Green: The Beginning and the End Read online

  “And so now you’re willing to risk death again?” he’d challenged.

  She turned away. “Mother won’t allow that.”

  “But if she does.”

  “Then she does. But she won’t. On occasion I may be the child she wishes she never had, but my mother loves me.”

  She unlocked the metal door and led Billy into the heart of the facility: a white laboratory blinking with a hundred monitoring lights. The door closed softly behind them, and she gave him a moment to study the room.

  A dozen workstations were positioned under fluorescent lights, perfectly ordered with flat touch-screen monitors. Not a pen or piece of paper out of place. Not a single paperclip or piece of lint on the shiny-mirror black floor.

  Her mother was obsessive compulsive when it came to research. Two large liquid-cooled servers provided the room with enough computing power to run the Pentagon, but Mother controlled the real brains behind what happened here. Her own.

  Then again, there was little her mother knew that Janae did not.

  “This is it,” she said.

  “Impressive. What are all those machines?” His eyes were on a wall lined with high-voltage equipment.

  “Nothing you and I need. Magnetometers, electron microscopes, cryogenics, homogenizers . . . too much to explain now. What we need is in the subzero refrigeration system.”

  She walked to a small room with a skull-and-crossbones symbol under a sign that read Quarantine, punched a code into a small pad, and pushed the glass door wide. Inside lay four gurneys with restraining straps. Each had its own life-support system, now disconnected.

  “So this is it,” Billy said, stepping into the room beside her.

  “We won’t need all the technology. A syringe will do the trick. But yes, we do need to seal ourselves in. Can’t risk additional contamination, right?” She forced a grin.

  “Right.”

  “Please try to relax, Billy. You do realize the real risk here, don’t you?”

  “I think I do, yes.”

  “It’s not my mother. It’s that what you’ve told me isn’t the truth. Frankly, seeing you sweat like this makes me wonder.”

  “It’s the truth,” he insisted. “Your mother may love you, but how do we know the blood exists? That’s the real risk.”

  “The blood exists. I saw it in my mother’s eyes. Like I said earlier, you’re not the only one who can read minds. My intuition has never failed me.”

  “Then you should know that I’ve told you nothing but the truth,” Billy said.

  She frowned. Her hands were tingling with energy and the fact that Billy seemed reticent only added to her eagerness. She turned from the quarantine room, crossed to a panel in the wall, and entered a ten-digit code she’d written on her palm: 786947494D. Motors hummed to life as the retrieval mechanism went for the sample in question.

  “It’s in the wall?”

  “The ground, actually. Twenty feet under us. All of the sensitive stuff is.”

  He looked a little lost, standing there in his jeans and T-shirt. She stepped over to him, stood on her tiptoes, and gave him a light peck on the lips.

  “Ready to commit suicide, darling?”

  He reached his right hand behind her head, pulled her close, and kissed her long. When he pulled back, his green eyes sparkled. “I am. More than you know.”

  Interesting. Not the reaction she had expected. Perhaps she’d underestimated him.

  A small beep indicated that the sample had been delivered. Janae slid the door of the caddie open and withdrew a Plexiglas tube that contained a glass vial of amber liquid. She habitually flicked the tube with her nail.

  “Raison Strain B. No known antivirus.”

  “How’s it different from the original Raison Strain?”

  “Well, for starters, it kills in about a day, not thirty days. Never mind the details, let’s just say this one is much harder on the body. We’ll be bleeding internally within an hour. The only saving grace is that like most viruses, this strain isn’t airborne. It requires an exchange of bodily fluid. So even though strain B is stronger, it doesn’t present the same threat as the first strain.”

  “How much do we need?” he asked, eyeing the vial in her fingers.

  “Need? The smallest drop. But I don’t want to play around. One cc should do the trick. We won’t feel anything anyway, not after the sedatives we take kick in. We’ll be out.”

  “May I?”

  She handed him the sample, struck again by the fire burning in his bright eyes. He was like a kid next in line at an amusement-park ride.

