“I don’t get it, Jack. How could Cal have done… whatever you think he’s done? He doesn’t know you. He’s never even seen you.”
His face twisted into something not even half human. “Jerry!” he shrieked. “My name’s JERRY! He don’t know us, ’cause we can’t touch him.” The smile came back (oh, how I wish it hadn’t) and the other guy-things echoed it. “Can touch you.”
They all took a floating step toward us, in perfect unison. Doc clamped a hand on my upper arm so hard it hurt. “Whoa! Whoa! What? How did he do anything to you?
How?” I flashed my knife and was embarrassed at the way
my hand shook.
Jerry-Jack’s head swiveled strangely on his shoulders like he was trying to shrug off a yoke. He opened his mouth-and the other Jacks opened theirs-and they all let out this sound. It made my stomach heave and my eyes water because I knew I’d heard it before and-oh, God-I never wanted to hear it again.
Doc murmured something in Russian and took a step toward the cave, pulling me with him.
Jerry’s head made another roll. “Mu-u-usic! Damned mu-usic. Burns.” He brought his face forward, eyes wide and feral and almost glowing with hateful and familiar red light. “He play. You pay.”
Enid. He had to be talking about Enid. Before I could even take that in, they flickered and half faded into the mist. Then they moved-smooth as smoke. I was only half ready, but Doc was fully primed. He let loose with his rock, catching Jerry-Jack in his nearly invisible head.
The tweak went solid again and dropped, distracting the others and giving me time to cut the horses’ tether. They bolted in all directions, covering our dash for the cave. Fog and tweaks roiled and danced, and a crossbow bolt shot from the cave to bring another one down.
Cal yanked both of us into the cave with him.
“Thanks,” I panted. “How’d you get the bow?” Damn, but I was glad I’d taught him how to use that thing.
Cal slipped a second bolt home. “They were focused on you. I was able to get to your horse before it spooked.” “Great. Give me the bow and some bolts.”
He grimaced. “Last one. I couldn’t get the quiver free before they attacked.”
He handed me the bow anyway and drew his sword. Awkward, with us all crammed into this rocky closet, but it came free of the scabbard with a deadly whisper.
The tweaks had stopped circling their floundering buddy and were moving on us again, like smart ground mist. Cal raised his sword; I held up the crossbow, threatening. They stopped, eyes gleaming, and faded into the mist.
The clearing was silent except for the wounded one’s muffled keening. We listened to our own breathing. We counted seconds. They weren’t done with us.
“Are these the same tweaks we saw before?” Cal murmured.
Saw? “Hell, how could we tell? But there’s four of them. That’s how many there were left.”
When they reappeared, they’d armed themselves with rocks. They didn’t hesitate to use them. I took the first one in the thigh. I heard another strike with a soft thud and Doc cried out. I fired the crossbow, but another stone smacked my shoulder and the bolt flew away into the fog. I pressed myself into the rubble, gritting my teeth against the pain and disappointment. Except for my knife and know-how, I was defenseless… unless I could bludgeon one of them to death with my crossbow. Cal’s body quivered against mine, dread and adrenaline racing between us like an electrical current.
Rock rang on steel, thudded on bone. Doc moaned and slumped, falling across Cal, who only just pulled his sword out of the way before it did damage.
I jerked forward to stop Doc’s fall, but a stone grazed my temple and then I was falling, too. A haze of sparks rose up to swallow me and the sound of a vast crowd roared in my ears.
Something had me. It jerked me off my feet and sucked me backward into the roaring darkness.
Hate to admit it, but I think I screamed.
II
Above, Below, and Here
Suleiman-bin-Daoud was strong. Upon the third finger of his right hand he wore a ring. When he turned it once, Afrits and Djinns came out of the earth to do whatever he told them. When he turned it twice, Fairies came down from the sky to do whatever he told them; and when he turned it three times, the very great angel Azrael of the Sword came dressed as a water-carrier, and told him the news of the three worlds: Above, Below, and Here.
NINE
DOC
Ilook down upon a valley from a high place. Where I stand, exactly, I cannot see. Below me the land is beautiful and serene; towns are scattered across it like gems on velvet, bright against the moist, lush green.
The biggest of the gems is a city that stands afar off, at a river’s edge-a cluster of crystals thrust into the sky, aloof. I do not recognize it, but feel I should. It is not a real city, but an archetype, I know these things even in dreams. The analytical mind. I decide the city is Kiev, my home.
I dismiss analysis and attempt to absorb the serenity-to breathe it in with the perfume of wet earth. I give myself a moment of this-a gift to myself-but a moment is all I am allowed. For the moment is drowned in the wail of sirens.
As I look down from my eagle’s nest, the gleaming, crystal city belches smoke.
A war?
When my eyes penetrate the smoke, I find that the city is a city no longer; it is an ugly, sprawling industrial complex. Gone are the buildings of my imagined Kiev, in their place, the ungraceful pilings of a nuclear reactor. The single fluted tower that has always reminded me, with much irony, of a minaret, tells me all I need to know.
I have been here, and know that the smoke is not smoke, but something far more sinister. I am instantly afraid. I don’t want to be here. I cannot be here.
In the villages and farms there is an awakening. A froth of humanity boils from the buildings. Somehow, they are at once antlike and individual; I see the masses and I see faces among them, and I am plunged with them into terror.
I must find a way down from this cliff, but my frenzy accomplishes not a thing. There is no way down. I can only run back and forth along the edge of my aerie, a flightless, dithering bird, trapped by its incapacity.
Fevered, I look again to the pylons of Chernobyl, but again they have changed. Where they squatted like broken gargoyles, there is now a tower. It is black like the candles I have seen in the windows of dark, cluttered shops-a votive to a demon. It glistens as if in a sheath of oil or water or glass. It terrifies me for reasons I cannot name. It terrifies me more than the leaking reactor.
The cloud now reaching to embrace the countryside is neither smoke nor radiation. It is a swarm of insects small as gnats. I tell myself this is a good thing, that these mites cannot possibly be as fearful as the horrors brought by the cloud of radiation.
But the comfort is false; the swarm overtakes the fleeing people and swallows them. They produce their own horrors, for their bite not only draws blood, it destroys and distorts so that what emerges from the swarm is less than human.
Yes, yes, a fine conceit. The Change-I understand. I protest this heavy-handed dictator of a dream. You may stop now, I tell it.
But it doesn’t stop. And though I dream knowingly, I cannot stop myself from wishing I could fly from this cliff. Damn dreaming. Let me help!
As swift as thought, I am in the valley. The insects have flown, leaving a countryside that is twisted and torn, and people who are also twisted, dead or dying.