Far Edge of Darkness

Chapter Twenty

Francisco was just about to call the others for dinner when Danny cocked his head to one side.

"Major Valdez? What's that sound? I can feel it right through the floor."

He listened. "I don't know. I can't hear any—" Francisco paused. There was a sound. Low, rumbling, like... thunder? Somebody else coming through?

The outer door slammed open with a blast of icy air. Joey yelled, "Stampede!"

Nelson roared to his feet. "What?"

"Mammoths! Crazy, stupid elephants are headed right for us!"

Nelson swore. "What spooked them? Doc, you and the kid, get into the back. Now."

"Come on, Danny. Let's go."

Nelson herded them into the makeshift sickroom. "Bill," Nelson growled, "you're in no shape, but Joey and I are gonna be busy for a while. Keep these people covered."

Nelson dragged him into a sitting position against the wall. Bill groaned. The pistol Nelson gave him shook in his hands.

Mother of— Nelson's a fool. Bill can't even see us without double images. He'll blow a hole through one of us by accident.

Francisco edged his way between the concussed guard and the women. Danny glanced curiously at him, then tightened his lips and manfully followed suit. Francisco had to swallow hard.

"Don't nobody move," Bill groaned. "Sit."

Francisco said quietly, "Lucille, I want you and Janet and Sibyl to sit in that corner over there. Janet, take Zac with you."

They moved. Bill squinted at them, evidently trying to decide which of the double images he was seeing was the ghost and which was real.

"Danny," Francisco said, when he was satisfied with the women's position, "drag that cot over here and sit down behind it, on the floor."

He obeyed. That got the women, Zac, and Danny out of the direct line of fire from the open doorway—just in case Bill decided to start shooting at ghosts. Or mammoths. There wasn't much he could do about Bill and his pistol.

"Siddown," Bill muttered.

He sat. On the floor between Bill and the others.

Then he just waited and listened. The rumble grew into a thundering wall of sound. Occasional blasts from trumpeting mammoths reminded him of old Tarzan movies. The floor shook. His medical bag vibrated on one of the cots.

The stampede swamped across them. Francisco braced. He realized he was waiting for something to crash right into the building. The door slammed open, causing him to jump. Bill fumbled the pistol on his lap, then regained control of it. Nelson and Joey retreated into the shelter in white-faced terror. Francisco caught a glimpse of massive shapes moving in the near-darkness outside.

Then the rumbling stampede was past.

For an instant, Francisco's ears registered another, incongruously loud sound in the darkness.

Nelson blinked—

A low, black shape hurtled in through the partially open doorway. It opened fire. Bill yelled and started shooting wildly. Somebody screamed. Francisco launched toward Bill and his gun. Hot pain flashed through his ribs. A brutal kick caught his side. Then he was grappling with Bill. Gunshots ripped through the main room.

Lucille screamed, "Janet!"

Bill's fingers tightened down across the trigger. Five shots blasted out of the muzzle. A shrill scream cut off behind him. Francisco twisted. He rammed an elbow into the guard's face. Bone crunched with a shocking sound. Francisco smashed his elbow into Bill's nose again and again. The bastard finally went limp.

It's over.... Relief swept through him, followed instantly by intense, gut-churning nausea. Francisco retched, then tried unadvisedly to get up. He retched again, bringing up clear fluid. C'mon, doctor, someone was hit, got to find out what's happened.... He sagged forward, instead, and fought the topsy-turvy rebellion in his gut. Wet, sticky pain clogged his side. Dimly, he saw Danny, Jr. huddled over his mother.

"Danny..." he tried to say.

Something dark loomed above him.

"Don't move!"

The voice was male, angry, scared...

Francisco couldn't have moved, even if he'd wanted. So he didn't. Whoever it was, they rolled him onto his back. An involuntary cry broke from his lips. Then he blinked groggily up at Dan Collins.

"Dan..."

"Frank?"

From across the room came a single, explosive syllable.

"DAD!"

Dan vanished from view.

Francisco tried to lever himself onto one elbow. Vertigo seized him, but the room steadied down after a moment. The sight that greeted him left Francisco cold. Janet Firelli lay sprawled against the base of the wall. Lucille was down, too, dead or unconscious. Danny, Jr. was crying. Dan had huddled down beside his wife. He was searching for a pulse.

Francisco grunted against pain and dragged himself up. "Dan—give me a hand—"

Dan Collins' face was ashen. His friend hauled him bodily across the room, without regard for his cry of pain.

"She's alive, Frank, she's still alive... ." Tears clogged his voice.

"Gimme the kit." His hands were badly unsteady.

"Janet?"

Her voice, whispery soft, said, "I'm okay. Just winged me, is all, nothing but a scratch. Lucille's hurt bad."

A bullet had struck Lucille high in the chest. The exit wound had missed her spine by an inch. The bullet had dislocated her shoulder blade two inches outward. Massive tissue damage in there. Clean it out, Francisco. You've got to pull your shit together, right now, or you'll lose her.

Francisco's hands were so unsteady he couldn't even hold a swab. Pain rushed through him, receded like the waves at Malibu, crashed back stronger than before. His own pulse was racing, unsteady. Shock, he self-diagnosed, blood loss...

From out of the grey fog surrounding him, Sibyl Johnson said steadily, "Let me." She pulled the swab out of nerveless fingers, then swore under her breath. The next moment, she'd wrapped something tight around his torso to control bleeding down his side. "Dammit, don't faint on us! Tell me what to do."

Francisco shut his eyes, fighting darkness. "Dan, get the hell out of here. Sibyl, get an alcohol prep..."

Under Francisco's guidance, Sibyl cleaned around both wounds, then taped down plastic to create an airtight seal in case she'd punctured a lung. Without X-ray equipment or ultrasound it was impossible to determine the full extent of damage and cracking her open under these conditions would kill her.

"Turn her onto her side, no, so the gunshot wounds are down," Francisco instructed, trying awkwardly to help. "If she's bleeding into a lung, she'll fill up both lungs with blood if you turn the other way. Can't do a damn thing about that dislocated bone... . Going to hurt like a mother. Don't want to hit her with a painkiller yet, not while she's unconscious." Sibyl dragged a blanket up across her. "Good, that's the best we can do." He clutched the edge of the cot, fighting the need to faint. "Now start an IV; she's in shock, her electrolytes will be messed up something terrible."

