Joss Ware - Abandon the Night

Brummell-Marcombe Manor
Wiltshire, England
April 1997

The nape of Quents neck prickled and he turned to see his father standing in the doorway, holding a riding crop in his left hand. He slapped it against his trousered thigh, and the sound settled in the room, ominous and full of promise.

You thought it would be amusing, Parris Fielding said, stepping over the threshold into Quents spacious bedroom. Slap. Trying to show me up.

Though his palms dampened, Quent remained still. Seventeen years old, he was taller than his father, broader, strongerbut Fielding held the crop.

The backs of his thighs still bore the welts from last time.

Quent knew better than to defend himself fromor even comprehendwhatever sin his father attributed to him today. There was nothing he could say. He curled his fingers into his palms and wondered if it would be this time. If Fielding would finally kill him.

Slap.

Hed come close three years ago. Close enough that Quent had been in the hospital for a week from a ski accident.

It had indeed been a ski pole that had inflicted the injuries. But Quent hadnt been holding it.

Quents mother, Starla Tamrit-Brummell Fielding, had deigned to visit once, flying in from Venice where she was filming on location. And then back the same day.

Parris Fielding, however, had been there every day. For hours. Updating the media with bloodshot eyes, reluctantly allowing photo ops of his disheveled self arriving and leaving the hospital. Shielding his face as if to keep the press from seeing his grief and worry.

Hed even, famously, postponed an important Brummell Industries board meeting so that he could remain at his only sons bedside.

Slap.

Quent lifted his chin, allowing the hatred he felt for the man whod given him life to show in his eyes. Three more months and hed be eighteenand free.

Would he live that long?

Fielding stepped closer and, in spite of himself, Quents heart rate picked up.

Maybe this time Ill mark up your pretty face, he said. His eyes danced with dark fury, and Quent saw the dull sheen on his high forehead. Other than that, he looked as if hed just stepped out of the boardroomevery hair in place, his slacks creased and his shirt tucked in.

No, his father didnt drink to excess. Didnt use. His vice was the liberal employment of his hands and fistsand, as his son had grown taller and stronger, hed supplemented them with riding crops, belts, and ski poles. And, once, a nine iron.

Someday, Quent feared, hed resort to his hunting rifle. Or the pistol in his office. But then, Fieldings amusement would be over much too quickly.

Slap.

Fielding strolled casually to the French doors that opened onto a vast balcony, flung wide to the fresh spring breeze. He closed them with a quiet click before turning back to his son. He wasnt breathing hard, and every hair was still in place. Even in the midst of his most furious of attacks, he remained well pressed and neat.

Slap.

Quent swallowed and thought about running. His muscles bunched beneath his skin, his stomach tightened and began to churn. But in the end, he didnt. He knew it would only be worse if he did.

And that, as vast as the Brummell-Fielding estate was, there would be no escape from his father.

Not until he was eighteen.

Three more bloody months.

The crop sliced through the air, whipping past his ear and onto Quents shoulder. He felt the sting through the T-shirt he wore, and before he could gather a breath, it came again as Fielding pivoted, this time, cutting across his back. And then again. And again.

He staggered, felt the burning in his back, the warm drip of blood. He raised his hand to ward off the next blow. But instead, Quent felt the sting down along his right arm and onto his belly and couldnt hold back a groan of pain. Fieldings face was drawn and dark, furious. His eyes, flat and cold and intense.

Pledging money to UNICEF, he spat. Whip. Half a million pounds!

Half a million pounds from Quents own trust fundtwice as much as his father had offered the same charityand barely a drop in the bucket of the Brummell-Fielding trillions.

Quent swiped a bleeding hand over his face just as the crop slashed his thigh, and then his hip. He twisted and turned, trying to avoid the pummeling that only became worse as Fielding became more incensed.

Sweat and pain blinded him, fear and anger drove him, and he stumbled toward the bag of golf clubs in the corner. Quent knocked into it as he dodged another blow, this time the crop slicing along his left arm. Tumbling against the bag, he collapsed onto the rug in a dull clatter of metal clubs. He rolled away as Fielding came after him, faster and harder, and Quents fingers closed around a slender metal handle.

Cool and heavy in his grip.

He tightened his fingers, pulling it out, and tried to drag himself to his feetbut the crop came more quickly, and his fathers biting words, raving about being upstaged, followed.

The club, solid in his hands. Quent knew he could swing out, smash it into the monster who came at himhe could kill him.

He could stop him.

Sixty-three years later
City of Envy

Over the years, there were many times Quent regretted not taking that golf club to his father and putting an end to the fear and torturebut never had he felt the regret as strongly as he did now.

Quentin Brummell Fielding looked down at the object on the table in front of him: a clear crystal, perhaps the size of a large mans thumb. Its clarity was so pure, the stone was tinged with pristine blue and faint grayyet when it was held to the light, it allowed the beam to shine through unencumbered, untainted. Faintly ice blue.

Delicate tentacles trailed out from the sides and behind, stylized rays from a sun. Or, in this case, a full moon. Like slender fiber optic threads, the tentacles resembled veins erupting from a heartlike crystalperhaps a millimeter or two thick where they sprouted from the stone, and becoming as slender as hair or fine thread as they branched out.

So this is what does it. What gives them immortality? Quent prodded the crystal with a small pair of forceps. His fingers shook. This is why they destroyed the world. He looked up at his friend Elliott, who, in a battle for his life, had hacked the crystal from of one of the immortal humans known as the Strangers.

Removing the crystal was the only way to kill them.

Yeah, said Elliott, who was also known to his friends as Dred. Once the crystal is introduced surgically, embedded in the soft tissue, it sort of roots itself into the body.

Quent poked the stone a little more sharply. A tip of one of the tentacles broke off and glinted like a minute shard of glass. If hed used the golf club that day, sixty-some years ago, his father would be dead. And perhaps the world would still be the same, instead of the overgrown wasteland it had become.

But he had not. Quent had rolled under the bed, clutching the five woodout of reach of the vicious attack, throbbing, broken, bleeding, half fainting from the painand remained innocent of murder yet another day.

And then, thirteen years later, Quents father had helped to destroy the world. All for a little crystal that allowed Fielding to live forever.

If Quent had known then what his restraint had cost mankind

Are you certain you want to try and read it? Elliott asked. Hed been a physician, a trauma surgeon, back in Chicago before everything had changedbefore Elliott and Quent and three other men had entered a cave in Sedona, Arizona. Theyd been on an adventure, using a map that Quent had acquired that supposedly led to a lost Anasazi treasure.

Sedona was a place known for its mystical properties and concentration of energy, but none of them had any idea how mystical and powerful it would turn out to be.