To Rule in Hell

by Blake Banner

  “You know that I did. I called them last night when I called the sheriff.”

  “You destroyed the labs, you called the sheriff and you alerted the press.”

  “Yes, Gibbons, and if you were not such an egomaniac, you would have known from the start that that was exactly what I was going to do.”

  “They are all over the site, filming from the air, with vans set up. And now somebody has leaked the experiments to them…”

  I smiled and wondered if that was Mason. I said, “And isn’t that a good thing, Gibbons? I’d ask you to explain why that’s a bad thing, but I’m afraid you would, and I really don’t give a damn anymore.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me like I was the embodiment of some paradox. “Have you no conception of how badly you have set back our fight?”

  I leaned back in my chair and laughed up at the blue sky. “No, Philip! I have no idea, and I don’t give a rat’s ass, either. You got lost, pal! You know the warning in Japanese Budo?” I sat forward and stared at him. “The Zen masters tell you, ‘Don’t look into your enemy’s eyes, lest you become your enemy.’ Do you understand that, Gibbons?” I pointed at him. “What you’re fighting against has become more important to you than what you’re fighting for. What the fuck is wrong with you, Philip? You’re complaining that the press are nosing into Omega? Can you not hear how stupid that is? You’re complaining that research they were doing into how to enslave people’s minds has been destroyed? That is, to you, a bad thing? These are your problems? You better take yourself away and do some fucking soul searching pal, because there is something seriously wrong with your vision.”

  He pointed a trembling hand at me. His voice was shrill. “That research could have been invaluable in our struggle! We could have used it against them! For the first time in decades it would have given us the upper hand over them! And you, with your barbaric, animal stupidity, you have set us back years!”

  I frowned at him. “Does Marni realize how far gone you are, Gibbons? You need help. You seriously need help. You’ve lost the plot, pal.”

  He shook his head and half screamed, “Stay away from me! You stay away from me! And stay away from Marni!”

  I stood, and the chair fell back behind me. I stepped over to him, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him up to within an inch of my face. Then I snarled at him, “Stop! Stop telling me what to do! Stop telling people what to do! Now fuck off out of my sight, you clown!”

  I shoved him. He staggered back, fell on his ass, scrambled to his feet and ran. Several people were staring at me. I flapped a hand at them and walked away. I was going home. At long last, I was going home.

  I made my way first to the apartment I had in Manhattan, on Riverside Drive. I ordered a rental car, and while I waited for it to be delivered, I had a shower and a shave, changed the dressing on my wound, and put on some fresh, clean clothes. Then I went down, collected the car and drove the two hundred miles back to my house in Weston. On the way I called Abi. She sounded happy but worried.

  “I’m so relieved to hear from you. Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine. It’s over. Really over this time. I’m on my way home. Are you there or are you still in Boston?”

  “I’m home, we all are.”

  I smiled. “Primrose and Sean are with you?”

  “Yes. They can’t wait to see you.”

  She hesitated a moment.

  I said, “What is it?”

  “Nothing. They love the house. They are thrilled at the news.”

  “Glad to hear it. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

  By the time I pulled into the drive and parked, there was already light in the windows, and the sky was turning from dusky gray to a darker blue. The door opened as I climbed out of the car and Abi ran to greet me. We kissed and when I looked up, Primrose and Sean were in the doorway, looking sheepish. I gave them each a big hug and Sean said, “This house is so cool! You must be really rich!”

  Primrose gave me a private smile and said, “I have lots of news for you, Lacklan.”

  “I can’t wait!” I said, and we stepped inside. I closed the door behind me. “But I am starving and exhausted. I need a drink and I hope Rosalia has something amazing up her sleeve for dinner.”

  Abi grimaced and took hold of my lapels. “Lacklan, I’m sorry. You have a friend here. He turned up on the doorstep and I didn’t feel I could turn him away. I haven’t asked him to stay to dinner, but he did want to wait till you got home to say hello. I hope you don’t mind.”

