The Obsidian Blade (14 page)

“That isn’t the same cat you had before, is it?” Tucker said.

“Yes. This is Bounce.”

“Shouldn’t he be bigger? He still looks like a kitten.”

Lahlia stroked Bounce’s fine gray fur. “Maria says he’s a runt. Arnold and Maria have larger cats. Bounce doesn’t like them. He follows me everywhere.”

“Where did he come from, anyways?”

“He came with you.”

“What? I think I’d know if we’d had a cat in the car.”

“I don’t mean today. Later, he will come with you.”

Tucker shook his head, confused. Kosh returned from the garage, carrying another armload of tools.

“You’ll see,” Lahlia said. She turned to Kosh. “Have you returned to Hopewell to stay?”

“Just a visit,” said Kosh. He held up Adrian Feye’s nail gun. “We’re picking up a few things.” He looked at Tucker. “Lahlia tells me the new preacher is even crazier than Adrian,” he said to Tucker.

“My dad’s not crazy,” he said.

Kosh shrugged. “Maybe so, but this new guy . . . Tell him, Lahlia.”

“Father September preaches that computers are the source of all evil. He performs miracles. He made Mrs. Friedman walk again.”

“See what I mean?” said Kosh with a smirk.

“Arnold doesn’t like him. Arnold says if God puts you in a wheelchair, you should darn well stay there.”

“That’s crazy,” Tucker said.

“Arnold eats many chickens,” Lahlia replied. “I once drank mammal milk. Maria insisted. It was quite odd.”

“You should try it with chocolate in it,” Tucker said.

Lahlia smiled. “I like chocolate.”

Kosh, fitting the tools into the trunk of the car, said, “Everybody likes chocolate.” Head still in the trunk, he said, “You got everything you need, Tucker?”

“I guess so.” Tucker looked again at the roof, wondering how he could convince Kosh to hang around for a while longer.

As they were fitting the last few items into the car, a beat-up Toyota pickup truck drove by, skidded to a halt, backed up, and turned into the driveway. The pickup pulled up behind the Chevy, and Ronnie Becker got out. He looked the same as he had the day Tucker had seen him at Hardy Lake: long black hair, black jeans, and a studded leather vest. He walked up to Kosh, grinning.

“Kosh Feye. Long time, bro.” He held up his fist. Kosh gave him a halfhearted fist bump. “Haven’t seen you since you left me in — where was it? Flagstaff? How you been?”

“I’m good,” said Kosh.

They stood a few feet apart, looking at each other.

Ronnie said, “What happened to your eyebrows?”

“Lost ’em,” Kosh said.

“Looks like you busted your nose, too.”

Kosh shrugged. “What are you doing back in town, Ronnie?”

Tucker got the impression that Kosh and Ronnie had not parted on the best of terms.

“Helping the old folks out,” Ronnie said. “Arnold’s just as cranky as ever. You?”

“Just picking up some stuff. We were getting ready to leave.”

“Yeah, I don’t know how much longer I’ll last here in Hopeless myself,” Ronnie said. He turned to Lahlia. “Maria’s been looking for you.”

Bounce flattened his ears and hissed.

Ronnie grimaced. “That cat never liked me.”

“Bounce is an excellent judge of character,” Lahlia said.

“Yeah, well, Maria’s on the warpath. She’ll make you sit through a doubleheader at church come Sunday if you don’t get on top of that berry patch. You don’t pick them now they’ll be bird food tomorrow.”

“Birds have to eat too,” Lahlia said.

“Whatever you say.” He turned to Kosh. “Want to run into town? Grab a beer at the Drop? We’re old enough now — Red will probably serve us.”

Kosh hesitated.

“It’s been a long time, bro,” Ronnie said. “We got a lot of catching up to do.”

Kosh looked at Tucker.

“I’ll be okay on my own,” Tucker said quickly. “Lahlia and I have some catching up to do, too.”

“What do we have to catch up to?” Lahlia asked.

Ronnie laughed. “Little Miss Literal.”

“Seriously, go ahead,” Tucker said to Kosh. “I’ll finish packing some things.”

Kosh pressed his lips together, then nodded slowly. “There’s a cooler in the car with some sandwiches if you get hungry.”

