Night Fall

by Cherry Adair

  “Oh, I was Dr. Straus all along. I like to keep in touch with my pet projects.”

  “What pet projects?” Simon, where are you? You were right. God, you were absolutely freaking right.

  “Who’d you think contaminated the water?”

  “I wouldn’t look so freaking proud of yourself. You killed millions of innocent people!”

  “Collateral damage. They would have died sooner than later anyway. Lousy nutrition. No incentive to feed themselves. They breed like rabbits…You look horrified, Miss Goodall. You’ve been here over two months. Do you think Africans can take care of themselves? Of course not. Here they sit, on one of the richest continents on the planet. And what good is a fucking diamond to some kaffir who can’t even feed his own family? The entire population of the African continent needs to be allowed to go as extinct as dinosaurs.”

  “You’re insane,” Kess whispered, appalled, horrified, and completely terrified by how a madman could say this calmly, sound this rational while he casually discussed the unthinkable. And, God help her, while he easily held her by the throat several feet off the ground.

  “My dear, if your eyes get any wider they’ll fall right out of their sockets.” He laughed and he had very large, very white teeth that creeped her out even more. “Abioyne Bongani is going to make a fine puppet king when the countries of Africa are united into one large, lucrative continent. Mr. Bongani will rule, and I will reap what I’ve sowed in the last three years. A brilliant plan, really.”

  “Feel free to pat yourself on the back. I’m not interested in your rhetoric.” And she wasn’t going anywhere. She wondered fatalistically when he was going to kill her. This conversation was so bizarre, so insane, that Kess had a fleeting thought that she might be having a horrible nightmare.

  “Oh, do stay, Miss Goodall. In a few days the people will be told that their president will now be their king. After all, he saved them from a terrible plague, didn’t he?”

  “I can’t believe he would be involved in this.” It was getting incrementally harder to breathe through her constricted throat. So her death was going to come sooner than later. Simon, I love you. “I don’t believe it.”

  “How naive you are, my dear. Who do you think suggested it? Oh, dear, you’ve gone very pale. Are you about to faint?”

  “No. Nobody is going to elect Bongani king. Certainly not anyone outside Mallaruza!” But they might, Kess thought, heart racing and mouth dry. Everyone thought the current president of Mallaruza was a humanitarian and that he loved his people. He’d offered them aid, supplied them with food, medical care, and a military presence. They very well might elect him and join their fate with Mallaruza.

  “You think not?” He produced a stack of newspapers and glossy magazines three feet high and dropped them, and Kess, to the hard floor. Kess rubbed her throat. He seemed twenty feet tall from her position on the ground. She tried to stand, but her hand slipped on several glossy magazines.

  “There. That’s what an excellent publicist does, Miss Goodall. Look at the headlines and stories I placed.”

  The publications were spread in a jumble around her. Kess tried to focus on the headlines through blurred vision.

  THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, USA Today’s cover proclaimed. Fortune magazine’s cover read AFRICA SEES NEW POSSIBILITIES IN A FUTURE WITH BONGANI AS MONARCH. The New York Times, above the fold, screamed AFRICAN COUNTRIES TALK UNITY UNDER A MONARCHY. KING ABIOYNE BONGANI NAMED 1ST KING OF AFRICA.

  They were all dated the next day. The day before the election.

  “No one in their right mind will believe this,” she whispered through the constriction in her throat.

  He laughed. “I have my arm so far up Bongani’s arse I can wipe his nose when he sneezes. I’m the brilliant ventriloquist, and he’s nothing more than an ignorant puppet.”

  Simon, are you okay? “What’s on the film?”

  “My employees contaminating the water. I forgot Little Miss Sunshine was snapping pictures as we worked so hard to heal all those stupid blacks.”

  “You’re going to go to hell,” Kess said, sick to her stomach.

  He laughed. “What the fuck do you think Africa is, Sunshine? Hell. A place where people die because of their own ignorance and ineptitude. Africa is the world’s poorest inhabited continent, or didn’t you know? Poorest inhabited continent, and has the most resources of any continent on the planet. Think about it. Gold. Diamonds. Petroleum. Copper—the list goes on. Give that a moment’s thought, Pollyanna. I’m just helping them along to the inevitable.”

