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

by Dean Koontz

Again he feels a presentiment of violence oncoming, but it must instead be just nervous excitement, born of anger and concern that Asteria will slip away from him. Any supernatural warning would need to have a source, and there is no source for it any more than there are such things as selfless love and honor, in which so many ignorant people profess their faith. Sebastian doesn’t even believe in the animal intuition that the brothers and sisters have been persuaded should be their sole guide to life. It’s just a term he uses to manipulate them and assure them that they have the license to do whatever they wish. He loves no one but himself and believes only in things that he is able to see, hear, touch, taste, smell, and use to satisfy his needs. His needs are many and insistent. Meecham and Dockerman regard him, moon-eyed and eerily silent, not like two brothers who are familiar to him, but like strangers taking stock of him. To them, his hesitation might seem to be fear. The Guide of Guides must never appear fearful. Like the others at the Retreat, Meecham and Dockerman don’t realize he crowned himself; they think it was their decision to elevate him and that he would rather not have been chosen. This fiction inoculates him against their envy. If the Guide is a commoner like them, not ruling the others but serving them, no king exists to be overthrown. The risk is that some of them might get the idea that they can replace him with a new Guide of Guides because he lacks e...