“Okay.”

“We won’t be long.” Ronnie crossed his heart and grinned. The two men walked over to Ronnie’s pickup truck and got in. Seconds later, Tucker was alone with Lahlia. She was staring at him with her enormous dark eyes. Bounce launched himself from her arms and bounded off after a grasshopper.

“Your uncle Kosh is a fearful man,” Lahlia said.

“You think he’s scary?”

“I think he’s afraid. Why else would he wear armor?”

“Armor?”

“His animal skins,” she said.

“You mean his leathers? That’s just so people will think he’s this big tough biker.”

“He’s afraid of people thinking he’s afraid.”

“You talk different now,” Tucker said.

“I’m using what you call contractions. Ronnie told me I talked like a robot. He is not very nice. Kosh is nice. He worries about you.”

“He’s okay,” Tucker said. A feeling of sadness swept across him; his eyes stung. “He reminds me of my dad sometimes.” He looked away. “I miss my parents.”

The intensity of Lahlia’s gaze increased. “You don’t know where they are?”

“They went . . . away. That’s why I’ve been staying with Kosh.”

“Did they go away because your mother was ill?”

“I think so.” Tucker felt something change, like a silent electrical discharge, or a sudden variation in the barometric pressure. They both turned to look up at the roof.

The disk was back, hovering just off the peak.

“The Gate does not come often,” Lahlia said. “It does not stay long.”

“You came out of it, didn’t you?” Tucker said. “You and my dad.”

“No. There is another.”

“Another one? Where?”

She pointed toward downtown Hopewell. “Your father found me there.”

“So he
did
go through one of those things?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where he is?”

Lahlia stared at his face, her eyes making small jumps from his eyes to his mouth to his nose, as if trying to fix his every feature in her mind. She pointed up at the shimmering disk.

T
UCKER FELT HIMSELF MAKING A DECISION — A LOOSENING
in his gut and a lightness in his head — the same feeling he had had the first time he went off the rope swing.

The disk might disappear again at any moment. He ran to the garage, lifted the aluminum extension ladder from its hangers, and carried it to the house. If he thought too much about what he was about to do, he might freeze up. He leaned the ladder against the eave, and climbed. Seconds later, he was standing on the roof looking into the disk. The surface buzzed and hummed; swirling gray clouds pressed against a perfectly flat, transparent membrane. He hesitated, fear and common sense battling with his need to act.

“You will not be welcome,” Lahlia said. She was on the roof, standing a few paces behind him, holding Bounce in her arms. “They may attempt to kill you.”

“Who will?” Tucker asked.

“The priests. You will know them by their yellow robes.”

Tucker looked from Lahlia to the disk.

“Priests in yellow robes? So there’s a church or something on the other side?”

“There is an altar atop the pyramid at the center of Romelas, the great city of the Lah Sept.”

Her words made no sense. Tucker understood only one thing. “But my parents are there?”

“Only your father.” Bounce’s yellow eyes were fixed upon the disk, his tail twitching.

“How do you know that?”

“I was there.”

The disk changed subtly, going from swirling clouds to grainy salt and pepper with a faint green tinge. The surface bulged; several gaseous shapes emerged, skinless balloons of white mist. Tucker stepped back, his heart hammering in his ears, as the shapes metamorphosed into transparent human figures hovering at various heights on either side of the disk.

“Do you see them?” he asked.

“Klaatu!”
said Lahlia. Her eyes were huge. Bounce was making a peculiar sound somewhere between a mewl and a yowl.

The mist peoples’ features moved in and out of focus as more of them emerged from the disk, men and women, all looking expectantly at Tucker. One of them, a man with round features and small eyes, drifted closer. Tucker batted at it with his hand. He felt nothing, but the gaseous shape fragmented where his hand passed through. The broken mist man drifted away, then re-formed.

“What do they
want
?” Tucker’s voice cracked.

“They come at moments of terror and triumph,” Lahlia said. Bounce hissed at the ghostly shapes, digging his claws into her arms. “They are hungry for drama.”

