Description: Prelude EDDIE Tanaka dug his elbows into the mud, releasing the sweet and sickening smell of rotting vegetation. He wriggled frantically toward the river. It was monsoon season, and the leaves of the bushes, disturbed by his passage, sent water pattering along the length of his body. Some trickled down his collar and joined the sweat bathing him. His sweat wasn't due entirely to the tropical heat. Most of it was because of gut- trembling, bowel- loosening terror. What were those things?! Behind him he heard screams of pain and terror from his colleagues, maddened, triumphant screams from the attackers, and over everything the keening wail of the things. Eddie pressed his belly against the muck, reached out for a tree root coiling up from the earth like an exposed rib, and pulled himself forward. Ahead was the soft gurgle and slap of running water. Not much farther now. He wondered if anyone else had made it out of the lab, and even as he crawled he hated himself for not going back. To look for any other survivors.To help them escape. But the only reason he was alive and outside was because he had been on the catwalk suspended high over the accelerator. There was a narrow access tube used to replenish the hyperpure oil surrounding and shielding the rest of the building from the massive, though brief, release of atomic particles created by their experiments. Experiments that tried to approximate conditions nanoseconds after the Big Bang. Though Eddie was tall, he was also thin, and he had been able to squeeze through the pipe. The men who attacked the lab offered no mystery. Brandishing knives and machetes, faces obscured behind headcloths, they had extolled their god in voices made shrill by nerves and euphoria. Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar. It was what was with them that froze the throat with pure, blind terror. Things like whirling dervishes constructed of slivered glass. The sound as they spun was a mind- numbing howl. When they swept across a person their passage ripped away clothes and .esh. Eddie pushed up on his elbows and vomited. He had seen Anne just before he entered the pipe. Clothing and skin .ayed off, screaming, still standing, not dead. He retched again and brought up only bile. It wasn't just water and sweat bathing his face now. He tasted tears. Anne had liked him. After they got past him following her into the bathroom that time. They had been discussing the results of that day's experiment, and Eddie just hadn't noticed. She liked me. She had told me so. And I didn't do anything to help her. Tears blinded him and he found the edge of the river without meaning to. Arms .ailing, he rolled down the bank and into the water. The current took him. The pockets of his lab coat .lled with water, but despite the added drag Eddie waited until the water had carried him perhaps a mile downstream from the lab before kicking off his tennis shoes and shrugging out of the coat. He didn't want the things realizing too quickly that someone had survived and escaped. He had to .nd a phone. Call the emergency number he'd been given.Tell the man who ran Lumina Enterprises what had happened. Hope he didn't get committed as a madman. The low hum from the big jet's engines and the underoxygenated air of the cabin conspired to send her to sleep. Dagmar Reitlingen blinked hard, removed her wire- rim glasses, rubbed her eyes, and pinched the bridge of her nose. Another .ve hours and they would arrive in Dallas. A three- hour layover, then the two- hour .ight to Albuquerque. Add to that the hours she had already spent sitting in the .rst- class lounge at London's Heathrow airport. The ground crew kept saying there were "phenomena" which were keeping them from departing, but they never said what "phenomena" meant. Dagmar did the calculation and realized she had left her house twenty hours ago. Only ten more to go, she thought glumly, assuming there aren't more "phenomena." She had tried to take the Lumina jet, but discovered that Brook was in jail in Baltimore, and the Gulfstream GV was parked in a hangar in Mary land. Since she had a new boss, she didn't feel comfortable just hiring another pi lot. It was a quirk of her charming, though secretive, CEO that Lumina Enterprises owned only one plane and employed only one full-time pi lot. When she'd crabbed at Kenntnis after one particularly daunting journey back from Singapore, he'd given that rollicking, .xture- shaking laugh, and told her he didn't want his chief of.cers becoming too distant from the average run of humanity. He'd then added that it wasn't like he made them .y coach. So she only got to travel on the GV