  “What you are is a bigot, a racist, and a megalo-maniac. Not to mention stupid. Mallaruzis are kind, caring, smart, and many of them well educated. They’ll see through this scam in a heartbeat.”

  His teeth flashed. “Smart and educated at say…MIT? Just like their new king?”

  “You’ll never get away with this.”

  “You think not? Trust me, Miss Goodall. Within ninety days every black man, woman, and child on the African continent will be happily working for Noek Joubert. There are over a thousand languages spoken. I can converse in all of them. Offer these people education, food, and work, and they’ll follow wherever I lead them.”

  Was he powerful enough to really make this happen? Kess had no idea. What terrified her was that he believed it. “Are you going to kill me?”

  “Impatient, my dear? No. Not yet. I still have a few choice appearances for you to make.”

  He had impersonated a caring, kind doctor. Kess had to ask, “What did you do with Judy? Was she part of your scam?”

  “Oh, no. I’m holding her somewhere safe until you get there.”

  “Whe—” She sucked in the rest of the word as everything tilted and went black. A second later she was standing in the brilliant sunshine. Outside.

  When Simon teleported her, Kess thoroughly enjoyed it. When this guy did it, it left her feeling sick and cold to her marrow. They were standing in the middle of a parking lot outside a row of broken-down warehouses. Kess recognized the area immediately. She and Simon had stopped close by here just a few days ago so he could kiss her. It felt like a different place, and was certainly a completely different atmosphere.

  He indicated a rusted-out heap across the weedy cement. “In the car.”

  As Kess ran she heard his laugh behind her. “Judy?!” Her heart raced as she tried to pry open the rusted trunk. “Judy, are you all right?” Even as she screamed the words she knew how insane they were. If this man had Judy, she was not all right.

  The trunk suddenly popped open a few inches. Kess staggered back at the smell. Whirling around, she searched for the wizard. “Where are you, you cowardly son of a bitch? What was the point of killing her? What?” She was screaming like a mad-woman. Enraged and more terrified than she had ever been in her life.

  “Because I enjoy playing to the death. Is it my fault she broke so easily?”

  “Then pick on someone your own fighting weight, asshole. Or are you too scared to fight someone who could hurt you worse than you could hurt them? Too weak to match yourself against an opponent who might beat you to death?”

  He waved a hand and Kess levitated, her feet three feet off the ground. “Want to take me on, little girl?” He laughed as he flung her like a rag doll against a corrugated iron fence fifty feet away. The impact ripped the breath from her lungs.

  Kess wheezed and gasped like a landed fish as she slid down to the ground, her vision dim. She didn’t know which was worse. Being unconscious when he did to her what he’d done to her friend, or wide awake so she could feel everything.

  One moment he was across the parking lot, the next he was crouched beside her, the black leather coat pooled around his feet. His long strawberry-blond hair floated around Kess’s face and the front of her T-shirt, feeling sticky as it clung. She couldn’t move, her entire body numb from the force of the blow. She couldn’t even drag in a small sip of air. Terror turned her brain to oatmeal as she stared into the eyes of a mons
ter.

  “Here,” he said gently. “Let me help you.”

  No. Don’t want your help. Oh, please, don’t touch me. She didn’t want his help. God help her, she didn’t want this…this thing anywhere near her. But her body was still stunned, and she could merely observe as he placed a long-fingered, pale hand on her chest and rubbed gently. Bile rose in the back of her throat as he smiled at her, his hand moving with an obscene familiarity over the upper swell of her breasts as he massaged air into her lungs.

  “After I deal with you, I’ll kill your boyfriend.”

  Kess tried to press her bruised back deeply into the corrugated fence to get away from the hand on her chest. Air seeped with agonizing slowness into her collapsed lungs. “W-why. What di-id we do t-to y—”

  “Oh, it’s not personal, my dear. Killing or skeet shooting have the same level of entertainment to me.”

  “S-si…ck.” Panic, dark and insidious, filled her mind like black ink dropping into clear water as his eyes went opaque.

