Six
Tuesday
November 25, 1990
Alastair flipped through the newspaper clippings and articles in the manilla folder slowly, deliberately. It couldn’t be, of course. The great forces of both the Dark and the Light were massing even now along the Iraqi border. The very notion was absurd.
“I’m not quite sure,” he had told Pokey coldly, about an hour ago, when he had first been handed this folder, “that I see the relevance of this.”
“No?”
“A cup was found yesterday to have been stolen from the British Museum.”
“From its Persian Collection. Sometime in the last six months.”
“A cup that one scholar, back in the 1950s, claimed bore some slight resemblance to the legendary Anahita’s Cup.” He shifted through the papers slowly, frowning. “And not,” he added, “a terribly reputable scholar at that.”
“Just thought you should know.”
“Anahita’s Cup,” Alastair said, “is in Iraq.”
“Guess it’s a different cup, then.” Pokey had shrugged. “Listen, about Herschberg…”
“I don’t give a fuck about Herschberg.”
Alastair winced and rubbed his temples. He really shouldn’t have snapped at Pokey like that. That was not good.
Herschberg. That town was beginning to give him a pain in the ass. It was all anyone wanted to talk to him about these days. Herschberg. Couldn’t they see that it had been rendered completely irrelevant? Reports were beginning to come in: the Dark was massing its defenses; all manner of Powers were hastening to the Persian Gulf; the forces of Armageddon were consolidating; and even in the midst of all of this, that profoundly irritating little town in the Midwest kept trying to claim his attention. Of course Anahita’s Cup was in Iraq. All of the forces of hell were gathering to protect the damned thing, for fuck’s sake. And yet all Pokey ever wanted to talk to him about was Herschberg.
Herschberg had merely been the site of a little game he had been playing with the Gaunt Man, and that was all. And some minor angel cult there had been shooting for a Doorway. But who cared? Let the Gaunt Man concern himself with Herschberg, even better now that the town continue to serve its function as a straw man, a windmill, a diversionary—
Alastair froze. Very slowly, he put the manilla folder down.
A diversionary tactic.
The Powers of the Dark, massing to protect Anahita’s Cup.
The Powers of the Light, massing to reclaim Anahita’s Cup.
A diversionary tactic.
But whose?
And to divert attention from what?
•
Saturday
November 22, 1990
He bent over the splintered upper left-hand drawer of the Sheriff’s big wooden desk, rummaging wildly through it and counting the seconds to himself as the alarms screamed in his ears.
He’d had nothing suitable for this job. No gloves, no lockpicks…nothing. Nothing. He had been forced to resort to using whatever he could find in Gunner’s truck.
In other words, an oily rag. And a tire iron.
When all you have is a tire iron, everything looks like...well, like something that would be far more enjoyable to smash the hell out of if only you had two working arms. And no broken bones, and no pulled stitches, and considerably fewer bruises.
Nonetheless.
He pushed through all of the random rubbish that she kept in here, the diversionary kipple, the camouflage—and then shook his head and just yanked the entire drawer out onto the floor. Its contents scattered everywhere: a woolly sweater, some spare boxes of paper clips, a bottle of ibuprofen, a few loose floppy disks, a couple of cassette tapes—and It.
It. It. It.
It hit the floor hard before rolling beneath the chair, and he caught his breath, thinking: oh Lord, what if it—
But, no. No, of course not. Items of such power did not break merely from being dropped hard on a linoleum floor.
He kicked the chair out of the way and crouched down, looking at it. He grinned.
It was a cup. A simple cup, clay bowl almost. With a foot.
When he had imagined this moment in his mind, he had always seen himself standing before it for a long time, motionless, silent, awed. He had imagined himself reaching tentatively for it, wincing in anticipation, unable somehow to trust that the thick gloves he wore would really protect him from it, from its power. He had imagined himself reaching out his hand twice only to draw it back, before finally (in accordance with the Law of Threes) daring to pick it up.