when Kenntnis was aboard. She had spent a lot of hours on the private jet, but compared to How many she spent .ying it wasn't near enough, and she'd tell him so next time. The thought choked and shifted to a worse thought. Maybe there would never be a next time. The call had come from George Gold, chief counsel for the company, on Christmas Day, informing Dagmar that certain criteria had been met which set in motion the transfer of control of the company into the hands of- Dagmar pulled a copy of the Washington Post from her briefcase and studied the face of the man who now controlled a vast corporate empire more valuable than Microsoft and far less visible. Despite the grainy quality of the photo the young man's extraordinary handsomeness came through, although his face was marred by what looked like dark bruises. He was .anked by two older men, one whose severe features showed kinship. It was clear from the relative heights that Richard Oort was not a tall man. His expression was tense and hunted, and he held out a hand as if to ward off the photographer. The headline shouted out BOMB PLOT UNCOVERED.In smaller type was American evangelist sought to bring about Armageddon in nuclear .re. All of Dagmar's instincts screamed out fraud, and she said as much to George. The lawyer had disabused her of that notion. "No, the documents were carefully drawn. Mr. Kenntnis was very speci.c in his instructions. Oort is to have total control of the company up to and including liquidating all the assets." As the COO of the company, Dagmar was left shaken and sickened by that bit of news. "When did this happen?" Dagmar had demanded. "December second." "As if Kenntnis knew something might happen." "I couldn't say." "Is he dead?" "I couldn't say." She had wanted to scream and curse him for the legalistic caution and cold precision. Tell me if Kenntnis is alive or dead! But perhaps George didn't know either. "What do we know about this Oort?" "He's a policeman. From a well- to- do and respected Rhode Island family. Father's a federal court judge." So Richard Oort was not a con artist, but he was certainly heedless and indifferent to the welfare of his employees. Why hadn't he obtained Brook's release? Well, she would .nd out in a few hours. She hoped that Oort was bright as well as beautiful. The paper crackled as Dagmar lifted it from her lap and studied that face again. She wondered if this insane action by Kenntnis was due to passion, although she hadn't thought Kenntnis had been inclined that way. But why else would you leave a multibillion- dollar company in the hands of a young cop in a nondescript city in a nondescript state? The Reverend Mark Grenier stood on the verge at the edge of the westbound I-81 freeway trying to thumb a ride. It wasn't easy to do when your right hand was missing. Overhead the moon struggled among the heavy clouds, occasionally breaking free and touching the ice- clad branches of the trees with silver.There had been an ice storm two nights ago, and the cold was so intense none of it had melted. He couldn't keep standing still. Grenier began to walk along the shoulder. His thin-soled Italian loafers offered little protection against the cold, and the buttons of his shirt and coat barely closed over his burgeoning paunch, allowing .ngers of cold to lick at his skin. He was losing sensation in his feet, and he stumbled on tussocks of winter-brown grass. He had made bail yesterday and rushed to his Washington apartment, the apartment he'd maintained so he could be close at hand when a president had need of a little midnight counseling. He was desperate for a shower in privacy, the thick lather of verbena soap, the crackle of a starched Egyptian cotton shirt, and the caress of a cashmere sweater to drive away the memory of that polyester prison jumpsuit. But he'd found the locks changed. He rushed to the bank and discovered his accounts had vanished. He had always been a subtle man; he didn't need a skywriter to get the message: He had failed his overlords, and they had jettisoned him. Resentment burned in his gut. He had given his life to the study and attainment of power, but not just the power of wealth and in.uence. Through long and arduous study he had become a sorcerer. Magic .owed through his hands and sang in his blood. He had worked hard to open the gates between the dimensions and allow the Old Ones to return, and they had fucking succeeded. Then, because of one tiny miscalculation, because he underestimated the strength of will of Richard Oort, he forever lost his ability to do magic. He remembered that black blade swinging through the air, and the glitter of Rich

Please Wait