Adam roared, trying to fight them off. Struck dumb, they all stared at him. In the midst of a lull in the whipping wind, Walker heard an all-too-familiar click and turned to see Hakan aiming a pistol at Adam.
Walker could have drawn his own weapon, but to do that, he’d have to let go.
“No!” Meryam barked, throwing herself in front of the gun.
“You don’t see,” Hakan told her. “Look at him again. This isn’t your man.”
Someone had helped Feyiz to his feet. He leaned on a student’s shoulder, trying not to fall down again. “Don’t do this, Uncle.”
Hakan laughed softly. “I’m not going to kill the man. Not as long as he keeps his hands to himself from now on. Bind him hand and foot, and bind him well, so I don’t have to shoot him.”
Others moved in to take over. From somewhere they’d produced the sort of plastic zip ties that police officers sometimes used in place of handcuffs. Walker surrendered his position, but he watched carefully to make sure Adam wouldn’t fight them. Polly had to twist one of his arms around, but beyond that, Adam only smiled, eyes cold, a thin stream of bloody drool sliding down his chin as if he’d bitten his tongue.
“There’s an open stall a short way along,” Hakan said, gesturing with the gun. “Take him down there and we’ll figure out how to hold him. Someone bring a light.”
As his Kurdish workers moved to help, Polly began to dismantle some of the lighting in the camp, repositioning it as Hakan had asked.
Walker stood, glaring at Hakan. “Is that Zeybekci’s gun?”
“Better in my hands tonight than in his,” Hakan replied.
Walker didn’t argue, though he didn’t trust anyone with a firearm right now. Even the weight of his own gun against the small of his back felt too dangerous, too easily turned against them all. Adam wasn’t himself—Walker didn’t want to think about what might happen if he himself lost control.
Kim stood with Meryam, speaking quietly to her, checking over her injuries. Approaching them, Walker saw that Meryam had begun to cry. The sight of tears on the face of someone so formidable cut him deeply. The whole scene had unfolded with a surreal quality, a nightmarish aura that made it all seem a terrible dream. But now he saw how tired Meryam looked, drawn and sorrowful and confused as the blood continued to trickle across her mouth and chin, and the realness of it all made him tremble.
“Hakan’s right,” Meryam said. “Adam wouldn’t ever raise a hand to me. Especially now.”
Walker saw Father Cornelius pushing through the gathered staff.
“Tell her,” the priest said, the deep lines crinkling at the corners of his eyes. “It’s all happening too fast.”
Meryam wiped at the blood on her chin but did not try to erase her tears. “Tell me what?”
“What you already know,” Walker replied. “What you and Hakan have both just said. That wasn’t Adam at all. It was something else… and we think we know its name.”
Meryam winced as Dr. Dwyer pushed the needle through her cheek, tugging the thread out the other side. She hissed air in through her teeth.
“Sorry,” the doctor said. “I thought the topical I put on would dull the pain.”
“I’m sure it did,” Meryam said. “Still not a pleasant feeling, having someone stabbing holes in your face. How badly will it scar?”
Dr. Dwyer tugged on the thread and tied it off. “Four stitches. Not a huge scar, really, and it’ll add character. But if it bothers you, a good plastic surgeon could make it barely noticeable.”
The doctor stepped back, examined his handiwork. “You want to talk about this?”
His eyes were kind, but Meryam had no room for kindness now. All it would do was soften her, and she needed to be nothing but hard edges and blunt force at the moment.
“I wouldn’t know how to start.”
Dr. Dwyer nodded. “Try to get some rest. The painkillers I gave you should make you sleepy and I’m sure your body’s already exhausted. Decisions can wait for morning.”
Meryam managed a half smile. “Get some rest yourself.”
The doctor had dark circles beneath his eyes and as far as Meryam knew, he didn’t have cancer. She figured that under the circumstances, she had been acquitting herself pretty well. Yes, she’d been burning the candle at both ends, but her light was going to burn out soon enough—no point in conserving that flame.
She lay down on her side on a thick bedroll, dragging a blanket over her. The heaters in the infirmary were doing their job, but with the frigid air blasting through the passages of the ark, there was a limit to what they could accomplish.
The doctor had allowed Patil and Zeybekci to go down to the mess to get something to eat. He’d sent one of the students with them, a young woman named Belinda, and she’d been instructed to bring them back to the infirmary as soon as they’d finished eating. But their temporary absence didn’t mean Meryam was alone. Just a few feet away from her, Armando Olivieri lay with his head on a small pillow. Dr. Dwyer had sedated him, but even unconscious, the old professor’s brow was furrowed, his sleep troubled.
Drowsy, she let her eyes close… and an image of Adam filled her mind, savage and cruel, his eyes bright with malice. She felt the sting of that first blow, the first time he had ever laid hands on her. Had she seen a flicker of strange fire in his eyes, a flash of color that didn’t belong there? She imagined him smiling, saw a riot of sharp black teeth inside his mouth, jerked back and caught a glimpse of the horns jutting from his skull, pushing through his hair….
Grunting, Meryam jerked awake. Her heart drummed in her chest, filling up her throat so that she could barely breathe. She stared at the unmoving form of Professor Olivieri beside her. He’d turned on his bedroll, his back to her now. As she caught her breath she took in her surroundings, recognized that the lights in the infirmary had been turned down. A dream, she thought, but it had felt more like a haunting.
Catching her breath, she listened to Olivieri and watched his back expand and contract with his own deep breathing. Somehow she felt his breaths were too even, that he seemed not to be sleeping at all, but to be waiting. Listening.
Hugging herself beneath the blanket, she scooted a bit further from him, listening to the dark. Meryam forced herself not to dwell on the conclusions Father Cornelius and Ben had made. All she wanted now was for Adam to be all right, to be released by whatever had seized his mind.
Meaning you believe, she thought. You believe in the demon. Its body might be dead, but its essence remained. Ben had talked about ancient disease, some kind of contagion that nobody had been exposed to in thousands of years, and now Meryam realized it was precisely that… just not in any way either of them had been willing to imagine.
Her face hurt and a dagger of pain stabbed into her skull, just above her left eye. Fighting drowsiness, Meryam peeled back her blanket and climbed stiffly to her feet. Her boots and jacket were nearby and she winced several times as she carefully dragged them on. Dr. Dwyer was nowhere to be seen. Olivieri still had his back to her, but he seemed too still, so that she half expected him to speak to her, there in the gloom of the half light. She waited a moment, sure he would talk. It would have been good to have help and she knew Olivieri would understand. Others might try to stop her. Before she had seen the blunt malice in Adam’s eyes, the glint of something she knew was not him staring out at her from his eyes, she’d have tried to stop herself.
Not anymore.
Quietly, she padded from the infirmary. Voices whispered along the passage off to the right, quiet footfalls headed her way, so she darted to the left and soon lost herself in the silent shadows of the ark. In the middle of the night, nobody would be back there, except perhaps a guard or two. Nobody would want to be there now, especially.