Rising Darkness

Chapter Eight

THE IMMACULATE INTERIOR of the back of the limousine was just as it should be, luxurious and contained. The man liked to have his environment comfortable and controlled. It brought him a sense of calm and peace, which allowed him to focus on his work.

The seats were made from butter-soft Italian leather. There was a small but perfectly stocked wet bar that included champagne and several bottles of a 1999 Royal DeMaria Riesling Icewine. The fridge was stocked with petit fours; smoked salmon pâté and organic whole grain crackers; boiled quail’s eggs with a lemon-mayonnaise dip; melon balls made from honeydew, cantaloupe and watermelon; and several different kinds of fresh sushi. There was also a flat-screen HDTV that he kept on mute, perpetually tuned to CNN.

The man divided his attention between watching the ticker tape headlines running along the bottom of the screen and the spring scenery that scrolled past his windows.

His cell phone rang. It was one of his employees, and this was a phone call that he had been waiting for, so he answered and listened. “You’re quite sure that he’s dead? And it can’t be traced back to you? Excellent. Thank the Senator for his help. Tell him that I too am looking forward to a mutually beneficial future.” The man smiled out at the bright spring day. He asked his companion, “Do you play chess?”

“What?”

“Forgive me,” the man said. “I thought I said that quite clearly. Do. You. Play. Chess.”

“No, I do not fucking play fucking chess.”

“Do you know anything about the game?”

“For Christ’s sake, who cares?”

“Manners.” The man kept his voice mild, but his gaze turned into spears of ice. “I do, and you would do well to remember that I am driving this conversation.”

A pause. His companion said, “I only know the basic moves, and nothing at all about the maneuvers or strategies. I know just enough about the game to know that’s like labeling primary colors to a master painter like Renoir.”

The man was somewhat mollified. He relaxed back in his seat and chose, for the time being, to ignore his companion’s truculent attitude. “Nicely put. Chess has been called the game of kings, you know, as it was deemed a worthy occupation for sovereigns.”

“I presume you are driving this conversation to somewhere specific.”

The man said, “Then there is the analogy as well. Politics is like a game of chess. There are the pieces, and then there are the players. Dorothy Dunnett, a well-known Scottish novelist, used the analogy in a series of historical novels filled with political intrigue. Have you read her work?”

“No.” His companion closed his eyes, his expression indifferent.

“You should pay attention,” the man said, his tone flat. “I am telling you the most important thing you have heard in your life.”

His companion took a deep breath then opened his eyes and looked at him. “Fine. Do go on.”

The man said, “There is another game beyond the game of kings. It is a shadow game, and it has been played for millennia behind the panoply of human things. Like politics, the board and the pieces of the shadow game have shifted and changed through time, but in this game, the players have remained the same. I have just removed a piece from the game. We should call him a bishop. Like any chess piece he could only make certain moves, but they were damn good ones. I’ll give him that for his epitaph.”

“You had a man killed because of a game in your head.”

“No, I had a man killed because he could sense changes in spirit as he stood near his king and worked to protect him. With this man out of the way, I now have much more leisure and opportunity to take the king. All it will take is the highest-level security clearance, the right time and place and a handshake, and when I do it, it will strengthen my position in the game tenfold.”

“Oh I see. So basically you had a man killed because of a game in your head. I suppose I could congratulate you,” said his companion. “But I won’t.”

“Indeed,” said the man. The corner of his mouth twitched. “The fact of the victory will have to be congratulations enough.”

The ancient game, so long played, was coming to a head. There had been many peaks and valleys over the years, intense maneuvering and vicious skirmishes followed by periods of quiet and a wintering of conflict. Dared he hope they were at long last heading into the endgame?

The man remembered his first years on earth, that giddy rush of exhilaration he had felt after having been imprisoned for so long. He had been free at last and this whole world lay before him like a virgin with her thighs spread wide.

He had to admit it might have gone to his head a little.

He had not been a happy camper when he had found that a group of his people had followed him to earth. That first conflict . . . A frown marred his handsome brow. He didn’t like to remember it.

It had begun so well, his first life in this place. He had lived in a golden land, and his childhood had been one long ascendant journey to self-discovery. He had been born to rule, not by birth but by ability, and by right, and he had taken that golden land of Babylon and made it his own. He became king and imposed his law, his order, enacting his own manifest destiny.

The group that had followed him had been fresh and at full strength, in the morning of their first birth into this world. They had just recovered their full memories from their earlier lives, and they had acted in concert to take him by surprise. Barely escaping with his life, he had been forced to go into hiding deep underground in the dark, airless catacombs of his city.

