FIRST DIGITAL EDITION The Light is the Darkness © 2012, 2011 by LairdBarronArtwork & Illustration © 2012, 2011 by David HoAll Rights Reserved.

This edition published by:DarkFuse (In association with Arcane Wisdom)P. O. Box 338North Webster, IN 46555www.darkfuse.com Copy Editing by Leigh Haig

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever withoutthe written permission of the author.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Larry Roberts, the Robertsfamily, and the magnificent artist DavidHo.

More thanks to my friends Jody, John L.,Paul, Steve, Norm, Scott N., Nick K.,Wilum, JD, Chesya, Justin, Ellen,Gordon, Lucius, Jeff F., Jeff V., and my

brother Jason. And of course, thank youto my fans, without whom I’d havenothing.

This one is for my stalwart companionsAthena, Horatio, Persephone, andUlysses who stood by me through a long,dark winter.

It’s also for Erin, in spite of, because of,everything.

Chapter One

I

After Conrad followed yet anotherdead end sighting of Imogene, he’dexhausted most of his cash and all hisfavors. His sister’s trail of bloodybreadcrumbs vanished into a SouthAmerican rainforest. Imogene, a

crackerjack FBI special agent, hadoriginally disappeared in Mexicoseveral years beforehand while huntingDr. Drake, the fellow who may or maynot have murdered their older brotherEzra.

That most authorities took Drake’sdecade long absence as proof of death(he’d been older than the oldest Naziwar criminals last anyone saw him inpublic), hadn’t dissuaded Imogene fromher mission of vengeance. She’dbelieved the doctor possessed great anddiabolical secrets, an unnatural lifespanbeing least among these.

Brother dead, suspect missing,sister missing too. Gears within gears,wheels within wheels, irony piled upon

irony. Lately, Conrad wasn’t surewhether he was chasing Imogene or herghost.

The only good thing to come frommonths spent chopping through the junglebetween backwater villages was thediscovery of yet another in a sequence ofcached papers and films Imogeneperiodically dropped for him like cluesin a bizarre game of cat and mouse.These latest papers were left tuckedinside a firebombed bunker and revealedher recent contact with another familyacquaintance he’d long thought dead orrelocated beyond the reach of friend andfoe alike: Pablo Souza, knowninternationally as the Brazilian, achemist and surgeon of some infamy and

a former henchman of Dr. Drake.Rumor had it, and a hasty note

among the top secret military documentsshe’d stolen confirmed, Imogene hadsought Souza out to purchase a serum theold man perfected, an elixir thatcontained most wondrous and potentiallylethal properties—One drop will grantyou immortality unless it strikes youstone dead! The alleged properties wereso wondrous they’d attained the statureof legend.

Imogene’s note read in part: I knowwhere Drake is hiding. Problem is, youcan’t get there from here. Souza gave usa way in, though. The kicker is, Souza’slittle wonder drug isn’t what made Dr.D. an ageless villain. Turns out it’s the

other way around. But, daylight isburning and I have to make tracks. So,this is it, brother of mine. I’m gonnaeat the worm and shed this skin. Raul iscoming with. Final showdown oneleven at eleven. Don’t try to follow us.Love you, kiddo. The Raul shementioned was Raul Lorca, a decoratedMexican scientist and Imogene’s loverof several years. Her loyal sidekick.Mexican intelligence had a fewquestions for him too.

Unfortunately, Imogene was long,long gone and the Brazilian skipped thecountry just ahead of Conrad’s arrival,although as more than one lawenforcement agency wanted Souza’shead on a pole for various crimes

against humanity dating back to theSecond Great War, his latest absencemight’ve been a coincidence. The oldboy tended to move frequently. As forSouza’s miracle elixir: those in the knowscoffed and dismissed the existence ofthe drug as a fairytale, mythical as Poncede Leone’s fountain. Conrad didn’t careabout the skeptics. Good enough forImogene was good enough for him, andeither way, Souza was another link in thechain that would help him locate hissister for a homecoming or a funeral.

Conrad put out the word he wasnow looking for the Brazilian in additionto Imogene and her lover. Tracking thechemist would be expensive, if notimpossible. Luckily, Conrad’s

membership in the Pageant, whileexceedingly hazardous, rewarded himwell. He made the call to his patron, areclusive industrialist named CyranoKosokian, and scheduled a ludus with atop ranked contender. They would fightthat coming spring in a crater in thedesert. The terms were particularlybrutal—a blood match untodismemberment or death—and thus thepayout extravagant. Sufficientlylucrative, he hoped, to ameliorate themassive debts he was in the midst ofaccruing in search of Imogene. Then hechartered a flight to a remote Polynesianisland resort and dropped off the mapfor a while.

He thought of it as returning to the

nest.The resort was contained within the

shell of a ruined castle on a hill above awhite beach. It loomed over a jetty, ahandful of antiquated fishing boats, andfarther out, at the mouth of the harbor, areef. During the winter season the resortwas deserted but for a skeleton staff anda handful of fellow eccentrics.

Conrad practically owned theplace. The resort was scarcely upscale,being rather an ancient church convertedto a fortification against buccaneers,and, during one of the government’smore prosperous and ambitious eras,remodeled as a hotel casino meant toattract the big fish: filthy rich Americansand Euro nobility seeking anonymous

escape from the paparazzi. The dingyfaçade, weedy courtyard, two hundredyear old clay tiles that let in the rain, themoss and the cracked plaster, yellow asdecayed ivory, the sullen employees, andthe occasional cockroach, combined andcollaborated to lend the villa an aura ofThird World charm.

The owners were proud of theirerstwhile clientele. Dim photographs ofdecrepit Hollywood celebrities, Vegassingers, 1980s supermodels, and afamous Latin dictator, glinted in thelobby, the dining room and the lounge.The stars grinned and grimaced, weremainly ghosts, unknown to the bartendersand the boys who carefully swept thefloors.

In the mornings while the sky wasyet dark, Conrad dressed in the rubbersuit with its leaden patches and weightsat wrists, waist and ankles, and ranalong the beach until he came to themountain path and followed it up and upabove the tree line, across the blackshale slopes and gaspingly at last untilhe fell to his knees in the shadow of thecaldera of a dead volcano.

Come the tourist season themountainside would be strewn withpanting men in flowery shirts andsunburned women in floppy-brim hatsand starlet sunglasses the natives sold bythe gross alongside key chains, potteryand bananas at the little thatch stands onevery other corner. But this was winter

and the mountain was peaceful aswesterly light began to bleed across theocean. Conrad sprawled among thesmall stones and powdered ash andwhen his air returned, lurched to his feetand plunged back down toward the treesand the beach that slashed like a whitescar.

The staff, a cadre of dark, pinch-mouthed men in secondhand tuxedos,lugged a buffet bar into the courtyard.There he collapsed beneath a fadedparasol and gorged on slabs of boar andgoat, bread and cheese, and gallons ofgoat’s milk while a servant in a dirtywhite jacket waited at his elbow to pourhis coffee and light his cigarettes. Thecigarettes were killing him, he knew.

Gravity was killing him, and diffidencetoo, and someone, somewhere waswaiting to kill him if these things failed.In contemplation, he’d have anothersmoke.

Conrad always slept for severalhours. Later, in the early afternoon ofeven-numbered days, he went to asection of the beach where oldrockslides had deposited bouldersamong the shade of the palms, and liftedthe smallest of these rocks in his armsand lumbered to the surf and tossed theminto the bay. He persisted mechanicallyuntil a trench gouged the sand and theskin on his arms glistened slick withblood and he could no longer grasp theboulders, could scarcely stand.

Odd days he swam from the jettythrough the shallow harbor past thebreakers until the water cooled anddarkened beneath his threshing limbs. Onthe way home he pushed harder, harder,put the hammer down and drove ballsout, held nothing in reserve.Occasionally, his body became lead andhe sank in the greenish lagoon near theshore, plunged like a statue, trailing hislife-breath in a streamer of oblongbubbles, sank toward the hermit crabsand the coral and algae scabbed rocks.Three of the more reliable natives, theones he reckoned with the least hatredtoward white men and Americans inparticular, who were paid quitehandsomely to sit and observe these

solitary excursions, eventually set asidetheir shared flask of coconut rum,clamped hand-rolled cigarettes in theirteeth and poled a skiff alongside andhooked Conrad’s limp bulk with gaffs.They towed him to the docks where twomore fishermen waited to roll him ontohis face until the water ran from hislungs and he coughed his way backamong the living. Slowly, laboriously, asConrad weighed something on the scaleof a small walrus, they loaded him into acart and pushed him up the hill and to hisquarters for another long nap.

Upon emerging, torpid and semi-feral, he’d feast again and gulpprodigious quantities of local wine fromearthen jugs. Strange, leering visages

were carved into the jugs. Conrad hadseen many of these in various formsstacked on the hotel’s storeroom shelves,the rude pantries of the shacks andshanties—always well hidden from thecasual inspection of the rapacioustourists and their cameras and videorecorders. The concierge, a smooth,walnut fellow named Ricardo, becausehis mother originally emigrated fromMadrid where she’d been an actress ofminor accomplishment, informed Conradthat an old family of master potters madethe jugs. The jugs were good fortrapping the power of spirits if one knewthe proper incantations. The family wasscattered across the islands and hadfaded into obscurity around the time

most of the population converted toChristianity. Old ways never really diedand the spirit jugs gradually reappearedduring the empty winter months alongwith the traditional fertility charms andclay idols of elephantine creaturessquatting upon thrones of skulls, andshark-headed humanoids whose faceswere obliterated by the slow burn ofcenturies. Effigies of dark gods, theconcierge said. Makers and destroyersaccording to their whims.

Conrad awakened occasionally toflickering orange shadows upon theceiling; sing-song chants, the stridentmelody of reed pipes, the rhythmickathud of drums. From his balcony hewatched the sinuous roil and flare of

bonfires among the monoliths embeddedin the black line of foothills. After a timehe returned to bed, sometimes dreamingof men in masks and headdressesassembled in the hotel lobby, their eyesturned upward and boring through thefloor of his room. Spearheads sparkedand glinted in the dimness; machetesclinked and scraped against woodenharnesses of war.

The weeks lay before and behindhim, an endless white waste.

No matter the day, as dusk began topress the sun against the waves, Conraddragged a wagon to a cane field behindthe resort. He’d unload his weapons andget down to business. The light workfirst—he flung a brace of javelins into

sacks of straw tied to rickety bamboocross posts; first right-handed, then left,mostly at close range, but sometimes asdistant as one hundred paces, which wastoo far to be considered effective as ageneral rule; and after the javelins camethe sling and he hurled smooth, grayriver stones and watched straw puff asfrom bullet holes and he continued untilhis shoulders ached.

By then, night fastened upon theland. Fortunately, there on the coast thestarry sky hung within a hand-span of theearth it was never truly dark. He’dpractice with the heavy weapons:chains, mauls, the Visigoth axes, thegreat iron mace from Mongolia with itsiron head and flanges that shrieked as he

swung at the bamboo thickets andsplintered the smaller trees, made veesof them like a swath of brokentoothpicks; and as he chopped, his feetmoved in the katas of feudal samurai,side to side and diagonal; and oldersteps, the berserker rush of the Vikingsand the Gauls. He ravaged through thecopses in brief charges of the Romancohorts and the implacable Spartans,until, at last it was done and the steamrolled from him in clouds.

After supper he broiled in the saunaand then off to his suite to brood over acollection of cryptic papers assembledfrom the dusty shelves and trunks ofantiquarian bibliophiles from Alaska toKatmandu, or set up the antique

projector and meditate upon thekaleidoscopic horror show spun from afilm reel he’d found among his long lostsister’s effects, all the while repeatingone of several mnemonic triggers thatwould alter his brainwaves and open adoor to elsewhere, wherever that mightbe. From the glimpses of bloody bonesand colloidal darkness, he wondered ifit might not be Hell itself.

He doggedly awaited some sign ofapprehended knowledge, a stirring of theatavistic consciousness. Occasionally,shadows and mist coalesced intonightmares of massive tendrils uncoilingfrom a vast and dreamless void, andvisions of antlers and fiery destruction,but none of it made sense except that

now, if he concentrated to the point of aviolent migraine, he could cause a spoonto vibrate in a bowl by will alone andpossibly once he had slightly levitated afew inches above the blanket while inlotus, but he had been drunk, so verydrunk.

Such was the daily ritual.The morning the neurologist landed

for a series of scheduled tests, Conradwas on the lounge terrace, sipping theblackest of black coffee and smokingcigarettes. A radical chief of staff at amainland university paid exorbitant feesfor the privilege of monitoring Conrad’sunusual brainwaves.

Rains had begun the previousevening. Lightning stabbed at the

horizon. A small man in an overcoatexited the plane and one of the attendantsheld an umbrella for him as theyhurriedly made for the hotel. This wasDr. Enn, one of several persons Conradhad contacted to conduct periodic testsof his neurological activity. Soon came anumber of trunks and cases, dutifullyunloaded by hotel employees andwheeled up the dock on hand trucks.

Two more visitors, heavies in suitsand glasses, trailed. The short, thickfellow with the bad 1970s haircut wasAgent Marsh. The suave, dark gentlemanwho looked like he’d strolled off thecover of GQ was Agent Singh. Bothworked for American intelligence—theNational Security Agency. Conrad

suspected he would have to kill themsooner or later. For now it meant hewould have to relinquish the papers andfilm he’d retrieved in Brazil. Simply notime to stash everything. So be it: he’dhand over his curiosities like a good boyand maybe get the operatives to do somedigging on his behalf in the bargain.

He finished his cigarette. Theisland and its routines were the nest.Now he’d crawl back into the egg.

II

He lay suspended beneath miles

and miles of blue-black ice anddreamed.

This ice was the oldest kind thathad come down from the great outerdarkness and closed around the worldeons past. Trapped in its glacial foldswas a cornucopia of geological oddities:Cryptozoic bacteria writ large,fossilized palm fronds of ages whenblood-warm oceans and perpetual fogwrapped hemisphere to hemisphere;insects, animals, men, and things thatresembled men, but were not, and vastglobular superstructures of primordialjelly and miles-long belts of ganglia, allcaught fast in glacial webs, allpreserved and on exhibit in the gelidrecesses of his dreaming brain.

Conrad dreamed of waking, ofthawing, which was a reliable indicatorthat control was shifting his way, that hehad swum up from the Hadal depths to asemi-lucid state, and so he blinked awaythe ice and whispered the Second Word,which was leviathan, and was again achild in the backseat of Dad’s car. Theywere in Alaska, hauling ass along theParks Highway, bound for Anchorageand the airport. A DC-10 waited totransport them to Spain and the clinicwhere miracles happened.

Mom and Imogene weresomewhere ahead, cutting through arctictwilight in a Citroen with bald tires anda broken heater. Mom was reckless atthe wheel, a damn the torpedoes, cry

havoc! kind of lady and likely she waspuffing a Pall Mall and lecturing haplessImogene on the essential instability ofsubatomic matter. Or how theheadhunters in Papua, New Guineaperformed fertility rituals with the skullsof their victims.

The windows were frosted over,but when Conrad scratched a circle therewas Denali rearing in the middledistance, a chunk of red-black rockwearing a frozen halo.

His head ached. It ached all thetime those days; ached as if it were heand not brother Ezra being eaten alive bya melanoma the diameter of a mango.Ezra rode shotgun, the metal nub at thecrown of his Seattle Mariners baseball

hat chattering against the glass. Ezra wasthe elder; a little league all starshortstop, future hall-of-famer anddevoted tormentor of younger siblings,currently under the weather and fadingfast. Ezra wasn’t much for trappinggroundballs or distributing Indian burnsthese days; he’d withered to skeletaldimensions that Conrad could tuck underone arm.

1980.This was the year the famous

Japanese mountaineer Kojima bought aone-way ticket to visit his ancestors.Kojima wasn’t dead yet either; he stillhad a few hours to watch his extremitiesfreeze, to ponder whatever great menponder as they wait for the curtain to

drop. Kojima had been in the news allweek. As they toiled past the shadow ofhis tomb, Conrad gazed at the stormclouds and tried to touch Kojima’sthoughts.

When he asked Dad his opinion,Dad grunted and said mountain climberswere responsible for polluting thewilderness with discarded oxygenbottles and food wrappers, that theywere possibly the filthiest creaturesalive.

Dad’s shoulders were roughly thespan of a mattock handle under a plaidcoat. He looked like a bison hunched atthe wheel, not a lunatic physicist hellbent for leather to the airport. He was asecond generation Swede. His own

father got bayoneted on an atoll in thesunny South Pacific during WWII. Dadstaunchly refused to drive Japaneseimports. Wouldn’t touch sushi. He didn’teven glance out the window at themountain.

Conrad realized he was not alonein the backseat. There was an old guybeside him, and he resembled Dad, butmuch older and dressed in weirdclothes, a space suit or something, andhe stared at Conrad in a way the boywould grow accustomed to over time.His eyes bled pity. There followed apsychedelic moment like Borges shakinghands with himself. And Conrad knewhim because they’d met before. The oldman said, Time is a ring, then fractured

into motes of sparkling dust.1980, 1980. For Conrad, 1980 was

the magic number, albeit in the cursed,black magic sense. Ten years old and onthe road to Hell.

The Navarro family shipped off tothe Pyrenees and sought a miracle fromDr. Drake in his converted ThirteenthCentury Abbey that locals referred to asThe Cloister. Over the final months ofEzra’s decline, Mom, Dad, Imogene, andConrad camped in the hostel of BlancoVillage a few miles from the base of themountain retreat and awaited a miracle.

That was a muddy spring and brutalsummer. A summer of goats, flies andsluggish, crawling heat fended off withmosquito nets and pails of shaved ice.

Sullen locals and ugly foreigners—Americans and Brits, mainly—clumpedin the hostel taproom, or loitered nearthe well house in the village square,pecking each other like pullets in a too-small cage, squabbling over the newscasts on the Armed Services RadioNetwork, the papers that came in theweekly mail run. It was a uniformlymournful time. The Cold War was colderthan ever and an American embassy wasin the hands of Islamic fundamentalists.Nobody in the village of Blanco seemedoverjoyed about anything from themuddy roads that ate corduroy forbreakfast, to the great louse infestationamong the hens, to the low supply ofdrinkable whiskey in the hostel cellars.

One of the Germans even complainedpublicly and bitterly that the farm girlsweren’t as free with their charms aspeasants in “more civilized” provinces.Tempers ran hot and led to severalungainly, drunken brawls in thedamnable mud, although everything wasusually patched up with a handshake anda few rounds of cheap booze.

Every day, the family mounted thebus, a relic from WWII, and endured thekidney-crushing trip up the switchbacktrail. Mom and dad usually sat near theshipping tycoon from Essex, or, if theywere in the mood, exchangedpleasantries with another Americancouple, vociferous college professorsfrom Madison Wisconsin. Imogene hung

around with the youngest daughter of anAustrian diplomat and the pair tradedearrings, braided each other’s hair andnattered incomprehensibly. Conradremained apart, stoically regarding thesheer cliffs and smoky ravines beneaththe bus wheels, his ears ringing with thegirls’ false laughter.

In the beginning, the bus wasoverloaded with patrician families eagerto make the daily pilgrimage. As daysblurred into weeks and months, moreempty seats appeared. New, fresh facesarrived on occasion, cowed into abjecttimidity by the shopworn expressions ofthose who remained from the spring.Come the glowering days of late August,Conrad was once more pressed to the

edges of a boisterous, sweaty crowdcomposed of mostly strangers.

Ezra got a little worse each visitand everybody cried and sleepwalkedaround with red eyes and broken veinsin their noses. Mom was the one whokept them together for the most part,diluted the incipient hysteria into apersistent mood of shrill grief, althoughshe was a bag of bones and raw nervesbefore it was through. She’d taken toarguing with Dad. Not little arguments,either, but real bruisers and they wentout into road for the worst of them, stoodin the rain and shouted down the thunder.

Mom hated what Dr. Drake and hiscronies were doing to Ezra. She wasn’tsure precisely what they were doing as

no one was allowed to see behind thecurtain. Drake interacted with thefamilies via intermediaries, a duo ofancient, hook-nosed men who might’vebeen twins with their identically thickGreek accents and dusty suits, theirmatching expressions of reptiliandispassion. The Greeks didn’t give awayanything, ever. All anyone really knewabout Drake’s technique was that itinvolved hypnotic regression viamultiple mediums, and routine injectionsof an experimental medicine. Therewere side effects, of course. Pain andsuffering. Nightmares and night sweats;exploding neuroses. None of it would’vepassed muster back in the States, but thiswas the refuge of last resort.

Mom begged Dad to call it off, totake Ezzy home and let him spend hisremaining days in familiar surroundings.He missed his dog, his friends, hisroomful of trophies.

Then, one day between summer andautumn, it was time to go.

Mom and Dad lovingly dressedEzra in his Sunday best, packed hisremains in a wooden box and shippedhim overseas on a gigantic cargo planeflown by pock-cheeked men in parkasand goggles.

Conrad slept most of the way homeacross the Atlantic, drugged by growlingturbines, the clink and jostle of nets andstraps. There had been a funeral,although Conrad didn’t recall much, and

after the dirt was shoveled on and theadults drowned themselves in alcoholand misery at the reception, nothing elsewas said. The coffin lid, the book ofEzra, was closed. Well, mom sailed herSupercub into a mountainside the nextsummer and dad went to pieces, lost hisjob at Drome Corp. and took apermanent vacation at Grable, theswankiest funny farm west of theMississippi, and eventually died on thetoilet, just like Elvis—then the incidentwas finished.

…The dream skipped forward…Years later, when they’d grown and

shuffled off to their respective colleges,long after Conrad was well on his wayto cult fame and ruin and Imogene was a

superstar graduate from the university ofJ.E. Hoover, and they’d reconciledthemselves to Dad never getting out ofthe loony bin, his little sister summonedhim for dinner at the Monarch Grill, ahole in the wall they haunted asteenagers. She’d materialized from themidnight blue, smiled that hard, sharpsmile of hers and kissed him. Littlesister was bittersweet, like gourmetEuropean chocolate. She didn’tunderstand him, didn’t respect hischoices, considered his shadow-careeras a latter-day gladiator a colossalwaste of superior genetic material. Herpoints were well taken—a Navarro wascapable of almost anything, even Conradwhose talents ran to the brutish end of

the spectrum. Daddy, a physicist cumOlympic caliber power lifter; Mom, aPhD poet and ace pilot; Ezra, the teenbaseball star and internationallypublished essayist.

Conrad could’ve been an artist, aspace shuttle pilot, a decathlonchampion, except with advanced degreesin theology and quantum mechanics. Likethe rest, he’d excelled at everything he’dattempted. He was stronger than Dad andsmarter than Ezra, a millionmagnifications more artistically giftedthan either of them and maybe a bitsuperior in that department to Imogene.Imogene was the rapier wit, the poppsychologist and crack shot with anylight caliber sidearm, the deductive

genius with metaphorical balls of steel.Imogene had always been the mean

one of the bunch, too. She opened up theold wounds with a casual swipe of herclaws.

Kill anything interesting lately,bro?

An attack-trained orangutan.With your bare hands, Tarzan

style?Hell no! Ka-Bar.Wimp. Why do you pick on poor

beasts, huh?It was gonzo. Spent its whole life

in a cage being pumped full of growthhormones and zapped with a cattleprod. The thing wanted to eat my liver.

Good for it!

Hey, it’s almost never animalsnow. I’m in the major leagues. I get toslaughter big, sweaty Turks and axe-wielding Slavs.

Oh my. Clubs and knives, oh, oh—and tridents?

And whips and nets. I crashchariots; the ones with spiked hubs likeKirk Douglas drove. Circus Maximus,sis.

Lucky you. You guys prancearound in costumes like Mexicanwrestlers, except you try to murder ormaim each other.

Yeah.Who pays for this spectacle? Ever

really ponder that one, Connie? Everthink about what sort of people arrange

this secret world you star in?Rich folks.Guess they’d have to be to

recreate Caesar’s favorite pastime.That really your kind of crowd? Theseeffete psychos who want to relive theseedier aspects of the Roman empire?

These are the kind of folks whoown tropical islands. Hell, some ofthem run banana republics for fun.They want a spectacle, I can fill thebill.

Ah yes. Dictators, inbred nobilityand other megalomaniacs. Swellfriends you got there.

It’s a living.Over steak and wine, she played

with her knife, which was an unsettling

bookend to her smile, and said Ezzydidn’t die of cancer. Ezzy was murdered.Drake murdered him, murdered a bunchof people, probably. Why? BecauseDrake was a devil. Quite possibly, thegood doctor was Old Poger himself,horns and tail.

Conrad was unsure how toassimilate this new information. SeeingSissy was cool, but he had a lot on hisplate, what with the strict schedule ofarena events and the jet-settingdebaucheries accorded a celebrity of hisstature; command performances. Henodded and composed a semi-credulousreply that didn’t fool either of them.

Imogene was always the smart oneof the kids. When it came to Conrad she

was practically telepathic. Fuck it.Forget I said anything. How’s yourgoddamn steak tare tare? You eat likean animal. Dress you in some skins,you’d fit right into a cave man exhibit.Fucking troglodyte.

Genie—Fuck it, I said. Got any toot? You

rich bitches have snow falling out ofyour pockets, don’t you?

Sure. I know a guy, fix us right up.Conrad lost his appetite. Not much

later, he lost his sister too…

III

Mr. Navarro?”And the dream ended like a soap

bubble bursting.Light—too much, too red—came

through the water; then the waveringoval of an elongated face, a blotch oftapestry, the pulsing glow of a slideprojector. He sat upright in the greatmarble tub and gasped. Water streamedfrom his face and goggles. The goggleshad ceased transmitting, but their after-images crackled behind his eyelids,asynchronous to the rapidly shutteringpatterns on the white-lit square of wall.

Dr. Enn rose from the table with thecomplicated recording equipment andbrought him a towel and gently retrievedthe goggles. Dr. Enn returned to his

table, careful not to trip over the loopsof wires and plastic cords. AgentsMarsh and Singh lounged across theroom, sipping scotch from glasses, thebottle on a small table between them.

The temperature in the room was abalmy eighty degrees, and yet Conradshivered and his hands were blue. Hewiped his face and staggered from thetub to a patio chair and pulled on his flipflops. Conrad was not a tall man, butimmense through shoulders and hips, andhis legs were grotesquely thick such thathe walked with an odd, shuffling gait.His skin was burned and dark andterribly scarred as if a shark had takenbites out of him then dragged him facedown across the coral. He said, “Time.”

His was a rusty voice, a drinker’s voice,the voice of a man who’d survived ahanging.

Dr. Enn consulted his watch. Hewas much lovelier and infinitely fragilecompared to his subject. His hair wastight and black and he might’ve been arunway model. His pretty face bore theelastic expression of a man knucklingunder to sea-sickness; sweat oozed fromhim. He said, “Seventeen minutes, forty-three seconds. I’m impressed…althoughit’s hardly a record.”

“How is Esogi? Bangkok, right?”Dr. Esogi was Dr. Enn’s colleague at theinstitute researching Conrad’s‘compellingly bizarre’ physiological andneurological activity.

“There’s a symposium. Veryprestigious.”

“Old Burt’s golfing and whoring itup between panels, I bet.”

“Yes—I was hoping to accompanyhim.” Enn managed a smile.

Conrad laughed and found hiscigarettes and matches on the coffeetable and lighted one. He studied Enn asEnn’s face gathered the unwholesomelight from the projection beam. “Are youok, Doc?”

“Oh, ha-ha, don’t mind me.” Wormscrawled across Enn’s cheek. A butterflysloughed its chrysalis and flutteredagainst his forehead. The sun was ablack disc rising from his left eye. “Doyou mind if I kill this—?”

