Reprisal

TWENTY-NINE

"Mrs. Treece will be over in half an hour."

Bill asked if he could use the phone. Veilleur told him to go ahead. He was almost afraid to touch it, but he forced his hand to pick up the receiver and put it to his ear. When he heard a dial tone, he had a sudden urge to cry.

Maybe it's over—really, finally over.

He called North Carolina and got Lisl's number, then dialed her apartment. He let it ring a good while but there was no answer. If she wasn't home, it probably meant she'd found Sanders and had taken him back to his place. He tried information again for Everett Sanders's number but it was unlisted.

He hoped everything was going all right down there without him.

While waiting for Mrs. Treece to show up, he heard Mrs. Veilleur's accented voice shouting from the bedroom.

"Glen! Glen! Where's my breakfast? I smell breakfast cooking! Isn't anyone going to give me any? I'm hungry!"

Bill nodded and listened as Veilleur went in and patiently explained to his Magda that she'd just had breakfast and that lunch was still hours away.

"You're lying to me!" the woman said. "Nobody's fed me for weeks! I'm starving here!"

Suddenly Bill knew Mrs. Veilleur's problem, and the need for a full-time nurse: Alzheimer's disease. And abruptly Mr. Veilleur changed from a mystery man with a jealously guarded store of arcane knowledge to someone very human coping with a terrible burden.

But why had she called him Glen? The name on the mailbox downstairs had listed him as Gaston. He shrugged it off. Probably just a nickname.

The doorman called up shortly thereafter to announce that Mrs. Treece had arrived. A few minutes later there was a knock on the door and Veilleur opened it.

She was older, her hair shorter and more styled, her face thinner, more lined, but it was her.

"Carol!" Bill said as soon as his throat unlocked. "Carol Stevens!"

The woman stared at him in shock, without the slightest hint of recognition in her eyes.

"No—no one's called me that for—"

"Carol, it's me! Bill Ryan!"

And then she knew him. He could see it in the widening of her eyes as the old memories reconciled with the changed man before her. Her lips quivered and she looked as if she was going to cry. She opened her arms and rushed toward him.

"Bill! Oh, my God! It really is you!"

And then his arms were around her, crushing her to him as he swung her off the floor. He heard her sobbing against his neck and felt his own eyes fill with tears.

Finally he let her down but still she clung to him.

"Oh, God, Bill, I thought you were dead!"

"In a way, I was," he said. Carol… so good to hold her… like being brought back to life. "But not anymore."

The last time he'd seen her had been in 1968 when she'd boarded that plane with her father-in-law, Jonah Stevens. That had been right after the other horrors—Jim's violent death, the bizarre murders in the Hanley mansion, the crazy talk about her unborn child being the Antichrist.

Her child! Carol had been pregnant the last time he'd seen her.

A slow chill began to crawl through him. Veilleur had said the woman coming this morning might be able to answer Bill's questions about what had happened to Danny and what was happening to Lisl. Carol's child would have been born in 1968, making him just about…

Rafe's age.

He stepped back and looked at her, then at Veilleur, then back to Carol.

"Are you… is she… Rafe's mother?"

"Who's Rafe?" she said.

Mr. Veilleur said, "I believe we've found your son, Mrs. Treece."

"Jimmy?" she said, her fingers digging into Bill's arms. "You've found Jimmy?"

Jimmy. She'd named the boy after her late husband, Bill's old friend Jim Stevens.

Bill descrjbed Rafe to her and she nodded slowly.

"That SQunds like him."

She fished in her purse and came up with a wrinkled photo. She handed it to Bill. His knees weakened as he stared down at a slim, dark, handsome teenage boy who looked more like Sara than Rafe.

"That's him," he croaked.

"What's he done?" she said softly.

Bill could barely stand, let alone speak. Still clutching the photo, he stepped back and found a seat. Rafe was Carol's son?

But Veilleur had said Rafe was some sort of evil immortal whose real name was Rasalom.

"Someone had better explain this to me," Bill said.

