Colinaude asked Godsend for help. He knew after the quick disposals of Calypso and Silt that victory against the cadre lined up against him was going to call for desperate measures. He also knew that the revelation about Peter Cooley was pushing him against the barrier of all he had struggled against, and that Cassie Dawes lying in a hospital bed was only helping him along. If ever he had found his redemption, Cassie would have been the instrument. Yet now she was the latest victim of Cotton’s folly. If there was anything the day had taught him, it was that he was going to have to accept humility, so he knuckled down and activated the Terrific Beacon, a device, the only device the Eidolon had ever used, which called either half of the Tandem to the other in the opening moments of a crisis at hand.
"I’ve had a moment of clarity," he told Godsend, who appeared on the roof of Cassie’s last stand in the blink of an eye.
"I’m listening," Godsend said.
"I need help," Colinaude said. "There’s a destructive force out there. It has already claimed more than you would have ever suspected. I’m not blaming you. If anything, I must blame myself. There are two men out there right now who’re holding everyone who matters in my life hostage, waiting to slaughter them if I make the slightest move against them. One of them is Viper. His former master, Rancor, is dead, at Viper’s own hand, at the beck of the Cad and with the assistance of one called the Barracuda."
"Rancor," Godsend said, "dead?"
"Our old friend," Colinaude said. "He’s gone. Put aside our prior differences. Put aside the words we shared today. Put aside your misgivings about Rodrigo Ramirez. I need you. Damnit, I need you!"
Godsend stared at Colinaude for a moment. He betrayed no sign of his thought process, save for the end, which came within a matter of seconds, when he smiled, thinly. Colinaude knew immediately what he had decided, and hated him for it, as much as he was relieved that the Alabama Lamb had been so readily receptive, so easy to put aside past conflicts. He was…too perfect. "I’ll do it."
The wind flapped around the Eidolon’s soiled cape, and in the same instant Godsend’s own flew behind him majestically. Colinaude reached behind him, where he had an envelope tucked into his trousers. "These are pictures of Barracuda and Viper, in as many guises as I’ve known them. You should be able to locate them quickly enough. Traverse was never good at keeping its secrets. It was always better at spoiling them."
Godsend accepted the envelope without hesitation. "Cast your fears aside," he said.
"Weren’t you the one who said fear was a good thing?" Colinaude said.
"So I did," Godsend said. "It’s something to think about. I assume you’ll be going after the Cad."
"Soon enough," Colinaude said. "There’s one last thing for me to do."
"I bid you all clear waters," Godsend said. Once again, he was gone, as if he was never there. If anything had ever bonded the Terrific Tandem immutably together, it had been their mutual defiance of reality, of the senses. There were senses now Colinaude wished he didn’t have. His last task before the Cad was to visit Cassie. After having dropped her off here originally, he had made the journey to the "Traverse Tracks" building, where he made one last tarry with Peter Cooley’s office. There on his desk was Hopper’s paper, the one that had told Cooley everything he already knew, in considerably greater detail. Colinaude thought about how he had needed to work at retrieving Hopper’s notes in a new copy after leaving that one behind, discovering all the Cad’s appointments for himself, not needing Cooley after all. Perhaps he never had. Perhaps Cooley had never even decoded Hopper’s work. Perhaps, in the end, Colinaude had never needed Cooley.
It was an unpleasant thought. Colinaude had searched the rest of Cooley’s office, finding in a locked drawer the photos he would give Godsend, the only evidence that there was more to Cooley than met the eye. Had Colinaude not trusted Cooley, if he had made this sweep before and discovered these photos, he might have saved himself heartache. It was probably the reason the photos were there to begin with. Cooley had wanted him to find them, to learn the truth earlier. It had been a test, one of many Colinaude had failed.
Returning to the roof of the hospital after retrieving from No.33 Cobb Lane the beacon, he knew he had left Cassie alone for a very long time. He knew every word he spoke with Godsend only delayed longer his return to her side. He was afraid to see her again, as if the ghost of the Cotton from Stonewine Alley would be waiting instead of a broken woman who had trusted in him, believed in him.
