CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Almost two hours later. Upstate New York. A warm and sticky night. Just outside Facility 23.
Dying oaks, crumbling inwardly from a blight, stretched out their branches alongside the access road with lugubrious crookedness. As the young soldier drove her up to the facility gate, Loraine told herself there was nothing special, outwardly, about the facility. Surrounded by razor wire, floodlights, and cameras on steel poles, it was just another sprawling, generic government structure, with a cryptic sign but no clear markings. But there was something about it...
The air conditioner in the government car was broken; the driver had apologized, but there was no time to go to the motor pool for another—she'd received a cell phone call from Dr. Helman summoning her here within minutes of leaving Bleak. Sweat gathered on her brow and blew away in the air washing through the car's open windows. Her clothes chafed her, under the armpits, and at her collar. The young Special Forces driver, a stocky white man in a uniform and black beret, had hardly spoken since she'd got in beside him.
She stared at the bland facade of Facility 23, thinking, Sean Bleak is in there somewhere. In a place that hummed with frightened desperation.
Now what brought that on?she thought. But since her first encounter with Bleak, she'd felt more intuitive, more sensitive, than she ever had before.
She pondered her sense of deep but indescribable connection to Gabriel Bleak. She'd felt him watching her as she walked away, down Ninety-fifth Street. Felt it as clearly as you'd feel a cool breeze on the back of your neck.
Maybe all this exposure to the supernatural had her imagining things. Seeing Krasnoff project his visions; seeing Soon Mei open the Hidden. Glimpsing her fate scribbled in red ink. She was seeing the unearthly everywhere.
No—it was more as if her boundaries had been fractured. Her assumptions about reality had flown to pieces. It was as if hidden doors, secret passages, were everywhere, no matter where you went. As if she had been walking down the corridor of life looking for a door where the walls looked blank, then she'd discovered the doors were there all the time. They were simply invisible, until you learned to see them. She was starting to sense things she'd never sensed before.
And her newly kindled intuition told her that Facility 23 was one big bad omen.
Deal with it, she thought, as the sedan drove through the gate to the first checkpoint. The driver spoke to the guards, flashlight beams made Loraine blink, then the car was waved on. It drove along a narrow asphalt road around the building to stop at a nondescript gray metal door in a big, otherwise featureless concrete wall in the back.
The gray metal door opened, as she got out of the car, and Dr. Helman was waiting for her in its rectangle of cold light, bobblehead nodding. “I apologize in advance,” Helman said, as she walked up to the building's back door. “I should let you read the file of the man you're about to meet, first. But there isn't time. Events press. Time grows short. You must meet him now.”
She followed him into a building, and down a corridor—for much of its length a blank, doorless corridor, like so many others she'd walked through—Loraine thinking it strange Helman hadn't mentioned her meeting with Bleak. Maybe they didn't have her under surveillance after all. Not all the time. But there was another possibility....
***
SHE KNEW IT WAS him, before Helman introduced the man sitting at the table: “This is Sean Bleak. Sean, Agent Sarikosca.”
They were in a small, windowless conference room with a large flat-screen TV at one end; a glossy pine-finish, oval conference table with a few chairs, concrete walls painted light green. An opaque glass hemisphere in the center of the ceiling probably held a surveillance camera. Just outside the open door were two guards, alert to a call from Helman. Apparently Helman didn't trust Sean.
“I don't want to call her Agent Sarikosca,” Sean said as she sat across from him. A peculiar, twisted little smile as he said it; a pettish, whispery voice; ice-chip blue eyes. Long sandy hair. He wore a paramilitary outfit. On him it looked almost like the clothing of an inmate in a military prison.
Not an identical twin. But much like Gabriel Bleak—and very much unlike him.
“You'll call her what protocol demands, Sean,” Helman told him, sitting at the end of the table, frowning over a complicated remote control. “General Forsythe wants a structured environment for you. Your privileges are contingent on staying within that structure. That means following protocol.”
Sean chuckled at that; eyes flicking at Helman with barely concealed contempt. “You invoke Forsythe's name to keep me in line.” She noticed he had a way of talking with his mouth nearly shut. “You know he's special; that he's the one I respect. But don't pretend I've got any real freedom.” Sean looked at Loraine, added hastily, “Not that I don't ever leave this place. I've been in places like this most of my life—but there were other places too.” It seemed important to him to tell her that he was more than some lab rat, here. “There was a place up in the mountains, in the trees. I had a nanny, she was a good old girl. I had a tutor who was kind of like a dad to me. In a sort of way. I had play dates with kids, for a while. Till that got weird. I even got taken to Disney World one time. I've got the latest game consoles. Lately I go on what they like to call virtual excursions. We've got some pretty good VR gear. And I've had women—”
“Sean!” Helman snapped. “Have some respect for the agent.”
