pastures of adolescence and early womanhood. She had to go forward. And tonight that meant along this empty street, to see what the coming night had in store.

The idling engine of a car on the opposite side of the road drew her attention. She glanced across at it. Its windows were all wound up – despite the warmth of the air – which struck her as odd. She could not see the driver; both windows and windshield were too thick with grime. But an uncomfortable suspicion was growing in her. Clearly the occupant was waiting for someone. And given that there was nobody else on the street, that someone was most likely her.

If so, the driver could only be one man, for only one knew that she had a reason to be here: Decker.

She started to run.

The engine revved. She glanced behind her. The car was moving off from its parking place, slowly. He had no reason to hurry. There was no sign of life along the street. No doubt there
was
help to be had, if only she knew which direction to run. But the car had already halved the distance between them. Though she knew she couldn’t outrun it, she ran anyway, the engine louder and louder behind her. She heard the tyre walls squeal against the sidewalk. Then the car appeared at her side, keeping pace with her yard for yard.

The door opened. She ran on. The car kept its companion pace, the door scraping the concrete.

Then, from within, the invitation.

‘Get in.’

Bastard, to be
so
calm.

‘Get in, will you, before we’re arrested.’

It wasn’t Decker. The realization was not a slow burn but a sudden comprehension: it
wasn’t
Decker speaking from the car. She stopped running, her whole body heaving with the effort of catching her breath.

The car also stopped.

‘Get in,’ the driver said again.

‘Who … ?’ she tried to say, but her lungs were too jealous of her breath to provide the words.

The answer came anyway.

‘Friend of Boone’s.’

Still she hung back from the open door.

‘Babette told me how to find you,’ the man went on.

‘Babette?’

‘Will you
get in?
We’ve got work to do.’

She approached the door. As she did so, the man said, ‘Don’t scream.’

She didn’t have the breath to make a sound, but she certainly had the
inclination
, when her eyes fell on the face in the gloom of the car. This was one of Midian’s creatures, no doubt, but not a brother to the fabulous things she’d seen in the tunnels. The man’s appearance was horrendous, his face raw and red, like uncooked liver. Had it been any other way she might have distrusted it, knowing what she knew about pretenders. But this creature could pretend nothing: his wound was a vicious honesty.

‘My name’s Narcisse,’ he said. ‘Will you shut the door please? It keeps the light out. And the flies.’

His story, or at least its essentials, took two and a half blocks to tell. How he’d first met with Boone in the hospital; how he’d later gone to Midian, and once more encountered Boone; how together they’d broken Midian’s laws, trespassing overground. He had a souvenir of that adventure, he told her; a wound in his belly the like of which a lady should never have to set eyes upon.

‘So they exiled you, like Boone?’ she said.

‘They tried to,’ he told her. ‘But I hung on there, hoping I could maybe get myself a pardon. Then when the troopers came I thought: well, we brought this on the place. I should try and find Boone. Try and stop what we started.’

‘The sun doesn’t kill you?’

‘Maybe I’ve not been dead long enough, but no – I can bear it.’

‘You know Boone’s in prison?’

‘Yeah, I know. That’s why I got the child to help me find you. I’m thinking together we can get him out.’

‘How in God’s name do we do that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Narcisse confessed. ‘But we’d damn well better try. And be quick about it. They’ll have people out at Midian by now, digging it up.’

‘Even if we can free Boone, I don’t see what he can do.’

‘He went into the Baptiser’s chamber,’ Narcisse replied, his finger going to lip and heart. ‘He spoke with Baphomet. From what I hear nobody other than Lylesburg ever did that before, and survived. I’m figuring the Baptiser had some tricks to pass on. Something that’ll help us stop the destruction.’

Lori pictured Boone’s terrified face as he stumbled from the chamber.

‘I don’t think Baphomet told him anything,’ Lori said. ‘He barely escaped alive.’

Narcisse laughed.

‘He
escaped
, didn’t he? You think the Baptiser would have allowed that if there hadn’t been a reason for it?’

‘All right … so how do we get access to him? They’ll have him guarded within an inch of his life.’

Narcisse smiled.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘You forget what he
is
now,’ Narcisse said. ‘He’s got powers.’

‘I don’t
forget,’
Lori replied. ‘I simply don’t
know.’

‘He didn’t tell you?’

‘No.’

‘He went to Midian because he thought he’d shed blood –’

‘I guessed that much.’

‘He hadn’t, of course. He was guiltless. Which made him meat.’

‘You mean he was attacked?’

‘Almost killed. But he escaped, at least as far as the town.’

‘Where Decker was waiting for him,’ Lori said, finishing the story; or beginning it. ‘He was damn lucky that none of the shots killed him.’

Narcisse’s smile, which had more or less lingered on his face since Lori’s remark about Boone being guarded within an inch of his life, disappeared.

‘What do you mean …’ he said, ‘… none of the shots killed him? What do you think took him back to Midian? Why do you think they opened the tombs to him the second time?’

She stared at him blankly.

‘I don’t follow,’ she said, hoping she didn’t. ‘What are you telling me?’

‘He was bitten by Peloquin,’ Narcisse said. ‘Bitten and infected. The balm got into his blood …’ He stopped speaking ‘… You want me to go on?’

‘Yes.’

‘The balm got into his blood. Gave him the powers. Gave him the hunger. And allowed him to get up off the slab and go walking …’

His words had grown soft by the end of his statement, in response to the shock on Lori’s face.

