“Louise Connell? No. A very determined young lady, but her weapon is her intellect. Her friend Jack, on the other hand… the one you were interested in… he’s another story.”
“Yes,” the One said. “The Heir is quite another story.”
Ernst jolted in his seat. He had never been struck by lightning, but this must be how it felt.
“Jack is the Heir?”
The One nodded. “Heir Apparent.”
Now Ernst understood why the One had grilled him in such detail about his early experiences with Jack.
“I knew it!”
The singed remnants of the One’s eyebrows lifted. “Did you, now?”
Watch it! Be careful here. Fabricate as little as possible.
“Well, I didn’t know, exactly. But he visited me on Thursday night asking where he might find you.”
“Really. For what purpose?”
Ernst’s mouth was dry. “To kill you.”
The One leaned back. “Interesting. And what did you tell him?”
“The truth: I had no idea where you were. He threatened me but became convinced I didn’t know. In fact, I laughed in his face at the possibility that he could succeed in harming you.”
Obviously, not such a laughing matter. Jack, you impress me more and more. But still… you failed.
Which put Ernst firmly back in the One’s camp.
“He very nearly did. Why didn’t you subdue him?”
“I tried but he was waiting for me when I entered my apartment and had disabled all my defenses.” Time to stretch the truth. “But I did call Szeto-”
“Ah, yes. Szeto. Where is he?”
Yes… your beloved Szeto…
“Alerted by me, Szeto and two of his men captured Jack and brought him to a property the Order keeps on the West Side. Szeto wished to torture him for revenge, I wanted information from him-specifically, how he knew about you being the One. I had surmised he was involved with the Enemy but had no idea he was the Heir. When I got there, Szeto and his two men were dead and Jack was gone.”
The One considered this. “Szeto did not strike me as the careless sort.”
“Well, in this case he was. Perhaps because he was so full of rage at Jack for killing so many of his men, and for the brutal beating he had suffered at his hands just weeks ago.” Ernst could not resist a final dig. “Szeto was competent, but I learned from my dealings with him that he suffered from an exalted estimation of his own abilities. If he had done his job, Jack would not have been around to attack you.”
The One appeared to mull this. “Still, he proved useful on a number of fronts. I shall miss Szeto.”
All but choking on the words, Ernst said, “We all will.”
Another protracted silence, and then the One said, “Drive me to the city. And as we travel, I want you to call the Council and tell them to send someone over to the Connell woman’s apartment-that is, if the Heir has left any to send.”
“We still have a few.”
“Tell them I want to know if she is there. If she is not, I want them to search her apartment for the Compendium of Srem.”
Another jolt, albeit of much lower voltage. Louise Connell had the Compendium?
“Yes, sir. And if they find it?”
“If it is there, do not touch it. If it is not, they are to leave her apartment exactly as they found it and report back to you.”
“As you wish,” Ernst said and reached for the phone.
“And while that is under way, tell the Council to send some of the local members of that Johnson, New Jersey, Lodge over to the building to see what is going on. I want a report as soon as possible.”
The Johnson Lodge? What could interest the One there?
“Right away. May I ask-?”
“You may not.”
The One leaned back and closed his eyes. The hideous injuries aside, he looked haggard, exhausted. Ernst had never dreamed anything like this could happen. And yet it had.
He wondered what that ancient twisted mind was planning.
Of one thing he was certain… Ernst was quite glad he was not Jack.
5
Jack hacked away at the last layer of dirt packed around the gleaming black sigil where it leaned against the wall. Neither time, the flood, nor the encasing dirt had dulled its onyx finish.
Since the sigil measured a half dozen feet across, they’d decided to excavate a narrow passage in front of it, free it from the dirt, and drag it out. The passage allowed room for only one, so the three of them rotated between digging and hauling away the loosened earth.
Behind him, Eddie said, “Careful. Don’t break it.”
Jack bit back a retort that might have come out sharper than intended. Eddie had morphed into a pest. Yes, Jack understood that the Lodge creeped him out and he wanted the place in his rearview mirror ASAP, but he was beginning to micromanage. Maybe that expanded his comfort zone, but it set Jack’s teeth on edge. Having dirt in his hair, his eyes, and down the back of his shirt didn’t help.
So he said, “Not to worry, Fredo.”
“Frodo?” he heard Eddie say to Weezy. “Why’s he calling me Frodo?”
“I said ‘Fredo,’” Jack called back. “And I’m getting in the mood to take you out on the lake for a little fishing.”
“Fishing? What’s he talking about?”
Jack heard Weezy laughing farther behind. “Never mind. And as for the stuff that sigil is made of, you can’t even scratch it.”
“Nice sentence structure,” Jack said.
She laughed again. “Oh, now you’re getting on me?”
“No,” he said as the last bit of dirt fell away from the top point of the sigil. “Now I’m getting this thing out of here. Eddie, give me a hand and we’ll see if we can shake it free.”
Eddie slipped in beside him. Together they both got two-handed grips on the spokes of the sigil and began rocking it back and forth. Dirt rained on them as it became looser and looser.
“What is this thing made of?” Eddie said as they increased their efforts.
“Don’t know… but it looks like the same stuff as our little pyramid back in the day, and that was virtually indestructible.”
“It’s called tenathic,” Weezy said.
“Since when?”
“Since I read about it in the Compendium.”
He remembered Professor Nakamura telling him and Weezy that the folks at U of P hadn’t been able to identify the pyramid’s shiny black compound, mainly because they hadn’t been able to chip off a sample. Now he had a name for it: tenathic.
Finally it came free.
“Yeah!” Eddie shouted. “Yeah!”
“Okay. Let’s try to roll it out of here.”
They put their shoulders against the spokes, and Weezy pitched in by pulling on the free side, but the remaining section of the perimeter was jammed. Jack stepped up on one of the crosspieces and grabbed the perimeter. He could only vaguely make out the glyphs carved into the surface, but he could feel them against his palms. Something strange about them… something not right, but he couldn’t say just what.
Well, right or not right, it needed freeing up, so he tightened his grip and threw his weight backward-once… twice…
It loosened up on the third try. He dropped back to the floor and put his shoulder against the sigil. The three of them resumed their effort to roll it.
“Watch out for that point,” Jack told Weezy. “If this thing starts to move, it could-”
It moved and a point angled toward Weezy but she danced out of the way. Another couple of turns and it sat free in the passage. Dusting the dirt out of his hair, Jack stepped back with the others and stared at it.
Weezy said, “That has to be his Other name. Don’t you think? Can it be anything else?”
Jack looked at her eager face. “It had better be. It’s all we have.”
After they’d discovered the sigil this morning, Weezy had brought her backpack down. As she stepped over to where she’d tied it to the ladder, Jack leaned in for a closer look. He couldn’t say why it had felt so strange. But he recognized the glyphs.