“But it's true—I've had women! Brought in special. Kind of like the ones you'll see here on the TV tonight. That what we're going to see, Dr. Helman? That experiment with Gulcher?” “Yes, yes.”
One other thing was in the room. She hadn't seen it till Sean leaned forward. It was behind him: a suppressor, plugged in and turned on.
Feeling pity for Sean, thinking he had been raised in places like this and there was no telling what he'd been through, Loraine impulsively said, “You can call me Loraine, Sean, if you like.”
“Thank you, Loraine,” he said, studying her. He smiled, suddenly, briefly showing yellowed teeth, as if he remembered that it was good to smile broadly but wasn't quite sure how to do it.
Helman used the remote to turn on the television and clicked through a menu till he got a window on the screen that said PREPARED MATERIAL. “Here we go. This is...” He turned to Loraine, putting on an expression of solemnity. “Well—perhaps I should prepare you.”
It was funny how socially artificial both of these men seemed, Loraine decided. In different ways, each seemed strikingly insincere. As if they'd learned to interact with people the way a clumsy man learned to dance—by rote.
“Why don't you turn that suppressor off, Helman,” Sean said suddenly. “You don't need it. And could show Loraine some things.”
“No, not this time; I don't think so, Sean,” Helman said, with asperity. “I wish to tell her...” He leaned toward Loraine, his manner grave, weighty. “You've seen some hard things, Loraine. Your duty has taken you to some dangerous places. You saw women you'd recruited taken into custody in Syria —and there was nothing you could do for them. You saw a suicide bomb attack in Kabul. You were involved in the debriefing on the Miami attack. You know what the terrorists did there. That is what we're up against—a brutally unstable world.” Helman gently rapped the table to emphasize the next sentence. “We cannot afford to be concerned with every fallen sparrow! We must be willing to do whatever is necessary! Power like this, potential of the kind the CCA contains, and directs...we cannot risk losing control of it. It's like the Manhattan Project in the last century. Sometimes the testing is dangerous. People die. We need to know that you're... capable of dealing with the harsh realities.”
Loraine shrugged. “It's all been harsh reality, Doctor.” She wasn't thinking of Syria, though that had been bad enough. She was thinking of Krasnoff—and Sean Bleak, sitting across from her. It seemed likely he'd been pried from his parents' hands, raised in an institutional setting. She'd had to work hard on accepting that kind of reality at CCA.
“To be sure,” Helman said. “But what I am going to show you may shock you anyway. We run tremendous risks here—and to protect the country we must test the forces we work with. Test them on people, on human beings. You must have a spine of steel to proceed with us, Loraine. And if you don't —well.” He glanced at Sean. “One way or another...we will have your help.”
That one startled her. One way or another?
“I've had women,” Sean said suddenly, out of left field, almost leering at Loraine, “but nobody with your class.”
“I'm here as a federal agent, Sean,” Loraine said, forcing herself to smile politely—but feeling her skin crawl. “Let's keep this professional.”
“Professional?” Sean's eyes looked shiny, as if he were close to tears. His mouth compressed. When he spoke, it was through clenched teeth, and hard to make out. “What profession do I have?”
It came to her that Sean was stuck in adolescence. He had his brother's penetrating eyes—and a sense about him, as with his brother, that he was always aware of something you couldn't see. Even with the suppressor in the room Sean knew the Hidden was there, in ways she couldn't.
But he was so different from Gabriel Bleak. Gabriel had a still, strong center to him. You felt that he was ready for anything. You knew you could trust him. He might hold things back, but he wouldn't want to lie to you. It would be unnatural to him.
But his brother, she suspected, might say anything to get what he wanted. Sean was damaged— and there was no telling how deep the damage went.
“Your profession, Sean, is to serve the United States of America by helping it control UBEs,” Helman said, using the remote control again, fast-forwarding. Images flickered by on the television screen, too fast to make out. “You even get paid for it, every month. Sometimes you spend the money.”
Sean sniffed. “Spend the money! EBay purchases. Amazon. Once a month I get to have a bottle of wine.” He sniffed in disgust. “The occasional hired girl. It's how they manage me... control we. “
The images on the screen slowed, became recognizable: a concrete courtyard, a view from high on a wall, and to one side was General Forsythe with a man she didn't recognize at first, and a group of armed black berets. The man with Forsythe turned, his face caught the light, and she recognized him. “Troy Gulcher!” she blurted.
“Very good,” Sean said, with a kind of nerdy irony. “Our man Gulcher. Who's been bitching continuously since he got here.”
She saw that Gulcher, in the video, had no restraints, no cuffs. That he was standing with Forsythe in a friendly way. She realized that Gulcher was not just contained—but recruited. A wan like that. A wurderer. Was she really supposed to work beside him?
