Chapter 18

The General awoke after 10 a.m., but he was still tired. The Prince had kept him up late talking the night before. It had been a while since they’d communicated so openly, and they had a lot of catching up to do.

The General was used to rising before dawn, upon which he would work out in the old horse barn before heading off to Greenville—hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups and chin-ups, along with lifting some old cinder blocks that his grandfather had left in there. The barn was big enough for him to park his van inside, too. And on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays he would open up the van’s back doors and do reverse tricep presses off the rear of the inside bed. And when he was finished with that portion of his training, he would sprint back and forth across the barren tobacco fields until he could sprint no more.

He needed the strength of a warrior, sure; but he also needed the speed if his body was to be worthy of a second in command.

The General had placed an old quartz heater in the barn (which warmed him just fine if he stood right in front of it), but the sprinting could be dangerous in the winter. One time, just before Christmas, the General had actually rolled his ankle on a patch of ice. That had put him out of commission for almost two weeks, but even so the General still looked forward to his training.

It was an important part of the equation.

Of course, it would’ve made much more sense to work out in the cellar, but there was not enough room down there now that everything had been dedicated to the Prince. And then there was the attic, but even after all these years the General didn’t like going up there. Besides, the Prince had indicated that he was saving the attic for something really special.

Today was Tuesday, and even though he would not have to do his tricep presses or his sprints, the General entered the horse barn feeling behind. He didn’t bother turning on the heater and went straight for the chin-up bar that he’d installed between the beams of one of the horse stalls. The General had also hung a mirror on the stall’s back wall so he could watch himself as he did his chin-ups.

The barn smelled wonderful this morning, the General thought as he took off his shirt. Like Pine-Sol. He had washed down the inside of the van before parking it inside the barn—left the back doors open so the inside would dry—and the clean, fresh scent seemed to permeate everything. He made a mental note to do that from now on, after he transported the impaled to the sites of sacrifice. He wouldn’t need to hunt any more drifters on Route 301. True, the doorways lasted for three months—that was part of the 9:3—but the General already had the final doorway. The one through which the Prince would return in the flesh, the one through which the General would become spirit.

The General grasped the cold steel bar—paused briefly to admire his muscular torso—and then began his chin-ups.

He moved quickly but methodically. There was a lot to do today—both at the farmhouse and later this afternoon with the rehearsal at Harriot. His other self, the young man named Edmund Lambert, would not go to class today. In fact, Edmund Lambert would stop going to classes from now on altogether. That was one of the things he and the Prince had discussed the night before. There was no need to keep up that part of his day-life now.

No, by the time the registrar’s office caught up with him and notified Jennings that his work-study boy had been slacking, Edmund Lambert and the General would have no need of Harriot University and its theatre department.

The doorway in the mirror before him told him that.