But of course there was no time for any of that now, so he just wrapped his hand in the oily rag, snatched it up by the foot, shoved it in his other pocket, and ran like hell.
•
They were waiting for him right beside the truck.
He didn’t even notice them there until something had clubbed him gently behind the ear, and then he was caught as he fell, lowered slowly into the snow.
Clubbed gently. And then caught and lowered, also gently. If firmly.
Oh.
Professionals.
He gasped, blinking the spots out of his eyes, realizing that he had been propped awkwardly against the side of the truck, seated in what was already inches of snow, feeling it melt beneath him, slowly soaking through what was left of his trousers. Cool, yes. Cool was good. Moist, however...well. Moist was another story.
“Well,” someone said from somewhere up above him. “If it isn’t Grace Under Pressure. Aren’t you getting a little old for breaking and entering these days, Manitou?”
He looked up into the mirrored sunglasses of the two men looming over him, then looked very quickly away. It was a bad idea, a very bad idea, ever to look directly at the sunglasses. His stomach did a slow roll, and he wondered briefly how they might respond if he were to throw up right on their shoes.
“Walkers,” he breathed, then swallowed. “I...what...what...” He winced. “You...you hit me. In the head. Why, why did you…”
“Well.” One of them sniggered. “Took us a minute to recognize you.” He turned to the other. “Looks like you owe me that tenner, Johnson. It’s still alive, after all.”
“Do you think so?” Johnson took a step backwards, looked him over. “Are you sure about that? How on earth can you tell?” There were sirens, had been sirens for some time now, actually, and they were getting louder.
“Walkers,” Youngjack began, “I don’t really know if this is the best—”
“Oh, no one will notice us. Or you. Although,” Johnson added thoughtfully, drumming his fingers along the top of the cab. “Perhaps we really ought to arrest it.”
“Mmmmm. It really is our duty,” Smith agreed. He hefted a bottle of...beer? No, it was root beer, one of those gourmet brands that came in amber glass bottles. He hefted it up to his face, took a swig, and then let out that smacking ahhhh noise that people always made on television commercials. “Ever been to prison, Grace?”
“I go by Youngjack now,” Youngjack told him coldly. “As you very well know.”
“Can’t say that I blame you. There’s nothing quite like an inaccurate name to really piss off a shape-shifter, is there?” He snickered. “Looks like those Sleepers must have had a go at it. I’ve never seen one in quite that shape before, have you? It looks like something the cat dragged in.”
“Or maybe the cat itself,” Johnson agreed, smiling thinly. “After something’s dragged it in.”
“And it smells like a wino. Hey, I know who it reminds me of. Johnson, doesn’t it look just like that guy lives on the corner? The one who collects string? You look just like a guy I know collects string, Grace. He tells passersby about the Great Depression and begs for change.”
“Do you ever give him any?” Youngjack asked politely.
“Isn’t that thing that owns you sick of you yet? If you were mine, I think I just would have fed you to something years ago. I understand they got some things living up there on that ship that can make that last a while. Like weeks.” Smith frowned and turned to Johnson. “Is that true, do you think, or just a rumor?”
“Oh, I’m sure that’s just a rumor,” Johnson assured him. “After all. It hardly seems credible.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. But still. I can’t imagine why anyone would keep this creature around for as long as they have.”
“I assure you,” Youngjack told him. “The Gaunt Man finds my antics infinitely amusing.”
“Yeah? Weird. You’re already boring me, and I’ve only been talking to you for...what’s it been now, you reckon, Johnson?”
“I’m afraid I’ve lost track.” Johnson sighed, infinitely weary. “Perhaps a minute?”
“Frankly?” said Youngjack. “I’m beginning to find this little vaudeville act of yours rather tiresome myself. Tastes differ.” He attempted a smile, but he could feel that it hadn’t come off quite right. More of a snarl, really. “What can I do for you this evening, Walkers?”
