Billy stood up and waved the fly away from his face. The men would be coming back for him, he knew, and they'd take him back to the woman with the needles. Danger was here, all around. He had to shake off the dizziness, had to find a way out of this place! He turned the doorknob and stepped out into the empty corridor as Krepsin shrieked again behind him.
He started along the corridor, trying to remember how he'd come in. Krepsin's voice echoed behind him. Billy broke into a run, stumbled and fell, then got up and ran again. The walls around him seemed to breathe, as if he were caught inside a huge beast that was trying to consume him.
And then he turned a corner and abruptly stopped.
A young man with electric-blue eyes and a shock of curly red hair was standing in his pajamas less than ten feet away, in front of an open doorway. He had frozen when he saw Billy. The sweat of a nightmare sheened his sunburned cheeks.
"Wayne?" Billy said.
Wayne's mouth hung half open. His eyes were glazed and dull with shock.
Billy took a step toward the other boy, and saw Wayne cringe. "What have they done to you?" Billy whispered. "Wayne? What have they—"
A hand gripped his shoulder. Niles wrenched upward on Billy's arm to keep him from running. Krepsin was still screaming like a madman.
Wayne was pressed against the wall. He had seen that they had even provided the Hawthorne demon boy with his clothes. They had brought him here and hidden him in the white house, and they had given him his clothes! "You said I was safe," Wayne whispered to Niles. "You said as long as I stayed here, I was—"
"Shut up, goddamn it!" Niles told him.
"Wayne, they brought me here!" Billy said, the pain clearing his head. "They're trying to use me, Wayne, just like they're trying to use you!"
Niles said, "Wayne, I want you to get dressed and pack your bag. Do it quickly. Mr. Krepsin wants to leave here in fifteen minutes."
"Demon," Wayne whispered, as he huddled against the wall.
"Get ready to go! Move.'"
"Kill him for me," Wayne said. "Right here. Right now. Kill him like you had the witch killed."
Billy almost got free with a sudden burst of strength, but Niles pinned him tighter.
And then Wayne knew the truth. "You did bring him here," he said, tears in his eyes. "Why? To hurt me? To make me have nightmares? Because," he moaned softly, "that boy's evil . . . and Mr. Krepsin is too?"
"I won't tell you again to get your fat ass moving!" Niles said, and forced Billy back along the corridor, toward where Krepsin was babbling about returning to Palm Springs because there was disease in the bunker.
It was all a trick, Wayne realized. They'd never really been his friends; they'd never really wanted to protect him. They'd brought the demon right to his door! Everything had been a trick to get the Crusade!
It was all clear to him now, and his mind crackled with wild currents. Maybe they'd even brought Billy Creekmore here, he realized, to replace him.
Even his daddy had tricked him and wasn't his daddy. He'd been tricked and lied to from the very start. Had been told Keep healing, Wayne, keep healing keep healing even though you don't feel the fire anymore keep healing. . . .
His mind was cracking. The snake was winning.
But not yet! He was still Wayne Falconer, the South's Greatest Evangelist! And there was one last way to destroy the corruption that had surrounded and finally trapped him. He wiped the tears from his face.
The eagle might still destroy the snake.
61
Jim Coombs took the Challenger to sixteen thousand feet. He checked his instruments and turned on the automatic pilot. Below the jet, as indicated by a downward-tilted radar mechanism set in the nose, was a rough terrain of desert and mountains. A scan of the weather ahead showed clear skies. The takeoff and landing were the skillful parts of flying the Challenger; now, with the jet flying itself and visibility almost perfect, Coombs could sit back and relax. He'd been awakened in his quarters at the jet hangar about half an hour earlier, and told by Dorn that Mr. Krepsin wanted to go back to Palm Springs immediately. Krepsin was a nervous wreck back in the passenger section; the man had waddled aboard wearing his white caftan, his face as pale as milk, and had started sucking at an oxygen mask as soon as he'd strapped in. Niles and Dorn were even more quiet than usual. Wayne was silent and brooding, not even bothering to answer when Coombs had spoken to him. And there was another passenger aboard, as welclass="underline" the dark-haired boy that Coombs had flown down from Chicago. The boy had a hard, shiny look in his eyes, something between fear and rage and probably a bit of both. Coombs didn't know what was going on, but for some reason he was very glad he wasn't that boy.
Coombs yawned, still weary from his interrupted sleep. They'd be in Palm Springs in a couple of hours.
From his seat at the middle of the plane, Billy watched Krepsin's chest heaving as the huge man breathed through an oxygen mask. Krepsin sat toward the front, where he had plenty of room; his breathing sounded like that of a man in agony. Abruptly, he reached out and drew the clear plastic curtain around his seat, cutting himself off from the rest of the cabin. Niles sat sleeping just behind Billy, Dorn across the aisle. Across from Krepsin, Wayne sat like a statue.
What had they done to him? Billy wondered. How had these people gotten control of the Falconer Crusade? There had been madness and terror in Wayne's eyes, and Billy feared his brother was beyond help. But still, somehow, he had to try. He saw that, too, as part of his Mystery Walk—breaking through the barrier of fear that kept them apart, that had put Wayne on a twisted path leading into the clutches of Augustus Krepsin. His mother—their mother—was probably dead. Wayne's madness had wanted it done, and Krepsin had obliged. Fear and hatred had been Jimmy Jed Falconer's legacy to his adopted son.
And now Billy recalled something his mother had told him: that Wayne wouldn't be able to recognize true Evil when it reached out for him. That Wayne might be his weak link, that the shape changer might be able to work on Wayne to get at Billy. He leaned his head back, squeezing his eyes shut. What would she want him to do now? When he opened his eyes, he saw Wayne looking back at him over his shoulder They stared at each other for a long moment; Billy thought he could feel electricity passing between them, as if they were batteries feeding off each other. Then Wayne rose from his seat and came back along the aisle, averting his gaze from Billy.
"What is it?" Niles asked him, when Wayne had prodded him awake.
"I want to go up to the cockpit," Wayne said. His eyes were glassy, and a pulse beat rapidly at one temple. "Can I?"
"No. Go sit down."
"Mr Krepsin always lets me," Wayne told him. "I like to sit up front, where I can see the instruments." One side of his mouth hitched up in a slight sneer. "Mr Krepsin wants me to be happy, doesn't he?"
Niles paused for a moment. Then he said irritably, "Go on, then. I don't care what you do!" He closed his eyes again.
"Wayne?" Billy said, and the other boy looked at him. "I'm not your enemy. I never wanted things to be like this."
"You're going to die." Wayne's eyes flared, two hot bursts of blue. "I'm going to make sure of that, if it's the last thing I do. God's going to help me."
"Listen to me," Billy said; it was burning to come out of him. He had to tell him, right now, and he had to make him understand. "Please. I'm not evil, and neither is . . . was my mother. Didn't you ever wonder where your healing power came from? Didn't you ever wonder, why you? I can tell you why. Don't turn away! Please! The Falconers weren't your real parents, Wayne. . . ."