On any other night he'd have thought it a beautiful sight, but beauty is better when shared. He'd have loved nothing more in the world than to be sitting between Gia and Vicky right now, an arm around each of them. He could almost hear Gia saying that she'd like to come back to this spot tomorrow night and paint the scene.
And then he thought about the baby, his lost child. He remembered all the times in the past few months he'd imagined himself bouncing his little boy on his knee, tickling him to make him laugh, teaching him to throw and catch and—
Christ, he didn't even know if the baby was a boy or a girl. His mind had been so numb he'd forgotten to ask.
But even if it turned out to be a girl, no matter. She'd still need bouncing and tickling, and even throwing and catching lessons. And she'd have been beautiful, with blond hair and blue eyes like her mother's.
This time last night he was starting a new future, one crammed with possibilities. Now he had nothing. Not even hope.
That was the worst of it. Where there's life, there's hope. Yeah, right. Maybe. But not in this case. Gia and Vicky might go on living, but not as Gia and Vicky. No, don't call it living. Mere existence was not living. The two people he'd loved would be gone while the blobs of protoplasm they'd inhabited survived.
He clung to the possibility that Dr. Stokely had understated the possibilities. She'd probably learned a few hard lessons about giving families hope and then not being able to deliver. False hope worked for a while, but in the end it was worse than no hope.
No hope… that certainly fit the baby's case. No coming back for him. Or her. He'd imagined a little piece of himself and Gia continuing beyond their time, their place, aimed toward infinity.
Now… never happen.
But the very worst was knowing the reason why Gia and Vicky and the baby were where they were.
Him. Jack.
The Otherness was toying with him, trying to break him down. First Kate, then his father and brother, and now his child and the two people on Earth who meant the most to him.
On the face of it, flat-out killing him and having done with it made more sense. Why target those around him?
Last fall, in a Florida swamp, Rasalom himself had provided the answer.
"Killing you now might be something of a favor. It would spare you so much pain in the months to come. And why should I do you a favor? Why should I spare you that pain? I don't want you to miss one iota of what is coming your way.
"Physical pain is mere sustenance. But a strong man slowly battered into despair and hopelessness… that is a delicacy. In your case, it might even approach ecstasy. I don't want to deprive myself of that."
Being on intimate terms with the Otherness. Rasalom had known exactly what was coming.
Jack hadn't.
He didn't know how to deal with this. Did anyone? He wanted the ground to crack open and swallow him.
A sob tore loose from deep, deep inside. His head fell back as he let it loose and screamed into the night—all the pain, all the shattered dreams, all the frustration…
He straightened and wiped his eyes. Had to get a grip. Had to—
The lamp above him winked out. Then the one to his right, thirty feet away, did the same. Then the one to his left.
What the hell?
Then the overheads on the FDR began dying, up and down the road.
Some sort of power failure.
So what?
As he continued to stare across the water he saw a round shadow slowly rise on the far side of the railing. At first he thought it was a balloon, but as it continued to rise it broadened into a pair of shoulders, then arms straight down its sides.
A man… a floating man.
The languorous way it rose, without moving its arms… had to be a balloon, an inflatable doll.
But when its feet reached the level of the top rung, it moved, stepping forward to stand on the railing. Then it crouched with its arms about its knees and perched there like some sort of gargoyle. Jack couldn't see the face, but he knew its eyes were fixed on him.
"What the—?"
"Hello, Heir," it said in a mocking tone. "How's life?"
Jack knew that voice.
Rasalom.
With a howl he went to leap off the seat and wrap his fingers around the throat that housed it. And if the two of them tumbled to the river below, so be it. He'd go to his grave strangling this son of a bitch.
But he never left the seat. He could move his arms, but not his feet or his legs. His body wouldn't budge. He clawed the air and howled again, sounding like a madman. At that moment he was.
Rasalom put his head back and sniffed the air.
"Mmm. The nectar of desolation, the liquor of devastation, the elixir of despair, the wine of disheartenment. This is a fine, fine vintage. If only I could bottle it."
Jack felt his rage cooling. Not lessening, simply mutating from hot to cold.
"Why?" he managed to say. "Am 1 that much of a threat to your all-powerful boss?"
"Boss? Oh, you must mean what you people so quaintly call the Otherness. No, it's not my boss, so to speak, but we do have arrangements—promises that have been made—for when certain ongoing operations and processes run their courses."
"So you sent a false Alarm through the Oculus, made the yeniceri think they were doing the Ally's work."
"A false Alarm is very difficult. Only once have I been able to send one. I prefer more indirect stratagems. For instance, to make you cross paths with the yeniQeri, I encouraged a cretinous cult I'd started—just for this purpose, by the way—to kidnap the niece of someone who frequents one of your environs—
"Cailin?"
"Yes. Her. Well, they thought they were going to 'sacrifice her to the Otherness.' Of course, I'm far more interested in torture sacrifices than is the Otherness, but they didn't know that. The 'Otherness' part set off the Alarm—a genuine Alarm—and three yeniceri were sent."
Jack was baffled. "Why would you want me in contact with the yeniceri?"
"So you would wind up right where you are now. But you almost escaped me. I had to send a false Alarm—a very brief one, and quite a strain it was. It went through a Florida Oculus. I wanted to bring you back."
"The yeniceri assassin? You sent him? Why did you want me back?"
"Because I didn't want you in Europe when your last two loved ones were removed."
Last two loved ones… the filthy—
Jack exerted every fiber of muscle, every ounce of will to lever himself from the bench, but he might as well have been trying to stop the freighter making its way down river behind Rasalom.
"Is your boss so petty it stoops to killing mothers and children? How did they even get on its radar?"
"Let's not forget the deaths of your father and siblings. You're wondering why something as vast as the Otherness would concern itself with these seeming trivialities?"
"So you could have this moment, I suppose."
Rasalom laughed, and the genuine amusement in the sound puzzled Jack.
"The Otherness leaves me to create my own amusements."
"Then why? Does it think I'll be so discouraged and beaten down that I'll crawl into a hole and die? Well, guess what—it's backfired. It's made an enemy for life who'll do anything and everything to get in its way. So you'd better kill me now."
Jack realized then that for the first time in his life he was reaching a point where he wouldn't mind dying. If Gia and Vicky didn't make it, he couldn't think of a goddamn thing to live for… beyond revenge. And revenge wasn't enough.
Rasalom said nothing.
"Why, goddammit?"
A dramatic sigh. "Well, I was saving this for later but I suppose telling you now will have just as much effect: The Otherness is not behind the tragedies that have befallen your loved ones."