The Impaler

Yes, the General thought. The Prince required a new doorway. That would heal the wound between them and set the equation right again. That would prove to the Prince that the 9 and 3 were together again.

As the General returned the lion’s head to its proper place, he felt a wave of remorse pass through him. He hoped the Prince, wherever he went during the daytime, could feel how sorry he was. He assumed he could; for the Prince and the General were tied together in the stars. Always had been, and both of them were in too deep to turn back now.

What was the line from Macbeth that Bradley Cox said so poorly? “I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

Macbeth. Bradley Cox. Part of the equation? Everything connected?

There was something there.

Flash-flash—A memory? A dream from the night before?—and suddenly the General understood why the Prince had wanted him to go to the cast party.

Bradley Cox.

The Prince had wanted Bradley Cox—the self-worshipping actor, the vain and promiscuous sinner. That had to be it. But the young man named Edmund had let his recklessness and his obsession with Ereshkigal get in the way. And now it was too late. Now, if he were to take Cox as a soldier, because of their public confrontation, the authorities would focus on Edmund first.

Or would they?

The General knew from his previous consultations with the Prince where he desired the next soldier to be sacrificed. And surely, the authorities would never find him there. Plus, the General could make it look as if Cox had disappeared; could make it look as if he committed suicide or perhaps drowned in the Tar River while swimming drunk. Yes, the General thought, as long as the authorities didn’t find Brad- ley Cox’s body they might never connect his death to Vlad the Impaler. And even if they did, the General and the Prince would be long gone by the time they figured it all out.

It made sense—but the General needed to think about this. It was all coming at him too fast. He couldn’t be sure anymore—he had grown too dependent on the doorways for confirmation of the Prince’s messages, needed time to sort it all out. Perhaps Cox should be the doorway itself. Perhaps—

The gash on his chest cried out, and the General understood. He was wasting his time guessing. First things first: he needed to begin with cleaning up his mess.

The General left the cellar and went up two flights to the upstairs bathroom. He turned on the shower and stepped inside. His wound stung painfully under the hot water, but the General gritted his teeth and took it— washed himself thoroughly, then stood there thinking until the hot water ran out. The cold felt good on his skin, helped numb the pain in his chest and stomach. And when his mind had cleared somewhat, the General toweled off and bandaged himself with some gauze and medical tape he’d originally purchased to help his tattoo heal. How ironic.

Once his wound was properly dressed, the General donned a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and went downstairs to the kitchen and made himself a protein shake. He stood there at the sink, drinking and thinking how pleasant it felt to have the line of coolness running behind the burning gash at the center of his torso. There would be no workout in the horse barn today, he thought; no running across the tobacco fields, either, and no push-ups for a long time if he ever wanted his wound to heal.

“But the wound will heal,” the General whispered. “Eventually.”

He rinsed out his glass and headed into the parlor. The room smelled awful, and the General immediately opened all the windows. Then he rolled up the rug and lugged it out onto the back porch. It was ruined, he decided, and would have to be burned in the yard at some point. The General went back into the kitchen, fetched the mop and bucket from the broom closet, and filled it with hot water and Pine-Sol.

He began in the parlor, following the trail of blood and excrement and mopping carefully as it led him through the front hall and kitchen and back down the cellar stairs to the workroom. The General felt calm and at peace. One step at a time, he thought—the beginning of eventually, of solving the equation. Following the trail told him so. Yes, one could find the Prince’s messages in anything—even in one’s own blood and shit—if one looked closely enough.

“C’est mieux d’oublier,” the General whispered as he mopped the workroom floor. He dumped the bloody-shitty water down the drain in the corner and rinsed out the bucket in the slop sink. And when he went back upstairs and looked at the clock on the kitchen wall, he realized he’d cleaned up the entire mess in just over half an hour.

Satisfied, the General took a deep breath and realized that his T-shirt was sticking to his chest. The temple doors were bleeding again. He would have to take another shower and replace the gauze and medical tape.

Before heading upstairs, however, the General returned to the parlor—was about to close the windows, when suddenly he caught sight of a black SUV coming up the driveway.

The General froze as a crippling wave of fear shot through his body. The SUV looked dangerous, and there was no time to change—no time to wash the blood from his chest! He began to tremble—had to fight the urge to flee—when suddenly something unexpected happened.

It came to him in a flash-flash inside his head, and all at once the General’s fear disappeared.

Chapter 61

Andy Schaap parked his TrailBlazer alongside the white truck at the end of the driveway. He got out and peeked through the driver’s side window. He didn’t know what he expected to find—Blood spatters on the dashboard?—and felt foolish when he saw the truck was clean.

Nonetheless, Schaap couldn’t deny the feeling he got when he pulled onto Sergeant Lambert’s property. The old tobacco farm was the most secluded of the homes he’d visited so far. And had he not been taken so off guard by the little spark of hope clicking away deep inside his stomach, perhaps Andy Schaap might have been more careful.

Indeed, he wanted first to go looking in the old horse barn, perhaps even check out the crumbling tobacco sheds he passed on his way in. And if he had, things might have turned out differently that afternoon. Instead, however, Andy Schaap followed protocol—took out his cred case and headed up onto the front porch.

The old, weather-beaten planks creaked painfully beneath his feet as he came upon a little handwritten sign over the doorbell that read, Please ring. Schaap pressed the button. The sound that came from inside was loud—like a buzzer on a game show, he thought—but afterwards there was only silence, no sign of life within.

Schaap rang the bell again and called out, “Hello? Anybody home?”

Nothing.

Schaap opened the screen door and peered through the inside door’s small, beveled-glass porthole. The house was dark inside, but he could make out an empty hallway with a large staircase at the far end. Something about this place gave him the creeps, but he certainly would need more that that to justify his entering without a warrant. He rang the doorbell again—listening, watching for movement inside—when suddenly he heard a creak on the porch behind him.

Schaap turned just in time to see the man coming up the stairs—a tall, muscular man in a tight black T-shirt. In one moment, Schaap felt a smile form at the corner of his lips; in the next, he saw the man’s gun.

“Freeze!” he shouted, dropping his cred case as he went for the gun beneath his jacket. “FBI!”

But the man coming for him did not freeze.

“Your body is the doorway,” he said, raising his gun.

Time seemed to slow down for Andy Schaap; and amid his terror, he felt the clicking in his stomach travel up his spine and into the back of his head.

That’s a Beretta M9, he said to himself.

A split second later the bullet struck him between the eyes.