He helped me back to the car, but it was hard going because he was weak, I was big, and neither of us looked forward to hitting the road again. I sank into the passenger seat and he took the wheel, while I sat on my hands to keep myself from tearing open any more boils.
I glanced at the speedometer: forty-five mph.
“Faster,” I murmured. The rank smell rising from my pores was making me dizzy and it took every bit of willpower I had to keep from giving in again to the nausea.
I watched the needle creep up to sixty.
“Faster,” I said.
“Alfred, in these conditions . . .”
“We’re running out of time!” I shouted. “And time’s the only condition that matters now!” Then I shut up because the screaming hurt my throat. The needle hit eighty-five and kept inching higher. He squinted through the windshield, as if his squinting would somehow penetrate the white cloak around us.
My right arm twitched as I fought the urge to reach into my pocket, pull out the semiautomatic, and blow his hound-dog head off. It was like the feeling I had in the Taurus that night outside Mike’s house, but ten times stronger and I fought it in silence for a few miles.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I said finally. “Something you should know.”
He nodded.
“I’ve been getting these urges to, um, hurt you. Kill you.
It’s almost more than I can stand.”
He glanced at me.
“It’s not me,” I went on. “At least, I’m pretty sure it’s not me. I didn’t have homicidal urges before they got into me—at least, not like these. I guess it crosses everybody’s mind and that doesn’t make it right, just normal.”
He nodded. “I have had similar thoughts.”
“About me?”
He nodded again. “Since I woke in the hotel room. I came close to leaving you back there by the roadside. The urge was almost overwhelming.”
“I can still tell which ones are their thoughts and which ones are mine. But the line is getting thinner between them. I’m scared that I’ll reach the point when I can’t tell the difference.”
I pulled the gun from my pocket. He looked at it, and then looked quickly away.
“It would be useless against our enemies, would it not?” he asked.
I nodded. It comforted me in a strange way, holding it. My head hurt and my vision began to cloud. Kill him. He betrayed thee and lied to thee. Kill him!
I rolled down the window and wind whipped into the confines of the little cockpit. He wasn’t looking at me. His whole body tensed, waiting.
I threw the gun out the open window.
For the rest of the drive, I spoke only to tell him to go faster, because without realizing it, I think, he would slowly back off the gas, and I would say, “Faster, faster.”
There was fire in Louisville and Frankfort; we could see the fuzzy orange glow of it burning through the fog. I had lost all sense of time. When we were about a hundred miles north of Knoxville, I dialed Needlemier’s number on Op Nine’s cell phone.
“Hello, Alfred.” The line was staticky, but I could hear the tremble in his voice behind the pop and crackle. “Everything’s been arranged.”
“About an hour,” I said. “Meet us at the airport.”
On impulse, I hit the speed dial for headquarters. I didn’t get a recording. I didn’t get anything. The line just went dead without ringing.
The fog was so thick on Alcoa Highway that Op Nine missed the airport entrance, and we had to pull a U-ie to get back. A silver Lexus was the only car in the parking lot. I wondered what Mr. Needlemier thought when he saw us stumbling toward him, two broken-down, slumping shapes, leaning on each other as they emerged from the fog.
“Alfred . . .” He took a step forward. “Dear Lord, what has happened?”
“Practically everything,” I said. “Mr. Needlemier, this is—”
And Op Nine said, “Samuel.” He looked as startled as I must have looked. “Yes, I remember! My name is Samuel.”
“Great,” I said. “Now you’ll have to kill me.”
“The first order of business is getting the two of you to a doctor,” Mr. Needlemier said.
“No,” I said. “There’s no time.”
He opened the door to the backseat and we slid inside.
“There’s a duffel bag in the CCR,” I told him. He left to fetch it.
“How much farther?” Op Nine asked. His face had gone the milky white color of the fog.
“He’s in the mountains south of here,” I said. “About a thirty-minute drive.”
“You are certain of this?”
“I’m not certain of anything anymore.”
Mr. Needlemier dropped the duffel into the trunk. He came to my side carrying a long thin box.
“You got it,” I said.
“I got it. But faced many uncomfortable questions while getting it. Horace Tuttle is not a trusting fellow.”
“Horace Tuttle is a jerk,” I said.
“What is it?” Op Nine asked.
I opened the box and drew it out. “The blade of the Last Knight of the Order of the Sacred Sword of Kings.”