The Law of Nines

50

THE MEMBER OF THE DAGGETT SOCIETY stood frozen in shocked silence, staring at the identical knives. Alex, facing all the people, saw the eyes of the man in the back roll up in his head. Alex sprang forward to try to grab the man as he toppled back, but he wasn’t close enough.

When the man hit the floor they all suddenly came to their senses at the same time and turned to help. Sounds of concern filled the room as everyone offered advice at the same time.

“Tyler, just stay there,” one of the men said, kneeling down as the supine man started coming around. He gestured into the confusion. “Get a pillow to elevate his feet.” He started taking the supine man’s pulse in a way that looked to Alex like he knew what he was doing. “You’ll be fine, Tyler. Just lie there and let the blood get to your brain.”

“No, please, I’m all right now,” Tyler said, looking embarrassed as he lifted his head.

As someone pushed a pillow from the couch under Tyler’s legs, the man over him put a hand on his chest to hold him down.

“I was just so shocked, that’s all. I’m fine, Doc.” Tyler started sitting up. “I’m all right,” he insisted, if weakly. When he started to stand, some of the other men reached in to steady him.

“Maybe you’d better lie down,” Alex said as he gripped the man’s upper arm in case he keeled over again.

“Yes, he should,” the doctor said.

“I’m all right now,” Tyler said, his voice still sounding weak. “It’s just that when Hal was opening that box to show you the knife that the society has held in safekeeping for over a thousand years, I was thinking of all the generations of members who have lived for this day without ever seeing any of the things they believed in and waited for, and here I stand, seeing a prediction in a book over a thousand years old come to life right before my very eyes. But then when I saw the other knife. .”

Everyone started talking at once. Jax took the opportunity to retrieve her weapon and return it to its sheath as she came around the table to see about the man.

The doctor told Tyler to lie down on the couch and put his feet up. The man, embarrassed by the attention, didn’t want to, even though he still looked wobbly on his feet. People spoke up, telling him that he should follow the doctor’s orders.

Out of the corner of his eye, on the other side of the knot of people, Alex saw a hand reach out and snatch the knife from its velvet bed in the open box.

In a blur of movement, the middle-aged man with the knife elbowed a woman back out of his way as he dove for Jax.

Jax saw him at the last instant and jerked back, but not fast enough. The blade caught her with a glancing blow as she spun away from the surprise attack.

Hal was close. He crashed through the chairs toward the man and deflected his arm as he again drove the blade in toward Jax. By then, Alex was also flying into the melee. The woman who had been knocked out of the way by the knife-wielding man screamed.

Other people yelled, “Fred, no!” at the attacker.

Ignoring the cries for him to stop, Fred slashed wildly. Jax drew a knife as she dodged the attacks. As he lunged for her again, Hal kicked the arm of the knife-wielding man away from her. The blow whirled him around so that his back was to Alex.

As he raced in, Alex twisted to add momentum and power as he used all his strength to smash his elbow in against the back of the man’s neck. The impact was enough to crush his vertebrae. The man went limp and in a sinuous movement collapsed, sprawling onto his back as frightened people scrambled out of the way.

The doctor went to a knee beside him, putting fingers to the side of his neck. “He’s still alive, someone call—”

Using a foot to boost herself, Jax leaped over a toppled chair, knife in hand. She landed beside the downed man and, with both fists around the handle of her knife, drove the blade down through the center of the prostrate man’s face. It slammed in far enough to hit the back of the skull.

“Now he’s not,” Jax growled.

Alex saw blood down the front of her white blouse, but other things had suddenly taken priority. He grabbed Jax by the arm, lifting her. She held on to the knife as he hauled her up. The bloody blade abruptly came unstuck and drew back out as she pulled it with her.

Alex shoved her back toward the wall behind the table. As she was still stumbling back and hitting the wall, he rounded the table and drew his gun. He used the table as a physical barrier to maintain space as he brought the weapon up, pointing it at the people before him.

“Everyone on the ground!”

They froze in shock.

“On your knees! Now! Or I’ll start shooting!”

People dropped to their knees in a panic.

“Hands behind your heads! Lock your fingers!”

“I’m a doctor,” one of the men said. “Jax is hurt. Let me help her.”

“On your knees or you’re dead! Understand?”

The man nodded reluctantly.

“Jax?” Alex asked over his shoulder without taking his eyes off the people lined up on the floor. “How bad is it?”

“Not bad enough for you to put down your Glock.”

Alex didn’t find her words all that encouraging, since he knew that she believed he was more important to stopping Cain’s plan than she was. At least she was talking.

