The board was raised. The music lowered.
She vomited up water, her purged lungs struggling to gasp a life-sustaining breath. Finally, her esophagus cleared as she wheezed air and tears.
Captain Jay Zwawa spoke slowly and clearly into her right ear. “You helped the Klipot woman escape, didn’t you?”
Leigh sobbed and choked, unable to find her voice.
“Lower her again—”
She shook her head emphatically, buying precious seconds, the confession rasped. “I helped… I planned everything!”
“Did you inject her with vaccine?”
“Yes! Ten cc’s into her IV.”
“What was in the vial?”
“Tetracycline… other stuff.”
“What other stuff?”
“I don’t know, I can’t think–
The board was lowered.
“Wait! Get me inside your lab, I’ll figure it out!”
Zwawa signaled his men to cut her loose, ending a performance necessitated by Lieutenant Colonel Nichols and the Pentagon Nazis who still insisted torture yielded valuable field intelligence. The fact that Leigh Nelson had been cooperating up until then was a moot point, as was the reality that the terrified physician would have confessed to the Kennedy assassination and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping had it meant avoiding another waterboarding session.
“Get her warm clothes and clean sheets for her mattress.”
“Sir, shouldn’t we take her to the lab?”
Heading up the basement stairs, the captain ignored the MP.
The white van raced east through a tunnel of rock nature had made impervious to the all-seeing eyes of the Reaper drones. The pitch-darkness forced Paolo to use his headlights. He powered them off the moment the vehicle cleared the tunnel, and the billowy brown sky reappeared overhead, the light from the luminous pink flares dimming as he distanced them from Belvedere Castle.
Ahead was Fifth Avenue. Central Park’s eastern border was blocked by a wall of cars and buses.
Paolo swerved onto the sidewalk, bulldozing his way south in the darkness.
Thump… thump! Thump… thump! Each collision rocked the van like a speed bump. Francesca was seated up front between her husband and Shep. With outstretched arms, the pregnant woman braced herself, using the dashboard. “Paolo, those are people you’re running over!”
“Dead people.”
“Get off the sidewalk.”
“And drive where? The streets are blocked.”
Manisha was in the second seat, holding Dawn’s head in her lap. Her daughter was coughing violently, expelling specks of blood. The necromancer turned to her husband, desperation and anger in her eyes. “We should have never left the cab.”
“Easy to say now,” Pankaj retorted. “How much longer could we have remained there?” The van lurched again, the jarring blow forcing everyone into seat belts.
“Paolo, enough!”
“They’re dead, Francesca. We’re still alive.”
“Excuse me,” Manisha interrupted, “but how are you still alive? None of you even looks sick.”
Francesca motioned to Shep. “Patrick has plague vaccine. At least he had it. He threw what was left into the crowd.”
Shep struggled to turn around, the pain coming from his severed left deltoid pushing him in and out of consciousness. “I still have vaccine left.” He half grinned at Virgil, seated behind him. “I emptied the box into my pocket before I stormed the castle.”
Reaching into his right jacket pocket, he retrieved three small vials of the clear elixir.
Virgil stopped him before he could pass them back. “What about your wife and daughter? Have you forgotten the reason we’re trying to cross Manhattan?”
Manisha’s expression of hope vanished, her mouth quivering. “Your family… where do they live?”
“Battery Park.” Shep grimaced as he searched his jacket pockets again.
“When did you last… I mean, are you certain—”
“Manisha!”
“I am so sorry, forgive me. My husband is right. I cannot take from your family to save mine. You’ve already risked your life—”
“No wait, it’s okay. There were eleven vials to start, I still have six left, two for Bea and my daughter, one for Virgil. Virge, maybe you should take yours now?”
“Hold on to it for me.”
Shep passed the three vials back to Manisha. She trembled as she accepted the gift of life, kissing Patrick’s hand. “Bless you.”
“Just be careful, the drug causes wicked hallucinations. Back in the park… I imagined something hovering over your daughter. I swear, it looked like an angel.”
Dawn raised her head. “You saw her?”
“Saw who?”
Her hands shaking, Manisha hurriedly uncapped the vial. “Dawn, swallow this. It will make you feel better.” She poured the liquid into her daughter’s mouth, fearing the one-armed man’s line of questioning.
“Her? Are you saying what I saw was real? What did I see? Answer me?”
Dawn looked to her mother.
“My name is Manisha Patel, this is my husband, Pankaj. I am a necromancer, a person who communicates with the souls of the dead. The spirit you saw hovering over Dawn, she shares a special bond with our daughter.”
The van lurched again, the impact nearly popping a shock absorber.
Francesca screamed, slapping Paolo on his arm. “What’s wrong with you? She just said she speaks to the dead. Stop running them over!”
“Sorry.” Spotting a break in the wall of cars, he veered across Fifth Avenue, working his way east along 68th Street.
“Manisha, this soul… you called it a she?”
The necromancer nodded at Shep, swallowing the tasteless vaccine. “She has been my spiritual guide ever since we moved to New York. She warned us to leave Manhattan, but we were too late. How is it you were able to see her?”
Shep winced as the van rocked wildly, the pain in his shoulder excruciating. “I don’t know. Like I said, the vaccine causes hallucinations. To be honest, that’s all I thought it was.”
“What you glimpsed,” Virgil interjected, “was the veiled Light of the soul. Remember what I told you back in the hospital, that our five senses lie to us, that they act as curtains that filter out the true reality of existence. In order to be visible, light requires an object to refract upon. Think of deep space. Despite the presence of countless stars, space remains dark. Sunlight only becomes visible when it reflects off an object, like the Earth or the moon. What you saw was this companion soul’s Light reflecting off the girl.”
“Why her?”
“Perhaps the girl possesses something very special, like her mother.”
“And what is that?” Pankaj asks.
Virgil smiled. “Unconditional love for the Creator.”
Manisha gazed up at the old man, tears in her eyes. “Who are you?”
The high-rise apartment was heavy with the scent of aroma candles. The dying flames flickered within designer glass jars aligned across the granite kitchen table, reflecting off the stainless-steel surface of the Sub-Zero refrigerator. Powerless, the double-sized doors lacked the vacuum to remain sealed.
Forty-four-year-old Steven Mennella moved through the condominium as if he were wearing a lead suit. Steven was an NYPD sergeant, his wife, Veronica, a career nurse who had recently taken a job at the VA Hospital.
Steven grabbed a scented candle from the kitchen and carried it into the master bedroom. Leaving it on his bedside table, he stripped off his uniform, meticulously hanging it up in the walk-in closet. Searching by feel, he removed a recently pressed collared white shirt from a hanger, along with his favorite gray suit. He dressed quickly, then selected from a tie rack the patterned tie his daughter, Susan, had given him on his last birthday. He knotted the silk tie, slipped on his leather belt and matching dress shoes, then did a quick check in the closet mirror.