Sibyl found the vein on the fourth try, and taped the IV needle down, then started a saline solution running. Francisco showed her how to add medications, how to deal with infection and shock. Francisco's vision kept greying out as he talked her through it. When it was done, Francisco felt himself slipping.

"Will she live?" Sibyl asked, from an incredible distance.

"Hope so..." he mumbled.

She tore loose his shirt. "You did a good job, doctor. Now let me see how badly you're hit." She swabbed at his side. "It doesn't look too bad. Not nearly as bad as Lucille."

For an endless moment, all he could do was yell. Sibyl Johnson had a sadistic bent. When his vision began to clear again, she was taping gauze into place. Dan Collins had reappeared from somewhere. His friend's face was waxy white.

"Frank?"

Sibyl answered for him. "The bullet grazed his ribs. He's lucky. I take it Lucille's your wife? She's pretty bad, but we did our best. Right now she's sleeping quietly. Help me get him onto a cot, would you?"

Tough girl, Sibyl Johnson.

They lifted him cautiously and deposited him on one of the cots.

"How much of this should I give you?" Sibyl asked matter-of-factly.

He managed to focus on the small vial of remaining Demerol and a clean hypodermic.

"No, Lucille's going to need that—"

She shrugged, stuck the needle into the rubber seal, and began filling the hypo herself. "If you slip into shock from pain and die on us, what are her chances?"

Footsteps in the other room heralded somebody's arrival.

"Hey, Collins," somebody called, "where are you?"

"Infirmary."

Francisco roused himself with a supreme effort. "No, that's too much! Half that..."

She arched one brow in his direction. "That's better." She complied, using the plunger to squirt the medication back through the rubber seal so none of it was wasted, then neatly injected him before he could protest.

Francisco yelped. Sibyl packed the Demerol carefully away and went to look at Janet's injuries. Dan clasped his hand as though Francisco were made of blown glass. Dan's hand shook. He'd been crying.

"Frank, what are you doing here?"

"The Hughes boy's appendix was about to burst," he gritted. "They figured... I was expendable."

"And who's—who's this young lady?"

Dan's voice control was shattering. His gaze kept straying from Sibyl back to the cot where Lucille lay, bandaged and silent.

Francisco discovered deep gratitude for the spreading bliss of Demerol. "Sibyl Johnson. Anybody going to relieve my curiosity? Can't believe you showed up like that, didn't think the cavalry showed up anymore..." He was babbling in the grip of the drug and didn't care.

Before Dan could answer, Logan McKee strolled into the room. Francisco groaned. McKee, the lunatic, loose and armed with a rifle... .

"Frank, I think you'll remember Captain McKee," Dan said quietly.

McKee strolled over and leaned down from an incredible distance. "Major," he saluted sloppily. "Didn't expect to find you here. We got 'em, Colonel."

Dan stood up and rubbed a hand across his face. "My wife's hit pretty bad." His voice shook. "Frank's hit, but he's not critical, thank God. Janet Firelli was grazed. Janet? How bad is it?"

Sibyl Johnson answered. "She'll smart for a few days, but it's not serious."

Janet made a strangled sound under her ministrations.

He heard Sibyl talking quietly to someone, but her voice and face grew incredibly muzzy as the Demerol took deeper hold. He tried to get Dan's attention, then forgot why.

Then he slipped quietly into darkness.

Charlie finished loading the last of Carreras' men into the back of the truck. He swung the door shut with a savage bang. Two at Stabiae... Three here. Five down. A veritable army to go. To get them all, they would have to declare war on global organized crime.

Charlie snorted. They were already at war with global organized crime. The bad guys just didn't know it, yet. He shivered in the intense cold and rescued Lucania from the floor of the truck. Thank God, none of the bullets had punched through anywhere near her. Wrapped up in her miles-too-big parka, she was fast asleep. Charlie headed slowly toward the bunker, holding her close as he could without waking her.

Logan McKee met him partway to the door. "Got to wondering if you were going to come inside."

"Just taking care of the meat."

McKee nodded. "They'll freeze solid out here. Thank God. Figure we'll just dump 'em before we go and let the vultures at 'em next spring.

"How'd it go in there?"

"Collins' wife was hit, real bad. Collins is taking it pretty hard. The doctor was hit, too, but not as seriously. If he makes it, maybe Collins' wife has a chance."

Charlie glanced up curiously. "Doctor?"

"Yeah. They had a couple of other hostages Collins didn't know about. One of 'em's a doctor. I'd met him a couple of times."

Charlie rubbed the side of his face. "Great. Two walking wounded."

"Four, actually. That Firelli girl was grazed by a stray round and the doctor's here in the first place because one of the hostages damn near busted an appendix."

"Great. Oh, that's just fine. With that many wounded, we're going to be stuck here for a while." Charlie drew in a lungful of biting air and glanced at his sleeping daughter. "Okay, maybe that's not so bad. We could use a little time to catch our breath, make some plans."

"Yeah, well, I'm freezin' my butt off. See you."

McKee headed back inside.

Charlie followed more slowly. He hunched his shoulders and pulled open the door. It creaked against the pressure of the wind. Charlie latched it behind him, then surveyed the shambles of the main room. It was hard to believe, but that biggest guard, Nelson, had actually made it out past McKee and Collins. The place was riddled with bullet holes. Charlie remembered Nelson. Shooting that bastard had given him more intense satisfaction than his very first orgasm with a girl, when he was all of fifteen.

Shooting Nelson would never return Sibyl's life, but killing another of her murderers helped, just a little.

Past an open doorway, Collins had huddled down beside a cot. The place smelled like blood and death. He didn't see any sign of Collins kid. He must be in there, too. It looked crowded, in fact, jammed with cots and injured bodies.

Four wounded...

Charlie gently set Lucania down and eased open her parka, so she wouldn't overheat, then shrugged out of his own. He draped it across a chair with a bullet hole through the back. He wondered emptily whether or not the food he could smell was still hot. It had been hours since he'd eaten anything.