“Please.” Conrad gesturedindulgently. His hands had steadied, hispulse rate begun to drop into the high-normal range.

Dr. Enn shuddered and clicked offthe projector and the room was flushwith soft blues and blacks. After asignificant pause, he said, “Dr. Esogimentioned your unorthodox modalities,but I must confess...” He referred, ofcourse, to the dull gray tube on the table,its tightly rolled sheets of waterproofpaper with their diagrams and formulas;micro-slides of photography that rangedfrom disquieting to monstrous, and themonstrously incomprehensible. “We’llresume the battery when you’ve rested.”

“Thanks, doc. This’ll be the last

session for a while, so be thorough.”“You’re leaving?”“Sorry, doc. My public demands an

appearance.”“I think I’ll detour to the bar and

have a drink. Gentlemen.” Dr. Ennnodded to the agents, grabbed his coatand left in a reasonably dignified hurry.

“The fuck is this operation you gotgoing?” Marsh said. “I told you, Leo, wedig through a few phone records, make afew calls, follow that fruity little docaround, we find out where our boydisappears to.”

“Yes, what is this operation?”Singh nodded at the machinery, thetangle of leads.

“Sensory stim,” Conrad said

without a hint of irony. “Big matchcoming up in a few weeks. I use allkinds of techniques to get my head in thegame. Hypnotherapy, regression.Whatever.”

“But…if that little fellow iscorrect, you just held your breath forover fifteen minutes. That isn’t humanlypossible.”

Marsh said, “Where did you getthat collage?” He was still staring at theprojector and what had beamed from itseye. “That’s vintage Cold War eyes-onlyshit. Some kind of mind-conditioningprotocol. What the hell you want with amilitary grade brainwashing protocol.”

“I don’t want it. Imogene left itbehind.”

“Doesn’t explain why you’reenacting the procedure. This isn’t thekind of shit you play with, Connie.”

“Trying to get into my sister’shead,” Conrad said. As always he toldmost of the truth. It was the only way tostay half a step ahead of the bastards.You told ninety-nine percent of the truthand saved the lies for emergencies.“She’s after something, I don’t knowwhat. Maybe she’s trying to shed somelight on a moldy old governmentconspiracy. Maybe she wants to provemy dad was locked away because heknew too much. She didn’t bother to tellme.”

“We’ll be taking these materials offyour hands,” Singh said.

Conrad smiled. “Easy come, easygo. She found them lying aroundsomewhere.” Somewhere includedabandoned bunkers and secret stashesand lost government installations aroundthe world, a few decommissioned blackops facilities. “The stuff you’re lookingat belongs to a file under MK Ultra. Waybefore we were born to this veil oftears. Project TALLHAT, I think.” Hewaited for a flicker of recognition, offear or surprise, but the agents juststared like fish. “And on the subject ofGenie—”

“Haven’t heard anything since theSouth America rumor,” Marsh said.“Which, as you discovered, was a wildgoose chase.”

“She’s dead, Jim,” Singh said andgazed sadly into his empty glass.

“Dead or burrowed in like a tick,”Marsh said. He refilled both theirglasses. The men sipped and kept staringat Conrad with those fish-eyedexpressions. “We can’t figure out whatshe was up to.”

“We haven’t quite decided whatyou’re up to.” Singh lighted a cigarette.

“Me? Fighting. Looking for mysister. She was obsessed with findingsome guys. Cold War guys. Guysassociated with this TALLHAT program.I need another name. Maybe two. Figureyou boys can help me. These papersgotta be hooked into a databasesomewhere.”

“No shit,” Marsh said. “Want usdigging up bones in an the Old SpooksGraveyard? Could be dangerous. Gonnabe costly, for sure.”

“How do you plan to compensateus?” Singh breathed smoke. “Planning tosell a house? One of your bolt holes? Isthat wise? You seem to worry aboutdeath from above more than anybodyI’ve met.”

“I worry about death from everydirection. There’s a payday coming.What do you say?”

“Yeah? Who are you up against?”Marsh appeared intrigued.

“The Greek.”“He’s the number three contender,”

Singh said. “I’m impressed.”

“They must be betting on him tomurder you,” Marsh said. He glanced atthe ashtray full of cigarette butts andsmirked. “The Greek carves you thengets his own shot at the title. You’re atune up match.”

“Something like that. He won’tcarve me, though. He’s a grappler. He’llpull off my arms.” Conrad smiled andlighted another cigarette. He’d watchedseveral dozen videos of the Greek, ahulking brute who favored exotic helmsof savage beasts. The Greek had oncesnatched a full grown lion from theground and broken its neck with a quicktwist. Some whispered he dwelt in acave in the mountains like oldPolyphemus. “It’s a mortality ludus, so

the money is good. When I get it.”“Uh-uh, sweetheart. Cash up front.

We’ve got operating expenses…wives,girlfriends, bookies.” Marsh made a faceand drained another glass.

“Okay, Connie,” Singh said with asharp glance at his partner. “Robert and Ididn’t fly all the way out here to breakyour balls, as the kids say. We’ll seewhat we can find about TALLHAT. Cashon delivery.” He stood and stretched,then walked to the projector andgathered the film and the photographicplates piled there on a tray.

“Thanks, boys,” Conrad said.The three remained a while longer,

smoking cigarettes and polishing off thescotch. And when his self-appointed

watchdogs had gone, Conrad madereservations for a flight to the UnitedStates, set the machinery in motion forthe next phase, perhaps the final phase ofhis quest.

Interlude

Dr. Drake, that urbane devourer ofchildren, wasn’t the Devil, but hewanted the title. That, according to thebook of Imogene.

In the weeks before Conrad’s father

suffered a massive coronary in his cellat Grable and sailed off to join Mom inthe Happy Hunting Grounds, he spilledthe beans about Drake and their worktogether to Imogene, and thus deflectedher rising star unto madness and death.

Nice going, Pop. In bitter moments,Conrad always thought Genie should’veknown better about gawking into theabyss and so on. Their father wasn’t anice man, probably not even a decentone.

Imogene laughed and said Conradwas right on that count. Dad allegedlykilled a fellow technician at alaboratory, back in the 1970s—somepoor schmuck named Enrique Valdez.Imogene told Conrad all about it late at

night when they’d gotten stoned off theirasses and drunk a quart of wine. As akid, she’d eavesdropped on Dad andMom arguing, pieced together a crypticphone conversation, and had gotten hersticky mitts on one of Dad’s journals thatallegedly made oblique reference to theevent. Supposedly there was some kindof top secret bio-weapons program andValdez tried to steal one of Dad’sformulas, maybe to claim it for his ownand get a promotion, maybe to inventsomething and get rich in the privatesector—there was no telling.

All she knew for certain was Dadcaught the sneak and killed him. CrushedValdez’s head with a hotplate; cookedthe guy’s face in the process. Conrad

didn’t believe it because Dad would’vegotten locked up for that kind of stunt,and probably forever. Imogene said Dadwas too valuable and had too manypowerful friends, so the governmentwaved its wand and the killing got sweptunder the carpet. They filed it as a tragicaccident. One could only wonder howmany other “tragic accidents” there’dbeen.

Conrad was even leerier of Dadafter that little campfire tale. Then, Dadhad his epic breakdown and got hauledaway by guys with butterfly nets and theynever spoke again.

Imogene was the one who’d visitedDad at that posh Pacific Northwestasylum called Grable, smuggled in

whiskey and cigars, patiently enduredhis episodes of mania and delusion.Frequently, she brought books he’drequested; the musty, esoteric kinds oftomes hoarded in the trunks of FarEastern antiquarians, many of thempoorly typeset or delivered to molderingparchment in the native scripts of theirauthors (many of these the very sameImogene would inherit one day, thenpass along to Conrad). Dad wasenamored of ancient astrological theory,most particularly the research of Chinesescholars during the Zhou Dynasty. Hespent hundreds of hours meticulouslydocumenting references to astronomicalphenomena, with special emphasis onplatelet-like bodies and gigantic cellular

structures. These he cross indexed withmodern accounts of similar unexplainedanomalies, a significant portionrecorded by NASA shuttle cameras andthe International Space Station. Cosmicdust and gas, luminous clouds, sunspots,or evidence of extraterrestrialintelligence—who could say? Theuniverse was a black forest, after all. Itadded up to something piscine in Dad’sestimation, even if the rest of the expertsweren’t overly galvanized about theprospects so obliquely suggested.

Imogene became curious; curiositywas the definition of her career. Dadwas in his cups, straddling the border ofutter psychosis, thus when he explainedthe nature of his research, his hypotheses

regarding Dr. Drake’s Technique, itsprofound generative connotations, andthe doctor’s affiliation with someominous and nameless religious cultwhose leaders sought transcendentpower, perhaps godhood, she wasintrigued, but skeptical.

The skepticism didn’t linger.Imogene had been the anal-

retentive, type A personality, a woman incontrol, just like Mom. Normally, hercomport was smooth and cool aspolished steel. She’d taken a leave ofabsence from her job and was often inthe company of a Mexican national, ascientist named Raul Lorca who was inturn a younger colleague of Dad’s. Dadhad originally introduced Imogene and

Lorca and things between her and thedashing young Mexican took off likefireworks.

Conrad met the guy half a dozentimes—the scientist was in his latethirties and excruciatingly handsome. Hehad a self-deprecating sense of humorand seemed genuinely humble for acelebrated genius. Mostly, though,Conrad knew him from Imogene’s rantsabout Dr. Drake and the need toassemble allies against that worthy’sschemes. Lorca was a mysterious figure,fast-tracked for the Nobel until a fallfrom grace, of unspecified nature, led toexpatriate status. His research for theMexican government had beentangentially related to Drake’s own. Like

Imogene, he believed Dr. Drake and Dadwere on to something, that the DrakeTechnique might be bigger than atomictheory.

The last time Conrad saw Imogenealive, it was a few months after theirimpromptu rendezvous at the MonarchGrill. On this occasion she was frazzled,febrile, chain-smoking and pacing theconfines of her apartment in SanFrancisco, the one Conrad lovedbecause it was an oasis in the alcove ofa warehouse converted to art galleriesand a discotheque.

The apartment was dark and stiflingas an untended aquarium. It reeked ofmusk and alcohol. The drapes weredrawn tight and the door resembled a

bank vault with its locks and bars andbolts. Her plants were dead, the sinkwas jammed with dishes and brokenwine glasses. More glasses and bottlescluttered every room. Her tabby, theredoubtable Jeeves, had run away to hispeople.

She dwelt among heaps of paper—reams of hastily jotted personalobservations, international newspaperclippings of UFO reports and king-sizedenvelopes of surveillance photographsof former Drake clients and underlingsthat would’ve done the likes of Singhand Marsh proud. Astoundingly, she’dacquired a slightly water-damagedledger from Drake’s defunct researchcenter in Spain—the Cloister had been

largely destroyed in an earthquake andthe resulting fire three or four years afterEzra died there. Allegedly, Drakeperished in the destruction. Certainlythere’d been no official sightings of himsince then.

The file contained a list of patientsand next of kin contacts, research notesand so forth. However, the pièce derésistance was a dossier on Dr.Ambrose Drake cobbled from thearchival records of the FBI, CIA andINTERPOL. The mother lode, she calledit.

Come on, bro! Do you think popread about Drake in ScientificAmerican? The guy doesn’t exist, really.Nobody knows about Drake except

people he wants to meet. Drakecontacted Dad, sent him a letter. I sawthe goddamned thing; oh yeah, thedoctor was so very sorry about youngmaster Ezra, would that he could help,condolences, condolences, etc. At theend he gets to the point, does the softsell routine, invites the family to hisclinic in Spain. Crap! Coincidence?Did he pick Ezra’s name out of a hat?Or maybe it had something to do withpop’s research—the research he wasdoing on the side, the unfunded stuff.Uh-huh, I bet Drake was extremelyintrigued by Dad’s thesis on quantumphysics and the theoretical applicationof micro technology. I mean, hell, thatwas before nanotech was even a term.

Nope, Drake knew what Dad wantedand how badly he wanted it. Ezra was atiny sacrifice in the scheme of things, ifyou look at it from Dad’s perspective.He’s a pure philanthropist and they’rethe individualist’s worst nightmare. Theol’, ‘if you could end world sufferingby killing one innocent’ choice.

Care to guess what Drake’ssuccess rate was with his miracleprocedure? Low. The rate was so low Ibet the placebo effect covers most ofthose spontaneous remissions. Thatcenter was a roach motel. Drake waspeddling poison to the bugs. Or maybeit was worse than that, more diabolical.Maybe those poor little fuckers weresacrifices. Ritual sacrifices on the altar

of pseudo science.Then there’s Dad in his loony bin.

You never talked to him after he gotcommitted, you don’t know what he wasup to at Grable. A bloody Lovecraftasylum with a fresh coat of paint andcable TV in all the rooms. I guess hereceived some odd visitors—spooks,government shrinks, scientists of everypersuasion. I bribed one of theorderlies to be my fly on the wall. Theorderly said our patriarch was inconstant contact with foreign nationals.A gaggle of chemists, some of them onthe lam, incidentally. All picking hisbrain about the Drake Technique. Wordgets around, y’know. Since nobody’dseen hide nor hair of Drake in years,

Dad became the de facto guru. I mean,Drake was older than some of thoseNazi scientists living out their goldenyears in South America. He has to bedead, right? Course he does.

Another weird thing—Dad’s nameis flagged at the Bureau. The wholefamily’s flagged. You too, bucko. It’s alow key watch list. I stumbled across itby pure chance. Makes me wonder whyI was ever hired. I mean, picture theFeds hiring someone on a suspectedRed list back in the ’50s and you’ll getthe idea. Somebody big pulled stringsto clear my admission. Doesn’t makesense…or maybe it makes all the sensein the world. Better not touch that rightnow.

Dad wrote a thesis. It’s called“Imago Effect,” supposedly based onan ancient Greek collection of epistles,some occult tome he got as a door prizefrom our vacation in the Pyrenees.Dad’s thesis is all about how Dr. D. andfriends plan to become gods. Creepyisn’t the word, brother mine.

Dad made a pact with Drake. Dadwanted the answers. He got ’em; see,that’s why the worms ate his brains.Forbidden knowledge, brother dear.Sure as shit wasn’t grief. Know whathis part of the bargain was? Know whathe did to pay his debt? Mom figured itout, maybe not completely. But enoughto make like a banzai pilot. Drake tookthose children. He ate Ezra and in

return gave Dad the keys to Hell. I’mgonna figure out where he dropped ’emand raise a little myself.

Conrad had accepted eachproffered scrap of “evidence” withpolite interest, infinitely more concernedabout his sister’s erratic demeanor, hernon-sequiturs and paranoid monologues.She refused to answer the phone; even asthey chatted, her supervisor at the bureauoffice left a brusque message on theanswering machine. Conrad got thedistinct impression that Imogene waslooking into the barrel of a suspension,or worse.

He smiled and nodded, but couldn’tfool his sister.

Imogene’s expression smoothed

into that of a statue, a marble queen. Shewhip-cracked the back of her handacross his mouth, slashed him with herclass ring, chipped his teeth with theforce of it. He stood mute and stolid andwatched the tears make diamonds of hereyes, watched the knot form between herknuckles, a thundercloud of rupturedveins. He said nothing, waiting, becausethis was as it had ever been; she wasirresistible as gravity and boar tides, asa train wreck. His most tenable option,the brotherly option, was to endure thestorm.

I was going to kill him. Had itplanned out for his birthday. He let thatmonster eat our brother to advancesome goddamned occult hypothesis. But

I was too chickenshit to pull it off;convinced myself he wasn’t the one thatneeded a bullet in the head. Course, hegoes and springs a leak in the oldticker. Maybe God sent an angel ofdeath to even the score.

She was falling apart, but whatcould he do? The family wasn’t much forinterventions, historically speaking. Hedidn’t do anything, in the end; impotentand weak in the presence of hertowering rage, her maniacal obsession.She wiped her eyes, sighed, and let himwrap her hand with a towel full of icecubes. She ordered Chinese; they atefrom the cartons because that was safest,considering the sanitation problem withher sink, and come the fortune cookies,

her normal acerbic personality hadreasserted itself.

Me and Raul are on this case.Drake is listed as deceased in officialgovernment records, but Raul thinks theshithead is still out there somewhere,that his cabal of black magic-loving,eugenics-worshipping lunatics isgathering power. I want payback forwhat happened to our brother. Raul’sgonna help me get it. We may gounderground for a while. I’ll call whenI can. If something happens to me…She intoned the cliché with a dramaticwink and proceeded to sketch a courseof action. The melodrama smacked ofgrotesquery because both of them knewsomething was going to happen. It was in

the stars.During a lull in the conversation, he

cracked his cookie. His fortune said:imago, imago, imago.

Chapter Two

I

Conrad left his island bolt hole andflew to Crete to attend the last supper ofhis adopted uncle and manager, a dyingbillionaire named Cyrano Kosokian.

The plane touched down amid aheat wave. A dour chauffeur in a dark

suit and rimless sunglasses waitedoutside customs. He held a homemadesign that read, Mr. Navarro. Heintroduced himself as Sergio, took thebags, and put Conrad in the back seat ofan antique Packard.

“Welcome back,” Nikolai DeKoonsaid from the front passenger seat. Thiswas Kosokian’s major domo of sometwenty-five years. DeKoon, anexpatriate British gentleman, was leanand pale and dressed as always in awhite suit. He projected an aura of effetemenace that frightened Conrad as a boyand merely disquieted him as a man.

“Came down from the castle tosquire me yourself? I’m flattered.”Conrad didn’t offer to shake hands.

“Special occasion. Uncle is downto hours. Half the people in the airportare likely here for the festivitiestonight.”

Conrad had noted the abundance oflimousines on the curb and imagined thefleet of them winding along the desolateroads to Uncle K’s abode. He said,“Everybody loves a fucking parade.”

It was a long drive along thecoastal foothills despite the fact Sergiokept the accelerator mashed to thefloorboard while a tiny national flag onthe radio antenna snapped in the breeze.Pavement ended at the city limits and thecar was engulfed in a cloud of whitedust. The air-conditioner was broken.Conrad had to keep the window cracked

and the dust swirled into thecompartment and formed a powderylayer upon his clothes.

Eventually, they approached themountains and arrived in the courtyardof a mansion. A low stone wallcrumbled on three sides; remnants of anorchard sprawled in an untendedmorass. Rocky hillside terraced down toa distant swath of shining water. Themansion itself was decayed into a stateof grandiose ruination, slumping towardthe stony earth of its foundation.

Conrad climbed out, dusting his hat.A pair of ancient men clad in sweat-blacked dungarees labored to draw abucket from the well, which sat betweenthe house and a newer timber garage.

The pair stood so close to one another,for a moment he savored the illusionthey were conjoined. They stared at himwith dead-fish eyes, tongues wrigglinginside toothless mouths. One wipedgnarled, greasy fingers on his sleeve andbegan to draw on the rope. Conrad’sflesh prickled at the sight of them, hisinstinct alerted to some threat it didn’tcomprehend.

DeKoon snapped shut his cellphone and said, “Ta-ta for now, dearboy. Urgent matters press. I’ll see you atthe banquet, of course.” He alightedfrom the car and strode quickly awaytoward a small villa some distance fromthe main house.

Sergio slammed the trunk. He

mounted the cracked marble steps withthe bags, beckoned for Conrad to follow.“Your Uncle asked me to bring youdirectly. He is weak.”

Cyrano Kosokian bore no relationto Conrad. He’d been a longtime friendof Dad’s, although he refused to disclosethe details of how they’d met or whythey’d stayed in touch. Uncle Kosokianrelished his secrets. The joys ofmanipulation appealed to him almost asmuch as did the pleasures of brute force.When things went south at the Navarrohome after Ezra’s death, Dad sentConrad to live at this very estate foreleven years. Conrad sulked in rage anddespair at being exiled from his sisterand his home. Uncle Kosokian had

chuckled and said, You are myapprentice. You are my little pet KentAllard. The secrets of life and death,pain and suffering, shall be yours.Except, I shall not teach you to cloudthe minds of men, but to rip their heartsfrom their breasts and split their brainpans and eat that jelly like caviar! Towhich Conrad had smartly responded,Hell with Allard, I want to be Cranston.

He received an opulent privateeducation via tutors. Uncle Kosokianhad also instructed young Conrad in theprincely arts, including that of warfareand close combat, had groomed him forthe clandestine spectacles of the Pageantand its gladiatorial exhibitions—a greatand secret show that had played to the

tune of obscenely rich patricians sinceancient times. The man had participatedin the secret arenas during his ownsordid youth, had spilled his share ofblood. He taught Conrad most everythingthere was to know about killing men andbeasts for sport and profit.

Uncle Kosokian was the last ofumpteen generations of olive plantationbarons and shipping magnates. On theorigins of his lineage he was customarilysly, saying only that an ancestor of hishad almost done for Odysseus. He’donce confided to Conrad over a bowl ofsweet red wine that he inheritedeverything by virtue of his elder siblingsbeing killed during the wars. Anaccomplished prodigal son and all

around ne’er-do-well, he’d not lifted afinger to advance the family fortune orsecure a wife or sire offspring. Heintended to wallow in luxury andsquander the Kosokian riches down tothe bitter dregs, pursuing whores, eatingand drinking to excess, and losing vastsums while gambling on sports. Judgingby the ramshackle appearance of theestate, the mission appeared to havebeen accomplished.

II

Cyrano Kosokian was a behemothconfined to a fancy pneumatic hospitalbed. Perhaps seven feet tall, perhapsmore, and hideous—his was the face ofa somewhat melted Christmas gnome.An oxygen mask depended from thewattles of his brontosaurus neck.Kosokian’s private nurse, a haggardArmenian, had snatched a pack ofGauloises and cursed him on her wayout as she lighted one.

Flies gathered.The longer Conrad looked, the

more of them swarmed, fat and torpid inthe killing jar of the study. They buzzedaround his mentor’s hands, played touch-and-go on stained bandages; trundledalong his sleeves as if he were already a

carcass. He muttered in bastard English,took long swallows of the Tiger’s Milkhis servants mixed by the pitcher. Histeeth were long and sharp and the shadeof bloody ivory.

Conrad distracted himself with thedécor during their frequent silences. Allarches and plaster and undertones ofmedieval squalor. Too dark, too ripe, toomany flies. And too many narrow stairsin the spiral case. Kosokian’s studyoccupied the top of a seaside-facingtower and was crammed to the gills withantiquarian treasures, much draped bydusty sheets in advance of his permanentvacation. A brass telescope pointed atthe balcony where strips of light creptthrough the shutters.

The emaciated elders shuffled infrom their duties and each took a post oneither side of the bed. “These are theangels of my nature,” Uncle Kosokiansaid, forestalling Conrad’s question.“One better than the other. They are alsomy bodyguards.”

“Where did you get these two? Afire sale?” Conrad eyed them with acontemptuous smile to disguise hisunease. He disliked their beady eyes andtoothless grins, how they hunched likevultures and picked at their scabrousflesh, all the while listening with feigneddisinterest. Neither amounted to muchmore than a bundle of twigs andrawhide, yet some quality of presence, aviolent magnetism, radiated from them; a

similar dark aura emanated from UncleKosokian and seemed to intensify withage and infirmity rather than diminish.Conrad would’ve been tempted tocharacterize the force as evil if hesubscribed to such concepts.

“Be kind,” Uncle Kosokian said,his accent miraculously thinning. “You’llinherit their services, if you’re lucky.Meanwhile, a final request.”

“No,” Conrad said.“What do you mean, no?”“No, I won’t stop looking for

Genie.”“Lad, I admire your pluck. Your

nemesis, this Drake, he is powerful.Powerful and terrible. I beg you, desistbefore he takes notice and squashes

you.”“I would hate for that to happen. I

will try to be clever.”“You are cunning as a beast is

cunning,” Uncle Kosokian said. “That’snot enough. Did your father ever explainwhy he split you and fair Imogene whenyou were children? Why he sent you tome?”

“Dad was vague on that point.”“The fellow wasn’t fond of sharing

his thoughts. Too many dark secrets. Toomany enemies from his service with yourgovernment. Imogene was to be hisweapon against them. That’s why hemade certain she was groomed for lawenforcement. She served him well. You,he wished to protect from his foes.

Believe it or not, he loved you best,Conrad. That is why he sent you to me,why you were cloistered here in mydemesne.” Kosokian sucked a tall glassof Tiger’s Milk and breathed heavily.“Your father had other plans for you.Alas, his breakdown and untimelydemise derailed everything he’d workedto accomplish. He would not approve ofyour Quixotic pursuit of Imogene. Shebecame embroiled in his vendetta withthe forces of darkness, as it were. Nosense following her into oblivion.”

Conrad said, “You talk a lot for aguy on oxygen.”

Kosokian’s immediate family andfriends began arriving at sundown.These were a motley collection of

down-at-the-heels aristocrats,dilettantes, and an ever-circling swarmof lamprey and pilot fish. Conradremembered a handful of them from hisyouth, and he shook hands and kissedcheeks as the guests ascended the stepsand passed through the front door in acavalcade of morbid pageantry.Kosokian’s servants had shut off theelectricity and lighted dozens of torchesand lamps, hundreds of fat, gothiccandles in chandeliers and candelabras.Smokey shadows hung thick in thenarrow passages and the vaulted banquethall alike. The walls were decoratedwith soot-stained tapestries, curtains,and a grand collection of archaicweaponry and armor.

The whole roasted boar arrived ona five-foot-long trencher, apple in mouth.From his position as guest of honor nearthe head of the main table, Conrad eyedthe assembly in their cloaks and capes,their tall hats and taller hairdos, andthought this could be a banquet in thecastle of a degenerate prince circa thelatter middle ages. He could almost tastethe metal of the long knives—those intheir hands and the ones up their sleeves.The hall was indeed dim, but he senseda deeper and more sinister darkness inthe furtive glances, the sly, cold smiles.Upon Kosokian’s demise his kith and kinwould divide his estate as theyferociously divided the boar.

Attendant’s wheeled the great man

into the hall aboard a mahogany chairoversized as a throne and carved in thelikeness of a dragon. Kosokian haddispensed with the oxygen mask anddonned resplendent silk robes ofcrimson trimmed in gold, and jeweledrings on every finger. He laid anobsidian rod across his knees. A goldenpendant set with an obscenely large rubyreinforced his image as the moribundpotentate, a sorcerer-king who’d steppedfrom tarot card to hold a final debauchedcourt.

Servants in crimson livery arrivedwith platters and decanters while asextet of troubadours decked inmedieval garb mounted a dais andstarted in with their flutes, harps, and

recorders. Incense bubbled and spatwithin strategically placed braziers,cloying odors of lotus and dragons’-blood overwhelming the rot ofKosokian’s bandages, the reek of hisdecayed flesh.

Conrad escaped as soon as humanlypossible, seizing his opportunity whenplates were finally cleared and theassembly broke down into pairs fordancing. He sneaked to the balcony andstood in the shadows, smoking acigarette and watching moonlight glintfrom the waves.

His escape was short-lived—several guests emerged from the hall, ledby a servant who lighted a torch in asconce and revealed Conrad’s hiding

place. A curvaceous blonde in a brightgreen summer dress introduced herself.She was a cousin of their host, severalplaces removed. Her father hailed fromYork and served the British consulate.Her mother worked for the queen as adining consultant. Her brother flewwarplanes in the Royal Air Force. So faras Conrad could determine afterlistening for ten minutes, the girl herselfdid nothing except drink and spend herparents’ money. Her cheeks were rosyfrom heat and booze.

“So, why are you lurking?” shesaid. Her diamond earrings blazed in thetorchlight. “Aren’t you the guest ofhonor?”

“I was looking for the cask of

Amontillado,” he said. His shirt stuck tothe small of his back.

