TheBeastWithin Read online

  Matt stared at him, thinking, You have to be kidding. “Well, the parable does end by saying that ‘Charles’ uses this mysterious rite a number of times to make the shadow do his bidding, right? He makes the shadow bring him money, and fame. Ultimately, the shadow helps him assemble a big militia of over a hundred soldiers called the White Aryan Caucasian Fist of God. Over time, this militia is strengthened and empowered by regular applications of this rite.”

  “And…?”

  “And White Aryan Caucasian Fist of God was, I think, the name of the militia which you claim to have started. At least, it was, according to the author’s profile on the book’s back flap.”

  A flash of teeth. “Was and is. And until recently, we were still nearly one hundred strong!”

  “Right.” Thinking, What does “until recently” mean? Matt decided not to ask. There was only one thing he needed from Kingman, and that was information on Mr. Dark—if he had any. Which was a big if.

  Matt gave Kingman an open look. “So you tell me…am I on to something? Or did I just drive three thousand miles for nothing?”

  The old guy held his unblinking gaze for two, three, four seconds, and then let out a short, rasping laugh. “You didn’t come all this way for nothing,” he said reassuringly. “Roma’s tea is famous in these parts. Come in, my dear— come in!”

  The wild hope that had briefly flared in Matt’s chest was quickly extinguished. He turned around impatiently. Roma had entered the room, bearing a tray that held two china cups and what looked to be an old-fashioned pewter samovar. The steam rising from its spout obscured her features—all but the slanted green eyes, which cut briefly toward Matt as she passed him. As she crossed to Kingman’s desk and leaned over to set down the heavy tray, Matt’s pulse started to beat like a drum at the base of his throat.

  “Remarkable, isn’t she?”

  Embarrassed, Matt glanced quickly back to Kingman, who he now realized had been watching his reaction. He began stammering out something, but Kingman held up his hand, palm out. “No need to apologize,” he laughed. “Roma is beautiful, is she not? You said so yourself earlier.”

  Mortified, Matt clenched his jaw and glanced guiltily at Roma. But she was just standing at the corner of Kingman’s desk, impossibly at ease, hands clasped modestly before her and eyes demurely downcast. The faint smile on her lips was unreadable, could have been shyness, satisfaction, shame— or contempt. Or all four.

  “How much”—and here Kingman walked from behind his desk over to Roma—”How much would you pay for such a woman, Matt?”

  “Pay?” Matt couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.

  “Yes, pay. How much would you pay?” Kingman stood right next to Roma, arms crossed, giving her a satisfactory look-over, like a coin collector inspecting a buffalo nickel with a valuable defect. “You’d be surprised what Roma has cost me. Two thousand dollars I paid to a marriage broker to winnow down the field of potential brides, then three thousand more to cover the introductory visit, another thousand for the visa, two and a half for various bribes to Kamchatkan officials, then four more to pay for the plane tickets for her and her two brothers, whom she refused to leave behind. So: twelve thousand five hundred dollars, all in all.” With a rasping chuckle, he ran a liver-spotted finger along her biceps. “What do you think, Matt? Was she worth it?”

  “Worth it?” Matt’s throat felt dry. He still couldn’t believe Kingman was talking about his wife like she was a secondhand camera he’d bought on eBay. But he had to respond. “Hell, yes,” he said. “Mr. Kingman, I’d say, all things considered, you got the deal of the century.”

  Roma’s enigmatic smile didn’t change at his words, but her eyes, which had been downcast to the floor, rose slightly. Not enough to meet Matt’s gaze, but just enough to claim the middle distance between them. The barometric pressure in the room shifted. As did Matt’s pulse.

  “The deal of the century, eh?” Kingman, agitated, had begun to pace. “But you haven’t yet heard how much she actually cost me, have you? The twelve thousand dollars, yes? But that is nothing. That’s just money. I could care less about the money.” He gave a short, barking laugh. “No, Roma was far more expensive than that, weren’t you, my love? Ultimately, she cost me my army, which has jeopardized the entire Rahowa.”

  That word again. “You’ll have to explain that last part,” Matt said.

  Kingman looked at him in disbelief. “Don’t tell me that you are unfamiliar with the works of Ben Klassen?”