There were more than a dozen of the mist people hovering on either side of Tucker and Lahlia, staying just out of reach. Tucker tried to focus on their individual faces, but when he looked at any one of them straight on, their features softened and blurred. The surface of the disk had changed from grainy green to a cloudy, colorless whirlpool. Bounce squirmed and growled, then let out a horrific screech and exploded from Lahlia’s arms. He hit the roof and made a panicked dash for the edge — straight at the disk.

“Bounce!
No!
” Lahlia shouted.

Tucker tried to grab the cat, but it shot between his legs. Off balance, Tucker stumbled and fell forward. The cat leaped. The disk flashed orange. Bounce disappeared into the whorl.

Tucker, on his hands and knees, was facing the disk from inches away. He felt it sucking at him, a thousand invisible fingers tugging at his clothing, at his skin, at every hair on his body. He gripped the rough shingles with his hands and tried to push himself back, but the wind had him in its grip. He could hear Lahlia shouting something, but her words were garbled. Slowly, inch by inch, the disk drew him closer until, with the same gulping, slurping sound he remembered from before, he was swallowed up.

Lahlia stood on the roof and watched the Klaatu drift toward the Gate, their ethereal forms distorting and streaming into the disk like wisps of smoke entering an exhaust fan. The Gate buzzed and flickered. She heard the faint hiss and rattle of wind passing through leaves, and the distant lowing of slave cattle. Turning slowly, she looked out over the land surrounding Tucker Feye’s childhood home. A place of legend. She looked toward downtown Hopewell. A figure in black was walking up the road.

Kosh.

She watched him grow slowly larger. Soon, she could make out the details of his face — the missing eyebrows, the off-center nose, the set of his mouth.

Standing before the Gate, she waited for him.

It was strange spending time with Ronnie Becker. Kosh had thought about him often since they’d split up after a month of vagabonding around the West on their motorcycles. They’d had a lot of fun until that one night when they got in a drunken argument that ended with a bloody nose for Ronnie. Kosh had ridden off on his bike, leaving Ronnie sitting on a curb outside a bar in Flagstaff.

They’d been little more than kids — immature, impulsive, and stupid. That was a long time ago. They were older now. They were men. They could laugh about it. He told Ronnie about falling off the barn, breaking his nose and collarbone, somehow making it funny, but leaving out the part about the disk and the World Trade Center. Ronnie told Kosh about some of his adventures: a brief period of living with a group of Hare Krishnas in Denver, a month in the county jail in Albuquerque — Ronnie wouldn’t say what that was for — and two years as a deacon in an evangelical mega-church in Nebraska. He’d been kicked out of the church after getting caught in a motel room with the preacher’s teenage daughter. Ronnie had always had a knack for trouble. Now he was back, living with his parents, but he said it wouldn’t be for long. He’d gotten a job working for the new preacher.

“The miracle cure dude?” Kosh asked.

“You got it, bro.” Ronnie winked. “My ticket to heaven.”

After one beer, Kosh said he should be getting back to Tucker. Ronnie wanted to keep drinking and talking.

“One beer? Since when does Kosh Feye stop at one?”

Kosh stood up. “Sorry, man, I gotta go.”

He left Ronnie at the bar with Henry Hall, who would drink and talk with anybody, and walked back to his brother’s house. It was a relief to leave Ronnie behind — again.

As he walked up the driveway toward the house, Kosh noticed Lahlia on the roof. And a few feet in front of her, floating just off the peak, was the faint outline of a disk.

The fear rose up inside him. “Don’t get too close to that thing!” he shouted.

Lahlia gave him a small wave, stepped off the edge of the roof, and was gone.

Kosh stood frozen, staring up at the empty space where the girl had been, hearing his own breathing and the pounding of his heart. Then something inside him broke free, and he was climbing the ladder, running along the roof ridge toward the disk. He stopped himself just in time. The disk hummed and crackled with malevolent energy.

Taking a step back, Kosh tried to think. Whatever was happening, it was real. Either that or he was truly insane. What was he supposed to do? Follow the girl into the disk? He was certain that Tucker had preceded her. He should have known. He should never have left him. The kid had as much as told him that he thought Adrian and Emily had been swallowed by a disk. Kosh hadn’t taken him seriously. It made no sense, but Tucker was a teenager with the same reckless disregard for his own safety as Kosh had at that age.