She laughed. Perspiration beadedin the hollow of her throat, gleamedacross the swell of her breasts. “For thelove of God, Montresor,” she said, andmoved her hip so that it locked with his.

“Yes, for the love of God.”He went with her to the garden and

lifted her dress and pressed her against ashattered colonnade and they coupled inthe dull red light that spilled from theterrace. The stars flickered with the beatof his rising blood and began to turn.

She nipped his ear and said, “Idon’t like that mean old uncle of yours.He’s a fraud. Not as sick as he lets on,for damn sure.”

Conrad looked into her eyes, butthat didn’t help. He gripped herhaunches and worked harder.

She said, “We were here forChristmas. After everyone went to bed,the old man rolled out on the balcony inhis creepy throne-mobile. I was downhere in the bushes smoking a joint. Hestepped off the balcony and zipped intothe darkness like one of those wire-fuaction heroes. I didn’t see where hewent. Heard him cackling, though.”

He pondered a response. Therewere so many questions. His next thrustdid the trick and she screamed andwrapped herself around him like a boaconstrictor and he forgot what he’dintended to ask.

Uncle Kosokian passed away laterthat evening. Three days later his body,wrapped head to toe in a silk shroud,was placed on a pyre at sunset andburned. He did not leave Conrad apenny.

III

When Conrad arrived in the Stateshe bought a Cadillac, a 1948 SixtySpecial Fleetwood, at a used car lot inSanta Fe. The salesman claimed it wasoriginally the property of a small-time

cartel boss who got himself whacked bya jealous mistress. There were bulletholes, somewhere. Conrad wonderedhow many cars rolling around oncebelonged to dead people. We drive theircars, sleep in their beds, wear theirclothes. Wear their faces.

He called a friendly privateinvestigator named Tony Kite anddoubled down on the finder’s fee for theBrazilian. Finder’s and catcher’s fee.Tony promised to assign more guys, hewas closing in, etc., etc. Conrad wishedhe could’ve consolidated his efforts, putthe Two Stooges, Marsh and Singh, onthe case, but the Stooges weren’t hisfriends. They answered to higherpowers. If they realized he wanted to

talk with a wanted criminal such asSouza, their evil faces would light uplike kids at Christmas. Then there’d behell to pay, and more. That the nation’snumber one intelligence agency hadn’tput two and two together was bothalarming and amusing.

Money was a problem. Money wasalways a problem no matter how manybones he crushed or how much blood helet or dues he paid. The fucking rent wasalways due.

One night he was waiting out thesmall hours in a saloon in the badlandsby nursing a bottle of Johnnie WalkerBlack when a rowdy group piled in fromthe desert darkness and started tearingup the joint. He’d situated in a dark

corner facing the door, a woman tightagainst his hip. Him and the girl hadbeen on the road for forty-eight hourssince he found her at a booth in a dinerlooking shrewdly forlorn. A peroxideblonde with tepid eyes and a lividkeloid on her neck in the shape of astylized jellyfish that elongated anddistorted as she breathed.

The mark electrified the hairs onhis body, ignited the primitive fuse at hiscore, cranked the rotor in his brain,churned primordial muck. But he didn’tprotest, didn’t turn on his heel and fly.Flight hadn’t worked before, anyway.They, whoever they were, theHonorable Opposition, as he thought ofthem, had had their hooks deep in him

for a year now, a year that he’d noticed,just before the expedition to SouthAmerica. His hunch was all the workwith the transcendental meditation andautohypnosis, the hours of gawping atpsychedelic films and weird Rorschachblot patterns Imogene cadged from godknew where, had gotten the gearsturning, had really and truly cracked thedoor. Maybe he was entering an alteredstate as Dad prophesied, as that devilisheminence Dr. Drake had allegedlyattained. Conrad might be on his way toachieving godhead and wouldn’t that bea kick in the ass?

Or, more likely, exhaustion andbrain damage were doing the talking.

Her name was Yolanda, or Wanda,

he couldn’t remember, and she was toodrunk to see straight. She rested her headon the table between the ashtray and ahandful of quarters. A cigarettesmoldered in the corner of her mouth. Hepulled it free, frowned at the lipstickring, and smoked the remainder whilethe newcomers chuckled and hooted likehyenas and glass shattered.

The group was eclectic: three menin polo shirts and golf slacks, their big-haired girls in sequined cocktail dresses;a squad of hurly-burly bikers in full-onleather regalia, bodyguards of the RodeoDrive refugees; and a tall, rangy man infaded Army fatigues. His hair was blackand sleek, his eyes pale as ice water.His nose was flat. He wore a spiked

collar, spiked bracelets, and a fistful ofshiny, expensive rings. His boots werethe steel toe kind. A nasty bruise on hissculpted cheekbone was fading toyellow.

They’d grabbed a bunch of tablesand commenced drinking. The girlsplayed pool with a couple of thedrunker, braver locals. The bikersslammed tequila and took turns hurlingshot glasses at the mirror above the barand the bartender himself, whoeventually retreated to the kitchen andhid. The pretty boys in the polo shirtsguffawed and sipped beer.

The tall, black-haired man stared atConrad. Conrad stared back, highlightinghim with a golden shaft of light from

nowhere. I can do that AND bendspoons with my mind power. Holy shit.He blinked and the shaft of light, whichno else seemed to notice, winked out.The black-haired guy was Rauno-something or other. Members of thePageant knew him as the Finn, anunranked fighter on the periphery andrising fast. Young and mean. If he lived afew more years he might land a patron,might become somebody. Conrad thoughtthe guy didn’t have a few more years.

The Finn unfolded from his chairand strolled over to where the party girlswere flirting with the hapless locals.The local boys were stout, blue collartypes, probably construction workers;corduroy jackets, greasy ball-caps on

backward, half-blitzed and irritable asbulls. Neither was too happy when theFinn told them in an exaggerated accentto get their filthy Yankee paws off hiswomen. There was a long moment wherenothing happened, then one of the mensmashed the Finn’s jaw with a bottle andhis partner broke a pool cue across theFinn’s spine. The Finn shrugged andlaughed and wiped a trickle of bloodfrom his lip. He turned and stuck histhumb in the eye of the guy who’d hit himwith the pool cue. The other man threw ahaymaker punch, but the Finn absorbed itand caught his arm and twisted it until itcrunched. He ground the jagged base ofthe bottle into the man’s nose. Bloodrushed over his knuckles. Then he leaned

over and caught the man who wasshrieking and crawling away by thetesticles and the scruff of the neck,hoisted him shoulder-high and pitchedhim through the big picture window in ashower of neon. The bikers cheered andthe polo shirt boys gave the Finn a roundof golf claps.

The Finn wasn’t breathing hard. Helooked at Conrad, hand on hip.

“Sit down before you fall down,”Conrad said. He poured another glass ofbooze and drank it all in one steady pull.

The bikers stirred, but the Finnwaved and they settled. “Are you afraidof me?” His accent was completelyinvisible now.

“He’s a tub of shit. Smash him,

Ronnie,” one of the girls said. Shepopped her gum.

Conrad frowned and poured againand drank again. His short hair wascombed. He wore a casual navy bluesuit, nice shoes, everything.

“Be quiet,” the Finn said to the girland she shut up.

“He’s afraid okay,” one of the poloshirt boys said. “Lookit him. Jill’s right.Chubs is a round mound of ground.Givin’ you the hairy eyeball. Kick hisass, man. Fuck, lemme.” And everybodybut the Finn laughed.

“I apologize for the idiots,” theFinn said. “I know who you are. Fightme.”

“I don’t want to fight you,” Conrad

said. But he did want to, very, verymuch. The more he watched the Finn’sentourage, the more he yearned to tasteblood. “I don’t do unsanctioned matches.My people aren’t comfortable with it.”

“Please do not be disrespectful.”“You’re disrespectful and you’re

unranked. Don’t bow up to me, son. It’sunseemly. Look at my scars.”

“I apologize. We would have agood match. You’ve seen my films. Youknow I can fight.”

“Pick on some other guy, someother night. Sit down, have a drink.”

“Name the terms.”“Go away, son.”The Finn gestured at one of the polo

shirt boys and they held a whispered

conference. The Finn said to Conrad,“Tomorrow night. There’s a place not farfrom here. You call your support people,whatever. I’m bringing my own staff anda film crew. So, full panoply.”

“Full panoply.” Conrad favored thesimplicity of shoes and a t-shirt forsomething off the cuff like this, but theFinn obviously needed film, and filmstock sold far better to the collectors ifthe contestants dressed in their peacockfinest. “Seventy-five, winner take all.”

The Finn didn’t blink. “Done.Weapons? Hands and feet?”

“What do you prefer?”The Finn smiled and made a fist.

IV

He found the town in a dried upbasin valley, dropped his film at a one-hour-photo-mat. The pictures weresequences of him and Wanda in variousposes against the landscape and othersof just the empty land itself shot from themoving car. Photography didn’tparticularly interest him. He snapped thephotos because on occasion he’d spottedghostly figures and orbs floating in thebackground of the developed film; hintsof the unseen forces that surrounded him.

Wanda skipped off to have nailsdone at a salon. Conrad checked hisbattered and mutilated roadmap. Hisvision doubled; he wiped tears awaywith his sleeve. The sky contractedrhythmically, an origami nautilus.

The town was gritty, the kind oftown one might expect from a machoman cigarette advertisement. Highcountry, wind-blasted and strange in theprovincial sense that such places haveever been strange to outsiders. Everystructure creaked, every skinned surfaceate the anemic light or gave it back tooharshly.

Conrad squinted, clutched his headto keep it from cracking like a plate. Hisfingers were going numb, and that was

odd; such a thing had never happenedbefore unless he was blind drunk orsuccumbing to the sweet balm ofunconsciousness from repeated blows tothe head. The sensation came and went,tiny surges of disquiet.

He dialed Marsh from a payphonein the arcade between a tattoo parlor anda gun shop. It was a lengthy numberprinted inside a matchbook from theEgyptian Casino in Atlantic City. Conradhad no need to dig up the matchbook.His memory wasn’t perfect, not likeDad’s, or Imogene’s, or even Ezra’s hadbeen; even so, he possessed a mnemonicknack with patterns and sequences.Number strings were cake. No, he usedthe green and gold matchbook because

he enjoyed the gilt lettering, its curedscent, the suggestion of great mysteriesunfolding in the dark.

The line hummed.A pit bull wandered the street,

snuffling garbage. People gave it a berthwithout seeming to notice the object oftheir apprehension.

The line stuttered and snapped likea fire.

A kid in a biker jacket a couple ofsizes too large stopped at Conrad’s car,peered into the dirty windows.

“Hah,” Marsh said, far away.Chamber music droned, water rushedover rocks. Woodwinds, violins,recorders, river stones rubbed smooth asglass. No opera today. Marsh had once

confided that he preferred opera whenhis mood was savage.

“Marsh,” Conrad said.“What… Goddamn it.” Marsh

disconnected.Conrad waited.The kid in the biker jacket whistled

to the pit bull. They walked across thedeserted lot, went through a break in thecyclone fencing, soon became specks inthe outlying fields. The white gulf waspenetrated by water towers, train tracks,abandoned box cars, a million miles ofscrub. Someday alien probes mightdescend, drill core samples andspeculate whether life could’ve possiblyexisted here in aeons gone by.

The payphone rang. Marsh said,

“It’s okay now. How’d you get thatnumber? That’s my private number.” Thechamber music was gone.

“You gave it to me.”“Hell I did. When? When did I give

you that number?”“I don’t remember. Perhaps

Singh...”“Call the other number, next time.”“The recording.” A heavily-

accented voice would answer, sayConrad had reached Kow’s MandarinGrill, please wait.

“Uh-huh. That one.” Marsh didsomething away from the receiver, cameclose again. He coughed. His voice wasraspy; it thickened when he was upset.According to Singh, Marsh suffered from

a rare bronchial disease, a souvenirfrom the Dark Continent. “Y’know weclandestine types wallow in thetraditions of argot and subterfuge. It’sgenetic.”

“Ah.”“You know, Conrad, I was kinda

worried you weren’t going to call in.Thought maybe you’d forgotten.”

“No worries, Rob. I’ll have yourmoney.”

“Oh, don’t I know that. Where youheaded, bud?”

“West.”“Uh-huh. Where to?”“There are sites in Washington. I

might visit those.” Conrad smiled andhis lips split, dribbled blood down his

chin into the receiver. Marsh had himpigeonholed as a wannabe naturalist.That was fine, that was convenient, itkept them off his back. The MimaMounds. The Juniper Dunes. The HorseCliffs. A dozen others, most of themnameless and unmapped. He’d trod theground of those places; camped in theirprimordial circumferences and watchedstar-fields blaze like iron in a crucible;burned innumerable rolls of film andwaited for epiphanies that yet eludedhim. Going back to those hallowed siteswasn’t likely to make a difference; thekey to the whole mess was surelyelsewhere in an exotic region, upon adarksome shore. However, he had togive Marsh something. Otherwise,

Marsh would take what he wanted.“Shouldn’t you be training?”“I’m always training.”“And that’s it. Huh.”“I’m just driving.” Conrad wasn’t

an artful liar; bluntness was his weaponof choice. However, when dealing withthe likes of Marsh he’d graduallylearned to adopt cursory camouflage, toblend in with his current habitat, an anttrundling in the shadow of aardvarks.Huh, I’m becoming proficient.Should’ve gone into law.

“Uh-huh. Say, bud. People came byyour house yesterday. The New Englandhouse.”

“Who?” Conrad had almostforgotten about that place—

monumentally gothic, surrounded byovergrown gardens and fieldstone walls;he hadn’t been there in several years. Anindustrialist fan had given it to him as apresent. Conrad had owned severalhomes before liquidating them to fuel hissearch for Imogene. Gifts from patronsand admirers. Cars too; and planes. Allof it gone now, except for the NewEngland house, a cabin in WashingtonState.

“People. We called in an eye in thesky and ran the pics—nada. Theyweren’t ours and they weren’t Companyguys; probably foreign. Got any foreignfriends?”

“I don’t know them.”“No?”

“No.”“Uh-huh. Stranger things, I guess.”“I’m just driving.”“Sure, sure. Could be a

coincidence. Maybe whoever ownedthat house before had some heat. Thatcould be the deal.”

“I don’t know them.” Theconversation compounded Conrad’sheadache; his brow was slick andfeverish. He feared the tension wouldprompt him to do something ill-advised.Occasionally, nerves caused him to burstinto maniacal laughter. He had to get offthe phone.

“Uh-huh, could be a coincidence.That’s how a pal of mine got cashiered. Iever tell you that story? No? Sullivan

ran an LP in Lima. Boring stuff, Ipromise you that. Not much of a healthrisk. Except Sully went into the wrongnightclub to get drunk and came out atexactly the wrong time; somebodythought he looked like somebody elsewho was also there, it was dark, andblah, blah, blah. Piece of piano wirewill fit around anybody’s neck if you cutit long enough.”

“I don’t know them.”“You’re just driving, right?”“Right.”“Uh-huh. Singh can meet you. He’s

got business in the area. If you don’t hearfrom him in a few hours—”

“I’ll call back.”“At the other number.”

“Okay.”Marsh disconnected.Conrad stared into the receiver.

The concave oval of miniature blackholes radiated waves of soft static likeheat shimmering from desert highway.

He made another call, this one tosome medical technicians affiliated withthe Pageant and told them when andwhere the ludus would be, then hung upand slouched into a dollar store, boughta bag of aspirin packets and three bottlesof generic seltzer water. The clerk at theregister was excruciatingly polite. Sheseemed pleased to inform him that yes,the Happy Raven Hotel was aboutseventy miles up the highway, Bonvoyage, sucker. He thanked her, went

outside and chewed a fistful of aspirin,gulped the water.

Packs of urban cowboys trolled inpickups, spat tobacco at the gutters inwell-rehearsed arcs. Some gave Conradthe evil eye, muttered to their partners, ifthey had any, to themselves if theydidn’t. Country & Western tunesslithered from tin sheathes, coiled intohis eardrum, tweaked the knob of hisadrenal drip, caused a surge oftestosterone that threatened to wake theprehistoric lizard. Opera for Marsh,Hank Williams for Conrad.

He revisited the photo shop andpicked up his film. He sat on the bumperof the Cadillac and reviewed the stackflashcard style. Then he burned the

pictures in a sodden pile, kicked theashes to pieces as an afterthought. Theashes drifted across white and yellowparking stripes and were lost in theboundless fields.

V

The ludus went down at a mostlydefunct strip mall just off the highway afew minutes after midnight. There was afilm crew, a couple of equipment vans,the assorted handlers and hangers on

attendant to these ludi. A small crowd,even for this. He’d placed a call to oneof Uncle K’s former liaisons andarranged for a surgeon, a couple ofemergency techs, and three security guys.The security guys dressed in suits andcarried Uzis slung under their coats.Their leader, a short, mean looking guywith false teeth shook Conrad’s hand andsaid it was an honor to meet him.

Conrad strapped on a gloriousplumed helm, a harness, greaves andboots. He wrapped his left fist in acestus. The for-show-minimum. Acrossthe lot the Finn was a terror with hisoiled body and spiked-everything. TheFinn opened his mouth and arched hisback, sucking in oxygen. Conrad smiled

without emotion and stared at the groundand waited for it to begin.

The Finn had killed his share ofmen, but they were lesser men, not firstclass talents. The last victim was asecond-tier brute in Gibraltar; a realbloodbath, that one. Nothing for Conradto scoff at, but nothing to worry abouteither. He’d watched the tapes, studiedthe taller man’s movements, his favoredtechniques. The Finn was a striker, apugilist enamored of cestus and cleats,knees and elbows. Conrad wasn’tconcerned with strikers; he was built toabsorb that kind of punishment. Aprimer, a tune up for the real battlesdown the line. Easy money.

The Finn had killed many, many

men, but lesser men. The Finn waskilling Conrad.

The Finn’s fists were too fast, tooheavy and they were everywhere.Conrad was strong, but strong couldn’tdo much against fast this night and hewas on his knees on the sticky asphalt inthe crushed glass and gravel and it wasall but over.

The grand, stony moon wobbled,lopsided and estranged. Its edgeswhickered against a whetstone of darkmatter and coagulated fire, counterpointto cosmic symphonies of gammabombardment and imploding quantumparticles. The moon shrieked below thethreshold of human perception,reverberated in vast stygian chambers of

rock and bone. Its light slopped as froma butcher’s pail overflowed; a lanternbloated on reeking whale fat, the ribsand spleen of every woodsman who hadgazed upon it and trembled before theshutter shut and the bar dropped acrossthe cottage door.

Conrad didn’t see the moon ormoths as large as silver dollars flutteringtheir dance in its milky radiation. Hishead was bowed. He saw worm holes;he saw his hand, wrapped in iron-studded rawhide, as a dismemberedstarfish welded to concrete; he saw thedim hulk of a windowless cementfaçade, the flank of a mall, a forgottenmausoleum commemorated by graffitiand posters bleached to zero resolution.

Then the Finn kicked him in theface with the ball of a reinforced hoplitesandal, hard as horn and laced below thecrook of the knee, the boot of legionswhich had trod ancient slaughter fieldsblack, and the sodium lamps leaned likepalm trees in a hurricane, beamed theirbright-hot lights into Conrad’s eyes.Angels instantly retreated to waveringpinpricks. Devils made long, sinuousribbons of themselves and hissed.Conrad’s chin strap came apart and hishelmet arced out in a cinematic parabolaof gleaming metal and crimson bristles,bounced once into darkness anddisappeared.

Cymbals clashed.Conrad’s blood jumped from him,

hurled itself from him, declared him theheadwaters of a river, a broken vessel,the Grail smashed upon rocks.

The Picts howled—The painted devils, the fearful

angels—An x-ray of his skull in the doctor’s

hand—A red infant, yarded from the womb

trailing its umbilical cord—A hog squealing in the stirrups,

rising to meet the knife—And the next dropkick slammed

home into Conrad’s ribcage with theweight of a derrick behind it, digginginto the meat of him, the bones and thesinews of him bending around the leatherand the steel and the Finn’s calf, a

granite oblong piston.Conrad clasped that pillar in a

death clinch. Thank you, he thought inthat jigsaw moment when all momentsconverged, when all possibilitiesrevolved upon the point of a tooth.Thank you for that. And he squeezed—

The planet hurtled through dustyspace.

—a crocodile with a deer in itsmaw turning and turning over in theriver, whipping the muddy water like athresher takes wheat and covers thecamera lens.

The Finn’s thighbone snapped, thenhis spine; a sharp, pulpy report as of apickaxe hacking into moist subjectmatter and then Conrad had the Finn’s

neck levered between elbow andsternum and he twisted with aconvulsive scissoring of his hips,making a corkscrew. Paralysis,strangulation, death; quietly desperate asany pincer-to pincer mortal combatwaged by arthropods in the soft grass ofnature’s killing floor.

After, no applause. The buzzinglamps, cold. A couple of guys in greensmocks hustled Conrad into the back of adrywall van and switched on thefluorescents, began stitching him up.

Like Satan appearing in a puff ofblack smoke, DeKoon squatted in theopening that breached the cab. Hissallow features shifted and flowed in thesickly light. “Should’ve gone the whole

hoplite route—pila and knives. Raunohad too much faith in his hands. Rubbishwith weapons. Bloody awful. At leastyou put him down. Thank god.”

None of the fighters had names,barring fanciful nom de plumes, orpopular crowd attributions. It wasalways the Finn, the Turk, the Russian.Conrad was the American, and thatsufficed. At the moment he was the Itboy representing what DeKoon referredto as ‘the Colonies.’

Conrad couldn’t speak because hislungs were deflated sacks of shockedflesh straining to expand and get someoxygen cycling before the lights wentout. So he bled. He suspected DeKoonwas a figment summoned by head

trauma. What a backwater stage this wasfor a man of DeKoon’s caliber. Theman’s presence here in the outpost ofpillaged American heartland, the FairLady of Liberty and Plenty sans makeup,was supremely incongruous; so farremoved from his customary haunts ofEuropean pleasure salons and HongKong opium dens. Conrad hoped thewell-heeled ghoul would dissolve at anymoment, sink into the quagmire of his id.

DeKoon grinned as if he tasted thevery wish in Conrad’s mind. “I amunhappy with your exhibition. You don’ttake unsanctioned fights. That’s a no-no.”

“Maybe we need to renegotiate mycontract.” A medic ran a needle into

Conrad’s shoulder and laced the heavysutures in the manner of sealing apigskin. Conrad’s mouth crimped tighter.

“Don’t be stupid, Conrad.”DeKoon picked lint from the breastpocket of his suit. His long, exquisitefingers would’ve brought tears to theeyes of world class pianists and state-sponsored torturers everywhere. “Doyou think you’re the only attraction onUncle’s string? My string, now.Disabuse yourself of that conceit. Yourprior performances were excellent,but… After tonight’s debacle I amextremely nonplussed. Something’sdifferent about you. Are you losing youredge, Conrad? Wine, women and songgot you down? You looked slow. Slow

and old.”Conrad raised his head and flashed

DeKoon a vicious grin.“Ahh, good. That’s the temper we

love.”Conrad bled.DeKoon made steeples of his

horribly beautiful fingers. He appraisedConrad through the gaps. “Sweet, sweet,malevolent Conrad. What can I do foryou? The answer is, ‘Anything.’ Tell mewhat you need and I’ll oblige. You’vebeen saving your pennies. Do you want atropical island? A flotilla of haremgirls? A new car? Say the word, my boy.Because, something’s amiss. Indeed, youseem melancholy and reckless. Don’t bereckless with Uncle K’s investment.”

Conrad spoke thickly. “You don’town me.”

“Oh. I was under the impressionthat I do…”

“Don’t push.”“Imogene, Imogene, the prettiest

girl I ever done seen? We can’t raise thedead, O friend of mine. We won’t takeon the entire Mexican army. Badbusiness.”

“Wasn’t the Mexicans.”“We know who it was. We don’t

care to attract his attention, either.Nothing personal. Uncle tried to tell youthis before.”

Conrad grunted and hung his head.“Ah, well.” DeKoon made a sad

face. “Goodbye for now, Conrad. We’ll

be in touch. The main stage next, hmm?”Conrad bled.“Yes, I think so. I beg of you, keep

your eye on the prize. No moreshenanigans. Kay?”

“Conrad!” A woman called fromoutside the panel truck. Her voice wasbreathless and Midwest-nasal, tentativeand unutterably drunk; the exact pitch toraise one’s hackles.

That was…what was her name?Yvonne, Luann? Wanda. Wanda, right.They had begun to run together, tobecome interchangeable, these Wanda’s.

“Your woman beckons,” DeKoonsaid. “I shan’t keep you apart. We’ll bein touch.”

VI

Conrad?” Wanda came into focusagain.

The motel room was a swamp.They’d been drinking vodka,

because Conrad happened to have a halfcase stashed in the trunk of his Cadillac,and chain-smoking cloves as that’s whatthe girl carried in her transparent plasticpurse with the Wonder Woman decal.She’d grown fond of cloves in collegewhen she prowled coffee houses, dating

the musicians, the painters, and thenihilistic poetry majors, whatever clichéwith a pulse was handy. Clove was thewatchword of cool people.

The girl attached herself to him likea barnacle to the hull of a ship. Therewere two kinds of women in hisuniverse—the kind who screamed whenhe peeled off his shirt and revealed thescar-tissue narrative of his life; and thekind who wanted to fuck on the spot.Wanda was firmly in the second camp.After motoring through miles of whitealkaline and rusted lake bottoms, theyleft their fingerprints and smudges on thedrapes, the savaged sheets, each other.Here was morning—overcast, stark andcold as stars.

But now the sea change was ineffect.

What had she said to him during thenight? What had she whispered in thevoice of the Other? Something gutturaland foreign. Germanic, Gallic…Imogene spoke German, I mean she didbefore she died; she could’ve been atranslator instead of… Must be theburnt carpet, the chemicals in theepoxy confusing my dreams.

What was it Wanda said?(they want in)He didn’t want to remember, so

stopped poking the dead animal with astick. Wanda was just Wanda again,anyway.

Wanda’s eyes glazed and she began

the inevitable recoil into flight. Even thefearless ones had their limits. Ancienthistory was sexy; current news was lessappealing. She was getting sober fast.The grisly cavalcade of memories fromlast night in the strip mall parking lot haddoubtless begun to trickle, trickle, hadbegun to rearrange the landscape of herpreconceptions.

Conrad wasn’t surprised. Bearingwitness to the spectacle left the Wanda’sof his life cotton-mouthed andremorseful come sunrise when realitysifted through the frame, reshaped hispagan fugue into the sterile thrum of amodern world full of telephone polesand bellied wires, cracked highways andnaked skulls withered to nutshells along

the endless maze of ditches. He dressedin plumed helmet and cape and killedmen and beasts for the pleasure ofhideously rich beings who were only tooglad to pay him a yeoman’s wage. Hiswould-be girlfriends had difficultyreconciling the reality of his avocationwith the nature of their desires.Consequences returned full force withthe cockcrow.

Daylight bleached his moonscapeof a face. Black and blue on deadlynightshade, red meat bulged like anintestine in the corner of his right eye.The left eye was a glistening purple bud,clenched as a toddler’s fist, its rootssunk deep in a hidden fracture thatyawned with each hoarse exhalation.

Blood drained steadily from crushedcartilage and ruined sinuses, yolked inthe back of his throat, and he frequentlyhawked into the wastebasket.

Conrad knew he looked bad, hadseen the Finn’s handiwork as he leanedto spit phlegm in the sink. The facecould’ve been his father’s, and he cursedhimself because it was the same morbidthought that pricked him after every boutwhen he was morose and more than halfdrunk from the adrenaline of kill or bekilled. Self loathing was a pureraddiction than any combination ofalcohol and cocaine, than any adrenalrush.

