Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) (51 page)

No … not alone. Something coming. Something big. He knew without looking what it was. A few minutes later he saw her huge pincered head rise and hover above him, swaying.

Not again! Shit-shit-shit! Not again!

He’d worked since dawn on regaining control of his limbs, and for most of the day it had seemed a hopeless task. No matter how he concentrated, how he strained, his body simply would not respond. But he’d kept at it, and as the light had started to fail, he’d begun to achieve some results. He’d noticed twitches in his arms and legs, in his abdominal muscles. Either the toxin was wearing off or he was overcoming it. It didn’t matter which. He was regaining control—that was what mattered.

But all his efforts would be for nada if the queen dosed him again.

She made no move, simply hovered there with her head hanging over him. Did she suspect anything?

Get the fuck away!

He’d spent the entire day willing his muscles to move, now he was begging them to be still. One twitch, one tremor, one tiny tic, and she’d ram her proboscis into his gut again and put him back to square one.

She watched him for what seemed like forever, then she began to move—

No!

—her head lowering toward his belly—

NO!

—and past him. She arched over him, her hard little feet brushing across the skin of his abdomen. He could feel nothing but he saw his abdominal muscles twitch and roll with revulsion and prayed she wouldn’t notice.

She didn’t. Her near-endless length finally cleared him and she wound her way up through the drain opening and into the night.

At last—time for action.

He strained his arms and legs upward as if fighting against steel manacles. To his delight he saw the muscles bulge with the effort. His fingers didn’t move, didn’t close into the rebellious fists he willed for them, but he watched the veins in the undersides of his forearms swell as blood coursed into the resistant muscles, watched his abdominals ripple and swell around the wound as he tried to sit up.

But nothing was happening. His veins and arteries continued to surge, stretching against the envelope of skin, his abdomen rippled like the Atlantic in a hurricane, but no sign of voluntary movement, only chaos.

And then his eyes snapped to the wound below his navel. Something moved there. Something wriggled within it. This morning’s scream built again in his unresponsive throat as two slim black pincers, each no more than an inch long, poked into the air. A multi-eyed head, deep brown and gleaming, followed. It paused, glanced around, fixed Hank with its cold black gaze, then dragged its long, many-legged length from the wound with a crinkling
slurp.
Another identical creature quickly followed. Then another.

Hank’s once quiescent and unresponsive body was moving now with a will of its own, writhing, bucking, convulsing, rocking up and down, back and forth in its webbed hammock as his veins and arteries bulged past the limits of their tensile strength and ruptured, freeing more wriggling, pincered, millipedic forms.

Something snapped within Hank’s mind then. He could almost hear the foundations of his sanity crack and give way. And that was good. He welcomed the collapse.

For it brought a whole new perspective. Everyone aboveground was dying. Dying and decomposing. Not Hank. No way. Hank was alive and would stay alive through these, his children.

Parenthood.

If only I could cry!

He’d never wanted children, but now it had happened. His children. He’d considered the Kickers his children—after all, hadn’t he fathered the movement? But these were true offspring. They’d grown within him. Fed off him. Made him part of them. He’d go on living through them while everybody else—including the Kicker cop captain and his two renegade underlings—died.

If only I could laugh!

He watched with pride as dozens more of his children broke from the cramped confines of his body to swarm and crawl with wild abandon over his skin. So good to see them free and moving about, stretching their slender, foot-long bodies, gaining strength before heading to the surface and joining the great hunt.

If only I could cheer!

Some of them tangled and began to rake and spear each other with their pincers.

No fighting, children. Save it for topside.

Just then two more broke from the sides of his throat, glistening with blood from the vessels through which they’d been traveling. They reared up and faced him, swaying back and forth like cobras before a snake charmer.

Yes, my children, he wanted to tell them, I am your daddy and I’m terribly proud of you. I want you to—

They darted forward without warning, each burying a pincered head hungrily into his eyes.

No! he wanted to say. I’m your daddy! Don’t blind Daddy! How can he watch you grow if you eat his eyes?

But they were naughty children and didn’t listen. They kept burrowing inward, deeper and deeper.

If only I could scream!

Maui

Night was falling.

Jack stood in the great room and stared again at Moki’s giant sculpture. The closer darkness came, the more repellent he found it. The stench of rotting fish from outside made it worse. Its foulness urged him to smash it back into its component fragments.

He’d driven down to the airfield earlier. Frank and his plane had survived the night. Jack had called Gia on the shortwave. She’d said everything was okay but he’d sensed a new tension in her voice. She denied any problems but during the grisly ride back he couldn’t get it out of his head that she was worried about something.

He turned now at a sound behind him and saw Kolabati emerging from the bedroom. Alone. Finally. Her dark eyes flashed with excitement as she strolled toward Jack. And as she passed she pressed something into his hand—warm, heavy, metallic. He glanced down.

The necklace.

“Moki?” he said.

She motioned him to follow her to the lanai.

“He’s wearing your fake,” she whispered when they’d stopped at the railing.

“And he’s still…?”

Bitter anguish dulled the animation in her eyes as she nodded. “Still the same.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Put it on,” she whispered, touching the hand that held the necklace.

Jack thrust it into his pocket. “Better not. He’ll notice.”

