A Catch in Time Page 34

  John Thomas’s thoughts tumbled as he tried to calm Lily. Knowing that she was grieving for her mother, as well as hurt by the ordeal with Mack, he despaired of getting her quickly calmed. He had to go back and help Katie. Lucas was right, though, he couldn’t take Lily with him. And what about Josiah and Catherine? They must be helping Katie. But, no, maybe Mack had hurt them, too. Maybe he, John Thomas, was the only one left. The only one left to help all of them. He could feel his shoulder holster hidden beneath his jacket as Lily squirmed against him. Anxiety mounting, he tried again to gently pull Lily’s arms from his neck, but she only gripped tighter.

  This was impossible. The minutes were ticking by.

  He’d never felt so torn. The need to protect Lucas and Lily was imperative. He felt it as a responsibility and as an instinct. He’d been Lucas’s guardian for as long as he could remember. And Lily. His fierce love for Lily was unbreachable. He’d held her in his arms only minutes after she was born, had fed her and soothed her and played with her every day of her life. Her being, her spirit, was integral to his world.

  But the others, too, were his family. Kate was his anchor, his guide, his parent. He’d never put his feelings for her into words, never acknowledged the obsessive compulsion with which he tied himself to her. He knew only that his world was at rest when Kate was near and had a subtle instability when she was not. Her absence tied tiny knots deep in his gut, so deep that he felt their tension only as a subliminal unease for which he had no words.

  Catherine, Josiah, Laura, and Eli were all vital to him, merged into familial counterparts. He thought of Catherine as his grandmother, Josiah as his uncle, Laura as his aunt, and Eli—Eli had been his older brother, teasing, indulgent—and easy to talk to, about personal or embarrassing things. Eli was gone … now Laura, too. His heart ached with loss, twisted with fear for the others, burned with terror of Mack.

  What to do? He sat on the cold tiles, hugging and rocking Lily. As terrified as he was of Mack, he had to try and help his family. At the same time, Lucas and Lily had to be kept safe, far away from Mack. He looked at Lucas, hunkered down in front of him.

  He would do what Lucas had suggested, leave Lily here with him while he went back to help the others. It wasn’t perfect. Lucas was just a child, but what other choice was there? And Lucas had already proven himself; he’d gotten Lily out of that building.

  “Lily, listen, please, Lily-o,” John Thomas said. He rocked and patted her. “Katie’s hurt, Lily, I have to help Katie. You can stay with Lucas, he’ll take care of you.”

  “No, no, no, NO NO,” Lily sobbed into his neck. Her little fingers pinched as she clutched him. “Icefire/black, ICEFIRE/BLACK!” she wailed.

  John Thomas sighed. This was no good. She’d never let him go. He squeezed his eyes shut against the pain of what he had to do next. It was going to be hard, she was so scared, so … small. But he had no choice. He might be the only chance the others had against Mack. Mack might have left them all, injured and bleeding, inside the building, while he pursued him and Lucas and Lily. When Mack didn’t find them, he’d go back and make sure the others were dead. John Thomas remembered Mack’s knife, slicing into Reina.

  John Thomas grasped Lily’s wrists in his hands and pulled them firmly from around his neck. In his best imitation of Catherine’s no-nonsense tone, he said, “Lily, look at me.” Her face was tear-stained, large brown eyes full of fear and pleading. He gentled his tone. “I’ll be back as fast as I can. Lucas will take care of you. He—”

  Lily screamed.

  John Thomas’s heart jumped into his throat. Shouting Lily’s name, he clapped his hand over her mouth to smother her shrieks. But her body had gone rigid and her head twisted from side to side to escape his hand.

  Lucas jumped to his feet. “Shut up!” he screamed. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back.

  “Hey!” exclaimed John Thomas, shocked at Lucas. “What are you doing?” His hand flew from Lily’s mouth and clamped Lucas’s wrist. “Let her go.” Lucas glared at him and John Thomas faltered at the flash of something dark, dark and dreadful in Lucas’s eyes.

  Mouth free, Lily screamed.

  Unnerved by Lily’s screams and Lucas’s violence, and his … eyes, what had that been? Had he imagined it? John Thomas became aware of people in the doorway. More gathered behind them. There was shouting, but he couldn’t understand the words. Loud, sliding tones barked and sang. Chinese. He’d heard Chinese on television, but never like this. The din became deafening in the echoing alcove. Adrenaline seared through him.