He shrugged. He ought to go say hello, first, at least. He found to his surprise he dreaded having anyone else see him. He dreaded, more than he'd believed possible, the shock and pity he'd see in their eyes.

Christ, what was wrong with him? He and Lucania were safe—safer than his daughter had ever been in Bericus' house, safer than Charlie had been in four years. He squared his shoulders against burning welts and limped slowly across the room. It was too bad the doctor'd been hit. He could have used some medical attention for his back. The room was knee-deep in people and cots.

Charlie found McKee peering at an injured man dressed as an Army officer. Which, considering Charlie's stolen MP uniform, meant nothing at all. He must be the doctor. A dark-haired woman with her back to him had bent over a boy of about eleven or twelve. She was busy adjusting bandages along his abdomen. That had to be Zac Hughes. He wondered who the woman was and why Carreras had considered her a necessary hostage.

Charlie leaned tiredly against the doorframe. A kid of about fifteen, looking exactly like Dan Collins, glanced up. The boy noted his presence through fear-bruised eyes, then turned his attention back to his mother. McKee crouched down beside Collins and murmured something which Collins clearly didn't hear. McKee shrugged and stood up again. The woman kneeling beside the injured boy glanced up at McKee...

Charlie felt as though somebody had slugged him. With a baseball bat. He actually staggered.

Sibyl...

He must have made some sound, because she looked up.

Green eyes widened. Her whole face drained of color in the space of a single heartbeat.

"Charlie?"

His throat wouldn't work properly. Somehow, the sound came out anyway, strangled. "Sibyl..."

Without quite knowing how, he found her in his arms. She clung to him. She was weeping his name brokenly, again and again. He closed his arms around her back, crushed her against him, buried his face in her dark hair, still unable to believe she was alive. Wetness soaked through his shirt. For a moment, he wasn't sure which of them was holding up the other. Shudders coursed through both of them.

Charlie shut his eyes over stinging salt. For a moment, he was aware only of her warmth, the feel of her against him, the hiccoughing sound escaping her. He didn't know how, didn't care how. She was here, alive, and he was holding her. Nothing else mattered. Tension, fear, hatred, all drained out of him in that moment.

"Hey," he whispered wetly, "don't go all mushy on me now... ."

She shook her head mutely against his chest—and kept crying. He didn't think she would ever stop. Sibyl shifted in his arms, tightened her grip fiercely around broken ribs. Charlie gave a strangled cry and nearly went down.

Sibyl's eyes, wide and shocked and glimmering with tears, met his as she caught him.

"Charlie?" She sounded scared, looked scared. The look in her face hit him like a blow across the backs of his knees. He wobbled, then dragged himself up and braced himself against her.

"Sorry," he whispered, shaken more by the look in her eyes than by the pain. "Just busted a rib, is all." Charlie tilted her face up when she tried to hide against his shirt. Her eyes were dark, wet emeralds in a waxen face. Her lips trembled. Charlie wiped her cheeks with his fingertips. She tried to smile, but her lips were quivering too badly.

"Are you okay?" Charlie asked. He looked for signs of burns, found none. Another coil of tension unwound in his belly and drained away.

"Yes. I'm a little bruised and sore, but I'll be fine. You? Besides the rib?"

"In one piece, sort of."

"And—"

"Lucky's asleep in the next room."

Sibyl closed her eyes and started crying again. "Thank God... Thank God... Charlie, I thought you were both dead." She looked up.

"How—" they began simultaneously.

They halted and stared at one another. Then Sibyl beat him by a half-second with a glare in her eyes and a strangled, "Don't you ever die on me again, Charlie Flynn!"

From somewhere behind them, McKee's voice intruded.

"Flynn? Your name! At last!"

He glared at the lunatic. McKee was chuckling. "Should've known you were Irish," he said, shepherding them out of the sickroom. "With that hair and temper, what else could you be? Are you going to stand there all night, Mr. Flynn, or will you please enlighten me as to this young lady's name?"

He glanced with pointed interest toward Sibyl.

"My name's Sibyl Johnson," she answered for herself. "Who the hell are you?"

Charlie found himself grinning. That was what he liked about her.

"Logan Pfeiffer McKee, Ms. Johnson." He shook her hand formally.

She studied McKee. "So... were you the one who found Charlie?"

McKee rubbed the back of his head ruefully. "It was a little more the other way around."

"I hit him over the head with a rock and tried to shoot him," Charlie muttered. "Things were a little confused."

Dan Collins' voice came from the infirmary doorway. "I'm still confused."

Charlie glanced up. Collins and his son stood in the doorway. The colonel had aged ten years. He looked haggard in the harsh fluorescent light. The arm he'd wrapped around his son looked like a permanent fixture. He glanced from Charlie to Sibyl.

"You two obviously know each other. I take it this is the 'other Carreras victim' you thought had died at Herculaneum?"

Charlie just nodded.

"Hungry?"

Charlie's smile widened a little. "Hell, Collins, if it's not moving, I'll eat it. Even if it is moving, I might eat it."

"Good. There's plenty of it."

Charlie glanced down at Sibyl, asking with his eyes if she'd join him. The way her eyes lit up lifted a load that felt like the weight of the entire earth off his shoulders. For the first time in how long he couldn't even recall, Charlie Flynn felt happy. Just plain and simple, happy.

Sibyl grinned and said a little too brightly, "Good. I think you could use some fattening up," she said, taking in the toughened scarecrow he'd become over four murderously tough years.

Sibyl spent the rest of the night on the floor, wrapped in blankets and Charlie Flynn's arms. She didn't sleep much. Charlie did, despite the fact that Logan McKee snored like a trumpeting mammoth. Despite the trickle of light coming from the bathroom, around the edges of the blanket they'd rigged for privacy. Despite worry for his little girl. Lucky slept nestled in blankets on the floor beside Sibyl's ear, looking utterly angelic. Janet Firelli, recovering some of her strength, had cooed over the little girl.

Danny had just rolled his eyes, earning Charlie's rusty laughter. Now Charlie slept so deeply she wasn't sure he'd ever awaken again. Despite everything they had yet to face, a smile tugged at the corners of Sibyl's lips. He'd looked so stunned when she'd invited him under the blankets with her. His weight and warmth felt good against her back. The arm he'd tucked around her waist hadn't moved even an inch. She wasn't sure which of them had needed the intimate contact more.

