The man looked at her, smiled, and pressed the phone to his ear.
Abby narrowed her eyes. She saw a vein pulsing at the man's throat, a tic in his left eye, and she could smell his wet flesh beneath his rank body odor. She thought he would probably taste tough and insipid — a lifetime of discontent would do that to a person — but still she grinned, and growled, and the man turned away and slipped his phone back into his pocket.
Abby closed her eyes. Her bones and muscles were beginning to ache. Just let me find him before I change, she thought. After that ... I don't care. Blake needed stopping years ago, and I failed in that. This time I'll do the right thing.
* * *
The plane touched down and eventually disgorged its disgruntled passengers. Abby immediately noticed the way the ground crew kept looking away from the passengers, out the tunnel windows, and up at the sky. They were nervous. No, they were terrified. They were trying to hide it, but everything about the way they stood, silent and twitchy, told her that they really did not wish to be here. At the junction of the tunnel and the arrivals terminal she paused and looked out the window. The sky was clear, the afternoon sun shining down on the busy airport ... and there were army vehicles flitting between buildings, disgorging soldiers who carried heavy machine guns and rocket launchers.
Abby walked into the arrivals terminal. It was silent. Hundreds of people stood clumped around TV monitors, and those who had just arrived soon joined the silent throng. It spooked her seeing so many people doing nothing, saying nothing, simply watching the screen. But even from a distance she could see flames smeared yellow and orange across one of the screens, and immediately she thought, Heathrow.
"What is it?" she asked a young man, his eyes wide, face slack with disbelief.
"Dragons just destroyed Heathrow," he said without stopping. He was walking from TV to TV, as if viewing different channels could alter the truth.
Abby did not stay long. She had seen one of the dragons in the New Ark, and she had no wish to watch them raining fire and destruction down on innocent people. "You bastard," she muttered as she left the terminal. Whatever cause Blake claims as his own, there's no justification for this.
She had to get there. Hire a car, drive to London, because the hints she had received from that awful, ancient entity in the infinity of the Memory had seemed to be right. London was where things were beginning to happen, and she knew that Blake would be there soon.
She would meet him. Father and daughter reunited. But this child had nothing but hate in her heart for her father. Hate and fear and a growing desire to kill him and eat of his flesh.
* * *
Abby breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled out from the Avis parking lot and found her way onto England's motorways. She supposed the world had far greater problems to contend with right now, but she had still been expecting the BPRD to put out information about her, telling airport authorities that she was ... what? A monster? A runaway werewolf? A danger to herself and everyone around her, come full moon?
She smiled, shook her head, turned on the radio. "Bad Moon Rising." Great.
* * *
Jerusalem — 1990
"GAL, THIS IS MADNESS. Father would never want us to do what you re talking about doing. It could destroy everything we've done over the past fifteen years!"
"Zahid de Lainree doesn't agree, you said that yourself."
"Yes, but he was obviously mad."