Doors opened, in the courtyard. People came through, accompanied by more guards. She recognized Helman, Soon Mei, Krasnoff—and someone she didn't know.
“Who is that child? He's got cuffs on!”
“That is just one of the difficult elements I was warning you about,” Helman said. “William John Blunt. Billy Blunt. We purchased him from his parents—” “You purchased him?”
“Yes. We arranged for them to report him missing and gave them a substantial fee. They were quite happy with the arrangement. He is a casebook psychopath—they were quite afraid of him. He was starting to use his abilities on them. Just coming into them fully, then. He's quite a little government secret. Top secret, as you might imagine.”
“Like me,” Sean said ruefully. “But uglier and not so talented. Can't play a first-person shooter to save his little ass.”
“Yes, indeed, just as you say,” Helman said distractedly, watching the screen. “There...you see something interesting...Krasnoff is now projecting his vision.”
“I don't see it,” she murmured. She could see the light projecting from Krasnoff's eyes and mouth —and a circle on the wall, sparkling around the edges. Nothing inside the circle but concrete wall.
“Exactly so,” Helman said, with an expert's excitement. “It doesn't show up on this video. Other visions of his have shown up, rather fuzzily. But not this.”
“It's because it's the Wilderness,” Sean said matter-of-factly. “They don't want you making pictures of them.”
Loraine was peripherally aware that Sean was looking at her. Specifically, at her breasts. Which was something else he had in common with Helman. “Now these girls...”
Then Loraine went rigid in her seat as it played out: The three women in blue prison shifts brought in. One of them somehow being influenced by Billy Blunt to attack another. Blood flowing. The woman being attacked with teeth and fingers. Soon Mei summoning ghosts—seen only murkily on the video. Madness—possession. The boy in the midst of it...
Loraine forced herself to watch—sure that if she came off as if she couldn't handle it, she'd be in danger of “containment” herself. They wouldn't take any chances. She'd have to pretend to accept this.
But she couldn't accept it, not really. Not seeing a boy purchased from his parents. Three women held prisoner to be used as experimental subjects. Women deliberately subjected to possession, violence.
Deep down inside, Loraine knew she'd changed sides. She could pretend she hadn't, for a while. But she couldn't really be part of this.
And that was it—she had pivoted, internally. She'd shifted the center of gravity of her loyalties. She was still a loyal American. But she was no longer loyal to CCA.
Then the courtyard footage was over. She stared at the blank television screen.
“I could have called something to take control—something better than that idiot kid,” Sean was saying.
Loraine realized that Dr. Helman was watching her closely. “This is a kind of initiation for you, Loraine—almost in the ancient sense of the word. But—the initiated can't always bear the initiation.”
She had to keep up the facade. She managed a faint smile. “You were right, Doctor,” she said calmly. “It's shocking stuff. But I can...see the potential.”
“Can you?” Helman looked at her skeptically. “If we could control people with talents like Krasnoff and Soon Mei and Billy, in the outside world...”
“Anybody's name left off that list?” Sean muttered bitterly.
Helman pretended not to hear. “We can't control them efficiently, as it stands. We need to establish real, reliable power over them—that's what we were trying to do, through Gulcher...and other possibilities. To control these ShadowComm types—but also so-called spirits that may be of use. You see, those UBEs who could be of use in...in offensive capabilities...they do not cooperate with one another. Or consistently with us. They're rather savage. But we believe they can be forced to cooperate with much greater control. We believe that Gabriel Bleak will give us the means.”
She looked at him. “Gabriel Bleak?”
“Yes. That's why we've been pursuing him in particular. Oh, yes, we know you met with him today. We lost track of you once you got on the subway—but we weren't trying very hard to keep up. We don't want him to be too suspicious—too wary. We've been readying you for interaction with him, for some time now. For special work with Gabriel Bleak. We hoped to simply capture him, first. He's proven remarkably elusive. But a special sort of recruitment... that might work too. Might perhaps yield better results. We have people already preparing the ground.”
“So—” She licked her lips. She really wanted a drink of water. “So you would be willing to work with the Shadow Community on its own terms? To let them work independently, in the field, under assignment? Bleak—Gabriel Bleak—was willing to consider it.”
Sean chuckled; Helman's head bobbled with amusement. “Ha-ha, well, we would not allow that, no, no, not as such. But we want them to think we might do that, in the short term. In the long term, we'll need to have most of them in constant containment. Except for a very few special individuals. In time, Sean here, and Gabriel Bleak, selected others, may be allowed to work in the outside world. But we have to create certain control precedents first. You, Loraine—you are one of those precedents. You and Gabriel Bleak are, to use the old-fashioned term, soul mates.”
