Staring down at the dead child in its ancient, peeling crib, Rachel wondered how even Doro had managed to keep so many latents alive for so long. How had he done it, and how had he been able to stand himself for doing it? But, then, Doro had nothing even faintly resembling a conscience.
The crib was at the foot of an old, steel-frame bed. On the bed lay the mother, semiconscious, muttering drunkenly from time to time. “Johnny, the baby’s crying again.” And then, “Johnny, make the baby stop crying! I can’t stand to hear him crying all the time.” She wept a little herself now, her eyes open, unseeing.
Miguela and Rachel looked at each other, Miguela in horror, Rachel in weariness and disgust.
“You were right,” said Miguela. “I don’t like this one damn bit. And this is the kind of thing you want me to handle?”
“There are too many of them for me,” said Rachel. “The more help I get, the fewer of these bad ones will die.”
“They deserve to die for what they did to that baby” She choked again and Rachel saw that she was holding back tears.
“You’re the last person I’d expect to hold latents responsible for what they do,” Rachel told her. “Do I have to remind you what you did?” Miguela, unstable and violent, had set fire to the house of a woman whose testimony had caused her to spend some time in Juvenile Hall. The woman had burned to death.
Miguela closed her eyes, not crying but not casting any more stones, either. “You know,” she said after a moment, “I was glad I turned out to be a healer, because I thought I could make up for that, somehow. And here I am bitching.”
“Bitch all you want to,” said Rachel. “As long as you do your work. You’re going to handle these people.”
“All of them? By myself?”
“I’ll be standing bynot that you’ll need me. You’re ready. Why don’t you back the van in and I’ll draft a couple of the boys out back to help us carry bodies.”
Miguela started to go, then stopped. “You know, sometimes I wish we could make Doro pay for scenes like this. He’s the one who deserves all the blame.”
“He’s also the one who’ll never pay. Only his victims pay.”
Miguela shook her head and went out after the van.
JESSE
Jesse pulled his car up sharply in front of a handsome, red-brick, Georgian mansion. He got out, strode down the pathway and through the front door without bothering to
knock. He went straight to the stairs and up them to the second floor. There, in a back bedroom, he found Stephen Gilroy, the Patternist owner of the house, sitting beside the bed of a young mute woman. The woman’s face was covered with blood. It had been slashed and hacked to pieces. She was unconscious.
“My God,” muttered Jesse as he crossed the room to the bed. “Did you send for a healer?”
Gilroy nodded. “Rachel wasn’t around, so I”
“I know. She’s on an assignment.”
“I called one of her kids. I just wish he’d get here.”
One of her students, he meant. Even Jesse found himself referring to Rachel’s students as “her kids.”
There was the sound of the front door opening and slamming again. Someone else ran up the bare, wooden stairs, and, a moment later, a breathless young man hurried into the room. He was one of Rachel’s relatives, of course, and as Rachel would have in a healing situation, he took over immediately.
“You’ll have to leave me alone with her,” he said. “I can handle the injuries, but I work best when I’m alone with my patient.”
“Her eyes are hurt, too, I think,” said Gilroy. “Are you sure you”
The healer unshielded to show them that his self-confidence was real and based on experience. “Don’t worry about her. She’ll be all right.”
Jesse and Stephen Gilroy left the room, went down to Gilroy’s study.
Jesse spoke with quiet fury. “The main reason I got here so fast was so I could see the damage through my own eyes instead of somebody’s memory. I want to remember it when I go after Hannibal.”
“I should go after him,” said Gilroy softly, bitterly. He was a slender, dark-haired man with very pale skin. “I would go after him if he hadn’t already proved to me how little good that does.” His voice was full of self-disgust.
“People who abuse mutes are my responsibility,” said Jesse. “Because mutes are my responsibility. Hannibal is even a relative of mine. I’ll take care of him.”
Gilroy shrugged. “You gave her to me; he took her from me. You ordered him to send her back; he sent her back in pieces. Now you’ll punish him. What will that inspire him to do to her?”
“Nothing,” said Jesse. “I promise you. I’ve talked to Mary and Karl about him. This isn’t the first time he’s sliced somebody up. He’s still the animal he was when he was a latent.”
“That’s what’s bothering me. He’d think nothing of killing Arlene when you’re finished with him. I’m surprised he hasn’t killed her already. He knows I can’t stop him.”
“There’s no sense beating yourself with that, Gil. Except for the members of the First Family, nobody can stop him. He’s the strongest telepath we’ve ever brought through transition. And the first thing he did, once he was through, was to smash his way through the shielding of his second and nearly kill her. For no reason. He just discovered that he could do it, so he did it.”
“Somebody should have smashed him then and there.”
“That’s what Doro said. He claims he used to cull out people like Hannibal as soon as he spotted them.”
“Well, I hate to find myself agreeing with Doro, but”
“So do I. But he made us. He knows just how far wrong we can go. Hannibal is too strong for Rachel or her kids to help him. Especially since he doesn’t really want help. And he’s too dangerous for us to tolerate any longer.”
Gilroy’s eyes widened. “You are going to kill him, then?”
Jesse nodded. “That’s why I had to talk to Karl and Mary. We don’t like to give up on one of our own, but Hannibal is a Goddamn cancer.”
“You’re going to do it yourself?”
“As soon as I leave here.”
“With his strength … are you sure you can?”
“I’m First Family, Gil.”
“But still”
“Nobody who needed the Pattern to push him into transition can stand against one of usnot when we mean to kill.” Jesse shrugged. “Doro had to breed us to be strong enough to come through without being prodded. After all, when the time came for us, there was nobody who could prod us without killing us.” He stood up. “Look, contact me when that healer finishes with Arlene, will you? I just want to be sure she’s all right.”
Gilroy nodded, stood up. They walked to the door together and Jesse noticed that there were three Patternists in the living room. Two women and a man.
“Your house is growing,” he said to Gilroy. “How many now?”
“Five. Five Patternists.”
“The best of the people you’ve seconded, I’ll bet.”
Gilroy smiled, said nothing.
“You know,” said Jesse as they reached the door. “That Hannibal … he even looks like me. Reminds me a little of myself a couple of years ago. There, but for the grace of Doro, go I. Shit.”
JAN
Holding a smooth, rectangular block of wood between her hands, Jan Sholto closed her eyes and reached back in her disorderly memory. She reached back two years, to the creation of the Pattern. She had not only her own memories of that event but the memories of each of the original Patternists. They had unshielded and let her read them not that they could have stopped her by refusing to open. Mary wasn’t the only one who could read people through their shields. No one except Doro could come into physical contact with Jan without showing her some portion of his thoughts and memories. In this case, though, physical contact hadn’t been necessary. The others had shown their approval of what she was doing by cooperating with her. She was creating another learning blockassembling their memories into a work that would not only tell the new Patternists of their beginnings but show them.