Maker's Song - In the Blood Part 10

"Maybe that's possible," Alexander said carefully. "I'd bet good money she'll be at Prejean's gigs in Seattle, especially if he saved her life. I could alter our plan to include her-"

"No, Wallace would be a distraction. You'll need to remain focused. S will kill you if you make a mistake. He's fast and unpredictable. Dangerous."

"Singing to the choir, Father," Alexander sighed. "We watched the footage too."

Wells took a swallow of the amber liquor. The Courvoisier burned down his throat, tasting of oak and vanilla. "Give S the encoded MP3 player or, better, leave it for him; keep at a safe distance. Once he's finished with his task, sedate him and bring him home."

Alexander propped the shotgun against the easy chair and rose to his feet. "Bring him home to heal Athena," he said, his gaze steady.

"And Mother," Wells said. "Listen to me carefully and keep this thought forefront: Only I have a map to the labyrinth within S's head, a labyrinth I created."

"Do I hear an amen?" Alexander said, a cynical smile twisting across his lips. "I understand, Father. But I need you to understand this-Athena first."

"Athena first, agreed," Wells said, lying with a sincerity learned from decades of work within the Bureau. A pang of regret bit deep into him. Athena was Alexander's twin. He feared his son might never be the same without her, and that was the reason he hadn't already ended her life.

But as Athena descended deeper into madness, he feared that her insanity would seep into Alexander through their indefinable bond, the womb link of twins. Feared it was seeping into him even now, threading delusion through his veins.

"Agreed then." The cynical smile vanished from Alexander's lips. He crossed the carpet to where Wells stood in front of the mahogany bar and bowed his head.

Wells stepped forward and kissed the top of Alexander's golden head, bestowing paternal blessing with a touch of his lips.

"Bring S home," Wells murmured. "And I'll teach you how to wield him."

"I'll hold you to that."

"As you should."

Wells stepped back and Alexander lifted his head. He looked at Wells for a long moment, the Aegean depths of his eyes unfathomable. "I've always wondered why you hide your thoughts from me when you're the one who made me telepathic."

Wells chuckled. "To build character. To give you grief. To keep you guessing. Take your pick."

The cynical smile returned to Alexander's lips. With a flipped half-salute, he turned and walked from the room.

"Alexander," Wells called. His son's tread stopped. "Keep in mind that the MP3 player is designed to play the message only once. Preview it, and you'll be giving S nothing but static to listen to."

The front door creaked open, then shut again.

Wells drained the snifter in a second long swallow. Sweat popped up along his hairline. Heat flushed his face. He poured a second drink. Sliding his fingers around the snifter's stem and cupping the bowl in his palm, he carried the gla.s.s, along with the bottle of cognac, down the hall to his office.Mortal Wells might be, but the fires of creation burned within his mind. Genetics was his hammer. Human flesh his metal.

His son was the proof of that-his daughter his only shame.

"Do what needs to be done, Bobby." Gloria rubs her hands over her still-flat belly. "Maybe that's why I'm carrying twins. Maybe that's why we have one of each gender." A small, knowing smile curves her lips. "And maybe that's why I chose you."

With those words, Wells had finally seen beyond the self-sacrificing madonna to the calculating mother-G.o.ddess. Through her, the path to divinity unfurled beneath his feet. Father to a new age. Creator of G.o.ds.

But Athena...He still didn't know what had gone wrong, how he'd made a mistake. The twins had been designed with the utmost care, their genetics altered and enhanced as they curled together within Gloria's womb, all flaws deleted.

Or so he'd believed. Until Athena's mind had quietly, slowly, and irrevocably unwound. Paranoid schizophrenia. A flaw unforeseen.

Settling into his comfortable and well-broken-in leather chair, Wells set the cognac bottle down on his desk and picked up a copy of the disk his daughter was watching at this very moment.

Thena is watching it again. She enjoys it.

Athena wasn't alone in that; Wells had watched it many times as well. But he didn't enjoy it; that wasn't the word he'd use.

No. A better, a more accurate word would be scared. It scared and exhilarated him. But he didn't enjoy it. He slipped the disk into the drive.

Taking another sip of the cognac, Wells clicked PLAY. A corridor appeared on the monitor, the dim lighting tinted night- vision green. A figure moved into view-waist-length black hair snaking into the air like night-blackened seaweed caught in a current. His wings, black and smooth, arched up behind him, half-folded, as he knelt on the floor and reached for one of two figures crumpled together on the tile.

A voice curled from the computer's speakers, low and deep, with a trace of a European accent. But, just like the first time he'd heard them, the words trailed a finger of ice down his spine.

''Avenge your mother. And yourself."

And S rises from the speaker's arms, rises up from the floor, bathed in dim red emergency light, his body tight and coiled, blood smeared across his breathtaking face. Rises up like a G.o.d from the ashes, a burning, beautiful, terrifying G.o.d.

Wells. .h.i.t PAUSE and poured himself another drink. Until he'd viewed the disk, he'd considered the late Elroy Jordan- sociopath, s.e.xual s.a.d.i.s.t, and serial killer-to have been Bad Seed's greatest success. No longer.

The beautiful boy who'd risen from the floor on the monitor had eclipsed Jordan.

Smiling, Wells poured another drink.

10 WHISPERS.

Damascus, OR March 22

"IS THE DISEASED OLD cow still breathing?" Athena asked. She sat cross-legged on the sofa, her gaze on the laptop cradled in her lap. The lab smock she wore over her jeans was smeared and spattered with blood and other fluids.

"Mother's still breathing, yes," Alex replied, kicking the door shut behind him. He set his sister's tray of night meds on the cluttered coffee table.

