By the Sword rj-12 Read online

  Jack felt slightly numb. The only other people who knew about the rakoshi and the necklaces were the two most important people in his world—Gia and Vicky—plus two others: Abe and…

  "Did Kolabati send you?"

  "No. I wish I knew where she was. We may have need of her before long, but we have other concerns right now."

  " 'We'?"

  "Yes. We."

  Jack stared at Veilleur. "You're him, aren't you. You're the one Herta told me about. You're Glae—"

  The old man raised a hand. "I am Veilleur—Glenn Veilleur. That is the only name I answer to now. It is best it remains that way lest the other name is overheard."

  "Gotcha," Jack said, though he didn't.

  So this was Glaeken, the Ally's point man on Earth—or former point man, rather. Jack had thought he'd be more impressive—taller, younger.

  "We must speak of other things, Jack. Many things."

  There was an understatement. But where?

  Of course.

  "You like beer?"

  3

  "An interesting turn of phrase," Veilleur said, pointing.

  Jack glanced up at Julio's FREE BEER TOMORROW… sign over the bar. It had hung there so long, Jack no longer noticed it.

  "Yeah. Gets him in trouble sometimes with people who don't get it."

  They were each halfway through their first brew—a Yuengling lager for Jack, a Murphy's Stout for Veilleur. In the light now Jack could see that Veilleur's eyes were a bright, sparkling blue—almost as striking as Gia's—in odd contrast to his craggy olive skin. He watched him pour more of the dark brown liquid into his glass and hold it up for inspection.

  "All these years and I still don't understand why the bubbles sink instead of rise."

  Jack knew the answer—someone had explained the simple physics of the phenomenon to him once—but he didn't want to get into it now. No sidebars, no amusing anecdotes. Time to get to the point.

  Julio's was relatively quiet tonight, leaving Jack and the old guy with the rear section pretty much to themselves. An arrangement Jack preferred on most occasions, but especially tonight.

  Probably best to conduct discussions about the end of the world—or at least the end of life as anyone knew it—without an audience.

  He glanced around the bar with its regulars and its drop-ins, drinking, talking, laughing, posing, making moves, all blissfully unaware of the endless war raging around them.

  Jack envied them, wishing he could return to the days, a little over a year ago, when he had shared their ignorance, when he thought he was captain of his life, navigator of his destiny.

  No longer. No more coincidences, he'd been told. Instead of steering his own course, he was being pushed this way and that to serve the purposes of two vast, unimaginable, unknowable cosmic… what? Forces? Entities? Beings? If they had names, no one knew them. Nothing so simple as Good and Evil. More like neutral and inimical. Forces that humans in the know had dubbed the Ally and the Otherness—although Jack's dealings with the Ally had caused him only pain and loss. He'd learned he could trust it as an Ally only so far as his purposes were in tune with its agenda. If their purposes diverged, he'd be dropped like last week's Village Voice, or crushed like a fly against a cosmic windshield.

  The man on the far side of the table had answers Jack desperately needed.

  "So you're the one I'm supposed to replace."

  Veilleur shrugged. "Should the need arise, someone is going to replace me. You aren't the only candidate."

  "I'm not?" Dare he hope? "Could've fooled me."

  "You are a prime candidate—perhaps the prime candidate—but there are backups out there."

  "Swell. I sound like a replacement part."

  "In a very real sense you are. Don't think of yourself as anything more than a tool. You're not. But you became a tool that stood out among the other tools when you caused the death of the Twins."

  Jack closed his eyes, remembering the gaping hole in the Earth that had swallowed a house and a pair of very strange men.

  "I was only defending myself. It was them or me. I even tried to save them at the end."

  "But you were the proximate cause, and that shifted the mantle of heir apparent to you."

  "But I don't want it."

  "No sane man would. But only a certain type of man qualifies. He must have a sense of duty and honor and—"

  Jack snorted. "Considering my lifestyle, I think I'd have a permanent spot on the bottom of the list."