He’d weighed the damage as heslowly pulled on his grey and blue

leisure suit, loose-fitting for the purposeof gliding over the lacerations of hisrectangular torso, the welted minefieldsof his pylon thighs. None of it was trulyserious, no important bones werebroken, he was on top and a customleather briefcase stuffed with sixty-fivegrand lay under the bed. Money to paythe tax men.

The phone barked; a lime-greenrotary job. Wanda moved to answer it,stopped when Conrad gave her a look.Ten rings, then silence. That would beMarsh, Singh, or DeKoon. He wasn’t inthe mood for any of them, theiraccusations, interrogations, threats.Earlier, someone at the front desk hadslipped a note under the door. The note

gave an address and a date and wassigned by his good friend Tony Kite.Tony was ready and waiting for the nextstep.

The room brightened by sluggishdegrees. Big rigs loaded with produceand lumber rumbled past, shook thewindows. The television snowed.Numbers shuttled on the clock.

Finally, she lighted a cigarette,smoked it while she watched him withheavy-lidded wariness. “Are youretarded?”

He stared at his swollen hand,limned on the table between a cloggedashtray and a bottle. The hand could’vebeen the subject of a Bacon study, arudely carved chunk of marble; it didn’t

seem attached at all, just lying there,mute and bruised. He said, “Cerebralhemorrhage.”

“What.”“Brain damage. It’s distinct from

mental retardation.”“Oh.” She sucked her cigarette. Her

face was much older now, wasted.“Doesn’t seem all that different to me.When it comes down to it.”

Sometimes, when he lacked thewill to concentrate, the needle jumpedtracks. He said, “Goodbye, Wanda,”instead of, Let’s get breakfast.

“Huh?”“Let’s get breakfast.”“Yeah. Okay.”Conrad got the disposable camera

from his jacket. He held the camera atarm’s length, stared into the lens.

VII

They ate pancakes and drank coffeeat the truck stop.

Wanda said, “He wants to knowwhat you’re doing.”

“How’s that again?” Conrad sippedhis coffee stoically. His arms prickled.An antiquated paper spread before himon the table, recently plucked from his

wallet where it was kept safely tuckedbehind Imogene’s washed out graduationphoto. Imogene had stolen the abstractfrom a government archive, although itwas doubtful anyone missed it; thedesign was a relic of the Cold War, backwhen the KGB had teeth and CIAoperatives smoked Lucky Strikes andknew how to kill with the mysterioustechniques of Judo. He unconsciouslycovered the ink blot splotches with hishand.

The muscles in Wanda’s facetwitched. “I wonder, is all. Where areyou headed, really?”

“I’m looking for someone.”“I think I feel sorry for them.”“Me too.”

While Wanda was in the restroomConrad paid the tab and left a tip for theburly rancher’s daughter who’d clearedthe dishes and pretended not to noticethe apocalypse of his features. Hecouldn’t decipher the waitress’s nametag. His eyes watered and stung.

Conrad finished the dregs of hiscoffee. Wanda’s pack of cloves wastucked under the rim of her plate. Helighted a cigarette, indifferent to the NOSMOKING sign above the door. He heldthe sweet tang for a while, trying to burnthe taste of bile and Wanda from hismouth.

Wanda did not return from thebathroom.

Conrad glanced at his watch. Tony

Kite would be waiting. He stubbed thebutt on the edge of the saucer, walkedout, started his car and drove west.Today was Imogene’s birthday; her thirdsince she’d run away with Raul Lorca.

VIII

Dust hissed against the tin walls ofthe fireworks shack. Here, somewhere inthe Nevada hinterlands, the anatomy ofthe world was baked prairie andemaciated scrub; sulfur pits and the

petrified bones of gangsters. Mountainsstabbed the horizon. Beyond, wererivers and green valleys and farms. Ormaybe nothing but a maw, an esophagealtube and a hell of acid and darkness.

Conrad wasn’t betting either way.He stuck a cigarette in his mouth andpaused, head cocked, to appreciate theghostly intonations of the wind, itsslithering veil of grit.

“Yo, amigo,” Tony Kite said. Hewas shorter and lighter than Conrad andhis arms were carved up with prisontattoos. No business suit today, no powertie or gold cufflinks; today he wore achambray shirt with burn holes in thebreast pocket and ingrained dirt at thecollar, jeans bleached grey, threadbare

moccasins. Tony Kite, in his heyday, hadbeen the wunderkind of a premiercontractor with offices across NorthAmerica and Britain. His success, as heoften elaborated when exceptionallystoned, relied upon having friends in thegutter and lower—namely Quentin,Huntsville and Folsom, to hit themarquee attractions. Right then, gazing atthe gathering storm, he sounded less thanplacid, which was as close to highemotion as he usually got. Here was aman who’d survived prison riots, lookeddown the drain pipe of a Mafioso’s .45and escaped from the trunk of a movingcar during a botched kidnapping inBogotá. Not much fazed him. “Who’s thegirl?”

“What girl.” Conrad knew, though.Kite shut the batwing doors and

jerked down the stainless steel skirt. Hepeeked through the slats. “The one inyour car.”

“Damn.” Conrad lighted hiscigarette; the corona of his Zippo’sflame illuminated boxes and bundles andstacks of firecrackers, cherry bombs andM-80s. He sat and smoked, impassive asa Gila monster. He hadn’t told Kiteabout the women, wouldn’t have knownwhere to begin.

“She your squeeze?”“No.”“She followin’ you, man?”“Apparently.”“She a pig? Oh, shit, man. She a

Fed? A spook?”“No. I don’t know. That’s the other

pair I told you about. Well, they aren’tCompany. NSA. Same difference.”

“The pretty boy and the goon.”“Yes.”“Spooks are the worst. My grand

pappy was Army intel in WWII. Creepybastards.”

“Didn’t your company deal withintelligence people.”

“Course we did. More you get toknow them, more you hate them.”

The shack rocked and clattered inthe throes of a powerful gust. Aminiature cyclone skittered across apatch of ochre light, collapsed into itselfafter a dozen or so torpid revolutions.

Kite said, “God, you look like youbeen through a wood chipper. Givin’ thecrowd a show?”

“It’s nothing.”“A flesh wound, huh.”“Is she still there?”“Uh, yah. She’s still there.”Conrad smoked. Each inhalation

made him aware of his battered ribs, thebloated mass of his spleen.

“Maybe you better reschedule thismeet.”

“Why?”“Never mind, never mind.” Kite

stared out the crack at the blowing dust,and presumably, the woman in theCadillac. “I wonder who that bitch is,man.”

“I assume we’re green light.”“Sure, man. Green light. It was

expensive...”“Okay. How does fifteen percent

above duty sound?”“Sounds like me and my old lady

are going to Costa Rica for the winter.Although, why take sand to the beach,eh?” Kite turned from his post to wink.

“Give me the news.”“Right. I got the Brazilian; he’s a

fuckin’ butcher. My people, that’s whatthey say—he’s a butcher. He did someillegal plastic surgery in Beverly Hills,blinded some producer. The cops wanthim bad.” Kite went to the register andbrought back a photograph.

Conrad took the photo. It matched

the surveillance shots baby sisterImogene had snapped back when shewas spying on Dad at the booby hatch,although she hadn’t truly grasped theimplications, she’d simply beenfollowing woman’s intuition, bless herdark, little peach-pit of a heart.Nonetheless, this was the Brazilian,alright. They’d met several times at theCloister. Dr. Souza was old as dirt thenand nothing seemed to have changedduring the intervening decades.

“Well, the Brazilian’s a menace.Did freelance work for Lockheed-Martin, DynCorp, plus some Podunkoutfits. He got drummed outta all ofthem. Had an international rap sheet longas my arm, before this Beverly Hills

action. Guy likes psychotropic anddesigner poisons. Don’t know why thehell he switched to surgery—he ain’tmuch good at it, ha-ha.”

Pain, suffering, cruelty. “Theyhave this thing about transformation,”Conrad said.

“They?”“There’s a conspiracy.”“There’s always a conspiracy. I

gave him the quiz, like you said. Did theTwenty Questions bit. Told me to tellyou, ‘Drake is the Prince of Darkness’.Said he’ll deal for the codex.”

Conrad thought of the manuscriptsafely hidden in the wheel well of hisCadillac. A bundle of desiccated vellumsheaves bound in catgut, throbbing like a

chunk of plutonium or a piece ofconcentrated darkness. Imogene’s gift tohim and the one piece of intelligencehe’d withheld from the Stooges. “Bloodof Old, Opens the Eye. Flesh of Flesh,Opens the Mouth to Drink the Stars.”Oh, this is definitely the real McCoy.His palms sweated. He was done withit; question was, was it done with him?

“Man, you’d tell me if you hadcancer, or somethin’.”

“I don’t have cancer.”“Then what?”“Revenge.” Conrad knew that Kite

knew—his friend was trying to keep hisfeet warm by making small talk. Conradwas bad at small talk.

“Hey, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, baby. I

loved Genie, too,” Kite said. “Whateveryou gotta do to get inside, that’s fine asfar as it goes. But, come on, man. Areyou really gonna let this lunatic stickyou? What if it’s not authentic? Or, whatif it is?”

“I’m reasonably certain it’sauthentic.”

“You’re reasonably certain.”“My father knew him when I was a

boy. They were colleagues.”“Yeah, but that’s a long time gone.

Man it ain’t cool to take rides fromstrangers. You don’t know where it’llend.”

“We all end up in the same place,T-dog.”

“Well, shit. Don’t make me sorry

for mixing up in this deal.”“Think about Costa Rica and you’ll

feel better.” Conrad couldn’t tell Kitewhat he thought the serum did withoutsounding like a bigger lunatic than theBrazilian. “When and where?”

“Souza’s waiting in Rattlesnake.Eagle and his brother brought the dude inand got the building and everything. Nottoo far, man. Gotta do it soon; the dudewon’t hang around forever. He’s gotitchy feet on account of the pigs, youknow. I get the idea we can’t really holdhim. He’s got this sort of…presence. Areal heavy presence.”

“Tonight?”“Yeah, man. Why, you scared or

somethin’?”

“Oh, not really. I’m wondering whyyou’re grinning. What’s so funny.”

“It’s a veterinarian clinic, man.Like for dogs and shit. But it got shutdown a while ago. Still got the notice onthe door.” Kite laughed and stomped hisfoot on the rickety planking. “You goin’to the vet. I hope he don’t neuter you onaccident, man!”

“Hell, K, I hope he doesn’t neuterme on purpose. Let’s roll over to themotel and see the man. We’ll take myride.”

Kite made some calls. His peoplehad lodged the Brazilian at a no starmotel in Rattlesnake; left him with aquart of tequila, a couple of strippersfrom the casino and an Shoshone strong

arm with a twelve gauge dozing outsidethe door. Eagle and some of his homeysfrom the reservation would swing by andhave the doc at the clinic in time for themain event.

Kite stuffed a cheap automaticpistol in his waistband, covered it withhis shirt. Then he rolled a joint andsmoked it. Conrad didn’t join him; hewas worried dope might contaminate theprocedure.

They ventured into the congealinggloom. Kite padlocked the stand asConrad warily approached his car. Hedidn’t quite trust it in the creepy,blustery light, its passenger door hangingajar, creaking with each buffet. Thefamiliar metal gleamed dull and

somehow alien, suggestive of passivecomplicity in this sinister turn of events.Already, dust gathered on the seats.

The girl was long gone, as usual.

IX

Kite dropped him at the motel, saidhe’d be back in a few minutes. Conradgot the idea that his friend not onlydisliked the Brazilian, but wasfrightened of him as well. He thought it areasonable reaction.

Conrad told the man guarding thedoor to take a walk. He sent the whoresaway too, the older of the paircomforting her sobbing comrade. Theirfaces were gray with revulsion andshock, although both were thankfullyunmarked—Conrad was familiar withthe Brazilian’s tastes. Now it was onlyhim and the old chemist. He placed thecloth wrapped manuscript on the table,straddled a creaky chair and folded hisarms across the backrest and studiedSouza.

Souza resembled a petrified corpsethat had been stripped of its cerements;Tutankhamen’s vile grandfather, the highpriest of a blood-black god. He wasentirely naked. Brown as rotted vellum

and desiccated and short of breath, hestood near the window, basking in thesunset. His tiny eyes shone in the gloom.“My boy! So good to see you again!” Hespoke with the perfect enunciation of aneducated foreigner. “When was the lasttime...you were very small. But my,goodness aren’t you a behemoth.Destroying God’s creatures to amuse theidle rich, I hear. A drink?”

Conrad shook his head. “Thank youfor coming, Mr. Souza.”

“What else could I do? Perhaps Ishould not have, I think. This thing youdo for your sister—it is unwise. Very,very unwise. Are you certain you don’twant a drink? Have a drink or I’ll benervous.” Souza went to a cabinet. He

was extremely limber and graceful for aman who appeared a millennia dead. Hehanded Conrad a paper cup of vodka. “Ishould not have come. No, I see thatnow. You are mad, my boy. Utterly mad.The scent of madness oozes from yourpores. And your eyes are like flames.”He repaired to the bed where he satcross-legged amid a wallow of sheetsand thin, stained hotel pillows. “IfImogene is dead, God rest her, there isnothing to be gained.”

“Vengeance.”“Perhaps you are a fool then.”“Genie left a trail. All I can do is

follow it. Go to the places she did.Collect the things she did. Speak withthe people she did.” Conrad met the old

man’s gaze at this last statement.Souza nodded. “Yes, she visited

me. Several years ago.”“Did you give her the serum?”“Your sister is a persuasive

woman. Of course I gave her what sheasked. Do you possess the triggers?”

“I have two. Do you know them?”“No, I’m but a humble chemist.

Even with the serum you’ll need thethird.”

“Then stick me. I’ve got names. I’lltrack down another trigger.”

“Ms. Imogene already had themwhen she came to me. She was preparedand primed for the next step.”

“She’s the fucking Boy Scout of thefamily,” Conrad said. “How did Tony

find you, by the way? Disappearing fromthe cop radar is a talent I’d like tocultivate.”

“Your amigos found me because Iwished it so. I don’t worry about theauthorities, or men such as yourself. Itake pains to conceal myself from Dr.Drake. It is at terrible risk to myself thatI emerge to deal with you in this place.”

“You’re hiding from Drake.”“Oh, yes.”“Why?”“Do you not understand the way of

this world you’ve entered? The strongeat the weak. Me, you, your lovelysister. The good doctor would be happyto devour us, one by one. He’s alreadybegun.” The old man sighed and snapped

his fingers. “To business. I am pleasedyou brought the manuscript. I’ve soughtit for…well, forever and a day, more orless. Ms. Imogene never let on that she’dacquired it when we were negotiating. Ibelieved all she had to offer was apound of flesh. So clever, that one.”

“Yeah. Makes me wonder what shetraded instead.” Conrad hefted the clothbundle, weighed it in a final calculation.He rose and handed the manuscript toSouza. He smiled a loose, friendlysmile, having decided to kill the chemistat his next opportunity.

Souza grinned and fondled hisprize. “Perhaps you’ll have theopportunity to ask her. I think this wouldbe an unhappy outcome. I think you

would be better served to slink awayinto the night and forget her, forget Dr.Drake.”

Night had fallen. The lamp clickedoff and they sat silently in the perfectdarkness of the motel room. A tongue ofred and black flame rolled from Souza’slong fingernail and made his expressionwicked in the shadow play. He said,“Boy, I could walk into the dark andyou’d never see me again. I could reachacross the small space between us andtake your heart from your chest, devourit like an apple while you stared inamazement. The strong devour the weakand grow stronger. Your Quixoticimpulse amuses me, however. Also, Dr.Drake would be mightily offended were

I to gobble his special provender. So, Irestrain myself. I simply wanted you toknow I could. I really could.” He closedhis hand and the fire went out. “Shall wego, boy? Shall we go and introduce youto the Great Dark?”

X

The Rattlesnake Animal Clinic wasa dead black rectangle off an unpavedstreet. A solitary lamp illuminated theservice entrance, the merciless grilles of

several parked cars. The night windsmelled of radiator fluid and cookedinsects. Occasionally dust spattered thelamp while deformed tumbleweedscareened by on their migratory paths tooblivion.

Inside the blistered stucco andcement, the lair of knocking pipes andquiescent wires, at the very heart of thesqualid box, was Operating Room #2.Brutal, fluorescent light seeped beneaththe rumpled seal of the double doors. Aradio played dim, unintelligible music,distorted the ebb and flow of whisperedconversation.

The light snuffed. A man began toshriek.

XI

Time is a ring,” Imogene said.“Bye, bye.”

Conrad missed her already.They want in. They want in. They

love you, Connie.“Super collage. Supercollider. The

Drake Technique in action. There is nocenter and the edges are telescopic.”

The walls were dirty. How could aclinic be so dirty. Flies circled a bulb,crawled on the dangling chain.

Somebody was shrieking to theaccompaniment of an opera diva.

“Daddy, I’m scared,” Ezra said.“Me too,” Dad said. The coffin

lowered, then the dirt.Conrad was scared also, but he

couldn’t speak. His mouth was full ofblood.

“Please look at these cards. Whatdo you see? Quickly.”

Thumb whorls. Faces. Hell. A lightbulb attended by flies. “Daddy?”

“Oh, you’ve been practicing themeditations. The Occultus Tyrranissuffers from mistranslation. It is often abald forgery and to follow theinstructions of such a tract leads toabiding misery and most gruesome

consequences. Your copy is not aforgery, but you will dwell in abidingmisery all the same, I think.”

“Hold his head, amigos. This willturn our friend inside out.”

The injection was delivered by aneighteen gauge needle, the kind of needlevets stick in horses, and it slid directlyinto Conrad’s spine.

“Hold still, my friend,” theBrazilian said. “This is going to hurt.”

It hurt.Funny thing how most of them

didn’t possess names. The Brazilian; theSlovakian; the Russian. Conrad was theAmerican now that the former Americanwas pushing daisies.

“Time is a ring, the muscle that

moves the eye. Time is the sun, a ring, amouth, a white howl in a black mouth.Time feeds on itself.”

Faces, opened. Flowers, flies. Alight bulb spat and went dark. Itsfilament glowed like tines of the Devil’strident.

The elk-horned man laughed andlaughed through an unhinged jaw. Hisface was milk. He loomed above the figtrees, slapped aside their woolybranches as he came cackling. And hisphallus was a medieval pike strikingsparks.

“The whole shebang is utterlytheoretical,” Mom said as she notchedup the engine full throttle. “GoMariners!” Her canvas-topped Supercub

slowly nosed into the cliffs, folded itselfto an orange ball of confetti.

Bang. The universe collapsed into aparticle.

“Time runs in all directions. Timeis a droplet of blood crashing into alinoleum tile. Time is a nosebleed.”

“So, Conrad. I must warn you thatthere are certain risks associated withthis procedure. Basically, a sequence ofchemical alterations will occur. Afundamental reordering of your essentialcomponents. Also, conceivably, wormscould eat your brain. Shall we proceed,yes?”

“If you’re screaming, you’re alive.”Conrad was screaming. The crowd

was screaming.

The Slovakian with the deviltattoos, the replica Bronze Age helmetwith spikes and horns and the replicaBronze Age bow, shot him in the legwith a barbed arrow. Felt as if aClydesdale had kicked him in thequivering meat six inches north of theknee. The crowd loved it. Its thunderburied him and the chariot came on, achrome-plated pile driver astride agolden cloud of dust. Cameras whirredand popped.

“They say God dwells outside ofTime. He wants to eat us because He islove.”

That horsefucker of a needlerammed into his spine and kept going. Itsquirted a pure grade-A Cenozoic

microbe comet into his blood, and tick,tick, tick.

Supernova. Light bulbs everywheresnuffed as one.

“Please examine the cards. Youwill be allotted five seconds for eachcard. Tell me what you see.”

Why were the cards covered inbloody fingerprints? Why did they makehim so sick in his stomach? Sinking intothe deep, deep black.

“I see. I see. Moths. Holes in thefaces.”

“Time feeds itself. Time is amuscle, a mouth. Opening.”

“Stop looking at the cards. Stop.”“But I can’t stop.”Every shaking shudder of every

hollow-eyed mountain; every slosh andslip of every bottomless cup of sea. Dustand grit filtered down from cracks,unshuttered skylights that looked intoabysses.

The universe is colder thanAbsolute Night, yet is exploding like theblood droplet in its impact. It has begunto bubble.

Siamese twins shook hands andboarded separate cabs.

The Slovakian got a final howl asConrad’s spear tore him from the chariotand pinned him to the blotted Coliseumsand, before the angry hyenas ate hishands, his feet, before they yanked hismanhood into saltwater taffy and thecrowd repaired to the bars for cocktails

and appetizers, to pay its debts andcelebrate with drugs, sex and rockmusic. Thumbs down.

“Please look into the light. Lookonly at the light. Now, I am going to saya word. When I say this word, the worldas you know it will cease to exist. It willbecome something new. Are youprepared to become a superhuman, myboy?”

The cathode dilated and spewedichor of the gods into his veins.

“Listen carefully.”

Interlude

Funny story about the first timeConrad met Marsh and Singh.

The trio collided in Mexico shortlyafter Imogene originally went missingalong with her lover, the esteemed Dr.Raul Lorca. Conrad flew from theAegean when he received a late nightmessage that she was in deep troubleand needed him to get his ass to Mexico.Genie couldn’t talk, someone watchedher every move. Come quick, bro. I’m init now. The line went dead before shegave him her exact location.

He was a mess. The contest hadbeen a team event, a gory recreation ofsome epic Peloponnesian slaughter. It

got ugly, as the big-draw battle royalesinevitably did—and he was one of thefortunate few to crawl away with all hisoriginal parts. He’d been stabbed andslashed, punctured with an arrow; he hadcracked ribs, a bruised larynx andkidneys and was down a few pints ofblood despite a transfusion. His bodywas a purple-black mosaic of stitchesand staples. He didn’t closely resemblethe smiling face in his passport photo.Other than that he was mint.

Uncle Kosokian had sequesteredhim in a private hospital with round theclock nurses and a team of nervousphysicians. They doped him to the gillson painkillers, gave him a button to pushwhenever he wanted another shot of

morphine and it wasn’t enough, so hedowned all the tequila he could layhands on, which was a supply limitedonly by his capacity to swallow.

Imogene had terrible timing, but herolled with it, unhooked himself from theneedles and tubes, lined his pockets withpill-bottles, and went hunting.

The next two weeks were a blur, achain of blackouts. Amid the nightmarishsmog of pain, Jose Cuervo, andDemerol, he managed to trace his sisterto a villa on the outskirts of a poor, offseason resort town near the U.S. border.Imogene had rented a seedy haciendawith a view of a gulch that served as adry moat. Past the gulch, spread asloping panorama of sage, cacti and

distant, heat-shimmered mesas. Whathad she and Lorca been doing? Nobodyhad an answer, not even the Bureau.Evidently she’d taken a leave of absenceand zoomed off to pursue some top-secret agenda and probably get herselffired once and for all.

Conrad had a sneaking idea whatshe was after. What to do about it wasanother matter.

None of the townies knew anythinghelpful. Folks remembered the dark-haired gringa. She talked like a man andbroke the eye of a farmer who’d pinchedher ass while they shot pool at thecantina. She carried a pistola and drankfrom the bottle and the regulars figuredright away she was a Fed, probably a

customs agent, or a narc. They didn’tgive a damn; obviously she had biggerfish to fry than hassling any of the locals.When she stopped coming in, it wasn’t asurprise. She’d paid down anothermonth on the hacienda and the maidreported that some of her personal itemswere still inside. The only thing missingwas her, and her car, which turned out tobe a rental from the airport in MexicoCity. The authorities eventuallydiscovered the car at the bottom of aquarry, demolished by a crash and theensuing fire. None of the charred bonesinside the wreckage belonged toImogene or her biologist companionLorca, however.

Naturally, enterprising locals had

stripped the hacienda of everything thatwasn’t nailed down. It didn’t matter.Conrad spotted her subtle knife blaze ona living room post—an inverted arrowbisecting a heart containing: CONNIE &GENIE FOREVER. She’d hidden theimportant stuff in a garbage bag in thecrawl space. It was exactly as she’dpromised to do if something like thisoccurred—articles of clothing; travelbrochures; sundry papers and receipts;traveler’s checks; a plastic bag ofHumboldt County Thunderfuck and loose.38 slugs; and a scorched envelopecontaining the partially exposed glossyof a man in a robe wearing a crown ofantlers. Great, pointy antlers; a twelve-point buck for sure, or the world’s

biggest stag beetle. The man’s face wasin shadow, except for the rim of awidened, protuberant eye, all black, andthe corner of a too-large mouth skinnedback to reveal a pit. Imogene had printedDrake in the bottom corner. Not much ofa likeness, not to Conrad’s recollectionof the smarmy old salt who’d tendedEzra. Then a couple of film canisters anda thick packet of dossier-stylephotographs of various old men, theirnames and occupations and last knownaddresses meticulously typed on thereverse—none of whom seemedfamiliar; and a smaller collection ofsatellite plates of the Cloister in thePyrenees.

There was also a book, a medieval

pamphlet made of crinkly animal skinthat smelled of must and dried blood.Untitled. The shell of some kind of largearthropod had been embedded in thewooden cover. The tract’s leatherypages were covered border to border inancient Greek text, except for periodicdiagrams of esoteric anatomicalsurgeries, and more embeddedexoskeletons of predatory insects.

Imogene left a note on a scrap ofsoiled stationary with flowers andrabbits. It said, in jagged script, Theywant in.

Conrad was far too addled toanalyze the particulars of the clues, orwhether any clues truly existed beyondthe miasma and warp of his beleaguered

perceptions. He wandered around thetown, dropped ominous andinflammatory comments and set up shopat the hacienda. Maybe she would return,or if she couldn’t return, she’d realizewhere he’d be and send a message; or,perhaps, when he’d recovered his wits,he’d discover some new scrap that she’dleft behind. Mostly he stayed because hedidn’t know where else to go or what todo if he went there. As a precaution, herented a deposit box at the bank andstashed Imogene’s clues for safekeeping.

He hibernated, rousingoccasionally for more tequila and pills.He listened to cockroaches and mice asthey scuttled around his stinking, soddenbulk, and fat moths battening the dust-

caked windows, thirsty for his salt andiron, his deadly sweat. Sometimes,through the grubby window notch, thesky flushed red as the skin of a balloonstretched to bursting. Titanic shadowsmoved behind the sun, the gaping moon.Dark shapes dimpled the red sky asfingertips denting cellophane. WhenConrad dozed, Drake materialized in abell of smoky, volcanic light, shook hismighty antlers and beckoned from theyawning archway of a cathedral. A giantin foul, sooty robes.

Conrad never fully slept as thefever licked at him with the urgency of aselfish lover.

Later, a vehicle with the headlightsoff rolled up during the wee hours. He

was reclined in the bathtub, where he’dtumbled several hours before whilelooking for a spot to relieve himself,naked except for a pair of horridlystained boxers. He hazily glimpsedsilhouettes reversed upon the plasterceiling. The strangers circled the house.Their shoes crunched in the gravelbeneath the bathroom window; muttersand whispers carried to his ears, piercedhis delirium.

They entered through the unlockedfront door and began moving from roomto room. Someone shined a flashlightinto the bathroom, flicked the dead lightswitch a couple times, and moved onwithout spotting Conrad’s foot and anklehanging over the rim of the filthy tub.

Stuff was getting knocked around.Glass was breaking. The men spokeSpanish and there were at least four ofthem. Government men? Cops?Mobsters? Conrad decided to ask.

He eventually levered himself fromthe tub and limped into the hall. Theworld rushed him in 3D; he bracedhimself with one hand to keep frompitching onto his face. It was dark but forbits of moonlight coming in here andthere, and bobbing flashlight beamspoking around. Conrad bumped into aman in a suit. The man was small andwiry, like a bird, and reeked ofnervousness and aftershave.