“We're what?” She actually rocked back in her chair.
“So that's what they mean by taken aback!” Sean said, amused. “Yeah, Loraine—you're fated to be mated with my brother.” He added sullenly, “Like he hasn't had all the luck already.”
“It's not as if you're 'soul mates' in the sense of two people who merely feel comfortable together,” Helman said. “True soul mates are fairly rare. They are souls that were created at the same instant, a symmetrical cocreation, for a special kind of union. They're not created merely for romantic reasons, you know. It has something to do with creating a ripple effect from the symmetry of putting them together—soul mates send out a 'harmonic transmission,' when they unite. Helping, supposedly, to bring more harmony to the world.”
“See, now you're getting all pompous and erudite and shit,” Sean said, rolling his eyes.
Helman seemed to control his temper, then went on, “Now, with Gabriel Bleak—our profile suggests that deep down he's a very romantic man. He's lonely. And we believe he's already unconsciously enamored of you. As he's your soul mate, and you his—he really cannot help falling in love with you. At first it might be hard to get him to admit that—”
“Have to get him hard before he admits it,” Sean said, grinning around clenched yellow teeth.
Helman sighed and shot Sean a look of irritation. Which Loraine thought was ironic, considering Helman's own arrested-adolescent behavior. Could be that Helman was a kind of warped role model for Sean.
Helman looked earnestly back at Loraine. “We don't believe Gabriel Bleak will work with us willingly without you on board. And we need him to be genuinely on our side. There's something very* specific we need him to do. And for you—though he may not know it yet—he would do anything. “
“Bleak and I hardly know each other. I find it hard to believe that...that he and I are... 'soul mates.' Find it hard to believe in soul mates at all.”
“Nevertheless, it is the case. Soul mates are just one of those oddities of metaphysics. But believe me, they are quite real. But we use the term in a higher sense than the usual sentimentality.”
Soul mates. She'd thought the idea childish, improbable, before. But there was something beautiful, really, in this higher kind of soul mates, she decided. Souls “created at the same instant, a symmetrical cocreation, for a special kind of union.” And CCA had perverted that beauty—used it for their own sick little agenda.
What had Zweig called it? The “lure concept.” That's what she was—a lure. To get Bleak here— to containment.
Keeping impassive, she asked, “What is it you need Bleak to do for you...specifically?” “He's got to work with me,” Sean said. “Do a dual magicking with me.”
“A...a what?” she asked numbly. Trying not to sit there with her mouth hanging open. Soul mates.
“A certain ritual.”
“There is great power,”' Helman put in, “when you put the Bleak brothers together. So we're told. They represent two ends of one metaphysical pole. Bring them together, in the same working, and we can bring under our control a certain entity who will, in turn, control all the ShadowComms we can locate. Gulcher was just a temporary expedient. This...other entity will make it possible for us to bring about a basic and much needed change in our society. We cannot go on like this, you know, with the world so dangerous, so unstable. For a start, the president is planning to suspend elections, a couple years from now.”
Loraine was not as shocked as she thought she'd be. “So that rumor is true.” “It'll be necessary for a time. An...indefinite time. You see—”
“Hey, Doc,” Sean said, looking at Helman suddenly with a sneering triumph. “You're gettin' way past 'need to know.'“
Helman scowled, not liking to be brought up short by Sean. But he nodded reluctantly. “I suppose you're right. There'll be time for that later. The general will decide when.”
Loraine took a long breath, trying to center herself. She couldn't let them know how all this made” her feel. Especially the part about the president's plans. I'm supposed to be loyal to the president— when loyalty is actually treason.
But she nodded, locking eyes with Helman, trying to sound as if she believed what she was saying. As if she didn't privately believe that Dr. Helman was insane. “If the president thinks that this change is necessary for the safety and stability of the country then”—she shrugged—”I've taken an oath: I serve at the pleasure of the president.”
“Must be good to be president,” Sean said. “With you serving at his pleasure.”
Helman winced. Loraine simply stood up and said, “I've given you my answer, Doctor. I'm tired and it's a long trip back to Brooklyn Heights.”
“Actually”—it was General Forsythe, standing in the doorway—”I reckon you won't be going back to Brooklyn Heights tonight.” Forsythe stood there with his hands casually in his pockets; smiling apologetically. And seemingjust as fundamentally insincere as Helman and Sean. “I'm sorry, by the way, that I missed the meeting, turning up at the last moment here like this. I had a kind of a set-to with Mr. Gulcher. Discipline issue.”
“I...didn't come prepared to stay overnight. I need to clean up, get some rest—”
“Oh, we have rooms for officers and government visitors here, you can use one of those. They're a bit dormlike but comfortable enough. I've already sent for your necessities. Your things will be here any minute.”