  "You may be what your society considers a career criminal, someone it would lock away if it knew you existed, but I gather you must be someone who does not easily turn his back on problems, and who finishes what he starts."

  "What do you mean, 'must be'?"

  Veilleur shrugged again. "Though I don't know you all that well, those are the qualities the Ally requires, so I must assume you possess them."

  Yeah, well, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. Navel gazing wasn't his thing. And even if it were, who had time?

  Jack leaned forward. "What's it like being the Ally's point man? Does it change you?"

  "You mean physically? Of course you're changed, but you feel the same as you ever did. The only difference is you stop aging. If you get sick, you beat the infection quicker than anyone else; if wounded, you heal faster."

  "Immortal." The word tasted bitter.

  Veilleur nodded. "So to speak. But not indestructible. You can die, but it takes a lot to kill you. An awful lot. But it's the living on and on that changes you. Watching your loved ones age and die while you stay fit, young, and vital." Flashes of infinite hurt danced in his eyes. "Friends, lovers, children, family after family dying while you live on. Watching their wonder turn to hurt as you stay young while they grow old, stay well as they sicken; the hurt turning to anger as you refuse to grow old with them; and sometimes the anger turns to hate as they come to view your agelessness as betrayal."

  He sighed and sipped his Murphy's in silence while Jack put himself in those immortal shoes… watching Gia age while he didn't… watching Vicky grow until she was physically his contemporary while her mother moved on through middle age and beyond… burying Gia… burying Vicky…

  The prospect made him ill.

  Veilleur broke the silence. "Maybe it is a betrayal of sorts not to tell them from the start that you'll go on and they won't, but I've tried it that way and it doesn't work. First off, your lover doesn't believe you, or perhaps concludes you're slightly daft and accepts that. Because in the heat of new passion, her lips may acknowledge what you've told her, but her heart and mind do not embrace the possibility of it being true… until bitter, sad experience confirms that it is." He shook his head. "Either way, it nearly always ends badly."

  Jack saw a bleak landscape stretching before him—possibly.

  "So that's what I've got to look forward to."

  "Not necessarily. If the Adversary has his way, you and I and the rest of humanity will have a very short future."

  "About a year or so, from what I've gathered."

  "Yes… next spring if all goes according to his plans. But that's only if his way is unimpeded. That's if we don't interfere with his plans."

  "But if Ra—"

  Veilleur held up a hand. "I assume you've been warned about saying his name."

  Jack nodded. "Seems weird but, yes, I've been warned."

  He'd been told on a number of occasions over the past year never to utter the name Rasalom, to refer to him instead as the Adversary. Rasalom allowed no one to call him by his name or even speak it—although he used anagrams of it for himself. Say the real thing and somehow he knew—and came looking for you.

  Jack had witnessed what happened when Rasalom caught up to someone who'd been using his name. Not pretty.

  "How old is this Adversary?"

  Veilleur pursed his lips. "It's hard to be sure, what with the fall and rise of civilizations, each keeping track of time in different ways. Counting from his first birth, he's a few y
ears older than I am—about fourteen, perhaps fifteen thousand years."

  Jack sat in stunned silence. He'd expected him to be old, but…

  "Wait… you said 'first' birth?"

  "Yes. He's hard to kill. I helped bring about his demise on our first meeting, but he didn't stay dead. I thought I had finished him for good—so had the Ally—on the eve of World War Two. In fact, the Ally was so sure he was gone it freed me and allowed me to start aging."

  "But wrong again."

  "Unfortunately, yes."

  "But the Twins—where did they come in?"

  "They were created to watch over things in the aftermath of the Adversary's supposed death and my return to mortality. The Adversary was gone, but the Otherness was very much alive, so they restarted the yeniçeri to—"

  "The yeniçeri…" Jack ran a hand across his face. "Oh, man. What a nightmare. Wish I'd never heard of them."

  "I'm sure the feeling is mutual. They answered to me until the fifteenth century when I locked the Adversary away—for good, I thought. After that, their numbers dwindled until the Twins resurrected them."