‘He’s dead?’ she murmured.

Narcisse nodded.

‘I thought you understood that,’ he said. ‘I thought you were making a joke before … about his being …’ The remark trailed into silence.

‘This is too much,’ Lori said. Her fist had closed on the door-handle, but she lacked the strength to pull on it. ‘… too much.’

‘Dead isn’t bad,’ Narcisse said. ‘It isn’t even that different. It’s just … unexpected.’

‘Are you speaking from experience?’

‘Yes.’

Her hand dropped from the door. Every last ounce of strength had gone from her.

‘Don’t give up on me now,’ Narcisse said.

Dead; all dead. In her arms, in her mind.

‘Lori. Speak to me. Say something, if it’s only goodbye.’

‘How … can … you
joke
about it?’ she asked him.

‘If it’s not funny, what is it? Sad. Don’t want to be sad. Smile, will you? We’re going to save lover-boy, you and me.’

She didn’t reply.

‘Do I take silence as consent?’

Still she made no answer.

‘Then I do.’

E
igerman had only been to Midian once before, when providing back up for the Calgary force in their pursuit of Boone. It had been then that he’d met Decker – who’d been the hero of that day, risking his life to try and coax his patient out of hiding. He’d failed, of course. The whole thing had ended in Boone’s summary execution as he stepped out into plain sight. If ever a man should have laid down and died, it was
that
man. Eigerman had never seen so many bullets in one lump of meat. But Boone hadn’t laid down. At least not stayed down. He’d gone walkabout, with no heartbeat and flesh the colour of raw fish.

Sickening stuff. It made Eigerman’s hide crawl to think of it. Not that he was about to admit that fact to anyone. Not even to his passengers on the back seat, the priest and the doctor, both of whom had secrets of their own. Ashbery’s he knew. The man liked to dress in women’s dainties, which fact Eigerman had chanced upon and used as leverage when he’d needed sanctification of a sin or two of his own. But Decker’s secrets remained a mystery. His face betrayed nothing, even to an eye as practised in the recognition of guilt as Eigerman’s.

Re-angling the mirror, the Chief looked at Ashbery, who shot him a sullen glance.

‘Ever exorcize anyone?’ he asked the priest.

‘No.’

‘Ever watch it done?’

Again, ‘No.’

‘You do
believe
though,’ Eigerman said.

‘In
what?’

‘In Heaven and Hell, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Define your terms.’

‘Huh?’

‘What do you
mean
by Heaven and Hell?’

‘Jesus, I don’t want a fucking debate. You’re a priest, Ashbery. You’re supposed to believe in the Devil. Isn’t that right, Decker?’

The doctor grunted. Eigerman pushed a little harder.

‘Everyone’s seen stuff they can’t explain, haven’t they? Especially doctors, right? You’ve had patients speaking in tongues –’

‘I can’t say that I have,’ Decker replied.

‘Is that right? It’s all perfectly scientific, is it?’

‘I’d say so.’

‘You’d say so. And what would you say about Boone?’ Eigerman pressed. ‘Is being a fucking zombie scientific too?’

‘I don’t know,’ Decker murmured.

‘Well, will you look at this? I’ve got a priest who doesn’t believe in the Devil, and a doctor who doesn’t know science from his asshole. That makes me feel real comfortable.’

Decker didn’t respond. Ashbery did.

‘You really think there’s something up ahead, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You’re sweating a flood.’

‘Don’t push, sweetheart,’ Eigerman said. ‘Just dig out your little book of Exorcisms. I want those freaks sent back wherever the fuck they came from. You’re supposed to know how.’

‘There are other explanations these days, Eigerman,’ Ashbery replied. ‘This isn’t Salem. We’re not going to a burning.’

Eigerman turned his attention back to Decker, floating his next question lightly.

‘What do you think, Doc? Think maybe we should try putting the zombie on the couch? Ask him if he ever wanted to fuck his sister?’ Eigerman threw a look at Ashbery. ‘Or dress in her underwear?’

‘I think we
are
going to Salem,’ Decker replied. There was an undercurrent in his voice Eigerman hadn’t heard before. ‘And I also think you don’t give a fuck what I believe or don’t believe. You’re going to burn them out anyway.’

‘Right on,’ Eigerman said, with a throaty laugh.

‘And
I think Ashbery’s right. You’re
terrified.’

That silenced the laugh.

‘Asshole,’ Eigerman said quietly.

They drove the rest of the way in silence, Eigerman setting a new pace for the convoy, Decker watching the light getting frailer with every moment, and Ashbery, after a few minutes of introspection, leafing through his Book of Prayers, turning the onion-skin pages at speed, looking for the Rites of Expulsion.

Pettine was waiting for them fifty yards from the necropolis gate, his face dirtied by smoke from the cars, which were still burning.

‘What’s the situation?’ Eigerman wanted to know.

Pettine glanced back towards the cemetery.

‘There’s been no sign of movement in there since the escape. But we’ve
heard
stuff.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like we’re sitting on a termite hill,’ Pettine said. ‘There’s things moving around underground. No doubt about that. You can feel it as much as hear it.’

Decker, who’d travelled in one of the later cars, came across and joined the debate, cutting Pettine off in mid-flow to address Eigerman.

‘We’ve got an hour and twenty minutes before the sun sets.’

‘I can count,’ Eigerman replied.

‘So are we going to get digging?’

‘When
I
say so, Decker.’