She stared. “You sent someone to rifle through my apartment? That really wasn't necessary, General.”
He shrugged. His vaguely apologetic look didn't waver. “We've got a state of national emergency coming up here, Agent Sarikosca.” The regret dropped from his face. She saw him, suddenly, as he really was. A cold-eyed slug of a man capable of doing anything to anyone. “This is no time to think like a suburban housewife.”
That one felt like a slap in the face. But she had to ask: “My cats...?”
He snorted impatiently. “We can have them put down for you. You'll be here for a long time, I expect. You'll want to cancel your lease.” “Cancel my...How long will I be here?”
“Oh—you'll be here at Facility Twenty-three indefinitely, Agent Sarikosca. Unless we need you to bring Bleak to us—and then, perhaps, we'll cast that fishin' line in the water. But the bait will be firmly on the hook. You won't be going anywhere we don't want you to go. And now—I believe there is a debriefing we need to get ourselves to. There is a good deal, I reckon, you haven't told us about
Gabriel Bleak.” The two black berets in the hall stepped into view, then, behind him, looking at her coolly, without pointing their weapons at her. But making their purpose clear. And Forsythe told her, “Come right this way, please.”
***
GULCHER SAT ON THE edge of the small bed, looking around at the tiny room they'd given him. Superficially, it was more comfortable than a jail cell. But it was still locked from the outside.
“F*cking college dorm room,” he muttered. “But they don't lock those kids in.” He should be asleep. He was tired, and frustrated. The whisperer wouldn't say much to him. He could sense the ethereal familiars around, but they weren't responsive to him. Forsythe was interfering some way. Gulcher could sense a connection.
A knock on the door. “Yeah, come in, as if I have a f*cking choice!”
The door unlocked, and Dr. Helman was there, carrying two tiny liquor bottles, as if from a minibar. Helman's head bobbled. “Mr. Gulcher? Can I have a word? And the use of a couple of glasses?”
What was this all about? “Sure. Glasses over by that dinky-ass little sink there.” Helman closed the door behind him, busied himself at the sink, pouring the drinks. “Water in yours?”
“Hell no, I want to taste it. That all you've brought?”
“It is, I'm afraid, all I could scrounge. I thought—bourbon?”
“Yeah.”
“I'll have the brandy. Here you go.” He handed Gulcher the glass with a little more than a finger of amber fluid in it and actually clinked it with his own. “Chin-chin!” Helman said, taking the merest sip.
Gulcher snorted. “Whatever. Sit down.” He nodded toward a small chair at the small desk.
Helman sat, cradling the glass in both hands. Sipping the bourbon, Gulcher noticed that despite the hour, Helman still wore his suit jacket and the tie with the flowers painted on it.
Helman sighed. “I am a man of the world. I'm sure it's evident. Yet when it comes to the ladies, I find myself tongue-tied. Loraine Sarikosca is here. I don't know as you've met her. A handsome woman. Perhaps a tad young for me. She's not happy with her current situation—she's under restrictions.”
“I know the feeling.”
“Ah, yes. Oh, you'll be given much more latitude when we have what the general calls 'full control.' And when your loyalty has been tested. But until then...at any rate, I, ah...well, you seem a vigorous sort of man, who doubtless has had women in his time. I mean—the ones you had, who...that is, I don't mean to imply—”
“The ones I didn't pay for, or force?”
“As I said, I meant no offense—”
“It's all right. I'm a con, you rack up a lot of run-ins with the heat, you get to expect people to have, you know, assumptions and shit. I prefer my women voluntary. And I've had plenty of girlfriends.”
“So...with a woman who's a professional—”
“She's a whore?”
“Not that kind of professional, Mr. Gulcher. Troy...1 mean, she's a member of a profession, she's a federal agent, she's...not someone to be trifled with. How would one...Well, I was thinking of knocking on her door this very evening. She might be lonely, here.”
“She give you any indication she thinks of you that way?”
“Ah—not as such. No.”
“Then she probably doesn't. Figures you for too old for her. And she's not going to be in the mood, when she's already feeling trapped, for Christ's sake. Hey, Doc?” Gulcher paused to drink off
half his bourbon. Too bad there was only this one baby bottle. “I'm a little, what you might say, skeptical that advice about women is the only reason you're here.”
Helman chewed his lower lip, glanced nervously at the door. “Very perceptive. Yes, there is something else. I hesitate to discuss it. What—yes, let's put it this way—what was your impression of the event in the courtyard? With Billy Blunt, the others. Forsythe supervising.”