  Jack pounded a fist on the table—once.

  "And if the Twins were still around, they'd be taking care of business and I wouldn't be involved in any of this, and you and I wouldn't be having this conversation."

  He wanted to kick himself, but pushed back the regrets. If only was a futile game, and since he couldn't exactly call Peabody and Sherman and have them crank up the Wayback machine, he'd have to play the hand he'd drawn.

  "Take it two steps further backward: If a German army patrol hadn't breached a wall in the Adversary's prison, he'd still be there. Or just one step back: If the Adversary had died back in 1941, as thought, even the Twins would have been redundant. By a quirk of fate—and this I believe was a true coincidence—his essence found a home in a man of, shall we say, unique origins. But though he was undetectable, he was also trapped and powerless. Until that man fathered a child. Then he was able to move into that child—become that child."

  "When was this?"

  "Early in 1968."

  Jack did a quick calculation: He'd been born in January of 1969, which meant…

  "Early 1968? Hey, I was conceived in sixty-eight."

  "Not a coincidence. Once the Adversary merged with the fetus, the secret was out. Plans were set into motion. You were one of them."

  Jack leaned back and stared at the wall. "So I was part of this even before I was born."

  Some things he'd learned as a kid suddenly made sense.

  Veilleur nodded. "Perhaps I was too."

  "Why all this cloak-and-dagger crap? Why don't the Ally and the Otherness duke it out mano a mano—or cosmo a cosmo, or whatever they are?"

  "Because that's not how the game is played. And though it's a life-or-death struggle for us, to them it's something of a game."

  "And we're the pieces they move around."

  "Reluctant pieces in our case. Not so the Adversary. We're still fully human, but he's something else now. That's what happens when you align yourself with a power that is inimical to everything we consider good and decent and rational. He became the agent provocateur for the Otherness. He gains strength from all that is dark and hateful within humanity, feeding on human viciousness and depravity."

  "And he's gaining momentum, isn't he?"

  Veilleur leaned closer. "Why do you say that?"

  "I can feel it. Can't you?"

  He sighed. "Yes… yes, I can. The pieces of his endgame are falling into place, I fear. Some of them I can't identify, but I can feel when they fit together."

  "So where's the Ally? Why isn't it fitting its own pieces into place?"

  Veilleur paused a moment before speaking. "I can't say for sure, but my sense of it is that after I appeared to have ended the Adversary's existence, the Ally retreated in a way—downgraded its surveillance of our corner of reality. An infinitesimal speck of it is still watching, still acting, but in a limited capacity. I don't think it senses any imminent danger, so it's maintaining a state of readiness or preparedness and little more."

  "It should be making countermoves."

  "Against what? The Adversary is playing this very carefully, keeping his hand out of sight as he strengthens it. Part of the reason for that is me."

  "You? You've been riffed."

  "But he doesn't know that. He thinks I'm the same hale and hearty being who pierced his gut with a sword that sucked the life from him and spit it out. He has no idea that I'm an old man in a creaking body or that the sword is long gone. He fears if he tips his hand, I'll come looking for him, and this time he might not be so lucky."

  "Instead, you're hiding from him."

  He nodded. "Not so much for myself—I've lived longer than I ever wanted to, and quite frankly, I'm tired—but for my wife and the rest of you. If he learns the truth about me, he'll feel free to act openly, and he'll waste no time stealing our world from the Ally."

  "But how? Won't that set off cosmic alarm bells?"

  "So one would think. But he must have a way—or thinks he does. And something between now and next spring will trigger his plans." Veilleur's expression grew bleak. "The only thing I can think of is that he'll discover my weakened, mortal state."

  "Then you'd better stay damn well hidden. But maybe it's something else, something he's cooking up, something we can stop. Any idea what he's been doing behind the scenes?"

  "Well, the latest is this so-called Kicker movement and—"

  That pricked up Jack's ears. "Whoa. 'So-called' Kicker movement? Why do you say that?"