Right before supper, they'd managed to pry the slave's collar off his neck. His look as he'd hurled it outside had sent chills through her. Sibyl found herself almost pitying Carreras. She hoped he died as hard as Tony Bartlett had.

All during supper, he remained extremely withdrawn. He made certain Lucania had mashed up food she could eat and even managed to play airplanes with the spoon, drawing Lucania's giggles, but he avoided meeting anyone's eye. He flatly refused McKee's offer of first-aid attention after they finished eating.

So Sibyl took matters into her own hands. "Charlie, let me look at your back."

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not. You're white around the lips and swaying on your feet. Sit down. Now!"

He sat. Very gingerly, Sibyl eased off his shirt. Someone had wrapped cloth tightly around his ribs. It looked to Sibyl like a woman's stola—a cheap one.

"Who wrapped your ribs?"

"A fisherman's wife. We got out just—" He stiffened and made a ghastly sound.

Sibyl gulped. "I'm sorry. It's stuck to dried blood. Hold tight. I'll be right back... ."

She brought a pan of warm water from the kitchen and soaked the stuff loose with a wet cloth. If I keep him talking, maybe this won't hurt so much. "You were saying?"

He told her about the flight from Herculaneum, between little gasps and several sharp grunts. But the cloth came loose. His back was a mass of bruises, criss-crossed welts, swollen bands and lumps...

McKee, stepping past the sickroom, glanced in just as she finished unwrapping it.

"Holy Loving Jesus..."

Charlie snarled something under his breath.

"The way you've been moving, I knew it'd be bad under those bandages, but..." McKee's voice trailed off. "Sibyl, do you need any help?"

"No," Charlie grated. "We don't."

McKee shrugged and moved on toward the bathroom. Across the room, Dan Collins glanced up, but said nothing.

Very, very carefully, Sibyl washed Charlie's injuries. By the time she was done with the left shoulder, he was trembling. Quietly, Sibyl filled a hypo with a couple of cc's of Demerol. Without a little help, he'd pass out before she was done.

"Lean forward a little. That's good. Hold still."

He tried to crane around.

"I said, hold still! This is going to sting."

She jabbed the fleshy muscle and injected him.

He didn't flinch, but he did demand, a little sourly, "What the hell was that?"

"Synthetic morphine. Don't argue. Just lie down and let me deal with this."

Dan Collins glanced up from his own bedside vigil and tried to smile. "Take my advice. Don't argue. You'll be a happier man."

Charlie blinked, then swallowed sharply. "Okay."

Sibyl wanted to comfort the army colonel, too, but she couldn't lie to him and say, "Lucille will be fine." Lucille Collins' life was still very much in danger. At least Charlie had begun to relax under the influence of the medicine. By the time she finished washing grit and sand out of the welts, he was very drowsy and much more comfortable.

"Forgot how nice it is not to hurt," he mumbled into the army cot.

Sibyl turned aside, searching for the surgeon's medical kit. She found it on the floor and rummaged.

"What do you need?"

She glanced up. Francisco Valdez was awake. He looked a little pale.

"Something to prevent infection, something to deal with existing infection, and something for a broken rib."

Francisco eased up to a sitting position. "Let me see."

Sibyl helped the surgeon wobble over to Charlie's cot. Francisco's brows drew down sharply. He prodded cautiously, drawing a sharp yelp from Charlie.

"That needs to be set. It's out of proper alignment." He glanced around. "Where's that big lunatic, McKee?"

"I heard that," McKee said from the other room. He appeared in the doorway. "What's up?"

"I need some help setting a broken rib. If we don't, he'll risk a punctured lung. We can't deal with that here."

McKee nodded. "Tell me what to do."

Sibyl scooted out of their way. She hugged herself and tried not to flinch too badly when Charlie yelled. Thank God I dosed him first. Sibyl learned more colorful curses during the next five minutes than she had during her entire academic career. New Jersey cops had foul mouths. In any language. The one time she dared look, Charlie was sweating down his mutilated back, fists tightened in the blanket. The wetness on his face wasn't sweat, nor did it look voluntary.

It took far too long, in Sibyl's estimation, but Francisco Valdez finally said, "Yes, that's better. Much better. Thanks, McKee. Hang around a minute, I'll need you again."

Francisco Valdez went to work on the welts, using a topical anesthetic, followed by antibiotic ointment.

"Normally," he told Charlie, "I'd want you on oral antibiotics, but I've got an appendectomy and a gunshot wound that take higher priority and we have a limited supply of ampicillin."

"No problem." Charlie's voice, muffled by the blanket on the cot, wobbled a little.

"We'll keep these scrupulously clean and apply topical antibiotics to the worst welts until we run out of it. Hopefully by then, we'll be somewhere to get these properly looked after."

While he talked, Francisco smoothed in the medicine.

"Ms. Johnson, would you find the large gauze pads, please, and the adhesive?"

Sibyl rummaged again. She handed over a whole box of gauze and the tape. "I can do that," she said. "Your hands aren't steady yet."

Francisco smiled ruefully. "Yes, my ribs hurt, but not as much as Charlie's. Relatively speaking, I'm fine. Place the pads like so, overlapping, and tape the outsides to one another. Yes, just like that... ."

They covered Charlie's whole back, from his neck to his tailbone and partway around the sides. By the time they'd finished, Charlie looked more like the permanent occupant of an Egyptian crypt than a cop. At least he'd stopped wheezing like an asthmatic elephant. The wet trails down his cheeks had started to dry.

"Very good. Charlie, can you sit up?"

A sheen of sweat still glistened on his throat. "Sure, doc. No problem. Sometime next week, maybe."

McKee had to help him get there, then had to brace him once he made it.

"Now what?" McKee asked.

"We need to tape his ribs. Ms. Johnson?"

Sibyl handed over tape and helped hold Charlie up. McKee did the taping. Charlie compressed his lips and bruised Sibyl's wrist every few seconds. But he didn't yell again.

