THOMAS STARED at the man he now knew had masterminded the virus. A thick Frenchman with fat fingers and greasy black hair who looked like he could stand in the face of a hurricane without batting an eye.
This was Armand Fortier.
They had been sedated, Monique told him. Within an hour of him passing out, they’d both been given shots. Men were dismantling the laboratory. They were going to be moved; she got that much from one of them. But to where she didn’t know.
Then she’d passed out. Neither of them knew how much time had passed since then.
They’d awakened here, in this windowless stone room with a pool table and a fireplace. They were both handcuffed with impossibly tight cuffs, seated in wooden chairs, facing the Frenchman and, behind him, Carlos. Monique was still dressed in her pale blue slacks and blouse, and Thomas still wore the camouflaged jumpsuit.
Thomas had tried to deduce their possible location, but he had no memory of being moved, and there was nothing in this room that couldn’t be found anywhere in the world. For all he knew they’d been out for two days. If he was right, the reason he’d dreamed at all was because he hadn’t been drugged for that first hour after Carlos had tortured him.
That first hour, he’d dreamed of the inquiry where he’d fought Justin and discovered that Martyn was Johan . . .
“Just so you know, the Americans did try to rescue you,” Fortier said. He seemed to find the fact interesting. “And I know from a very reliable source that they were after more than the antivirus. They want you. Everybody seems to want Thomas Hunter and Monique de Raison.”
His eyes moved to Monique. “You have this solution in your head. You’d think I would just kill you and eliminate the risk of them finding you. Fortunately for you, I have reasons to keep you alive.”
His eyes shifted back to Thomas. “You, on the other hand, are an enigma. You know things you should not. You gave us the Raison Strain, and then you inadvertently gave us the antivirus, both sides of this most useful weapon. But it doesn’t stop there. You continue to know things. Where we are. What we will do next, perhaps. What should I do with you?”
Thomas’s mind returned to the dream of Justin’s challenge.
Johan. The man who’d led the Horde against them so effectively had been Johan. And Johan had a scar on his cheek. Thomas had watched the duo walk into the woods to broker peace with Qurong, a peace that was somehow entwined with betrayal.
The crowd had erupted in fierce debate. Thomas had returned to his Guard, and the Council had joined them to berate his decision to give Johan safe passage from the forest. But how could he kill Johan? And hadn’t Justin won the inquiry? They had no right to undermine him now.
The festivities that night had been more dissension than celebration— a strange mix of exuberance by those who believed that Justin was indeed destined to deliver them from the Horde with this peace of his, and animosity by those who argued vehemently against any such treasonous betrayal of Elyon.
Thomas had finally collapsed into a fitful sleep.
“What are you thinking?” Fortier asked.
Thomas focused on the thick Frenchman. He had no doubt that this man would succeed with his virus. The Books of Histories said he would. And, as it was turning out, changing history wasn’t as easy as he’d once hoped. Impossible, maybe. All of this—his discovery of the virus in the first place, his attempts to derail Svensson, and now this encounter with Fortier—might very well be written in the Books of Histories. Imagine that: Thomas Hunter’s attempt to rescue Monique de Raison at Cyclops failed when the transport he was flying in was shot down . . . If he’d been successful in retrieving the Books from Qurong’s tent, he could have read the details of his own life! But it seemed that the path of history was continuing exactly as it had been recorded, and he knew its final destination if not the precise course it would take.
The question now was when. When would they finally kill him? When would Monique die? When would the antivirus actually be released to the chosen few? When would the rest die their hideous diseased death?
“They searched for you with nearly a hundred aircraft loaded with enough electronic equipment to power Paris for a week,” Fortier was saying. “It was quite a spectacle, not all at once or to one region, of course. In circles and to airports throughout the South Pacific. They blocked the air-traffic routes between Indonesia and France. To be quite honest, we barely made it out.”
His lips twisted in a small grin. “We wouldn’t have if I hadn’t foreseen exactly this possibility. You see, you’re not the only one who can see the future. Oh, your sight might be different from mine based on this . . . this gift rather than solid deductive reasoning, but I can promise you that I have seen the future, and I like what I see. Do you?”
“No,” Thomas said. “I don’t.”
“Very good. You still have your voice. And you’re honest, which is more than I can say for myself.”
He turned away.
