Violet light flared, the orange eye flashed, and he felt her come over him, into him. For one incredible moment she let him share her awareness….
The mandala that had been Lenore floated like an angel over Michael, over streets of quaking red flesh, under stars that seemed black holes piercing night’s whiteness. At first she had felt fragile and alone, as if any breeze might destroy her; but she had begun to realize that she was invulnerable now, and her loneliness would pass. All human emotions had been released in her evisceration. She had shed care as daintily as she’d stepped free of marrow and muscle and bone. In place of these things, in the stead of passing sadness or flitting joy, she sensed the growth of a quiet majesty and the promise of stranger, more ancient concerns. Human passions were to be her toys now, and then her tools, but never again her masters. What she truly had to master, to harness, was the blind reckless hunger of the other mandalas. She had willed herself free of blindness; she must share this knowledge with them. She must bring them to a new and greater understanding of their nature, their potential.
Only one so young and naive could have possessed the ambition to change the thirty-seven, but she felt calm and resolved. She had launched herself among them for a purpose; she already had prevented one far blinder than herself from taking form. It would be awful to waste the opportunity she had seized, and she did not intend to do so. But it would take time, human ages, to understand the things of which she was capable and begin to work toward her goal.
In the meantime, she needed allies. She needed to keep touch with the physical world, to understand and remember it as she had when she was human.
Michael was the one familiar point among the tugging of a thousand needs, a million empty stomachs. She needed him— although not nearly as much as he needed her.
As she hovered there indecisively, the guardian of the woman standing next to Michael began to stir, finally noticing the vulnerable target so nearby. Now that the configuration had been restored, Michael was becoming visible to them once again. Lilith’s mandala was a wheel of gnarled, knotted blossoms peeling back to show poison barbs secreted inside. It began to spin toward Michael with ferocious possessiveness and a threat of violent lashing, as if to scare off the newborn mandala while she hesitated.
That threat quickened her decision. Better her than another. This was as good a place as any to take a stand against their reflexive evil.
She pulled herself over Michael protectively and felt herself swell as she absorbed him. She learned, then, that there were to be no clear rules and that human intentions were meaningless now. For as she took hold of Michael, she felt a fierce, miserly greed well up in her. Delicate violet edges hardened into curving razors.
He’s mine.
The thirty-seventh mandala prepared to fight for its catch.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marc Laidlaw lives in San Francisco. He is the author of four previous novels and numerous short stories. He will turn thirty-seven in the coming year.
Marc Laidlaw published his first short stories while still a teenager, and he has gone on to write four acclaimed novels: Kalifornia, The Orchid Eater, Dad’s Nuke, and Neon Lotus. He lives with his family in San Francisco.
Jacket design by Alan Dingman
Jacket painting by Ron Walotsky
ST. MARTIN’S PRESS
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
Distributed by McClelland & Stewart Inc. in Canada
ALSO BY MARC LAIDLAW
Dad’s Nuke
Neo Lotus
Kalifornia
The Orchid Eater
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE 37th MANDALA. Copyright © 1996 by Marc Laidlaw. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Interior art by Harry S. Robins.
Copyright © 1996 by Harry S. Robins.
Edited by Gordon Van Gelder
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Laidlaw, Marc.
The 37th Mandala / Marc Laidlaw.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-312-13021-X (hardcover)
1. Title.
PS3562.A333A615 1995
813’.54—dc20
95-15720
CIP
First edition: February 1996
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1