"Glad you... gave me that stuff," he said at one point. "This would'a been... murder without it."

Francisco lifted one brow. Sibyl explained. "I used only two cc's."

The army surgeon nodded. "That's all right, then. I'd have done the same. All right, Charlie, we're done torturing you for now. I prescribe plenty of rest and about twelve straight hours of sleep, followed by getting the hell out of here."

Charlie managed a wan smile that did amazing things to Sibyl's pulse. "You said it. When do we leave?"

"Right after you get some sleep," Sibyl said sternly.

Francisco caught her eye. "I think you need a little sleep as well, young lady. Off to bed. Now."

So Sibyl had ended up putting together two separate nests of blankets out in the main room, a small one into which she tucked sleeping little Lucania. She then offered to share the other with Charlie. The look in his eyes when she made that offer was one of the treasures she locked away in a secret corner of herself, along with memories of her parents and her grandmother's warm hugs and laughter.

Sibyl just wished she could sleep as deeply as Charlie. Every time she closed her eyes, some newly remembered horror would present itself for reinspection. She stared into the semidarkness, watching dust motes in the narrow shaft of light from the bathroom, and listened to Charlie's heartbeat and soft breaths. She thanked God every few minutes he was alive, that he had a chance to recover. That Lucania was safe with him.

She hoped Charlie could afford some good reconstructive surgery. What kind of health insurance did a police officer have? And had he been missing, subjectively, long enough to account for the age of his injuries? Not bloody likely.... Some of those scars were four years old. She damned Carreras all over again. Maybe something could be done through Francisco Valdez. It was the least the Army could do.

Nothing was easy anymore. Not that anything had ever been easy in her life. When God handed out trouble, He seemed to keep a special eye out for the Johnsons.

She wondered what part of New Jersey Charlie'd grown up in. Where, exactly, was Jersey City? They'd had so little time to talk. Did he have family up there? Maybe even a wife and kids? The question left her stunned. Listening to little Lucania breathe, recalling a few things Charlie'd said, she didn't think there were any kids in his life as a twentieth-century cop.

And even if he'd been married, they'd have taken every physical clue from him at the time of his capture. She wasn't sure undercover cops who were married would even wear a wedding band. She had a feeling something like that would come under the heading of protective camouflage.

God... She didn't want Charlie to walk out of her life. She treasured his friendship and harbored a sneaking feeling she didn't want to settle for just friendship. Her thoughts jolted her. He was old enough—at least, looked old enough—to be her father. She barely knew him. All she really knew about Charlie...

He was tenacious. Infinitely gentle with those who needed him, deadly to his enemies. Loyal to a fault. Astonishingly resourceful. And the most honorable man she knew.

Her throat closed traitorously.

The only virtue she could lay at her own feet was stubbornness. That was something that got her into trouble as often as not.

She already knew how he felt about children.

Low voices from the infirmary sidetracked Sibyl from her own worries. Lucille was awake. Dan Collins' voice was a broken whisper in the darkness.

"Lucy, hon, I'm so sorry..."

"Shh... Dan, don't—"

"This is my fault, it's all my fault, you're hurt and I've smashed up all these innocent people's lives..."

Sibyl swallowed hard. As bad as her own situation was, Dan Collins was living in hell.

"No, Dan." Lucille Collins' voice was breathless from pain, but there was no compromise in her tone. "It is not your fault. You didn't put me here. They did. You didn't hold a gun to our heads. They did. You didn't pull the trigger... or order us marooned someplace horrible to die... they did."

"Lucy—"

"Dan, sometimes we have to... have to stand up to evil men, no matter what the cost. I love you even more because you did. Because you cared enough about... about what's right to risk us, to risk everything..."

The sound of a grown man crying like a child was too harsh, too intimate a sound to be borne. Sibyl wanted to stop her ears, but couldn't move without waking up Charlie. And if he woke up, he'd start hurting again... .

Sibyl must have moved, because Charlie stirred sleepily. His arm tightened around her.

"You okay?" he murmured.

She nodded, then turned over and looked up into his eyes. "And you?"

"Tired," he admitted.

The voices coming from the other room stopped, then resumed more quietly.

Charlie's eyes had gone dark, very nearly unreadable. "Sibyl, I—you're a wonderful girl, smart and sweet and... and dammit, you're a wonderful friend in a tight spot. But... there's... there's a lot you don't know yet about me. I'm not a very nice person, Sibyl."

She remembered waking up with ropes on her wrists and ankles, and no memory of herself. Remembered a battered man's whispered gentleness to a complete stranger.

"You don't know yourself very well, then, Charlie."

His glance was startled. She thought about marshaling all sorts of sentimental arguments. Settled for something he might be able to accept. "You could have chosen to work for Carreras, instead of hunting him."

His whole face closed, like a mimosa leaf that's been pinched too hard. "Yeah. Well. I could see where that got the rest of my good old buddies in the Thirty-Seventh Street Tarantulas. I didn't figure a coffin and a jail cell were all that much different."

Something in the way he wouldn't meet her eyes told her there was a great deal left unsaid. She wondered what had prompted him to become a police officer. She decided if he didn't want to share it, she didn't want to prod. Some things were too hurtful to share.

"Well," Sibyl muttered, having determined this was confession time, round one, "I'm not exactly the innocent you seem to think I am."

His glance was clearly skeptical.

"Charlie, I stabbed Tony and lied to him, then left him to die."

"Yeah, I know."

"And I was glad I—" A gasp of shock broke loose. "You know?"

"I found him. While I was looking for you."

"And you don't mind?"

"Mind—?"

"Jeezus H. Christ," Logan McKee muttered from across the room, "keep it down, will you? Let a bum sleep!"

Sibyl gulped. These men had gone through hell to rescue her and the others, and they were being rude when Mr. McKee clearly needed sleep.

Meanwhile, Charlie's eyes reminded her of a little boy confronted by an abusive father after a Saturday night binge. How many times has life slapped you to the ground, Charlie Flynn?

She tried to explain how she felt in a way that wouldn't cause him further pain. "I don't rush into things. Generally, that is," she added ruefully. "Seems like lately, rush is all I've done."

"Does that mean you, uh, maybe want to get to know me better?"

