something here,” Edwards replied. “Gonna have to pinpoint the source.”
As he spoke, Edwards reached forward, hand outstretched, and slapped his palm against the speaker’s ankle, the way others of the congregation had.
The woman was surprised by the hard grip, and she stopped midspeech to stare at the shaved-headed man who had grabbed her. “Let go, you’re hurting,” she said.
“Just wanted to touch the sainted lady,” Edwards explained as the robed figures came hurrying toward him from the back of the podium.
“Get away from the glorious widow,” one of the robed goons ordered.
The woman on stage kicked out and stepped back from Edwards, leaving him stumbling forward into the stage. The buzz in his head was there, but it was slight, and touching the so-called Stone Widow didn’t seem to make any appreciable difference.
“I just wanted to,” Edwards said, “to be close to the new life that’s coming.”
“So do I,” another member of the crowd called. “Let me feel the new life.”
“Let me be close,” another shouted.
“And me!”
Suddenly, Kane and Grant found themselves being pushed forward in a human wave as the crowd surged to get closer to the Stone Widow, even as Edwards was shoved violently against the edge of the stage itself.
“Fuck, Edwards, what have you started?” Kane muttered into his Commtact link.
* * *
BENEATH THE STAGE, Domi’s crimson eyes widened as the wooden box began to throb, its contents rattling within.
* * *
CONFUSED, BLACK JOHN Jefferson peered around him, trying to figure out where he was. He was surrounded by jungle, dense foliage thick with sap and the buzzing of insects like a wall of sound on the air. Tiny black flies swarmed about his wounds, feeding on his blood.
There was no real path to speak of, and Jefferson looked behind him, trying to recall if that was the direction he had come from. He had been on board the sinking fishing scow, had dipped under the waves when it had finally disappeared. The wound on his head had felt bastard hot where the sun struck it, but the salty water of the sea had made it sting even worse, doing nothing to cool either his skin or his temperament.
He had floated there awhile, the waves rolling about him, sending him on an undulating journey to wherever they chose. He remembered a beach, golden sand, a jungle running along its edge, palm trees and rubber plants. He had to have blacked out somewhere and had since been running on instinct.
He could recall nights like that when he’d been drunk, and his body had continued functioning anyway, whether his mind was really awake or not. Instinct could do that to a person—the deep-rooted instinct to survive.
Black John pushed the stem of a plant away as it tickled at his nose, shoving it aside with a groan of pain. His body ached and the wounds on his chest were still weeping, a clear pus coming from the broken skin where the bullets had struck, along with tiny slivers of congealing blood like red splinters. He’d kill them; that’s what he’d do. Salt, Six, all of them. They should have followed his number-one creed—to leave no witnesses. Leaving him alive would be the last mistake those ungrateful sea dogs would make.
He battled on, fighting with the foliage, seeking something to vent his anger upon. Then, as he shoved the low branches of a towering palm out of the way, he saw the building. It sat there, nestled in the jungle’s green embrace, as big as a cathedral. Constructed of stone the color of sand, the building had grand, sloping sides and a wide expanse of steps running up its center to a smaller structure that rested at its apex. The walls were notched with carvings, shadowed crevices in some script that the pirate couldn’t recognize but assumed to be written words.
Black John eyed the building, estimating it to be more than three stories in height, but still shorter than the tallest of the palm trees surrounding it.
With nowhere left to turn, Black John trudged toward the structure, wondering if anyone was inside. He was in need of medical attention, he knew, and the blood-spot trail he left on the jungle floor informed him he likely didn’t have that much time left. He reached down for the gun in his holster only to find it was gone. It didn’t matter—whoever lived there would either help him or he’d execute them and then he’d help himself with whatever he could find. In the end, it was always that simple.
Chapter 4
Lakesh stared at the Mercator relief map that stretched across one wall of the operations room, narrowing his eyes to pick out the trails of lights that were currently dark. Like everything else in the ops room, the map had been covered by tendrils of stone during Ullikummis’s violent assault on the redoubt. A tech on a stepladder was working at one side of the map, to the east, chipping away at the stone that had once overwhelmed it, removing its crust sliver by sliver. According to the map, there were plenty of pathways into the old states of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, but there were no mat-trans-ready redoubts in the particular area that Rosalia had indicated. Lakesh shook his head with incredulity; it was almost as though military operations had been warned away from the region, deliberately kept at arm’s length.
Swiveling his chair, Lakesh turned back to his computer, tapping at a key to reengage the darkened screen. While the Cerberus redoubt had been designed to manage the mat-trans system, it was not the only mode of transportation that Lakesh and his people had access to. The interphaser could also tap the quantum pathways and move people through space to specific locations.
While more amenable than the stationary mat-trans, the technology of the interphaser was limited by certain esoteric factors. The full gamut of those limitations had yet to be cataloged, but what was known was that the interphaser was reliant on an ancient web of powerful, hidden lines stretching across the globe and beyond. This network of geomantic energy followed old ley lines and supported a powerful technology so far beyond human comprehension as to appear magical. Though fixed, the interphaser’s destination points often corresponded with the locations of temples, graveyards or similar sites of religious value. Clearly, ancient man had recognized the incredible power that was concentrated at such vortex points, which had been cataloged in the Parallax Points Program. These coordinates had been input into the interphaser.
Lakesh brought up a computer database of the known interphaser destinations; like most of the Cerberus endeavors, one of the IT experts had come up with a computer program that explored its properties.
Lakesh was still working at the problem when Brigid Baptiste and Mariah Falk returned, materializing in the mat-trans chamber like participants in a magic trick. Deep in his calculations, Lakesh had not heard the unit power up in the corner of the room, but when its door opened he looked up from his desk and watched Mariah and Brigid exit the chamber, returning home from their brief excursion to India. Mariah looked buoyant, smiling radiantly and—Lakesh fancied—walking with a skip in her step. A pace behind her, Brigid was solemn, her dour expression fixed. Lakesh had been Brigid’s supervisor back when they had both been archivists in Cobaltville, and they had been colleagues—and friends—for a very long time. Right now, Lakesh was worried about her. What had happened with Ullikummis had put all of them through metaphorical hell, but Brigid had taken it worse than anyone, being turned so absolutely against her own will.
“Brigid, a word?” Lakesh called, raising his hand as the two women paced through the room.
