The Wheel of Darkness

here. It was the one place in his memory construct so well defended that nobody—even his own brother, Diogenes—could ever penetrate.

The fire crackled in the grate, and candles guttered on the side tables. The air was perfumed by woodsmoke. He waited, his breathing gradually slowing. Just being back in the warm indirect light had a calming effect on him. His heartbeat decelerated. To think that, not long before, he had sat in this room, meditating with Constance, taking on new and unimagined mental powers. It was ironic, even slightly mortifying. But no matter. Soon—very soon—the danger would pass and he could emerge again. He’d been frightened, badly frightened, and with good reason: the thing that had already enveloped him in the physical world had almost enveloped him in the psychical world as well. He had been mere minutes from having his life, his memories, his soul, everything that defined him as a human being, rent asunder. Butit would not penetrate here. It could not, never, never . . .

All at once he felt that sensation again, close on the back of his neck: a moist, chill breath of clammy air, heavy with the stench of damp earth and rustling, oily insects.

With a cry, he rose to his feet. It was there already , in his room, curling toward him, its red-and-black face contorted into the rictus of a smile, vague gray arms extending out toward him with a gesture that would have been almost tender if it were not for the claws . . .

He fell back and it was on him immediately, violating him in the most horrible fashion, spreading in and down and throughout, sucking, relentlessly sucking, until he felt something deep inside him—some essence so very deep he had never been aware that it lay at the core of his being—begin to swell, slip loose, distort . . . and he realized with a shudder of pure horror there was no hope for him anymore—no hope at all.

Constance clutched the bookshelves, rooted by fear, as Pendergast lay on the living room floor, against the wall, deathly still, haloed in mist. The ship continued to tilt, things crashing around her, the roar of water outside rising as the ship heeled. More than once she had tried to stretch out a hand to him, but she had been unable to keep hold, with the violent slanting of the cabin and the crash of books and objects around her.

Now, as she watched, the bizarre and fearful thing that had covered Pendergast like swamp vapor began to shift and break apart. Hope that had left her heart during the brief, dreadful vigil now suddenly returned: Pendergast had won. The tulpa was vanquished.

But then, with a new thrill of horror, she saw that the tulpa was not dispersing—it was instead sinking

into

Pendergast’s body.

Suddenly, his clothes began to twitch and writhe, as if countless cockroaches were skittering about beneath them. His limbs convulsed, his frame animated as by a foreign presence. His facial muscles spasmed and vellicated. His eyes opened briefly, staring out at nothing, and in that brief silvery window she saw depths of terror and despair as deep as the universe itself.

A foreign presence . . .

Suddenly, Constance was conflicted no longer. She knew what she had to do.

She stood up, forced her way across the room and up the bizarrely slanting staircase, and passed into Pendergast’s bedroom. Ignoring the heeling of the ship, she searched through one drawer after another until her hand closed over his Les Baer .45. She pulled out the weapon, drew back the slide to ensure there was a round in the chamber, then clicked off the safety.

She knew how Pendergast would want to live— and how he would want to die. If she couldn’t help him in any other way, at least she could help him with this.

Weapon in hand, she exited the bedroom and—taking tight hold of the railing—descended the slanting stairs to the living room.

74

LESEUR STARED AT the plated red bow of the Grenfell as the Canadian ship desperately backed its screws, trying to swing itself out of the way of theBritannia even as the great ocean liner yawed into it at flank speed.

The deck of the aux bridge shook as the podded propulsion systems strained under the extreme maneuver forced upon them. LeSeur didn’t even need to glance at the instruments to know it was over: he could extrapolate the trajectories of the two ships merely by staring out the bridge windows. He knew they were each on a course that would bring them together in the worst possible way. Even though the Grenfell ’s headway had fallen off three or four knots while it tried to maneuver, theBritannia was still driving forward at full power with its two fixed screws while the aft pods, rotated ninety degrees, delivered a sideways thrust that was swinging its stern around like a baseball bat toward theGrenfell .

“

My God, my God, my God

. . .” LeSeur heard the chief engineer repeating to himself, a continuous sotto voce prayer, as he stared out the window.

The aux bridge shuddered, tilting at an even crazier angle. The deck warning systems had lit up as the lowest decks shipped water. LeSeur heard a chorus of fresh sounds: the screeching and tearing of plated steel, the machine-gun popping of rivets, the deep groaning of the ship’s immense steel frame.

“My God,”

whispered the engineer again.

A deep boom sounded from below, followed by a violent shimmy, as if the hull of the ship had been rung like a massive bell. The violence of it threw LeSeur to the floor; and as he rose to his knees a second boom rocked the aux bridge, slamming him sideways into the corner of the navigation table and gashing his forehead. A framed photograph of theBritannia ’s launching, with Queen Elizabeth presiding, popped free of its screw mounts and cartwheeled along the floor, shedding pieces of glass, skidding to a halt in front of LeSeur’s face. With a sense of unreality, he stared at the queen’s serene, smiling visage, one white-gloved hand raised to the adoring crowd, and then for a moment he felt a horrible wash of failure—hisfailure. He had failed his queen, his country, everything he stood for and believed in. He had allowed the ship to be taken over by a monster. It was his fault.

He grabbed the edge of the table and pulled himself up, feeling a rivulet of warm blood running down into his eye. With a savage sweep of his hand he wiped it away and tried to recover his senses.

He immediately realized that something significant had just happened to the ship. The deck was righting itself