Light Has Weight, but Darkness Does Not (Nameless: Season Two #4)

by Dean Koontz

She is a long way from the Retreat, where she and Asteria have lived for a year, but also a long way from Las Vegas. She took four hundred bucks from the petty cash box in the front office. Tanner’s office. Tanner Sebastian is the Guide of Guides to all the brothers and sisters of the commune. He is for sure pissed about what she has done.

Evie stole to escape Tanner and the Retreat

Maybe she doesn’t have the nerve to use the knife, maybe she’s too squeamish for that, but it’s moot now, because it’s three men, not one, and the knife that she has instinctively pulled from her jacket pocket seems even smaller than it did before.

Tanner brought two others with him...

Asteria’s mother isn’t evil, and she isn’t stupid. Mother is just lacking something for which Asteria has not yet found the right word, the perfect descriptive. She loves her mom, she really does, just as anyone would love a lost kitten, even though a lot of the time Asteria has to be the adult if there’s going to be one in this relationship.

Asteria is the more adult of the mother/daughter duo fleeing Tanner

Evie’s rebellion has taken him by surprise and so angers him that he’ll use the Taser on her again and again, watch her flop around like a damn fish, before he coddles her into believing that her flight was based on a sad misunderstanding. He has no doubt that he will convince her it was a misunderstanding, because she still needs something to believe in, and she has nothing other than him and the Retreat.

Tanner thinks he knows Evie so well

Sebastian had expected that Evie might be of two minds when in time it was revealed that he wished Asteria to be his bride, but he had been certain that he could ease her away from any objection. After all, one of his two current wives is fourteen, and Evie never so much as raised an eyebrow about that. Although Evie isn’t one who can hide what she’s thinking, somehow she hid it this time. She stole a knife, a car, four hundred dollars, and her daughter out from under Sebastian’s watchful eye.

Sebastian wants a young bride and thinks Asteria fits the bill

Before the Retreat, her mother had to skip out on the rent more than once. “This is a scary damn rathole,” Mother says, but Asteria finds it less frightening than a lot of places that her mom has taken her in broad daylight. Buildings aren’t scary, but sometimes the people in them are.

Smart girl...

Worse, she knows Tanner Sebastian, has been studying him for a year. What he wants is anything he shouldn’t have, better yet if it’s something that demeans someone else. He has two wives. He’s had others before until he doesn’t want them anymore. If now he can have three wives, why not four? Why not Asteria and her mother in his harem? Asteria doesn’t believe that Mother has thought of this, because her mother is accustomed to avoid thinking about things that might disturb her too much. But Asteria has thought of it, and although it’s so horrible that it sickens her, who in the Retreat will stand up against it?

Asteria smarter than mom...creepy dude

It’s not risky, either, because Sebastian has a system that leaves the clueless bureaucrats blind to the truth. Yeah, Sebastian takes 80 percent of every check, but he makes sure nobody wants for anything.

Nice payday for Sebastian...keep followers drugged up and mellow

Shoot him in the head so the girls see it and know who they’re dealing with, so they see there’s no chance for them. Then strip them and break them right here, ride them and break them like breaking wild mustangs, so they have no spirit anymore, so they hate themselves more than they hate the men who broke them.

Sick guys with a plan