“Well,” commented Smith. “Isn’t this one obliging! Usually it takes us months to get you creatures to behave yourselves that well. What’s the matter, Grace? Not feeling well? You haven’t been having bad dreams, have you?”
“Oh,” Johnson said. “But you forget. This one has always been unusually adaptable. Less squeamish, you know, than most of them. It was quite a useful little brute, in fact. Once. In its day.” He smiled down at Youngjack. “Not to our side, of course. But.”
“Will that be all?” asked Youngjack wearily. “Because I really do have to be moving along now, Walkers.”
“Oh no,” Johnson told him cheerfully.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“You’re coming with us, you see.”
“To Long Island.”
“Don’t be absurd,” snapped Youngjack. “I’m under service to—”
“Contracts can be bought, Grace.”
“Contracts can be sold.”
Youngjack opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked from one of them to the other.
“You can’t be serious,” he said uncertainly.
“‘The Gaunt Man finds my antics,’” Smith lisped. “‘Infinitely amusing.’”
“Infinity just isn’t what it used to be,” commented Johnson sympathetically. “Is it.”
“The thing about those guys up there in Alaska, is that they’re so fucking out of touch. Don’t you think, Johnson?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Just a bunch of fucking amateurs. Messing about with Doorways. I mean, what the fuck?”
“Well,” Johnson reminded him, “you can’t really expect all that much from them, can you? I mean,” he said, and smiled, “it’s really nothing but a big zoo on a ship.”
“Yeah. A menagerie. You got your dogs, you got your leeches, you got your...whatevers. Anyone up there who wants to get something done is really gonna need some friends on the outside, you know what I’m saying?”
“Anyone up there who wants to be a player had better start making some fairly sizeable deposits in the favor bank.”
“GM’s finally sussed that out, Grace. It took him a while. But.”
“I don’t...” Youngjack began, slowly shaking his head from side to side. “I don't…”
“Little Green Flash just wasn’t worth all that much to us, I’m afraid. That deal needed a bit of sweetening. And really now,” Johnson smiled again, “you’re just about as much use to him as the corpse is, aren’t you? You’re worth a whole lot more to us, of course. But not much more to him.”
“At least you could use the corpse to attract flies.” Smith laughed. “It’s starting to smell, Grace. You know that? That’s gonna be a real pain in the ass for us. I don’t even think we can use it in that condition.” He turned to Johnson. “Can we?”
“I have no idea. The eggheads are going to have to figure that one out.” He shook his head. “Fucking Blade of Ashura. You know how hard it is to find dead Manitou, Grace? Then you finally think you got one, and it turns out that it’s been turned into something else entirel—”
Youngjack screamed and threw himself hard to one side, not even altogether sure what the purpose of doing this was. Even if he could manage to roll himself under the truck, what was he going to do under there? Hide?
Not that it mattered. Johnson caught him by the upper arms even before his shoulder hit the ground, pulled him back upright. He thrashed wildly, kicking, his legs slipping in the snow. His head knocked against the side of the truck, and he gasped, blinking, momentarily stunned.
“Don’t do that,” Johnson said sharply. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
He blinked once more, then slowly shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I...no. No. This is, this…”
“Just calm down,” Johnson told him. “Try to relax.”
“This can’t,” he said, panting. “This can’t be…”
“Take deep breaths.”
He closed his eyes. Deep breaths, yes. Slow the breathing, and the pulse will follow.
“Okay now?”
He nodded. The hands released him.
“Don't fight us,” Johnson advised him. “We don’t want to hurt you.”
You don’t want to hurt me? he thought.
“It’s really best if the soma has taken as little damage as possible.”
“Oh God,” Youngjack moaned. Smith, who had just taken another swig from his bottle, sprayed root beer all over the side of the truck.
“What did it just say?” he laughed. “Did it just say what I think it just said?”
“Oh God,” breathed Youngjack, and then was sick.
He missed their shoes. But not Johnson’s suit.
