Better than nothing, Jack guessed.
'He is also impatient,' Veilleur added. 'He was reborn in 1968 and has run into no opposition since. He senses that something is amiss on our side-'
'And he's right,' Jack said.
Veilleur nodded. 'Yes, he is right. But that very lack of opposition causes suspicion. He paid a terrible price for letting his guard down in the fifteenth century. He won't do that again. But that does not leaven his impatience. And his impatience may trump his caution… again, presenting us with an opening.'
An opening for what? Jack wondered. An opportunity to sit on our hands some more?
'That's all fine and good,' Weezy said, 'but where does Dawn fit in?'
Jack wasn't following. 'We're not going to involve her.'
'She is involved. Ras-I mean R has been hiding her for nearly a year. And as soon as she has the baby, he moves her out.'
'Which means he has plans for the baby and not for her.'
Weezy gave him an arch look. 'Oh, really? Let's think about that. He didn't just kick her out, he moved her into her own place, and guess where that place is.'
Veilleur said, 'I was concerned about that before I knew who Osala was,' Veilleur said. 'Now that I know…'
'There are no coincidences here,' the Lady said.
That was old news, but the words never failed to send a chill through Jack.
He turned to Weezy. 'Okay, maybe he does have plans for her. But where do you fit in? You were a threat to his plans for the Fhinntmanchca, but that's over and done. So why would he be interested in you now?'
'It somehow involves the baby,' she said. 'I'll bet my life on it.'
Veilleur's expression was grim. 'Not a wager to take lightly where the One is concerned.'
Weezy swallowed and nodded. 'Oh, right.'
Veilleur leaned forward. 'Did Dawn mention anything to you about the infant's 'deformities'?'
Weezy's hand flew to her mouth. 'Ohmygod! In all the clamor about the anagram, I forgot.'
He raised his eyebrows. 'Well?'
'She said it had black hair all over its body, little clawed hands, and… a tentacle coming out of each armpit.'
Jack would have said simply that it looked like what a q'qr was supposed to look like, but Weezy was obviously letting Veilleur draw his own conclusion. And he did-with a bang.
He slammed his hands on the table and straightened from his seat.
'What?'
Even the Lady seemed shocked. 'Please tell me you're joking.'
Weezy shook her head. 'That's what she told us.'
Veilleur dropped back into his seat. 'This shouldn't be. And yet it makes a strange sort of sense.'
'Does it? Dawn giving birth to a quasi q'qr?' He glanced at Weezy. 'We figure there's still some human in that baby.'
'Correct,' said Veilleur. 'It's not one hundred percent what you call oDNA. But obviously it has enough to take on the appearance of a q'qr.'
'That's what I thought,' Weezy said. 'A hybrid displaying the q'qr phenotype.'
'Whatever,' Jack said. 'The big question, as I see it, is why is a baby q'qr so important? I mean, important enough for R himself to keep Dawn as a houseguest all through her pregnancy and for the Order's doctors to guide her through labor and then whisk the baby away as soon as he's born?'
'I don't have the answer to that,' Veilleur said. 'Let me tell you what I know about the baby's genesis. For that we have to go back to the First Age.'
'That's fifteen thousand years,' Jack said. 'The baby's only two days old.'
'But the Taint that fills him is ancient. You know about the q'qr race.'
Weezy said, 'Genetically altered humans created by the Otherness to fight its battles-its own private Mongol horde.'
'Exactly. They multiplied like bacteria and overran everything in their path. A weapon designed to wipe them out misfired and killed only their females. So they mated with human women but human DNA trumped oDNA every time. Their offspring carried the Taint, but no new q'qrs were born. Their line was at a dead end. When the last one was killed, the q'qr race was extinct.'
Weezy said, 'I think the last q'qr died in 1983.'
Veilleur gave her a strange look.
'One used to live on your property in the Pines, Mister Foster. Jack and I ran into it-the last one I'm sure-when we were teens. We're pretty sure it drowned.'
He frowned. 'You're quite sure?'
'Quite.'
'How odd. But not impossible. A q'qr can be killed, but if left alone, it lives on and on.'
'Immortal?' Weezy said.
'In a sense, yes.'
Jack didn't care much about that q'qr. Dawn's was the one that mattered.
'Can we get back on topic? Why do the One and the Order want this quasi-q'qr baby?'
'Again, I can't even hazard a guess. Though I doubt the One is personally changing diapers, he does seem to have taken the child under his wing.'
'Or the Order has. Dawn mentioned that her OB man had the Order's sigil on his watch.'
Weezy frowned. 'You don't think they're going to worship him or anything like that, do you?'
Veilleur barked a laugh. 'Oh, I doubt that very much. The Septimus Order has its roots in the First Age. Its leaders took orders from the Seven and marshaled the q'qr armies. They had nothing but contempt for their filthy, ignorant, brutal charges. In fact, when the Order executed one of its own for treachery or a high crime, they q'qred them.'
'Meaning?'
'Meaning they would cut off his forearms at the elbows and shove them into his armpits as a show of contempt.'
Jack stiffened and glanced at Weezy, only to find her staring at him.
'Mister Boruff!' she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
'Who?' Veilleur said.
Jack turned back to him. 'A corpse we stumbled on in the Pine Barrens when we were kids-on your property, in fact-turned out to be a member of the Order, and he'd been killed that way.'
'To mimic the form of a q'qr,' Weezy added. 'We never dreamed… no one had ever seen the Kicker Man back then.'
'Speaking of which,' Jack said, 'if the q'qrs were fashioned by the seven-crazy Otherness, why do they have only six limbs instead of seven?'
Instead of answering, Veilleur turned to Weezy and pointed to the Compendium. 'Do you think you could find the Order's sigil in there and trace it for me?'
'I'll try.' She opened the book and began flipping through it. 'With the way the pages shift around, finding anything in here is a real challenge.' But only a few seconds later she stopped. 'Well, I'll be. Got one.'
She grabbed a pen and began tracing, then handed the sheet to him. Veilleur held it up for Jack to see.
'Now,' Veilleur said to Weezy, 'may I have one of your markers?'
Weezy handed him one of her ever-present Sharpies and he went to work on the tracing.
'It's true that q'qrs do not have seven limbs, but their symbol, the one they left behind wherever they pillaged and slaughtered, the one Hank Thompson has misinterpreted as the Kicker Man, has seven points.'
He held up his handiwork.
'And so, the rule of seven holds.'
Jack shook his head in wonder. 'It fits right into the sigil. I never saw it, never guessed.'
