The King of Plagues jl-3

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Well,” said Toys as he sipped Hennessy Beauté du Siècle cognac, “I think we can submit a new definition for ‘ostentatious.’”

  “Mm. Are you complaining or commenting?”

  Toys sloshed the deep-amber-colored liquid in his glass. “This is two hundred thousand pounds a bottle. I’m not a cheap date, Sebastian, but they had me at the crème brûlée.”

  “You think they’re trying to prove something to us?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Of course. And notice that we’re both saying ‘they.’ Not ‘he,’” Gault said. He sipped the cognac. It was delicious and it soothed the aches in his damaged flesh, but he would never have spent two hundred thousand on it. His devotion to brand names did not extend into mania.

  “Well, to be fair,” Toys said, “our American friend was always grandiose, but cultured … ? Not so much.”

  “And he has no excuse for it. He’s new money, but he went to the very best schools.”

  “You’re new money.”

  “Yes, but if you didn’t know it you couldn’t tell. You can tell with him. At a hundred paces, too. Table manners of a baboon, and he keeps his mouth open while chewing. And he has that thing where he speaks like a college professor one minute and a dockworker the next.”

  “You do know that he can hear everything we’re saying.”

  Gault merely smiled.

  “So,” said Toys, rolling the cognac back and forth between his palms, “the question is ‘why?’”

  Gault shrugged. “A demonstration of conspicuous ostentation makes its own statement, don’t you think? After all, no one needs to own a jet like this. There are plenty of less expensive aircraft that are more than opulent enough for the few hours their owners and their guests spend aboard them. To put it crudely, the price tag is a big ‘fuck you’ to anyone who can’t afford it, and much more so to those who can almost afford it.”

  “Mmm,” mused Toys. “Then tell me this, O mighty sage, why are we being treated to such luxury? He doesn’t owe us a thing, not even sanctuary.”

  Gault merely shrugged. He was pretty sure he knew. He closed his eyes and remembered a sultry night a dozen years ago. He and Eris in a Belle Etoile suite at the Hotel Le Meurice in Paris. The two of them naked, covered with bites and scratches, the bed and nightstand wrecked, sheets torn and tangled, and the air heavy with the smell of wine, perfume, and sex.

  “One day,” she’d murmured to him as they lay together on the floor, their feet propped on the edge of the bed they’d fallen out of during their last deliciously ferocious bout of sex. And it was sex. No one could call what they did lovemaking. It was too violent and immediate and selfish for that, and it had served them each and satisfied them both. “One day you’ll be a king, lovely boy.”

  Gault was propped on one elbow, his head resting in an open palm while he used his other hand to trace slow, meaningless symbols in the sweat between her heavy breasts.

  “A king?” he mused, his voice still carrying some of the East End London of his youth. “No way that’s possible, but I’d like a knighthood. That would be brilliant.”

  She shook her head. Her hair was snow-white, with subtle threads of lustrous brown sewn through it. Candlelight reflected in her eyes so that it looked like she was on fire inside.

  “No, lovely boy. I have my eye on you. One of these days you’ll be a king.”

  Sebastian laughed. “A king of what?”

  “What would you like to be king of?”

  “Not of bloody England. Too much nonsense and fluff.”

  “You could be the king of your own world,” she said. “A king of the microscopic world of viruses and bacteria.”

  “Oh, very nice. Behold the leper king—”

  “Shhhh!” Eris pressed a finger to his lips. “No. Not a king of the common cold or the king of cancer. One day I think you will be the King of Plagues.”

  He almost laughed again, but there was something about her tone when she said those words that stopped him. “The King of Plagues.” Saying it as if it was a real title for an actual king. No mockery. This was not a joke to her.

  Sebastian Gault had looked deep into her burning eyes. “Tell me,” he had whispered.

  And she told him. Not much, but enough. She broke off a delicious fragment of the truth and whispered it in his ear, and it was that seed, planted there in the shadows that smelled of their passion, that grew into Gault’s dreams of empire. The many paths that led away from that moment in his life trailed away into infinite possibilities, but one—that one—was paved with gold.

  The King of Plagues.

  “And if I am a king,” he whispered as he pulled her on top of him, “will you be my queen?”

  “No,” she breathed, her voice husky and dark, her hand reaching down to guide him inside. “No … I will be your goddess.”

  Afterward, he had made love to her so hard that they both wept and ached all the next day. And each time an unwise step or movement speared pain through either of them, they remembered and laughed. It was not the sex that they remembered but the idea that had fueled it.

  The King of Plagues.

  And the Goddess.

  THE FLIGHT WAS long and the crew did not inform them of their destination. From the duration and the angle of the sun, Gault judged that they were in southeastern Canada. Looking out of the porthole suggested east, and Gault was sure that they were still in America.