Conrad opened his mouth to utter agreeting, and the guy jumped back,

cursed, and shot him with a taser. Whap,prongs stuck in his shoulder and herecame the juice. It must’ve been asupercharged model, because Conradhad been tasered before, and usuallythey didn’t pack enough of a punch tofaze him, but this one clicked his teethtogether, rolled his eyes backwards andcaused foam to slather from his lips.

The slow waltz in Hell beganwithout music.

Conrad collapsed against the wall.The man released the trigger and whenhe did that he was fucked. Within aninstant of the current’s cessation, Conradtore out the prongs and swung his armlike a baseball bat and chopped theman’s throat with the edge of his hand,

made jelly of the windpipe. The manfell, thrashing. Conrad stomped on hischest until it caved, and again on hisgroin and the man stopped moving.

It was all instinct. His rationalthoughts melted into a pulsing, crimsonmass. He had left a brace of pila in thecorner of the hall, intending to practicein the high desert air once he recovered.He grabbed three of the javelins andcrabbed through a doorway toward amoving flashlight beam; slung a spearunderhanded at the shadow behind thelight and got lucky. Someone grunted andsomeone else opened up with the heavyarmament, probably a submachine gun,and the hacienda was briefly lit bystrobes of yellow-blue fire. The stench

of burning copper rode a blizzard ofplaster fragments and sawdust.

Conrad bored into the maelstrom,collided with a body and immediatelyplunged three feet of steel and ashthrough the man’s belly, then the wall,and the machine gun whirled away in afizz of Roman candle sparks.

The last guy ran from the house andfor the car, got it rolling backwards asConrad burst onto the porch and threwhis remaining pilum, overhand this time.His aim was bad because his nightvision was mostly ruined by the muzzleflashes. The windshield imploded, amass of fractured safety glass thatwrapped around the driver’s head andtorso like a net. The car yawed, flew off

the road and toppled into the ravine.The driver crawled from the wreck

and clambered up the opposite bank.He’d lost his suit coat and his white shirtfluttered among the clumps of sage, theflowing shadows of low clouds. Thecadaverous moon grinned as it peekedbetween the pleats of glinting star fields.

The man cried out when he sawConrad loping after him with thehitching, drunken gait of a trained javelinthrower; fired several wild shots overhis shoulder as he fled. The reportscame soft and ineffectual as a child’scap gun, counterpoint to the slap-slap-slap-slap of Conrad’s bare feet againstpebbles and dirt.

Conrad overtook him, a cat cutting

down a wildebeest, a large shadowswallowing a smaller, and they tumbledtogether among the rocks and the bushes.It was a short, pathetic struggle.

When the soldiers came, they foundhim slumped over the kitchen table,clutching a pile of bloody wallets.According to various pieces ofidentification, the dead men belonged tothe Mexico City police department. Noone knew why they had been sent intothe country. There was no record that theexcursion was authorized.

The Mexican Army took Conradinto custody. He was hauled to abasement and tied to a chair. Someonegagged him and then sprayed soda waterfoam up his nose to simulate drowning.

Many, many hard questions were asked.After a while, the military interrogatorfigured out his subject was just anotherdumbass gringo, albeit with a hottertemper than most, who’d gottencrosswise with somebody powerful. Theintelligence officer had actually cockedthe hammer on a revolver and stuck thebarrel in Conrad’s ear when Marsh andSingh strolled in to save the day. Moneychanged hands and Conrad wasblindfolded and taken from the torturescene.

The agents drove him across theborder and the three had dinner at a niceTex-Mex joint, then a long conversationover several platters of beer and tequila.

You’re one lucky bastard, Mr.

Navarro, Marsh had said. Those off-duty cops you dusted were freelancing.Nobody seems to give a shit aboutthem.

Conrad explained what he did andhow his sister had disappearedinvestigating he wasn’t sure what andthat the goons had probably come forher.

How did you wind up in this lineof work? Singh said.

A family friend knew a guy whoknew a guy. I was recruited andtrained. Conrad didn’t go into specifics—how he’d been tested, the nature of thetraining or where it occurred; didn’tspeak of those early years in the modernday slave pits of the underworld, how

he’d probably killed two of everyspecies, including men, that might’vewalked, hopped, or slithered up thegangplank of Noah’s Ark. He didn’tmention how Uncle K had scooped himfrom the mean and bloody amateur ranksand become his patron, his master.

Marsh and Singh drank excessivelyand hung on his every word, althoughthey didn’t press, not then. In those earlydays of Conrad’s burgeoning stardom asa blood sport personality, TheAmerican, he’d paid taxes to an NSAslob named Furillo. The NSA kept tabson the underground fighting rings, mostespecially those as elaborate andlucrative as the ones Conrad belongedto. The power of those exorbitantly

wealthy organizers of the Pageantsufficed to keep the intelligencecommunity at least nominally neutral, butgraft was the order of the day andpayoffs were necessary at every level ofoperation. So many palms to grease, solittle time.

After what Singh referred to as“The Mexican Incident,” Conrad’smanagement situation underwent aradical alteration, precipitated byFurillo’s timely coronary conclusion dueto the ingestion of multiple prescriptionmedications and the able ministrations ofa Vegas call-girl who convenientlyvanished without hanging around toclarify the circumstances of “Big Joe’s”demise.

The operatives stepped in withoutskipping a beat. They took a cut ofConrad’s exhibition paydays, raninterference for him with localauthorities when necessary, andpromised to look into his sister’s case.

It was the start of a beautiful,horribly dysfunctional relationship.Basically the same as every otherrelationship Conrad had known.

Chapter Three

I

It was night when he stopped at theflashing arms of a railroad crossing. Theklaxons twisted his insides. He openedthe door and puked. Murderous thunderof passing flats vibrated his bones.While he was spilling his guts onto the

pitted asphalt, someone climbed in onthe passenger side, slammed the doorhard enough to rock the car.

Conrad wiped his mouth, regardedthe dark-haired girl in the denim jacketand bellbottom pants who was calmlychecking her makeup in the visor mirror.A livid strawberry keloid ripened on herleft wrist, partially occluded by a charmbracelet. She smelled of cigarettes andPrince Matchabelli and seemedunpleasantly familiar. One of thosemalleable faces he’d seen a lot of lately;it glowed a blurry white in the gloom.

“Ever wonder what’s in thoseboxcars?” Her voice was husky from therawness of the country air. “Could becattle, could be people, political

prisoners on the way to Gitmo. Anything,really. See their eyes in the headlights,peeking between the slats.”

Conrad was dizzy. Concussion,definitely. Goddamn, he hoped it was aconcussion. Looking at her almostcaused him to be sick again. Was hehallucinating? He didn’t think so. Hewasn’t certain of anything, even gravity.

“I’m Rhonda. Where you goin’?”Her eyes were small and lively. Shenervously rifled a leather handbag with apeace symbol stitched on the flap. “Youdon’t mind, I hope…? I was freezing outthere.”

He hadn’t noticed her at thecrossing, hadn’t seen her at all. Shelikely planted herself nearby, hoped to

catch some poor sucker who got blockedby the train. Popped up like a trapdoorspider.

Rhonda nodded at her bag. “So…where’d you say you were goin’?”

“West.” His mantra. And in truth,the answer was South if he kept on to theend. South into the magma boiling heartof the world, and onward to Hell.

“Cool. Me too.” She lighted aclove cigarette, glanced around theinterior, wrinkled her nose. “Old car yougot here. Wow, is this your mom?” Shetapped a black and white photo pinnedto the visor; a dark woman in a gypsykerchief smiled from the shade of anelm.

“It’s a classic.” Conrad stared at

the train, the lights.Rhonda exhaled gustily. “Wow.

Somebody kicked the shit outta you,didn’t they. You feelin’ alright, man?Train’s gone.”

Indeed it was gone, reduced to ashadowy wedge lit by blue and redbeacons. His hands shook as he put theEldorado into gear. Seem to fly it, it willpursue…hadn’t Ben Jonson said thatabout shadows? Jung knew; Hesse knew;Nietzsche absolutely knew. TheGermans were canny. Conrad thoughtabout shadows, how there were so manyto choose from, how hungry andinsatiable they proved to be. Relentlessas cancer. “You picked the wrong car.”

“Oh, yeah? Are you a psycho?” The

girl smiled as if at a joke.“It’s a bad time for me.”“Well, it ain’t so wonderful for me

either. My last two hitches were fromhorny truckers. Some fun. Home,James.”

Conrad sighed. “Wanda, I’m beat.I’m going to get a room and crash for thenight.” He’d spotted a sign that saidFOOD GAS LODGING THREEMILES. That would be the Happy Ravenand it was on his list of places to go, thevery reason he’d driven across the bellyof the country, taken an unsanctionedbout against a no-name flak. The fighthad been one of his many pretexts to lurkin this geographical region, to conducthis private manhunt within a manhunt, a

veritable nested Russian doll of plotsand stratagems.

The machinery was in motion. Itwas down to the lounge singer, theEnglish professor or the retired politico.He’d picked the lounge singer becausethe lounge singer was as good as any andbecause the lounge singer had been atraveling man. Travel always made forinteresting conversation. According tohis sources, the man he sought workedthe lounge Friday through Sunday, six toten P.M., had done so for the lasteighteen months. Conrad reflected thatoften the most slippery ones were thosewho never really tried to cover theirtracks.

“It’s Rhonda.”

“Yeah.”

II

Rhonda tagged along as Conradregistered in the hotel lobby. Sheadjourned with him to the lounge for thetheatre half of dinner theatre. Fiveminutes and two margaritas later, shespotted a gaunt man in a razor-crispArmani suit who disappeared throughthe door with the fly-spackled EXITsign.

“Omigod—there’s Raul!”“Who’s Raul?” Conrad asked half-

heartedly. Too familiar faces, toofamiliar names. The only Raul he knewwas presumed dead at the bottom ofsome Mexican landfill. Time for anotherdrink. Rhonda patted Conrad’s hand,promised to be back in a jiff. Her small,quick eyes had gone over to black. Shesmiled a shark’s smile and followed theimmaculate stranger.

Conrad hoped that was the end.Meanwhile, it was just him and the lushand a whiskey river. He even toastedMr. Willie Nelson. “God bless you,Willie.”

The lush wasn’t interested in WillieNelson. He was a Rat Pack man. He

gazed at Conrad. “Gotta say, real clean,”the lush said. He wore a silk blazer openat the neck to display a clunky goldmedallion. His hard cheeks shone like apolished boot. He sat stiffly; an actionfigure melting under a sun lamp.

The lush called himself MartyCardinal, although Conrad knew theman’s birth certificate; his forty year oldvisa stamped a dozen places in theOrient, the Middle East and pointsbetween; and his dog tags saidsomething different. But, tonight, asevery other smoky, gin-soaked night forseveral crumbling decades, it had beenMarty Cardinal. He sweated through apoorly-dyed pompadour from his last setof Dean Martin and Perry Como covers

ala Tom Jones on Quaaludes. Theaudience of the Happy Raven Lounge,which included the requisite barsidelechers and a few drunken seniors on apit stop from their bus tour, hadapplauded tepidly as Cardinal ambledfrom the stage and listed to the dimcorner where Conrad nursed aboilermaker. They’d never met beforeConrad told the waitress to slip thecrooner a crisp g-note and ask him if hecould fake his way through My Rifle, MyPony And Me, but no time like thepresent, according to the singer as he’dordered a round from the baggy-eyedcocktail waitress, Put it on my tab,sweetheart, baby face.“They sewed youup real nice, kid. Maybe you should get

’em to do you a favor and stitch thatcheek of yours. It’s nasty.”

“Bad, huh?” Conrad’s brain hadreached the stage where it decided tobegin shutting off nonessential functions.Everything from the neck down belongedto a fossilized cave bear. At least hisgorge was staying put.

“Oh, yeah. But the old ones…boy,it looks like ya got yourself caught by abuzzsaw, or something’.” Cardinalemphasized that observation by gulpinghis drink with nary a shudder andsnapping his fingers for another JohnnyWalker on the rocks and make it adouble, those damned lights were hot asthe hubs of Hades.

Conrad resisted the urge to touch

his own face. Obscured by fresh bruisesand the jagged cut that had scabbed quitedramatically, the underlying scar forkedfrom his hairline, paralleled the orbitalof his left eye; another branch hookedbehind his cauliflower ear. A venerablescar, among the first in his expandingcollection.

Conrad fell away from the ticky-tack tables, the guttering votives andswan-necked men in polyester suits,plunged down the black shaft to a lonelyfarm in a lonely field, the abattoir lit byswaying kerosene lanterns, its concretefloor and antique drains choked withstraw and dust, the leopard on his chesttearing at his face until the skin began toflex like a latex mask. All those wet

mouths in the gallery, their collectiveexhortations no louder than a breezesighing through tall grass; all thoseempty eyes brittle as malachite, radiatingthe coldness of serried ranks of kniveshanging points-down from a rack.

Few animals were a match for aprofessional fighting man if the strugglelasted beyond that initial explosion ofsinew and adrenaline. Amateur hour; thegallery stifled yawns and rattled ice intheir drinks as the blood poured out attheir feet.

Conrad had been young and sloppy.And lucky. Mr. Kosokian alwaysretained first class medics. The plasticsurgeon, a convict on a short leash, hadbeen a consummate professional. With a

good tan, the marks were nearlyinvisible.

Marty Cardinal said, “I playedVegas once. Shook Sammy’s hand,damned if I didn’t. He was a quick-drawfella. Didja know? Quick-draw. Pow-pow-pow with these six-guns likeMarshal Dillon on Gun Smoke. It was ahoot. Dorsey! Dorsey, c’mere a minute!”He waved at the piano player, a fellowseptuagenarian in an exhausted whiteshirt with the sleeves rolled to theelbows. “Dorsey an’ me go back.Traveled the Northwest circuit together.Did a USO tour with Neil Diamond.Dorsey tickles those ivories like noneother. Billy Joel called him MagicFingers.”

“Nah, that’s what Billy’s wifecalled me.” Dorsey summoned thewaitress and put in for fresh drinks allaround. He constantly riffled a worndeck of cards, first left-handed, thenright. “Any chum of Marty C., yaddayadda. Marty this guy a boxer. Lookslike a boxer. You a boxer, sonny?”

“I know from boxers, Dorsey. Heain’t no boxer. He look like RockyMarciano to you? He look like GerryCooney? Where’s yer girlfriend, kid?”Marty Cardinal was methodicallystacking his dead soldiers in a glisteningziggurat, a sacrificial altar.

“She returned to the Mother Ship, Ithink,” Conrad said.

“Oh, she wasn’t a hooker, right?

She wasn’t a working girl ya picked upfrom under an off ramp, or anything?”

Conrad smiled wryly, lighted acigarette and pressed it to his swollenlips.

Dorsey snorted, passed his cards toand fro. He had the jaw of a horse andcrooked hands blotched with liver spots.“Ah, Marty, she wasn’t on the job.College kid down on her luck. A dropoutfor certain—prolly afraid to go home toma an’ pa, so she’s bummin’ around withdubious sorts. No offense.”

“You a dubious character, kid?”“Mr. Cardinal—”“Call me Marty C.”“What did you do before?”“Eh? Before what?”

Conrad gestured at the room.“Before Vegas. Before any of this.”

“Hear that, Dorsey? He wants toknow about, ‘Once Upon a Time.’”Marty Cardinal helped himself toanother drink. His smile was chilly.

“I heard what he said.” Dorseystudied his cards.

“You were in the Army.”Marty Cardinal nodded. “Korea.

Nastiest hellhole on the planet. Stilldream about the cold. Ya been checkinginto my back story, eh kid?”

“Yes. I’ve been to the ends of theEarth, and here you are. In this place.”

“Huh. Hear that, Dorsey? The kid’sbeen looking for me. Maybe I owe himsome money. Cripes, I hope ya can

squeeze blood from a turnip, kiddo. Mythree exes cleaned me out ages ago; tookmy cars, my condos, the whole schmeer.How’d ya find me, anyhow?”

“Detective agency. It wasn’tdifficult.” Conrad pulled a creased flyerfrom his wallet; a promotional shot of ayounger, thinner, slickly-dressed MartyCardinal bracketed by showgirls. Thesinger had scrawled his autographacross the back.

“Holy Toledo. That’s from theSands!” Marty Cardinal shook his headin bleary wonder.

The cocktail waitress leaned intotheir circle, handed Conrad a cell phone;eyed him suspiciously as if he might gofor her throat at any moment. “For you.”

He smiled painfully, hoping toreassure her, said into the receiver,“Conrad.”

Singh said, “Conrad, Conrad. Whatare you doing?” The connection waspoor.

Strangely enough, it seemed thesemen whose stock and trade wassurreptitious communication seldommanaged a line clear of interference. Ofcourse, for all Conrad knew, Singh wascalling from the bowels of a slumberingvolcano, or a submarine at the bottom ofthe South Pacific. “I’m relaxing.Conducting a pleasant conversation withfriends. Yourself?”

“Conducting a what? Aninterrogation, you say?”

Conrad covered the receiver withhis chin. “What happened after theArmy.” He swept his hand under thetabletop, groping for a mike, a wire,anything suspicious.

“Whozatt on the horn?”“It’s not Don King,” Conrad said.Marty Cardinal and Dorsey

chuckled and the glacier receded. MartyCardinal said, “Broadway, baby. AfterKorea I moved to the Apple, tried to getmy name in lights.”

“Who is that charming, drunkenfellow I hear?” Singh buzzed.

Conrad held up a finger as headdressed Singh. “A war hero. I’mdrinking him under the table.”

“Oh my, a real live war hero—is

there such a thing? You must be punchdrunk, poor boy. Buy him a shot for me,though. Just in case.”

“Karmic insurance?”“Indeed. I’m certainly in the

market… Look, Rob mentioned that youcalled earlier. He’s worried about you.”

“He’s worried about his money,you mean.”

“Our money. We share everything.Basically, we’re married. Please meetme at that museum in Coleville. Youknow the one—it’s on your way, isn’t it?Fourteen-hundred hours on Friday. Wecan speak of cabbages and kings, theweather in Buenos Aires.”

“You owe somebody money? Is thatwhy ya got yer head busted?” Marty

Cardinal had finished off another round.“That the s.o.b. who beat the tar outta ya,kid?”

“Okay,” Conrad said. “I’ll be there.It may be close.”

“Drive like the wind, mate,” Singhsaid. “Oh, and Conrad…I’m glad you’rein one piece. Ciao.”

“I’m touched,” Conrad said, butSingh was gone. “Sorry, Mr.—Marty.And after Broadway, you moved west,didn’t you? Washington, Idaho? Do yourecall a man named Ambrose Drake?”

“Huh?”“Ambrose Drake. He was a doctor

—a surgeon.”Marty Cardinal’s face slammed

shut. He began snapping his fingers

frantically at the waitress.“Ambrose Drake. A tall,

distinguished gentleman. Very dark, veryethnic.”

“What sorta trouble are you in?”Dorsey glanced up from his cards.“Unless you’re writin’ a book—”

“I’m not writing a book.”“Then what?” Marty Cardinal

gripped the edge of the table, a manclinging to a piece of flotsam in heavyseas. “What the hell ya want from me. Y-you’re—this is ancient history.”

“Is it?”“I dunno a goddamned thing.”“Dr. Ambrose Drake,” Conrad

said. “He treated your grandson.”“Go to hell.”

“Consider me the Ghost ofChristmas Past. I know everything. Youcame to the Cloister to visit a child. Youdon’t recognize me? I was a boy, so it’sunderstandable. You I recall quitevividly. I thought you were an officer,even in civilian clothes. You had thatmilitary bearing. Command presence.Hadn’t quite reinvented yourself asFrank Sinatra.”

Marty Cardinal appeared ill. Hegagged down an inch of bourbon. “Theclinic. I dunno—”

“His name was Dick, yourgrandson. He had leukemia,” Conradsaid. He was hardly drunk, now. Hishands were steady, his tone flat withhoned menace. Coupled with his

grotesque scarring, his brawny shouldersand immense hands, the menace shtickwas reliable. “There were a lot ofpeople at the clinic, but I could neverforget Dick either. A piano prodigy, justlike your pal Dorsey there. Loved modelplanes and baseball. My brother calledhim Dicky, talked about him nonstop.Real amigos, those two. My brother hada tumor named Jake, by the way.”

Marty Cardinal spilled his drink,knocked over the stack of empties whenhe clumsily sopped the mess.

“Dicky’s head was alwaysshaved…”

Marty Cardinal’s eyes leaked; hismouth hung slack and ugly with the shockof recollection, of demons loosed and

ravenous.“Leave him alone,” Dorsey said.“Are you crying? Don’t do that.

Please, I need you to look at something.Dr. Drake gave this to some of them tostudy.” Conrad made the promotionalphoto disappear and drew anothertattered sheet of paper from his coat,held it near the light. The paper waspapyrus-yellow, saturated with waterstains and splashed by violent brush-work that resembled the craft of ademented calligrapher. “I’ve been toldthat the military used tools like this, backin the days when you were in theservice. This, however, was originallycreated by Dr. Drake as a visualpsychotropic, albeit inert without the

concomitant verbal trigger. Uncle Samconsidered buying the protocol, butpassed. Have another look—you’ve seenit before.”

“Aww, no.” Marty Cardinalbawled. He covered his eyes. “Aww no,no, no.”

Conrad gaped in wonder andhorror, then collected himselfsufficiently to proceed with the Hoover-style third degree. “Any of these soundfamiliar? MK-Ultra. Majestic Twelve.Project TALLHAT. Project Bluebook.”

Marty Cardinal hunched tighter,refused to look. Wow, a monster. Look!

“It’s okay, chum.” Dorsey slung ascrawny arm over Marty Cardinal’sshoulders and glared venomously at

Conrad. “You better get. He’s got nothin’to say to you.”

Conrad forged ahead, implacableas a steamroller. “Some say the doctor isyet among the living. Drake was decrepitwhen he administered the Cloister. I’dpeg him at one hundred, easy. Not manyfolks see out a century of birthdays. Mustbe one hell of a medicine man, assuminghe even exists. I don’t think the Drakewe know ever did.”

“Who sent ya? I’m out. They said Iwas out. Lyin’ sonsabitches.”

“No one sent me. I’m a free agent,an inquiring mind. I want to know moreabout the Drake Technique.”

“I don’t know shit.”“I suppose if the CIA had gotten

around to co-opting his research they’dhave given it some silly code name.Probably converted it to somethingabsolutely unimaginative—OPERATION MINDFUCK.Bureaucrats, eh? For God’s sake, stopcrying, would you.” It was rubbingConrad’s nerves raw, the moaning andweeping, waking the lizard, the creaturethat always wanted a bite of somethingweak and vulnerable. His fingers curled.

“Screw ya, ya punk. This isbullshit.”

“You were on the team of spooksthat debriefed Drake and his scientistsabout his “Technique.” Istanbul, summerof ’60. The CIA was just checking it out,you didn’t actually appropriate the

intellectual property, probably becauseeveryone thought it was a hoax. Theywere correct. So your commandingofficers examined the evidence and cutthe doctor loose, let him creep backunder some rock.”

Marty Cardinal whined.Conrad grinned, heartless and

deranged, and tossed back a raw doublevodka without removing his feral gazefrom Marty Cardinal. Compassion wastoo heavy a load this far up the mountain.“But a couple decades later when poorDicky got sick, you didn’t hesitate, notfor one second, did you? You’d sensedsomething in Drake. You knew he wasthe real thing, that he held the power oflife and death in a big way. Sadly, it

wasn’t about helping your grandson.Dicky was, how do you military folkssay it?—expendable. Nah, you offeredthe poor little tyke up to the dark gods ina black magic ritual at the doctor’sclinic. You’d have done a lot worse tobecome a high wire Vegas act. Irony of itis, that sadist probably didn’t even needyour grandson, or any of those kids, tofuel his experiments. I think Drakeaccepted sacrifices because that’s justhow Satan gets his kicks. Cruelty tomortals.”

“Go ’way,” Marty Cardinal said,muffled into his hand.

“Examine the drawing and I will.”“Go ’way.”“Look at the drawing,” Conrad said

with bared teeth. Then, softly, “I’msorry, Marty. Truly, I am. You werethere. Most of the others are gone, ormissing—and my time is short. I can’tleave until you look at the drawing. Solook.”

“You prick,” Dorsey said.Marty Cardinal sobbed, but he

spread his fingers and stared at the pieceof paper for several seconds, until hisbloodshot eye began to blink rapidly andoverflowed and he covered it again. “Iwasn’t a spook. Nope. Thass just a colorfield. A fuggin’ Rorschach, maybe. Itdon’ mean nothin’.”

That’s what they all said, more orless. “Oh, it bears some significance.Try again.”

“Not to me. Not to anybody. It’s afuggin’ inkblot.”

“When your grandson concentratedon the drawing what did he see?”

“You prick,” Dorsey said.For a long moment Marty Cardinal

remained hunched, his frame sagging ingrief. Then he said, “Barbs.”

“Barbs,” Conrad said.“The Barbs of God. Dicky was

eleven years old. The last three monthsof his life, God is all he talked about.How God was going to eat every one ofus. You too, grandpa. You too.” MartyCardinal pointed at Conrad. “You too, yalousy sonofabitch.”

“Sixty-four-thousand-dollarquestion: Dicky had a word. A trigger.

What was it?”“Whah?”“The trigger, Marty. The auto-

hypnotic trigger. Short, pithy, maybe atad sinister.”

“I don’ remember.”“Yes, yes you do. I don’t think

you’ve forgotten anything about Dicky.No matter how much you drink, youwon’t. My father never got over what hedid to his son, either.” Conrad studiedthe shrinking glare of his cigarette coal,contemplated touching it to the web ofMarty Cardinal’s thumb and index finger.Marsh or Singh would’ve carted thecrooner to a private location and doneexactly that, would’ve done a hell of alot more than that, in fact.

“Why ya wanna know the word?Takes more than the word. You gottalook at a whole shitpot a pictures likethat one there, listen to some scaryrecordings. Whole series of injections.There’s a chemical protocol. Word won’help ya.”

“I’m aware of the protocols.Intimately.”

“Ya took the series?” Cunningsurfaced in Marty Cardinal’s wateryeyes. A glimmer of viciousness andwell-oiled deceit. “I read the numbersonce…the injections kill six outta ten.Drives three point five more bugshitmad. Ya took the series. No wonderyou’re… It was the Brazilian, huh?”

“The process has been refined. It’s

a nine in one shot, thanks to modernmedicine. No series anymore, not likerabies.” Thanks to Dad. I’ve never beenso proud.

“Ya took the Series. Dumbshit.Now they own you. He owns you.Dumbshit.”

“We’ve got a lot in common,”Conrad said. “It grows late, Marty.”

Marty Cardinal must’ve senseddoom in Conrad’s lazy expression.“Yeah, fine. Ya wanna know the magicword, I’ll tell ya. Ain’t a state secret, isit? Whatch ya deserve, I guess.” He halfleaned, half sprawled across the table,cupped his hand and whispered thetrigger into Conrad’s ear.

Bang.

The world ended.The world was remade.The fingernail chasm between

destruction and creation was a frozen,howling void, a hairline fracture on thewindshield of the onrushing cosmos. Itflickered through Conrad’s mind,writhed in microbial convolutions,etched itself into a secret expanse ofcerebral membrane, a trilobiteembalmed in Paleozoic flowstone.

The lounge sat there, relativelyunaffected.

Conrad dropped the paper and itblackened and crisped to ash. Now withthe primal rush of aggression leachingfrom his nervous system he was bone-tired and weak and slightly ashamed of

what he’d done. He smoked anotherguilty cigarette while Marty Cardinalwept and Dorsey wiped his friend’snose with a napkin and mutteredepithets. In a bit the old men lurchedfrom the table, exited through theenigmatic door with the blinky EXITsign.