“Put it on. You’ll need it. Trust me.”

Jack shook his head. “I’ll be okay.”

He looked out over the darkening valley. In the ocean beyond it he saw the white water of the whirlpool fading to gray. The maelstrom was slowing. Soon the geyser would begin and the air once again would fill with dying fish and hungry bugs.

But he still had time to make it to Kahului and take to the air.

He turned back to Kolabati. “What about the rest of it? What about you? Are you coming back to New York with me?”

“Do you trust me, Jack?” she said. Her gaze drilled into him. The answer seemed very important to her.

“Yes,” he said, not completely sure of the truth here, but saying it anyway.

He sensed the new, improved Kolabati could be trusted further than the old, but how much further he couldn’t say. He wasn’t quite ready to stake his life on it.

“Good. Then I’ll return to New York.”

Jack couldn’t resist hugging her. She truly had changed.

“Thank you, Bati. You don’t know what this means to me, to everyone.”

“Don’t get the wrong idea, Jack,” she said levelly. “It’s good to have your arms around me again, but I’m not giving up my necklace. I have no intention of doing that. I’m going back to New York just to talk to this ancient man you’ve told me about. That and nothing more.”

“That’s fine. That’s all I ask. I’ll leave the rest up to Glaeken. I know he can work something out with you. But let’s get moving. We haven’t got much time.”

“Not so fast. There’s still tonight’s ceremony.”

Jack pushed her to arm’s length but Kolabati clutched his forearms, refusing to let him go.

“Ceremony? You’re going to let him kill another—?”

And then Jack remembered how last night Moki had let the Niihauan stab him first. Was that what she wanted? To see Moki die? Did she hate him that much for going crazy on her? He looked into her eyes and couldn’t read them.

He would never understand this woman. Fine. But could he trust her? Her allegiances seemed as mercurial as her moods.

“That’s my condition. After the ceremony, I’ll return to New York. You have my word.”

“Bati?” a voice called from inside.

And then Moki stepped out onto the lanai. His eyes flared when he saw the two of them touching. He took Kolabati by the arm and pulled her away.

“Come. We’ll start the ceremony early tonight.” He glared at Jack. “I’m especially looking forward to this one.”

As Kolabati followed him into the house, she looked back at Jack and mouthed three words:
Wear
 …
the
 …
necklace.

When they debarked from the Isuzu, Moki turned to Jack and jabbed his index finger at his chest.

“We came early because it will be
you
who faces Maui tonight.”

Jack smiled. “I don’t think so.”

“If you can defeat me in the ceremony, you may have her. Otherwise she stays with me and you return to America.”

Jack noticed how Moki had said “America” instead of “the mainland.” Apparently his island had seceded from the union, at least in Moki’s mind.

Jack looked at Kolabati. She returned his stare coolly.

“So … this is what you meant by ‘after the ceremony.’ Swell.”

She nodded.

Moki gestured to the crater’s edge. “Come. It’s time.”

Jack hesitated. This was happening too fast, and none of it in his plan. He didn’t like surprises, and this was a particularly ugly one. Kolabati had known about it before when they were whispering on the lanai. Had she cooked it up with Moki, or was this all his idea?

At least Jack had one of the necklaces …

Or did he?

What was that around Moki’s neck? Jack’s fake, or the real thing? He cursed himself for not checking the one Kolabati had given him more closely. It didn’t feel any different, and if he remembered correctly from years ago, the necklace had caused an unpleasant tingle the first time he’d touched it. But that sensation had dissipated after he’d worn it for a while. Was that why he felt nothing when he touched it now? Or was there nothing to feel because it was the fake?

“What’s the matter?” Moki said, his grin broadening. “Afraid like your Asian friend?”

“Your ceremony sickened him last night.”

“Perhaps you should have stayed behind with him—or better yet, left the island.”

“I promised someone to get him back safely.”

“Take off your shirt and follow me,” Moki said, then turned and started up to the crater’s edge.

Jack followed, removing his shirt as he went. The cold air raised and then flattened gooseflesh on his skin. He tossed his shirt to Kolabati as he passed. Her dark, almond eyes widened when she saw no necklace around his neck.

What had she wanted to do? Rattle Moki by letting him see that Jack wore a necklace exactly like his? Uh-uh. He wasn’t playing her games.

She frowned at the three wide scars running diagonally across his chest. “Are those from—?”

“Yeah. Mementos from one of your pets.”

He welcomed the heat from Haleakala’s fires when they reached the ridge. Moki stopped and faced him. In the orange light he looked like a grinning demon as he produced two knives with slim, six-inch blades. The flames from below glinted off their polished surfaces. He handed one to Jack, wooden handle first. As Jack gripped it, a chorus of shouting erupted from below. He turned and saw the Niihauans approaching, angrily waving their arms.

“I was afraid of this,” Moki said, sighing like an indulgent father watching his unruly children. “That’s why I brought you up here early tonight. They want one of their own to defeat me, not some
malihini.
I’ll have to tell them not to worry. They’ll get their turn.”

Moki stepped between the Niihauans and the crater rim. He spread his arms wide and spoke to them. Jack couldn’t hear what he said over the roar of the inferno below, but finally they stepped back and waited.