Green: The Beginning and the End Page 6

  Billy held her in his green-eyed gaze. He’d been places, this one. For a few seconds she felt as though she was the lesser here, that he’d come to seduce her, to win his way into whatever prize he sought.

  Was he really reading her mind? It seemed preposterous. She couldn’t feel anything that suggested his mind was probing hers, peeling back the layers of her thoughts, her deepest secrets.

  “No, not yet,” he said. “Those I’ll save until later.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your secrets.”

  So it was true, then.

  “Of course it is.”

  Janae turned back to the ottoman and lifted one of the glasses. And now can you?

  No response.

  No, not when my eyes are averted or covered. How fascinating.

  She drilled him with a long stare and slowly brought her glass to her lips, allowing him to crawl as deep as he wanted into her mind.

  She sipped at the cool liquid, felt it slip down her throat. “And what do you see now, hmm? Anything you like?”

  “I see evil,” he said.

  “Oh?” She suppressed a stab of alarm. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “Depends.”

  “On whom, me or you?”

  “On us,” he said. “It depends on us.”

  She knew then that she liked this redheaded man named Billy. She liked him very much.

  “Sit with me, Billy. Eat with me. Tell me why you’ve come into my world.”

  THEY TALKED for an hour, and with each passing minute Janae’s anticipation for the next grew. From the moment Billy had climbed inside of her mind and found this so-called evil in her, she knew there would be no hiding from him.

  More to the point, she didn’t want to hide from him.

  They talked about a host of topics, taking their time to slowly unravel each other’s lives. He’d spent his childhood in Colorado, though he didn’t share many details, before becoming a defense attorney in Atlantic City. He then went on to Washington with an old flame of his named Darcy Lange.

  “Darcy Lange, huh? You serious?”

  “You know her?”

  “She was all over the news a few years back,” Janae said, curling her legs back on the Queen Anne chair. She took a teaspoon of caviar and brought it to her mouth. “Stunning creature.”

  “Yes. Can’t deny that. We were . . . you have to understand about Darcy and me. We both started young, in the . . . the . . . you know, the libraries below the monastery.”

  “Monastery? You met her in a monastery?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” He was hiding something. “We were kids, and we drifted apart until this whole Tolerance Act thing, when these gifts of ours came out. We had a thing, but it’s different now. Our interests have . . . aren’t exactly in line.”

  “Look, my beloved little redhead, if you expect me to open up my mind to you, I expect you to quit hiding yours.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You’re lying with every other word.” She stood up and moved away from the chairs. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. Honestly, I have enough on my plate. The last thing I need is some guy playing games with me.”

  “No, it’s not like that.”

  “Whatever. Are you finished? I’ll send a maid to collect the tray.”

  “What?” He stood, spilling some crumbs off the napkin on his lap. “No, that’s not what—”

  “Why, Mr. Rediger, should I give you even an ounce of my attention?” She knew why, but they had to find a way onto a level field of play.

  “It’s worth it, trust me.”

  “I’m not in the mood to trust a man who can glance into my eyes and see things I can’t even see myself. You’ll have to do better.”

  “How?”

  “For starters, come clean. Tell me how you came to read people’s minds.”

  “I will.”

  She walked back toward him. “Tell me about Thomas’s blood.” Even as the words left her mouth, she could taste her desire for whatever Billy might bring her.

  She didn’t understand the desire herself. As a child she’d always been fascinated by red blood, whether in a movie or from a cut or in the laboratory, vials of blood used for endless tests.

  Billy had gone rigid. “You know about the blood?”

  “You mentioned it in my mother’s office, remember?”

  His eyes searched hers. “So that’s all you know.”

  He’d expected more, had searched her mind already and found nothing. But she wasn’t finished.

  “I have some secrets that not even you can extract, at least not without skills far more seductive than reading a mind. Tell me about this blood.”