  Matt raised his eyebrows and turned up the palms of his hands, as if to say, Sorry.

  Kingman sighed. “Rahowa is a made up word for a very real concept. And that concept is that we are heading inexorably toward a worldwide racial holy war, or Rahowa.”

  Matt stared at him. Kingman didn’t blink. Apparently, he was serious.

  “Aha.” It was either that or You must be fucking kidding me. Aha won out, but not by much. “And how,” Matt said, trying to connect the dots, “and how did Roma jeopardize your winning this…war?”

  Now it was Kingman’s turn to look at Matt like he was an idiot. “Well, look at her, Matt,” he said, as if speaking to a five-year-old. “What’s the first thing you see?”

  So Matt had to look at her again, like she was a piece of meat. And he really couldn’t tell what he saw first: he was overwhelmed by the immediacy of her full lips, high brow, tigerish eyes, long neck, and the harp-shaped hips that joined a slim waist to endless legs.

  “Well,” Matt said, “she’s beautiful, I guess.”

  Kingman rolled his eyes and made a gah of exasperation. “Her skin, Matt, her skin. Do you notice anything about it?”

  This was getting unbearable. “It’s…ah…smooth?”

  “Of course it’s smooth, but what about its color?”

  Matt closed his eyes and focused on not choking Kingman. “What about it?”

  “Well, isn’t it obvious?” Kingman had stepped into Matt’s space, raising his voice. “You’ve opined that Roma is beautiful. But in your learned opinion, is she Aryan?”

  Matt opened his mouth, then closed it. Tried to massage away the approaching migraine. “I have no idea.”

  “Of course you don’t! And neither do any of the seventyeight fools who believe that I spent twenty years assembling the most formidable militia in Michigan only to miscegenate.” He spat the word out like a live coal. “She”—he jabbed a finger at Roma—”has cost me my army!”

  Roma just stared at the floor. She could have been carved in wax.

  Matt struggled to find something to say to this nut job. “Your, uh, numbers still seem pretty strong to me.” He pointed out the window. “We passed a few dozen of your guys on the way up the forest path.”

  “Of course you did. But do you see them now? Of course you don’t. And why is that?” Kingman’s eyes nearly crossed in fury. “Because they have quit the White Aryan Caucasian Fist of God! They are AWOL! They are deserters! All because of her, seventy-eight of the best militia in Michigan have turned traitor!”

  He flung his teacup at the wall, where it shattered in a brown spray.

  A stunned silence from everyone in the room. Jesus, this guy is unhinged. Matt felt the need to calm the old guy down before he popped a vein.

  “Well, ‘traitor’ seems a little strong,” Matt said. “I mean, you’re clearly still…ah…coexisting, right? You and the prodigal seventy-eight?”

  Now it was Kingman’s turn to look amazed. “Didn’t you see the fence?”

  Matt stared at him. For a second he didn’t understand. Then he did. And when he did, the skin on his arms lifted into goose bumps and the hair at the base of his neck prickled.

  Holy fuck.

  “Wait a minute. Mr. Kingman…” Matt struggled to keep his voice even. “Are you saying that that electric fence is…is the only thing keeping those seventy-eight ‘deserters’ out? That you and her and the handful of people in here are… are—” He groped for the right phrase.

 
; “Under siege?” Kingman smiled grimly. “That is exactly what I’m telling you, Matt.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Footsteps behind him, coming fast.

  Matt turned to see the militiaman with the faux-hawk stride past him, holding an open laptop. He was followed by Jasha and the guy with the RAHOWA tat.

  “Sir, Alastair wants to talk to you.”

  “Later, Walton.”

  “Sir? You’re going to want to hear this.”

  A pause. The old man’s crafty eyes shuttled back and forth between the soldier and Matt. He wiped a line of spittle from the corner of his mouth with the pad of his thumb.

  “Well, by all means, then.” Kingman pointed to his desk. The soldier crossed to it, set the laptop down, and stepped back.

  Matt took a sharp breath, felt his heart lunge within his chest. The laptop’s screen showed the red-fissured face of Baldy.

  “Well, Alastair.” Kingman stood imperiously in front of the screen, his hands clenched behind his back. “You’ve been busy this morning. I hear you had your army of deserters attack my wife.”