Veilleur closed the nurse in the bedroom with his wife, then the four of them seated themselves in the living room. Carol was introduced to Renny. Bill noticed that the detective looked as confused as Bill felt.

"Last night I told you both about Rasalom," Veilleur said. "He was killed—or at least appeared to have been killed—in 1941 at a place called the Keep in a small pass through the Transylvanian Alps."

"Who killed him?" Renny said. Bill supposed it was a natural question for a cop to ask.

"I did," Veilleur said. 'The power I had served for so long released me then and so I assumed it was over at last. Apparently I was wrong. Over the past few decades I have pieced together the following sequence of events. It seems that at the time of Rasalom's death, Dr. Roderick Hanley was successfully growing a clone of himself here in New York. For some reason, perhaps due to something unique about a clone, Rasalom was able to move into the body of the child who would eventually grow up to be James Stevens."

The name hit Bill like a punch.

"Then it's true?" Bill said, looking at Carol. "All those stories about Jim being a clone were true?"

Carol nodded. "Yes. All true."

"But Rasalom could not control the clone's body," Veilleur said. "He could use the body as a vessel for his life force and nothing else. He was trapped, an impotent passenger in Jim Stevens's body—until Jim fathered a child. When that happened, he moved into the new life the instant it was conceived within Carol."

"All that Antichrist talk," Bill said, remembering Jim's violent death and the pursuit of Carol by the Chosen.

Carol shrugged helplessly, almost apologetically.

"But I never really believed all the things my Aunt Grace and those awful people with her said about my baby. So I fled with Jonah to Arkansas where Jimmy was born. He was a perfectly normal infant during the first few months, but it wasn't long before I began to suspect there was something wrong with him, something… malignant about him. I blamed my feelings on all the horrors I'd gone through while I was carrying him, all the terrible things that had been said about him, about him being the

Antichrist and all that. But after a while I realized that there was no question about it: Jimmy was not a normal child. Physically, he grew and developed at a normal rate, but mentally he was unlike any child who has ever lived."

She paused and Bill noticed that she shuddered.

"How?" he said.

Staring at the corner of the ceiling as she spoke, she gave a brief summary of fifteen years spent with a child who was never really a child, who had never needed a parent.

"Finally, at age fifteen, he walked out on me. After he was gone, I distributed the balance of the fortune to various charities—I wanted no part of it—and came back to New York. I met a man, we got married, I'm… getting by. Mr. Veilleur contacted me a few years ago. We've been meeting and talking about Jimmy. I don't know if I believe him about Jimmy being this Rasalom he talks about, but I don't know if I disbelieve him either. It explains so many of the terrible things that have happened since he was conceived." She looked at Renny, then at Bill. "But what's he done to you?"

Bill told Carol about Sara and what she had done to Danny five years ago; he told her about Rafe and how he was twisting Lisl, and what they had done to Ev.

"But Mr. Veilleur doesn't think they were his real targets," he concluded. "He thinks Rafe or whoever he is has really been out to hurt me. Is that possible?"

Carol nodded. "He hates you."

Bill was struck speechless for a moment.

"Me? What did I ever do to him?"

"You almost killed him."

As Bill listened in awe, she went on to remind him of her botched attempt to seduce him that afternoon in the Hanley mansion, of how the seduction had ended when she'd started to miscarry the child she hadn't known she was carrying.

"He almost died then," she said, "and he blames you, Bill."

"Me? But'I had nothing—"

"You had everything to do with it," Veilleur said. "Mrs. Treece has told me of the incident. It's plain to me that Rasalom influenced her from within her womb, causing her uncharacteristic behavior. But it was your refusal to yield to her, to hold to your vows—it didn't matter that the God to whom you made those vows doesn't exist—it was your determination to continue on the course you had chosen for your life, toward what you believed was right that caused the near miscarriage." He shook his head in dismay. "And it was a complete miscarriage of fate that you got her to the hospital in time to save her child. For it was that child who has come back to ruin your life."