“I need to know something, Thomas. I know that you know the answer, because I have ears inside your government. I know the president has no intention of actually delivering the weapons that are just now entering the Atlantic. What I don’t know is how far the president will carry his bluff. I need to know when to take the appropriate action. We are now fully prepared for a nuclear exchange, you must know. Knowing if and when they might attack would be helpful.”
“He won’t fire nuclear weapons,” Thomas said.
“No? Maybe you don’t know your president as well as I do. We anticipate it. Any knowledge you give me won’t change the outcome of this chess match; it will only determine how many people must die to facilitate that outcome.”
Fortier glanced at his watch. “We are going public in France in three days. Over a hundred less-progressive members of the government will meet untimely ends between now and then. A Chinese delegation is waiting for a meeting with President Gaetan in his office, and I’ve been asked to join them. Evidently news of the altercations with you in Indonesia have leaked and are causing a stir. The Australians are threatening to go public and must be calmed. One of our own commanders is asking the wrong questions. I am a busy man, Thomas. I have to leave. We’ll talk again tomorrow. I hope your memory serves you better then.”
He regarded Monique, dipped his head barely, and left the room.
Thomas’s mind spun with the details that the Frenchman had just given him. The world was indeed rushing to its well-known end. While he was off dreaming about the Gathering and how it could possibly be that the great general Martyn was really Johan, complete with scarred—
Thomas stopped. He stared at Carlos, who had crossed the room and opened a door that led into darkness.
He turned in profile to Thomas. The scar. Right cheek. Curved like a half moon, exactly as he remembered Johan’s.
“Let’s go,” the man said. “Don’t make me drag you.”
No, Carlos wouldn’t want to drag them. It would mean getting too close—an opportunity for Thomas to do something. The man knew to play things safe.
But none of this interested Thomas at the moment.
The scar.
What if Rachelle was right about how the realities worked? Thomas might be the only true gateway between the realities, but if someone was aware of both realities, then both realities had potential to affect that person. For instance, now that Rachelle believed in both realities, if Monique was cut, Rachelle would also wake up with a cut. And if Monique was killed, Rachelle would also die. Would Monique die if Rachelle did? Thomas hadn’t convinced Monique to believe yet. Nor had Monique ever come into contact with Thomas’s blood.
The link between the realities was belief? Or Thomas’s blood?
Perhaps both. It did make a strange kind of sense. Life and blood and skills and knowledge were all transferable between realities—he’d already experienced that much. Proven it. But why?
Belief.
If someone with even the slightest belief came into contact with Thomas’s blood, then their belief would be enough to connect them to his reality with him. It would explain everything! And it wouldn’t require that Rachelle and Monique be one and the same.
It was as good a working theory as he’d come up with yet.
“Now. Please,” Carlos said, indicating the room.
There was still a hole in his theory. Primarily, why he was Thomas in both realities, why he didn’t share this experience with someone else.
Thomas stood. “I have something to say,” he said. “Can you get the Frenchman?”
Carlos studied him. “You’ll have to wait.”
“What I have to say he will want to hear before he meets with the Chinese.”
“Then tell me.”
“It has to do with how I knew where you were keeping Monique. You knew I’d come, didn’t you?” Thomas walked forward a few paces and stopped ten feet from the man. Behind him, Monique kept her seat.
“You could have tracked me down in Washington, but you chose to go to Indonesia and wait for me there, because you knew that I would know,” Thomas continued. “Am I right?”
“What does this have to do with the Chinese?”
“Actually, it’s not tied directly to the Chinese per se. I just said he should know this before he meets with them.”
“And this is?”
“That I am going to escape before he meets with them.”
Thomas didn’t have any such knowledge, but he needed the man’s full attention, and this was the first step.
“Then it would have been a wasted call,” Carlos said. “I have no intention of letting you escape. This isn’t a useful discussion.”
“I didn’t say you were going to let us escape. But our escape will involve you. I know this because you’re not like them. You’re a deeply religious man who follows the will of Allah, and I know you well. Much better than you think I might. We’ve met before.”
Carlos shifted. “If you know me so well, then you know that I’m not easily swayed by a fool who speaks in riddles.”
“No, you aren’t. But you have been swayed. Deceived. I know that without a doubt. Do you think that Svensson and Fortier have any intention of allowing Islam to thrive after they gain power? Religion is their enemy. They may set up their own, they may even call it Islam, but it won’t be the Islam you know. One of the first to die will be you. You know too much. You’re much too powerful. You are the worst kind of enemy—they know that. You must as well.”