Later, when the other drunks weremigrating in pods and the bartenderbegan to sadly sweep, Conrad made it tohis feet and drifted down the longcorridor of swollen, subterranean murkto his room. Empty, thank Christ and theFour Horsemen.

He fell across the bed and sankexactly as a stone dropped edge-firstinto the sediment far beneath the scales

of the sea.

III

He awoke, although that was not acertainty. His thoughts were sticky, hisfaculties stupefied. He knew he was in ahotel on planet Earth in the Southwest ofthe continental United States. This heknew, of this he was certain despite thefact gravity and vertigo conspiredagainst him, despite the open mutiny ofhis racing heart and shrieking nerves.

The room throbbed with bloodlesslight, the ashen flush of a landscapeunder the caul of an eclipse. Theamniotic light sluiced against cheapblinds, dripped and seeped throughchinks and seams, patterned great,ominous shadows against the clapboardwalls. Somewhere, a fan clattered in itscage, a radiator churned.

He was paralyzed. The hotelaround him became a translucenthoneycomb where nothing stirred in thetwilight chill. Rows of beds with lumpsof humanity nestled tight.

An inverted female shape hungmidway in the gulf beyond the bed andbefore the opaque blinds. The womanfloated, spread-eagle as a Vitruvius

Woman, hair flowing against the dingycarpet, her features a sulfurous smearamid velvet and ink. She emitted lowstatic, the electronic snarl of radiowaves creeping through the outer regionsof solar vacuum. She resonated a Hadalthrum, seethed and roiled like a swarmof wasps in a hive of bones. Her dimshape accumulated mass with each snickof the clock. She achieved a dreadfulaspect and unfathomable density andbegan to uncoil as angel hair, the wingsof a man o’ war, a hungry wasp.

(Doyouunderstandwhatishappeningyouunderstandwhatishappeningunderstandwhatishappeningwhatishappeningishappeninghappening?)He struggled to lift the anchor from

his chest and then nothing.

IV

Conrad was alone when graymorning filtered into his brain. Heshowered and shaved and noted that hisbruises were rapidly healing. Marks ofviolence giving way to simpleweariness, the pouches and bags ofencroaching age. Dented, butserviceable.

He drove for hours, sluggish anddreamy, imagining the serum, brokendown and reduced to its naked,predatory mode, spiraling through his

nervous system, clinging and entwininglike morning glory wrapping creepersaround a trellis, yearning for heat andsustenance. His fingers tingled, feltdetached. The flesh of his cheeks wascool as porcelain. Muscle spasms andtremors. No hallucinations, no blackoutsat least. No superhuman powers, either;no cosmic leaps of intuition, noburgeoning sense of godly omnipotence.All quiet, except for numbness andoccasional nausea.

The city lifted itself from the flat-backed plains as a colony of blue-bottleglass and aerodynamic steel. Everythingwas polished to an antiseptic gloss; theboulevards ran in perfect geometricgrids and russet leaves collected neatly

in gutters and along curbs. Citizens worewinter suits and winter haircuts andwere scrubbed bone-white to match thesky. They moved with clockworkprecision, aboard shiny Peugeots andBMWs, and on the hoof in their Gucci’sand stolid sensible wingtips; thebuildings and the people were cleverminiatures of the mighty easternmetropolises poured from a bag of jacks.

Conrad liked that the exchange wasto occur in the Coleville Museum ofNatural History, a massive andmodernized brownstone where the hallswere so quiet, the creak of his shoesechoed, chased after grains of dust inhidden corners. Following a ludus therewas always an exchange, a greasing of

the palm; traditionally the transfer wasresolved in an exotic locale; a catacomb;a mosque; a half-collapsed amphitheateralong the Turkish coast; atop theramparts of some rundown castle inScotland; precisely the canvases uponwhich Conrad performed his cruel andterrible art. Singh relished suchmelodrama and Singh called the shots.The museum was an improvement for thesimple fact it was indoors during the dayin a warm, cheery, if naturally,illuminated environment. Conrad wasonly sorry they hadn’t adhered to theirusual conclaves. A public rendezvouscomplicated the situation immensely. Hecalmed himself with the idea that he’dthink of something ingenious when the

moment of truth arrived.He waited near a towering cube

which enclosed wax simulacrums ofNeolithic tribesmen hucking spears at arampant smilodon. Conrad’s visage hungin a panel of glass. My bothers, mybrothers! He concentrated on rebuildinghis image after the patterns of thegovernment inkblots until his reflectionwavered and ran with the fluidity of oiland—

—he was among them shoulder toshoulder in the arid dawn pale as a floodof dying starshine the sun an ochre smearabove fields of bloody grass he waitedon smiling death spear in hand animalmusk fear musk in his nostrils upon hisgrimy skins his own skin and that

dreadnought was coming for them bellylow amid the rocks and weeds thatkilling machine coming for them comingthrough the bloody grass with itsmouthful of knives coming steady forthem as a falling tree a wave anavalanche of bloody rocks upon themhungry as fire for their flesh as fire ishungry for the bloody grass but he stoodhis ground he had his brothers he had hisspear here the monster came silent andhungry as a shadow crossing the earth—

The hunter who most resembledConrad was sideswiped and foldeddouble under curved strokes of black-splattered ivory; head askew, he grinnedat Conrad and said, “They Who Waithave always been among us, brother!”

Then a tusk dipped into the hunter’scheek and a sticky sundew replaced hisrude features.

Conrad blinked and there wasbeautiful, exotic Singh sliding towardhim, serenely passing through grainy sunshafts thrown down by phalanxes ofskylights. It struck him with a sudden,nauseating clarity that Singh was nothingso much as DeKoon’s enigmaticcounterpart, the pallid European’snegative. Conrad was disconcerted topicture that duo ferociously coupledupon a bed in some ramshacklebungalow, yin and yang, the Ouroborosswallowing its tail while earthquakesrocked the Andes and a cloud blotted thesun.

Singh waved, desultory andunaffected, inconspicuously attired,according to the fashion of the natives, intones of steel and coal. He was tall andslim and dark as the bark of an ancientmadrone tree. Singh was the chameleonin the madrone tree’s branches. He said,“Say, is that luggage ticking, old bean?”

“Hello.”“Hullo. My, my, aren’t you lovely

as a corpse.” Singh embraced himlightly, kissed his forehead. The duskyman wore heavy, foreign cologne. Hegleamed unctuously. “Did you see theTyrannosaurus on the first storey?Astonishing!”

Conrad extricated himself fromSingh’s grasp, hefted the briefcase.

“That isn’t a T-Rex.”“Wot, wot?”“Nothing. Shall we?”“No rush. I’m on vacation. Let’s nip

off to my flat. Not mine, it’s a corporatetimeshare, but anyway. You look like youcould use a drink.”

Conrad shrugged as if thesuggestion meant nothing to him. Hischest constricted and his breathing cameshallowly. Red sparks dashed mininovas against his eyelids. “Lead theway.”

As they walked along thepromenade, he was tempted to scan thesurroundings for Marsh or whoever elselurked behind the potted plants. Hedidn’t quite dare. Singh would know.

My fly is open.“You drive,” Singh said when they

left the museum and stood on thesidewalk in the austere light of agathering storm. Snow was possible.Meteor showers.

Is this a capture or a kill team? IsSingh black-ops? I don’t think so, butdamn, maybe. Doesn’t matter; it allends with a gunshot, a dose ofsomething unpleasant from a syringe.DeKoon won’t be happy when Idisappear. Unless he really was off hisrocker about the Finn. Damn, maybethat was it. One strike and he called inthe dogs. Or maybe he’s a member ofthe club. Forget it. Get your game faceon. Zip your pants, idiot.

Conrad couldn’t detect any telltalesthat his car had been tampered with orsearched. Then they were acceleratingthrough the clean streets. Conrad was onautomatic. He vaguely registered themyriad hyper-accentuated details—howa goodly quarter of the neon shop signswere in Korean or Thai characters; thebare-boned shade trees, stark andcomatose; the lowering clouds, facelessas a mob; the flesh of his lumpen,knobbed hands had begun to wattle andwrinkle, blue-veins bulging as heclasped the wheel. The hair on hisknuckles was gray. Tired skin, tiredblood. A man could pump all the iron heliked, muscle got old sooner or later,Jack Lalann and Arnold notwithstanding.

“How did your conversation withMr. Cardinal go?” Singh lighted acigarette.

“He revealed the secrets of theuniverse.”

“The secrets of the universe are ofscant interest to a brute such asyourself.”

“I wanted him to sign my vintageLP. He promised me backstage passes toa Neil Diamond concert.” Conrad hit thebrakes to avoid colliding with a taxi. Heseized the diversion to scan the rearviewmirror for a tail. Lots of cars back there.

Singh braced his left hand againstthe dash. His hand was soft and sinuousas the weaving head of a viper. “Do youreally take us for total morons?”

“I probably shouldn’t answer thatone.”

“To blazes with your personalissues. Your bloody agenda is onlypermitted so long as it aligns with ours!”Singh’s face was tight. He relaxed with avisible effort. “You’ve been tooobvious, too indelicate. You’re startingto attract enemies. I would not besurprised if MI6 is out for your ballsafter that brouhaha with the Honduranexpat last year—what was his name?”

“Kimosa.” Conrad punched the gas,jarred Singh back in his seat.

“Right. Kimosa. I guess the fellowthought you’d come to cut his throat;raised quite a stink with the consulate, Igather. We just tied that to you—all very

hush-hush, you see. How did you findhim? Never mind, stupid question. Yoursister did the heavy lifting, didn’t she.You just pitched cleanup on a bunch ofworn down geriatrics. I doubt themajority of them understand what it isyou think they know. His relationship toTALLHAT would’ve never occurred tome if we hadn’t confiscated thosedocuments on the island.”

“So, Cardinal played for theCompany. Lots of my friends do.”

“The booze hound was indeed aCompany man.” Singh gazed at the stopand go traffic, loose-limbed anddisaffected as usual. “Wicked stuff hegot up to in his day, I must admit. Thechap is from the old school—I’m

shocked he didn’t pop off to his garretand down a cyanide pill after you forcedhim to divulge his secrets.”

“I didn’t force him to divulgeanything. I asked nicely.”

“Did you get anything useful? Hewas never trusted with any sensitiveinformation.”

“That’s what he told me.”“Look, Conrad…something has

happened.”“No shit. I thought this was a social

occasion.”They left the metropolitan core,

crossed into stark regions populated bygrimy warehouse fronts, liquor storesand low income housing complexesstacked in concrete blocks.

It grew steadily dimmer, God’sthumb on the dial.

V

Conrad parked on the street andfollowed Singh up steps littered withpigeon droppings to a security door ofthe Wanderveldt Apartments. It was atall conical building, a decrepit 1950stenement riddled with tunnels andchambers like a termite colony in a greystump. Singh thumbed the button by 203

G. MOTT and shortly, they were buzzedin without comment.

The foyer was damp and paperedby dead leaves. A wheezing, shudderingelevator with brassy wall plates raisedthem to the third floor, deposited them ina claustrophobically narrow corridorthat went on and on under a series of dimglobes, many of which were broken out,or blank as glass eyes. Flies shrilled inthe dark globes; tiny, damned soulssearching for the light. Rough plasterwalls were scarred by fissures, brownwater stains and occasional jags ofgraffiti that almost made sense to Conradif he regarded them from the corner ofhis eye. Voices seeped through theplaster, mingled with the complaints of

the flies. Pipes groaned.Singh knocked at 203 and waited.

He pinched open a pack of Gauloises,stuck a cigarette in his mouth and offeredthe pack to Conrad.

“Thanks,” Conrad said, noting themany pizza delivery fliers before thedoor, an iris-dilation in the peephole.Sweat greased his face, made thebriefcase handle slippery in his fist. Heslowed his breathing, forced his neck torelax.

Singh lighted both cigarettes with amatch from a small wooden box thathe’d carried for as long as Conrad hadknown him.

“Un momento, por favor.” Locksrattled.

The door swung in to a darkenedspace, rich with incense, hash andunderlying mildew. First Singh, thenConrad on his heel.

A blanket of jungle-ripe humiditysmacked Conrad in the face. The doorshut and it was full night, except for asliver of light probing beneath thedrapes of a window somewhere to theright. Ghostly classical orchestra echoedfrom another room. Brahms at work.Someone giggled—bubbly and feminine.The record skipped and began again.

“Don’t move,” Marsh said from thedarkness behind Conrad and to the left.Phosphorescent green light bloomed.Marsh stepped around and played acrackling wand over Conrad’s

shoulders, chest and extremities. Marshresembled a hugely ursine airlinesecurity checker in cyclopean headgearand a Hawaiian flower print shirt andBermuda shorts. He sweated Scotch inthe sultry confines. “He’s good.” Hesnapped the wand off and Conrad wentblind with green aftershocks.

Singh switched on a floor lamp.The apartment was subdivided into

a hive—Conrad counted four flimsywooden doors and a curtain of beads.Each door had been painted a differentcolor: red; orange; blue; and white. Theouter area had been stripped to someopen beer bottles, pregnant ashtrays anda folded laptop computer on thekitchenette counter; a sectional and a

moldy phone book, but no phone. Nearthe balcony sliding door Mediterraneanincense sizzled in an iron brazier shapedlike a Buddha with pronounced incisors.Conrad wondered if they’d ripped thething off from an art gallery or amuseum.

Marsh unhooked his headgear,slapped it on the counter. He squintedand rubbed his blunt hands on his shirt.His stubbly head was something thatshould’ve rolled from a cannon barrel.“You got crabs, Singh.”

“Indeed? You are referring to thejet Cutlass, Nevada plates, numberAlpha-Charley-two-two-oh-niner? Ipicked him up at the museum. He parkedabout half a block down on the west side

of the street. Poppa Z’s goons, Ipresume. They seem quite proprietaryregarding our friend here.”

Marsh regarded Conrad. “In the olddays, we just garroted guys, or stabbedthem with a poisoned umbrella tip.Things are too damned complicated. Wegot lasers; we got masers; we gotnanoviruses and white frequenciesthat’ll short your cerebral cortex in one-one-hundredth of a millisecond. Forinstance —we got a killsat insynchronous orbit, keyed to your heatsignature. Actually, it’s a Russiansurplus geological satellite with minortweaks; shoots x-rays into the ground socorporations can decide where to drill.The fact it’ll cook any organic life in its

projection path is a happy side effect.You can smoke just about any bunker inthe world with one of these puppies. It’sall in knowing where to point it. Wannadrink?”

Conrad leaned against the wall inthe pale outline where a picture hadhung. He didn’t trust his voice. He shookand dripped. His clothes stuck to him asif he’d strolled through a sauna.

“What’s with him?” Marsh grabbedConrad’s briefcase, tossed it aside.“Going downhill fast, aren’t you, killer?Don’t look much like a world beaterfrom where I’m standing. Good thing webrought you here for this little powwow.Things are getting out of hand.”

Singh rinsed a couple of glasses in

the sink and a dumped scotch into each.He pressed one on Conrad. “Health!”

“Your liver’s got to be the size of asoccer ball. How’n the hell do you stayin shape to do what you do?” Marshsaid.

It was an old question, Marsh’snotion of an icebreaker. Conrad drankhis glassful, enjoyed the ephemeral bite,the transitory and finite thrill, likegasoline drying on pavement. Besidesfrequent visits to the Big Stage, how didhe maintain his edge, his dominantphysical power? Ask a crocodile, fatand torpid on its sunny clay bank how itstayed fit and deadly. Same answerwould apply. “If you aren’t planning tosnuff me, let’s discuss business.”

Marsh and Singh exchangedglances. Marsh said, “Snuff you? Youthought—?” The big man laughed. Hischeeks flushed and he hacked phlegminto a kerchief. “Oh shit, that slays me.You need to relax, son. Where do youthink we are, Zimbabwe? Drama queen.”

“He was joking about the killsat—the cone isn’t that precise; we might gettoasted as well. I would’ve just had oneof our sniper associates do the deed atthe museum. Far less messy. Here, let’sfreshen that a bit, yeh. There’s a lad.”Singh poured Conrad another dose witha trembling hand.

Why was Singh nervous? Have Iever seen them like this? Conrad didn’tthink so. Damn it, maybe they meant to

kill him after the transaction, kindassurances notwithstanding.

Murmurs and a groan escaped theroom with the Brahms. More gigglingfrom beyond the white door. Thehumidity was thicker, stronger. Shadowsswelled in the cracks and corners, beganto rise in a tidal trough.

“Who’s here?” Singh gestured withhis glass at the white door.

“Vonda. The hooker, remember?She got here a few minutes ago.” Marshgave his partner a bluff and hearty grinthat lacked conviction. A convulsion ofthe jaw and nothing more.

“Wanda?” Conrad said, chilled.“Vonda.”“Oh! Vonda. Yes, right then. Let’s

hurry this along, shall we. It would beimpolite to keep the lady waiting.”

“Yeah. Meter’s running.”The lamp flickered and everyone

stared at it. Conrad’s throat was tightagain; his body felt too heavy, too full ofsand and water. The room seemed tohave gained several gravities.

“Time to get down to brass tacks,”Marsh said, as if briskness would dispeldoom. “Here’s the score. This is the kissoff. You and us, we’re through. Theoperation has been terminated. Theoperation never existed. We don’t knowanything about the underground battleroyales, your crazy fucking sister,Project TALLHAT, nothing. We don’tknow no Conrad, Conrad.”

“Fine by me. What’s the catch?”“We’ll be out of your hair once

we’ve squared accounts.”“Squared accounts. What does that

mean.”“Means we needs must part,”

Marsh said.“And the shoe drops.”“The deal is—you buy out our

interest in your future enterprises,indemnify us against the possibility welose a ton profit on account of your, uh,premature demise. Say, oh, five hundredgrand.” Marsh patted the laptop. “Wecan handle the transaction right here.”

Conrad held up two fingers. “Okay,boys. I’ll go two-hundred even, and thishad better be good. Not here. I don’t

trust you that much, M. I’ll retreatsomeplace a tad more secure and wireyour payoff.” Half a million wasn’tbeyond his capability, but the last thinghe wanted was to hand these two jackalsenough money to cap him and disappearto whatever tropical paradise they’dbeen lining up since they were cadets atspook academy.

Even as Marsh opened his mouth,Singh cut in, “Jolly idea. Agreed.Agreed, Robert?”

Marsh shook his head in defeat.“Do you understand what kind of guyyou’re messing with? I mean, really,truly, understand?”

“The Brazilian? He’s done someantisocial things—”

“Not him. He’s a patsy, a stooge—just like your daddy was. Ciphers for thereal player, the wizard behind thecurtain. I’m talking about Drake.Ambrose Zora Drake. Really should atold us about him.”

The jig was up, then. They kneweverything. Probably not everything, butmore than enough.“What’s tounderstand? Drake killed my brother andprobably my sister. Because of him mymom blew herself to hell and my dadended up in a nut hatch. I think thatcovers the episodes you missed.”

“Whoa, whoa. It’s always aboutbaby Imogene, isn’t it, bud? I looked intoall that. You poor dupe. Your sister…How can I put it, Singh?”

“Delicately,” Conrad said. Hedropped his empty glass andstraightened.

“Hey, we’re friends,” Marsh said.He and Singh casually sidled away fromConrad’s considerable reach. “I’m justsaying, okay? She might not have givenyou the whole story. You’re loyal andthat’s sweet. But she wasn’t spotless,she wasn’t exactly true blue. I’m notcasting judgment—we all gotta eat. Sishooked up with Lorca, who is quite adubious character, then they took a hit ofthe Brazilian’s wonder drug and werenever quite the same. She went to thedark side. Am I right?”

Conrad looked at the floor, felt thebig vein in his neck throb. “Drake is

alive. Really and truly.”“Oh, that is affirmative,” Singh

said.“Drake was the brains behind the

Brazilian. Drake probably owned theBrazilian since Souza enrolled in medschool back in Eighteen-fucking-whenever.”

“Why are you afraid of him? Likeyou say, he’s gotta be older thanMengele. A has-been on the lam fromeverybody with a badge.”

“Guess again, Connie. Take asmany guesses as you need, even.”

“You picked Jonah’s whale for anenemy,” Singh said. “Drake is farbeyond the likes of us peasants.”

“An untouchable? Counting down

until the ball drops in a Nazi retirementhome?”

Marsh and Singh exchanged looksagain. Marsh barked and poured moreliquor. “Drake runs a show you wouldn’tbelieve. As for Nazis, well, sameballpark. He’s a satyr. He’s Caligula andde Sade and the Pope rolled in a ball.Frankly, I bet he could buy and sell theVatican. Guess that qualifies him as anuntouchable.”

“What if he’s a terrorist too?”Conrad said.

“Plenty of terrorist masterminds aregood with Uncle Sam. As of thismoment, mums the word from HQ.Drake definitely has friends in ourgovernment. Get the drift?”

“Drake indulges peculiar appetitesand our chain of command is at leastperipherally aware,” Singh said. “Thereare documents, pictures… I regrethaving seen them.”

Coming from Singh, that was sayinga lot, Conrad knew. “I’ve heard things.So what. Another rich bastard with theusual kinks. I know the type.”

“Wrong, stud. Whatever you’veheard, I promise that ain’t the half of it.”Marsh’s eyes glittered. “Nothing is goingto see light of day in our lifetimes.Records of his activities have a habit ofgetting misplaced or destroyed. Don’tthey, Singh?”

“Oh, yes.”“People on high have dropped the

cloak of darkness over his shoulders. It’snot unusual, happens all the time. binLaden, Noriega, guys like that were onthe dole long before they became publicenemy numero Uno. In some ways, itgets worse. At least for you.”

Conrad was growing cold as thesweat dried and his senses foundequilibrium. “Worse. What does worsemean?”

“Drake may be the wart on the assof an extremely large toad. Surely youfigured out he’s not unique.”

“Not unique?”“He’s junior member of a peer

group, the elite of the elite.” Singhlighted a cigarette. He sighed. “TheOrder of Imago. You’ve probably heard

of it during your investigations. It’s oneof those loudly whispered secrets—likethe Masons and the Satanists, only moreso. Powerful, powerful men. Tycoons,industrialists, Old World nobility. Awicked old-boys secret handshakesociety. We know it exists. We’ve met amember or two, heard some stories.They’ve established a few communes inremote areas. There’s one in Arizonaand another in Southern California.Probably five or six others. Didn’tImogene tell you?”

“Nothing specific. Wild talk.”The men stared at him. Their faces

were luminous as wax. Mummies. Theliquid giggle floated from the bedroomand Marsh’s glance twitched that

direction. His tongue distended slightly.He sported the lump of a burgeoningerection.

Singh said, “Why did you lie to usabout your sister? You should’ve told usfrom the start who she was after.”

“What, and ruin a beautifulrelationship.”

“Perhaps it’s our fault. Weshould’ve dug a bit deeper, should’veunderstood this wasn’t just aboutImogene. It all goes back to your father.He owed Drake everything, didn’t he?”

“I’ve always liked you, man. So, Iguess I’m kinda sorry about this.” Marshbegan to tremor. He looked like a man inthe throes of palsy.

Conrad picked up his glass and

filled it again. He noticed Marsh hadreached into his Bermuda shorts, wasstroking himself. “What does this groupwant? Aren’t you two even a teensy bitcurious?”

“Dunno, bud. Cults aren’t my forte.I’m just giving you the Action Newsheadlines…” Marsh’s eyes went deadand his face softened, lost animation.“Sorry, Singh. I’m done here.”

“Rob —”Marsh wheeled and shuffled to the

white door. He hesitated, shouldersheaving, before he shoved open a darkslot and bulled through. No music, nogiggling, nothing. Vacuum sucked thedoor shut.

Singh said dreamily, “Bugger it

all.” He wagged his head as if itweighed upon his neck. “Did you followthat trial of a certain naughty senator.Four or five years ago? The one they sayraped the intern? I had the dubiouspleasure of interviewing that sterlingfellow. He’d made an exceedinglystrange request during his interrogation.He demanded to speak with anintelligence operative, someoneinvolved with national security. So, in Iwent. The senator mentioned AmbroseDrake as a benefactor. The senator isfrom the oldest money, colonialbluebloods in tall hats. Kind of guyswho presided over the witch trials. Hemade this crazy claim his ancestorsknew Drake personally.”

The floor lamp began to flickerrapidly.

Something fell. Two, three, fourbeats and the lamplight steadied. Anashtray had plunged to the floor, dumpedits contents; the brazier rocked gently onits base. The red and blue doors hungopen, revealing cavities.

“Singh. What’s happening?”Conrad had fallen into a half crouch,fingers spread in anticipation ofviolence. His terror was muted, muffled,as if this were a dream and the floor wasquicksand and it was happening tosomeone else, someone on TV, perhaps,an actor rehearsing his wooden lines,standing on the X.

“You know.”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be asking.”Singh’s eyes were huge and dewy.

Saliva gathered in the corner of his slackmouth. “Vonda is lonely.” He shudderedand removed his gaze from the whitedoor. “So this hapless senator, the onewith his neck on the block, swore thatDr. Drake was involved in, how shall Isay, extreme occult practices. Decidedlyanti-American practices. The senatorclaimed to have made a pact with Drakeand friends in return for his celebritystatus and all the fruits that accompaniedsuch success. I relayed this story to mysuperior…expecting to get a laugh.Nobody was laughing. My boss quietlyadvised me forget what I’d been told.And I did.”

A pact.Imogene had said it first, shouted it

at him. The truth was heavy and itsquirmed in Conrad’s mind. Barbs. Godwill eat us all.

Sudden vertigo and the squeak ofneglected hinges interrupted Conrad’strain of thought. The white door hadswung slightly ajar; the pitch blacknessinside had grown solid and swollen andsprung its cage.

The room rippled at the periphery,distorted and elongated precisely as itmight’ve if Conrad had eaten a massivedose of shrooms or suffered a nastyconcussion. Pressure built upon his fleshand in his bones. Objects on the counterrustled; the laptop slid several inches.

The room seemed to be listing by a fewdegrees, a cabin in a sinking ocean liner.

“Farewell, Conrad,” Singh said. “Itoccurred to me we owed you a partinggift, a token of our esteem as it were.”He took a small packet from inside hiscoat and handed it to Conrad. “I don’trecommend viewing these on a fullstomach. Nonetheless, these diskscontain all you’d ever care to knowregarding the proclivities of Dr. Drake.Some in color.”

“Come here.” A female voice; asoft, sweet invitation that hinted ofmysterious pleasure, of chocolate andpeppermint, clamps and whips, a long,slow descent into the ultimate darknessof a sundew. “Come here, come here.”

The lamp dulled, dulled andreddened as a beam seeping throughclosed fingers. Marsh called, “Tell himgoodbye, Leo. I need to show yousomething.”

Singh smiled beatifically. Hisshadowy face gleamed. “Goodbye,Conrad. See you soon.”

Conrad didn’t answer. Heblundered out into the hallway and fled,following the swaying overhead lights.Someone kept calling his name.

Interlude

The first knockdown fight Conradhad was as a teenager and with hisfather.

Dad was a scary man. Big body,big brain, murderous temper. A scaryman and a terrifying drunk. He wasdrunk most of the years Conrad knewhim and the two seldom spoke. Dad tookhim aside after Mom crashed her planeand had a father-son type of chat in thecellar of their home in the foothills of theOlympic Mountains where they’d dweltsince Ezra’s death. The cellar was muchlarger than it appeared and housed anumber of machines and assorted labequipment. Dad spent the majority of his

waking hours down there,experimenting, plotting, muttering andcackling to the rats and the spiders.Conrad would’ve rather had theconversation in the traditional venue—on a rowboat in the lake, fixing the junkfarm truck, chopping wood, anything butthe damned cellar. Unfortunately, the oldman had become exquisitely paranoid inhis dotage and didn’t like to hang aroundin the open lest somebody should take ashot at him, or swoop down and roll himin a carpet and rendition him to somemiddle eastern hellhole for questioning.