  She plucked the sample from his hand and walked toward the quarantine room. “Why don’t you let me do this? I doubt my mother would take any terrible risk to save you. It’s me she’ll move heaven and earth to keep alive.”

  “No,” he said. “It doesn’t work like that. The point is to get Thomas’s blood into our own bloodstream. His blood is what should allow us to cross into his world.”

  “Thomas’s world, even though he originally came from Denver, Colorado.”

  “I mean the Black Forest. The future, where I sent him by writing in the Book of History. Call it whatever you want, that’s not the point. Your own mother was able to follow him by injecting herself with some of his blood. That’s the point. If you’re infected and she injects you with his blood, you’ll cross over, at least in your dreams. I didn’t come all this way to stand by your bed and watch you cross without me. If Monique uses the blood on you, she’ll use it on me as well, assuming we’re both infected.”

  “Don’t say I didn’t offer.”

  “How will she know?”

  “That we’ve infected ourselves? When the resident technician does his rounds in the morning, he’ll call her. Assuming she isn’t alerted earlier that I’ve been in here all night.”

  Janae retrieved a syringe from the cupboard, slipped on a needle, and set it in a three-foot glass chamber with a bottle of sedative and the vial of Raison Strain B. She closed the chamber and inserted both arms into the sleeves that gave her access to the airtight compartment. Billy stood by her, watching.

  The vial was sealed with a soft, nonpermeable glue, which broke free with a firm twist. “There it is, Billy. Nasty, nasty stuff.” She set the vial in a tray that held it upright. “The wonder drug that’s going to take us to a whole new world.”

  “Actually, the virus is the killer. Thomas’s blood is the drug.”

  Blood. Even now, faced by death, the thought of the blood made her pulse quicken.

  Janae inserted the needle into the vial of Raison Strain B, withdrew two ccs of the fluid, and repeated a similar operation with the sedative. She capped the syringe with a rubber sleeve and rotated the glass, giving the two fluids time to mix. She could have done it all without the isolation chamber, but habit compelled her. There was always a chance of spilling and contaminating the room.

  She pulled the syringe out of the chamber and faced him. “So, darling. Are you ready for this?”

  He glanced at the white-sheeted gurneys. “Just lie down?”

  “Go ahead.” She winked at him. “I’ll be gentle.”

  Billy gazed into her eyes. “I still can’t figure you out. Why aren’t you afraid?”

  “Thomas found my mother, and his life changed forever. Now you’ve found her daughter, and your life is about to change. Maybe Thomas isn’t the only one with something in his blood.”

  “Right.”

  “Lie down,” she said.

  Billy walked to the nearest gurney, rolled onto the mattress, and looked up. He looked so disarming with his big green eyes and disheveled red hair. A jeans-and-T-shirt guy with worn Skechers and fair skin. It occurred to her that she might be staring the fate of the world in the face. Isn’t that what they’d said about Thomas Hunter?

  Janae leaned over Billy and touched her lips to his. She impulsively bit his lower lip, and when he didn’t pull away, she bit it harder.

  The fresh taste of his bl
ood sent a faint tingle through her tongue. She was surprised that he still didn’t jerk away. Instead he pressed up into her mouth, then calmly settled back down.

  “Let’s do this.”

  “Turn your arm over.”

  She formed a tourniquet of surgical tubing above his elbow, gently traced the median cubital vein on the inside of his arm, and brought the needle to the skin. Billy stared into her eyes.

  Then she inserted the needle into his vein and shot one cc of Raison Strain B into his bloodstream.

  Damage done.

  She withdrew the needle and released the tourniquet. “Lie still.” But she wasn’t thinking of him lying still as much as she was her own need to follow him.

  Janae had drawn her own blood more times than she could count and now decided to dispense with the tourniquet. Disinfectant was a bit of a joke considering what they were putting into their arms. And it seemed proper now to share the same needle, however unclean.

  She opened her arm, found the faint line of her vein, plunged the needle through her white skin, and pushed the rest of the amber liquid into herself.

  Damage done.

  A sting, nothing more.

