Alek set aside the mug of whiskey and pressed his face with both hands. "My G.o.d, Tahlia, if you knew so much about this, about me, why the h.e.l.l didn't you tell me anything when I was younger?"

Tahlia gave him a sidelong look. "Well, for one thing, I didn't 'know' much of anything. All I knew about your people was what Byron told me, which wasn't much. And after he was gone, I knew nothing at all."

"But you knew about the Coven. You knew what I was." He looked up, then dropped his gaze apologetically. "No, that's wrong. I'm not your responsibility. Jesus, I'm treating you like some parent that didn't come through for me."

"And if I had told you," Tahlia asked, "would you've believed me about the Coven? Would you have believed the words of Tahlia Braxton over Amadeus?"

He said nothing and tried desperately not to feel like a complete fool in her presence.

Tahlia sighed and resettled himself on his stool. "Kid," she said, "we all gotta get where we're going in our own time. No rushing it. Besides, I always knew you'd figure it all out one of these days. Was always there, y'know. I seen it. Your girlfriend seen it too."

Alek's hands dropped away as a sickening dread filled all the empty places left inside of him. He sat up, his eyes skating over the whole of the room. "Where is she? Where did she go?"

Tahlia's gaze flickered toward the alleyside door.

Alek stood up, then weaved abruptly against the wall as the world twisted sideways on him. His ribs throbbed, his head ached--but there, already all the discomfort was fading. "I need to tell her...tell her what I know."

Tahlia scooted off the stool to steady him. "Whoa, kid. Know what?"

He looked down into Tahlia's upturned face, her small, brilliant, quizzical eyes. "The Chronicle," he said, "I know where it is. The real one."

Tahlia's smoke dropped out of her teeth.

Alek smiled and leaned over and kissed the side of Tahlia's cheek. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you for everything, Mrs. Braxton. I mean it." And then he escaped Tahlia's hold on him and went to the door.

The storm begun earlier was finished, and now only the wind lisped through the narrow straits between buildings. A sheer white rime of snow had gathered on parked cars and telephone wires and well-nigh everything else that was static and unable to escape the gentle wrath of winter.

Alek stopped on the walk outside the Metro and glanced around at the rubbernecked traffic and the homeless cowering back in doorways, trying to determine which way to go. He chose a direction at random. And for the next hour of nonstop walking he felt out of step with everyone around him. They all--or most of them, anyway--seemed so d.a.m.ned purposeful, these people. So driven. He watched them in amazement, realizing that he used to want to be one of them. One with them. No more. He stood in the middle of the mad bustle of Grand Central Station in wonder at how he could have lived such a false life for so long without seeing behind the stage-prop scenery at the barren futility of it all.

A face in the crowd. His lifelong dream. To just be an Everyman. And now? He was a rogue. A slayer. No, The Slayer. Yes.

The new knowledge clinging to him like an epiphany, he waded carefully into the crowd in some half-hearted attempt to catch the sub. But the sub to where? he asked himself. Back to Rapper's building? Someplace else? The Empress? Rockefeller Center? Where? Where did Teresa go when she wasn't with him? To his horror, he realized he had no clue, none at all. She might have flown to the moon, such was his helplessness right now. To know--to have the knowledge she sought for so long, the whereabouts of Paris's Chronicle-- but of course his d.a.m.ned stupid, pa.s.sionate outrage had to intercept all that. Critical ma.s.s at the most horrible of times. He'd been cruel and cretin and she had learned to hate him. She had walked away, but that was fair and just, wasn't it? It was, after all, what he had struggled to achieve in that G.o.dforsaken alley only an hour ago. He felt a stab of regret under his heart. Regret, of all things. Useless, that emotion, Teresa had said in a time when she had believed he was an angel. But regret changes nothing-- He leaned against a lamp post and tried to think, to imagine where she would go. If only she would feel for him, feel with their special bloodbound senses the new surge of hope, of knowledge, in him, maybe she would come get him. Or at least tell him where she was. There was an interesting thought. He had never tried it, but if she could feel his presence anywhere in the city as she said she could, could see his dreams even, then why couldn't he? He started walking again. No real direction, just walking, letting the streets take him up and down. Where are you? Tell me where you are.