He entered the sliding doors, still clad as the Eidolon, and struggled wordlessly for a moment with the desk clerk before striding past her and directly to Cassie’s room. He hesitated at the door, then pushed in. A solitary pulse greeted him, the only sign of life, a monotonous mockery of it. Colinaude broke down, removed his goggles, his mask, and collapsed on the bed beside her. For a long time, he didn’t move, didn’t breath, didn’t think. He couldn’t bear to. Something stirred, however. It was Cassie. She lifted an arm punctured with an IV unit and rested it again on Colinaude.
"Hello," she said.
He struggled to look up, to look at her. "Hello," he replied in turn. "Left you in a bit of dire straits, I’m afraid."
"It was bound to happen," she said. "I think I was owed it. Something you delayed."
"No," he said. "It was something you delayed. I happened to be the instrument. And the instrument again. I play a lousy tune."
"You play a good one," she insisted. "You play a beautiful one. You just have never heard it, yourself. You deserve that. I’d like to help you, but there seem to be other plans for me."
"They’re lousy ones," he said.
"They’re plans," she said. "And I think I’m going to have to follow them."
"No," he said. "No, you don’t have to. You can make your own."
"I’m a little past that," she said. "Besides, it happens to the best of us. And the worst."
"Some of us are in between," he said.
"Not you," she said. "I wish you’d see that. You deserve to." She was quiet for a moment, breathing irregularly, but somehow strongly. Colinaude could feel each rise and fall. He was following them. "You know. You know, there are moments I don’t want to, moments I can’t, but in the end, I do love him. I do love Bobby. I love him."
Colinaude didn’t reply, and Cassie’s chest did not rise again. The pulse of mocking life reveled in itself, as if it had been engaged in a struggle with Cassie and won. He didn’t react at all, didn’t move, didn’t scream, didn’t try to fool himself into believing Cassie could be saved again. It was over. Over. Over.
Tears streamed down his face. Colinaude walked away as the nurses and the doctors rushed past him, preparing to engage in their own futile folly. The tears began to sting, to stain his face, and he let them. They were turning bitter along with him. He exited the hospital, and kept walking. That thing inside him? The one that kept him walking the line? The one that had told him to recruit Godsend to help him take care of the treachery of Peter Cooley and the rogue agent Neville? It was no longer there. It was gone. It had snapped.
For so long now he had been battling himself, trying to hold the line between impulses, the ones he knew stood between the most rigid of definitions. He knew what a hero was, and what a hero did, and what a hero didn’t do. He was about to cross that line, the one he had always sworn himself against. Too much had been taken, too much hope for redemption for a boy who could never have known what was expected of him, of the implications all the things said about what happened had to mean about him, of the desire, the need, the lust, the will to avenge himself, to avenge others. What hope had he ever had? What hope could he have had, if Cassie had never had any? What hope did he deserve? What hope could there be for anyone?
There could be none. The Eidolon was an avenger, and for a long time that had meant a devotion to ideals he had believed in, but had never really been there. He was through with illusions, through with trying to fool himself, through with trying to pretend two and two made four. The world was a black and white globe. He had willed gray upon it, and the world in its vengeance had forced red to run deeply through him. Red was a conduit between the only true colors. He had tried to cut off this conduit, and instead become it. He was now going to embrace it. He was now going to make someone pay, as he should have all those years ago, forced everyone who told him of Stonewine to see things for what they really were, including himself. He was a coward, and he was going to take the coward’s way out. And all those who stood in his way were going to know his wrath. He was going to take his vengeance, the revenge of the angry avenger.
And who was standing in his way now? Who had set him about this path? Who had been the agent of Cassie’s demise, the conduit of Viper and Barracuda? Who had murdered Rancor, who had put in jeopardy all the people he had ever cared about? Who had made him see Godsend for what he truly was, a demon working with demons to sow the beginning of entropy?
The Cad. The face of evil, wrapped in benevolence, the jester for all the world to see, harmless and unassuming, the essence of all that had gone wrong. Colinaude would set things right. Oh yes, he would.
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