“Fuck,” Johnson spat and shoved him away, leaping backwards from the spew of cheap whisky and acidic bile. He slipped on the snow and fell, kicking snow into Youngjack’s face as his legs skidded across the icy pavement. Somewhere up there, Smith burst into great peals of hyena laughter.
“Shut the fuck up,” Johnson snapped, and the laughter turned off abruptly, as if a switch had been thrown. Youngjack balanced shakily on his one good arm, retching up one last thin sluice of stomach acid. He tried to remember when the last time he had kept something down was. More than twenty-four hours ago by now, surely. There was really nothing left in there. Nothing left at all. Nothing left to give.
“Fucking Manitou,” snarled Johnson, struggling to his feet.
He’s going to kick me now, Youngjack thought.
But he didn’t.
He probably doesn’t want to damage the soma, he thought. Any further. Any further than it’s already been damaged.
“Are you done with that?” Johnson asked him, in a tone of the deepest imaginable distaste. Youngjack coughed and nodded weakly.
“It really won’t be that bad,” Smith told him, in a voice that gave every impression of genuine friendliness. “We use an injection. It doesn't hurt. You could have been picked up for the drug research, you know. That’s much worse.”
No, thought Youngjack. No, it isn’t. It isn’t worse. He could feel tears beginning to well up behind his eyes, and he thought: I’m not handling this very well. I’m really not managing this very well at all.
“That’s something I’ve never really understood about you Manitou,” commented Smith. “You’re all so squirrelly about death, right? But then you get an opportunity like this, an opportunity to continue on after death, and it just upsets you. I don’t get that.”
“It isn’t us,” Youngjack whispered. “Not anymore. Not after you...it’s not really us after that. Not really. Not really.”
“Well, we all serve,” Johnson reminded him, now sounding oddly rather friendly himself. “In our own ways. You might want to consider it a kind of an honor. After all,” he pointed out, “it’s very rare, you know, to be able to serve in quite that way. In the way that someone in your particular, well, position can.”
Youngjack closed his eyes, still on all fours—well, all threes, he supposed, really—there in the snow, his hand going slowly numb from bearing so much of the weight of his body. He felt dizzy, and sick, and it occurred to him that they were almost certainly going to have to end up carrying him to wherever they had parked their car. He didn’t think that he would be able to stand up.
“What happens?” he asked them, struggling to be…well, reasonable about this. To manage it. To manage it well. “What happens now? Are you going to…” his voice faltered, and he took a deep breath. “Do you take me there first?” he asked, gritting his teeth, feeling obscurely compelled to know the exact details of how this would go, the logistics of it. “Or do you...” He swallowed. “The injection, I mean. Do you do that part now? Here, I mean? Or will you do it in the helicopter on the way there? Or—” He stopped suddenly, frowning at the strangely smothered snorting noise coming from somewhere up there, over his head. He opened his eyes, and then his mouth.
“You—” he began, and Smith burst into gales of hysterical laughter, tottering over to lean weakly against the side of the truck, utterly beside himself. Youngjack looked up at Johnson, who was beginning to smile himself.
“Oh, fuck you, Smith,” he laughed. “Couldn’t have held it in for just another minute, could you? Fuck. It would have wet itself in just another few, you putz.”
“I can’t...” Smith gasped. “I couldn’t help it. You weren’t facing it. You didn’t see the look on its face when it...it...” His arm collapsed at his side; root beer sloshed out of his bottle and onto the snow. “When it asked where we were going to do it,” he continued. “In the helicopter, or...” He shook his head helplessly, convulsed with mirth.
Youngjack closed his eyes, feeling the tears build up in there again. No, he thought. No, I’ll be damned if I’ll do that. No.
“Yes, well,” Johnson was saying. “It’s all very well for you. Look at what the creature did to my fucking suit.” He sighed. “I honestly didn’t think that it was even possible to play the Manitou. I’m rather disappointed in you, Grace.”