"Good. I don't want her dying before I can kill her."

"That's the spirit."

The room smelled of hot circuits and cinnamon potpourri, but underneath Alex caught a whiff of something that stank of rotten eggs and singed hair drifting from Athena's study lab. "How did your experiment go?"

"Unsuccessful," Athena murmured. "I need more material."

"Okay, I'll take care of it." Alex sat on the sofa beside her. "What else have you done today?"

"Studied." Her eyes scanned the images on the monitor, sliding right, then left.

"Ah." Meaning she was studying Dante, watching the med-unit footage yet again. He sighed. "We need to talk."

"About...?" Athena looked up. Lamplight glimmered in her eyes like sunshine on calm water and, for a moment, her eyes seemed translucent, palest ocean-green. "What happens next."

"I'm listening," she said, returning her gaze to the laptop's monitor.

Alex wrapped his fingers around the monitor's edge and folded it shut. "Enough. It's time for you to stop studying." He pulled the laptop from her reluctant grip and placed it on the coffee table.

"But I need to understand him," she protested. "When I look, I can't see anything beyond him and I don't know what that means."

"You're tired, that's all," Alex said. "You need rest." The dark smudges beneath her eyes testified to that and to all the restless, sleepless nights she paced away. But her visions were always right, sleep or no sleep, meds or no meds.

Visions Father knew nothing about.

"I've got to figure out how to undo Dante's programming."

"You can worry about that after I bring Dante home. C'mon, fresh air. Meds. Move your b.u.t.t." Alex grasped Athena's hand and pulled her to her feet. He led her through the kitchen and out the back door, easing the screen door shut behind them.

He released her hand as she settled into the swinging bench on the porch, then he sat beside her, wood creaking comfortably beneath him. Without looking, he grasped Athena's hand again. Her fingers, warm and hard, curled around his.

Alex drew in a deep breath of moist, pine-scented air. "So much better."

"If you say so."

A quick glance revealed the smile shadowing his twin's lips. He smiled too.

"The SB is probably planning on killing Father," Alex said, his gaze on the night sky. He watched the stars light up one by one like votives in a church. "h.e.l.l, the Bureau might've even rubber-stamped it after the fiasco with Moore."

"Do they know Father's the one who tipped Ronin off to Bad Seed?"

"I doubt it. That'd require some real intelligence work."

"What if they kill Father before he teaches you how to use Dante?"

"We'll have to hope that doesn't happen," Alex said. "I've armed Father and the security's tight, but..." He shrugged. "A pro could get past all of that. I've tried and tried to get Father to go underground."

"Maybe they'll send a b.u.mbling amateur or a poor shot instead of a pro. It's not like it's the mafia. It's the government."

Alex laughed. He leaned in and pressed his forehead against his sister's. Heard her quiet, never-ceasing thoughts: Does Father dream now? Of power and G.o.ds? Of all he can never be? And shall never have?

Athena's mind refused silence, refused to rest.

Alex straightened, relaxing into the bench as it swung back and forth, back and forth. The wood creaked, drowning out the sound of Athena's thoughts/whispers. He didn't have to look to know her lips struggled to keep up with the ideas streaming through her mind.

"I don't think Dante knows about Father's role in his conditioning," Athena said. "I don't think he knows about Father, period."

"That's good. Then he won't be expecting us."

"What happens next?"

"I go to Seattle," Alex said. "Trigger Dante, dope him when he's finished doing what he's supposed to do, then bring him home."

"How are you going to get close enough to him to dope him?" Athena looked at him, her blonde curls tumbling across her face, curls she brushed back automatically.

"Shoot him from a distance. In the back, preferably." Alex considered all that he'd read about Dante, replayed in his mind the footage that his twin obsessively watched: Dante cups Moore's face. His hands tremble. Glow with blue light. His hair snakes up into the hair and energy crackles.

Dangerous.

"Amen, brother," Athena whispered. "But soon he'll be a part of us. We'll give him Father to play with-after we restore his memories."

"Can we do that? Restore his memories?"

"I don't know, but there must be a way..."

"Unless the damage is too great," Alex finished.

"Green waters of remembrance," Athena said, her voice a low monotone, her oracle voice. "He'll need the green waters."

Alex's skin p.r.i.c.kled as his twin's gaze turned inward, seeking the sacred. "Green waters? For Dante? What do you mean?"

"Green and green and green."

"What else do you see?"

"The old cow's time is almost here," she murmured.

"Do you see it? Mother's death?"

Athena laughed. "Yes, a vision of a near-future event. I see a pillow over her face and my hands over the pillow." "An overdose would be simpler, less suspicious."

"Ah, but less fun, Xander, and I have so little."

Alex squeezed his twin's hand and listened to her circling thoughts: A pillow over her face, my knee and heart and hands over the pillow. Welcome to h.e.l.l, Cow. Let me be your guide.

Call me Hades.

Madness or divinity? Was there even a difference?

Father had tinkered with his and Athena's genes while they were still in the womb. He'd wanted G.o.ds. But believed himself disappointed.

He was wrong. He had his G.o.ds. Just not the ones he'd planned for. Dante hadn't been the only one to keep secrets.

Father had designed his and Athena's telepathy, but he knew nothing about their other gifts.

"Yes and yes and yes," Athena whispered. "Secrets. G.o.dhead. With Dante we'll have the perfect trinity-Conqueror, Counselor, and Creator. We'll begin a new age. After we punish the wicked first, of course."

"But of course," Alex agreed. "Isn't that the first rule in the G.o.dhead and Divinity for Dummies handbook?"

"p.r.i.c.k."