  He slowly sat. Crossed one leg over the other. Janae stood before him, arms folded, challenging.

  “You’ve heard of the Books of History?” he asked, then answered himself after a glance in her eyes. “No, you haven’t. They are a set of books that recorded the truth of all happenings, exactly as they happened. Pure history. The books of life, you might call them. But they aren’t ordinary books. Whatever is written in blank Books of History will actually happen. The wills of humans can be bent by them, but not forced. Inanimate objects, on the other hand, can be manipulated at will. You could write, ‘This room is red,’ in one of those books, and the room would instantly become red.”

  “Now you’re—”

  “Patronizing me,” he finished for her. “Yet it’s true. How else do you think I can read your mind?”

  What was he saying? Reading minds was one thing, turning a room red with a few words written in a book was another thing.

  “Another thing, yes, but true. Sit.” Then, “Please, just sit down and let me explain myself to you.”

  She eased herself into the chair but didn’t bother relaxing her arms.

  “From what I’ve been able to piece together, the blank books came from another time, presumably two thousand years in our future. They were brought here by Thomas Hunter and they turned up many years later in a monastery, where I found them and wrote in them. Long story, a kind of showdown that would take a few days to explain. Regardless, one of the things I wrote was that I would have special powers. Twelve years later they began to manifest themselves. So now I can read your mind. It’s that simple.”

  She unfolded her arms and set her hands in her lap. There was a finality to his voice that robbed her of any objection. “You’re serious,” she managed.

  “Dead.”

  “And you want to know about the blood.”

  “It was said that Thomas Hunter’s blood allowed him to . . . travel, shift, whatever you want to call it, between here and there. Anyone whose blood came in contact with Thomas’s blood could make the shift as well, at least in their dreams. And I do believe that both Kara Hunter and your mother know this as fact. I think they’ve both done it.”

  “With the blood?” Janae’s heart started to beat more deliberately. “They . . . you’re saying they used this blood to cross into another reality?”

  He eyed her. She was betraying her deep attraction to his suggestions, but she couldn’t hide from him, could she? So she didn’t try.

  “You’re saying that’s possible?”

  “I think it’s been done. I know they kept a vial of his blood for just this reason.” He stood and walked in a small circle, fingers scratching his cheek. “You have to know, these Books of History are my history. I’m who I am because of them. My life is ruined because—”

  “Where are these books?”

  He looked at her, apparently put off at having been interrupted.

  “You’re sure the blood is still around, that it exists?” she asked. “I mean, what if they did destroy it like they claim? My mother said she sent it to our lab in Indonesia, where it was incinerated. The lab doesn’t even exist today.”

  “Slow down. Take a deep breath. Do you think I would’ve come halfway across the world if I wasn’t sure?”

>   Janae stood, unable to hide the desire to know what he knew, to strip this knowledge from his history and to own it. Why? But even as the thoughts whispered through her mind, she was aware that he was also aware of them.

  Billy blinked at her. “What are you hiding from me?”

  “Nothing. How can I?”

  “You can’t. So why are you so desperate to know what I know?”

  “I . . .” What could she say if she herself didn’t know? “I don’t know. What would you do if you learned that your mother had a vial of blood that could take you to another world?”

  Her pulse was now a steady hammer in her ears.

  “You’d think it was preposterous,” she answered for him. “But then what?”

  “Then you’d want to possess it,” he said.

  “Assuming it exists.”

  “It does.”

  She looked away and tried to still her irrational eagerness to stand here while he reeled her in like a helpless fish.

  “Until today I was convinced that I was the only person on this planet who was qualified to find and use that blood,” Billy said. “But now I think you may be another.”

  “Because you need me?”

  “Because there’s something inside you that I’ve never seen. And I’ve probed the minds of a lot of people.”

  “What’s that? Evil?” She walked away from him. “I can’t believe I’ve never heard of any of this before today. She hid it from me all this time?”