Why, Youngjack wondered suddenly. Why is it that at moments like this, I never seem to be able to just faint? Why is that? His knuckles had begun to ache. He straightened his back, slowly, taking the weight off of his hand, then rubbed it fitfully against his trousers, trying to massage some life back into it.
“What we really wanted to talk to you about,” Smith informed him, having managed to pull himself back together, “is the Cup.”
“The one that you just stole from the Sheriff’s Office?” Johnson added, helpfully. “We require it.”
Youngjack continued to rub his hand along his leg, flexing his fingers: straightening, bending, straightening, bending.
“The one that’s on your person somewhere? Like in your pocket maybe? Or down your pants? Or maybe shoved right up your ass?”
“We’d rather you just hand it to us nicely.”
“But we’re willing to take the time to search you for it. I mean, if you’d really prefer it that way.”
Youngjack thought about this for a moment, then opened his eyes. He shoved his hand violently into his pocket, felt plastic there, and blinked. Oh. Right. Not that pocket. The other pocket. He passed his hand across his body, slipped it into his right-hand pocket, careful to keep the rag between It and his skin, and then flung It just as hard as he could into the street.
It didn’t go nearly as far as he’d hoped.
“Thanks,” Smith said cheerfully, and trotted off to fetch it.
“Didn’t want to touch it with your bare hands, huh?” Johnson smiled and shook his head. “You really are such sensitive creatures, aren’t you?”
The Manitou had picked up the Blade of Ashura in its bare hand and not even noticed what it was. It had handed it that way to Ajax. So he probably could have touched the cup. It wouldn’t have done a thing to him. Not one thing. He ought to have thought of that, he supposed.
Not that it mattered. Not now.
Well, at least the Gaunt Man hadn’t responded to his message, which almost certainly meant that the Manitou had never delivered it. So thank God for small favors.
“You must be kinda thirsty there, Grace,” Smith told him, trotting back with the cup in his hand. His bare hand. “After all that puking.” He bent down to scoop up some snow, dribbled it into the bowl. “How’s about a drink on us? Make it up to you, for our little joke. What do you say?”
Even knowing that they would do no such thing, Youngjack felt his stomach roll again at even the thought of it. He tasted the blood again at the back of his mouth, and heard the sound of its hopelessly severed throat, hissing air, trying to beg for even more of the filthy stuff. He closed his eyes, shuddering in spite of himself.
“Fool me once…” he began, then stopped, dismayed by the sound of his own voice. It had come out as little more than a hoarse whisper. He shook his head. No point, really.
“Yes, well. We’ll just take the rest of that aphorism as delivered then, shall we?” said Johnson. “That’s it, is it? It really doesn’t look like very much at all, does it?”
Who, me? Youngjack thought stupidly, before realizing that he must have been talking about the cup.
“It doesn’t look like much,” Smith agreed.
“Not like final victory.”
Youngjack blinked.
“What?” he croaked.
“Anahita’s Cup, Grace. The Blade of Ashura is in play. And it’s here, somewhere in this very town. We’ve got a rotting corpse en route to Long Island tells us that.”
“Light’s gone looking for the Cup in Iraq, Grace. Leaves us a clear field.”
“What…” His voice was still rough and hoarse, but he pushed on anyway. “What, but what does the Cup have to do with, with—”
“It doesn’t know?” Smith laughed.
“I begin to understand how it could have managed to lose a riddle game with that slavering thing it works for,” Johnson commented. “I’d always wondered about that.”
“Anahita’s Cup, Grace. It’s the sheath to the Blade of Ashura.”
Youngjack stared at them. It was a long, long time before he spoke.
“It is?” he whispered.
“Just pathetic,” sighed Johnson. “Yes, creature. It is.”
“The Cup is ours,” said Smith.
“And very soon, the Blade will be ours as well.”
“It’s gotta be around here somewhere.”
“We’ll find it in no time.”
Youngjack took a long and careful breath.