She wouldn't meet his eyes for a moment, then, so softly he strained to hear it, whispered. "Yeah. Think I do."

His touch was so light she could barely feel his fingertips. He traced dark circles under her eyes. "You haven't slept at all, have you?"

She shook her head.

Across the room, Logan McKee grumbled into his blankets. Sibyl repressed the urge to laugh aloud at the black look Charlie gave McKee's back. She settled for a contented sigh as Charlie gathered her close. He tucked his arms securely around her again. For a long time, Sibyl lay with her eyes closed, more content than she'd believed possible, then drifted into sleep with Charlie still draped warmly against her.

"So," Dan Collins broached the subject that had been on Sibyl's mind since waking, "here we all are. Battered, bruised, but not quite beaten, in the year 28,000 b.c."

Seven of them sat around the makeshift table the guards had set up in the kitchen. Lucille still slept, drugged into painlessness, and Zac Hughes was still too ill to get out of bed. Lucania was asleep, too, having finished her breakfast then curled up like a puppy on her father's lap.

Logan McKee scratched his beard and merely looked thoughtful. Danny, looking more white-faced than any fifteen-year-old ought to, glanced toward his father for reassurance. Charlie said nothing, but gripped Sibyl's hand under the table. Dan Collins clearly had suffered a sleepless night. Purple hollows under his eyes met deep gouges that plowed down his cheeks from the edge of his nose. Francisco Valdez tried valiantly to look comfortable in the hard, straight-backed chair and failed utterly. Of them all, Janet Firelli was possibly in the best shape, and she'd been shot.

The condition they were in frightened Sibyl. I've seen healthier people walk away from plane crashes. How can we possibly go after Carreras like this? He'd laugh himself to death. She suppressed the urge to close her arms around herself. Carreras could send his people through at any time and catch them flat-footed. And just how did the recall devices work? Would they be reappear in the middle of Mafia Crime Central?

Sibyl decided someone had to start voicing doubts and questions and no one else seemed eager for the job.

"Colonel Collins—"

"Dan. Please." His eyes urged her to agree.

Sibyl shrugged. Why not? "All right. Dan, I don't really have any idea how this time-travel thing of yours works, except Tony told me you press a recall button on that little gadget he had with him and you get back home again." She frowned. "Where is it, anyway? I had it in a pouch..."

Francisco said, "All your stuff's in the sickroom. I didn't take the time to look at it. Your jewelry's in there, too."

For a moment she was nonplussed. "Jewelry?" Then she recalled the heavy gold ornaments Bericus had ordered her dressed in. She almost laughed aloud. She had a source of income, after all. "You know, I'd forgotten I came through dressed like the Queen of Sheba."

Charlie glanced up. "You sure were."

She cleared her throat delicately, aware of the heat in her face. "Anyway, Colonel—Dan—I don't know how this time-travel stuff is supposed to work, but a couple of worrisome thoughts have occurred to me."

Dan Collins nodded tiredly. "I expected them." He leaned forward and steepled his fingers. "Go on, please."

"I don't think Tony planned to end up here, in this time and place. What would be the point? And I can't imagine how you and Mr. McKee ended up in a position to rescue Charlie, although I'm eternally grateful you did."

"Hear, hear," Charlie muttered. He gave her hand another squeeze under the table.

She squeezed back. "It doesn't make sense you'd have known he was there at all, never mind knowing exactly where to look, when he was a couple of hundred miles from the place Carreras dumped him to die. Besides, you don't seem to have anything with you that would be appropriate to early Imperial Rome. So it couldn't have been a planned mission. The only explanation which makes sense is that you were up to something else altogether and something went seriously wrong. All of which tells me these jumps, or whatever you want to call them, aren't reliable."

Dan Collins' brows lifted silently.

"The other little problem I see is this. Even if the jump works just the way it's supposed to and we do get back, presumably the recall devices are set to return to the point and time of departure, or close to it. Which means we walk right into their base of operations. Where Carreras will presumably be waiting with open arms. Either that, or you have another recall device with you, something not even Carreras knows about, to take you to a place or time where you can strike safely at him, without him expecting it."

Dan shut his mouth. Then said, "Ever consider a career in military intelligence?"

Charlie laughed, one short syllable. "She's good, isn't she? Told you she was the only reason Lucky and I are alive."

Her face flamed.

Logan McKee leaned forward and propped hairy elbows on the table. "She's also very right." The lines around his eyes deepened as he frowned. "Don't forget, Collins, there's still a traitor in your camp. Somebody talked." A brief silence followed that grim observation.

Janet toyed with a salt shaker and said nothing.

McKee finally broke the silence again. "How about it, Collins? That first jump you and I made screwed up big time. Apparently so did hers." He nodded toward Sibyl. "Back on that beach in whatever the place was—"

"Stabiae," Charlie put quietly.

McKee pressed his point. "Yeah. You said something about this, about how the whole time stream is coming unraveled. Can we get back?"

Sibyl shivered.

Across the table, Dan Collins' eyes darkened. "I don't know," he answered quietly. He glanced at Sibyl, at Francisco Valdez and Janet Firelli. "Probably. Maybe. The problem we're facing is called slippage. The more holes get punched through time, the more cracks radiate out around them. The more cracks, the more likely any given jump will slip into the wrong time or place. Or both. We know about one such crack. It dumped McKee five years into his future, from Florida onto my base. Another one allowed us to rescue Charlie, instead of taking us to Krakatoa to dispose of Carreras' goons."

He glanced at Sibyl. "You're here, Ms. Johnson, because of another one that diverted you into Alaska's remote past instead of the present where Tony was doubtless headed. What will happen when we try the next jump..." He lifted his hands, palms up. "I suspect a great deal will depend on what Carreras has running simultaneously when we try it. I know he's got something big planned. It's supposed to begin soon. At least the first phase of it, anyway. I don't know what it is."

He paused, lost in thought for a moment. Then he said, "Multiple jumps are always dangerous, whether they're the Firellian kind—like the one we made, McKee—or whether they're separate but simultaneous." A grimace tugged his mouth askew. "Firellian Jumps are worse, of course, because they're not simply straight-line progressions. They have sideways, nonlinear hops thrown in. Up until we jumped," he rubbed the back of his neck, "they were only theoretically possible."