  I frowned. “A friend?”

  “He’s in the drawing room.” As I moved across the hall she added, in an undertone, “He looks as though he’s been in an accident or something.”

  I pushed open the door and stepped inside. Abi and the kids came in with me. Ben was sitting in my father’s chair in front of the fire holding a glass of whiskey. His face was badly bruised, cut and grazed, and his left arm was in a sling. He smiled at me like we were old friends and raised his glass. “Lacklan. It’s so good to see you. Your taste in whiskey is as good as your father’s was. I hope you are well. As you can see, I have been in the wars.”

  I stared at him for a long moment. Every instinct inside me told me to kill him there and then. But another voice, a new voice, told me that I should not bring that kind of violence to my family.

  I said, “It looks like you lost.” I sat in the chair opposite him. “I’m afraid I can’t invite you to stay, Ben. I’ve been in the wars myself.” I turned to Abi. “Would you be a sweetheart? You and the kids go and tell Rosalia I’m back, and I am going to need a cow pie for dinner, at least.”

  She hesitated. “I think she’s…” She caught my look, smiled and said, “Of course! C’mon, kids, let’s go talk to Rosalia.”

  They left the room and closed the door behind them. Ben was watching me. He said, “Did you win?”

  I made a question with my face.

  He explained, “You said you were in the wars. Did you win?”

  “There are no winners in war, Ben. You know that. I withdrew. I retreated. Now I’m like Switzerland, rich and neutral.”

  He nodded for a bit, examined his whiskey, rich and amber in the firelight. “You didn’t look so neutral last night.”

  “Yeah? Was that around the time you were planning to extract my brain?”

  He gave a little snort. “As I recall, by that time you were already there, killing my men.”

  “I was there looking for insurance, Ben. I never wanted to be a part of this damned war. My father asked me on his deathbed to look after Marni. Then you wanted me to join Omega. I never wanted any goddamn part of it. Now Marni doesn’t need me, she has Gibbons. And you and Gibbons can go to war with each other, fight for which one of you gets to eat Humanity’s brains and control the world. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

  “It’s not that simple to walk away, Lacklan.”

  “Wrong. It is that simple. You know how dangerous I am, Ben. Look at you, look at the state you’re in. Look at your damned institute. Look at your organization. That’s what I did trying to get out. If I come after you with intent, Ben, I will burn your towers to the ground, I will kill every one of you, from Omega all the way up to Alpha. And, Ben, I know who you are.”

  He studied my face or a while, then said, “You tortured Ogden.” He was quiet for a moment, nodding to himself. “That was your insurance policy, so that you could retire with your wife and your stepchildren.”

  “Amongst other things. Now, you go away, you don’t ask me any more questions, and you leave me and my family alone. In exchange, I will not kill you. I will not make you tell me who got you out of the institute, who helped you escape. I don’t care. It’s none of my business anymore.”

  He thought for a moment, gazing at the flames. Then he took a deep breath. “You are not a threat?”

  “I am the biggest threat you will ever face, Ben.” I paused. He frowned. I sat forward. “If I get even a remote feelin
g that I am not getting through to you tonight, that you are thinking about reprisals, I will come over there and I will break your back and your neck and throw you in the furnace in the basement. I will destroy you and your organization completely. But if you are willing to leave me in peace, then I will leave you in peace. Ben, I want to retire. Leave me alone.”

  He nodded. “I want to kill you, Lacklan. I want to kill you very much. But I want you out of Omega’s hair even more. So you have your truce. But if I ever discover that you have returned, I will not come after you. I will come after them…” He pointed at the door.

  “Don’t threaten me, Ben. We’re done here. We have discussed everything there is to discuss. Get out of my house and stay away from my family.”

  He got to his feet with difficulty, pulled his cell phone from his pocket and sent a message. Then he limped painfully toward the door. I followed him. He stopped, hesitated before opening it, and turned to look around the room one last time.

