F Wilson - The Dark at the End

Without missing a beat Jack changed the story: “The One told us to check out the work.”

Both men frowned.

“The one what?” said the second.

Either they weren’t high-ups or were pretending not to know. He bet on the former and figured it wouldn’t hurt to keep them off balance by changing the subject.

He jerked his thumb at the opening in the floor. “We found an interesting variation on the Order’s sigil down below.”

Weezy was nodding. “Really interesting. Like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”

The Order guys glanced at each other. Both looked dubious but finally the first said, “I’ll go see.” He pointed at Jack. “No games, all right?”

Jack put on a wounded look. “I assure you, this is not a joking matter.”

He turned to the second. “Watch them.”

He headed for the opening, descended the ladder, and was down maybe half a minute when his excited voice echoed up.

“Hey, Lee! Get down here. You’ve got to see this!”

Lee gave them a look as he approached the opening. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“As if,” Jack said. “That’s our find and don’t you guys even think about stealing credit.”

He waited for Lee to descend then stepped over to the opening. Both of them were out of sight, so he grabbed the ladder and quickly hauled it up.

Ignoring the cries of “Hey!” and “What the fuck?” from below, he signaled Weezy and Eddie to follow him up the stairs.

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “Let’s roll.”

Jack glanced at him. Let’s roll? Really?

Well, at least they had a name-whether the right name or not, no one could say, but the only name available. It would have to do.

But something about the glyphs and the feel of that sigil continued to gnaw at him.

Ernst ended the call and closed his phone. Just ahead, the Manhattan skyline loomed above the entrance to the Midtown Tunnel, while his impatient passenger waited behind.

They had heard from the Manhattan brothers who investigated the Connell woman’s apartment. Neither she nor the Compendium had been in evidence.

And now word from New Jersey. Some of the information was puzzling, and even a little disturbing.

“That was from the brothers who checked the Johnson Lodge. They found two men and a woman in the basement. The woman’s description fits Louise Connell. Descriptions of the men are vague, but they easily could have been Jack and the woman’s brother.”

“What were they doing?”

Here was the puzzling part.

“According to the brother I just spoke to, they were digging.”

“Were they.” A statement rather than a question.

“Yes. They appeared to have been digging in an excavation beneath the basement of the Lodge.”

“That would put them in the ruins of the buried town.”

The One had been very interested in the town when he had quizzed Ernst about Jack’s boyhood.

“Yes. The brother told me that the High Council had authorized the dig and sent an emissary named Kristof Szeto to initiate it.”

“Did they find anything?”

“Someone-they don’t know whether it was Jack and his friends or the workers Szeto hired-but someone unearthed the large, damaged sigil that has been down there longer than the Lodge.”

It had been largely forgotten over the years. Ernst hadn’t thought about it in a long, long time-not since the 1980s when he’d researched the Johnson Lodge before visiting it. The sigil had been found in ancient times. The brothers back then had no use for a damaged symbol of the Order but did not feel right discarding such a relic. So they stored it away.

“Then we must assume the Heir saw it.”

“No assumption necessary: He directed the brothers to it.”

The One made no reply. He remained silent as they entered the Midtown Tunnel. Ernst glanced in the rearview mirror and saw him staring out the window, his expression unreadable.

“Does that particular sigil have a special significance?”

His voice seemed to come from far away. “It belonged to me back in the First Age.”

Ernst stiffened in his seat. What a remarkable revelation. That explained the One’s interest in it when Ernst had mentioned it during his quizzing about Jack.

“If only we’d known, it would have been displayed all these centuries in a place of honor.”

“I am glad it wasn’t. I had thought it lost forever.” He seemed full of sudden determination as he leaned forward. “When we reach the city, turn downtown.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ernst knew better than to ask why. But then the One answered his question.

“I must feed.”

“‘It may never happen, Weez,’” she said, quoting. “‘This may all be wasted time and chatter.’”

Jack, behind the wheel, stared straight ahead and said nothing as they cruised north on the New Jersey Turnpike. She’d called shotgun for the trip home. She was too rattled about what lay ahead to concentrate on the Compendium.

She studied Jack. He’d been strangely silent since leaving the Lodge. Something was bothering him. Endangering the baby? She doubted it. That was her worry.

“But, since it is going to happen,” she added, “I guess it wasn’t just wasted chatter. Not that I have veto power.”

He glanced at her. “We all respect your feelings, Weez. There’s just…”

“… too much hanging in the balance,” she said. “I know that. I just…”

“… never believed the end justifies the means.”

Behind them, Eddie laughed. “Are you two going to spend the entire trip finishing each other’s sentences?”

They were, weren’t they. Once again she was filled with such a longing for Jack. What was it? He wasn’t handsome-not ugly, but a long way from a hot guy. He didn’t radiate alpha masculinity; it might be there, but he hid anything that might draw attention.

But he was Jack, and he couldn’t hide what he was from her. And she’d fallen for who he was.

They made a pretty good team too. Didn’t he see that? Well, maybe he did, but he didn’t feel about her the way she felt about him. Not even close. How could he? To him, they were simply… buds-close as could be, with a history that went way, way back, but she didn’t go beyond friend for him. He would never see her any other way, and that tore a hole in her heart.

After a couple of beats of awkward silence, Jack said, “In this case, I don’t think the means are so terrible. The baby won’t know he’s got an Other name.”

“I know. I’ve come to terms with it. The Lady won’t perform the ceremony on anyone else, so that’s the way it has to be.”

Eddie said, “Why not give him a plain old American name right after the ceremony. That way he’ll grow up answering to Tom or Dick or Harry or whatever.”

“Assuming he grows up,” Jack said.

Weezy frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Assuming we have the right name, assuming the Compendium has the right ceremony, and assuming the ceremony will do what we hope it will, we all just might see the summer.”

The summer…

Jack was convinced-said he’d heard from multiple sources-that darkness waited in the spring. If Rasalom had his way, if they didn’t find a way to stop him, there’d be no summer.

“If just one of those assumptions is wrong,” he added, “then all this is for nothing.”

She couldn’t argue with his logic, but he seemed so negative lately.

“The Compendium hasn’t let us down yet.”

“But the name…”

Yes… the name. Everything hinged on the name belonging to Rasalom.

“We have to trust it’s his Other Name.”

“Trust? Trust whom? R?”

“Trust what we know about him from Glaeken-that he suffers from a monstrous case of hubris. The Seven served the Otherness, and one by one he eliminated them until only he remained. It fits perfectly with his personality that as he eliminated them he removed their Other names from his sigil-like crossing them off a list-until only his remained. And it makes sense that he kept that sigil as a souvenir of his triumph.”