The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [60]
Deirdre looked away, into the darkness. “I don’t know what I know anymore.”
Farr reached out and took her hand. She was suddenly too weary to resist. The absinthe, of course.
“Listen to me, Deirdre. We need you. I need you.”
Still she did not look at him. “I doubt I can help you. In case you’d forgotten, he doesn’t like me any more than he does the Seekers. You saw to that.”
“Damn it, Deirdre, I’m not talking about Travis Wilder. I’m talking about you. You’re one of the bloody best the Seekers have ever had. We need you more than ever now.”
At last Deirdre turned her gaze to him. “When I first met you, Hadrian, I thought I would do anything to understand the mysteries you talked about, that I would pay any price. But the price was too high, after all. I lost a friend.”
“Did you?”
“What do you mean? That I didn’t betray Travis?”
“No, I mean maybe he wasn’t really your friend. Friends don’t just turn their backs and run away. They forgive us our mistakes.”
Deirdre shook her head. You’re wrong, she wanted to say. But her lips couldn’t form the words. Maybe she didn’t really believe them.
“Please, Deirdre. You don’t have to make a decision now. Just come back to the Charterhouse with me. An hour, that’s all I’m asking. Then you can go if you want, and we’ll leave you alone. On the Book, I swear it.”
The short hairs on the back of Deirdre’s neck prickled. Why was Farr making an offer like this? It was hardly his style. Then, in a bright flash that cut through the green mist shrouding her brain, she understood.
“Something’s happened,” she said, sitting up straight. “What is it? Tell me.”
Farr drew in a deep breath, then nodded.
“She’s called,” he said.
20.
Even in the cement-covered heart of the city, Travis Wilder could always tell when the wind was about to blow.
He turned his back just as a gritty blast of air hurtled down Sixteenth Street, its force magnified as it squeezed between the narrow glass and stone canyons of downtown Denver. Two women in power skirts and tennis shoes were blown into a street fountain gone mad, and shrieked as water frothed around them. Several teenagers huddled together, trying in vain to keep the dust out of their fresh piercings. And a legless man held up shaking hands and laughed without teeth as pieces of trash whirled and danced around his wheelchair like bright paper fairies.
As suddenly as it had come, the wind ceased. The fountain returned to the confines of its circle, releasing the two women. Paper settled back to the sidewalk, lifeless trash once more. Travis started walking again. He had been down this street a dozen times before, and each time he had seen no sign of them. All the same, he knew he had to keep searching. What else was he supposed to do?
Motion flickered on the edge of his vision: a tall, pale figure clad all in black striding down the street on long, lanky legs. Sudden hope surged in his chest, and he turned. At the same moment the figure halted and faced him. The breath held hostage in his lungs was released as he understood.
Travis approached the plate-glass window. Even after two months, he still didn’t recognize the man reflected in the window’s surface. He was tall and almost lean, with shoulders far broader than Travis had ever pictured. The other was clad all in black despite the brilliant late-September day: jeans, T-shirt, trench coat. The skin of his hands and face was smooth and powder-pale, and his eyes were hidden by dark glasses. His head was shaven clean, and a short red-brown goatee framed the solemn line of his mouth.
You’ve been looking for him so long you’re starting to look like him, Travis. Brother Cy.
Not that Travis had much choice in the way he looked. His new skin—burnt and reborn in the hot flames of Krondisar—was still soft and exquisitely sensitive. He was forced to keep it covered and protected, hence the black thrift-store coat even on fine days like this.
His eyes were the same story. That first day he and Grace had returned to Earth, he had discovered he no longer needed his glasses. It