  “It’s not exactly the kind of thing you want anyone to know.”

  She spun back. “I’m her daughter!”

  “Even more reason to protect you.”

  He really did believe all of this, and the idea was becoming only slightly familiar to her. Familiar, not reasonable, not in the least, because what Billy was suggesting made no sense at all. Who’d ever heard of such a thing?

  But it did have a ring of familiarity to it.

  “Give me a few hours and I’ll tell you a few things that will remove any doubt from your mind,” Billy said. “The books exist. There’s a journal that talks about them, written by a Saint Thomas hundreds of years ago. They called him the beast hunter. Never saw the book, but I’ve interviewed two people in Europe who have. I’m telling you there’re connections between our worlds that would make your head spin.”

  “Beast hunter,” she repeated.

  “Saint Thomas the Beast Hunter,” he said. “But it’s the blank books that interest me more. Like the ones I wrote in during my life in the monastery. I believe they still exist, probably in the safe keeping of Thomas Hunter. His blood is a sure way to get to him. I want you to help me find the blood.”

  The notion overtook her with such savagery that she felt compelled to turn her face away. Such raw desire was unbecoming.

  “Will you?”

  I will, Billy. I will use you to feed my own needs.

  The thought surprised her. At least it had been guarded. She cleared her mind and faced him again.

  “Maybe.”

  Janae walked up to him and allowed a smile to caress her face. She placed her hand on his chest and ran it up over his head, through his unkempt hair.

  “Might be fun.”

  “I don’t care if you do use me,” he said, cutting to the heart of the matter. “I have to do this, with or without you.”

  Interesting. Her deception didn’t bother him. This alone increased her admiration of him.

  Janae stood on her toes, leaned forward and touched her lips to his. Then she turned and glided back to the chair.

  “Tell me more, Billy. Tell me everything.”

  6

  The Future

  QURONG MARCHED the path along the muddy lake in his nightclothes, a white and purple robe woven from silk that swished around his knees with each reach of his leg. The moon was absent from the black sky. Qurongi City, named after himself five years earlier, slept except for the stray dog, the priests in the Thrall, and him.

  Well, yes, he had awakened Patricia and Cassak. No king should have to visit the high priest in the dead of night without his wife and general at hand. Ba’al had sent his servant an hour ago, demanding that Qurong rush to the Thrall for a most critical audience.

  “Slow down,” Patricia snapped, close at his heels.

  He planted his foot and swung back. “The first sensible thing you’ve said all night. Why he insists I leave the palace to join him in the Thrall at this hour is beyond me, but I’m telling you, this had better be the stuff of life and death to every living being or I’ll make him pay for this arrogance.”

  She stopped and glared with gray eyes. Patricia had always been provocative when angry, but in the wake of his latest ailment—this ceaseless wrenching in his gut that denied him sleep—he felt only annoyance. She’d taken a moment to apply a dusting of morst to her face and to throw on a hooded black silk robe that covered her body from head to heel. Her stark white face peered from the hood like a ghost. The tattoo of three hooked claws on her forehead had been perfectly placed, red and black against her white skin.

  “Watch your tongue, you brute,” she cautioned. “We’re out in the open here.”

  “With whom? My general, who’d die for me?” He flung his hand out toward the dark city on the other side of the black lake. “Or with the rest of these rodents under Ba’al’s spell?”

  “Commander!” Her term when she was beyond despair. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Yes, I’ve finally misplaced my senses! Ba’al will have a reason to make a play for the throne, and I’ll be forced to kill him. Such a tragedy. You’re quite sweet to suggest it, my bride.”

  Qurong swung around and continued his march toward the Thrall, lit by the glow of flaming torches in the temple’s towers and doors.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Patricia objected.

  “No, of course you don’t wish Ba’al dead. You’d likely prefer to kiss his feet.”