Alex gestured with a tilt of his head. “Hal, take a look, will you please?”

Hal, to the side on one knee with his hands raised, rushed to do as Alex asked. Alex focused on the task at hand, on watching everyone in case there were accomplices to the man who had attacked Jax. He didn’t know if there was another traitor among the society. For all he knew this whole thing was an elaborate trap. He didn’t want to panic into pulling the trigger, but he had to be ready in case it became necessary.

As Alex kept the gun leveled on the cluster of people kneeling on the carpet in the middle of the room, he saw Hal rush over to the wet bar and grab a towel. He heard the towel being ripped.

“Hal — talk to me.”

“Dead Fred there caught her arm with the knife. Fortunately it hasn’t been sharpened in a thousand years or it might have done more serious damage. I’m not a doctor, but I’m sure she’s going to need stitches.”

Alex let out a sigh of relief.

“What’s the plan, Alex?” Hal asked as he walked Jax over to the wet bar, pressing a towel against her forearm the whole way.

“The plan is not to have any more surprises.”

“That was a pretty big one,” Ralph said from his place on the floor. “I’ve known Fred Logan for years and I never thought him capable of anything like that. I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“That makes two of us,” Mike Fenton said.

Alex kept his finger alongside the barrel of the gun as he sighted through the iron sights, fearing to hold his finger against the trigger lest something make him flinch and cause him to accidentally press it. He knew from countless hours of practice that from where they were on the floor no one could beat him to his gun before he could twitch his finger down to the trigger.

Hal cursed under his breath. Out of the corner of his eye Alex saw him leading a somewhat wobbly Jax around behind.

“That damn bar sink isn’t big enough to wash a grape,” Hal said. “I need to take her into the bathroom and use the sink in there, or the tub.”

“How bad is it?” the doctor asked.

“It didn’t seem to cut any veins. She’s lucky.”

“Right, lucky,” Jax growled.

Underlying the sarcasm, Alex could read the anger in her voice. He was relieved that she was angry. That meant it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared at first.

“I have a kit in my car,” the doctor said.

“You just do as Alex asked, Doc, and stay right there for the moment,” Hal said.

“Well, wash around it good but don’t get soap in the laceration, then wrap it tight enough to put compression on the wound to stop the bleeding.”

“Will do,” Hal said, his voice echoing from the bathroom as he flicked on the light.

“Mr. Rahl?” Mildred said, unable to take her eyes off the bloody corpse sprawled on the floor in front of her. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Mildred, look at me.” The frightened woman looked up at him. “You’re going to be fine. Don’t look at him, look at me. You’re not going to be sick. You’re a member of the Daggett Society. You’re going to be strong.”

That seemed to buck her up a little. She took a deep breath and kept her eyes on Alex. He hoped she wasn’t in on it.

“I don’t understand,” Mike Fenton said. “We’ve all known Fred Logan for years.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Alex said. “I’ve been fooled by these people as well. They’re good at what they do. You knew Fred here for years. I’ve only known most of you for hours. There is a lot at stake. I hope you understand why I can’t take any chances.”

Most of the people nodded.

Alex was glad to see Jax coming out of the bedroom. Her left forearm had a makeshift bandage made of strips of motel towels.

She drew her knife as she knelt down beside Alex. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “I’m just angry with myself that he caught me off guard like that. I feel stupid letting him cut me.”

“Now you know how I felt,” Alex said.

A number of the people watching from only a few feet away gasped when Jax leaned over and started cutting symbols into the dead man’s forehead. The beige carpet was soaked with blood all around his head. Yet more trickled down as Jax cut.

Finished, Jax sat back on her heels. Alex concentrated on trying to stop his hands from shaking as he sighted down the gun at people he hoped he wouldn’t have to shoot.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Hal said under his breath. “He’s vanished.”

Alex glanced down and saw that the dead man was indeed gone. The carpet was clean. Jax’s knife was clean.

“He was from my world,” Jax said to the people watching in wide-eyed shock. “I sent him back.”

Everyone began asking questions at once.

“Quiet!” Alex shouted. The room fell silent.

“What now?” Jax whispered to him.

“Now,” he said so that everyone could hear, “we’re going to test all of these people to see if any of them vanish and go back like Fred did.”

People gasped in fear. Alex gestured with one hand to quiet them down.

“Don’t worry, we’re not going to use a knife.”

Struck with a sudden worry of his own, he glanced over at Jax and whispered, “You don’t need to cut the skin, do you?”

“No. I only use a knife because I want to send their people a message, a message delivered in blood. I can use anything that will make marks.”