Gulcher didn't enjoy thinking about it. He didn't like anyone else having the ability to take control of people. What if it happened to him next? He shrugged. “Gave me a feeling you people could lose control of this thing. What do I know, I'm no expert. But for one thing—that Forsythe's got something else going on. He's got his own agenda. Only it's not his. That thing that's in him— something ain't human, in there.”
Helman looked pale. Drank a little more brandy. “What do you mean, he ain't...isn't human?”
“With that mind reading of his. You notice that? And it's not like he's...you know, got a talent, like I do. It's something else. It's like it's not him reading the minds.”
“Ah. Yes. I have been wondering about that myself.” Helman made his brandy swirl in the glass. “Forsythe was the first one in our research department to do what he called 'direct outreach' to the... the After. Specifically—to entities in what the Shadow Community likes to call the Wilderness. The part of the Hidden that's kept back from close interaction with our world, in normal conditions. The general bridged that gap—and he says he was rewarded with a certain 'extraordinary sensitivity.' Which we perceive as mind reading. But...I'm not sure that's the whole story.”
“That what he calls it? 'Sensitivity'?” It occurred to Gulcher that the more he knew about what was going on, the more options he had. Just like in jail. Know when they trucked out the laundry—and you might be able to go with it. “So what was this 'outreach' of his?”
“Ritual magic. He was the first to do it, that I'm aware of, in CCA. He has a special room that he performed it in.”
“And he sorta changed, after he did that ritual stuff—right?”
Helman blinked, opening his mouth to reply. Then he shut it. Seemed to think for a moment. “I suppose that's true. Not too obviously. But it shows, at times. He's changed. As I said—if it is merely enhanced psychic sensitivity—”
Gulcher made eye contact with Helman and shook his head. “No. And I don't think I'm telling you anything you're not already guessing. You're asking me because I help that kind of takeover happen. So you figure I'd know for sure. I don't. But I can make a good guess. And I'd guess your Forsythe ain't Forsythe anymore. He's only General Forsythe on the outside.”
“You're saying—he's a victim of neurological redirection by an Unconventionally Bodied Predatory Entity?”
“And what the hell's that mean?”
“The conventional term is...possessed.” Helman looked nervously at the door.
“Possessed?! wouldn't use that term. That's like you're talking demons. I've seen some things, “1 since I got this power. You know what it's more like? When I was a kid, I lived in a shitty part of Philadelphia. Then they started building a shopping center in there. We figured that'd make things better. My old man opened a car-supplies store in this shopping center—and then some wise-guys came around, the whole operation got taken over. Pretty soon they were asking twice the rents, and protection too. They were from the Florida mob, these guys. That's what you got here in your CCA now. These aren't, what you call them, devils. Oh, people took 'em for gods and devils once. But these are—just things that ain't human. They're from outside. They're—what's that term you use, UB something?”
“Ah. Unconventionally Bodied Entities. UBEs. Or UBPE in the case of some of the more aggressive individuals.”
“Well, you got that right, seems to me. That's what they are. They've got an agenda, that's all. Like any other hustler. They're moving into your operation, pretending it's still what you say it is—but just like that shopping center, pal, it ain't what it seems. Not no more. They got their chance when your
General Forsythe stuck his nose too far into their world, and I figure they used him to come partway over here. And they're gonna use your operation to make things safe for them once they're here. Because there's cops, over here, too. I mean, you know, spirit cops. And these hustlers that are pushing the general around, they need to protect themselves from that. And you guys, you're providing their, what you call it—their camouflage. The mob from the other side is moving in, and the general, now— he's one of them.”
Helman looked at Gulcher blankly. “Oh, no. I don't believe it could be quite so...so dire. That we're being used so...” Helman shook his head, drained his glass, set it down on the desk, and stood up. Seeming hostile to Gulcher, now, in a passive-aggressive way. “Well. I'll take your...your opinion under consideration.... And thank you for the advice on the fairer sex. Good evening.”
Just like that, boom, he walked out. Locking the door behind him. Gulcher chuckled, thinking, He's been wondering the same thing. Wanted we to tell hiw it wasn 't so. Doesn't like hearing that what he's scared of Just might be real.
“I know the feeling,” Gulcher said aloud. He drank the last piddly little drops of bourbon, adding, “I sure know that feeling.”
***
AT ABOUT THE SAME TIME. Embedded in the sticky New Jersey night.
“Greg? You there?” Bleak called—both in his mind and out loud. He was sitting at the kitchen table in Shoella's house, waiting for her. She'd been closeted with the loas in her summoning room for two hours. Bleak had got tired of puzzling over the Scribbler document.
He had reached out to Greg the Ghost through the Hidden; had felt him responding, hearing his name called from the shadows within shadows. But the voice was faint, the ghost seeming distant, unable to get through.