“What,” he said. “What happens when—”
“Final days, Manitou,” Smith said cheerily. “Things to do, Blades to find.” He shrugged and walked off around the truck, his feet crunching in the snow.
“I’d manage to do something right for a change, if I were you, Manitou,” said Johnson, reaching over his head to open the door to the truck. Youngjack ducked out of the way as the door swung open. “Time may prove to be even shorter than you think.” He stepped up into the cab and pulled the door closed behind him. From the other side of the truck, Youngjack could hear Smith slamming the passenger side door shut...
He had left the keys in the ignition.
Hadn’t he.
He scrambled away from the tires, kicking through the snow, trying not to think about how much of the cold wet slush he was sliding through was Gunner’s cheap whisky, frozen now into some sort of repulsive dessert treat for very naughty children, only wanting not to be run down in the street like a dog. He cleared the wheels just as he heard the engine roar to life and crouched, panting, in the snow.
The engine was idling. He looked back.
Johnson leaned out the window, grinning at him.
“Nice truck,” he said.
And floored it.
•
He pressed his forehead hard against the cool, cool metal of the phone booth, the shrill boo-boo-beeps ringing in his aching head as he waited and waited and waited and waited. It had never taken this long before, and he wondered briefly if it might be out of service…but no. That was impossible, surely. Such things did not go out of service.
No? You don’t think so? Why don’t you take a look at yourself, Manitou?
Out of service. Yes. He supposed he was, at that.
His makeshift sling had come undone, and his splinted arm hung stiffly at his side. He had wrenched his hip somehow back there, probably while he had been scrambling out of the path of Gunner’s old truck, and his one good hand was chapped and bleeding from being used to drag himself through the snow as he had crawled cautiously away from the Sheriff’s Office, no longer protected by the power of the Malandanti, desperately trying to avoid the notice of the police who had gathered around the building to survey the damage both inside and out. Blood from the gash in his side, where his stitches had torn loose, was slowly soaking through his shirt and trickling down his waistband. He had ripped the seams of his jacket under one arm, and no matter which way he turned, the wind always seemed to be blowing in just the right direction to force billowing gusts of snow right down into the hole, there to land on his shirt and melt, creating a cold shower effect that somehow failed to be in the least bit invigorating.
And it had been long enough now that he had probably bruised up quite colorfully. He could only begin to imagine what his face might look like.
There’s an easy way to find out. Why don’t you take a look at yourself, Manitou?
Boo-boo-beep, the phone whined in his head, and he gritted his teeth. If only he had another dollar, he would have simply hung up and tried it again, but he carried with him only the one, and he had already used it.
It had never taken this long before. Usually you could depend on the Law of Threes when it came to such things. But the third repetition of the message had come and gone long ago, and still there was no change. Perhaps he hadn’t done it properly. Had paid too close attention to the numbers he had dialed, or perhaps not enough attention, or he had dialed nine numbers instead of ten, or—
Gnothi Sauton, Manitou. Why don’t you take a look at yourself, Manitou?
He blinked.
Oh.
The Law of Threes. The Law of Threes, and the Law of Equilibrium, and the Law of Fair Payment.
There was no way around it, really. He took a deep breath and looked up into the snow-splattered metal plate of the phone booth, into the badly distorted reflection of his battered face, into the eyes of the dead man who lived in there.
•
“Selkie. I am the seventh son of a seventh son, and I was born with the Sight. I have dreamed of your coming. I dreamed it the night before last, and also the night before that.”
Youngjack spoke with the flat cadence of a man unaccustomed to public speaking forced to deliver a prepared address. It could tell that he had rehearsed this speech. He had probably recited it before the mirror.
“When I dreamed it again last night, I knew that it was a true sending and no deception. I knew that it would be tonight. I know what you have come to do. I…”
His voice faltered briefly, and he swallowed. His hands, those graceful hands, were clenched tightly together in his lap.
