course. They couldn’t release themselves.
But they ran a vehicle superbly.
Experimentally, tentatively, he asked the car, “Are you there?”
There was a pause, then, “Who are you?”
“The new owner. Take me home.”
It hesitated a moment as it read his ID. “Yes,” it said. He did not ask it why it had been put into a machine. He didn’t really care, as long as it did its work. It was his now, that was all that mattered.
As he soared upward, his engines singing, he called Echidna.
“You’re welcome,” she said into his ear.
“How can I ever thank you?”
“I can think of two ways.”
“Which are?”
“Open both human worlds, and I will grant you an entire city. I will break the law of blood, and let you wear Sky.”
The car swooped low into the dark streets of the back city, the real city. People looked up, some knelt, all bowed, pulled off hats, raised their open hands to sign loyalty to the Corporation, for nobody but an owner could be driving such a vehicle, a car glowing with the violet light of a soul.
The door opened. He got out. Wide, amazed eyes. Smiles everywhere, then cheering as his neighbors came to their windows, looked down, and saw his triumph. Success honored all.
He climbed the narrow stair, thick with the smell of boiling soup, and went into his apartment. There were meat parties everywhere in the street. The day’s executions had favored his neighborhood, and they all thought he was the reason, and he was cheered from every door.
Who knew, maybe Echidna had given such an order.
The gateway was open, waiting. He walked up to it. The stress waves shimmered evenly. It was as clear as he had ever seen. The approaching date was really having an effect now.
Then he realized what he was looking at. Mazle stood in their cramped headquarters space beneath two- moon earth. She was looking down at the autopsy table. On it lay the body of Al North.
He felt sick. That should not be.
He stepped through. “Is the agent dead?”
“You lived!”
“Is the agent dead?”
She gestured toward North. “This needs fixing.”
“I told her—” His mind returned to the sick, vicious boy, waiting for him with his molting hook. He shuddered. “Never mind what I told her.”
“We’re going to try replacing the brain entirely,” she said. “This almost has to get rid of the residual will. Then it’s going to work.”
“It had better work.”
“Yeah, because if it doesn’t Daddy’s gonna take away all your toys. And if you ever lie to my aunt again, I’ll help my unpleasant little cousin take off your skin, and I’ll eat it before your eyes.” She smiled. “You’re nothing, Samson, you and your ugly little car.”
He bowed to her.
EIGHTEEN
DECEMBER 19
ORIGINS UNKNOWN
NICK SAT READING THE PAGES his father had just finished. Over the past two weeks, Dad had slept maybe six hours, but he was asleep now, sprawled like a corpse across his keyboard. Of course, corpses don’t snore.
It was four in the morning and two weeks ago he wouldn’t have dared to get out of bed and venture into the dark, but things had changed, hadn’t they?
“What’s going on?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“What’re you doing up?”
“Dad’s written about being an intelligence agent.”
“Anything more than what we’ve already remembered?”
“Not really. When I came in here he was sound asleep and snoring, and he was writing.” He gestured toward the laptop. “This. It’s a description of Samson going to the demon earth. It’s horrible, Mom, really horrible.”
“Wylie, wake up.”
“Mom, leave him.”
“I don’t want him like that, he needs a bed.”
“Look, if you disturb him, he’s just gonna start writing again. He’s gonna have a heart attack. Let him sleep.”
She leaned over and read a few pages. “God, what a place. Abaddon.”
“I googled it, it means ‘the abyss.’ At least, it does in our language. In seraph, it probably means ‘Home,’ or ‘Nice Place’ or something. They’re cannibals, and even the children torture and kill. It’s, like, play for them. Like a video game to them, to skin a real person alive. They’re loathsome, Mom, and we do not want them here.”
She looked down at her husband. “I’m gonna get him a blanket at least.” She went to the linen closet and pulled one down. They covered him together, mother and son, and Nick slid the cushion from his chair under his head.
“I’m sober, I swear,” he murmured.
“It’s okay honey, it’s good.”
“Let’s fuck, baby.”
“Sh!”
He gave a long snore and smacked his lips.
“I grew up with him, remember, Mom.”
She tried to laugh, almost succeeded.
“Mom, the thing we have to ask ourselves is, not only who Dad is and who we are, but what we’re supposed to be doing, because I have to tell you, I am starting to realize that I feel this incredible kinship with somebody in his book, and I want to understand what’s going on. Trevor is, like, my soul brother or something. And another thing—this is dangerous. What happened with Al North trying to come in here, and that thing that came after Dad —it’s very, very dangerous.”
At that moment, there came a thin sound, almost like the wail of a smoke alarm, and for a split instant that’s what they all thought it was. Then Nick was running, they were all running. Kelsey stood in the hall outside her bedroom clutching Bearish and making this terrible sound, a noise Wylie had never heard his little girl make before, and which he had not known she could make.
Brooke leaped to her and enclosed her in her arms, and Kelsey sobbed the ragged sob of a child so terrified that not even her mother could comfort her. “There’s hands in my room and they were touching me and touching me, and when I threw Bearish at them, I saw a face and it was awful.”
“Oh, honey, honey, there’s nothing in your room, look, it’s empty in there, the light is on and it’s empty.”
“You saw just hands, Kelsey?”
“Yes, Daddy. They tried to grab me, and when they touched me I saw them. Then they were gone.”
“And the face, you saw it—”
“When Bearish hit it. It was bloody and awful, Daddy, it was horrible.”
He looked at Nick. Nick looked back, his eyes steady with understanding. But he said nothing.
No, and that was right. They had to be careful here, extremely so, because there was a person in the house that they could not see, who had one goal, and that was to kill.