Bleak tried again, his eyes focused on a blank spot in the wall. “Greg Berne...it's Bleak...come to me.” The off-white wall seemed to ripple, becoming a blizzard—all one color but with depth, something you could walk into. A tiny little dark figure was there, in the apparent blizzard—at first Bleak thought it might be a housefly walking down the wall. Then it came into focus, growing, as if someone were walking toward him in a snowfall. Closer...
And he stepped out of the rippling wall, to stand before Bleak in the kitchen, floating there, really, about a foot off the floor. Greg the Ghost.
“You got something needs fixing here?” Greg asked, looking around vaguely. “Somebody call me?”
“Greg? It's Gabriel Bleak. Remember?”
“My wife...you know she was banging someone else?”
“No, Greg, I didn't know that.” Bleak had a bad feeling about this. “Greg—you've been wandering around in this plane too long. You're starting to forget your mission. You're starting to forget basic things. You need to move on, man. And you can. I spoke to Roseland.”
The ghost looked at Bleak, frowning—then his eyes focused, and he nodded. “Bleak! Gabriel Bleak! I remember. Roseland the detective. To clear my name!”
“With luck—it will be cleared. I told Roseland that I had information that Mormon kid was in the neighborhood where that new murder was. They found DNA evidence there—they're testing him. And comparing with the DNA in that condom. They've already got a sort of confession out of him, though they can't use it, exactly—but the DNA will cinch it. Your family will be informed. Roseland promised. It'll be all over the news too. You can move on, Greg.”
The ghost nodded sadly. No smile, but a new light gleamed in his eyes. “That's the good news. Bad news is, I hung myself, and I'm dead.”
“You've done penance already. Move on, Greg.”
“I gotta tell you—there's a kind of bubble around this house you're in. Making it hard to get through. It's kinda like you're in another world completely, Bleak. Somebody's hemming you in.”
Bleak had sensed energy fields shifting around him—but the Hidden had its tides, its currents, its sea changes. He'd thought it was something like that. “Must be Shoella. Her summoning.”
Greg tried to rub his eyes—then realized he couldn't feel it. “Feel myself less and less...So my kids will get the word, right?”
“They will.”
“Then I'm going...and I ain't comin' back. But, Bleak, be really f*cking careful. I saw something that don't have any kinda real shape, around here, watching you. It's changing its shape all the time. And it's angry at you...and...” Greg was starting to recede, back into the wall—into the psychic distance. Getting smaller, rippling. “I saw it in the Hidden—that there's something close to you that wants to trap you...and something else that hates you and they're not far away.... I'd stay and help but I've been getting confused and...” Smaller, smaller. Like a housefly. Hard to hear the fading voice as Greg went on, voice phasing in and out of audibility. “It wants to make you some kinda slave...and... you won't be you anymore...that's the feeling I get...thanks for all...your...”
Gone.
“Gabriel?” Shoella calling, from down the hall.
Greg's warning ringing in his mind, Bleak got up and went to find her. Her bedroom door was open. Candlelight wavered the room's shadows. There was a smell of incense—roses and some unknown musk. He stepped through the doorway and saw Shoella kneeling, facing the door. She was completely nude, yellow candlelight highlighting her dark skin. She was kneeling on an animal skin— a cougar pelt, its outer edges sewn with black feathers.
Bleak had never seen her naked before—had never seen the tattoos on her breasts, dark blue ink designs, like barbed wire, spiraling toward the nipples.
Candle glow replicated in her eyes as she gazed up at him. “Sit with me,” she said.
He had thought they were going to talk about Scribbler's divinations. The scrivening in red ink. But she had some other agenda. He could feel it in the room.
Yorena was there too; the big birdlike familiar was perched on a world globe set up in a far corner. Eyes glittering as she watched him.
Bleak couldn't see much else in the room, outside the circle of candlelight. Just the outlines of masks on the wall; the old, mahogany-framed bed.
Shoella held a carved wooden goblet up to him. It brimmed with a dark liquid. “Honor me by drinking.”
“What is it?” he asked, coming closer, taking the goblet. “Honor me by drinking,” she repeated.
The moment seemed steeped in ritual; she was an ally. He rarely needed ritual magic. But she used it, and he could not disrespect it. So Gabriel Bleak drank.
At first he tasted only sweet red wine, and, he thought, salt. But that might be a little blood, making the salty taste, mixed in the wine. Then something else, something bitter. Very bitter.
He stopped drinking, but it was too late—he felt, almost immediately, that he was slipping into an altered state. Had she introduced a loa into the drink? Some entity infused in the liquid?
But as he squatted by the candle, handing her back the wooden goblet—from which she drank, in turn—he decided that it was something else. It was a druggy feeling.