  Lucas, seeing the people, released his grip on Lily’s hair. Lily dropped heavily forward against John Thomas’s chest, her head striking his chin. He held her tightly and struggled to stand. More people gathered, trying to see past those already in the doorway. A man pushed through the crowd and entered the alcove. His voice rose above the others and he jabbed the air to punctuate his rapid speech. The crowd quieted as they listened to the man’s questioning.

  John Thomas shook his head, lacking comprehension. A small, older woman darted in and stood close to the man. She peered, birdlike, at John Thomas. She spoke slowly, Chinese syllables of a different dialect, then smiled and raised her eyebrows, inviting him to answer. He shook his head again and shifted his arms around Lily in a protective gesture. Lily had stopped screaming, but clung to him as she stared at the strangers. Tear tracks on her face highlighted the dirt at their edges. Her dark hair was tangled, strands caught in the wetness of her cheeks.

  In the silence that followed the woman’s question, John Thomas realized that Lily was whimpering, a keening, unbroken thread. “It’s okay, Lily,” he whispered.

  “Ahhh, Engrish,” the tiny Chinese woman observed. She turned to the crowd, nodding and repeating, “Engrish, Engrish,” with every nod. A flurry of chatter broke out, but John Thomas didn’t listen. Lily was saying something to him in a voice so small he couldn’t hear her words.

  “What?” he asked her, and was shocked by the face she turned to him. Her expression was of excruciating pain, her eyes drowning in tears.

  “It hurts, it hurts, it hurts,” she whimpered. “Make it stop, John Thomas, please.” She burrowed her face against his shoulder, one arm covering her head, the other clutched around his neck. Wave after wave poured from the crowd, crashed against her unique perception.

  “What is it, Lily?”

  She wailed. He immediately heard the difference in her crying. It wasn’t fear- or grief-crying, it was hurt-crying. He remembered the awful wrenching Lucas had given her when he’d pulled a fistful of her hair and gently rubbed the back of her head.

  “Girrie okay?” the woman asked. Not getting a response, she raised her voice. “Hey, Boy! Girrie okay?” John Thomas looked at the crowd, thronging the doorway like a trap, and was filled with panic.

  “Fine,” he said to the woman, and walked into the crowd, arms protecting Lily as he twisted and pushed through. “Fine, we’re fine,” he muttered with every step. The tiny woman hurried after him, jabbering. Just as they reached the edge of the crowd, she grabbed his arm.

  Startled, he cried out and wrenched from her grip. His feeling of suffocation became claustrophobia. Dark, enclosed images flashed into his mind.

  Disoriented, he edged through the crowd. Voices rose. He couldn’t tell if it was in dismay or anger. He almost stopped at their demanding tones, but his own voice suddenly filled his head. “RUN,” it screamed.

  As he leaned to sprint, a melody filled the air.

  It rose hauntingly, a tinkling, simple tune. It stunned him, filled him with terror. He stood, transfixed, scalp prickling. The past six years melted away. In the forefront was only the terrifying, gut-wrenching tinkling that unlocked a nightmarish series of memories. Unable to hold on to reality, his arms numbed and went limp, his hands fell to his sides.

  Lily slid downward with a sickening lurch, feet jarring to the ground. She looked up at John Thomas’s face and couldn’t comprehend w
hat she saw, what she felt. Where was her John Thomas? What was happening? She stepped back and watched him slowly collapse, until he sat on the sidewalk, eyes glazed.

  “John Thomas?” she whispered, frightened.

  “Where’s Conrad?” Mack demanded, his pistol aimed at Laura’s head.

  Laura’s ears still roared from the blast of her gun. She saw Mack’s lips move but couldn’t hear him. She stared at his eyes. Red rimmed and raw, their ice-blue irises were thin rings around large pupils of sucking darkness.

  “WHERE IS HE?” he shouted ferociously.

  Deerlike, she froze, transfixed by the incomprehensible emptiness in the swirling black holes that were his eyes.

  He cocked his pistol.

  “NO!” Mohammed yelled, and his voice overcame the ringing in her ears. Mack’s wild eyes jumped to Mohammed. Laura felt a snap, as though she’d hovered, and now jarred to the floor.