  “I loved your father,” he said. “I miss him. I loved you too, Lacklan. I wish…” He paused, gazing at the floor. “I wish I could make you grasp the enormity of the tragedy. If you had taken your place among us…”

  “Get out, Ben. Go away.”

  He opened the door and hobbled across the broad hall. He looked oddly like a crippled old man. I followed him. Outside, a waning, sickle moon hung low over the treetops. I heard the sound of tires on gravel and two headlamps flooded the drive with light. A dark blue Audi pulled up. The driver got out and opened the back door for Ben. He climbed in and the driver closed the door. For a moment I saw his face, pale and ghostly, looking at me through the window. The driver climbed in behind the wheel, slammed his door and I watched the two red lights, like the red eyes of a demon, recede into the darkness among the trees.

  I stepped back into the hall and closed the heavy, oak door behind me. Was it over? Was it really over? I looked around me at the magnificent hall that had once been my father’s. I searched for him in the house, with my mind, but could not find him. Maybe his soul was finally at rest. But somehow, in some part of my mind, I knew it wasn’t.

  Then Abi was there, at the top of the stairs that led down to the kitchen. She was smiling. “Has he gone?”

  “Yes, he’s gone.”

  She crossed the hall to me and placed her hands on my chest. “Are you OK?”

  “Yeah. I’m OK. I’m better than OK. Where are the kids?”

  “Playing cards with Kenny and Rosalia, in the kitchen. Sean is a cheat.”

  “What’s she cooking?”

  “Steak and mushroom pie, with roast potatoes and Brussels sprouts.”

  Later that evening we sat around the dining table and talked and laughed. Primrose was excited because she had decided to do Marine Biology and had received a conditional acceptance to the University of Massachusetts. She was also excited because she had met a boy she liked, and she was pretty sure he liked her. Sean was excited too, because we hadn’t found a school for him yet, and that meant a few weeks of nothing but playing in the woodlands, going fishing, and exploring his huge, rambling new home. He made me promise to teach him how to shoot a rifle and a bow, and I promised him I would.

  Then we told them our plans to get married. There was a moment of stunned silence, followed immediately by squeals of joy and a lot of running around and kissing and hugging and laughing and tears of joy. Finally I called Kenny and Rosalia and told them to bring up a bottle of our finest Bollinger, and to have a glass with us.

  It was a happy moment in a happy evening.

  Outside the sickle moon rose higher over the trees into a darkening sky, and touched the black slate rooftops with silver light. An owl in the church bell tower called out, and its solitary cry was answered by a distant echo, deep among the shadows of the New England forests. And far, far away to the south, a dark blue Audi sped through the black night toward Washington, D.C., toward that great seat of temporal power, and in the back, Ben Smith wept like a child with twisted, tortured rage.

  Later that night, as Abi prepared for bed, I stepped into my study and opened the safe. I knew in my gut I had not seen the last of Ben. I knew, as I slipped that sheet of paper into the safe and locked it away, that if Abi and the kids were ever going to be safe, I was going to have to hunt down each one of the surviving twenty-three, and I was going to have to kill them.

  * * *

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  ALSO BY BLAKE BANNER

  Up to date books can be found on my website: www.blakebanner.com

  DEAD COLD MYSTERY SERIES

  An Ace and a Pair (Book 1)

  Two Bare Arms (Book 2)

  Garden of the Damned (Book 3)

  Let Us Prey (Book 4)

  The Sins of the Father (Book 5)

  Strange and Sinister Path (Book 6)

  The Heart to Kill (Book 7)

  Unnatural Murder (Book 8)

  Fire from Heaven (Book 9)

  THE OMEGA SERIES

  Dawn of the Hunter (Book 1)

  Double Edged Blade (Book 2)

  The Storm (Book 3)

  The Hand of War (Book 4)

  A Harvest of Blood (Book 5)

  To Rule in Hell (Book 6)

  * * *

  [1] See The Hand of War

  [2] See A Harvest of Blood

  [3] See Dawn of the Hunter