He didn’t respond.
“You’re not curious as to how we met before?” Thomas asked.
“We haven’t.”
“You don’t have the memory of it yet. We’ve met in the other reality. The one with the Books of Histories. There your name is Johan, and you are the brother of my wife. You’re also a great general who has caused me and my Forest Guard more than our share of grief.”
Carlos apparently found neither humor nor persuasion in the claim. “The only reason you’re alive is because of your witchcraft,” he said. “If you cross me again, I will kill you. I see that you’re not healing so well these days.” He glanced at the bruises and cuts the handcuffs had worn into Thomas’s wrists. “I think you will die easily enough. Give me a reason and I will test the theory now.”
“My gift is from witchcraft? Or because I’m a servant of El—of God? I’ll admit, I haven’t followed him in this reality, but I really haven’t had a chance, and that’s changing. Listen to yourself. You’re marked for death because of your belief in the one you call God! You serve two demons who kill for their own gain. You think they will let you live?”
He blinked.
“What if I could prove it to you? Brother.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“But you do believe that I know things I shouldn’t,” Thomas said. “That’s why you waited for me in Indonesia. You knew I would show up. I say that you too believe in a reality where there’s more than meets the eye.”
Thomas could see the light in his eyes. As a Muslim, such a belief would be natural to him.
Carlos was tempted to shoot the man then. If Svensson and Fortier weren’t so taken by Hunter’s strange gift, he would defy them and kill the man here.
“Your name is Johan and we are destined to be brothers,” Thomas said.
His mind ached with this nonsensical revelation. Who’d ever heard of such nonsense?
His mother had. She was a practicing Sufi mystic.
The Prophet, Mohammed, had.
Hunter might be misinterpreting his visions, but he might very well have seen others in his dreams. Maybe even him. Carlos. The man’s claims enraged him.
On the other hand, Thomas was smart enough to try something exactly like this to distract him. Handcuffed, the man hardly had a prayer of reaching him, much less escaping from him. But Carlos wouldn’t underestimate him.
“I’ll consider what you’ve said. Now if you will please—”
“Then I’ll prove it,” Thomas said. “I’ll cut Johan on the neck without touching you.”
The words triggered an alarm in Carlos. Heat spread down his neck.
“Do you believe I can do that? Do you believe that if I’m healed in the other reality, I will be healed in this one? Or that if I die there, I will die here? Do you remember shooting me, Carlos? Still, I’m alive. You live in the other reality with me too, and I’ve just had a confrontation with you at the Gathering. I cut your neck with my sword.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Stop this at once!” But Carlos’s mind reared with fear. He had heard the mystics speak like this. The Christians. He’d heard some claim belief that if a man would only open his eyes he could see another world. And a small part of him did believe. Always had.
“Do you believe, Carlos? Of course you do. You always have.”
At first, Carlos mistook the sensation in his neck for the rage that filled his veins. But his neck was burning. His flesh was stinging as if it had been cut. It couldn’t possibly be true, yet he knew that it was.
He lifted his left hand to his neck.
Thomas watched with surprise as the skin on Carlos’s neck suddenly began to bleed, precisely as it would if he’d just taken a blade to it.
He hadn’t just cut Carlos. But enough of Carlos believed his story about Johan to cause the rift in the realities. One of these two worlds might be a dream, but at the moment it didn’t matter. At the moment Carlos was bleeding because Johan was still bleeding!
The man lifted his hand to his neck, felt the small wound, pulled his fingers away bloody. His eyes stared in confounded fascination.
Thomas moved then. Two steps and he left the ground. His foot struck Carlos before the man could tear his eyes free from his hand.
The man hadn’t even braced for the impact. He crumbled like a chain that had been cut from the ceiling.
Thomas landed on both feet and spun around. Monique was staring, stunned by the developments. Then she was running for him.
“Quick! He has the keys in his right pocket!” Her words piled on top of each other. “I saw them; he has them in his pocket!”
Thomas squatted by the man and felt behind him for the pocket, dug the keys out, and stood. “Back up to me. Hurry!”
They freed themselves in a matter of seconds. Monique’s wrists were bleeding because of the cuffs as well. She ignored the cuts. “Now what?”
“You’re okay?”
“I’m free; that’s better than I’ve been for two weeks.”