  Mohammed pointed his gun at his own head.

  “Only I know where Conrad is,” he said to Mack. “You will put your gun down, or I will shoot myself.”

  Mack’s face seemed to melt.

  Laura gaped at the fluid contortions seizing his face. She realized it was just changing expressions, but the expressions were unlike anything she’d ever seen. The muscles twitched and froze independent of each other, mixing grimaces with smiles, squints with frowns; the mouth chewed with bared teeth, the tongue darted, eyes blinked, cheeks pouched, then hollowed, one nostril flared while the other pinched. His lips raised and lowered, flattened and widened.

  And noises: grunts, laughs, wheezes, and growls, a keening wail, a shout. He leaped, jerked, twisted—an insane convulsion of movement, as though his very molecules were randomly exploding. His gun flailed wildly as his rabid, pounding paroxysm danced him closer to them.

  Crouching, Laura shrank from his frenzy, her back against the short balcony wall, certain he would lunge at her any instant. She couldn’t snatch her terrified gaze from him long enough to locate her gun, and suddenly he bared his teeth and brought a hand to his mouth.

  Redness erupted, flowed down his chin. Blood, she realized, and couldn’t understand its sudden appearance. Flinging his hand violently from his mouth, he grinned wildly, bent at the waist and plunged his face at hers, lips bared over a fleshy obscenity clenched between his teeth; his own forefinger, ripped from his hand, its end gleaming, ragged flesh and glistening bone. Plucking it from his teeth with his mangled hand, he bit it in half. She heard the knuckle pop, the crunch of bone as he ground his teeth together.

  Horrified, she twisted her head aside, but he shoved his face before her, jerking in front of her again and again as she tried in vain to turn aside, stomach heaving.

  Then his hand gripped her face, fingers pressed painfully into her cheeks, the dark void in his eyes mere inches from hers. “I TOLD you to bring CONRAD,” he roared in fury. His fetid breath was hot, sharp with the iron smell of blood.

  A deafening explosion flung him away from her and she recoiled, warm blood spattering her face and chest. Mack’s body slammed backward, collapsed over two chairs, and sagged heavily. Slowly, it rolled, then thudded into the aisle.

  Mohammed held the gun he’d fired, muzzle down. Laura approached him, legs trembling, and took the gun from his hand. The weapon’s grip was warm beneath her icy fingers. Returning to stand above Mack, she fired two more rounds into his body, though half his head had already been blown away.

  Shen Lui pedaled his fish wagon slower as he approached the crowd, wondering what was going on. With any luck, he thought as he came to a halt, he might be able to sell the last of his fish, even those from yesterday. What an opportunity! He let the music play as he slid off the seat and set the brake. Hurriedly, he flipped up the icebox doors of the old ice cream wagon, unveiling the fish on their bed of ice.

  John Thomas heard only the music, felt only the darkness it evoked, and was engulfed by deep terror.

  Children-eaters. He was in a closet, hiding from the children-eaters. He was eight years old. Memories of burning bodies engulfed him as he passed out on the sidewalk.

  Lily crouched close to John Thomas’s limp body. Her unique sense received new information, a John Thomas—knowing that was different from the past. Different, and yet, somehow not different. Brighter maybe. No, not brighter, what was the word? Her frustration rose. Her John Thomas was fuzzy/yellow/vanilla. This new shift in him bled soft/green and it sparkled. She didn’t know how to arrange the newness in her mind.

  Lily couldn’t understand what was happening with her John Thomas—knowing, and with John Thomas.

  She looked anxiously at the crowd of people and barely noticed the dimming of the clamor that had been assaulting her in pain-filled waves. The strangers talked and gestured. Some covered the lower halves of their faces with their hands, others hunched beneath their jacket collars. The ring they formed began to widen.

  She glanced at Lucas only long enough to make sure he wasn’t coming at her. His eyes tied ropes of disgust and terror around her.

  Her toes were under John Thomas’s ribs, her shins pressed his side. Too frightened now for tears, she nudged him gently, needing him desperately.

  “John Thomas,” she implored. “Wake up.”

  This was awful. She collapsed, sobbing, onto John Thomas.

  The moment Lucas had been waiting for.

  He now planned to tell Lily that Laura wasn’t dead after all. She was just hurt. It wouldn’t be hard for him to confuse Lily enough to convince her to go with him.