  “I only need you partially alive to entice Mr. Blackthorne to rush to your fucking side. Piss me off and the percentage will decline rapidly.”

  There was a smell about him. Something that, as the air seeped back into Kess’s lungs, made her want to hold her breath. It was the smell of death. She turned her head away from him, but the sticky strands of his hair bound them together, freaking Kess out even more. It was like being a fly stuck in a monstrous spider’s web. She shuddered, feeling the skin on her face tighten and stretch over her bones.

  “You have…” She sucked in more air, filling her lungs, “have what you want. The film. Why don’t you just be a man and let me g—”

  The hand still massaging her chest twisted violently in the front of her T-shirt. He yanked her to her feet, making her head flop painfully as he angrily shook her. What chilled Kess to the core was that he had no anger on his face. He’s going to break my neck was all she could think. He’s going to shake me long enough and hard enough to break me.

  Once again he held her several feet off the ground so that she had no purchase. Clawing and kicking out she tried to break free, but he just extended his arm and continued shaking her until bile rose to the back of her throat. There was no swallowing the nausea down, and she vomited, her stomach cramping.

  Tossing her up in the air like a tennis ball, he punched her in her midriff with his full body weight behind his fist. Kess lost consciousness before she was airborne.

  Sixteen

  Simon wanted answers, and the best course of action was to get them directly from Bongani. Time had run out and he was done with the bullshit. But it was almost eight P.M., and Abi was neither in his offices nor was he at his luxurious penthouse apartment overlooking the marina.

  Simon scried the entire city of Quinisela for wizard power hot spots. He found three: The docks, the church/palace, and a warehouse on the northeastern edge of town. Since the docks and the church were in close proximity to not only each other but the hotel where Kess waited for him, Simon went to the warehouse first.

  A quick inspection of the contents and he’d be on his way. He suspected Abi was wandering through the basilica praying for some divine intervention for tomorrow’s election/coronation. Or admiring all the gold and marble he’d imported for the enormous white elephant while his people starved or died of a cocktail of spliced genetics.

  He had to drive to the warehouse because trying to teleport from the hotel proved impossible. As he drove, he put in another call to Mason Knight. Knight was unavailable, but Simon left a terse message. This power outage crap was bullshit. He pulled up at the warehouse. Ironically close to where he and Kess had parked like a couple of teenagers a few days before. The series of complicated locks were no problem, but the powerful protection shield around the entire building was.

  He finally managed to break through by removing Nomis’s corporeal presence from the hotel room across town for a few minutes. He needed all his power to make a crack wide enough in the shield to squeeze through. Thank God he was able to generate enough juice to do so.

  No easy task. It had been cast by a wizard a hell of a lot more powerful than Abi.

  Only Noek Joubert had power this strong.

  What was in here, and why such tight security? He tried checking on Kess. But he couldn’t see anything through Nomis’s eyes. The protective spell had shut around the warehouse again, cutting him off from outside contact. Well, hell. Unquestionably Joubert’s doing. A chill of foreboding slithered up Simon’s spine.

  Fortunately Nomis was capable of independent thought and action. Simon trusted that part of himself to take excellent care of Kess. Nomis wouldn’t let any harm come to her.

  Windows up near the roof of the cavernous space let in the gray-tinged half-light of dusk. The air was cool, the temperature kept reasonable by enormous industrial metal fans high in the ceiling. The dull hum of the turning blades masked his quiet footsteps as he crossed a wide expanse of empty concrete floor. Everything there was to see was in deep shadow.

  While the front third of the giant space was empty, row upon row of floor-to-ceiling shelving was packed with crates and boxes.

  Simon unclipped the powerful flashlight and shone it on the labels at eye level. RED CROSS. MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES.

  Here were Dr. Phillips’s missing supplies. He ran a finger across the top of one of the crates, not surprised to find a thick layer of reddish dust there. How long had the doctors begged for these supplies and been told they were on their way? Months? Fury made Simon grit his teeth as he ran the bright beam of the mag light across the face of the shelved containers.

