Infernal

2

-0:28

"Gia?"

She started at the sound of her name. She'd been sitting at the kitchen table, staring at nothing, lost in a helpless, hopeless funk.

She looked up and saw Tom standing in the doorway. He had a wild look in his eyes.

"You're leaving?" she said.

He shook his head. "Not immediately, but soon. Maybe."

"I'm—"

He motioned her down the hall. "Come on back to the sitting room. I need your help with something."

Wondering what he was talking about, she followed. She gasped when she saw Jack slumped in a chair, his chin on his chest, his head lolling to the side.

"He fell asleep?"

"Well, yes and no. It's not what you think. Yes, I put him out, but not with my ramblings. I had a little help."

"I don't…" She stepped over to Jack and shook his shoulder. "Jack? Jack, wake up." He didn't stir, not the slightest. Alarmed, she turned to Tom. "What's wrong with him?"

"I knocked him out."

"What?"

He lifted the scotch bottle. "With this."

Gia felt a cold hand squeeze her heart.

"Talk sense, damn it!"

"Okay. Sorry. Here goes: I got to thinking about a lot of things tonight—how you took the Stain from Vicky and how Jack took the Stain from you, and how I couldn't imagine a single person in the world taking it from me." He sounded on the verge of tears as he shook his head. "To have somebody willing to give up their life for me—God, what would that would be like?"

"Oh, there must be—"

He held up his hand. "Trust me: no one. Not after all the bridges I've burned. And I got to thinking about the way your eyes glow when you look at Jack, and the way your voice sounded when you talked about him being your rock, which I took to mean your hero. Am I right?"

Dumbstruck, Gia could only nod.

"Right. And I knew there wasn't a person alive who'd look at me or speak of me that way. I've never been anybody's hero—not even to my kids. A kid should be able to look at his dad just once in his life and say, 'That's who I want to be like.' I can't imagine one of my kids saying that. Ever. And I don't blame them. Why should they? I never gave them a reason."

Gia's confusion was giving way to fury. She clipped the words as she spoke them.

"But what's this got to do with putting Jack to sleep?"

"Well, as I was visiting my friendly neighborhood drug dealer—"

"Drugs? You?"

He shrugged. "I've been clean awhile, but the events of the last three or so days nudged me back into some old bad habits. So anyway, I'm listening to him list his wares as he's wont to do, and I hear him mention Georgia Home Boy. Now, he's mentioned this every time, but tonight, feeling the way I did, it hit me right between the eyes. That was the answer."

"Answer to what? What's Georgia—?"

"Georgia Home Boy—the acronym of which is GHB, which stands for gamma-hydroxy-butyrate or something like that. It's also called Grievous Bodily Harm, which yields the wrong acronym, but then, you can't expect the folks who use this stuff to be Einsteins. Anyway, it's one of those so-called date-rape drugs."

A flash of rage burned through Gia. "You gave Jack a date-rape drug?"

He smiled and held up the bottle. "Right in here. Odorless, colorless, and pretty much tasteless, especially in something like scotch. Mix it with alcohol—this batch is one-hundred proof—and it's good night, Nellie."

"But weren't you—?"

"Drinking it too?" He shook his head. "Just pretending. There's a wet spot next to my chair where I dumped it. Sorry about the rug."

Who cared about the rug?

"You… you still haven't told me why."

He put down the bottle, reached into the shopping bag, and came up with a familiar-looking container.

"You remember this, don't you?"

She nodded, her mouth dry.

Tom put the container down and stepped toward Jack.

"Okay, then let's put it to work."

Gia's legs went rubbery. She had to grab the back of the chair to stay upright.

"You can't. It won't work. The book said—"

"I know what the book said, and I'm sure it's right. But there doesn't seem to be any intelligence behind the Lilitongue. Like it's designed to perform certain tasks, and allow certain things within certain limits. I got to thinking that if it's just a dumb infernal device, maybe I can fool it."

Gia had a sense of where this might be going but dared not acknowledge it. Hoping… believing… she'd be setting herself up for a crushing fall.

"You?"

"Well, people have been saying how much we look alike. Hell, if I was ten years younger and twenty pounds lighter—okay, forty pounds lighter—they might think we were twins. Our DNA's got to be similar. And I thought, maybe we're enough alike to confuse the Lilitongue… allow me to grab the Stain because maybe it won't recognize the difference between us."

Gia couldn't speak past the fist she'd pressed against her mouth.

Tom looked at her. "Kind of a shock, hmmm? I'm kind of shocked myself. And I'll tell you flat out I'm scared witless. So help me open his shirt before I change my mind."

Gia could only nod. Her fingers were numb, clumsy as she fumbled at the buttons. Jack was so out of it, almost comatose.

Finally she found her voice. "But why drug him like this?"

Tom snorted. "Come on. You know the answer to that. You've known him for years and I've only known the grown Jack for three weeks, but I know how he'd react. And so do you."

Gia nodded. "He wouldn't let you."

"Right. A month—hell, a week ago I'd have thought no one but an imbecile would turn down an offer like this. But knowing what I know about Jack, he'd be just that imbecile. But I can see now it's not stupidity, it's not foolishness. It's… it's being the rock you talked about. He'd see it as his problem and he'd solve it or find a way through it, and no way would he allow anyone, especially his no-account brother, to stand in and take the fall for him. Am I right or am I right?"

"You're right," Gia said as she finished unbuttoning the shirt. "You are so right."

What else was there to say? Tom had nailed his brother.

Together she and Tom pulled up Jack's underlying T-shirt. She gasped when she saw the edges of the Stain only millimeters apart.

"Jesus," Tom breathed. "Better hurry."

"But…" She couldn't help it: She was baffled. "Why?"

Tom began unbuttoning his own shirt and pulling it off.

"Well, as I said before, you were willing to take Vicky's place, Jack was willing to take yours, so I guess it's up to me to take Jack's—if I can."

Gia watched in disbelieving awe as he stood bare-chested and opened the container. He smeared the mixture on both his palms and looked at her.

"Okay. How does this work?"

"You…" Her voice sounded faint, miles away. "You press your hand over the Stain and wish it for your own."

He frowned. "Wish? Really? That's it?"

Gia nodded, fearing if she spoke she might break whatever spell was at work here.

Tom took a tremulous breath. "Okay. Here goes. I'm going to use both hands. A two-pronged approach, you might say."

She noticed how his hands wavered and trembled as they approached the Stain, but he kept moving them forward until his palms lay flat against Jack's skin, one on each end of the creeping black band.

"And now I wish."

Gia held her breath as Tom closed his eyes. A voice filled her head saying, Please, God, oh please, oh please, oh, please.

He suddenly stiffened, his arms straightening and jittering, his body shaking as if he'd grabbed a hot electric wire. His eyes snapped open as he arched his back and cried out in agony.

And then Gia noticed a mark on the back of each hand—black… and lengthening, stretching over Tom's trembling wrists, then up his shaking arms to his shoulders, then disappearing onto his back. She watched in horrid fascination as a black band snaked around each side of his chest to stop bare millimeters apart over his breastbone.

At last he stopped shaking. His hands pulled from Jack as he staggered back.

Gia turned from Tom to Jack, looking for the Stain. But Jack's skin was clear, unmarred.

She dropped to her knees next to him and sobbed.

Saved!