Siege of Stone Read online

  The thought left her as quickly as it had come. Whatever was happening with the unearthed cloth, it smacked of science. And as for the purported ghosts, fraud was still the most likely answer. After all, the work of the crop circle hoaxers might have been considered alien for decades had they not come forward and shown how it had been done. The ghosts were probably nothing more than a well-organized bunch of scrub footballers looking for a cheap laugh.

  Besides, why would ghosts bother to show themselves and scare crofters and housewives and truckers? Just for the fun of it? It was too preposterous. Surely ghosts would want more than that.

  He wanted blood. But not the small amounts that had flowed from the individuals he had met while wandering in the desert. It had at least been entertaining, however, when he'd come across backpackers and hikers. Of the half dozen he had confronted, there were only two of them whom he had not been able to control.

  Fortunately, one of them was a man hiking with his wife, and the woman had been all too susceptible to his desires. She had attacked her husband with the strength of the madwoman that she temporarily was, and had torn clean down to the jugular with her teeth. Then she had taken out a folding knife and disemboweled herself, precisely the way in which he had requested of her.

  The other person whom he had met had been untouchable, his mind as impregnable as if there had been a foot thick layer of lead between them. Ah well, he had thought, as he'd smashed the man's head into a pulp with a rock, sometimes blood didn't tell. Actively killing wasn't nearly as rewarding as directing the mayhem, but it had to be done. He couldn't let the man go and tell of meeting a wanderer in the desert who looked like Jesus and was dressed like John the Baptist.

  But he was bored, this creature who had been known by many names. The Roman Catholic Church had called him the Antichrist; a motley assortment of pilgrims seeking truth, power, and self-justification had proclaimed him the Divine, the Holy One, and the Lord; and Laika Harris, Joseph Stein, and Tony Luciano referred to him only as the Prisoner, the one behind the disappearance of a sculptor in New York and the dehydrated bodies in the desert. They had come close to finding him in New York, and were tracking him down in Utah, only to be outdistanced by Michael LaPierre, who, in releasing the Prisoner from the lead-lined Anasazi kiva, let the bestial genie out of his bottle, and died for his efforts.

  It was good to be free at last, the Prisoner thought, after so many centuries of captivity. But he had wandered enough. This world's only true charms were the billions of intelligent creatures that bestrode it, creatures that he could anger to violence, and watch as they tore each other apart. What he had been doing was like stepping on ants when he could, with the proper planning and aid, raven cities, and turn countries against each other until this world ran red with the blood that flowed in its inhabitants' veins.

  But he could not do it alone. There had to be others that he would control, those who would take the risks and organize the chaos, while he sat back and relished the sights and sounds of carnage, until the red madness that had exiled him here had spread like a plague among the dwellers of earth.

  And those who would most easily fall under his control were those who sought him. Most of them were willing to be disciples in exchange for the power he could give them, like Swain, whose ability to touch the Prisoner's mind, even through his lead prison, had been far greater than most humans.

  Swain, however, was dead. He had died, and yet the Prisoner's hold over him was so strong that he had called him from his sandy grave and Swain had come, though he had been useless to the Prisoner, a fat corpse bloated with other men's fluids. It was a pity to lose such a potentially powerful ally.

  The only human in recent years who'd surpassed Swain's talent of mental contact with the Prisoner was the man Stein, to whom the Prisoner had appeared in dreams. His strength was formidable, and the Prisoner knew the blood must be strong in the man. But unlike Swain, there was no desire to worship in Stein. There was fear and denial, but also great knowledge, knowledge the Prisoner could use if he could persuade—or force—Stein to join him. If he could not, then he would destroy Stein.

  Stein, however, was far away. East. It was a great distance, and the Prisoner wondered if there were any others closer who had been searching for him, for good or ill. If there were, he should seek them out. If they proved to be allies, that would be beneficial. But if they wished to find him to destroy him, then he would destroy them, were he not able to bend them to his will.