  Medicines. Food. Water. Seeds and small farming equipment. Clothing and toys—millions of dollars of aid that would have gone a long way in helping Abi’s people, sitting in a gloomy warehouse gathering dust. What had Abi been giving to his relief workers as medicine? Because here it was, ton after ton of medicines sitting right fucking here.

  No wonder it hadn’t worked. Even on the non-gene-spliced strain. The doctors had been administering nothing more than a placebo for months.

  Abi was doling out help piecemeal. Simon guessed these goods had been sitting here for at least four or five months. Help had been right here in a locked, seemingly abandoned warehouse before the outbreak of Abi’s designer virus.

  With his three-sixty vision he watched Abi creep up behind him. Shit. He didn’t need to see the man, Simon had heard him cross the cement floor minutes before.

  He turned to watch Bongani walking toward him.

  “It’s not what it looks like,” Abi said from the shadows. He held a semiautomatic.

  Clicking off the light, Simon faced him in the semidarkness. “It’s exactly what it looks like.” He didn’t reach for his Taurus. He was faster and trained to face an armed man. Abi wasn’t. For now he kept his weapon holstered.

  “For over twenty years Mallaruza has had civil war.” Abi kept walking toward him. “There’s been no end in sight. And for those twenty years or more, Mallaruza and most other African nations have been given billions of US dollars in aid. Charity. Two-thirds of the poorest countries in the world are right here on this continent. Money, for Europeans, is the solution to our problems. We don’t need their fucking money. We need to feed our children, we need our crops to grow and our cattle to become fat! We need not to be fucking beggars, don’t you get that?” He leveled the semi-auto at Simon’s chest.

  “Forty-two out of fifty-two states in Africa have no hope of development. We are a raft at sea at night,” he said bitterly. “Africa is sinking despite the billions in aid groups send us. We have to learn to stand up for ourselves. To manage our own destiny. Without aid.”

  “Great speech,” Simon said sarcastically. “Go for it. But not this way. What the fuck are you thinking, Abi? Destiny? You’ve sold your soul to the devil and given carte blanche to a terrorist group like the Phoenix, and to a wizard as corrupt and powerful as Joubert.”

  “I’m go
ing to unite Africa, Blackthorne. Sixty-two percent of the countries on this continent are having their soldiers trained here. Mallaruza is supplying food and aid to them. They need a strong, powerful, well-educated leader with vision.”

  “No one man is strong or smart enough to lead countless millions of people who are already on the brink of destruction.”

  “I’ve proven that I can do it.”

  “How? By poisoning their drinking water so that half of them die a gruesome death from hemorrhagic fever? By stealing and stalling aid from around the world?”

  The whites of Abi’s eyes showed around the dark pupils, and his face went gray. “You know—”

  “That you had the hemorrhagic dengue fever gene-spliced with leptospirosis? Your version of Munchausen by proxy? Killing with one hand and offering swift and compassionate aid with the other? Millions of people died, while you came off looking like a fucking saint.”

  “But when I’m king, millions more will be saved. I will bring wealth and prosperity to my country.”

  “Then fix the reasons development aid disappears down a black hole. Fix the priorities and the incompetence. Fix the corruption and greed and fucking arbitrary use of government power in the recipient countries themselves. Don’t proclaim yourself king and become the puppet of a madman.”

  “He’s not—”

  “While you rule with a misguided but benevolent hand, Joubert will be raping all of Africa’s resources without anyone being any the wiser. Yeah, I can see your face, you stupid son of a bitch. You think Joubert and the Phoenix are going to allow you to do whatever the fuck you like? Not on a bet. They’re going to continue manipulating you just as they’ve been doing all along. Manipulate you, and the people who trust you.”

  Simon stepped away from the shelves and spread his feet, anger vibrating through him like a tuning fork. “Joubert is one of the most powerful wizards I’ve ever encountered. He’s going to strip every fucking resource out of the country. Strip them, suck them dry, and leave you with a country unable to sustain its own economy in any way. Every country that throws their lot in with the goddamned King of Africa is going to be ten times—hell—a hundred times worse off than they are now.