“Hal,” Alex said, gesturing with his gun, “frisk them. I want to know if any of them are armed.”

Hal apologized as he went from one person to the next, doing a thorough job of looking for hidden weapons. When finished, he stood.

“No hand grenades, no rocket launchers.”

“Good. Can you get Jax a pen off the table there, please?”

Hal stayed out of the line of fire and walked around behind to hand Jax the pen.

Jax crooked a finger at Mike Fenton, then pointed at the carpet a few feet in front of her. “Stay on your knees and come forward.”

Mike moved forward, keeping his fingers locked behind his head. He looked up at Hal, as if pleading his case.

“Just do as they ask, Mike. After what happened with Fred, Alex is making sense. We have to check everyone out.”

“Why not you?” Mike asked.

Hal heaved a sigh and knelt down in front of Jax. He tapped a finger against his forehead. “Test me first.”

Jax nodded and started drawing the symbols with the stubby motel pen. When she finished she sat back on her heels and rested her drawing hand in her lap. Hal turned and showed off the symbols on his forehead.

“See?” she said to the group. “I’m drawing a trigger that will activate a lifeline to take anyone from my world back there. If Hal had been from my world, he would have gone back just like that dead man, Fred, did.”

Everyone nodded that it made sense. They all looked considerably less worried. They came up one at a time and let Jax draw on their foreheads with the pen. It looked bizarre to see a roomful of people on their knees, all getting strange symbols drawn on their foreheads.

Mildred went last. She didn’t vanish. She looked relieved, though, as if she had feared she somehow might.

“I wish I could somehow preserve it,” she said to the group as she looked at all their foreheads. “We’re the first members of the society to see something from that other world since the book was first written.”

“Now what?” Hal asked, concerned with more important things than preserving a design.

“Now we let the doctor see to Jax’s arm,” Alex said.

“About time,” the man grumbled as he stood and came forward.

On his way by, Hal grabbed the man’s shirt at his shoulder. “Don’t you be that way to Alex. Fred’s the one who tried to kill Jax. Alex didn’t have to come. He didn’t have to take the land and he doesn’t have to be a part of any of this. Don’t begrudge him being afraid for his life, and the life of this young lady, here. It was one of the people we asked him to trust who attacked her.”

The doctor sighed. “You’re right, Hal. Sorry, Alex, Jax. I guess I just feel guilty because we let one of them into our midst. We could have ruined everything, and it would have been our fault.”

Other people nodded.

“Like I said, they fooled me, too,” Alex said. “But just because you all passed the first test, that doesn’t mean that I’m satisfied yet. Jax and I were almost killed by a doctor from this world who was working with them.”

Hal looked surprised. “Seriously?”

“Serious as a heart attack,” Alex said.

“This is going to need stitches,” the doctor said as he unwrapped Jax’s arm.

“Can’t you use magic glue?” Jax asked.

When the doctor frowned up at her, Alex said, “She means superglue.”

“Oh. Well, I could.”

“I have some in my truck. Hal, you want to get it?”

“Wait.” The doctor tossed Hal his keys. “Get my bag out of the back seat of my car instead, will you? I’ve got superglue but it’s medical grade. It’s more flexible and works better.”

Hal hurried out. He shortly returned with a black bag.

The doctor gestured to the table. “Over there. Let’s get her over there so she can lay her arm on the table.”

The two of them guided Jax over to the table. The doctor warned her that the glue would feel hot and sting. If it did, she didn’t voice a reaction. Alex didn’t hear a peep out of her as he kept his eye on the group on their knees before him. A few of them were getting tired and sat back on their heels.

It seemed to take forever, but when the doctor was finished Jax reappeared at Alex’s side sporting a tightly wrapped arm below the rolled-up sleeve of her white blouse.

“I have blood all over me,” she said. “I need to get some other clothes or I will draw attention.”

With a quick glance, he saw that she looked like she’d participated in an ax murder. “You’re right. Hal, would you go out to my truck with her? Watch her back?”

Hal caught the keys when Alex tossed them. “Sure.”

After they had returned, Jax hurried into the other room to change. It wasn’t long until she came out of the bedroom wearing the red top and different jeans.

“What now?” Hal asked.

“Now,” Alex said, “we’re leaving.”

“What about all of us?” Mike asked. “We have so much more we need to talk about.”

“We’ll have to talk later. I’m going to let Hal do the second half of the testing first, to see if any of you were in cahoots with your dead Daggett Society member from another world.”

Alex kept the gun pointed in the general direction of the group as he took Jax by the arm and backed toward the door.