  "Because its leader has no idea what he has tapped into, nor what he might unleash."

  "Hank Thompson. I've met him. Definitely trouble. What has he tapped into?"

  Veilleur glanced at his watch. "A long story… one I've no time for tonight."

  "How long a story?"

  "It begins fifteen thousand or so years ago."

  Frustration clamped down on Jack's shoulders. "You can't waltz off and leave me with just that."

  "My time is not my own. I've a sick wife at home."

  "Give me some thing."

  He sighed. "Very well. It's courting disaster to concentrate so many Taints in such a relatively small area."

  " 'Taints'? What are you talking about?"

  "Taints is what we called them millennia ago, before the Taint in their blood became diluted enough that they were no longer a threat. Now their distant progeny are becoming aware of their Taint, and calling themselves Kickers."

  "Yeah. Idiotic name, but—"

  Veilleur shook his head. "Not so idiotic if you're aware of the story behind it, but that's part of the secret history of the world, so virtually no one knows it."

  Secret history of the world… jeez, did that ever ring a bell.

  "You're making me crazy." But something else he'd said had struck too close to home, sending a wave of uneasiness through Jack's gut. "This Taint in the blood…"

  "A contaminant from the Otherness."

  Just what Jack had suspected… and the last thing he wanted to hear.

  "Some folks have another name for it: oDNA."

  Veilleur frowned. "Never heard of it."

  "It's part of what's considered junk DNA, and if I may echo you: Virtually no one knows of it."

  "But you do?"

  "I was told by an expert." Dr. Aaron Levy had told him a lot—way more than he cared to know. "And I guess it's only right that I know, since I'm loaded with it."

  Veilleur gave Jack a long, cool stare, then said, "In a way, that makes a perverse sort of sense. The Ally is trading in the only Taint-free human on Earth for one who is heavily tainted. Maybe it thinks it can turn the Taint against its source."

  "There's only one Taint-free human, and you're it?"

  Veilleur nodded. "I predate the Taint. The Adversary would be untainted as well, but he was reborn into tainted flesh."

  That meant Gia carried this Taint. And Vicky.

/>   No.

  "Wait-wait. You said Thompson was courting disaster by concentrating so many Taints in such a small area. You mean Manhattan? Because if we're all Taints, then this town is about as concentrated as you're gonna get."

  Veilleur shook his head. "Simply carrying the Taint doesn't make you a Taint. You must carry enough to influence your behavior, enough to taint your relationship with the world around you."

  "So… the greater the Taint, the greater the… what? Potential for violence?"

  "The greater the potential for making this place more to the Adversary's liking, and pushing it closer to the Otherness."

  "Do you know for sure the Kickers are Taints?"

  He gave Jack a perplexed look. "I can smell them."

  "Then I must stink."

  "Oddly enough, you don't."

  A flash of hope. "Then maybe I don't—"

  A quick shake of Veilleur's head. "Oh, you do. It's just that somehow you've learned how to compartmentalize it—or perhaps you were born with that ability. That talent, or knack, or whatever it is, allows you to bottle up the brutish tendencies so common to Taints, and set them free when you need them."

  "Sometimes they set themselves free."

  Veilleur stared at him, nodding slowly. "I imagine they do. What's that like?"

  "Scary. And yet…"

  "An exhilarating high? A dark joy?"

  "Yeah. 'Dark joy' pretty much nails it."

  "Perhaps that ability to compartmentalize was why you were chosen."

  "But where's this Taint come from?"

  Another glance at his watch. "Too long a history lesson for now." He rose. "Thank you for the beer, but I must be going. See you here again soon."

  Jack wanted to shove him back into his chair and duct-tape him there till he'd told the whole story. Instead he settled for grabbing his arm.

  "Wait. So you think the Adversary's got a hand in this Kicker thing?"

  "The Adversary or the Otherness itself. That image—the Kicker Man—on the cover of his book and graffiti'd all over town makes me suspect the Otherness. This Thompson couldn't have discovered it on his own. It must have been implanted."