One of his enemies at the time had written: How the oppressor has ceased! How his insolence has ceased! . . . How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!

But you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the Pit. Those who see you will stare at you, and ponder over you: Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities, who would not let his prisoners go home?

The author of that histrionic piece had been a stinking prophet with the burned gaze of the mad. He had come from an aggrieved and superstitious desert people that had been comprised of twelve tribes.

They had been too ignorant to realize the value of what he had brought to his kingdom, or the value of what he could have given to them, the education and learning, the technology and the civilization. They preferred to wallow in the heat and dust, and to plunge into constant petty wars as they worshipped their angry, vengeful God.

It had taken the man a long time to heal from the wounds he had gotten in that first battle on this world. But he had, and he could not forget, and he did not forgive. Among his many other projects and hobbies, he had made it his mission to hunt down the group who pursued him, and to destroy them. In fact, in that endeavor, he had enjoyed some degree of success.

The old bitch, though. He shook his head as he straightened his tie. She was a pistol. She’d gotten mighty dexterous at avoiding him throughout the centuries. But he had one huge advantage over the group that had come after him. He did not have their code of ethics. He had no ethics whatsoever that would hold him back from using his special talents in whatever way he wished.

The folks from home had liked to call him an aberration. He preferred to think of himself as unique. It had a much more positive spin.

As a result he was as strong and fresh today as a man in his prime, with all memories intact and all grudges well-nurtured. From what hints he’d been able to glean from the psychic realm, the old woman had let herself become frail as well as elderly. That wasn’t the brightest of ideas when involved in a long-term war such as theirs.

Over the ages he had accumulated an awful lot of grudges against her.

Triumphing over her was going to be downright orgasmic.

But first things first.

About that chess piece he’d just removed. The bishop. Nicholas Crow had been too educated for a normal human, too much of an adept in things that most people knew nothing about. The old bitch had scattered her teachings like a virus throughout the first nations, so it was actually possible that Crow had been taught what he had known by a native elder.

But he had to wonder. Perhaps the old bitch herself had trained Crow. If so, the man might find a trail of breadcrumbs in Crow’s past that would be advantageous for him to follow.

However, the very next thing the man needed to do was hunt down Dr. Mary Byrne, who had turned out to be a rather surprisingly slippery fish. And loud. Her psychic energy was blazing like a comet. At the rate she was going, she’d be a burned-out husk in a day or two. That was not the preferable option of events.

He had to find Mary fast if he hoped to get anything useful out of her. Just out of curiosity, he also wanted to find out what had happened to his two drones. They had almost gotten her, but then he had lost his connection with them. Now he couldn’t make psychic contact with either one. Neither was answering his cell, so the man had to assume for the moment that they had somehow been destroyed.

Also, the police reports he received about what had happened in Mishawaka were preliminary and confused, but rather interestingly freakish. He needed to get a more accurate account of what had happened, so he could determine what forces had been involved and decide what to do next.

He knew one thing for certain. Mary Byrne was acting in an unpredictable manner. Keeping track of her comet blaze in the psychic realm wasn’t much of a problem, but actually catching her in the physical realm was going to be more of a challenge, which was why he relaxed in the back of his limousine while his driver took him toward northern Indiana.

Old adages became adages in part because they were true. If he wanted something this important to be done right, he was going to have to do it himself.

“Enough about me,” he said to his companion. “Tell me about yourself. How are your teeth? Healthy? They look good.”

His companion sat in the seat opposite him, a handsome dark-haired young male with a clever, narrow face. The male had been bound with expert care to ensure his captivity but minimize bruising and stress on the joints.

“Fuck you,” the male hissed.

Oh dear. He was too bored to roll his eyes. He just could not get a decent conversation off the ground with this one.

He straightened the cuffs of his suit jacket. “Yes well, we don’t have time for that. Tell me about your medical history. You look like you work out. Do you have cancer, a congenital defect, or a heart condition? How about an infectious disease?”

“You kidnapped me to talk about chess and my medical history?”

Yawn. “Very well. If you’re not in the mood to talk about yourself, let’s talk about your ex-wife, Mary. I want you to tell me everything you know about her.”

“I’m not telling you a goddamn thing.”

“That’s what they all say, Justin. There have been so many of them over the years, and they have all been so very wrong.”

Mary was another pistol. It had been simply ages since their last tête-à-tête. He missed talking to her. It was going to be a pleasure to get his hands on her again.

The sleek black car sped down the road, quiet as a bullet shot through a silencer.