  Baldy gave a nasty smile. “You should thank us, old man. We were just upholding the law. Doesn’t your wife know that public displays of affection are illegal here in the US of A?”

  Kingman tensed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Didn’t she tell you?” Enjoying this. “That sweet brown thing musta came down with one bad case of jungle fever. She had her tongue about halfway down a guy’s throat when we caught sight of them.”

  “What…what guy?”

  “The guy standing right next to you.”

  Kingman’s mottled face snapped toward Matt.

  “Lying,” Roma hissed, crossing quickly to Kingman. “He is lying to you, my love, I swear.”

  “And that buck had his hand so far up her skirt, we all thought he was givin’ her a free exam, so naturally we had to—”

  Kingman slapped his hand down onto the keyboard with a clatter, and the connection was broken. He stood there, staring at the “Call Disconnected” message, his chest rising and falling, his breath whistling harshly in his beak.

  Suddenly an IM notification appeared at the bottom of the screen.

  “Charles,” Roma whispered, “don’t—”

  He hit a button. Five words appeared on the screen:

  BY MIDNIGHT

  TONIGHT

  OR ELSE

  Kingman slammed down the laptop lid. He stared at it for a minute, then looked up at Matt. His eyes a little too wide. His smile a little too tight. Said, “You must be awfully tired from your trip, Mr. Cahill.”

  Matt didn’t like the paranoid light in his eyes. He also didn’t like the red fissures that were spreading across Kingman’s face, dividing and subdividing it into a red grid. “Well, actually, I’m feeling pretty rested. Should be, ah, getting on my way.”

  “Nonsense. It’s getting dark out. Likely to rain again. You’ll spend the night with us! I insist.”

  From behind, Matt felt a big hand grab his arm just above the elbow, and another slap heavily onto his shoulder.

  Matt had never taken a martial arts class, but he’d seen this predicament play out dozens of times on TV, and the hero’s response was always the same: with his free arm he’d reach behind himself, grab his attacker by the scruff of the neck, and then bend forward, flinging the thug over his shoulder onto the floor. So Matt tried doing that.

  Unfortunately, he quickly discovered that what worked for Shatner, Selleck, Norris, and Hasselhoff didn’t necessarily transfer to reality.

  In short, TV had lied to him.

  While Matt did manage to reach back and grab a hunk of Jasha’s hair, all Jasha had to do then was grab Matt’s wrist and wrench it back even farther, while knocking the back of Matt’s knee with the front of his own. In less than a second, Matt was kneeling helplessly on the floor, his hands pinned behind him, praying that Jasha didn’t exert the single pound of pressure it would take to dislocate both arms at the socket.

  He didn’t. But he did twist them sharply, switching Matt’s gaze from Roma’s horrified face to Kingman’s reptilian, red-veined mask.

  “Kingman, I never touched her—I swear.”

  “I’m sure you do.” His tortoisey head bobbed up and down. “And I have no qualms about relying on the words of a man of honor. So all that’s left, at this point, is for me to confirm that you are a man of honor. Walton?”

  The militiaman with the faux-hawk stepped behind Matt and pulled Matt’s wallet out of his back pocket.

  “Got it, sir.”

  “Good. A background check, immediately.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what happens ‘til then?” Matt panted, humiliated. “We all just stay here? Or do you have a dungeon where you can conveniently dump me?”

  “Dungeon?” Kingman’s eyes crinkled shut and he gave a snort of laughter. “Perish the thought. You’re our guest. You’ll keep your bag, your ax. And while we do our due diligence, you’ll be escorted by Jasha, Walton, and Sig to the White Aryan Caucasian Fist of God’s penthouse suite.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Matt had guessed that “penthouse suite” meant the attic. But he realized he was wrong when Jasha firmly guided him back into the hall and then out onto the second-story deck. Just how wrong he’d been didn’t become clear to him until Jasha led him to the ski lift and pushed him firmly into a sky chair.

  “Gotta be honest, guys,” Matt said. “I totally forgot to bring my snowboard.”

  “Not gonna need no snowboard where you’re goin’,” said the militiaman with the RAHOWA tat—whose name was Sig, apparently. He tossed Matt the ax and backpack, then opened the ski lift’s control box. “Now, a parachute? That’s another matter.” And he flipped a switch.