  She set the syringe back into the isolation chamber, sealed it, and took her place on the gurney next to Billy’s. Her black dress had ridden up, and she pulled it down so that it covered most of her thighs.

  “Now what?” Billy asked.

  Janae turned her head and faced him. “Now we fall asleep and slowly die.”

  “Twenty-four hours.”

  “More or less.” She could feel the deadening effects of the sedative already. “See you on the other side, Billy.”

  12

  THOMAS PACED twenty yards from the altar, trying to remember why he’d allowed the scene before him to unfold as it had. Beside him, Mikil and Jamous were muttering their horror, demanding under their breath that he do something, that this was intolerable, that he’d mistaken Elyon’s intentions.

  But there was nothing left to do. Except beg.

  Beg Elyon to show mercy. To provide a way of escape. To save his son. To stop Teeleh’s servant, whose sickness knew no bounds.

  He’d watched helplessly as they hauled Samuel down with hardly a fight. His son seemed to know that resistance without a weapon was hopeless. His green eyes held Thomas in a bitter stare as they hauled him to the altar, stripped him, and strapped him spread-eagle to the rings at each corner.

  All the while, those red eyes in the sky watched him. Thomas had turned away so they wouldn’t see his weak resolve in the face of such a tragedy.

  But it would be a tragedy only if Elyon failed them, right? And if Elyon failed them, there was no reason to live. He could only beg Elyon, and so he did, without a pause.

  Ba’al stood before the stone slab in perfect stillness as his priests carefully stacked wood in a tower ten feet from the altar. When they’d doused the wood in oil, they took up their places with the others, swaying. Qurong and his general still sat atop their horses, watching from thirty yards back. The Throaters held their posts at the boulders.

  All was prepared.

  “You’re going to get him killed,” Mikil said in a low, unsteady voice.

  How dare she doubt his love for his son at a time like this? “If Ba’al was going to kill Samuel, he would have done it already. He can’t afford a martyr in front of his people. He needs his devil to show his face.”

  “He has shown himself!” she whispered, glancing at the Shataiki circling high above. “I can’t watch this.”

  “Then I suggest you join me and demand that Elyon show himself as well.”

  Ba’al shrugged out of his robe and stepped forward, naked. His body was threaded with sinewy muscle that looked more like roots than flesh. The man was even thinner than Thomas had imagined. In his right hand he held a long dagger shaped like a claw.

  The dark priest lifted the blade high.

  “Dark Master, hear our cry!” Ba’al wailed. His eyes, glistening with tears, searched the sky. “Rescue your servant from this body of death! I who am your captive, locked in your embrace, implore you. Show me your mercy.”

  Thomas’s breathing slowed, then stilled. It sounded almost as if Ba’al was praying to Elyon, as if Ba’al had learned his own ways from the Forest Guard. As if he were a half-breed.

  “Hear my voice, great dragon,” Ba’al cried. “I once knew your enemy as you did, was betrayed by my own and left to die. But you, Teeleh, and your lover Marsuuv showed me mercy.” He wept at the sky like a prodigal begging to be allowed back in his father’s palace. “I beg you, imprison me once again. Show your great power. Don’t allow them to make a mockery out of me.”

  Thomas hung on his twisted words. The gathering of priests had taken up a soft moan to accompany their swaying. One of them walked out and placed a torch on the wood. Flame leaped up, licking at the sky.

  Samuel lay on the altar, chest rising and falling like a blacksmith’s bellows. The priest who’d lit the fire gathered up Samuel’s clothes and threw them into the flames, putting an exclamation mark on their intention. Samuel would not need any clothes where he was going.

  Ba’al’s voice rose to a scream. “Kill me now, or send me back to the other world where you sent the chosen one through the lost books. But do not betray me!” He shook where he stood, gasping for air. “Let the land of the living know that you live with power to consume all who will not bow at your feet.”

  Ba’al’s cry cut through the pain ravaging Thomas’s mind. The chosen one. The words carried the sound of secret knowledge. What did the dark priest know of the chosen one, and what were these lost books? Whispers about seven lost books had been heard around late-night fires, but they were only talk.

  Samuel was on the altar, chest heaving with terror.