The walls of the room fell away. There was just the candlelight, seeming to replicate itself into a continuum of candle flames, each flame infinitely repeated within the next, each encompassing the others.
Shoella reached behind her and touched a switch. Music came on, drums and Jamaican voices in words he couldn't quite make out. But he could see the notes, a blood-red and sulfur-yellow stars, dancing in the air as they were sung. And then she was standing beside him, taking his hands, drawing him to his feet, and peeling the clothes from him.
She was so slender, so long and willowy and burnished and warm, her body elongated like a modern sculpture.
She drew him by the hand toward the bed. As they lay down, he thought, This is some form of enchantment.
But he was a man, caught up in the feeling of her skin against his, their sweat running together in the warm room, as she drew him on top of her; the imperative rising at his groin. He seemed to hear Jim Morrison singing about his mojo rising; Morrison in the darkness, nodding at him, then melting into the cloud that was Bleak's feeling, every sensation pillowy soft except the hard part that she drew into herself, a deep piercing between her legs, as she drew his tongue into her mouth, as she entwined him with her long arms and legs, murmuring incantations in his ear in a language...
A language he didn't quite recognize.
And the thought came to him that if he ever wanted to be a Great Magus, he was not going to achieve it this way, by allowing himself to be drugged and bedded, without it being his True Will.
But right now, he decided, coupling with Shoella was his True Will. He melted against her; he shattered himself against her, and the wave rose up again, and he was once more crashing against her...in a midnight sea.
***
GABRIEL BLEAK WOKE TO see silvery light coming through the slit in the curtain over the bedroom window. Must be dawn.
A powerful restlessness surged up in him. He considered taking Shoella again—she lay beside him, arms and legs splayed. She was deeply asleep, but he knew she would not deny him.
Instead he sat up, swiveled to sit on the edge of the bed, his brain percussing in his skull with the motion. The sensations of his limbs, his bare feet on the floor, seemed to whip around, as if trying to escape, before suddenly snapping back where they should be in his body, with an audible click.
“What was in that shit,” he muttered, standing to walk wobblingly out the bedroom door, barefoot and naked down the hall to the kitchen. He was terribly thirsty, badly needing a long drink of water. The kitchen was brighter, the light hurting his eyes. He found a glass, turned the spigot at the sink— nothing came out. “Shoella!” he called hoarsely. “Something wrong with your water.”
Then he became aware of a shushing sound; a gurgling, splashing. Water. But the sound was coming from outside.
He went to the open back door, and looked. And saw that Shoella's backyard was gone. In fact... The whole neighborhood was gone.
In its place was a tropical forest: a verdant hillside, columned by kapok trees and kauri and cathedral fig, canopied by foliage but flecked brightly with bird-of-paradise flowers and flowered lianas and purple orchids and shafts of golden sunlight. Just forty paces outside the back door a small, silver-white waterfall tumbled in slow motion, falling twenty-five feet into a dark green pool. Parrots, bright red and dark green, fluttered in the ancient, gnarled trees.
A rustling to his left. He looked and saw a small deerlike animal—nothing native to North America—with tiny, fuzzy antlers, long ears, exquisite little hooves. It stepped delicately out of the shady underbrush and stopped to look at him with large, brown, mildly curious eyes. It was completely unconcerned. It turned its attention to the little pool under the waterfall, dipped its head to drink.
Okay, he thought. I'm still asleep, and dreaming. But the thirst he felt seemed quite real. Go along with the dream. Drink from the waterfall. See what happens.
Nakedness couldn't matter here, so Bleak stepped outside the back door and walked along a thin path through knee-high, spearlike grass, his bare feet treading warm red clay. He looked for some remnant of the fences that should be here, the other houses either side of Shoella's. No fence, no houses. No power lines, no people. Nothing but forest.
He came to the waterfall, found himself staring in fascination at its silvery tumbling. He seemed to see each silvery, crystalline drop individually; and at the same time he saw them all at once, in galactic splendor. It was heartbreakingly beautiful.
But something, here, was watching him; something in the trees, the grass, the air itself. Watching.
He looked around—and saw no one. In particular.
Bleak moved closer to the waterfall, stepped out on a warm boulder at the edge of the pool, braced himself with a hand on the mossy hillside, leaned over, plunged his face into the cascade—and drank.
The water sent a stroke of illuminating energy through his body with the first swallow. Straightening up, wiping his mouth, he felt twice the man he'd been a moment before. “Not such a bad dream,” he said.
“It's no dream,” Shoella said, walking up behind him. “This is real. It is a world outside of time, cher darlin'.”
“Is it? You know, I don't think we're in Hoboken anymore,” Bleak said, looking around at the place's tropical growth, its verdant beauty.
“No,” Shoella said, laughing. “This is not Hoboken.”