  Immediately, the sky chair jerked away, pulled down the hill by a steel cable that fed into the rusting carousel wheel grinding to life above the militiamen’s heads.

  As the sky chair pulled away from the wooden deck, the ground dropped steeply away beneath it. In three seconds he was ten feet above the slope. In five seconds he was fifteen feet above the slope. In ten, there was nothing between him and the muddy slope but twenty feet of air.

  And that’s when Sig flipped the switch again.

  The rusty carousel wheel stopped grinding.

  The cable stopped sliding.

  The sky chair stopped moving. Or rather, it stopped traveling down the hill. It was still moving plenty, rocking back and forth like a pendulum as Matt clung to it for dear life.

  “Yeah, that’ll about do ‘er,” Sig said with satisfaction. “Guess I better run that background check, like Mr. Kingman said. In the meantime, Mr. Cahill? Enjoy the view.”

  And he walked back into the house, followed by Jasha.

  Which left Walton. The kid settled into a wooden Adirondack chair with a grunt. He set a high-powered rifle over his knees and glared down the hill toward the dozens of men who, in the late evening light, were building a bonfire.

  “So how’s the dental and vision plan here?” Matt asked.

  Walton didn’t say anything.

  “Measured any craniums lately?”

  Nothing.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Matt said. “How ‘bout we compare lists of our favorite chapters in The Aryan’s Lament.”

  Beneath the shades, Walton’s jaw began to work. “Seein’ as you’re a prisoner of the White Aryan Caucasian Fist of God? I’d shut the hell up if I were you.”

  Matt snorted with derision.

  Walton hopped out of his seat. “Something funny, Cahill? Spit it out!”

  Matt held up a hand. “Look, I was just trying to get a handle on your group’s name, is all. Kind of a mouthful.”

  “Our name, huh? Well, laugh it up, bud.” Walton, pacing, ran a hand over his faux-hawk. “White Aryan Caucasian Fist of God. I bet you think it’s a triple redundancy, right? But it’s not. It’s a matter of necessity, our name is.”

  �
��It is, huh?”

  “Damn straight. We came by it gradual. At first we was just the Aryan Fist of God. Nice and simple. Looked good on the Web page, and people liked it. We was pleased as hell when our Internet membership went up to seven hundred. And them was dues-payin’ members, every one of ‘em! Then we took a closer look, saw that more ‘n half of them fuckers listed their home country as India and Pakistan. Scroll down the list, and every other goddamn name on our roster was Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong. Turns out you don’t have to be white to be Aryan! Who the hell knew, right? So then we changed it to White Aryan Fist of God. That about did for most of them snake charmers, but there was still a dozen or so was albino—it’s commoner than you’d think—and them twelve ragheads, they kept orderin’ shirts and hats, and goin’ on our Web site, postin’ photos of their mutant asses and givin’ opinions on magic-carpet ridin’ or whatever the fuck else they wanted to talk about, and, well, as you can imagine, it just did shit for morale around here. So finally we named it White Aryan Caucasian Fist of God. That there was the nail in the coffin for the yoga brigade. Only it was right about then when he”—and here his voice dropped to a belligerent whisper—”he went on that trip, and came back…came back with, you know, her.” He sat back down, crossed his arms. “I got the lecture—we all did—about her hometown bein’ from where all white people come from and all that. I ain’t no PhD, but all I can say is, things ain’t been the same since. And now I gotta sit here and babysit your sorry ass.”

  “Sorry about that,” Matt said, confused by that last part but not caring enough to ask for clarification. “It wasn’t exactly my idea. You should’ve brought something to read.”

  Walton snorted. “Ain’t never read a book in my life.”

  Matt smirked. “Right.”

  “No joke.”

  Matt looked at him more closely. Twilight shadowed his features, but the kid seemed dead serious. “That a fact?”

  Shrugging. “Dropped out of school when I was fifteen. Wasn’t no good at it. Got my letters mixed up every time I tried to read.” Staring at his feet. “Worked a bunch of shitty jobs, slept in the back of my truck for a year. Then Mr. Kingman, he took me in. Gave me a job, three squares a day, a gun, training. Taught me all about my Aryan heritage. Gave me the only gift I ever got from anyone. See this here?”