Dad popped the cork on a bottle ofBushmill’s and guzzled it, one bloodshotjaundiced eye fixed upon his son all thewhile. He set the bottle aside and wiped

his mouth and said, You like to fight,Connie?

This surprised Conrad. He’d neverbeen in trouble at school, never thrown apunch. Most of the kids liked him. Thosethat didn’t wanted to screw Imogene inthe worst way and left her brother inpeace for obvious reasons. The bruiserswho didn’t want to fuck her were scaredshitless of her. She’d socked one guywho got too fresh in the testicles with thecute little set of brass knuckles she hid inher purse. Those guys left Conrad alonetoo. On the rare occasion some fooldecided to jump him, nothing excitingcame of it. Conrad could absorb a golfclub blow to the head and shake it off,just stand there and take a beating until

the bully got too tired to swing. Thatscared people worse than Imogene’sbrass knuckles and pointy shoes. Which,after messing with Conrad, theyexperienced close up anyway.

Conrad shrugged. He seldom spokearound Dad, except in shrugs and grunts,and monosyllables.

Dad said, You’re a special case.Some of my friends in the militarywould be most eager to get you in theirclutches. Ever ponder a career in theMarines? See the world with the Navy?No? Glad to hear it, because I won’tallow it. Your mom would haunt me if Idid. And he glanced around as if Momlurked in the shadows, ready to pounce.Anyway, Connie. You’re special and life

is going to become extremelyinteresting for you in the Chinese cursesense of the word. This family hasalways been afflicted with that kind ofthing. It goes back to my ancestors andI’m sorry your mom and you kids gotroped into the mess. The thing is, I’msending you to live with a friend ofmine in the Mediterranean. He’s got allkinds of connections. You’ll finishschool and go on from there.

What about Genie? Conradactually looked from his feet and into hisfather’s eyes.

She’s going to live with Auntie. Ihave high hopes for that girl.

Don’t separate us. I’ll stay withAuntie too. Conrad began to fidget

mightily. Sweat ran down his neck.Dad chuckled. First, you make

Auntie nervous. Second, you and Genieare entirely too close. That’s whatcomes of letting Mother practice allthat fucking New Age child rearingbullshit on you two—way too muchconfusion. Not your fault, but all thesame, it’s best you kids see other peoplefor a while.

Where is she?Gone, man, gone. They’ll be on the

road a while. Out of the country.Conrad didn’t say anything. He

nodded and tore an x-ray machine free ofits mooring bolts and broadsided Dad,sent him crashing through a domino rowof shelves. He didn’t use his empty hand

because he was enraged, not suicidal. Afire started and Dad came out of thesmoke, laughing and swearing, ready formurder.

They destroyed the cellar and thenthe fight moved upstairs into the mainfloor of the house and they destroyed thattoo. Dad lifted the the big stainless steelrefrigerator and rammed Conrad,bulldozed the whole living room wall,and then they were in the yard, rippingapart the lawn, tearing up lawnsprinklers and whacking each other withthem.

Conrad thanked god Dad was deaddrunk, because it slowed the old mandown a little. He threw some dirt inDad’s eyes and while he yelled and

blindly pawed the air, Conrad managedto tear the Citroen’s passenger door offits hinges. He raised the door overheadand slammed it down across Dad’s back.It took three tries, but eventually Dadstopped trying to get on his feet, and laythere, muttering. Dad eventually crawledover to the car and got a half-full bottleof scotch off the floorboard.

The two of them slumped on theruined grass and drained the bottle andwatched the house explode in aHollywood-style ball of fire. Dad wipeda tear from his cheek and explained thatConrad was a special case because he’dbeen engineered via a cloning processand that his DNA didn’t derive solelyfrom his loving parents, but there was

other source material. Material of abasic, primitive stock, an atavistic stock.That was why he looked a tad morebrutish than the other lads, and why hecould wrench car doors off their hinges,and why he could probably regenerate anon-lethal gunshot wound to soft tissuein a few hours. Maybe they could testthat hypothesis one day…

That was also the first time Conradgot drunk. It became a trend. Turned outDad was right about the gunshot wounds,too.

Chapter Four

I

DeKoon’s men swooped in andplucked Conrad off the street as helimped out of a tavern in the industrialdistrict a few minutes after last call. Hesaw them coming, decided that

discretion was the valorous course, andwent along for the ride in a big blacklimo.

DeKoon sat across the way,immaculate in his white suit and hat. Aheavily painted girl in a see-throughblouse cuddled him, her hand inside hisjacket and circling. She wore peacockfeathers in her tightly coiled dark hairand silver eye shadow. A man sat oneither side of Conrad. They too worenice suits and hats, black ones, andsunglasses. Another guy rode up frontwith the driver and at least two carsfollowed the limo.

“You appear remarkably improvedsince our last encounter,” DeKoon said.“Still, only three weeks until the ludus.

Not long to prepare for what I assureyou shall be a nightmare. The Greek ishell on wheels. And, of course, he’sbringing some associates and pets. Apity for you.”

“Three weeks is an eternity,”Conrad said.

“Yes. You’re a special case. I saidthe same to Uncle K many, many times.We’ve made a small fortune on peopleunderestimating you. You have the mostremarkable endurance and fortitude I’veever witnessed. The ghost of Rasputininhabits your skin.”

“Rasputin had nothing on me. I amgoing to slaughter the Greek, and hispets, and his associates.”

“I almost believe you.”

Conrad closed his eyes and tiltedhis head back so the blood and mucusdrained from his sinuses down the backof his throat. DeKoon was correct,though—he felt far better than he had anyright to. He said, “Uncle didn’t have anyheirs. He left you the empire?”

“Let us say I’m the executor. Irepresent the spirit of his interests. Yourincessant meddling with the greaterpowers that be alarms me and conflictswith said interests. It has to stop.”

“Been talking with my spookbuddies.”

“Those two are bad eggs, Conrad.You really should get shut of them. Theycan’t help you. They are doomed.”

“I suspect our arrangement has run

its course,” Conrad said, rememberingthe sweetly evil voice of the woman, thecloying darkness. “Why the hell are wehaving this conversation? Unless youhadn’t noticed I’m pretty goddamneddrunk. My face hurts. I could use somesleep.”

“Where is the woman you werewith the other night?”

“Which one? Nah, I’m kidding,they’re all the same. They come and go.”

“My advice to you is to pursueasceticism and celibacy, at least untilafter your match. Strange women are nofriends to a man such as yourself.”

“Thank you. I’ll shoot the next onewho tries to hop into bed with me.”

DeKoon smiled coldly. “It’s like

this. The Pageant is a lucrative hobby, adiversion. You are a tiny part of thatdiversion. I never shared Uncle K’sfamilial regard for you. The scrutinyfrom one such as Dr. Drake is sounwelcome, despite your entertainmentvalue, I’m tempted to have you diced sofine you could be sprinkled over agoldfish bowl. End of problem.”

Without opening his eyes, Conradestimated the angles of his shoulders andelbows relative the vital organs of themen who bracketed him. Both of themhad their hands in their pockets, ready todraw pistols. He didn’t like their odds inthe confines of the limo. “Then whydon’t you?”

“Because I received a package this

morning—an exquisite birch hamper ofthe sort used by the daimios of feudalJapan. The hamper contained severalitems, including a handwritten missivepenned upon obscenely opulent vellum.The details are tedious. The gist was,you are not to be pureed or otherwisemolested. The package was sentcompliments of one R. Lorca; yoursister’s lover. My nephew’s severedhead nestled inside the box and the letterwas inserted into his mouth. I am of thedistinct impression the lad died quitepainfully and in much terror. The threatto my remaining family seemedimplicit.”

“Well,” Conrad said. “I’m sorry foryour loss.”

“Thanks, old chap. As I said, UncleK was very fond of you. He feared youwould come to a bad end. Personally, Ihope you do. The sooner the better.”

“Been one of those days,” Conradsaid. “Nobody loves me anymore.” Andhe chuckled.

The limo slowed and stopped onthe corner where they’d originallynabbed Conrad. “Your sister is dead,”DeKoon said. “We would know if shewere among the living. This phantomthat teases you with ciphers and notesand well-placed rumors isn’t her. Youare in a web, Conrad. The spider iscoming.”

II

Connie, come to the house. Hurry.The note appeared in an email fromImogene’s old account, but he knew inhis bones it wasn’t her who pushed send.He didn’t care because the beckoningplea aligned with his mood ofdesperation and a conclusion he’dalready reached. The only place left togo was the one place the poets said aman couldn’t: home.

Three days of steady driving gotConrad across the desert and the

mountains and sent him along theshadowy Oregon coast and intoWashington—it had been years. Helooked over his shoulder the entire way,hypnotized by the chain of headlights inhis rearview mirror, wondering howmany of them belonged to Dr. Drake, theNSA, or whatever sinister forces werealigned against him.

He spent a night in Olympia at theFlintlock Hotel. He could’ve gone theextra couple of hours to his ultimatedestination, the abandoned family homeon the Peninsula, but despite his strengthand experience with mayhem and deathat the hands of brutes and the claws ofbeasts, he feared the dark. The darknessof the Olympics at night was particularly

oppressive—the ape in him respondedto it with bared teeth.

Courage bolstered with a halfbottle of whiskey, he opened the packageSingh had given him at their farewellrendezvous and viewed the disk on theroom computer. There were hundreds offiles containing government aerial andsatellite surveillance photos, a fewmotion picture clips, mostly ancient, andprimarily concerning remote militaryinstallations in regions such asMongolia, the Amazon Basin, Siberia,and Afghanistan. He kept clicking,certain of where it would lead, certainof what was coming—this was similarto the material he’d retrieved fromImogene’s caches, except for a handful

of files buried deep in an unmarkedsubfolder. These last, labeledCLOISTER c. 1982-83, were mutedsurveillance feeds of Dr. Drake’sPyrenees sanctuary.

First, a steady stream of imagesfrom the main grounds, then disjointedpictures of the interior corridors,culminating in a two minute recording ofevents in a large hall. Dozens of childrenwere seated upon the floor in smallgroups. A pair of braziers smoked andblazed upon a dais at the fore of theassembly. The overhead lights dimmedand then the hall was illuminated by theshifting flames. Two figures entered theroom and ascended the dais. Theirfeatures were hidden by cowls.

Perspective was unreliable, yet thefigures appeared freakishly massive,slightly bowed so the crowns of theirhoods didn’t scrape the ceiling. Theylowered their hoods and Conradrecognized both faces, before the faceschanged and became something otherthan human. The children panicked andtried to flee. Apparently the doors werelocked, because none of them escapedthe hideous fate that awaited.

Conrad watched the proceedingstwice. He removed the disk and snappedit in half and sat for a time, thoughts null.

Olympia’s tree-shaded streets werealmost empty at dusk. He bought a steakdinner at a restaurant down the street,then drank a couple of beers in the hotel

lounge; nothing stronger because he’ddecided to at least attempt a pretense ofprofessionalism. The lounge was a cozy,mirrored enclosure, lightly populated asit was a weeknight, and mostly bytourists. A blonde and a brunette whocould’ve been sororal twins perched onthe leading edge of the bar where thelight illuminated them to best advantage,reduced their surroundings to abackground blur. The women worevintage 1960s dresses and vintage 1960seyeglasses, slippers and stockings.Probably Evergreen coeds. They sippedmixed drinks in tall glasses and watchedhim while pretending not to. He boughtthem another round and one thing led toanother and he learned it wasn’t his

animal magnetism alone that attractedthem, but the fact they were hooking theirway through college.

Later, the trio lay tangled on hisbed. He sprawled naked on his back andlistened to them breathe. Light from thestreet illuminated the sleeping women,their soft, white curves, his dark andbrutish hands draped against that pallidflesh.

The phone rang as he’d known withan unerring instinct that it would. Theline hissed. He felt the weight of apresence on the other end. He said, “Is ityou?”

“Yes, it’s me,” she said into his ear.“Are you alive?”“Are you?”

He squeezed the sumptuous ass ofthe brunette. The woman groaned andtucked her forehead against his chest.“Yeah, looks like,” he said.

The voice on the phone said, “Youmet the Brazilian. You took a hit. Jesus!You’re shining like a klieg against theold psychic skyline.”

“I followed your instructions.Watched the films, memorized thetriggers. Something’s happening. I’m notcertain what.”

“Caterpillar to butterfly, baby.”“Is this a good thing, or a bad

thing?”“Depends, Connie. The Brazilian’s

serum is bad juju. All those Rorschachpatterns and evil home videos are also

bad, bad juju. Mind-fuckery of thehighest order. Put ’em together and it’s arecipe for a mini singularity. You gottabe of a certain genetic predisposition tosurvive and thrive. Our family treepossesses the recessive genes that reactand activate. When this shit you’ve doneto yourself finally kicks in for reals, it’llbe the biggest motherfucking trip youever been on. Those dress up battles ofyours… No human will be able standagainst you. No beast will lay a paw onyou. We’re talking godhead in a needle,brother.”

“Well, sort of sounds all right, youput it like that,” Conrad said.

“Sure, except that your change is abeacon to much bigger fishes cruising

the deeps. You know who wants to eatyou. He will eat you. Just like hemunched Ezzy. Just like he munchedthousands of others. He’s been aroundsince before the ice covered the Earth.Doing his wicked deeds, striving to getlarger than large. He eats the strong toget even stronger, and to eradicate thecompetition. He has to, because as bigand terrible as he’s become, there areworse. There are frightful things beneaththe mountains, beneath the oceans,beneath your bed. Things even the devilhimself fears.”

“Fuck Drake. You slipped him. Hemust have a blind spot.” When she didn’tanswer, Conrad said, “Drake is a man. Iknow how to kill men.”

“His name ain’t Drake, and likeI’ve been trying to tell you, he ain’t aman. You won’t be for long, either.Nobody who survives the serum stayshuman.”

“What about Dad?”“He didn’t take it. You see, the

alchemical formula comes from Drakeand Souza, which is akin to Satanhanding the Apple to Eve, or Prometheusteaching some Greek how to make fire.For them, the inkblot cards and theserum are trappings of science designedto enthrall and enslave modern minds. Acharade of rationality. Drake couldsimply breathe on you and transform youat the cellular level. He could snatchyour brain and show you some cosmic

horror that would turn your soul black.The Drake Technique is a joke, themechanical rabbit greyhounds chase.And when Dad glimpsed the true natureof Drake and Souza, when he realizedhe’d made a deal not with high priests ofa demon cult, but the fucking demonsthemselves, he opted out. Hilariouslyenough, he sent you to train withKosokian, never cottoning to the realitythat Uncle K was another of thediabolical set.

“I’m sure Drake had a good laughat Dad’s expense. He loves games.That’s why you’re still alive. Oh, andbecause he’s swollen to such gargantuandimensions he doesn’t get around much.He’s got plenty of servitors…and if one

of his agents drags you to the master’slair, you’ll be sorry.”

“Kosokian is involved,” Conradsaid. “He faked his death. He’smutating.”

“Took you long enough to add twoand two.”

“I caught on a while ago. Didn’tknow what I’d caught on to, though.”

“Kosokian’s deathbed act is just asnake slithering out of its skin. Happensevery few centuries after the first coupleof cycles. Uncle K is a monster. Yourpatron has been on the scene for an eonor three. He’s mortal enemies withDrake, by the way.”

“There’s a video of him and Draketaking a walk on the wild side together.

At the Cloister.” He swallowed bile atthe memory of the images he’dwitnessed. “Seemed like peas in a podwhile munching on kiddies.”

“They’ve got rules of engagement.Fuckers plot to destroy each other, butstill get together for tea and crumpets onoccasion. Lonely being a god, you see.Whole world is against you. Nobodyunderstands you except your nemeses. Ifigure there’s fifteen or twenty of thesedark lords scattered around the worldhatching their evil plans—three or fourothers are elsewhere in the solar systemhiding in moon lairs. There’s a reasonthe Apollo program avoided the darkside of the moon, is all I can say. Thereally old ones like Kosokian and Drake

hate each other like fire, but they don’tget it on directly too often. Nah, theyfight proxy wars. How’s it feel to be aproxy?”

“I don’t get it. Kosokian is using meas a proxy? Kosokian’s lieutenant hasbeen warning me off Drake.”

“DeKoon is a patsy. Renfield toKosokian’s Count. Except, being a dupe,he doesn’t have a clue regarding theidentity of his boss. Hapless bastardthinks he’s protecting Kosokian’s estate.Bet he thinks the master is really dead.Sad.”

“There’s more.”“Yeah, there is. The real reason

poor DeKoon doesn’t know shit, isUncle K likes to play mind games.

Drake, Kosokian, that ilk…they get arush from sadism, inflicting terror,instilling confusion and dread. Theydon’t give a rat’s ass about hierarchalefficiency. Hell, half the reason thesethings even establish organizations is sothey can torture and torment theirminions. Their own personal larder. Toeat, fuck, and cause suffering is theirreason to exist. The simple pleasures.”

“Where are you?”“Let’s just say this is a long

distance call and leave it there.”“I miss you.”“Yeah, me too. It’s nice hearing

your voice. But you gotta forget me.”“Not a chance, sis.”“This is goodbye. My situation is…

Let’s say it’s not pleasant. Raul tried tokill me and he may as well haveconsidering where I jumped to. Whenthat knife went in I didn’t stop to ponder,I reacted, made a leap across time andspace and like the ol’ bottle, went roundand round and stopped here, in thisplace, and I’m stuck. One way trip,folding the fabric of the universe to beata hasty retreat. See, going back in time isactually to travel forward, which is theway the river flows. There’s noswimming against the current. I don’twant you to get into a similar fix—andyou will, you keep fucking around withthe ineffable.”

“C’mon. You left the clues. Youwant to be found.”

“Gonna rescue me, Connie? You’rea sap. I love ya, man. Ain’t gonnahappen, though. Frankly, I never thoughtyou’d actually track me down. You’re aresourceful dude. You need to realize,I’m not the one who’s fed you the tidbitslately. I quit a while back, once Irealized you couldn’t save me…whatwould happen if you did. Raul’s had youon a hook for a while now. You’regetting played, fool. My former fuckbuddy has a bone to pick with ourfamily. He’s on the hunt for you.”

“Jeez, sis. What’s a guy to dothen?”

“Get on your horse and ride into thesunset. Avoid that fight in the desert. Theforces of evil ‘TM’ will be watching.

Go underground. Cash in whateveryou’ve got squirreled away and retire.Live like a king on that island. Forgetme. Forget Ezzy. Forget us all. This is anelevator ride to hell, bro.”

“I love you.” He didn’t know whatelse to say.

There was a long pause before shesaid, “One more thing. The house isdangerous. Don’t go there.”

“A trap?”“Yeah. Dark side of the moon. Lose

the girls. Do that soon.”“What girls?”“Don’t be an asshole, Connie.

Someone sent two of them, didn’t they?The brides of Dracula you fuckedtonight? In case you haven’t noticed,

you’ve attracted groupies like flieslately. Not to burst your bubble, but youain’t that cute. One of your enemies hasthrown these devil bitches at you formonths. They ain’t what they seem.They’re decoys sent to spy on you, drainyou, weaken you for the kill. You’regetting to be a beast, so Drake orKosokian sicced twins on your sorrycarcass. Don’t even dream you canhandle that kind of action if it gets rough.Another thing. My amigo Lorca isprobably lurking nearby. You see thatmotherfucker, start shooting, noquestions asked. Meanwhile, scram.”

“I’ll try,” Conrad said. “Sorry youand the boyfriend had a falling out.”

“Remember, time is a ring. Don’t

go near the house. But, if you do, watchyour ass.” She hung up.

“Who was that, baby?” the blondesaid, nails digging into his arm. Her eyeswere large in the dimness. She nuzzledhis shoulder and fastened her lips to hisflesh.

“Yeah, who was that,” the brunettesaid. She’d swiftly raised her head in themanner of a predator. Her eyes werealso very large. She dipped her chin andlicked his nipple.

“An old flame,” Conrad said. “Goto sleep, girls.” He concentrated,visualized waves of lethargy radiatingfrom his core. The women yawned,relaxed, and soon were snoring. Hewatched the light from the streetlamp

thicken to red, and after a while, heextricated himself and dressed and leftthe women muttering and snarling intheir sleep.

III

The two-lane highway woundthrough forested mountains. As the sunrose, he turned onto an unmarked dirtlane and eased along the overgrowntrack for nearly a mile before entering afield. The Navarro family home lay near

the center of the clearing, rebuilt shortlyafter the tragic fire during Conrad’steenage years—a two story woodenstructure with a peaked slate roof, wallspainted in shades of green and brown.The government had picked up the tab,sent in an army of contractors andlaborers, and the whole building wasrestored in weeks like the phoenix fromits own ashes. Conrad had watched thismiracle of industry and finally graspedthat his father was involved in someheavy duty shit for the powers that be totake such an interest in his welfare.Imogene rolled her eyes at this epiphany.She’d said, Late to the party as usual,you big, dumb bastard, and smiledsweetly and punched him in the arm.

He parked near the front porch. Hefastened a cestus with two inch spikes tohis left hand and forearm, strappedknives to his belt and ankle. The yardwas overrun with weeds and grass.Moss clumped on the roof, vinesdripped from the eaves. He smoked acigarette and watched the golden lightspear through the surrounding trees andripple across the grassy field. Bycontrast, the dark windows of the housewere cavities, pits.

The spare key was hidden in acoffee can covered in leaves at the endof the porch. He unlocked the front doorand stepped into the foyer and smelledits closeness, the rich, mildewed dampthat pervaded such long-neglected

habitations. Lamps glowed in alcoveshere and there, but the house wasotherwise steeped in dusty gloom.Conrad bowed, inhaled, andconcentrated. As if his consciousnessdilated and partially detached from hisbody to float along the hallways of thebuilding, he gradually became aware ofevery bolted door and sealed nook,every minute vibration of scuttlingtermites and flaking plaster. Miceforaged in the cellar, the hundred-foldcabinets and closets. Spiders hung likeopals in their webs. Mold bloomed onthe sills. But this was the sum of organiclife present. None of the HonorableOpposition lay in wait for him. He wasutterly alone.

Conrad had left home for good onhis eighteenth birthday when he walkeddown the drive to catch the bus for theairport and his decade-long sojourn inCrete. Glancing at the austere furnishingsreminded him that they’d lost the last oftheir familial history on the day he’dfought Dad and the house burned. Thepaintings and knick-knacks, the photoalbums, Mom’s library…all reduced toash and scattered across the field andamong the fir trees. This place was arotting shell. He knew instantly thatImogene had never come back either; theonly familiar human scent belonged toDad and that too was stale as thecollecting dust.

The cellar door and surrounding

surfaces were forged of steel beneath thewalnut paneling. The lock was securedby an electronic keypad. Dad hadn’tshared the combination and it wasdoubtful with his eidetic memory thathe’d bothered to write it anywhere.Conrad briefly pondered smashing thedoor with a sledgehammer from thegarage, or trudging out to a miningsupply company for dynamite. Bothoptions were problematic for a varietyof reasons owing primarily to lazinessand his abiding disquiet about stayingtoo long in the house. Without focusing,he typed a random sequence of numbersand the door slid open. The numberswere simply there and he hadunderstood without conscious thought

that they would be. Cool air rushedforth. He flipped a wall switch and aseries of naked bulbs caged in ironlattice illuminated intervals of thestairwell that curved downward intogloom.

Dad’s experiments were congealedin beakers and tubes and Petri plates. Inhis day, he’d spent as much timecrouched watching ants moil in the dirtas he did peering into a microscope or ata computer monitor. There were as manytracts and tomes of philosophy andfolklore upon his library shelves astreatises of medicine and chemistry. Theelder Navarro had believed, as did theancient philosophers of the Far East, thatthe cosmos ultimately revealed itself as

a repeating pattern, an infinitelyreplicated superstructure contained andembodied in a galaxy, down to a drop ofblood.

Poking through the maze of rusty,dusty equipment, overseen by murkyphotographs of Tesla and Einstein,Conrad missed the crazy, ruthless olddrunk. Unfortunately, this abandoned labwas no Fortress of Solitude and Dadhadn’t been any kind of Jor-El. Therewouldn’t be a journal or a stash of secretrecordings to lay his innermost thoughtsbare, to offer a pearl of wisdom or anoblique symbol of rapprochement. Therewas only dust and rust and badmemories.

The center of the laboratory was

empty space amid four support beams.The rest of the room was cluttered. Thisinefficiency was inexplicable. Hestudied the concrete, its patina of waterstains, its chips, cracks, and concentricgrooves that funneled into a shallowbasin. He ran his fingers over eachsupport beam, searching for the hiddenswitch, the concealed button, his inquiryguided by intuition and cynicism. Theinward face of each beam bore aninscription that together formed a quartetof glyphs obscured by a thin coat ofplaster. The beams were of basalt. Dadhad had them trucked in special. Conraddidn’t recall any carvings, but obviouslyDad got funky after the kids left the nest.The stains on the floor weren’t from

water, either. Too dark, too ominous. Hehung his head. “Oh, Pop. What have youdone?”

Spilled a few drops of claret topropitiate the black gods, what else?the ghost of Imogene whispered. There’sa vicious dagger stashed in a drawersomewhere. Look at those Tesla coils,those tuning forks. He was trying toopen a door in space and time withvibration and sympathetic magic.Whatever came through would befamished, natch…

So Dad really had been a magician,a sorcerer, corrupted by his associationwith Kosokian and Drake and the GreatDark they represented. Imogene wasright about everything. He sent me and

Genie away. Maybe he possessed ashred of decency. Maybe he wasn’t allbad. He wanted to believe that, but healso recalled Uncle K’s obliquecomments regarding Dad using Genie asa weapon and holding his remaining sonin reserve. That didn’t strike Conrad asparticularly wholesome. No, mypreservation is just another kink in aplot only Machiavelli could trulyappreciate.

“Ah, we meet again.” Dr. RaulLorca detached from the inky backdropand stood directly beneath one of thelamps so his emaciated figure wasstriped in shadow. He wore a handsomesuit and his hair was dark and soft uponhis collar. Conrad estimated Lorca to be

of early middle age, despite his sallowflesh, its tightness across his jaw andcheeks. Elegant and a refined in avaguely aristocratic fashion, it wasn’tdifficult to see why cynical Imogenemight’ve been smitten. She’d alwaysfallen for the worldly types; at least for aride or two. Lorca glanced at the postsand said, “My, my. A summoning circle.Dr. Navarro was conjuring demons withthe blood of babes, eh? Quaint.”

“Hi, Raul. Last time we talked youwere fucking my sister. I got a feeling Iliked you better then.”

“You’re too jealous of Imogene totruly like any man. On the subject ofprocreation: I to understand you were atest tube baby.”

“Somatic cell nuclear transfercloning,” Conrad said. He slid a foot tohis right, putting a table of beakersbetween himself and Lorca. “I wascarried to term by Mom. That makes mea real boy, huh?”

“Who donated the material?”“Kinda personal.”Lorca smiled apologetically. “I

confess, the questions are rhetorical.Imogene told me everything, although Idon’t think she knows the half of it. Yourfather combined his material with that ofat least two distinct species. EarlyHomo sapiens, possibly Cro-Magnon,and something much older, a DNA strandonly a select few have encountered. Amissing link, unless I miss my guess. The

fascinating question would be, wheredid he acquire these cells. As thatpsychopath Kosokian is your patron,your father was also nurtured by apowerful man. Granted, they becameenemies once your father ultimatelygrasped the enormity of the being he’dallied himself, its arch plan to enslavethe planet. Meanwhile, Dr. Drakeprocured the cells because he had atremendous interest in witnessing thebirth of a superman, knowing full wellyou’d become his servant one day.Unlike mere mortals such as Imogeneand myself, you were unique prior toBlooming. The serum simply sped theprocess along. Now…”

“I’m not a flower.”