Broadway. He looked at the signpost. Are you here? Is this the reason I've chosen this direction? He kept walking, looking, feeling the cold and the feelings under the cold. He heard his heart, heard the rush of his blood, imagined it drawing him to her like a strange compa.s.s.

He found himself standing at the door of the revolving bar at the Marriott. He went inside. Nothing. But near.

Now he felt it. Subtle. Like the ache in his side. He pa.s.sed through the bar to the left and found himself in the lobby standing amidst the red plush carpet sea between the visitors to the city and the haggard bellboys.

The nightclerk looked just as haggard and a great deal less trustworthy. "Can I help you, sir?"

He already knew Teresa was somewhere in the building, probably on one of the upper floors from the feel of it. What he didn't know was whether she had created any obstacles to his seeing her. "Did a woman check in here? About this tall? Very pretty, with long auburn hair? Green eyes?"

The nightclerk looked annoyed. "I'm sorry. You are mistaken."

"I'm not mistaken." But he saw now. The man was used to these midnight rendezvous, escorts and their clients, and like any good New Yorker, he let people make money and kept his mouth shut. An admirable quality at any other time but this.

"What room?"

"Excuse me?" The man shuddered, but only a little.

"What. Room." Alek narrowed his eyes and pushed...

"1010, sir."

"Thank you."

The first discovery that Alek made on entering room 1010 in the Marriott was that Teresa wasn't alone. A human male was with her on the bed, powerfully built and probably attractive from what he could see of the intruder by his bare, ebony back and baggy-khakied a.s.s. Bald head. Six-hundred-dollar sneaks. Some battle- rap type Alek would probably have recognized from an M2 video if he really thought about it. Maybe even a nice guy in some other life. Right now, only an intruder. Alek went to the bed, faster than either one of them could react, gripped a fistful of the man's pants seat, and peeled him off of her.

"Whadda f.u.c.k!" Homeboy ranted in a nice tough Harlem-inspired yawing as he pedaled his legs and pinwheeled his arms. After a moment of intense effort, Homey managed to twist his head back on his short, thick, bullish neck. He showed Alek his double row of pearly-nice, Hollywood-capped teeth. "I'm goan f.u.c.king cut your b.a.l.l.s off! Pput me dooown, motherf--! Alek put him down. Hard. "Get your clothes and get out of here," he said distractedly as he watched Teresa sit up on the bed. She was dressed in a black lace slip and garters and stocking with stalks of b.u.t.terflies embroidered along the backs of her legs. Her motions were fluid, openly inviting, and Alek had to swallow down an urge to turn back to Homey and rip his G.o.dd.a.m.n head off for seeing her this way. He felt like a jealous, irate husband in a Jane Austin novel. Gentlemen, take your pistols and ten paces...

Homey obediently went for his shirt on the bed--then grabbed Alek by the arm instead and swung him around, tried to land a four-ringed knucklepunch to his face. Alek caught it in his fist. Held it. He looked Homey in the face and felt the man's pulse tick with useless, angry energy. The man sneered.

Alek sneered back. "I said. Get. Out."

"I paid good money for the c.u.n.t," Homey said. "You her f.u.c.kin', c.o.c.ksuckin' husband or what?"

Alek let the man's fist go. Grabbed him by the back of the skull instead and thrust his own weight against the p.r.i.c.ka.s.s, sent him crashing back into the wall beside the bed. He felt the drywall groan, give. Homey's skull banged against a stud. The vase of fake orchids on the nightstand beside the bed rattled, danced, fell over.

Homey blanched, choked.

Kill him, he'd like to f.u.c.king kill the motherf.u.c.ker's a.s.s.

Alek let go of his head and stepped back.

Homey looked down and stared at the forty-six-inch ceremonial tachi sword slung up tight under his b.a.l.l.s with wonder for where it had come from and how fast it could have found its way there.

