So she and Jamais cling together, saving the little strength they have left. Erasmus sits cross-legged, rocking back and forth beside them. She tries to give him a hopeful smile, but her lips don"t want to turn and he"s not looking anyway. Two apes who survived the brief but horrible battle hunch over him, their guns pointed at his head.
Guy has been taken away somewhere. Only it"s like he"s not Guy the most special man in the universe any more. He was just a story. She felt it when he took the diamonds from her pocket, when his icy skin touched hers. Deep down she knows for sure now he"s D"Amantine, the thief in France who led her to Sabbath so many years ago.
And the old lady that Chloe only glimpsed has gone too.
"Jamais," she whispers in his furry ear. "I think Sabbath will want to leave soon."
Jamais does not stir. She sighs. She knows what Sabbath wants. She feels for the chain round her neck, but it"s gone, snapped in the struggle to get the dead man from her body and fallen somewhere. She fights back the tears. Maybe someone has found it and picked it up, just as Jamais picked up one of the stones that fell from Sabbath"s pocket in France, in 1830.
Sabbath wants her diamonds.
She has more than two thousand of them. One for every person she has saved, and by the same token, one to remember each soul who has slipped away from this alien world, forced to search for s.p.a.ce in a heaven that wasn"t their own. By thinking hard, by gazing into the perfect depths of their signifying stone, Chloe has always believed she can help guide them through the uncertain skies to the shadowlands of Asphodel, where they will forget their pain and dwell forever as peaceful shades.
She knows now her own time will soon be pa.s.sing.
Sabbath appears, crouches in front of them. His large frame blocks out all else. He talks to her, not Erasmus. Erasmus is a better sulker than she is.
"Are you comfortable, elemental child?" he says, his pale eyes probing hers, the harsh lights above shining off his high forehead.
"I feel dead," she mutters sourly.
"You should be," Sabbath a.s.sures her. "Your kind have had their time, and it is now long since pa.s.sed. New champions have been selected for the a.s.sured safety of the cosmos."
"The cosmos is very large," says Chloe sullenly. "Are you sure?"
"Very large, yes. But not infinite and thus manageable, if one starts the job early enough."
Chloe turns away. She"s bored by him.
"You"ll take us to your ship," he says. "That is where you keep the diamonds?"
She says nothing.
"Please don"t lie." He gestures benignly at Erasmus. "Or I"ll kill your guardian."
She flinches, then nods. "That"s where we keep them."
Sabbath straightens up, towers over her. "Kalic.u.m," he says simply.
Suddenly Kalic.u.m is there beside him, a skinny white streak of nastiness. He pulls from his pocket a small black box, and taps his finger against the casing.
Chloe gasps as the net starts to contract, drawing Jamais"s soft bulk closer towards her. The twinkling lights in the links dim a little as the hot metal presses into her flesh. Jamais wakes blearily and starts to whimper, as Sabbath"s thick fingers reach through the net searching out her own. He squeezes her fingertips, but with the net tight around her she feels only a pressure. And she hears Kalic.u.m"s soft, high giggle overhead.
"Take us there now," Sabbath instructs her, and his manner, like his grip, is soft. Chloe does not trust it.
Erasmus turns to her at last, tears in his eyes, and she cannot bear to see them so she lets Jamais take them all away.
Stacy had asked a dozen total strangers and weathered a ton of abuse, but she"d finally narrowed her search for Pietro Nencini to the third storey of Boyard Towers.
She climbed up the stairs, leaning heavily on the metal banister. Now she had to finally face up to the nagging voice in her head that had been asking over and over: what the h.e.l.l are you going to do if Basalt comes, oh protector-of-the-weak who couldn"t even look after herself if Mr Wong"s on Eastern Parkway shut down?
She checked her cellphone. The batteries were almost flat but she had the Brit emergency number keyed in and ready to send. If she could just get herself inside Nencini"s place, satisfy herself he was OK... Sit with him till Fitz or Anji or the Doctor came back into contact. She could watch out for Basalt and, if he arrived, get the cops down here p.r.o.nto. And one thing she knew for sure Basalt was not a swift killer. If she could just keep him talking long enough for the cops to catch him in the act...
She opened the door that led on to the communal hall. There were four apartments on each level. It wouldn"t take long to find him now.
Especially when one of those apartments had its dowdy front door pushed ajar.
Stacy ducked out of sight, back to the stairwell. Oh G.o.d. She checked her phone for the thirtieth time, took a deep breath and walked down the corridor to the door ajar. There was music coming from inside, opera, some scratchy aria on LP by the sound of things.
She put her eye to the crack and tried to see in.
And some enormous weight smashed into the door, slamming it shut and knocking her back with an involuntary shriek.
She heard a man"s voice gabbling in Italian until a loud thunk against the door seemed to stop him. Then the door was flung open.
Basalt stood framed in the doorway, hair dishevelled, wild-eyed, blood spattered over his face and staining his gritted teeth.
He stared at her first in surprise, then in outrage then like the cat who"s got the cream.
