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A cloud of pain passed across the old woman's puffy face.

She sighed. "Yes. Just like that."

"So it all comes together. 'No more coincidences,' right? The flap of skin I can't throw away, your hiring me to infiltrate the Dormentalists where I'd get a view of Brady's globe and recognize the pattern… everything's been carefully orchestrated."

He felt like a goddamn puppet.

"'Orchestrated' gives me too much credit. No one—not the Otherness, not the Ally, and certainly not I—has that much control. People and objects are placed in proximity in the hope that certain outcomes will ensue."

"Is Brady in the same boat?"

"Luther Brady is driving himself. I doubt he has any concept of what the Otherness's new world order will be like, but I have little doubt that he believes that the man who completes the Opus Omega will be rewarded with an exalted position in it."

"But how does he even know about this Opus Omega?"

"He too had a dream, but his was of a map of the world. It showed the nexus points around the globe, each radiating lines toward the others. Wherever three lines crossed, the intersection glowed. He had no idea of its significance until a forbidden book, The Compendium of Srem, was delivered into his hands."

"Forbidden, huh? How exactly does a book become forbidden? Like banned in Boston?"

She offered him a tolerant smile. "In a way. It was banned in the fifteenth century by the Catholic church."

"Six hundred years… pretty old book."

"That was merely when it was banned. It's much older than that. No one is quite sure how old. The Compendium first came to the church's attention during the Spanish Inquisition when it was discovered in the possession of a Moorish scholar whose name is lost. He was put through unimaginable agonies before he died, but either could not or would not say who had given it to him.

"The Grand Inquisitor himself, Torquemada, is said to have been so re-pulsed after reading only a part of The Compendium that he ordered a huge bonfire built and hurled the book into the flames. But it would not burn. Nor would it be cut by the sharpest sword or the heaviest ax. So he dropped it into the deepest well in the Spanish Empire; he filled that well with granite boulders, then built the monastery of St. Thomas over it."

Jack gave a low whistle. "What the hell was in it?"

"Many things. Lists and descriptions of unspeakable rites and ceremonies, diagrams of ancient clockwork machines, but the heart of The Compendium is the outline of the Opus Omega—the final process that will assure the ascent of what it calls 'the Other world.'"

Jack felt a chill. "The Otherness. Even back then?"

"Surely you realize that this cosmic shadow war is about far more than humanity. The millions of years since the first hominid reared up on its hind legs are an eye blink in the course of the conflict. It began before the Earth was formed and will continue long after the sun's furnace goes cold."

Jack did know that—at least he'd been told that—but it was still hard to accept.

"And as with all forbidden things," Herta went on, "77ie Compendium could not stay buried. A small subsect of monks within the monastery spent years digging tunnels and secretly excavating the well. They retrieved the book, but before they could put it to use they were all slain and the book disappeared for five hundred years."

"If a boulder-filled well with a monastery overhead couldn't keep it out of circulation, where did it hide during those centuries?"

"In a place built by the Ally's warrior—"

"You mean the one Anya told me about—the one I'm supposed to replace? He's that old?"

Here was another thing Jack couldn't or wouldn't accept: Like it or not, he'd been drafted into this cosmic war.

"Much older," Herta said. "Almost as old as the Adversary. More than five centuries ago he trapped the Adversary in a stone keep in a remote pass in Eastern Europe. He sealed away many forbidden books there as well, to keep them out of the hands of men and women susceptible to the Otherness. But the fortress was broached by the German Army in the spring of 1941. Fortunately the Adversary was killed—albeit temporarily—before he could escape."

"But this Compendium thing made it out?"

"Yes. It and other forbidden books ended up in the hands of a man named Alexandru, one of the keep's caretakers. After the war he sold them to an antiquarian book dealer in Bucharest who in turn sold The Com-

pendium to an American collector. A quarter of a century later, the collector was murdered and the book stolen."

"Let me guess who was responsible for that: Rasa—I mean, the Adversary, right?"

"Not personally. He was a child at the time. But his guardian then, a man named Jonah Stevens, committed the crime and saw to it that The Compendium reached a recent college graduate named Luther Brady."

"And the book told him to start burying concrete columns at these spots around the globe?"

Herta shook her head. "Not start—finish. The Opus Omega had been begun long before, but there was no way for those ancients to reach certain parts of the Old World, let alone the New. Remember, The Compendium was already sealed in the Transylvania Alps when Columbus set sail for the Americas."

"So Brady picked up where they left off. But why Brady?"

"Because he's the sort who is highly susceptible to Otherness influence. He was and still is inspired by dreams of power—of literally changing the world."

"I didn't mean Brady specifically. I mean, why work through someone else at all? Why doesn't the Adversary just go out and bury these pillars himself? This Opus would probably be finished by now, and he wouldn't have to deal with all this Dormentalist bull along the way."

"But that would mean revealing himself, something the Adversary does not want to do."

"Why not?"

"Fear. He avoids drawing attention to himself for fear of alerting the Ally's champion. So he must work behind the scenes."

"I've seen some of what the Adversary can do, and if he's afraid… well, this champion must be one tough cookie. Do you know him?"

Herta nodded. "I know him well."

"What's his name?"

Herta hesitated, then, "His mother called him Glaeken."

12

Luther Brady leaned toward Barry Goldsmith, his personal attorney for the past dozen years. Barry had met him here at the Forty-seventh Precinct house and the two of them had been sitting alone at this battered table in this stuffy interrogation room for what felt like hours.

"How long can they keep us here?" Luther whispered.

He was sure they were being observed through the pane of mirrored glass set in the wall before them.

"We could leave now. I could demand that they either charge you and arrest you, or we walk."

"Arrested… I don't want to be—"

"Don't worry." Barry patted his arm. The gesture retracted the sleeve on his charcoal Armani suit, revealing his glittering Rolex. "I don't do criminal defense, but I know enough to tell you that they'll need a lot of evidence to put the cuffs on someone of your stature and pristine record. And we know they don't have that evidence—can't have that evidence, right?"

He sounded as if he wanted reassurance. Well, Luther would give it to him.

"Barry, listen to me and trust me when I say that I have never even heard of this Richard Cordova, let alone done him harm. And they say it happened up here in the Bronx. I don't know if I've ever in my life even set foot in the Bronx."