and neither age nor sex would be an impediment to their wrath.
But the question of Parker had become increasingly complex, for his name had been on the list sent to them by Barbara Kelly, though with no indication of a reason for its presence. Parker’s visit had been troubling to Eldritch. Parker knew of the existence of the list, and he knew that his name was on it, probably because the old Jew had shown it to him. Parker suspected, too, that Eldritch and the Collector had a copy of a similar list, and by coming to Eldritch’s office he had been sending a warning to them both: keep your distance from me. I will not be one of your victims.
Only certain conclusions could be drawn from this. Either Parker knew why his name was on the list, and his inclusion was therefore justified, in which case he was secretly in league with everything against which they were fighting, and was worthy of damnation; or he did not know why his name was on it, which opened up two further possibilities: his own nature was compromised, and he was polluted, although the pollution had not yet manifested itself fully; or someone, possibly Barbara Kelly or others known to her, had deliberately added his name to the list in the hope that it would cause his allies to turn against him, thereby ridding his enemies of an increasingly dangerous thorn in their side without risk to themselves.
But Kelly was now dead, killed, it seemed, by her own kind. Her medical records, accessed by Eldritch through his network of informants, confirmed that her body had been riddled with cancer. She was dying, and her efforts at repentance appeared genuine, if ultimately doomed. In a sense, it was apt that lymphoma should have been eating away at her, for she herself had been responsible for a steady, ceaseless corruption, insidiously metastasizing life after life, soul after soul. One act of defiance, born out of fear and desperation, would not have been enough to save her, whatever she might have hoped.
But then Eldritch was not God, and could not pretend to have any understanding of His works. He examined each case on its own merits, but simply from a lawyer’s viewpoint. Only the Collector, touched by something that might have been the Divine and transformed into a channel between realms, claimed to have an insight into a consciousness infinitely more complex than his own.
And, if he was to be believed, infinitely more merciless.
Eldritch did not doubt for a moment the veracity of the Collector’s claims. Eldritch had seen too much, and knew too much, to try to fool himself into believing that some conventional reason, one unconnected to the existence of a divinity and its opposite, could be found for all that he had learned or witnessed, and the Collector had insights into the matter that were far deeper than Eldritch’s. But now the Collector had instructed him to make Parker’s file active, even as he began killing the others on the list, and for the first time Eldritch found himself in serious conflict with his son.
Son.
As he stood before Parker’s file, his fingers hovering above it like the talons of an ancient predatory bird, a weariness swept over Eldritch. It was easier to think of his son as another: as Kushiel, as the Collector. Eldritch had long ceased wondering if some part of him or his wife had been responsible for the creation of this murderous presence in their lives. No, whatever had colonized his son’s spirit had come from outside themselves. A second dwelled within him, and the two were now indivisible, indistinguishable from each other.
But Parker was right: his son’s bloodlust was growing, his desire to collect tokens of lives ended becoming ever greater, and his actions with regard to the list represented their latest, and most disturbing, manifestation. There was insufficient proof of guilt to act against most of these people. Some had probably been corrupted without even knowing it, while others might simply have accepted money, or a piece of information that gave them an advantage over others, a small victory against the system which, although wrong in itself, was not enough to render them worthy of condemnation. If a single sin was enough to invite damnation, then the whole human race would roast.
Yet great evils were frequently the product of the slow accumulation of such small sins, and Eldritch knew that, when the time came for the people