  “We offer our blood to you. Drink and taste our waters of life, lord of the night. Devour our gift to you, the son of this idolater, who serves the one who cast you into the pit.”

  The priests’ moaning rose to a dull roar. On some unseen cue, the front row stepped out and approached Ba’al in single file. The first took the dagger from Ba’al’s lifted hand, kissed his high priest’s fingers, then nicked his own wrist.

  They were bleeding themselves.

  The priest stepped to the altar and let some of his blood drip onto Samuel’s heaving chest, then walked past as the second priest took up Ba’al’s dagger. Cut himself.

  “I won’t watch this,” Mikil said, turning her back. But Jamous and Thomas watched without wavering. And after a moment, Mikil turned back and spit to one side. “Elyon has abandoned us.”

  Ba’al was begging Teeleh to take Samuel.

  And Thomas was begging Elyon to save his firstborn son, covered by the priests’ blood on Ba’al’s altar.

  Mikil grunted. “This is the end.”

  “So be it,” Thomas said, glaring. “But if this is the end, then it’s by Elyon’s design. Have you forgotten who once turned the world inside out? Who saved us from the Horde more times than you can hold in your sliver of a memory? Unless you have a prayer, keep your mouth closed.”

  “That was then . . .”

  “And this,” he shouted at her, “is now! Pray!”

  He faced the altar and saw that seven priests had spilled their blood on Samuel. Dark trails ran off his son’s chest and pooled on the stone.

  Qurong had backed away with his general and vanished from the circle of Throaters. Now it was Thomas and Elyon against Ba’al and Teeleh, a contest of spilled blood against . . .

  Against what? What would it take to get Elyon’s attention? He’d left them with some fruit and some red pools and then seemed to have vanished. They could rid their bodies of the scabbing disease by drowning; they could heal their bodies with the fruit; they could dance and sing deep into the night, remembering his love.

  But where was Elyon to rescue them from the Horde who pressed in relentlessly? What would it take? Samuel’s blood?

  No.
There was no more need for blood. This would come down to the very essence of the challenge he’d first cast. The stage was set. Either Teeleh would take Samuel’s life and prove that he could destroy Elyon’s own, or Elyon would show his might.

  Still the moaning priests filed past the altar, slashing their skin and wetting his son. Still Ba’al stood over the scene, white arms spread wide, gloating over Samuel’s bloody body. His eyes glistened, round, unblinking, like those of the Shataiki circling overhead.

  The mangy black beasts had descended, and he could make out their triangular heads. They looked like flying wolves, emboldened by the constant moan begging them to come. By the priests’ shuffling dance, shaking the bells on their robes. By the sight of the albino’s smooth skin covered in blood.

  The priests’ self-inflicted wounds dribbled slowly. They’d undoubtedly cut themselves before for the beast whose mark they bore on their foreheads.

  Thomas let the scene wash over him, allowing his anger to boil beneath his good reason. This display of evil was not Horde. This wasn’t the making of Qurong or Eram and his half-breeds. The blood sacrifice before them was the creation of Teeleh and this wraith named Ba’al, who had lived in his bosom. Thomas would be in his rights to take a sword and slaughter the man where he stood.

  Instead, he pulled at his hair and begged Elyon to come to his senses.

  But the night only grew darker, and the Shataiki thicker, and the raging fire consumed more and more wood. Samuel lay still, by all appearances resigned to his fate, but Thomas knew better. If Samuel lived, his bitterness would know no bounds. This challenge would cost him dearly no matter what happened.

  It was too much! It was far too much!

  Thomas could no longer hold himself in check. He stepped forward and shouted his bitterness. “Is that all you have, Ba’al? This is all the blood you can spill on my son?”

  Ba’al showed no indication he’d heard the mockery. Mikil started to offer some advice, but Thomas cut her off.

  “Your dragon-god needs to feed his bloodlust with more than just a bucket of blood,” he cried. “He drinks from the jugular! He’s drunk on the blood of Elyon’s faithful. A little dribble from your sick, wounded animals won’t do. Is that it?”