  He reached out then, with the tentacles of his probing mind, trying to find not those whom he could contact, but those who wished to contact him. If they were untouchable by his mind, if the blood link was weak or nonexistent, they would remain unknown to him. But if the link was there, and their desire was strong, then he would know.

  The Prisoner felt her. She was the foolish one, the one who had the strength to reach him but not the strength of will necessary to accomplish it. Swain's sister.

  He had known that she and others were seeking him after Swain died, and he had called to her, but she had heard his shouts as if they were a whisper from the bottom of a great canyon. Still, she was the closest of those who had sought him, so he would go to her and find what power she had, to whom she was bound on this earth, and if she would be an effective partner in his reign of terror.

  Effective, if temporary. Eventually, all would die. His purpose was nothing more nor less than universal destruction.

  He did not have the patience to breed humans so that he might enjoy their torments and deaths indefinitely. If he could, he would rather destroy everything now, and then live alone in misery on a world empty of all but himself.

  He could not help it. It was his nature.

  Chapter 6

  Jezebel Swain sat alone in her cell, grinding her teeth and scratching her arms. It was the same damn thing all the time, just sit and stare at the goddamn walls, and wait and wait and wait. And then, every few days, one of those bastards in white would come and take her to see Dr. Ross again, and the sonofabitch would talk to her and ask her the same dumbass questions, and she would tell him the truth and he would shake his head and look sad and ask her again, and then she would get pissed off and tell him to go to hell and then start to scratch her arms again.

  She was up to her arms now, because she had scratched the backs of her hands and her wrists raw already, and they were bandaged up. But she had to scratch something, because she couldn't keep her hands still. Dr. Ross had told her that if she continued to hurt herself, they'd have to put her in restraints. Then she would stop, and wait until she got back to her cell, because for Chrissake, she was already restrained enough, wasn't she?

  She knew what he wanted to hear her say, but she wasn't about to say it. She was going to tell the truth, and she had told it, time and again, and it was so simple an idiot child could understand it, but they didn't believe her, so they kept her in this nuthouse.

  She went over it in her mind again, her closely clipped nails digging at her arms, burrowing in the soft spot inside the bend of her elbow, reddening the flesh. They had been in that Indian roadhouse on the reservation, and those moronic cowboys had started on Damon, who was trying to lead them to the Divine now that Ezekiel had disappeared into the desert. Then Rodney, the big ex-biker who was with them, went for one of the cowboys, and all hell broke loose.

  Before she knew what had happened, Jezebel had rammed a shard of glass from a broken sugar container into the throat of a cowboy, killing him deader than dirt. She and Damon had gotten out and driven away, but their van got stuck, and the next thing she knew, Ezekiel, her brother and lover, was there, a mummylike walking corpse, enveloping Damon and somehow sucking all the juice out of him. In a minute, Damon's body was as dried as Ezekiel's had been, and Ezekiel, now full of Damon's fluids, was standing there, looking happy and satisfied, come back to life.

  Then the cops had come, or at least some people she thought were cops, some black bitch and a white guy. They took Ezek
iel and put him in their trunk, along with Damon's body, and told her to say that Damon had run away. That was the story she had told the other cops when they came, and they had taken her and charged her with the murder of Arthur Griffith, which was the name of the shit-for-brains cowboy she had stabbed.

  For a while, she had given them the story the first cops had told her to tell, but then, after days of being in her cell, she told her court-appointed attorney to go screw himself and gave the authorities the dope on what had actually happened. When none of them believed her, she got a little violent, and then started scratching herself. That was when they'd put her in the nuthouse.

  She didn't give a damn, though. Those cops who'd taken Ezekiel away hadn't come back or done shit for her, so why should she tell their bullshit story? And when it came right down to it, the nuthouse was better than the jail. The cells were cleaner, for one thing, and she'd rather be locked up with crazies than with the trash she'd been with in jail.

  But Jesus, she hated that Dr. Ross. If they let her nails grow out, which they wouldn't, she'd try and scratch his eyes out. She was already in for murder, so what else could they do to her?