“Okay, stay close,” Thomas said.
She was staring at Carlos, who lay unconscious, bleeding from a slight wound on his neck. “What just happened?”
“Later. Hurry.”
The hallway was empty. They ran to the staircase at the end and were about to climb when Thomas changed his mind. Sunlight poured through a three-foot window directly ahead and above. The latch was unlocked.
He redirected her toward it, pulled himself up, opened the window, and swung into the window well outside. He glanced over the top, saw no guard, and turned back for Monique.
“Jump. I’ll pull you up,” he whispered.
She caught his hand and he plucked her easily from the floor, wincing with the thought of the pain she must feel in her torn wrists. She struggled a bit to get her knees up on the ledge, but soon they crouched in the window well, window firmly closed behind them. Less than three minutes had passed since Carlos hit the floor.
Monique poked her head up for a look. “We’re in the country,” she whispered. “A farm.”
Thomas saw several large barns and a driveway that disappeared into the forest. This building was covered by old stonework. The sun was already dipping toward the western horizon.
Carlos would wake up soon. They had to put some distance between them and this farm.
“Okay. We go straight for the forest.” Thomas studied the closest trees. “Once we run, we don’t stop. Can you do that?”
“I can run.”
He glanced around one last time. Clear.
Thomas leaped from the window well, pulled Monique up, and ran for the forest, making sure she stayed close. The crunch of twigs and dried leaves welcomed them into the protective trees.
Thomas glanced back. No alarm. Not yet.
Mike Orear guided Theresa Sumner by the arm toward the CDC parking lot. She’d ignored his phone calls for the last twenty-four hours, presumably because she was out of town. But by the looks of the bags under her eyes, he wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she’d been holed up here, working on the virus.
He’d driven out to her house last night. No luck. It was eight the next morning before he’d finally driven here.
“Mike, you’ve made your point. And the answer is no. You can’t go public. Not yet.” She pulled her arm away.
“Twenty-four hours, Theresa. This isn’t about you and me anymore. I made a promise, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. You tell whoever needs to know that they have twenty-four hours to come clean, or I’m putting the story on the air.”
She reached her white SUV and pulled up, face brave but dog tired. “Then you might as well join the terrorists, because you’ll hurt as many people as they will.”
“Don’t be naive. Are you telling me that if I don’t run the story, more people will live?”
She didn’t answer. Of course not, the answer was no, because if the virus was real, they were all dead anyway. And this virus was as real as she’d said. Real as milk or bread or gasoline. He’d gone from incredulity to a state of constant horror over this impending sickness that was growing in his body at this very moment.
“Which means that you’re not making any progress,” he said. He turned away. “Great. All the more reason to break this open.”
“Are you glad that you know?” she asked. “Has the quality of your life improved because I dragged you into this?”
The last five days had been a living hell. He looked away.
“Exactly,” she said. “You want to draw the rest of the world into the same kind of miserable knowledge? You think it’ll help us deal with the problem? You think it’ll bring us one minute closer to an antivirus or a vaccine? Not a chance. If anything, it slows us down. We’ll be dealing with a whole new set of problems.”
“You can’t just not tell people that they’re going to die. I don’t care how much you want to protect them; it’s their lives we’re talking about. The president is still holding firm on all this?”
She crossed her arms and sighed. “His advisers are split. But I promise you, the moment the people know, this country shuts down. What am I supposed to do if I can’t get a line out to the labs in Europe? Thought about that? Why would the employees at AT&T go to work if they knew they only had thirteen days to live?”
“Because there’s a chance we’ll all live if they keep the lines open, that’s why.”
“That would be a lie. You’d just be replacing one lie for another,” she said.
“What? Now there’s no chance we can survive this?”
“Not that I see. We have thirteen days, Mike. The closer we look at this thing, the more we realize what a monster it really is.”
“I can’t accept that. Someone has to be making progress somewhere. This is the twenty-first century, not the Middle Ages.”
“Well, it just so happens that DNA is no respecter of centuries. We’re all just groping around in the dark.”
“You know the word will get out soon anyway. I’m surprised the rest of the press hasn’t pieced this together already.”
She took a deep breath. “It’s only been a week. Patterns take time to recognize unless you know what you’re looking for. The military knows what to look for, but they’ve been told what to expect under various cover stories.”
“But for how long? This is insane!”