From one brotha to another, thought Alek, and smiled with genuine malice. "We want to be alone," he said, raising the sword ever so slightly. "Get it?" Home y put his hands up in an authentic I-give-up-man gesture and reached for his shirt for real this time. Without putting it on--or for that matter, without even reaching for his wallet lying on the nightstand beside the overturned vase, an act that would have made him cross the path of the tachi--Homey backed away to the door and opened it behind him, slunk out backwards, gold chains a-jangling, grey-faced, defeated.

"Put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, won't you?" Alek asked.

Homey took the sign with him and slammed the door.

Alek put the sword down.

Teresa crossed her legs. Though her face had hardened from the moment of his arrival, she seemed to be having trouble maintaining it now. "He and his friends have a lot of money and he could have recommended me," she said.

He said nothing; he watched her face, all of it cold, unbroken ice, all reflection, as if she were doing her d.a.m.nedest to hide what lurked inside. She looked away. "My time is money. And I would appreciate it if you would leave now."

"You gave up on me," he said to her at last.

She looked up then. "You gave up on you."

He opened his mouth to say...what? Suddenly his whole being rebelled against this and he had to take a step back, away from the slayer in himself--that Amadeus-made creature with armor as black and hard as beetlesh.e.l.l. Silence roared up between them like an icon to his pride. But pride, like regret, was a useless emotion. He broke it. "I'm sorry I disappointed you, beloved. I'm sorry I made you hate me. I really am."

She tilted her head. She flushed. "Don't be so stupid."

"Am I? Stupid?"

"You are if you think I could hate you." She dropped her eyes, her lashes like crimson fans on the marble- white planes of her cheeks. "I was angry, caro. You angered me. No one has angered me in a long time."

He approached her. He touched her hair freely in response, wound it like silk around his fingers. Then he kissed her with all the fierce hunger of his pa.s.sion, kissed her, unafraid at last of that pa.s.sion, and he heard his twin's contented sigh echoing up through the tunnel of his soul. He broke the kiss, kissed her again, and again, said to her, breathlessly, against her mouth, "I'll never disappoint you again, I promise. I swear it..."

"Your eyes." She touched his face and shook her head. "You're different, What have you seen?"

He smiled mischievously, br.i.m.m.i.n.g.

Her dark eyes brightened. "You know."

"I was shown."

"Where then?"

"So close, so, so close. Yet a lifetime away." He took her hand, He studied her face. Loved her eyes. The planes of her cheeks. Her eyelashes. Her rare smile. Loved the strength and determination in her heart, the many wisdoms in her mind. Loved her...not as a lover, he realized, but as a student loves his sensei, all but worships her. "Come, fly with me. Let me show you."

"I will...but..." She shook her head with wonder.

"What is it, Teresa? What?"

She looked deep into his eyes. "What are you?" she whispered.

He stood up. "Complete."

27.

How immortal was the altar. In almost thirty-eight years it had remained unchanged. It perhaps bore a new and modern skin of graffiti and its red and gold paint was weak and its bra.s.s rings a long time lost, but at its soul the altar remained changeless. The fellowship of animals remained in their painful stances, heads tossed back as if in the death rictus of poison. So many years and its milky canopy mirrors reflected still the swarm of city lights and the rise and fall of the deathless sun.

Things change, they changeth not.

On the icy gravel path, Alek stopped. They were alone. Lone worshipers at the altar. Few New Yorkers ventured this far into the park at this hour of the abyss. Rather, even the insomniacs and dogwalkers and crazies would be staying to the gravel paths near Central Park South and along Lexington Avenue, waiting for the sun to burn off the mist and some of the cold and chase away all the monster they knew dwelled in the dark here.

He shivered quite suddenly and wondered if it was only the cold, looking on the barren benches, the night's worth of garbage cl.u.s.tering on heat grates, the rats squirming through the wired baskets on their early- morning foraging trips.

"Here?" Teresa said, creeping up beside him.

"Under the carousel. It's all he had time for before..." Another shiver. Cold. Danger. Or an echo of danger.

Perhaps.

