,” it said, with a voice that was not sound, but thought. “
.”
Fascinated, repelled, she again tried to withdraw her hand, but it held fast. The face, terrible and beautiful, drew closer to her. It wasn’t real, she told herself, it was only a product of her mind, the image of one of the thangkas she had contemplated for hours on end, now recreated by this intense meditation.
The Kalazyga demon drew her toward the fire. “
”
She took a step toward the fire, hesitated, then took another, almost floating over the carpeting toward the warmth.
“Yes,” said another voice. Pendergast’s voice. “This is good. This is right. Go to the fire.”
As she drew closer to the flames, the heavy guilt and mortification of murder that had lain on her shoulders melted away, replaced by a sense of exhilaration, the intense exhilaration and dark joy she felt when she saw Pendergast’s brother tumble off the edge of
All she had to do was step into the flames.
One more step. The fire radiated its warmth, licking up into her very limbs. She remembered him at the very edge, the two of them locked together in a macabre caricature of sexual union, struggling at the roaring edge of
With a scream, she writhed in the grip of the demon, and with a sudden, immense force of will she managed to break free. She threw herself back from the fire, turned and ran through the door, and suddenly she was falling, falling through the house, through the basements, the sub-cellars, falling . . .
66
THE STORM RAGED BEYOND THE OPEN RAILS OF HALF DECK 7, SPRAY sweeping across the deck despite their being sixty feet above the waterline. Liu could hardly think over the boom of the sea and the bellow of the wind.
Crowley came up, as soaked as he was. “Are we really going to try this, sir?”
“You got a better idea?” Liu replied irritably. “Give me your radio.”
Crowley handed it over.
Liu tuned it to channel 72 and pressed the transmit button. “Liu here, calling Bruce, over.”
“This is Bruce.”
“How do you read me?”
“Five by five.”
“Good. Buckle yourself into the coxswain’s station at the helm. Welch should take the seat across the aisle.”
“Already done.”
“Need any instructions?”
“They seem to be all right here.”
“The lifeboat’s almost completely automatic,” Liu went on. “The engine starts automatically on impact. It’ll drive the lifeboat away from the ship in a straight line. You should throttle down to steerageway speed only—they’ll find you quicker that way. The master panel should be pretty self-explanatory to a nautical man.”
“Right. Got an EPIRB on this crazy boat?”
“Two, and they’re actually the latest GPIRBs, which transmit your GPS coordinates. On impact, the GPIRB automatically activates at 406 and 121.5 megahertz—no action required on your part. Keep the lifeboat’s VHF tuned to emergency channel 16. Communicate with me through channel 72 on your handheld. You’re going to be on your own until you’re picked up—the
“Understood.”
“Questions?”
“No.”
“Ready?”
“Ready.” Bruce’s voice crackled over the handheld.
“Okay. There’s a fifteen-second automatic countdown. Lock down the transmit button so we can hear what happens. Talk to me as soon as possible after you hit.”
“Understood. Fire away.”
Liu turned to the freefall launch control panel. There were thirty-six lifeboats, eighteen on the port side and eighteen on starboard, each with a capacity of up to 150 people. Even launching one boat virtually empty like this, they still had plenty of capacity to spare. He glanced at his watch. If it worked, they’d have fifty minutes to evacuate the ship. A very doable proposition.
He murmured a short prayer.
As he initiated the launch sequence, Liu began to breathe a little easier. It
going to work. These damn boats were overengineered, built to withstand a sixty-foot free fall. They could take the extra strain.
Green across the board. He unlocked the switch that would began the countdown on lifeboat number one, opened the cover. Inside, the little red breaker-lever glowed with fresh paint. This was a hell of a lot simpler than in the old days, when a lifeboat had to be lowered on davits, swinging crazily in the wind and roll of the ship. Now all you had to do was press a lever; the boat was released from its arrestors, slid down the rails, and fell sixty feet to land, nose first, in the sea. A few moments later it bobbed to the surface and continued on, driving away from the ship. They’d been through the drill many times: drop to recovery took all of six seconds.
“You read, Bruce?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Hang on. I’m releasing the switch.”
He pulled the red lever.
A woman’s voice sounded from a speaker mounted overhead. “Lifeboat number one launching in fifteen seconds. Ten seconds. Nine, eight . . .”
The voice echoed in the metal-walled half deck. The countdown ran out; there was a loud
