Execution

Chapter 25 of The Man with the Luminous Eyes

We arose, and walked to the house. The fox followed Al respectfully, while giving me (as I thought) occasional contemptuous glances.

Above, I saw dozens of crows circling. The same crows I’d seen surrounding the Beret barracks. The same crows that had followed us home from Ken’s the night Patterson took us. Just two nights ago, I reminded myself.

I realized, for the first time, why those crows had always made me intensely nervous.

Al looked up, loathing on his face, his eyes burning in the night air.

The crows fled, their arrogant cawing unable to mask genuine terror.

“I never could abide crows,” he said quietly.

We paused for a moment, silent, at the door to the brightly lit living room. The fox turned and departed silently.

“Keeping watch?” I looked at Al.

“As he always does. He’s been watcher and guide since long before you or I arrived here.”

“I don’t envy him that job.”

“Nor I. But in all the time he’s been here, he’s only found one of us who really required all his patience.”

“I did get that impression. I can be a bit slow.”

He began to laugh, but cut it off immediately. We were on the way to execute a prisoner. Laughter would have been utterly dishonorable.

He paused at the sliding door, and then forced himself to enter the house. I followed a pace behind, no more willing.

Nothing had changed; no one had even moved. Lorna was still standing with three berets watching her—and the Colonel watching them.

Knowing Lorna’s attractions, that seemed a very wise course.

She noticed us enter and said contemptuously, “That was quick.”

Before I could respond, Al looked towards my watch. I followed his glance, and saw that the time was a quarter past four. Only 15 minutes had elapsed since I’d walked out the door into the snow.

“Time enough.” I looked at her with my newly illumined eyes. She turned away. Very quickly.

I then realized, unfortunately, that luminous eyes didn’t show me the reality of things. Or of people. Because Lorna’s body was as enticing, as perfect, as it had been the first time I saw her. Apparently, no realization—psychological or spiritual—could really impact that reaction.

Which wasn’t going to make watching her execution any easier.

“Time to die,” I said, speaking as much to myself as to her.

She looked at me. Her face remained painfully beautiful, though the madness was fully revealed in her black eyes. I wished that what she was in reality could be seen, even if just for one moment.

That wish, like most, remained unfilled.

Then she laughed. No longer the music of elven bells, but the cawing of demons taking the form of crows on the Wheel—and in our world, too.

“Die? To be rid of you, you pitiful, seven-fingered loser? I’d die gladly. I’ve given this lovely body to hundreds since I came down to this little world. You were the worst. It was all I could do not to vomit during your absurd, inept attempt at love making.”

“Glad I’ve made your journey to hell easier for you.”

She laughed again. I was tempted to strike her, just to shut her up. I restrained myself.

“As though you could kill me. I have lived since before your little world was imagined.”

“As have I.”

That silenced her. I was very glad of that.

“A lot can happen in 15 minutes, baby.”

Then she began to hiss. Even having seen the wheel, it was terrifying.

“This has gone on long enough, Lukasi. Time to die.” Al went to her, and said to the three Beret guards, “I’ll take charge of her now.”

Had he waited longer, we might have had to fight our own men. The guards were already staring at her body, and obviously not hearing anything she said.

Even then, trapped, handcuffed, her real ugliness revealed, she was simply too seductive, too dangerous.

Except for a man who’d trained for the priesthood.

I was beginning to understand Al, and the choices he’d made since coming here. I took some small satisfaction in that.

He walked up to Lorna, and knocked her to the floor with a surprisingly solid left hook.

He looked at me with genuine compassion, and said, “You don’t have to watch, Frank. Not this one.”

“I’ll watch. I’ll never be certain it’s finished otherwise.”

At least I’d learn how the Blue Beret executions were performed.

That really didn’t help.

The Colonel walked up, silent as a hunting cat, and stood beside me.

Al looked at us both.

“I wish it could have been different,” he said simply.

The Wheel was already rapidly fading from my memory. But I recalled enough to say, “It is different, Al. It always has been and always will be. Ultimately, you’re liberating her, or at least helping her on the path to liberation.” The Colonel put one of his huge hands on my shoulder, as if in thanks.

Then Al turned again to Lorna. She began to scream, the scream of a demon no longer able to seduce others to join her in torment.

Everything within me wanted to turn away, to run away, to wake up in my bed with heart pounding, realizing that this had all been a horrible dream.