Another slayer. Not perhaps...

"He's here," Alek said.

"The Stone Man."

"Not Stone Man."

She withdrew Paris's ornate knife. It gleamed dirtily in the coppery sodium lights surrounding the carousel.

"Won't you go back?" he pleaded. "For G.o.d's sake, the sun--"

"I want the f.u.c.king Chronicle."

"You'll be blind in half an hour."

"Then let's do this already and quit arguing about it." She looked at him challengingly. She had opted for heavier, darker clothing this time. A wool coat and hat that made her look like some princess out of a Russian novel, black shades that wrapped around her eyes nearly completely. Not that the meager black fabric and plastic would help. In about an hour the sun would crest and turn her world into a watery red inferno she would no more be able to sustain than a man could bathe fully within the sun's unrelenting rays and not collapse, blind, from heatstroke. But trying to convince her to wait until nightfall was impossible. Trying to make her wait for him to return from this even more difficult. He knew. He'd been trying to convince her otherwise since they'd left the Marriott more than half an hour ago.

"Killing yourself won't be avenging Paris, you know," he said.

A crow called harshly and she looked up. The firs and the naked, narrow-boned maples writhed alive with a rich dark foliage of daybirds. He felt a shiver that was not fear. She turned away, met his gaze with such open hostility he found it incredulous that this was the same woman whose words had moved him so only an hour ago.

He spoke again, but now as if from great height or distance. "It was writ the animals would weep and music would come forth and black blood and a midnight sun, and the Covenmaster would not know another rising of the day."

Teresa looked cynically upon the carousel animals inside their cage of time and disuse. The revolver moved, out only laboriously, and not two whole inches. The stage protested even that. "The carousel has not turned in ten years, caro."

He breathed in the cold and the steel and listened to the gravel crackling like bone dust under his feet. I don't want to be here, Tahlia. I don't want to be doing this, Byron, my mapmaking friend. I want to be elsewhere, away. I want to be safe, I want to be hidden somewhere in the shadows of the city and not here, not now. I don't want to know if I can beat him. I don't care to know. I just want to be finished, finished...

Debra sighed and laughed disheartenedly. Afraid, Slayer? Are you a coward as well as a murderer, then?

The carousel clicked forward three paces and displaced shadow. And momentarily, before sliding back under a cloak of darkness, he saw it--a dark paralyzed mount with a figure sitting sidesaddle upon it. Still. Waiting for him.

Like in the beginning.

They had come full circle.

So.

Above a blackbird cackled and rattled the air with its voice. Teresa drew cautiously back, back off the path like some pre-recorded ballet, recoiling but not retreating. She looked at him, her eyes luminous and full of night and understanding. I would stand with you, but I know my place in prophecy. I know my place as Noah and Moses and Jesus knew theirs. To wait. You must go alone. Otherwise he will make me a p.a.w.n to make you do what he wants.

"He will try to kill you," she said.

Again Debra laughed, but like a wraith, sneeringly.

Afraid, Slayer?

"He had that power," Alek answered. He went to her and took her knifehand, held up the lethal little weapon, touched his tongue to the edge. He felt no pain. He did taste his own coppery sweetness. The final host. It would bleed slow for hours and keep his battlehunger up. He touched her hair but did not kiss her, not now, not when he wanted to touch the anger and the emptiness in his childhood heart. Finished, he walked, alone, toward the altar.

The dark horse ticked forward as if summoned to meet him. And now it did not slide. And the master of the horse appeared fully, unshielded. Just like that first time in the cold and the dark, but that his face was turned down and away and a wide round Quaker's hat concealed his beautifully awful features.

Alek mounted the stage and stopped. He narrowed his eyes on the silent figure and waited.

After a moment the hat was tipped up and back on the blonde head. Tiny filed teeth grinned up at him, gleaming like pearls in the dark. "Hey there, man." The slayer's coat slit open to show an old Radiohead concert T-shirt. Alek flinched back, lurched against the dolphin at the sight of the spineless little p.r.i.c.k that went around calling himself the Chosen.