“Of course it’s insane! The whole thing is insane!”
He put his hand on the hood of her Durango. Cold. She’d been here for a while. Maybe all night. Or longer.
“Our story about the quarantined island south of Java is starting to fall apart,” she said. “A number of people made it off the island before they shut it down. The press over there is wondering how far it’s spread. So are half the labs working with us.”
“My point exactly. There’s no way they can hold this in. We should have every lab in the world working around the clock on this—”
“We do have practically every lab in the world working around the clock on this!”
“We should have the whole military out, looking for these terrorists—”
“They’ve got every intelligence agency with anything to offer on it already. But please, these guys have the antivirus—we can’t just send a tomahawk cruise missile after them.”
“We know where they are?”
She didn’t answer, which meant she either did know or had a very good idea.
“It’s France, isn’t it?”
No answer.
“Finally, an excuse to nuke France.”
“I think there may be some takers.”
“Surely not the government proper.”
“No. I don’t know anything else, Mike.” She held up a hand. “No more. I’m wasting time out here.” She started back.
“People need to make things right,” he said. “With their children. With God. Twenty-four hours, Theresa. I won’t implicate you.”
She looked back at him. “Do whatever you have to do, Mike. Just think long and hard before you do it.”
“Where are we going?” Monique panted.
Thomas scanned the meadow that lay ahead of them. Beyond it, a hazy horizon. “Away from Carlos. Do you have any idea where we are?”
“I would say up north. Maybe outside of Paris.”
“The Sûreté will be scouring the country for us as soon as Carlos sends word,” he said. “We have to get to a phone that has service to the United States. The airports will be too dangerous. What about the English Channel?”
“If we could find a way to the Channel without being tracked down. Why not Paris?”
She was French and would pass easily. He might stand out.
“You know Paris well?”
“Well enough to get lost in the crowd.”
“We have three days before they go public. When that happens, they’ll have to declare martial law. Public transportation may be shut down. We have to get you out of the country before then.”
“Then Paris is our best bet. I would say it lies to the west.”
“Why?”
“The horizon isn’t as clear to the west. Smog.”
He considered her reasoning. “Okay, west.”
They ran west for nearly two hours before the sun began to dip past the western horizon. They’d encountered several farm buildings, which they skirted after a quick look, but still no paved roads. The problem with using a farm phone was that the Sûreté would undoubtedly track any overseas calls originating from this part of the country, a simple task when there couldn’t be more than a few hundred in a hundred square miles out here. A pay phone in a place frequented by tourists would be much safer.
The problem with finding such a place was simply that Thomas and Monique were running blind. Not only were they losing light, but they still weren’t sure where they were.
They ran on, torn between taking the time to find the right direction and keeping distance between them and any pursuit Carlos gave. Twice Thomas cut back on their own path, struck out due south for several hundred yards, and then continued west again.
Thomas’s mind grappled with other issues as they ran. The wound he’d inflicted on Carlos’s neck. He had been right: Knowledge and belief of the realities opened a link between them. Not a gateway, mind you—neither Carlos nor Johan had awakened as the other. Not that he knew of, anyway. But some kind of cause-and-effect relationship had been triggered between them. Those who believed in both realities saw the transferable effects in both realities. Blood, knowledge, skills.
You bleed in one; you bleed in the other.
Surely Monique would believe after seeing what had happened to Carlos. With Thomas’s prompting, she would likely believe that she was connected to Rachelle. But was this a good thing?
And if he killed Johan, would Carlos die here? Perhaps.
Allowing Johan to live had been the right decision; he was sure of it. Now that he knew the link with Carlos, he would have to reconsider. But how could he kill Rachelle’s brother?
And there was another matter that bothered him, something he was having difficulty placing. His memory had been clouded with these dreams, and he couldn’t quite say why, but there was a problem with Justin of Southern.
The warrior had defeated him soundly and revealed his intentions of brokering a peace, while the Horde was plotting their final defeat. Mikil had sent out two groups of scouts, but none had yet reported any grave threat. Thomas had reinforced the Guard on each side of the forest, but otherwise he could do nothing except wait while Justin—
He pulled up.
Monique stopped. “What?”
“Nothing.” He ran on.
But there was something. There were Qurong’s words—the ones he’d overheard in the Horde camp. He could hear them now.
