"Haleakala," he said, beaming. "The House of the Sun. Now that the false Maui is dead, the sun will return to the path that the true Maui taught it."
"When?" Jack said.
Ba had come up the slope and now stood at his side, looking at the night sky, then at the rumbling crater. He seemed tense.
"Tomorrow," the chief said. "Tomorrow, you will see."
"I hope so," Jack said. He turned to Ba. "But in case he's wrong, I think it's past time we headed back home."
Ba nodded. "Yes. We must hurry. I fear we might already be too late."
"Too late for what?"
A tortured look flickered across his features, all the more startling because of their usual waxy impenetrability.
"I don't know. I only know I must get back to the Missus."
"Okay, Big Guy. We're on our way." He turned toward Kolabati. "All we've got to do is load our lady friend in the Jeep and we're—"
Kolabati was gone.
Jack spun this way and that, searching the darkness. Not a sign of her. The Isuzu was still parked down the slope but no trace of Kolabati. He and Ba searched the entire area but all they found was Jack's shirt, lying on the lava where she had been standing. He pulled it on and hopped into the passenger seat of the car.
"She must have taken off on foot when we were listening to the old chief. You remember how to get back down the trail?"
Ba nodded and started the car.
They picked their way down the trail, Ba driving as quickly as he dared, while Jack scanned the road ahead in the headlights and as far to each side as he could see in the dark. Nothing. Nothing moving but the wind. As they wound down from the crest, the wind abated and the fish and seawater began to rain from the sky, narrowing vision even further. An occasional bug began to harass them.
Finally they came to the house. The lights were on and the generator was running, just as they'd been an hour ago. Jack leapt out and ran inside, stepping over a thrashing tuna and dodging bugs on the way. There weren't many around at the moment. Once inside he ran through the halls, shouting Kolabati's name. He didn't expect her to be here—how could she have beat them back on foot?—but he had to give it a shot, had to assure himself that he'd looked everywhere.
Uncertainty gnawed at him. What if he didn't find her? What if she was hiding from him? Had she lied? Had she had any intention at all of coming back to New York with him? Apparently not.
What a pathetic jerk I am.
He took the stairs to the upper floor, to the great room, but lurched to a stop when he heard the sound. Ahead, bleeding down the hall from the great room, a buzz, the unmistakable sound of over-sized diaphanous wings, hundreds of them, beating madly. Had they caught somebody—Bati perhaps? Were they in the midst of some sort of feeding frenzy?
He wanted to turn and run but forced himself to stand fast. Something about the buzzing…not wild and frenzied…calmer, smoother, almost…placid.
He stepped forward. He had to see what was going on in there. From back here he could see only the front end of the room. The lone lamp that still functioned gave off enough light for him to make out the details of the room. And what he saw sent his skin crawling.
Bugs…the great room was full of them, crowded with them. They obscured the walls, perched on the furniture, floated in the air. All kinds of bugs, from hovering chew wasps to drifting men-o'-war, and all facing the same direction, away from the smashed windows, toward the interior of the room. Jack's legs urged him to get the hell out of here, but he had to see what held them so spellbound.
Jack dropped to his knees and inched forward. The bugs remained oblivious to him. He stretched out on the bare floor and craned his neck around the edge of the entry way to bring the rest of the room into view.
More bugs. So tightly packed he could barely see through the thick of them. Then a gust of wind sluiced through the windows, undulating the hovering mass enough for Jack to catch a look at the center of the great room.
It was the sculpture, Moki's final work. The only object in the room on which the bugs had not perched. Its long, arching wooden spokes were bare for their entire length, from where they seemed to spring from the walls to their common center, the jagged, unwieldy aggregate of black and red lava fragments. The bugs hovered about it, every one of them faced toward its center like rapt churchgoers in silent benediction.
And the lava center…it pulsed with an unholy yellow light, slowly, as if in time with the beat of a massive, hidden heart.
A single glimpse and then Jack's view was obscured again. But that glimpse had been enough to break him out in a sweat and send him sliding back along the floor. Something about that sculpture, the way it glowed, the reverence of the bugs, the entire scene disturbed Jack on a level too deep to comprehend or understand. Something within him, not from his personal experience, but some sort of racial memory, a warning carved on his hindbrain or encoded in his genes, flooded him with circulating fear, leaving him unable to react in any way but flight.
And when he was far enough down the hall, he rose to his feet and ran out of the house to where Ba waited in the Isuzu.
"Drive, Ba!"
The Oriental pointed to the Jeep they'd driven from Kahului.
"Shouldn't we—?"
"Forget it. Let's get out of here! Now!"
Jack sat and shivered as Ba drove downhill through the downpour. He resented the fear crawling under his skin. He prided himself on his ability to govern his fear, channel it, use it. Now it was nearly out of control. He closed his eyes to the night, ignored the thump of fish bouncing off the hood and roof, took deep breaths, willing himself to be calm. By the time Ba had swerved through most of the downhill switchbacks, he was in control again. But his fingers still trembled on their own in the adrenalin aftermath.
The fear was slowly replaced by disappointment, and perhaps some depression. He'd failed. Kolabati had lied to him. Should he have expected any less? Me, of all people. He'd spent most of his life lying. He mentally kicked himself for believing she'd changed. But she'd been so convincing.
That's what you get for playing by the rules.
Maybe he and Ba simply should have tied up Moki and taken his necklace, then ripped Kolabati's from her throat and left her back there to die of old age in a few hours. Not that it hadn't occurred to him, yet everything within him balked at the plan. But maybe this hadn't been the time for ethical niceties. Too much at stake here.
Was there any use at all in going back to New York? Glaeken had sent him for two necklaces. He was returning with only one.
He set his jaw. Glaeken would have to find a way to make do with one necklace. He'd given it his best shot and had come up short.
He just hoped it wasn't too short.
When Ba hit the pavement above 377, he picked up speed. The wheels skidded on dead fish and clumps of wet seaweed.
"Easy, Ba," Jack said. "If we crack up, we may never get back to the plane, and then this whole trip will be for nothing. If it's not already."
"I must get back to the Missus. Quickly. She needs me."
Jack studied his grim, intent features in the dashboard glow. Ba was scared too. But not of bugs. Ba was scared for his adopted family. Why? Why now? What was happening back there?
WEDNESDAY
WNEW-FM
FREDDY: It's a minute after midnight. A little over nine hours till dawn.
JO: Yeah, you're almost halfway home. Hang in there.
MONROE, LONG ISLAND
Alan felt like a vampire.
Why not? He was living like one. Up all night, sleeping when he could during the day. Reminded him of his days as an intern. Many a time he'd gone thirty-six hours straight without a wink. But he was older now, and the stress of the nights—the insane paradiddles on the storm shutters, the incessant gnawing at the outer walls—carried over into the dwindling daytime, keeping his naps fitful and restless.