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Lanighan screamed, “Now!”
Mulvaney grabbed her hand, jerked her arm straight out, and sliced her from wrist to elbow. She screamed in pain and the shock of the wound, numbly watched the blood pour from her arm.
Lanighan held the stones beneath the flowing blood. When they were red with her blood, he threw back his head and yelled to the heavens, “It is done!”
The screaming stopp
ed.
Lanighan looked at the stones in his bloody hands and saw a light—blue, transparent, blinding in intensity, and it seemed to outline the edge of each stone. It whirled around the stones, merging them, and soon the edges were no longer to be seen. As the stones became one, they vibrated in his hands, and a whine began, growing louder and higher, like an electrical wire pulled taut and plucked. The light grew brighter and brighter, spearing out, encompassing the stone, his hands, the room.
He felt the light move into him, felt the small poisonous cells in his body pop as they were destroyed. He was on fire, and he hurt, hurt so badly, pain rising from every part of him. The stone—it was killing the cancer, and it was killing him. His heart pounded hard and fast, and his breath grew short. He tried to let the stone drop, but he couldn’t. The light moved through him and around him, and suddenly it coalesced into one narrow beam and split through the top of the warehouse, arcing up into the night sky, piercing the heavens.
And the killing pain left him and poured itself into the light, becoming one with it. He couldn’t look away, it was pure and powerful, and it was born of him. Night became day, and he stared into the face of his own sun, followed its pulsing rays upward through the night sky and beyond, to the soul of the universe. Now he understood the very nature of its being, of man’s being. He was its king, its master.
He was perfection.
He was a god.
The ground began to move under his feet.
97
Voices, loud, angry voices, then there was nothing, no sound at all. It had been only moments, but it seemed much longer since he didn’t know what was happening. Then Nicholas heard Kitsune screaming. He tapped the comms unit in his ear. “Mike! Now!”
He heard her yell to Menard’s men, “Go, go, go!”
Nicholas had wanted to stay close to Kitsune, but six guards had followed her up to the big office on the second floor and he’d been forced to hide in the shadows. When the guards heard Kitsune scream, they didn’t rush into the office. Obviously they’d been ordered not to come in, and they wanted to do something, but there was no one to tell them what to do.
When the building began to shake, the decision was made for them. All but one of the guards took off down the stairs to get out of the warehouse, and Nicholas heard the staccato gunfire from Menard’s men taking them out. The last guard started for the doorway, weapon up. Nicholas came up behind him, hooked his arm around his throat, and twisted, then threw him to the floor.
Nicholas ran into the room. He saw Mulvaney throw Kitsune against a wall. Mulvaney turned and saw him, and incredibly, he smiled, the same smile he’d given Nicholas as he’d escaped over the wire fence in the alley behind Mike’s garage. “I wished I’d killed you. But now’s a good time, isn’t it? You’ve made your last mistake, boyo.”
Nicholas saw the detonator in Mulvaney’s hand. He fired, shattered his hand, but the bullet was too late. Mulvaney had already pushed the button and the floor was buckling under their feet.
The noise of metal wrenching apart was brutal, and then came the wall of flames behind him. No escape back through the door. He saw Mulvaney fall to the floor, heard him cursing, cradling his wrist.
He saw Lanighan standing in the corner, his eyes—exalted, that was it, his head thrown back to the heavens. A long, thin scream tore from his throat. Nicholas saw he had something in his hands. It was the three stones, but now they looked like one, and they were covered with blood, Kitsune’s blood.
Nicholas shouted, “Mike, Lanighan, stop him!”
She jumped in the window and crossed to Lanighan in three strides, turned him around, then put her fist to the soft spot under his jaw. His eyes rolled back in his head and he went down.
Mulvaney was on one knee but coming back up when Kitsune appeared from behind him and kicked him, hard, in the back. He sprawled onto the floor face-first, and she darted over to Lanighan.
The fire was whipping madly toward them, the walls starting to go up in flames around them.
Mike was pulling at his arm. “Nick, we’ve got to get out. Come on. Come on!”
He saw Kitsune through a thickening veil of smoke on her knees by Lanighan, the blood from her arm streaming over his face. She was hurt badly; he needed to help her. He took a step toward her, but she rose and rushed to him, pressed something hard into his hand.
He looked down and saw it wasn’t the three stones united, it was simply the Koh-i-Noor, and it was covered with blood, her blood. What had happened to the other two stones?
Kitsune’s face was highlighted by the inferno behind her. He saw her mouth move: “Go.”
He made a grab for her, but she raced back toward Mulvaney.
Mike screamed, “Nicholas, come on, come on! I’ll get Lanighan.” She pulled him up and threw him over her shoulder and carried him to the fire escape. Nicholas climbed out the window, and she shoved Lanighan at him.