I’d seen enough to know that waking up wouldn’t be that easy.

Somehow, I forced my eyes to focus on Al.

The light from his eyes had become cold, hard, deadly, as it focused on her exquisite face. And in a matter of instants, that face was gone. But there was no blood, no muscle, none of the horror that I’d seen in Sherry’s corpse, or Michael’s.

There was simply blackness, nothingness, far more terrifying than the dead human meat and I’d seen after Beret executions in the city.

The blackness from within her grew, and consumed her body, until there was no sign that her beauty had every existed.

Despite everything, that was a cause for sorrow.

I turned away from the floor where her body would have been, and saw “No Face for the Faceless” written in blood on the walls.

The Colonel sat down heavily in one of the chairs, controlling his grief by some superhuman strength of will.

I didn’t have his strength. I wept. For some time. For myself. For the winter. For the laughter like elven bells that I’d never hear again. For the vain, foolish, selfish girl Lorna had been before she gave herself up to a soldier of darkness.

“We’re done, Frank,” Al said quietly.

“Almost.”

“Always the damned detective, aren’t you, Frank?”

There was no humor in those words.

I had no desire to cause Al pain; that had been burned away by the light.

I realized that my own suffering was nothing compared to his.

But I had to have the answers.

“I’ve got nothing else, Al. Nothing. I’ve got to know. I’ve got to have the loose ends tied up. It’s not the realm of light. It’s not Haydn. But it’s the life that’s left to me down here.”

He sat, silent, unable to speak. I decided to help him with what I’d figured out for myself.

“Michael’s easy. He was working for Lorna. I could tell that the first time I saw him. One sucker can always recognize another. I suppose he was another of the hundreds. Better than me.”

That level of self-pity was unworthy, and I forced it down.

“When you came after me? In the garage?”

“Just theater, Frank, and I’m sorry. But I didn’t know where Lorna was, or what she could hear. I had to be convincing.”

“You were that, Al.”

I paused. And asked the big question, the one I’d been working on for more than a week.

“But Sherry?”

Al must have been trained in the same hard school as the Colonel. He showed no emotion. I was proud of him for that. But he spoke tightly, as though forcing his confession through unwilling teeth.

“What you saw when you came to my office that morning? It was all real.

“I’d like to tell you it was all part of the plan. That it was necessary. That Sherry volunteered. Sacrificed herself to help rid the world of Lukasi. That she was working for us all along. That her execution was faked. Or that she’d been working for Lukasi, and had to be killed.

“But I can’t.

“She was completely innocent. Not even involved. Just a pretty girl that I’d hired to remind me that there were pretty girls, even if I’d never touch one again.

“She was in love with me. She had a kind, warm heart.

“And I killed her.”

He stopped, and I saw his eyes roving the room, as they always did when he was nervous. He was a warrior of light, garuda. And also the awkward, shy man who’d stood before my desk a week earlier.

With an effort, he continued.

“I thought I was alone in the penthouse, that everyone had gone for the night. I’d always been careful about that; I didn’t want anyone surprising me with my glasses off. But that night? I was trying to remember anything from the Wheel that could help me find Lukasi, and I’d forgotten to check the outer office.

“Sherry came into my office. She probably knocked, and when I didn’t answer, she assumed that I’d gone.

“I didn’t hear the knock. I just saw the door open, and I reacted. But she had time to scream before she died. I’ll live with that sound until the day I die. And after.”

I realized why people hated detectives. I hated myself pretty deeply at that moment.

“I’m sorry, Al. It wasn’t important. I shouldn’t have asked. After tonight, I should have just trusted you.”

“There’s no absolution without confession, Frank.”

“I can’t absolve you, my friend.”

“That’s what you think.”

He smiled, bleakly.

“Let’s get out of here. I’ve seen enough of this place to last me a lifetime. It cost a fortune to build and to inlay the Wheel everywhere in the house. Then I had to sell it to Patterson for nothing—because he thought he had leverage over me. I’ll miss the Wheel. But this place has served its purpose.”

The Berets moved away, silent. The Colonel didn’t look at either of us, and when we’d gotten outside, they had faded like ghosts.

Al got behind the wheel of a blue coupe.

“You can actually drive, Al?”

“I’m a man of many talents, Frank.”

I got into the passenger seat, and we drove in back in silence.