  She had just closed her eyes to try and get some sleep when she heard a weird sound, like somebody had ripped a really big piece of cloth. She sat up quickly and opened her eyes, and saw him.

  She had never set eyes on the Divine before, nor had she spoken to anyone who had ever seen him, but from the electricity that filled her entire body, she knew this being in front of her could be no one else. He was wearing a loose white shirt and light-colored trousers, and he smiled at her as though he were an angel come down from heaven. A light brown beard wreathed his strong jaw, and his soft hair fell straight down to his shoulders. His unblemished skin was a perfect bronze shade, and his blue eyes looked into hers with a promise of paradise.

  "Jezebel," he said, and her name had never sounded more beautiful in her ears. "I've come to free you." Then he held out his hand, and she stood up and put her bandaged right hand into his. There was a further tingle at the contact, and she laughed out loud at the sensation. "Come," he said, and he stepped through the wall.

  She didn't pause to wonder at it. Of course the Divine could pass through walls if he wished to. He could do anything, couldn't he? She watched as her hand in his vanished through the white-painted cinderblock wall, and then she just stepped through it as well.

  Instantly, there was a feeling of compression. It was as though all the atoms in her body had suddenly shrunk, and the pain was so great as to be beyond the release of a scream. But it lasted for only a moment, and then she and the Divine were standing in a dimly lit hall, and he was leading her down it, and she was moving along with him, the pain gone, but the memory of it still pounding at her mind.

  This part of the facility seemed to be deserted. She could hear no screams or moans from inside the rooms they passed.

  At the end of the hall, they came to a heavily locked door, but again, the Divine simply passed through its steel surface. Jezebel wanted to try and pull back, but was helpless. Had the Divine walked into flames, she would have gone with him, as long as her hand was in his.

  This time the pain was even worse. The steel was far less yielding than the more porous cinderblocks that had walled her cell. As she came out on the other side, she felt shredded, slashed apart, and put back together with will alone.

  But they were outside now, and it was the first time she had felt cool night air for many weeks. Or was it months? She had lost all track of time, and the pain she had just experienced muddied her mind even more.

  The Divine didn't look back, nor did he acknowledge her pain. He only walked with the certainty of a god toward the back wall of the facility, and then through it, and she followed, her soul screaming one last time at the pain, and then they were through, and a dry plain made silver by moonlight lay before them, as far as Jezebel's burning eyes could see. They continued to walk, the Divine still clinging to her hand. It wasn't as though she was holding his hand, or that he was holding hers, but as though they were one creature, half-man, half-woman, joined at the ends of the arms, grafted together so that their hands became one, a shared fusion of flesh.

  Although the memory of pain stayed with her, it faded after a time, and she was amazed to find that she did not grow weary as she walked. It was as if her contact with the Divine strengthened her, as though he were an inexhaustible battery from which she drew power through their contact.

  They walked all through the night, away from people and buildings and roads, straight into the desert. At last, just as the sun was starting to lighten the eastern horizon, he suddenly stopped, whirled about, and looked at her, his gaze piercing her like a butterfly on a pin. She tried to draw back from the ferocity in his face, but their hands still clung together.

  "Why?" he said. The power of the single word was like a slap in her face. Jezebel shook her head, not understanding. The Divine pulled his hand away from hers, and the release left her weak. She staggered and fell to her knees in the dust, her right hand throbbing. But when she looked at it, it appeared unchanged, the bandage still wrapped around it.

  "Why did you seek me?" the Divine said, and his voice seemed more gentle.

  She tried to think, and then to make her mouth form the words her mind spoke. Everything seemed suddenly, terribly complicated and difficult. "I . . . because . . . you are the Divine. Because you know . . . all the secrets. And you have . . . all the power."

  "And what power," the Divine said softly, "do you have, little one?"

  "I . . . I don't know, not much, I mean . . ."

  "Are you not involved with a group? The group that Ezekiel Swain led?"