“I tell you, the brilliance of the plan is in its boldness,” Qurong had said. “They may suspect, but with our forces at their doorstep, they will be forced to believe. We’ll speak about peace and they will listen because they must. By the time we work the betrayal with him, it will be too late.”
By the time we work the betrayal with him, it will be too late.
Who was “him”? When Thomas learned he hadn’t killed Martyn— that the man Qurong had been speaking to wasn’t Martyn—he’d assumed that “him” had to be Martyn. The thought had passed through his mind as Justin led Martyn from the amphitheater. It was partly why he had no intention of believing in any peace those two brokered. His Guard would be ready.
But what if “him” was Justin of Southern?
Of course! Who better to betray than a hero among the people, a mighty warrior who’d ridden like a king through the Valley of Tuhan and defeated the commander of the Guard in hand-to-hand combat?
It was a trap! Justin must have an alliance with Martyn already. He’d negotiated the Scabs’ withdrawal from the Southern Forest. Then he’d ridden back to the main Horde camp with Martyn and arrived in time to save Thomas and his band in a show of good faith. The man atop the hill overlooking Thomas and his men had been Martyn.
It all made perfect sense! The battle at the Southern Forest, Qurong’s words in the tent, Justin’s saving Thomas in the desert, Justin’s victory in the challenge, and now this unveiling of Martyn as Johan. Even the march through the Valley of Tuhan.
And it was all to this end. A trap. A betrayal.
What if the betrayal ended in the slaughter of their village? The death of the children? The death of Rachelle? Would Monique die? What if he was killed by the Horde? He was needed here.
Thomas would not be fooled by their betrayal. He would hold the line and refuse any peace offered by Johan and Justin. It would end in a terrible battle, perhaps, but—
Another thought struck him. What if he used this knowledge against the Horde? What if he created a reversal of his own, one that might avoid war altogether? His own peace on his own terms.
Thomas stopped again, heart pounding with an eagerness to dream again. He had to return and deal with Justin’s betrayal!
Ahead, at the edge of a clearing, lay a small stone quarry. The lights of a farm cottage glowed several hundred miles down in the valley.
“What now?” Monique demanded, panting.
“It’s almost dark. We don’t know how far we have to go or where we’re really going, for that matter. We have to stop for the night.”
“What if he catches up to us?”
“I don’t think Carlos will expect us to stop for the night—he’ll go on to the city or he’ll search the barns and the towns.” He nodded at the farm lights ahead.
She looked around. “You want us to stop here?”
He jogged over to the quarry. The ground fell twenty feet, like a bowl. Several huge boulders lay at the bottom.
“We can lay down some branches or straw.”
He thought she might protest. But after a moment she agreed. “Okay.”
Ten minutes later they had covered the ground with grass and propped several large leafy branches against the largest rock to form a rough lean-to.
Thomas sat on a boulder near the lean-to, strung too tight to even think about sleep. But that was just it—he had to sleep now. He was desperate to sleep. To dream. To stop Justin before the betrayal could destroy both worlds.
“Thomas?”
He looked at Monique, who leaned on the boulder next to him.
“We’ll be okay,” he said.
“I think you’re too optimistic.”
“How can I not be optimistic? Three days ago I persuaded the president of the United States that my dreams were real, and he sent me on a fool’s mission to find you. It cost some men their lives, but I did find you. Now we’re free, on our way back to the world with information that will change history.”
She looked away, clearly unconvinced. “We’re in France. Unless I missed something back there, the people who’re doing this have control over France. And you do understand that I have no evidence that the information I have will actually create the antivirus, don’t you?”
“Svensson has the antivirus. We watched him inoculate himself.”
“But I don’t know if what he used is based on the information I gave him.”
“Fortier all but said it was yours.”
“Why did they keep me separate from the others?”
They sat in silence. Under other circumstances it might have been an uncomfortable silence, but now, on the eve of the world’s destruction, with pretension long gone, it was only silence.
“So you really do believe all of this,” Monique said.
She meant his dreams. “Yes.”
“How is it possible?”
“You didn’t have too much trouble believing that I got information from my dreams. That’s information out of thin air. Why not more?”
“There’s a far cry between dreaming up information and cutting someone’s neck without touching him,” she said.
“I was also shot dead in the hotel right in front of you.”
She paused. “It goes against everything I’ve ever believed.”
