The screams built, louder and louder still, beating at his mind, but he didn’t look away from the incredible stones before him. They were so beautiful, yes, and now they were pulling together, as if drawn by an unseen force, though the lines between them were still clear. Not fully united, not fully one again. Not yet.
He stared into the heart of chaos, became one with it, then he rose above it, looked down, and marveled. He picked up the stones, cupped them tenderly in his hands. Their heart was calling to him, and he knew it was time. When he spoke, his voice was stronger and louder than the screaming. It was the voice of a god.
“Bring me the woman’s blood.”
Mulvaney was tiring, but he didn’t slow. His knife slashed a path in front of him, sending Kitsune back, closer and closer to Lanighan. Kitsune was focused on him, her own knives jabbing, tearing, and she rent the sleeve of one arm. She saw blood well up, but it didn’t slow him. He continued advancing; forcing her back, ever back, toward Lanighan.
Lanighan screamed, “Now!”
Mulvaney grabbed her hand, jerked her arm straight out, and sliced her from wrist to elbow. She screamed in pain and the shock of the wound, numbly watched the blood pour from her arm.
Lanighan held the stones beneath the flowing blood. When they were red with her blood, he threw back his head and yelled to the heavens, “It is done!”
The screaming stopped.
Lanighan looked at the stones in his bloody hands and saw a light—blue, transparent, blinding in intensity, and it seemed to outline the edge of each stone. It whirled around the stones, merging them, and soon the edges were no longer to be seen. As the stones became one, they vibrated in his hands, and a whine began, growing louder and higher, like an electrical wire pulled taut and plucked. The light grew brighter and brighter, spearing out, encompassing the stone, his hands, the room.
He felt the light move into him, felt the small poisonous cells in his body pop as they were destroyed. He was on fire, and he hurt, hurt so badly, pain rising from every part of him. The stone—it was killing the cancer, and it was killing him. His heart pounded hard and fast, and his breath grew short. He tried to let the stone drop, but he couldn’t. The light moved through him and around him, and suddenly it coalesced into one narrow beam and split through the top of the warehouse, arcing up into the night sky, piercing the heavens.
And the killing pain left him and poured itself into the light, becoming one with it. He couldn’t look away, it was pure and powerful, and it was born of him. Night became day, and he stared into the face of his own sun, followed its pulsing rays upward through the night sky and beyond, to the soul of the universe. Now he understood the very nature of its being, of man’s being. He was its king, its master.
He was perfection.
He was a god.
The ground began to move under his feet.
97
Voices, loud, angry voices, then there was nothing, no sound at all. It had been only moments, but it seemed much longer since he didn’t know what was happening. Then Nicholas heard Kitsune screaming. He tapped the comms unit in his ear. “Mike! Now!”
He heard her yell to Menard’s men, “Go, go, go!”
Nicholas had wanted to stay close to Kitsune, but six guards had followed her up to the big office on the second floor and he’d been forced to hide in the shadows. When the guards heard Kitsune scream, they didn’t rush into the office. Obviously they’d been ordered not to come in, and they wanted to do something, but there was no one to tell them what to do.