F. Paul Wilson - Nightworld

Good. Rasalom wants to let that hope grow until it is the last great hope left for all humanity. Let them think they've been doing something important, something epochal. The higher their hope lifts them, the longer the fall when they learn they've struggled and died for nothing.

But Rasalom senses them taking comfort in their relative safety, drawing strength from their comradeship. Their peace, uneasy though it may be, is a burr in his hide. He cannot allow this to continue unchallenged. He does not wish to destroy them—yet. But he does wish to breach their insulation, unsettle them, vex them, start them looking over their shoulders.

One of them must die.

Not out in the streets, but in the heart of their safe haven. It must be an ugly death—nothing quick and clean, but slow and painful and messy. And to make the death as unsettling as possible, it must befall a dear member of their number, one who seems the most innocent, the most innocuous, one they never would expect him to single out for such degradation.

The new lips gestating within the sac twist into a semblance of a smile.

Time for a little fun.

In the tunnel leading to the cavern, Rasalom's skin, shed days ago, begins to move. It ripples, swells, fills out to living proportions. Then it rises and begins its journey toward the surface.

As it walks, it tests its voice.

"Mother."

Ba should be driving this, Bill thought as he raced along the deserted LIE, aiming the old Graham for the Queens-Midtown Tunnel like a bullet from a gun. He glanced at his watch. 3:32. Less than forty minutes to sundown. He would have preferred the Queensboro Bridge but remembered that was impassable due to the effects of a gravity hole.

Jack rode shotgun—literally. He sat high in the passenger seat with this huge short-barreled thing—he'd called it a "Spas"—held up in plain sight. Ba sat behind Bill with a similar shotgun in plain view. The two warriors were sending a message: Don't mess with this car. Nick sat behind Jack, Sylvia and the boy were squeezed in the middle, their cat on the boy's lap, their one-eyed dog panting on the floor.

That left the driving chore to Bill. He knew he wasn't the greatest driver, but if they ran into one of the roving gangs that had taken over the city during the day he figured he'd do better with a steering wheel than with a shotgun.

He glanced at Jack who'd been strangely silent and withdrawn since their reunion at the airport. He was definitely on edge. Something eating at him, something he wasn't talking about.

Bill gave a mental shrug. If it concerned them, they'd find out soon enough.

The further he drove into Queens, the more obstacles on the expressway; he wove as quickly as he dared around and through the litter of wrecked or abandoned cars. They slowed him and he wanted to fly.

Carol…he hungered for the sight of her, for the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand. She consumed his thoughts, his feelings. He wished he could have got a line through to her from the airport, just to let her know he'd made it back and was coming home.

"Better hurry," Nick said from the back.

"Going as fast as I can, Nick."

"Better go faster," he said. His tone was completely flat. He'd reverted to near cataonia since leaving the keep. "It's Carol."

The car swerved slightly as Bill's fingers tightened on the wheel.

"What about Carol?"

"She's in trouble. She needs help."

WNYW-TV

no transmission

MANHATTAN

The head was waiting in the kitchen.

Carol was on her way back from Magda's room, carrying her lunch tray, worrying about Bill and why she hadn't heard from him yet. She screamed and dropped the tray as she rounded the corner and saw it floating in the air. She recognized the face.

"Jimmy!" she cried, then got control of herself.

Not a head, just a face. And not Jimmy. Not her son. She'd almost stopped thinking of him as her son.

Rasalom. It was Rasalom.

The face smiled—an Arctic gale registered greater warmth. Then its lips moved, forming words, but the voice seemed to come from everywhere. Or was it inside her head?

"Hello, mother."

Carol backed out of the kitchen. The face followed.

"Mommy, don't leave me!" The tone was mocking.

Carol stopped retreating when her back came up against the dining room table. She looked around for Glaeken but knew he wouldn't be there. He'd gone out hours ago and had left her with Magda. Carol swallowed and found her voice.

"Don't call me that!"

"Why not? That's what you are."

Carol shook her head. "No. You grew inside me for nine months, but you were never my child. And I was never your mother."

Another smile, as cold as the first. "I sympathize with your efforts to dissociate yourself from me. I understand them because I've tried to do the same in regard to you. Perhaps you've had more success than I."

"What are you talking about?"

"The bond of flesh. Since the day I was conceived within you, I've worn the flesh you gave me. It links us. I don't like it any more than you do, but it is a fact, one that won't go away. One we both have to deal with."

"I've learned to deal with it—by not thinking about it."

"But that doesn't cancel it. I've given this a lot of thought and there's a better way to deal with it, a way that allows me to come to terms with my fleshy link to you. A way that can benefit you as well."

The voice in her head was so calm, so soothing. Almost mesmerizing. Carol shook herself.

"I—I don't want anything from you."

"Don't think just of yourself. Think of your friends. I'm offering you and some of them a safe harbor, a haven, a chance to survive the endless night."

"I don't trust you."

The smile again, rueful this time. "I wouldn't trust me either. But hear me out. You have nothing to lose by listening to my proposal."

Carol remembered what Bill had told her about a woman named Lisl who'd lost her soul and her life by listening to Rasalom. But what, besides her sanity and her dignity, did Carol have left to lose? Unless a miracle occurred, tomorrow would hold the world's last daylight. By Friday she'd be in the same leaky life raft as the rest of the world.

"What do you mean by 'a haven'? And how many of my 'friends' can I take there?"

"A reasonable number."

"Glaeken among them?"

The face rotated back and forth, the equivalent of a head shake.

"No. Not Glaeken. Anyone else, but not Glaeken. I've waited too long to even my scores with him."

Carol didn't know what to think, what to do. If Rasalom had agreed to allow Glaeken safe harbor, she'd have known he was lying. There was probably no rivalry, no enmity in human history as long and as bitter and as deeply ingrained as theirs. But he had excluded Glaeken. What did that mean? Could his offer be genuine? If she could save Bill and a few of the others…

"Come downstairs and we'll discuss it."

"Downstairs? Oh, no. I'm not leaving this building."

"I'm not asking you to leave this building. I'm one floor down. In your apartment."

"How—how did you get in?

"Come now, Mother dear. I can do anything I wish. Anything. Come visit. We'll talk. I'll be there until darkness falls. After that I'll have other matters to attend to."

The face grew dim, became transparent, then faded completely. Gone as if it had never been.

Carol sagged back against the table. Expect the unexpected. Wasn't that what Glaeken had said? Easy enough to say, but Rasalom's face—floating in the air, talking to her as casually as if they'd bumped into each other in an aisle at the A&P.

And the ease with which he seemed to have entered the building was bad enough, but knowing he was waiting down in her apartment tied her up in knots.