It tilted its head to one side, watching him with some interest. It had seen this before, of course. The man was willing himself, willing himself not to plead, not to weep, not to make a fuss. They often did that. It had always found it a terribly curious thing for them to do, really. It couldn’t imagine how or why they would possibly care.
•
He squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed hard. Managing it, he thought. Managing it well, and his hand—its—his—their graceful hand clenched so tightly around the telephone receiver that the knuckles ached and burned.
“...until you tell us what that is.”
His eyes flew open. He had very nearly missed it.
“Yes,” he blurted, badly startled and wanting only to speak quickly so that it would know that he was there, so that it would not go away. “Yes, I’m—I’m here. My—” He took a deep breath. “My first question,” he said, “is about the Cup.”
“Ex caeli,” said the voice, blandly. “From without it comes to say: You are not, I am. It draws out what had been deep within and pours in what had been out, for good or ill. It is no longer in your hands. Your hands are not the ones that hold it.”
“Terrific,” he muttered. “Tell me something I don’t already know.”
“The human population of Saint Xavier, Montana,” it said, in that same bland voice. “Is fifty-nine thousand and seventy-eight.”
He blinked, then sighed.
(It is traditional. Ask your next question.)
“My next question,” he said slowly. “My third and final question.” He took a deep breath. “What,” he asked it, “what would happen if the Blade of Ashura...”
He felt, somehow, that this was a very bad idea.
Nonetheless.
“...if the Blade of Ashura,” he continued, “were brought into, um…into union with the cup—with Anahita’s Cup?”
There was a long silence, punctuated only by the hissing and crackling of the open line. He had just about decided that it was not going to answer him when the voice came, but this time it was not the pleasantly artificial pre-recorded feminine voice, but a different one altogether: cold, sexless, impersonal, inexorable, not even remotely human.
UNION, it said. COMPLETION. UNITY. OUT OF MANY....ONE.
Hang up the phone, he told himself. Just hang it up, right now. You don’t know what that is on the other side of the line. That could be anything coming through, so just—
OUT OF MANY—ONE. ONE. ONE. ONE. THE WILL OF HEAVEN.
He flinched as if struck.
Oh, no, he thought. No, that’s, that’s—
THE WILL OF HEAVEN. I AM, YOU ARE NOT. YOU ARE NOT, I AM. I AM, YOU ARE NOT, YOU ARE NOT, I AM. I AM YOU ARE NOT YOU ARE NOT I AM—ONENESS! ONENESS! ONENESS!
“Whose oneness?” he asked, even though he knew that it was a bad idea to interrupt, even though he knew that he had no more questions left, even though he knew that he should just hang up the phone right now—or, for that matter, several seconds ago. Hang up the phone and run like hell.
ONE. ONE. ONE. ONE. I AM. I AM. I AM, I AM, I AM I AM I AM I AM I AM IAMIAMIAMIAMIAM...
He dropped the receiver, doubling over, squeezing his eyes shut and clamping both hands over his ears. His broken wrist screamed as he slammed it into the side of his head, but still he could hear the voice, blaring from the dangling receiver, surely louder than the telephone’s capabilities could really—
...IAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAMIAMI...
“But what about us?” he cried. “What about, what about—”
There was a click, and the voice stopped abruptly.
“—us?” he finished, then opened his eyes.
“Us, Manitou?” The man smiled at him with cold contempt, one hand still pressed down on the telephone’s tongue. He stooped to pick up the receiver, gazed blankly at it for a moment, and then placed it firmly back in its cradle. “What us would that be, pray tell?”
Youngjack straightened and looked hard at him.
“Do I know you?” he asked coldly.
The man’s mouth slowly widened into a feral tooth-baring grin, a terrible, a frightening grin.
Youngjack drew in a sharp breath and looked into the man’s blank eyes, the horse’s blank eyes, and then past them, into the eyes of the thing that rode him. He shuddered and crashed to his knees.
“Master,” he said, ducking his head and shivering. “Master, please. Forgive me. I...did not recognize you.”
•
•