"You," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "You found me. Wasn"t sure if I gave you enough rope."
Behind him, collapsed in a dark puddle, was a large man who could only be Nencini. Stacy stared in shock at the body, lying sticky and still.
"Some kind of crazy coincidence, huh?"
"There"s no such thing as chance encounters," the Doctor had told her.
"Come inside." Basalt gave her a sticky red grin. "Party"s just beginning."
Twenty-eight Stripped away Basalt lunged for her with big, b.l.o.o.d.y hands. Stacy kicked out at him but she couldn"t stop him grabbing hold of her ankles and hauling her swiftly inside. Her nails raked at the threadbare carpet as she was dragged into the foul-smelling room, the screech of the ancient diva too loud in her ears.
He twisted her round, dropped her face down beside Nencini"s p.r.o.ne body. She fumbled for the phone in her pocket, crawling quickly away to put distance between them, to buy time. The door slammed shut as her fingers closed on the phone.
He brought down the back of his heel on the base of her spine and she collapsed, winded, to the floor.
But he hadn"t seen the phone in her hand.
She hit send.
Then she clamped her fist round the smooth plastic sh.e.l.l and held both hands to her ears, hoping Basalt would think she was simply trying to protect her head. He kicked her in the ribs, and, too shocked to feel anything much, she hoped the snapping sound she heard was her imagination.
Like the stern little voice speaking secretly in her ear over the warbling operatics.
"The number you have called has not been recognised..."
Stacy tore the phone away from her ear like it was red hot. "No!" she yelled. She tried to cancel the call, to dial the number again, but Basalt kicked it out of her hand and it fell in the middle of a mountain of pizza boxes. On instinct she tried to crawl after it but he brought something hard down on the back of her head and the world blinked out into flashes of light and darkness.
his grip on her wrists made her feel alive as he yanked her down to the bed She gasped and she shook herself away from the flash of the nightmare. Basalt had retrieved the phone and was standing behind the pizza boxes, watching her, amused.
He tapped the phone and shook his head, his wild hair waving. "That might get you the British emergency services in whatever world you came from. But not here."
She stared at him blankly, her nose and her lip throbbing from hitting the floor. "What are you talking about?"
"Just like old times, isn"t it?" whispered Basalt as he dropped the phone and walked slowly towards her. "You underneath. Me on top."
She felt blood leak from her nose into her mouth. The sharp tang on her tongue turned her stomach. Basalt crouched beside her and reached into his pocket, showed her a coin that glinted dull gold. The crackly diva on the turntable hit a suitably hysterical note.
"So now you kill me, huh?" she hissed. "After so long telling me all about the little things you do, I get to see them for myself, is that it?"
"Stacy, Stacy," he said, placing the coin in Nencini"s bloodied mouth. "So good I killed her twice."
She raised herself on to her elbows, and he turned and grabbed her exposed throat with shaking hands. Her eyes bulged as he tightened his grip and leaned right in. His breath, his odour was rank, overpowering. The bloodspots on his face made strange constellations.
patterns on the throw, buckling and twisting as he bundled one up into a thick rope and pulled it tight round her neck "It was a real puzzle, wasn"t it? How someone could die so... spectacularly... and yet still be found doing their stuff over the ocean, or across state... even across town." His lip curled. "I couldn"t believe it when I found just how close you were. We had some good times, you and me, baby. I couldn"t help but come visit the new you."
She looked at him, her breath rasping, his stink in her lungs, pressure building in her ears. She couldn"t move her arms to fight him off. He was squeezing tears out of her.
"It was against the rules, of course, but I ain"t never found better than you," he whispered, placing his forehead against hers. "So soft, so kind. So compliant at the back of your nice, quiet, dark little place out in Tappan, with all the little home comforts I"d picked out for you."
"What are you saying?" she croaked.
"I"m saying how sorry I was when I finally killed you, baby." He kissed her tenderly above the eye. "When the new you was all set up and ready to go, and the old you had deteriorated so much that, well..." He chuckled softly. "You broke my heart, baby. You didn"t even know it was me, last time we were together."
his breath in her ear, his teeth tugging at her lobe as the noose chafed and tightened Abruptly he let go of her, backed away. "It"s like I said... You, Nencini, the whole G.o.dd.a.m.n lot of them. You all killed yourselves. You made death inevitable. I just made it happen. I have to make things happen, because I"m the one in control. Get it?" He was growing more and more agitated, his voice rising up to challenge the singing. "But no, you don"t. You"ll never see that. You"re never going to understand." Finally he marched up to the c.r.a.ppy music centre and bashed it off the table. The stylus slit the diva"s throat with a long, noisy scratch. The sudden silence made Stacy"s head throb louder. She could hear herself catching noisy breaths, desperate, like they might be the last ones she could grab for.
"I missed you," he said simply. "I went to see the new you day after day. You. But you didn"t know me. You didn"t know there used to be so much light in your eyes when you looked at me, or how you used to cling to me in the night when the bad dreams got you in your sleep..."
