[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Then she released him,grabbed her bag from the back of her chair, and ran from the room.Slowly Whistler rose from his knees, the only sound the thump of January'sfootsteps overhead, followed by the banging of the double doors as she fledthe church.He turned to the circle and shrugged like a borscht-belt comic."Perhaps she doesn't care for roller coasters?"Whistler andLourdes offered to straighten up the room after the meeting.Their intention, of course, was to be the last couple to leave the church, sothat on their way out they would have time to plant their little bomb on thelectern of the pulpit unobserved.It went off without a hitch; they closed the double doors behind them andhurried out to the Jaguar, which was parked in the handicapped space with thechauffeur seemingly asleep behind the wheel, cap pulled down low.Whistleropened the back door forLourdes , then followed her in."You're supposed tocome around and open the door," he remarked to the back of the driver's head."I wish you'd pay a little more attention to duty."The chauffeur removed her cap and handed it back to Whistler by way of reply."Here," said Selene."Wish in the front half of this, then shit in the backPage 86 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlhalf and see which side fills up faster." The Jag pulled away from the curb."Did you drop off the book?""Where it's bound to be found, no later than ten o'clock tomorrow morning,"said Whistler, pulling the chauffeur's cap over his yellow hair for a goof,cocking it at a jaunty angle."And my list?""Got it right here.Names, addresses, and weak spots."Lourdes produced asmall green spiral notebook from her purse and handed it up to Selene."You don't have to start working on this until after we get back, you know.Shouldn't be more than a few weeks," Whistler reminded her."I don'thaveto work on it at all," Selene reminded him in turn."But I wantto.I cast the runes last night, and got a new twist on the results I've beengetting for a week." They turned right onCentral Avenue , heading for thefreeway."TheOakland airport, you said?"In the mirror, she saw Whistler nod."Oaklandit is.Now, back to the runes.What I kept coming up with wasbeginnings and endings, birth and death.Pretty common for this time of theyear, what with the Yule solstice and all.The numbers were a little weird,though.I ran them a few times, and they kept coming up two and one twobirths, one death; two births, one death."But then when I threw the bones again last night, they came up reversed.Notclean beginnings and endings, but cycles.And the numbers were five and five."Whistler nodded."As I recall, it's been five years since Nick attacked you.""Come the Yule, five years exactly.I think what the bones were telling me isthat one five-year cycle has to end before the next can begin.""Sounds reasonable to me," said Whistler."Did the runes also happen to giveyou any hints as to how to go about it?""Not the runes.But I cast the Ching this morning twice.Both times theyarrows came up Basic Principles." This time she caughtLourdes 's eye in therearview mirror."Remember what I told you was one of the foundation stones ofWicca, dearie?"Lourdespiped up again."Do what thou wilt!"Selene shook her head, amused."Why is it that all you vampires only rememberhalf of it? 'An it harm no one, dowhat thou wilt.' But there's one more basicprinciple to Wicca, and that's from Heraclitus of Ephesus.'The way Up and theway Down are One and the Same,' he said, about twenty-five hundred years ago.""Which means?""A whole lot of things.In general, it means that when you're born into life,you're dying from death, and when you die from life, you're born into death.But you can apply it in an infinite number of ways.In this case, it's anotherway of saying that if you want to know how to tear down an edifice, you mustlook first to see how it was constructed, then reverse the process."Selene waved the green notebook in the air."Your little edifice wasPage 87 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlconstructed one brick at a time, and that's exactly how we'll demolish it.Onebrick at a time."FOURBetty finished working on her sermon a little after midnight, then made therounds, mostly for the enjoyment of seeing the blinking red and green lightsof the new security system, but also to make sure that the building was empty.She didn't want anyone listening when she stepped up to the pulpit to time hersermon.That was the only way she'd ever been able to do it accurately: aloud,at the pulpit.But when she reached the lectern, she saw that someone had left a presentthere for her a fat paperback with a glossy black cover, curling at thecorners, embossed with stylized blood drops vivid, red, raised.The letters of the title,The City of Blood, were also raised, but in silver,as was the author's name, Nicolas San Georgiou.The index cards for Betty's sermon fluttered to the floor.With fingers gonesuddenly numb so had the tip of her nose, for some reason she opened the bookto the dog-eared title page.It had been inscribed by the author in a carelesshand:To Jamey and Selene:Thanks for teaching me about the real thing!Every Inch Of Mah Love,Nick.The numbness passed; she turned the book over in her hand."You son of abitch," she said to the picture of the author smiling up at her from the backcover."You lying son of a bitch." Then she remembered, and both the fear andthe anger were supplanted by the same sad sudden understanding that must havewashed over that bereaved mother in "The Monkey's Paw," hearing the thing thathad once been her child dragging itself with agonizing slowness toward herdoor.Only in Betty's case it had to be true; it was too awful and too ironic andtoo perfect an answer to her prayer not to be true the child had just takenroot in her belly, and the father appeared to be a vampire.Then Betty remembered a fragment of another story a Sufi tale about a littlegirl who told her mother she was afraid to cross the graveyard on her way homefrom school, lest she encounter the bogeyman."If you do see a bogeyman," hadbeen the mother's advice, "run straight at him, because he's just as scared ofyou as you are of him."But it was not until after she'd looked up Nick's address in the phone book,coaxed one more start out of her '77 Olds 88 (it took the Marin Street hill insecond, with all eight cylinders growling and the tappets clacking like atroupe of demented flamenco dancers), located the house on Grizzly Peak withPage 88 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlthe red and black lacquer Feng Shui dragons on the mailbox, parked theexhausted Olds at the bottom of the steep driveway, and trudged up thelantern-lit flagstone walk that climbed steeply to the front door, that Bettyremembered the punch line to the Sufi story."Mommy," the little girl had replied."What if the bogeyman's mommy told himthe same thing?"Nick hadn't been sleeping he'd been up in the office working on his FourthStep but he was in his pajamas when he answered the bell, with his Deetroitsecurity system (a little Saturday-night special guaranteed not to blow up inyour hand three times out of four) behind his back
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