  “You’re a double-minded oaf, Q. One minute you wake me, insisting that I offer a sacrifice to Teeleh to heal your ailments, and the next you curse him and his high priest. Which is it? Do you love Teeleh or do you hate him?”

  “I serve him. I am his slave. Does that mean that I must drink his blood and have his children?”

  “If he demands it.”

  “Let’s just hope this aching in my belly isn’t his growing child.”

  “That would be a sight,” his ranking general, Cassak, said behind them.

  Patricia wasn’t finished. “If you serve Teeleh, you serve Ba’al. One of these days you’ll get that through your thick skull.”

  “Like I served Witch, then Ciphus? Then Sucrow, now this wretch Ba’al?”

  “Stop!”

  This time when he caught her eye, he saw he’d gone too far. The lines of her ghostly face were etched with fear.

  “You will not speak about him that way in my presence!” she said.

  “And what am I, your poodle to play with?” Qurong demanded. Then, with a clenched fist, “I am Qurong! The world bows at my feet and cowers under my army! Remember whose bed you share.”

  “Yes. You are Qurong and I love Qurong, leader of all that is right in this cursed world. I am humbled to have known you, much more to be called your wife.”

  She was toying with him, he thought, only half-serious, but enough for Cassak to believe it all.

  Patricia continued. “And you will show your love for me by keeping me away from danger.”

  “You’re more afraid of that witch than of me?”

  “Of course. You love me. Ba’al hates us both, and his hatred would only be aggravated if he heard you speak of Teeleh or him the way you do.”

  Qurong frowned, but his fight was gone.

  A sharp pang of pain cut through his belly, and he resumed his march down the muddy path that led to the Thrall.

  They walked in silence until they reached the wide steps that rose to the large gate. It was guarded on either side by bronzed statues of th
e winged serpent, a likeness of Teeleh that their first high priest, a scheming character named Witch, had supposedly seen in a vision. Few besides the priests had claimed to see the great beast in these last twenty-five years, since the waters had turned to poison. Woref, the general, had once claimed to have seen Teeleh. In Qurong’s distant memory, Teeleh was more of a bat than a serpent.

  Truth be told, Teeleh was probably a figment of their imagination, a tool the priests used to maintain their hold on power. There had been some sightings of the Shataiki bats that lived in hidden Black Forests, and some of the black bats seemed to have an unexplainable power, but nothing like the power that the priests attributed to them.

  When Qurong first defeated Thomas of Hunter and took the Middle Forest, they had just lost Witch in battle. Upon defeating Thomas and left without a priest, Qurong had cautiously accepted the offer of the half-breed, Ciphus, to protect them from evil. Ciphus introduced them to a strange brew of religion that he called the Great Romance, which involved worshipping both Teeleh and Elyon, the pagan god of the Forest People.

  Ciphus’s time lasted just over a year, until three months after the albinos made off with Chelise, the very same traitor who was now out to poison them all with the red lakes. His daughter had become a she-witch herself.

  What started out as lenience toward the albinos became bitter remembrance, and Qurong had fully supported Sucrow’s bid to kill Ciphus and return the Horde to the worship of Teeleh, the winged serpent who ruled the powers of the air. In his death, Ciphus became a martyr for all half-breeds to revere, emboldening Eram, who soon after defected with the rest of the half-breeds.

  Sucrow’s reign as high priest ended on a goose chase for an amulet that reportedly had great power. Following Sucrow’s death, a priest had come to them from the desert, stood tall upon the Thrall’s highest landing, and declared that Teeleh had chosen him to be high priest of all that was holy and unholy. He claimed to have lived with Teeleh until now, when his time had come. He was the servant of the dragon in the sky. Qurong had seen the people’s awe of this skinny sorcerer and agreed to make him high priest.

  He told himself a thousand times afterward that it had been a mistake. At best, the balance between Qurong’s political power and Ba’al’s religious power was delicate. There would come a time soon when Ba’al would have to die. He was altogether too full of himself, drunk on his own power.