McKee snorted. "Still a goddamned guinea pig."

Collins ignored him. "That's why I had no idea what to expect when we activated the second leg of our triple to jump here. Our jump may have been what messed up yours, Ms. Johnson, and vice versa. Or it could have been the slippage effect. I just don't know. I'm not even certain the physicists will know.

"When we do activate our recall, we'll be activating the third leg of a Firellian triple link that has already proven faulty once. Frankly, I don't know what will happen. I only partly understand what Sue and Zac and their teams are doing. I do know the whole fabric of what we conventionally think of as time is weakened every time a new hole is punched in it. Jumping out of here could kill us."

For a long, long moment, nobody said a word. Sibyl was scared all the way to her toenails, in a far quieter fashion than she had been on the beach at Herculaneum. Marooned in a Pleistocene winter?

Danny said, "So, like, we could be stuck here, hunh, Dad?"

Sibyl read signs of too much strain and sleeplessness in the man's face as he rumpled his son's hair. "Yeah, son. We could be. Either we stay here/now, or we try the jump out and potentially end up someplace worse."

"Like beyond Antares," McKee put in.

Francisco started to sit forward, grunted once, and sat abruptly back. "If it's all the same to you," he said stiffly, in obvious pain, "I'd just as soon try it. I think we all have a few scores to settle."

"Let me get the Demerol—" Janet began.

"No." He shook his head. "I'll be fine. Others need it worse than I do. And God knows, we might need it even more later."

The breakfast in Sibyl's stomach turned leaden. Charlie tightened his hand around hers.

"How shall we do this?" Sibyl asked quietly into the silence. "Vote? Or follow military command? Do lifeboat rules apply, or do we get to choose?"

McKee shook his head. "What's to choose? If we stay here, too chicken to try it, eventually we'll run out of food and diesel. And I don't think any of us could survive a winter in this place. Maybe not even a summer. I'm betting there's more than wooly mammoths out there."

Danny nodded. "There is. Zac, he's a nut on the stuff. There's saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, cave lions..."

Dan Collins smiled at his son. "Yes, we get the point. The Ice Ages weren't very friendly to humanity and we have too many wounded as it is to survive here."

McKee glanced at Collins. "How about it, Colonel? When do we leave?"

Dan Collins glanced toward the infirmary. "Not until Frank says it's safe to move Lucille and Zac."

They looked as one toward Francisco Valdez.

"Give them another couple of weeks, Lucille especially. Kids heal faster than adults. If she makes it that long, she has a good chance."

"Janet?"

She laughed harshly. "Do you have any idea how much I miss salad bars? Doors that actually have doors? My mother..." Her voice wavered. "Hell, yes, I'll risk it."

McKee turned his cool appraisal on Sibyl and Charlie.

"That leaves you."

"You already know how I feel," Charlie said gruffly. "I'll kill Jésus Carreras with my bare hands, if I have to." He curled a hand protectively around Lucania's head. "I can't do that sitting on my butt in this icebox."

"I want the hell out of here," Sibyl said harshly. "No way we can survive here for any length of time. Diesel and supplies'll run out eventually. So I vote we cut our losses and get away from this place. Soon."

"Well," McKee said briskly, "that leaves us with the question of how to deal with Carreras once we get there."

Collins swore softly. "Yeah. Except none of us knows a thing about him."

Sibyl heard Charlie draw breath. Felt him gather himself through the tightening of his hand on hers. He spoke like a man chopping through thick ice.

"I do."

He was instantly the focal point of their undivided attention. He kept his gaze on the table and seemed to have difficulty speaking. The hand that wasn't clasped in hers was clenched in a white-knuckled fist.

"A lot of this..." He paused. "I've never told anyone most of this." He glanced up, met Collins' gaze squarely. "I first tangled with the Carreras family a long time ago. I wasn't much older than your boy is now, Collins."

The colonel put an arm around his son.

"I don't kid myself about what I was back then. If you weren't in a gang, you were everybody's target. And the Carrerases of this world use gangs." He shook his head. "Most of it doesn't matter anymore. When I was seventeen, they shot my grandfather. They didn't know he was my grandfather and didn't care, either. He was just a witness that had to be silenced. After it happened..."

Nobody moved. Sibyl could hear the snow blowing against the concrete walls outside.

"I quit. Got a high school diploma so I could apply to the police academy. Worked my ass off, finally made detective. Found out which Carreras had given the order. Finagled a transfer from New York to Miami. For the first two years I couldn't get close. My captain had me working other cases hard as I could go. But we made busts, dug out more information. And then, when I was this close"—he held up thumb and forefinger almost touching—"I stumbled across this time-travel thing. Next thing I knew, Carreras was bending over me, laughing, while they pumped me full of drugs. I figured they'd make it look like an OD and dump my body in Biscayne Bay."

He paused. Nobody spoke. His eyes were haunted. His fingers trembled slightly in Sibyl's grasp. She pressed them and earned a slight squeeze back.

"Anyway, I woke up in chains, with Richie or Ricky or whatever his name was standing in front of me, explaining to some guy in a dress how I'd murdered some important friend of a Roman senator's. At least, that's what Richie told me he'd said. A couple of minutes later, he let me know they'd sentenced me to die in the arena."

His laughter was harsh. Across the table, Dan Collins actually flinched.

"A couple of days later, he came to visit me. I was in this hellhole of a prison, built out of solid rock underneath another prison."

Sibyl caught her breath. "The Tullianum..."

He glanced up. "Yeah. You know it?"

"It's under the Mamertine Prison. Jugurtha was starved to death in it and Vercingetorix was put to death there by Julius Caesar. It's... horrible. Sixteen feet high, maybe thirty feet long, twenty-two feet wide..."

"You know it, all right," Charlie muttered. "They drop you through a hole in the ceiling. Then, if they decide to let you out, they run down a ladder. Richie didn't bother with the ladder. He just shouted down the good news. He told me I was lucky. I was going to be the featured event of the day. The Emperor himself was going to watch me die."