"You"re a victim, sweetheart," she"d sneered at Jacqui. "That"s all."
"You killed me." The words dribbled out of her like blood or tears.
"It was your time to go," he said. "That happens. Even to the ones we love." He looked across at her, his eyes red-rimmed. "But I chose the moment. I did that for you. Don"t you think that"s better than leaving it to G.o.d, or something? Than just trusting to fate?"
Her back was pulsing with pain as she tried harder to rise. "You"re insane."
"I was gonna be leaving this whole d.a.m.n world," he complained, his voice suddenly shrill in distress. "Just like you did. And I was going to be with you again. They said so, Chloe and Erasmus did. They said so. They"d found the perfect set-up for me. My reward. A perfect You."
He pressed his lips against her neck. She squirmed and finally tore free of his grip. "Leave me alone!" she warned him.
"Perfect... Not the You we"ve got here now," he said, his face twisting in contempt. "Not the feisty, clever-clever You who thinks she"s got what it takes to fight me. Uh-uh." He shook his head. "The real you. That"s what I was going to get. The weak, helpless, scared little You. The one who needs taking in hand."
"Screw you," she hissed, her ribs burning, lungs p.r.i.c.kling with hot needles.
"The You who"ll do whatever I want and just as I say."
"You sick psycho b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she muttered, spitting blood from her mouth.
"And I was that close to getting it," said Basalt, snapping his fingers. "But that"s all gone to h.e.l.l now. So what do you say..."
He lunged forwards. Stacy turned and ran for the door but he caught her by her hair and yanked her backwards. She tried to struggle free but he slapped her on her bad ribs, and she almost blacked out with the pain. He held her tight in a half-nelson.
"How about we make like it"s old times, baby?" he hissed thickly in her ear, as his free hand snaked under her top.
Then Nencini"s door smashed wide open and a screaming, wild-eyed madman came tearing inside.
Fitz.
He was running full pelt, arms outstretched. He grabbed Basalt"s head, knocking the killer backwards. Stacy twisted free and fell to one side, but Fitz was going too fast to stop. He and Basalt piled into a big sideboard that collapsed under their sudden attack.
Recovering, Basalt swung a big fist at Fitz, who ducked just in time. The big man swore as he bruised his knuckles on the wall. Fitz jabbed his fingers at Basalt"s eyes but missed and hit his cheek. Basalt"s second blow hit Fitz right in the jaw, smacked his head back against a panel of the fallen sideboard, stunned him. He hit Fitz again, even harder. Fitz brought his arms up feebly over his face, but Basalt swatted them aside, raised his fist again ready to Stacy brought a lead-crystal decanter down hard on Basalt"s head.
The decanter didn"t break. The head did.
With a low moan Basalt rolled back, eyes closed, fist still clenched. He collapsed in the splintered sh.e.l.l of the sideboard, a thick trickle of blood bisecting his sweaty face.
Fitz opened one panda eye, and winced. He opened the other instead. "Did we get him?"
"Yeah." She sunk painfully to her knees beside him. "We got him."
"Are you OK?" Fitz asked, dabbing tenderly at his split lip.
Stacy almost laughed. She said nothing.
"I"m sorry I took so long," he muttered, pushing himself up on one hand. "But I"ve been stuck in the boot of Basalt"s car all this time. I hid there outside the warehouse, see, "cause we crashed Anji"s car and all these bullets were going off and the guards were coming for us..." He was babbling, perhaps in shock. "I was only going to hide for a minute. Then Basalt drove off and I couldn"t get out. And I"ve lost Guy and I"ve lost Trix and..."
She had no idea what he was talking about. She didn"t care care what he was talking about. what he was talking about.
"...and then we stopped here and I forced open the boot and I saw where we were, and I guess I"m too late for Nencini"
"Fitz "Danger" Kreiner," she said softly, "do you think you could shut up and just hold me, please?"
With his arms round her it was just a little easier to let the tears come freely, to let it all go.
"Yes," says Kalic.u.m gloatingly, eyes shining white in the glow of the mountain of diamonds. "You were right, Sabbath. Why should we waste our own precious time and resources stealing diamonds when such a fine selection has been gathered already?"
Sabbath says nothing. He never thinks he"s anything else but right.
Chloe, still trapped in the metal web, huddles closer to Jamais and hopes that Erasmus will soon stop just staring at the great gleaming pile of diamonds and think of something to do. She hates strangers seeing her special place, drooling over the diamonds like they are simply jewels and not tiny keepsakes of the lives she has helped make super-special.
Kalic.u.m pushes his hand into the small mountain and wriggles his long lingers. Chloe can tell from his smile he is savouring the cold, scratching sensation of the gems grinding against his skin. Jamais growls, bares his ivory teeth, but she shushes him. She reminds herself that the stones can"t feel. It"s just stories that they can contain the splinter of a star or the cell of a soul. They are old, dead things. Their magic is in the mind, and the memory.