Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(12)

“Ah. Um.”

“You can leave if you want.”

“No, I’ll—um. I’ll stay.”

The principle is simple. You run a charge through the cables. The god is sensitive, and moves away from it. But of course, the cable is a loop, so there’s actually no escaping. Or not unless you’re seriously unlucky. And within the first loop is a second loop, so you run a charge through that, and on and on, driving it inwards, till your little god drops straight into the flask, like a lobster in a pot. The practice can be quite a bit more complex, but the theory’s as easy as they come.

Usually, I’d work in a church or temple or on ancient, sacred ground. Once, in the ruins of an old Iraqi city, where I got the Russian mafia on my tail, just to make life interesting. I’ve known retrievals done in sacred groves, and wishing wells, and even in a London railway station.

But to take a god out of a human being?

Never.

I could kill her, just by trying. And if I didn’t try . . . then she was dead for sure.

I hit the first charge, to contain the thing, to let it know that I was there, and there was no point settling down for the night.

Melody jolted. She folded stick-like arms around herself. Her feet came off the floor.

I hit the second charge and she shook and shuddered and an awful, trembling wail burst from her throat.

Someone was beating on the door. It had been going on a while before I noticed it. I told Silverman, “You see to that, will you?”

There were cables all over her. It was ridiculous. I hoped her heart would hold out. I hoped— The flask went over, fallen on its side. That shouldn’t be a problem. I ran another charge. She yelled. She shrieked. The sound rose into frequencies I didn’t think the human voice could reach. Furniture shook. Ornaments started to dance off the sideboard, dropping on the floor with sharp little thuds.

The skin on her face was moving. Something was making patterns in her flesh, whorls and twists and swirls, all just below the surface, like some kind of violent weather system, racing through her body.

There were voices at the door. I had been moving slowly, trying not to cause her too much pain, but now I knew I’d have to take the risk. I hit three short bursts in quick succession, fast as I dared. Her body arched, bounced, and her tongue lolled out of her mouth. Her false teeth had come loose.

A couple of paramedics appeared. Silverman was trying to take the flak for me. I was grateful. Someone started shouting and I yelled back, “Five minutes!” and I ran another charge. I could feel it, burning, tingling in the air, and I thought, maybe this one, maybe this’ll do it— And the lights went out. The equipment died. The power just drained away. And in the pitch dark Melody Duchess screamed and screamed until her voice was no more than a gasp and wheeze like air escaping from a leaky tire.

Somebody pushed me out the way. There was a flashlight shining and a lot of shouting, then someone found the electric panel and reset the circuit breakers. The lights came on.

I said, “This isn’t what you think—”

But my part in it all was over then, and everybody knew it.

Well, except for me.





Chapter 11

Indiana Jones




They wouldn’t let me in the ambulance. No surprise, perhaps. They left me in that dingy, over-stuffed apartment. Silverman wanted to talk, only I hurried him outside and shut the door. After that, I simply stood there in the wreckage, wondering what to do. It was the most desolate feeling. There was debris all around me—thirty-year-old magazines, and a child’s doll, and photographs of people that I didn’t know and likely no one else did either, and a souvenir sombrero pinned up on the wall as if it were an antique shield . . .

And for no particular reason, I looked round for the strongbox. It had been kicked across the room, against a sofa piled with clothes, all neatly stored in plastic bags—the fashions of a bygone age. I went over, nudged it with my foot, and saw the paper tucked inside.

I suppose it was just superstition, but I felt a real fear as I reached down and snatched it out. The god was gone, but it seemed a kind of residue remained, a trepidation I could not shake off.

I took the paper and unfolded it.

It was a photocopy. A cartoon, printed off-center, in thick, black, grainy lines. No words. An ugly, in-your-face kind of thing, and not at all the sort of picture I’d imagined Melody would like.

A boy—a teenager, perhaps—was staring out at me, over his shoulder, holding up an apple with a bite chomped out of it. His brows made a V and his mouth made a V, and his whole face had been scrunched into a wicked, grinning leer. It was vulgar and defiant and in some way challenging, and I felt that my reactions to it were too strong, over-wrought by what I’d just been through, and by the former presence of a god.

I put the paper in my pocket. I looked around for anything that might have some connection with the job that might explain things or else give me a clue to what was going on here. But there was nothing. I picked the flask up, shoved the cables in an empty bag, then went downstairs, and called a taxi.

I was ready to drop. But the night was far from over.



They had the kind of lights that drain the life out of you. Even if you’re well, they still make you look sick.

I was in the ER waiting room. I was there with the victims and the worried families and the old Hispanic man who started praying very loudly and whom everyone was too polite to interrupt.