“Yes, you are. A poisonous night-blooming flower. How else could I havewinded your scent and flown here togreet you? You snatched every clue Ilaid down for you, my brutish sleuth.You would Bloom or die. Simple.”

“Did Drake send you to fetch me?”Conrad said.

“Heavens, no. He’d either make mea thrall or devour my essential salts if Iwere foolish enough to come near him.Your sister wished to kill him, foolishgirl, while I simply desired the secret toimmortality. I’m my own man with myown designs and I’ve hunted you formany moons, as the indigenous types say.It was very difficult to bide my time, towait for you to fruit.” Lorca tilted his

head and smiled shrewdly. “I wonder—what on Earth did you give Souza inexchange for your shot? Imogene and Ibartered a veritable pound of flesh toreceive ours. The Brazilian is whollyDrake’s creature. More than human, as itwere. Drake inducted him to theimmortality club ages ago, made him achief servant. As I said: I shudder tospeculate what Souza extracted from youin return for his precious elixir. Come,won’t you level with an old familyfriend?”

“You didn’t like Dad.”“Lucky guess.”“Nah. I see those rows of genteel

shark teeth and think, this guy is apredator. He only opens his mouth for

one reason.”Lorca clapped in merriment. He

shook his finger at Conrad with mockrue. “I confess. I hated him. Dr. Navarrokilled me when my name was EnriqueValdez. He thought he killed me, Ishould say. I was revived and given anew identity, a new face. Those bastardsat the CIA actually slotted me right backinto your father’s department. This wasabout five years after I recovered fromsurgery and learned to walk and talkagain, learned to answer to Raul insteadof Enrique. The cretin never caught on.Every day I thought of murdering him, ohyes. I longed to repay him for ruining myface. He’d burned it with acid. Suchexquisite agony. The plastic surgeons

did a credible job, but it always felt likea mask. Nearly drove me insane.

“Although, I’ve since reverted tomy former countenance, if not my birthname. This is how I would’ve appearedif that lumbering ox hadn’t mutilated me.To Bloom is to gain ever increasingcontrol over one’s molecular structure,one’s electromagnetic field, to reshapeone’s form to fit one’s needs. It feelsgood to be myself again, if onlysuperficially. It feels good to beimmortal.”

“Shit, Genie was on the moneyabout Dad murdering some poorschmuck, huh? So, you’re the poorschmuck. That’s an interesting tale. Bythe way, I’d rather you didn’t call my

dad a cretin. Speak no ill of the dead andwhatnot.” Conrad rolled his neck andshoulders, willed his muscles to loosen.He tried sending a cone of sleep at theolder man, but the cloud dissipated andhe couldn’t seem to concentrate ongenerating another. He said, “How comemy dad tried to kill you anyway?”

“A long, complicated, and boringstory. I stole a bit of research andfunneled it to my government. Nothing todo with the Drake Technique, so-called.We were designing a bio-weapon basedon small pox. He caught me red-handed.We struggled. I was no match for a giantlike your father. Not in those days. HowI would savor a chance to replay thatscene today… Years passed. Here we

stand. The father is dead, yet lives onthrough his son.”

“Imogene isn’t with you,” Conradsaid to gauge his reaction. He slidanother six inches toward the wall. “Itake it Pop doesn’t live through her.”

“We’ve parted ways. A lovers’quarrel, I’m afraid.”

“Let me guess. Since you didn’tjoin Drake or one of the other immortalsI can only assume you intend to formyour own powerbase. Man like youneeds an army if he’s going to stickaround. Sis wouldn’t have yoursuperbaby, would she?”

“These dark lords are ruthless andcunning,” Lorca said. “The only way forlesser lights such as myself and your

sister to survive their predation is toeither hide or band together. She wouldnot listen to reason.”

“She finally realized who youwere, I bet.”

“Yes, all was revealed after wecompleted the cycle. She means meharm. She is an angry and vengefulwoman. This animus must run in thefamily.”

“Where is the angry woman?”“Far away, I dearly hope.

Doubtless Drake has her in his clutches.She wouldn’t leave well enough alone.Forget her. I’m here for you, Conrad.You’ve accomplished much these pastfew weeks. Yet this a delicate juncture,despite any sensation of heightened

prowess, you are exceedinglyvulnerable. It wouldn’t do to have youwandering the countryside in youremergent state. Too dangerous.”

“I suppose you’re going to take meto the mountains, teach me the ways ofthe mystical arts.” Conrad gripped theedge of the table with his left hand.

Lorca drifted closer withoutmoving his feet. He stood in silhouetteand his form blurred and warped in thedimness, seemed to gather size anddensity—the impression of wings, anaura of a black halo. “Don’t you believeI want to help?”

“My old man did you wrong anddied before you got to even the score. Ialso think you’ve done something to my

sister. Not much chance of us beingfriends in either case.”

“Wrong,” Lorca said. His face hadbroadened, its bones thickened, the fleshgone waxen and hard. No longer quitehuman, but a creature feigning humanity.“You and I will be much more thanfriends.” Even as he spoke heaccelerated toward Conrad, handshooked into claws, lower bodyimpossibly motionless. He’d gainednearly a foot in height. His mouth gapedblack as an eel’s. He was the image of adiabolical being sprung from the page ofsome book of demonology.

Conrad flipped the table in thesame instant Lorca moved, and Lorcabatted it aside as if two hundred pounds

of metal was actually a Styrofoam prop.Conrad dove and rolled and slung thethrowing knife he kept in his jacket.Lorca flinched and the blade skipped offthe bone just above his temple. A pearlof blood formed and Lorca kept coming.He grinned. His teeth were jagged andmany.

“Is that why you hung around withGenie? Revenge?” Conrad bounced tohis feet and managed to get another tablebetween them. Lorca had eased back,coiled into himself for another strike,and was in no hurry. Obviously if theman couldn’t torment Dad, the onlysurviving male heir would have to do.

Lorca stopped. He pressed histhumb to the blood, studied it. “At first,

yes. Once I realized what she’dstumbled onto, what your father andDrake had accomplished, I delayed myplans and assisted her in gathering thepuzzle pieces. I grew quite fond of her,in fact. A shame. Although, it stillamuses me that she didn’t catch on untilthe end. Like father, like daughter. Shereally had no idea who I am. Silly littlegirl playing with guns.”

While Lorca was talking, Conradgathered his reserves and tried again—he visualized the man bursting intoflames. It was a strange sensation, apsychic weight in the center of his brain,the mental analogue to pushing rope.Pins and needles stabbed the length ofhis spine and his vision blurred. He

pushed harder.“What are you doing, Conrad?”

Lorca said. The wound in his headwidened and blood poured in a rivulet,dripped steadily from his collar andsplashed on the concrete floor. “Youcan’t win. This is a rigged game.”

“Genie seemed confident I couldkill you.” Conrad had gone through thesame fire as Imogene and Lorca. Theman obviously possessed the ability toshift shape, to manipulate his mass andstrength. Whatever he could do, Conradcould do, if only he knew the trick.

Lorca said, “Nonsense. Imogeneis…it’s not possible that you’ve spokenwith her.” The man leaped again mid-sentence. Conrad reversed tactics; he

pulled the table toward himself and usedit as a shield. Lorca raked it and steelshredded like tissue paper. Conradplucked a ten inch sliver of shorn metaland stabbed Lorca’s neck, rammed itclean through the opposite side. AsLorca reeled, hand clapped to hisleaking jugular, Conrad punched him inthe ribs with the spiked cestus, then thekidney, driving into the blow with everyounce of force he possessed, whichwould’ve sufficed to shatter acinderblock, to rip a hole through a wetsandbag, or rupture the internal organs ofa normal man. Lorca uttered a gurglingcry, and back-handed Conrad across thecellar and into the wall. Conrad curled,knees to chin, the air slammed from his

lungs. He wished he’d brought a gun,although that hadn’t helped Imogene, hadit? His thoughts were unclear; the roomdimmed to infrared.

The scientist grasped the steelsliver and pulled it from his neck. Bloodspurted and foamed. His face and chestwere thick with blood. He wasunrecognizable. His right eye shimmeredand glared from the gore; it burned like acoal. “Allow me to return this,” he said,and approached Conrad and caught hisankle and lifted him as a doctor hoists anewborn. Conrad scrabbled at the floor,trying to find purchase. He had a momentto consider whether anyone had evergripped him with such animal strength,then the scientist stabbed him in the thigh

with the shard and twisted.Conrad didn’t scream, although he

wished to. Imogene whispered, Jesus,bro. Didn’t you get your ass kicked thelast time you came down here? Hebeheld her then: nude and lithe, pinionednear the apex of an obsidian pyramidthat jutted from a mountain of skulls. Herarms were chained above her head andshe shone brilliant as a diamond prism.Light beamed from her flesh—white,then red; a nova that wiped the imagefrom his mind, but left an imprint on hisretina.

He laughed.Lorca dropped him in a heap and

frowned. “What is amusing?”“See, in a life or death struggle,”

Conrad said, pausing to cough a bit ofblood, “when your enemy starts laughingyou don’t stop to ask why, you finish himbefore it’s too late. Too late, sucker.”

Lorca kicked Conrad in the ribshard enough to make him writhe. Thesecond kick was less forceful, and thethird thudded from Conrad’s sidewithout effect. Lorca stepped backquickly. Nubs of horns bulged from hisskull and his breathing whistled andkeened high upon the register.

Conrad had gone about this allwrong, projecting malice at an enemywho was prepared for such a gambit.Perhaps inward was the answer. Heimagined himself whole and strong,imagined his flesh as iron, his muscles

as cables, his heart a furnace. Heimagined a keyhole opening. Streams ofdark and light flooded into his mind likeoil. He stood. Lorca swiped at his collarand Conrad slapped his hand away andgrinned. His teeth felt large and sharp.His was the physical strength of a greatape. Three great apes. The joy of hisrage was more powerful still.

“Damnation,” Lorca said. “Youcatch on fast —”

Conrad grabbed his throat andsqueezed, felt the windpipe go, then thespine, and squeezed hard enough to snapa railroad spike, reduce a stone togravel. With a renewed burst of vigor,Lorca jerked free and attempted to run.Conrad leaped and drove his knee into

the small of the man’s back whileyanking his chin up and to the rear untilseveral large bones snapped. Lorca’smuscles convulsed. Then his tongueprotruded and he was dead. To be safe,Conrad fetched an axe and chopped thecorpse into several pieces. He loadedthe remains into a barrel, doused themwith kerosene and struck a match.

He rested on the front porch andwatched the greasy smoke coil into thesky. His sense of triumph was temperedby the regret he hadn’t had theopportunity to torture Imogene’swhereabouts from Lorca. While herested, the steel splinter spontaneouslyworked itself from his leg and clinkedonto the ground where it smoldered and

bubbled. A few minutes later the woundsealed itself to an angry red puckersurrounded by deep tissue bruises whichrapidly faded.

There wasn’t even a scar.

IV

Conrad stayed in Vegas for theweek preceding his showdown withdestiny. DeKoon reserved a penthousesuite in the glitziest casino, providedhim with a limo, guards, call girls, and

an unlimited tab at the front desk.Conrad banished the girls. The gorillasin the mirror shades kept a respectfuldistance. A fearful distance. He sat lotusbefore a wall of glass that overlookedthe desert. He stared into the distanceand, when night fell, into the blacknessbetween stars. That week every sunsetwas red, every night moonless.

On Saturday night DeKooncollected him and whisked him off towitness the heavyweight mixed martialarts champion of the world defend hisbelt in the trademark steel cage. Thechampion went down in the fifth roundand as the fighter’s head bounced on thecanvas, a few drops of blood splatteredthe breast of DeKoon’s impeccable

white suit. The brunette on his armsquealed and dabbed it, then licked herfinger as she smiled coquettishly andcrossed her long legs. Conrad glanced atthe crowd packed around the harshlyilluminated stage: a sea of shadowsfractured by camera flashes, its denizenshunched forward like carrion birds.

“Two of the most famous warriorson the planet,” DeKoon said, hand onConrad’s shoulder, “and you could tearthem apart, rip the stuffing from them.Likely at the same time. Couldn’t you?I’d wager anyone in our top fifteen couldtake these guys. What a shame theluminaries of the Pageant must toil inobscurity.”

“The wheel goes round. I’m sure

the taste for real blood will hit themainstream again one fine day.”

DeKoon glanced at the crimson-lipped brunette. “I think you’re on tosomething, my friend.” He leaned overand kissed her, savagely, possessively,and she grasped his hair and pulled himin. A pair of beasts feeding upon oneanother.

Meanwhile, doctors rushed to tendthe fallen champion. The stage burnedbeneath a column of white light while allelse faded to black. Imogene appearedagain as she had at their house. Shefloated atop the column of light near thevault of the roof. She loomed, naked andglistening with blood and sweat, larger,by far, than life. Her wings beat slowly

and crackled with fire. Like thearchangel Michael, she carried a swordand its blade dripped flames thatscattered into sparks as they fell towardthe unheeding throngs below. She blewhim a kiss as her body brightened andflared and disintegrated into thedarkness.

Almost over, Connie. The brunettekept sucking DeKoon’s face. She winkedat Conrad. Her eye glowed with thereflection of the stage lights.

V

The cargo hold of the helicopterwas windowless and lighted by a redbulb in a plastic case. Conrad sat alonein the cavernous hold and listened to therotors churn. He had no idea whatcoordinates the pilot bore him toward,only that it would be a remote and deepdesert location where death and gloryawaited.

He slept and dreamed of beingtrapped inside a cave, of cowering inanimal terror while beyond the mouth ofthe cave twilight cloaked a primordiallandscape. A terrible presence impendedupon his hiding place. This bestialpresence hunched until its crown of

antlers scraped rock, and it chuckled andgrowled and reached for him, clutchedhim and drew him into the light. Hisflesh was shredded, his bones cracked,his blood poured down a ravening maw.

He awakened as the helicopterlanded.

Engineers and laborers had furtherexcavated a massive crater near the footof some low mountains, reinforced itwith granite pillars and entrenchedamphitheatre style bench seats, with allthe grandeur and scope of an ancientpyramid construction site.

Cold dusk had settled over the land.Floodlights glared from a ring ofconning towers. Film crews positionedthemselves atop strategic roosts along

the rim of the crater. Several hundredspectators had assembled betweengranite colonnades. The guests weregarish as peacocks in their collectiveattire. Men with automatic riflespatrolled the perimeter.

Conrad wondered, as he often didin the moments before a ludus of thissize and complexity, how many millionsof dollars had gone into thepreparations, the construction, thebribery of God only knew how manylaw enforcement agencies and militarypersonnel to steer clear, to divertattention and provide cover. Who werethese pampered and pompousspectators? Foreign royalty, Balkanfinanciers, sons and daughters of

Hollywood, of Washington D.C., thebored and bloodthirsty scions of Westernindustry, and fake celebrities? Theiridentities were a mystery, for theorganizers of the Pageant scrupulouslyenforced a policy of non contactbetween athletes and patrons, but thecrowd’s desire was plain; that desirecharged the air.

Adrenaline smoked in Conrad’snostrils, his lungs. He’d stripped nakedin the belly of the chopper and donnedhis harness of battle, the boots andplumed helm; armed himself with abrace of pila, the cestus, and a gladiusmeant for chopping men to small pieces.He needed little else.

Pageant attendants escorted him to

a staging area where he was consultedby a tight-lipped surgeon and a team ofassistants. Conrad was offered animpressive selection of pills andinjections—drugs to pump him up andinure him to pain, or drugs to sand downthe edge and keep him calm, dependingupon his strategy for the battle. Hedeclined and sent the medics packing.DeKoon waved from the curve of apillar a few yards away along thecrumbling lip of the crater, then leanedback into the shadows and Conrad wasalone. He regarded the stars whileannouncements crackled over speakers,introducing the main event of the ludus inseveral languages.

A youth, dressed in a toga and

wreathed in laurels, came to lead himdown the many steps into the pit. Theboy warned him to watch his step on thefinal landing and the sandy floor of thearena proper. There had been a numberof earlier matches, including anextremely messy battle royale betweentwo dozen convicts flown in fromvarious international prisons. Thecustodial crew could only do their best.

Oiled posts were driven into theground at irregular intervals, torchessocketed into the crowns. The resultantlight was smoky and dull and his shadowstretched long and grotesque across thesand. Horns winded, deep, primal tonesthat raised the hairs on his body andvibrated in the soles of his feet.

Silence fell as the horns died andthe announcements ceased and the crowdheld its breath in anticipation of carnage.

The Greek’s retainers awaited;elderly and vile twins, dressed in soiledloincloths. Conrad recognized them asUncle Kosokian’s creepy servants fromthe estate. One beckoned and draggedhis nails across a stone outcropping andstruck sparks. Conrad followed themaway from the expectant eyes of thecrowd, its burgeoning murmurs ofunease and discontent. The ancients ledhim into a cavern that reeked of spoiledblood and charred meat.

The Greek lolled upon a thronefashioned from a pile of animal hidesand armor and the shattered bones of

men. More torches hissed and sputteredfrom crevices in the walls. Smoke tingedthe air red as the heart of a stokedfurnace. “Good to see you,” UncleKosokian said. He had grown to theimmense proportions of the giants fromConrad’s nightmares; easily the height ofthree men standing upon one another’sshoulders. He wore nothing except for acrown of obsidian spikes and a necklaceof bloody skulls. Sweat poured from hiscockles and dewlaps. He suckedmarrow from a cracked femur and tossedit atop the growing pile. The ancientsscuttled to positions at the base of thethrone, where they hissed and madesigns of obeisance to their master.

Conrad’s knees quaked. His gladius

fell from his hand and clattered uponrock. He said, “My, what big teeth youhave, Uncle.”

Uncle Kosokian’s chucklereverberated ominously. “Like certainCaesars of yore, I can’t help but descendinto the arena for the occasional bit ofsport. I know, I know, it’s unfair,undignified and a trait often derided inthe illustrious. Regardless, nostalgia isundimmed by enlightenment. As amortal, I was quite expert in the dispatchof my fellow man. To be deprived of adirect hand in such gory spectacles is ahigh price for godliness.”

“What does this mean? Am I to beenslaved? Eaten?” Conrad could stillhear the children at the monastery

screaming, could see them scooped intothe slavering maws of monsters. Thisguise of Uncle Kosokian, albeit distortedto mythical dimensions, was yet ahumanoid mask of his true self. Its trueself was likely more accurate. Uncle Kwas a man by the thinnest definitiononly.

“I lied about many things, Conrad.My fondness for you is nonethelessgenuine. Tonight is a celebration. Youstand at the threshold of transcendence.You are of the primal stock, my son. Themissing link between man and animal,your cells scraped from the soft spongeat the bottom of a pond when all theEarth was muck and amoeba. Youpossess a purity that none alive can

match—not me, nor Drake, nor yoursweet, lost sister. In a few eons, whenyour strength has grown, you will rise togobble up your enemies and takedominion of this ball of dirt.”

“And Imogene?”“Stubborn, stubborn boy. Assuming

by some miracle she wasn’t captured byDrake as a thrall, or murdered by thatwretch, Lorca, then by all means, takeher as your queen, your slave, yourwhatever. None of my concern.”

Conrad half-listened to UncleKosokian, mesmerized instead by asudden transformation of the ancientsfrom wizened men to a pair of the taut,voluptuous women he’d known in adozen incarnations over the past months.

Rhonda smiled with lascivious glee andWanda tipped him a wink and thrust herhip at an exaggerated angle. Smokeshifted a veil across these apparitionsand as it drifted, they were scabroustrolls once more, snickering at hisexpression of horror.

“My apologies,” Uncle Kosokiansaid. “Think of them as hobbles…impingements upon your running amok,drunk with power. Pleasure instead ofimprisonment. My servitors meant youno harm. Quite the contrary—theydisposed of those two baboons who’dbeen extorting you. Marsh and Singhwere into wet work. Sooner or later oneof them would’ve decided to cut yourthroat in case their superiors decided to

investigate. I couldn’t permit such a fateto befall you.”

“No,” Conrad said, and a multituderesided in that utterance. He gritted histeeth and composed himself. “And herewe are. The guests will be pissed whenthere’s no fight. We’ll be ruined.” Hesmiled bitterly at this last.

“The guests? Provender, my boy.Grist for the mill. In a moment I shallmake a minor adjustment to you that youmight transmogrify into an astonishingand horrific creature of legend and thenwe’ll shamble forth and devour themwhere they recline. Kicking andscreaming.”

“That sounds absolutely delightful.”The voice was soft and urbane and

Conrad recognized it as Dr. Drake’s.Eyes burned molten red in the darkestcorner of the cave at the heart of acolumn of shifting darkness. The columngathered height and mass, billowingupward and outward with silent menace.

“Damn you Ambrose,” UncleKosokian said, lurching to his feet,which was a frightening sight. “This ismy demesne. You are trespassing inviolation of our covenant. Begone!”

Dr. Drake said, “I am aware of ourarrangement, Cyrano. Alas, I amcompelled by reasons of appetite andparanoia to abscond with the young man.Surely, in your wisdom, you knew I’dcome for him tonight.”

“I rather hoped you’d show a bit of

restraint. There will be repercussions.You’re ruining the lad’s debut.”

Dr. Drake emerged from his roilingcloud of blackness. He was as Conradremembered: frail and bald with a hooknose, his lips perpetually curved in asardonic smile. He dressed simply in adark shirt and slacks. “Greetings,Conrad. It’s been positively ages. How’syour sister, eh? Hold tight and we’ll beoff for a conversation of cabbages andkings, my little oyster.” To UncleKosokian he said, “Hand him over,Cyrano. All is not lost; you can still eatthe folk awaiting their bread andcircuses.”

“Get behind me, Satan.”“We must destroy him. I’ve never

witnessed such acceleration, such rawpotentiality. Had I suspected… Let’s sayI’d have taken measures. Call it a failedexperiment, hubris. If we hesitate, he’llbecome too strong. We must act.”

“But I am. The blood and bones offive hundred sheep will be his initiationunto godhead. The boy will make a fineally to my cause against you, old one.”

“The servant will become themaster,” Drake said.

“Admittedly I fear you in your fullaspect,” Uncle Kosokian said. Hecracked his knuckles and rolled hisshoulders as a prizefighter preparing forthe blows to come. “However, you’veoverreached by appearing within mysphere. I say again, begone!”

“Don’t be a fool. I am sufficientlymanifested to annihilate you and takewhat I wish.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either way,it’ll be bloody.”

“Do you promise?”Galvanized by a nod from

Kosokian, the ancients shrilled in unisonlike angry vultures and hopped towardthe doctor, claws extended. Drake caughteach man by the neck, midair. Hesmashed their heads together in a showerof pulp and cast the limp bodies againstthe cavern wall with such force theirlimbs detached and flipped end over endinto the gloom. He wagged his finger atUncle Kosokian and clucked his tongue.

Conrad stared with newly

sharpened senses at the doctor, a kind ofX-ray vision that bored through Drake’sfaçade. Drake’s flesh and bonesflickered and rippled and Conrad hadthe sense of enormous fingers insertedinto a puppet. Whatever plucked thestrings existed partially upon anotherplane and across an improbable gulf; anentity that radiated malignant hunger andrage of scarcely conceivable scale.

“Run, Conrad. And remember thelittle people on the day of your return.”Uncle Kosokian stooped and brought afist the size of a wrecking ball downonto Drake’s head with the evidentpurpose of driving the doctor into theground as a mallet pounding a stake. Theblow glanced aside without effect.

Drake laughed and a thundercloudcoalesced and swiftly descended to coilaround the antagonists. Strokes of blueand yellow lightning licked forth andscorched rock, blasted sections of thefloor into gravel. All of the torchessnuffed at once and the cavern was castinto darkness.

Conrad took the opportunity to flee,his flight guided by the intermittentflashes of lightning. The earth shook andgroaned and cracks opened in the groundand raced along the walls and thick,choking dust billowed forth. The cursesand cries of the combatants rose to atumult and became the death cries ofmighty beasts, the roaring of calvingglaciers, of collapsing mountains. He

caught his heel on a stone and pitchedheadlong into a chasm of hot, whistlingwind and blackness edged in dull redfire—

—and found himself kneeling in thecourtyard of his Vegas hotel. Only, notprecisely his hotel and not the Vegas heknew, not by a long shot.

The building loomed dark andsilent, a mausoleum beneath theglittering desert sky. The entire city laymotionless, silent and sepulchral. Abreeze rustled a flag on a pole. The starswere not right. Brooding emptinesscrushed down with the weight of theuniverse itself. Conrad’s face was wetand he realized he bled from his eyesand mouth and nose. His blood mixed

with flakes of ash and rust, and it tastedof antiquity and ruin. The moon slowlypierced the horizon and hung there, theblazing ivory tooth of a cannibal godtaking a bite of the world.

His enemies would follow oncethey finished squabbling. He had to keeprunning lest Drake find and kill him. Theproblem was, he doubted there was anyplace on the planet to hide. It’s a one-way trip, Imogene had said. Forward tothe end, beyond the end to the beginning.There would be no return. Actually,there’d be a return, it would just requireseveral hundred million years ofevolution.

It all felt so malleable, the moon,the stars, the night itself. He covered his

face and concentrated, and discoveredthat there was nothing a bit dramaticabout folding space and time. Heallowed his mind to fill with theblackness of the illimitable void thatsurrounds the specks of dust thatcomprise the cosmos, and from this heartof darkness he summoned an image ofhis sister, pure and crystalline. Herimage persisted for a moment before itwavered and dispersed. His visiondilated and contracted simultaneously,impossibly. In Imogene’s stead,something awesome and terribleshuddered, a stirring from the cosmicdepths. He glimpsed a reflection of hisown form, grown monstrous, elongated,distorted, all encompassing. A mouth,

his mouth, yawned like a thousand blackholes, eating planets, constellations,light, its own tail.

Dread overwhelmed him as theearth gave way and he was suctionedinto the cathode of the universe, reducedto his constituent particles and absorbed.

VI

Conrad crawled from the soup andcurled into a fetal position, gasping andwet with slime. He eventually opened

his eyes to a lambent sun directlyoverhead. His unreasoning terrorreceded by degrees, although it lurkedand his heart beat too fast. He lay supineon a mossy atoll surrounded by shallow,blood-warm seas. Steam drifted from thewater. The sky was apple green.

“Behold the empire of trilobites,”Imogene said. She gleamed. “Hard tobelieve there’ll be little hominidsskulking in yonder caves an eon or twodown the road. Then flint and fire anddogs and rats. The adoption of gods anddevils. Then, revenge, baby. Fiery, goryrevenge. It’ll be great.”

“Something to look forward to,”Conrad said. He shivered violently,taken with a sudden chill. Contemplation

of deep geological time wasn’t doingmuch to curb the fear in his heart, thewooziness of his brain. Nor did hissister’s dark smile lend him comfort. “Idon’t know why I’m thinking of fryingpans and fires…”

Imogene beamed her sinister smileas she reached up and casually graspedthe sun and turned it counterclockwise asif unscrewing a light bulb.

A night without stars rolled overthe world.

In the darkness, Imogene laid hercool hand upon his brow and her nailsonly dug in a little. She said, “Shall webegin?”

Table of ContentsChapter One

IIIIIIInterlude

Chapter TwoIIIIIIIVVVIVIIVIIIIX

XXIInterlude

Chapter ThreeIIIIIIIVVInterlude

Chapter FourIIIIIIIVVVI