  Hoping that whatever was wrong with John Thomas stayed wrong, he stepped forward but was stopped by an iron grip on his arm.

  Whirling around, he barely kept a snarl from his face. The young Chinese man who held him yelled rapid-fire syllables at him. From within the crowd, the small woman who had earlier entered the alcove shouted at him. “No, Boy. Bad sick, bad.”

  Lucas now realized why people had covered their mouths and noses. Bad sick, the old bitch said. They thought John Thomas had some fatal disease. The crowd shuffled even farther back. The man who held him pulled him with them. The woman next to him grabbed Lucas’s other arm.

  Lucas fumed. Maybe he should kick, hit—break free. Then dash to Lily. Nobody would dare come near. He tensed his arms but felt the grips on them tighten. The man draped his free arm down along Lucas’s neck and across his chest. Shit. Fuck.

  Shen Lui stood by his fish wagon, one hand holding the icebox door. The crowd had stepped back from something in their midst. He craned to see until someone yelled “Stop. Sickness!”

  Shen Lui froze. A body was on the sidewalk, a wailing child sprawled over it. He slammed the lid of the icebox, leaped onto his seat, and, standing on his pedals, he hurried away, taking the music with him.

  John Thomas floated in thickness, a world his conscious mind had forgotten. But the forgetting that had taken place in a closet six years ago had been conjured by a traumatized mind. And now, bludgeoned by loss and terror, he plunged back through lonely darkness into that trauma. Phantoms chased him and he ran from them with heavy limbs. Children-eaters, CHILDREN-EATERS; like sharks, the terrifying phantoms swam in the thickness, with the crying and the dreadful music.

  He had to move toward the hideous music to find the crying that called to him. The child who sobbed was important. He hurried, so slowly through this thick blackness. The crying became louder. The music … was fading. The crying. Was. Right in his ear.

  His eyes fluttered open to a gray sky, and he felt a familiar weight on his chest. He hugged the familiarity. Lily. Dazed, he stared into grayness. Why was Lily crying?

  “John Thomas?” Lily’s tear-stained face, inches from his.

  He blinked. “Hi, Lily-o. Did we fall down?”

  John Thomas sat up as Lily babbled frantically. He tried to make sense of her words as he stared, dazed, at the ring of faces surrounding them. Reality crashed into him.

  Mack, Shaitan. Protect Lily. Katie hurt. Eli, Laura, and Reina
, dead. He scanned the crowd. And saw Lucas.

  His body stilled, breath trapped in his throat. Staring at Lucas, he felt only the feelings of his youth, his fear and abhorrence of his younger brother. All the rationales he’d applied to Lucas’s behavior in the intervening years vanished, sucked out of him, and angry loathing spilled into the vacuum.

  Lily tugged on his jacket, patted his face, needing his attention, to tell him.

  “Lucas,” she blurted. “He’s icefire/black. Like that bad man who took me. Icefire/black, John Thomas.”

  John Thomas stared at Lily and understood. He looked at Lucas and saw loathsome empty darkness swirling in Lucas’s eyes. Anger twisted through his fear.

  Lucas, instantly aware of the change in John Thomas, didn’t care. Savage heat filled him. He needed Lily’s blood.

  “Shaitan,” he cried, thrusting a finger at Lily. “Her birthday is …”

  But John Thomas was listening to something else: his father’s last words, reverberating through the years. “Watch out for Lucas.” And he knew, with certainty, what his father had meant.

  When Lucas said the word “birthday,” John Thomas was already drawing the gun from his shoulder holster. And as Lucas uttered his next word, the first bullet tore through his chest. The crowd screamed and scrambled away as the second bullet plowed into Lucas’s forehead.

  Kate, Laura, and Mohammed were waiting for a break in traffic when they heard the shots. Kate grabbed Laura’s arm.

  “Over there,” she said, pointing up the steep street.

  They ran, Mohammed pausing only long enough to make sure Josiah and Catherine, forced to move slower, still had them in sight.

  They’d sprinted for blocks searching for Lily. Unable to find Lucas or Lily in the theater, they’d emerged to find John Thomas gone, as well. Clinging to the hope that John Thomas had somehow moved Lily to safety, they’d dashed back to the Suburban. But no John Thomas, no Lily.