  She felt tears pool in her eyes. "Ezekiel's dead . . . they're all dead now. I tried to find you after he died, but I couldn't. Then I . . . then everything fell apart."

  "You are his sister, yet you couldn't find me? The blood should have been strong. His blood was your blood, yes?"

  She shook her head dumbly, trying to explain. "My mother was Ezekiel's father's second wife. I was born after they were married."

  "Half siblings, then," said the Divine thoughtfully. "Still, the same father . . ."

  "No. My mother . . . had a lover. He was my father."

  "Ah," said the Divine sagely. "That explains it, then. Why you couldn't reach me. Why even now it takes me great effort to peer inside your head. Our connection is so . . . tenuous."

  "Oh, don't say that, my lord!" Jezebel took the Divine's hand again and held it tightly. "I've wanted so much to be with you . . . Ezekiel told me everything about you, your powers, your desires, what you could do for those who served you . . ."

  "For those who serve me with more than themselves, my child. But you have nothing. I am free now. I need allies with connections. I need warriors. You I do not need." He held her right hand, and then ripped the bandages from it. She gasped at the pain. "You scratch yourself. So much so that you bleed." Then he nodded, as if in satisfaction.

  The Divine took both of Jezebel's hands in his, so that her fingertips rested against his palms. Then he began to stroke her fingers with his thumbs. He did this several times, and then closed his hand over her fingertips and held them for nearly a minute. Jezebel could feel something changing in her hands, as though insects were crawling from the tips of her fingers.

  Then the Divine opened his hands, and Jezebel saw that her fingernails, which had the day before been trimmed so short that she could barely scratch herself at all, had grown until they rose a full inch past her fingertips, curving inward like ragged and spatulate claws.

  "Ah," the Divine whispered. "A miracle. Now you can do what you've been wanting to do, Jezebel. You can really scratch now. Scratch hard."

  He looked at her, and the look would have told her what she had to do, even if she hadn't already heard the command inside her head. Maybe she wasn't the perfect channel for the Divine's will, but with him here, right in front of her, she knew precisely w
hat he wanted her to do. And she had no choice but to do it.

  She lifted her hands to her neck and she began to scratch the skin at the hollow of her throat, just below the spot where, she remembered, she had rammed the dagger of broken glass up under Arthur Griffith's chin. She scratched with both hands at once, so deeply that the nails started to cut right through the skin.

  She scratched until she felt blood start to trickle down her fingers, across her palms, and onto her wrists from her torn exterior jugular veins. In another few minutes, she had dug deeper, so that her jagged nails severed her interior jugular, and her blood, wet and warm, start to rhythmically pulse against her hands. After that, she lived only another three minutes, and died wondering how all this had happened, and hoping that she would come back to life the way that Ezekiel had, and that she would see him again.

  "Don't count on it," said the creature who watched Jezebel Swain's eyes go dull, and who read her last thought before her brainwave activity ceased altogether. "There's no coming back for you," the Prisoner said softly.

  He watched for a while longer, until the blood had ceased to pulse. It had really been all over when the blood had stopped its flow to the brain, but there was still some residual flavor, and he had been without such nourishment for so many centuries.

  At last he stood up from where he had been crouching, looking into the woman's eyes as life left them. He looked at the eastern horizon and breathed deeply, relishing the smell of her blood that was soaking into the sandy soil. Then he looked down again, and wondered if perhaps he should have let her live and mated with her instead of enjoying her death.

  No, he thought. This was no time to start new generations. There were already enough of his blood. His ability to wield over half of Michael LaPierre's troops was proof of that. Amazing, how a mere score of seeds planted over a millennium ago could bear so much fruit.

  Yet maybe not so amazing after all, when one considered the remarkable evolutionary advantage those with his blood would have. Genetic strengths that would enable them to survive plagues and deal with hunger more effectively than other humans. Add to that the fact that they could not help but be more intelligent and hardier workers, and it was no surprise that his progeny should have spread so widely.