He shrugged. “Then you’ve believed in the wrong things. And if it’s any consolation, so have I. When you live it like I have, it begins to feel quite real. Even natural. I’m not saying I understand. I’m not saying that I’m even meant to understand it.”
She looked at the sky. “You think about God in all of this?”
“I don’t have a good history with religion, despite my father being a chaplain. Maybe that’s because my father was a chaplain. For the first couple weeks of these dreams, even though I had some incredible dreams of encountering God in the emerald lake, I kept it all in its own little box, reserved for the unexplained. There was the colored forest with its version of God, and there was this Earth, each in its own set of dreams. On this Earth God doesn’t exist, I believed. I wasn’t ready to think differently.”
“And now?”
“Now the reality of Elyon is feeling very compelling again. In my dreams, I mean. For a long time after the Shataiki invaded the colored forest, battle was more real to me than Elyon. I’ve been commander of the Guard, fighting wars and spilling blood for fifteen years, and not once has anyone reported seeing a black bat or hearing a single word from Elyon. We call our religion the Great Romance, but really it feels more like a list of rules than anything similar to the Great Romance we once had. But now I think the knowledge of Elyon is starting to work its way into me again— in both realities. Make any sense? If Elyon’s real there, surely God must be real here.”
“It might explain your dreams,” she said.
Another long silence.
“I’m still not ready to believe that I’m connected to a woman named Rachelle who is conveniently married to you,” she said.
He sighed. “It may be best that you don’t believe it. Because if you are connected to her, then anything that happens to Rachelle may also happen to you.”
“You mean if Rachelle gets cut, I get cut? Like Carlos?”
“Rachelle has already experienced that very thing. We can’t allow anything to happen to you.”
“Because it will affect Rachelle as well.”
Thomas sighed and leaned back against the boulder.
“Is Rachelle in danger of being killed?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. We all are.”
“Then I suppose you’d better dream and save the world.”
By her tone he knew that she was frustrated with these ideas of dreams, but he didn’t have the energy to win her over now. He decided to give her one parting thought.
“I just may. But I think I’ll have to go after Justin to do that.”
She didn’t ask who Justin was.
The moon was bright and the night cold when they finally agreed that they should sleep. The lean-to was meant to hide them from any prying eyes in the sky, and Thomas insisted they both sleep under the leafy branches.
Despite their initial attempts at modesty, they both accepted the fact that comfort and warmth were more important at the moment than forcing themselves into positions that would keep them up half the night. They lay shoulder to shoulder, arm to arm in the dark and began to drift off.
Thomas was almost asleep when he felt her hand rest on his. His eyes opened. At first he wondered if she was touching his hand in her sleep. He should ease his arm away.
But he couldn’t. Not after what he’d put her through.
It took him another fifteen minutes to begin drifting again. They fell asleep like that, wrist to wrist.
Carlos covered the ground in a steady, fast walk. The moon was high enough to light his way, which made the going easier than during the first hour of darkness, before the moon rose.
He traveled alone because this issue of Thomas Hunter had become a very personal matter, and also because he knew he could deal with the problem without ever revealing the full truth of what had happened in the house.
In his hand he held a receiver that accepted a signal from the woman. They’d sewn the transmitter into her waistband a week earlier—no reason not to keep very close tabs on such a valuable asset. If and when she discarded the slacks, he would have a problem, but until she reached a town, she wouldn’t have the opportunity. And based on their course, that wouldn’t happen before morning.
They had stopped. Even at this pace he would reach them in a matter of hours.
He lifted his hand and touched his neck again. The blood had dried; the cut was hardly more than a scratch. But the manner in which he’d received it played heavily on his mind.
As did what Thomas had said about his own demise after his usefulness had expired. He’d considered the possibility that Fortier would simply dispose of him once the man had what he wanted—there were never guarantees with men like Fortier.
But Carlos wasn’t a man without his own plans. This development with Hunter could actually play into his hands. For one, it gave him a perfect reason to kill Hunter once and for all. But it could also ensure his own value until he had the opportunity to take out both Svensson and Fortier. He would tell them that before dying Hunter had confessed something new from these histories of his, a major coup attempt immediately following the transition of power to Fortier. They would keep him alive at least long enough to head off the coup.
Hunter would make no such claim, of course, but there was some truth in the statement. There would be a coup attempt.
Muslims, not a godless Frenchman, would end up the winners in this war of Allah’s.
Fortier wasn’t the only man who knew how to think.