Suddenly the sea appeared before them, fog pouring in through the mouth of a channel. It was magnificent in any world, but to Lenore’s eyes the fusion of dimensions rendered it almost unbearably beautiful. They drove along a narrow road, crawling past violet lawns, through trees of thorn and ivory. Layers of distant hills rose on the far side of a channel; the terrestrial sun glared through momentarily, scorching the fog. Then, taking the star’s place, a stark orange orb like a blind eye peered through, dripping a tainted manna, striking at the stunted trees and blighting the foliage, turning the landscape into a desert where only things of scale and metal could possibly survive.
Creaking, he turned to face her. His eyes were gone. When he moved his jaws, she hardly heard a thing. She shrank from the warring mandalas that writhed and gnashed the air above their heads. She had to stop it somehow, before Michael was hurt. She felt no fear for herself, but he was weak.
Suddenly something in the car gave way. There was a raw clanking somewhere underneath them.
“Fucking Crowe’s fucking paper clip!” said the Michael-thing. He pulled the car off the road, driving through brush. He yanked his door open and stumbled out, gesticulating at the car with emotions she couldn’t grasp. She joined him in a small glade of broken glass and rubbish, just out of sight of the road.
How close they were to the sea! Here the cliffs came up abruptly. She lost herself in the sight of the horizon smothered in coppery mist. In the mouth of the bay, she saw the coiling struggles of huge metallic creatures spouting bloody foam. Great bells rang, deep voices echoing between the cliffs of the channel. A bridge ran over the water, a frail piece of orange metal stretched out to an implausible thinness, with specks of life crawling over it. Cars or insects, or a fusion of both.
The Michael-thing moved first toward the car, then toward her, then back to the car. It leaned into the car and began pushing the vehicle across a stretch of din. The car rolled, gathering speed, crashing through branches, juddering past her. She watched in joyous release as it flew from the edge of the cliff and toppled out of sight. The sound of its crash was ecstacy.
The Michael-thing stood watching where the car had gone. It swayed like a heap of metal about to topple. She didn’t want to touch the thing but it twitched toward her, lifting splintered fingers in supplication or farewell. She realized that it was about to grasp her in a mockery of affection, sinking its corroded grips into her flesh. The thought was more than she could bear. She spun aside, barely eluding it. Her mandala dipped between them, and she felt a moment’s human sadness, for the husband-thing could not last much longer. It had served its purpose in bringing her to Derek Crowe. Nothing it did from now on had any meaning whatsoever. Its life was over. It had passed from significance. Nothing of Michael was left in it now; she could hardly remember the affection she might have felt.
Her mandala flew in furious motion, blurring like a black wheel of razors. It sliced into the amorphous mass of the husband-thing’s guardian, cutting it open like a seed pod full of tiny rose-colored beads. The specks of life went flying, scattered like jewels from a broken necklace, spraying down the cliffs toward the sea, some floating aimlessly into the sky.
And then the Michael-thing, the husband-thing, disappeared. It didn’t run away or cast itself over the cliff; it simply ceased to be. Lenore forgot it had ever existed. She didn’t question how she had come to this place, for that was irrelevant now. She had somewhere to go, and her mandala would get her there.
33
“So,” Lilith said, latching the door, turning to face Derek in the narrow hall lined with boxes. “You had to come in here today of all days. You know half the people out there are getting ready for that Club Mandala bash tonight? You’re their dream come true, walking in here like that.”
“Lilith, I—” Derek was breathless, practically in shock. He had never been mobbed before. “I only came to ask you a favor—”
“I don’t hear from you for days, and then you show up like this? You’re starting a riot.”
“I didn’t know this would happen. How could I?”
“If you wanted to talk to me, you should have called me at home. In private. This isn’t the place for a discussion. You’re making everything worse, as if it weren’t bad enough already. And what about this thing in North Carolina?”
“What thing?” he said.
“This ritual sacrifice. Which of your fans is responsible for that?”
“What are you talking about?”
She looked at him in cool disbelief. “I can’t believe you haven’t heard. It’s not exactly in the headlines, but they’re all buzzing about it.” She pointed down the hall. The store was loud with whistling and disappointed cries. “Weren’t you just out in North Carolina?”
“Of course,” he said.
“There was a murder there—a double murder actually. I’m surprised you haven’t been questioned about it. Someone painted a nice big mandala on the wall in the victims’ blood.”
Derek went cold, thinking of Chhith/Huon, the ritual murders around Phnom Penh. But Chhith wasn’t in North Carolina; and the Renzlers had just come from there, crossed the country so quickly that they might have been in flight.
“Do they know who did it?” he said.
“Some crazed couple, supposedly. But they can’t find them.”
“A couple,” he murmured.
“Now what?” she said. “Derek, where are you going?”
He didn’t know himself. He couldn’t go out the front door, and what good would it do to escape out the back? The Renzlers already knew where he lived. What he ought to do was find out exactly what the story was with this sacrifice, and then—what? Call the police? If he didn’t turn them in, he’d come off looking like another Charles Manson. He’d stopped into Cinderton for one night’s lecture, accepted a ride to the airport, and somehow brainwashed his fans into murder. He’d spent a good deal of time with them, time unaccounted for on that dark road. They’d be painted as zombies, his witless slaves, and he the mandala master. Of course, he’d have an alibi, wouldn’t he? Their friend had come to fix the broken car….
He mustn’t let it get to that point. This was time for extreme damage control.
“I need your help,” he said.
“I told you before, I can’t get sucked into this. I’ve tried telling those people out there I’m not Ms. A, that we didn’t meet till after you wrote your book. But it’s futile. They want to believe in me.”
“Lilith, please, I know this is all fucked up, but I need help! I may be in trouble. Real trouble.”
“You just figured that out?”
“Would you take a look out there? There are two people, they came in with me, a young guy and a girl, a girl with hair that’s sort of henna black and red. They’re both in black leather, punk types.”
“They came in with you? I don’t believe it.”
“Just look, all right?”
She went to the door, opened it a bit, and peered out. It had greatly quieted in the shop. “I don’t see anyone like that,” she said after a minute.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
They’ve run off again, Derek thought. They must have thought I was on to them. Or else they just panicked in the crowd, like I did.
Lilith shut the door again. “Who are they?”
“Just…” Should he tell her, the way things stood between them? No. Not yet. “Just some people who’ve been following me around.”