Bill's mind rebelled against what he was hearing.

"He did that to Danny because I refused her? And now he's after Lisl for the same reason?"

"I believe he also set fire to your parents' house," Veilleur said. "It was no accident that they died on the same date as your friend Jim Stevens. He was sending you a message. You have been the target all along, Father Ryan. You hurt him and he does not forgive."

"But they were innocent!"

"But useful to Rasalom. Think: You'd already taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. He could not ruin you financially or slaughter your wife and children, so he chose another route of attack."

"Why didn't he just kill me?"

"Too quick. No sustenance from that. Even physical pain gives him only a fraction of what he derives from psychic pain, from fear, hatred, self-doubt. His purpose appears to have been to utterly ruin you from within. To do that he stripped you of your support system—your family, your friends, your freedom, your religious order, your god, your very identity. He wants you to doubt yourself, to question the worth of your life, the usefulness of continuing it. He destroyed everything that gave meaning to your life, that made you who you are, expecting you to turn against your values and wallow in doubt and misery and self-pity. And then, hopefully, to commit the ultimate act of despair: suicide. He almost succeeded five years ago, but you refused to give up. So now he's returned to finish the job."

Bill sat there numb, in shock.

"But why is he wasting his time with me? If he's so powerful, if he's out to change the world into some awful place, why expend so much effort on me?"

"First of all, it gives him great pleasure. And in a hellish way it's a testimony to you that he felt he had to level such a devastating assault against you. He must respect your strength of character. He may even fear you. But the real reason he's taken the time to shatter your life is that he's afraid to reveal himself just yet. He's been biding his time, accumulating power, amusing himself while he grows stronger."

"He was afraid of a red-haired man when he was growing up," Carol said. "But we never saw him. Who was that?"

Veilleur sighed. "Me."

They all stared at the old man. Finally Renny said what was on Bill's mind.

"You've got to be kidding!"

"Not as I am today," Veilleur said quickly, "but as I used to be. I am the red-haired man Rasalom fears—or rather I was. He still thinks I am a vigorous, younger man, brimming with all the power of the opposing force, waiting for him to show himself so that I can bring the full power of that force to bear on him."

"So," Bill said. "You were the last to oppose him? Who before you?"

"No one."

"But you said this has been going on for ages."

Veilleur nodded.

"Then you're…" Bill couldn't grasp it, didn't want to try right now. "But then who represents this opposing force now?"

Veilleur's expression was bleak.

"No one. When Rasalom appeared to be dead, the battle appeared to be won, so the opposing force left this sphere. And I began to age as everyone else… one year at a time. So now there is no one on earth to oppose him."

Suddenly Bill was afraid—for the world, but especially for Lisl.

"I've got to go back," he said, rising to his feet.

"Bill, you can't be serious!" Carol said.

Bill felt his fear swell into waves of murderous rage, roaring through him like a storm surge.

"He killed my parents, mutilated Danny Gordon, and God knows what else. I'm not sitting pat up here while he does whatever he pleases with the people I left behind."

Renny was on his feet too.

"I'll go with you. I've got some unfinished business with this bozo myself."

"I want to come too," Carol said. "Maybe I can talk some sense into him."'

"Do you really believe that?"

"No," she said, her lips trembling. "But I feel I've got to try."

"I believe I'll come too," Mr. Veilleur said.

"Are you up to it?"

Bill felt the full intensity of his blue-eyed gaze.

"You can't stop him, but you can frustrate him, hamper him. I have this feeling that you're a man who can do it. It will be a small victory, meaningless in the long run, but I'd like to see it. I'll have to stay in the background, of course. Under no circumstances must he know about me. Understood?" One after another, he stared at each of them. "If he sees me like this he will know he's free to make this world—quite literally—a living hell."

As Mr. Veilleur went to give the nurse instructions as to the care of his wife during his absence, Bill began calling the airlines to check out the flight schedules. He was possessed by a dreadful rising urgency to get back to Pendleton.