The muscles on his scarred jawline stood out in high relief. "The Circus Maximus in Rome was really pretty, you know? All marble and gemstones and incredible bronze facings on the turning posts, gorgeous sculpture on the barrier... . They sprinkled ground-up mica flakes on the sand, to make it glitter. The first time I fought there, they used whips to drive us condemned slaves onto the sand. By the time my first fight ended, the place stank like a slaughterhouse. I was the last one of us left alive. God help me, I killed all the others to stay alive, even their goddamned champions, who were supposed to finish me off. That's when one of the schools begged the Emperor to have me sold to them, rather than execute me."

Sibyl leaned closer and slid an arm around him.

Nobody made a sound while he collected his composure.

"Well," he said heavily. "Now you know. What do you want to know about Carreras? His old man runs things, probably came out of retirement to set this up. Julio's got lieutenants in half the cities of the world. Most of them are cousins or in-laws. They control more money than the American budget deficit is worth and last I heard, they were planning..."

His voice trailed off. Dan Collins' head came up sharply.

"What?"

Charlie's eyes had lost their focus. "Collins, what do you know about this thing he's planning?"

"Not much."

"Anything, Collins."

"The only thing I've been told is, he'll be moving through a lot of men and equipment soon. Sue Firelli's lab notes refer to substantial disruption of the time stream from about fifty years back, in the general area of Alamogordo, New Mexico."

Charlie went white. "Jesus God..."

"What?"

Charlie looked up, but his eyes were nearly blank. "My sources..." He stopped. Cleared his throat once. "Julio Carreras plans to declare war on the Yakusa."

McKee started swearing.

"The what?" Danny asked.

Dan Collins was exceedingly pale. "The Japanese mob. And Trinity Site nuclear testing grounds is at Alamogordo, New Mexico."

Sibyl went cold all over. "Oh, my God. We have to stop him. He's mad..."

"Jésus Carreras would do it, too, damn him." Charlie swore. "Japan practically owns America—and what they don't own, they've driven out of business. Carreras can't make any money if Americans don't have disposable income, which they won't have if our economy's shot to hell. Eliminate or control the Yakusa—which owns Japan—and you'd have it all. That must be how he figures it."

Grim looks passed between Dan, Charlie, and Logan McKee. Unbidden, Sibyl thought of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis... An unlikely trio ranged against the darkness of eternity itself. Somewhere, somewhen, they would find a far edge to that darkness, just as Sibyl had found her way back from the far edge of her own personal darkness. She'd found her way back in the person of Charlie Flynn. Maybe a crippled cop from New Jersey, a frightened Army colonel, and an escaped lunatic could find the far edge of that darkness.

And if they did...

Maybe they could eventually try and put their lives back together again. Meanwhile...

"One for all, and all for one," she muttered to nobody in particular.

"What?" Dan Collins frowned.

Charlie stared at her, then began to laugh, very softly. "Who says watching old movies isn't educational?" He squeezed her hand and said, "I think we just found ourselves a freakin' windmill to tilt."

They stayed in the concrete bunker just long enough to get the most seriously ill and injured ready for safe transport. As Francisco had predicted, Zac Hughes III healed fast. Sibyl discovered she liked him a great deal, particularly when he felt well enough to gush on about the passion of his young life: construction and engineering methods in medieval cathedrals. Sibyl didn't know much about that period in history, but his knowledge—particularly for a twelve-year-old—was encyclopedic.

Lucille desperately needed surgery that Francisco was finally driven to attempt, just to keep gangrene from settling into the rotting meat around the hole through her chest and back, never mind the gunk that was rotting inside, along the path the bullet had traveled. She wouldn't survive if gangrene got into a major organ. So, with Sibyl and Janet assisting, Francisco worked over her for hours, the look in his eyes echoing a singular terror that he might kill her, she was so weak already. But the repair job he did, as he said, "Ought to hold until we get her to a real hospital. At least we've reduced the chances of gangrene by cleaning the entire wound track."

When Francisco said he was ready to risk it, they stripped the bodies of their warm clothes and redistributed them, moved all the food, blankets, fuel, the stove that had kept them alive, and anything else that looked remotely salvageable—including all the army cots and every knife and gun every guard had been carrying, not to mention every bit of spare ammo. Through some male chemistry Sibyl didn't understand, Dan Collins, Logan McKee, and Charlie Flynn just started hauling out boxes of loaded cartridges, without ever once discussing it.

With Logan driving, Sibyl beside him, Charlie squeezed in next to her. And—because (he'd argued) he'd missed all the fun the first go-round—Zac Hughes III rode on Charlie's lap. Logan hadn't objected. "Hell, with you up here, Sib, and little Zac there, we've got about as much historical expertise as we're gonna find around here, right in front where you can see what we jump into. Let's go. I'm freezin' my butt off."

Together, Charlie and Sibyl mashed the recall button. Slowly, the time storm gathered out above the incredibly long, blackened smear in the otherwise unblemished white ice, where Vesuvius had turned solid ice into steaming mud. The portal slowly opened, like the dilating lens of a good camera, with pink lightning sizzling out of it from every direction.

"Here goes nothing," Logan muttered. "Hope the guys in back hang on real tight." Charlie and Sibyl braced themselves as Logan stepped on the gas and roared into the puncture of blinding light. Sibyl knew she was still in the truck, grasping Charlie's hand, but the only sensation was that of falling down an elevator shaft.

They came out into a night so full of stars, Charlie gasped at the sight. Not the stronghold of the Carreras family, at least. Then Zac went nuts. "Look! There!" The bones of a two-towered cathedral loomed over them, off to the left; pink lightning struck the walls, the half-finished towers, the curve of flying buttresses visible in the stark flashes of semi-daylight. The impression was that of Satan slowly swallowing the cathedral down his gullet. "I know that one—it's Our Lady of Paris!" Zac stammered. "Before the masons finished her. Wow!"

Sibyl shot the excited kid a quick look. "Zac, isn't Notre Dame de Paris on the edge of the Isle de la Cité?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Logan yelled, seeing the reason for Sibyl's question in the steep dropoff now visible in the glare of truck headlights. Before he could even think of hitting the brakes or turning the wheel, they were airborne, falling like lead bricks toward the black water of the Seine.