“Don’t,” warned Corinda. “It’s a trick.”
But Dana inched forward. There was just enough light coming through the window for her to see the hole torn in the shoulder of Angelo’s orange jail jumpsuit. Blood, black as oil in that light, pumped weakly from the skin beneath. She bent close and saw what it was. She understood what it was.
Angelo had been shot.
She looked at him and he nodded. “Didn’t get away … clean. Guards … Didn’t get an artery … I think. But … it hurts.” He tried to smile. “You two crazy ladies didn’t help.”
Dana knelt beside him, but she kept the chunk of quartz ready in case she had to smash him. “You said you broke out to set things straight.… What did you mean?”
“I mean this … wasn’t me.…,” he said, his voice weaker than it had been a moment ago. “The newspeople … they interviewed a cop … and he said that they were looking to … connect the murders to … that drug.”
“What drug?” asked Dana. “You mean Eclipse?”
He nodded weakly. “Eclipse was … never supposed to be out on the streets,” he said. He was starting to breathe strangely, and blood was pooling under him. If the bullet wound had been bad before, then the fight had made it worse. “It was only for … helping people. That’s why … it’s given only … to people like … us…”
“What? What do you mean? What people?”
Angelo’s eyes were becoming glassy, but he looked at her, and into her. “People … like you … and me. Personas con cualidades, chica.” He coughed, and blood flecked his lips. “You just … sit with it and … let it in. Ride the … smoke … so easy. That’s what he … promised. No … addiction … no bad high … nothing illegal … you just let the visions … come…”
And that was when it all made sense to Dana. She stared at him as the pieces of the puzzle lifted from the wrong shape and fell back into place with perfect, cruel clarity. Then she turned slowly toward Corinda. The tall woman lowered the didgeridoo.
“The incense…?” murmured Dana.
Corinda chewed her lip for a moment, looking worried, looking like she wanted to run. “It’s supposed to help bring out psychic qualities,” she said.
“Oh my God,” breathed Dana. “It’s not the tea. I’ve been breathing it ever since I started coming here for yoga, haven’t I? For weeks. You’ve been getting me high for weeks. Why would you do this?”
“She didn’t,” said a voice. “The incense was only for special students.”
Dana whipped around as a man walked slowly toward them from the back of the store. He wore loose black pants and a blue velour shirt embroidered with spinning suns and planets. He bent and picked up Angelo’s knife.
“A good blade.” He tossed it aside and drew another from under the hem of his shirt. “But I prefer my own,” said Sunlight.
CHAPTER 82
Beyond Beyond
9:36 P.M.
And the world, which had been hanging on its last, twisted hinge, broke off and fell.
Dana stared in horror.
Corinda covered her mouth with a hand, as if trying to hold back the kind of scream that would tear her apart. On the floor, Angelo tried to rise, his body twitching and shuddering, but then he collapsed back and lay still, arms and legs spread wide.
Standing at the edge of the shadows, Sunlight looked from one to the other and then back at Dana. “And now, my girl, do you understand?”
Dana said nothing.
“Are you ready, Dana, to help me wash this world clean of sin and weakness and impurity?”
Her lips moved, and Dana heard herself echo the words. “Wash it clean? How?”
“With blood, of course,” said Sunlight, taking a few small steps forward. “That is always the way. Blood is the life. No, let me be more precise: blood is the pathway to life. We are all born in blood, are we not? Born in blood and pain, screaming our way into this world. This is no different. The Red Age is upon us, and we sacred few will usher it in. We will be the midwives for the birth of a better world to come.”
“You’re—you’re—”
“The word you’re fumbling for is ‘prophet,’” he said. “And every prophet must be mad by the standards of the ordinary world, for they see a different world that is beyond the vision of the sheep. For thousands of years, people like us—yes, us—have been hunted and stoned and crucified and burned because we see a larger world than the rest of the human herd can ever see. And in each age of the world, when a prophet comes to preach of a better world to come, he is killed. His own blood is spilled as a sacrifice to stupidity and fear and closed-mindedness. The Christ of your faith was beaten and whipped and nailed to a tree for speaking of a better world to come. There have been many others. That ends here, with me, with us, tonight.”