"Lord knows what Toby will think when he sees that stuff trickling out of the Nal-toon," Reyna said in the same haunted voice. She swallowed hard, rubbed her eyes. "He'll die if he eats it, won't he?"
"If he eats enough of it, yes—which might not be too much. It's incredibly pure." He watched as Reyna bowed her head and clasped her hands in prayer. He waited a few moments, then stepped close to her and touched her shoulder. "Reyna," Veil continued quietly, "I don't mean to be insensitive, but prayers aren't going to help Toby now."
"That isn't true, Veil," Reyna whispered without opening her eyes. "Toby is sick, he's badly injured, and the Nal-toon is filled with death that Toby is almost certain to think is something else, some gift sent to him by the Nal-toon. God's intervention is Toby's only hope now."
Veil gripped Reyna's wrist and gently but firmly pulled her back along the way they had come. "Pray on the way to the cemetery," he said curtly.
It was dark when Veil drove the rented car back over the Queensborough Bridge into Manhattan. He glanced sideways at Reyna and could see that she was barely able to hold back tears. "Tomorrow's another day," he said softly. "We'll go into the other cemeteries—New Lutheran and Zion. We'll just keep at it until we find him."
The tears finally came, and Reyna brushed them away with the back of her hand. "What haunts me is the possibility that we could have passed within a few feet of him, and Toby was passed out or too sick to respond."
"It's possible, sure—but it's just as possible that he's farther to the southeast, gone to ground in one of the other cemeteries. Or he's simply ignoring us because he's not ready to come out yet. The good news is that if we can't find him, it's not likely that anyone else will, either."
"Until he comes out below the golf course," Reyna replied hoarsely. "Somebody will be sure to spot him, and he'll be trapped. I told you he won't be taken alive, Veil."
They drove in silence for almost ten minutes before an accident in the center and outside lanes of the FDR Drive brought traffic to a crawl. Veil looked at Reyna, who was sitting bolt-upright in her seat, staring straight ahead. In her face was a terrible fear, and Veil suspected that it was more than fear for Toby. He said, "Let's talk about a gutsy friend of mine by the name of Reyna Alexander."
"Thank you for calling me your gutsy friend," Reyna mumbled in a flat monotone, "but let's not talk about me."
"I think it's time, and I think you want to. Let's you and I exorcise a few of your ghosts—and I'm thinking of a big, fat, ugly one in particular."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Veil reached across the seat and plucked at the left sleeve of Reyna's beige, long-sleeved blouse. "There are needle tracks under there, right?"
Reyna's head snapped around, and her eyes were wide in terror before an old haunt. "Yes," she breathed, and in the sound of that one word was a universe of guilt, shame—and relief.
Veil edged over into the inside lane where traffic had slowly begun to move past a cordon of blinking lights from a patrol car and tow truck. "Jesus, Reyna, I hope they're not fresh."
Reyna shook her head. "They're not. It's been years."
"How did it happen?"
"Veil, I really don't want to talk about it."
"Yes, you do. Tell me about it."
There was a prolonged silence. Veil waited, certain that the words would eventually come—and they did.
"I told you I was twelve when my parents died," Reyna said in a low voice. "It was in the Kalahari, with the K'ung. A warrior party of Bantu attacked. It was . . . horrible. My parents went down in each other's arms while they were being . . . poked to death by Bantu spears. Poked to death. All over."
Veil reached out for Reyna's hand and squeezed it tightly.
"I escaped by running into the desert," Reyna continued. "By that age, I was at home almost everywhere in the desert. I had enough lore to find my way back—except that I didn't want to find my way back. I was out of my mind with terror and horror, and all I wanted to do was die. I almost did. I had no water, and after a while I just lay down in the trough of a dune. Toby came after me and found me. He'd brought a water-egg for me. They carry water in ostrich eggs, you know."
"I know," Veil replied softly. "It was in the newspaper articles."
"Toby half dragged, half carried me back to the camp. By then the battle was over. The Bantu had been driven off, and the K'ung—out of respect for my feelings—had already buried my parents. They'd even . . . even . . ."
"Reyna?"
Reyna sobbed once, then brought herself back under control. "They'd even made a cross out of firewood and put it up over my parents' grave. In all the time—the years—that my parents had spent with them, with all the subtle and not-so-subtle proselytizing they'd done about Jesus Christ, this was the first time the tribe had shown even the slightest interest in the meanings or symbols of Christianity. They'd loved my parents, Veil, even as my parents had loved them."
"Yes. It doesn't surprise me."
"The wireless in the Land-Rover was broken, so there was nothing to do but wait. After two call-ins were missed, the Missionary Society had the South Africans send out a helicopter to check on things. They found me and took me back to Johannesburg." Reyna paused, sniffed. "Toby saved my life, Veil. It's so terribly important to me that I save his."
"I understand. What happened to you after they took you out of the desert?"
"It's pretty much as I told you. I became a ward of the Missionary Society. I was given the best schooling, then brought back here to attend college. But I couldn't get those . . . images out of my mind. Always, night and day, I would have these flashes of memory, see my parents holding on to each other while they went down under the spear thrusts . . ."
"It's okay, Reyna. It's over now."
"Yes. Except . . . like you, I guess, I was an extremely troubled adolescent. I'm ashamed to say it, but God wasn't enough solace for me in those days. Nothing seemed to be able to block the memories—except drugs. Eventually I became hooked on heroin."
"And you were eventually arrested by Carl Nagle."
Reyna uttered a sharp cry, then doubled over in her seat and clutched at her stomach, as if a knife had been plunged into her. "It was horrible, Veil. Horrible. He did things . . . I don't think I'll ever feel clean again."
"You're clean, Reyna," Veil said gently as he stroked her back. "The sin and the filth are his, not yours. Know that and accept it."
Veil continued to stroke Reyna's back, and finally she began to relax. She sighed, straightened up. Then she took Veil's hand, kissed it, held it up to breast. "I guess you could say that my experience with Nagle was almost therapeutic," she said with a quick, nervous giggle. "That . . . man was so terrible, fear of him became even stronger than my craving for drugs. The Society stood by me, of course. They put me in a rehabilitation program, supported me all through withdrawal. But I swear it was fear of him as much as any treatment program that kept me off drugs after that." Reyna let herself fall over onto Veil, who wrapped his arm around her. "I'm still so afraid," she added quietly.
The security guard at the gate recognized Reyna and waved Veil through. "Don't be," he said as he drove slowly through the narrow streets of the campus. "I have a strong feeling that Mr. Nagle's clock is about to be cleaned good for him. I wouldn't be surprised to see him put out of everybody else's misery permanently."
Reyna shuddered, the muscles in her body rippling like a physical prayer. "Why do you say that?"
"It's just a strong notion. Nagle's not going to bother you again, Reyna."