  When the plane landed they were both relaxed and composed and accompanied the two Asians without comment or protest. The plane had set down at a large private airstrip by the water, and the boat ride across the river was quick and comfortable.

  As the boat coasted to a gentle stop at the dock, Gault nudged Toys with his knee. Toys looked up to see a woman step out of the shade of the boathouse and into the bright sunlight. Even Toys, whose taste tended toward fashion models of both gender of the type once known as “heroin chic,” lifted his eyebrows in appreciation. The woman was tall, slender, with snow-white hair that lifted and snapped in the breeze off the water. She wore skintight white sporting slacks and a bikini top that was little more than triangles of brightly colored cloth. Her feet were bare and she wore silver jewelry at throat, ears, fingers, toes, and navel. Sunlight flickered around her as if the daylight kept reaching out with quick and naughty touches. Her body was lithe and fit and the only concession to makeup was a fierce red lipstick that was an immediate challenge.

  “Well, well,” murmured Toys. “Not exactly Snow White, is she?”

  “Good God,” breathed Gault. “That’s Eris.”

  “I thought you said Eris was his mother.”

  Gault laughed. “That is his mother.”

  Toys turned to Gault with a half smile, but he wasn’t joking. Then Toys took a second and longer look at the woman as she walked toward them.

  “If that’s cosmetic surgery, I’ll marry her doctor.”

  “No. Just bloody good genes and a refusal to age like ordinary mortals. I don’t know how old she is, but she has to be in her sixties.”

  “You’re killing my youth-centric sensibilities.”

  Gault laughed. As soon as the boat was tied to the cleats, he leaped onto the dock and walked toward Eris with his arms wide. She beamed at him like a happy panther and hugged him fiercely, showering kisses on him, even on the bandages. As Toys approached, Gault gave him a look that said, Well, she’s not my mother.

  Eris turned, graceful as a dancer, and gave Toys a quick and frank appraisal. “Who is this delicious beast, Sebastian?” she said in a husky voice that was English with a soupçon of Boston. “Is this the clever one who’s been keeping you out of trouble all these years?”

  “Sweetheart,” Gault said, “meet Toys. Toys … this is Evangeline Regina Isadora Sanderson. Lady Eris to the commoners and Goddess to those who really know her.”

  “Toys … mmm, now that’s a name with real potential.”

  Toys took her hand and kissed it in a way that was
at once elegant and filled with self-referential mockery. Eris gave him a wicked grin. At close quarters he could see that she was indeed older than she at first appeared, but no one would ever guess fifty, let alone mid-sixties. The bikini top was challenged to restrain abundance; her eyes were as green as a tropical sea and flecked with sparks of gold fire.

  “Welcome to Crown Island,” she purred.

  “Thank you for having us,” said Toys.

  Eris eyed him up and down. “I haven’t had you yet.”

  Then Eris hooked their arms so that they bookended her and led them toward the huge fortress of a building that was McCullough Castle.

  Above them the sun was a furnace, and Gault wondered what was being forged in its heat.

  GAULT AND TOYS were escorted to separate rooms.

  “Divide and conquer?” Gault asked with a smile.

  “Divide, yes, conquer—no, lovely boy. We want you to be comfortable. Travel is such a bore. Take a hot shower. Fresh clothes will be laid out. Someone will come to fetch you in an hour.”

  One of the two silent Koreans stepped up to Toys and led him down a side hall.

  When they were alone, Gault took Eris’s hand and led her a few steps away from the second servant.

  “What’s going on, love? This is weird even for you.”

  She laughed. “Mystery and intrigue is all the thing, lovely boy.”

  “I’m not the boy I once was,” Gault said bitterly. He touched his bandages. “And I’m no longer ‘lovely.’”

  Eris shook her head. “Bruises will heal and you’ll come to love your new face.”

  “I wasn’t talking about my face,” he said distantly.

  “Oh, God, are we going to have a gloomy existential conversation in a drafty hallway?” But before Gault could reply, she kissed him lightly on the mouth. “Go and make yourself clean and pretty for me.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Breaking News: CNBC

  December 17, 2:55 P.M. GMT

  U.S. stock markets closed today after an apparent terrorist attack on the Royal London Hospital. The newly renovated hospital was completely destroyed, and early estimates number the dead at four thousand. That number is expected to climb.

  Though the incident in London happened before the opening bell, trading went into full flight-to-safety mode as points were chopped off by panicking investors. Stock markets in Europe and Canada have also plunged.

  SEC commissioner Mark David Epstein has not said when trading would resume.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Barrier Headquarters

  December 17, 3:56 P.M. GMT

  The three assassins were, in fact, genuine London police constables. All three had clean records; none of them had known ties to extremist political or religious groups. In every way they were ordinary citizens, and that was the scariest part of it.

  “I don’t understand this,” complained Benson Childe. “They’re good men.”

  “My ass,” I said.

  We sat in his office on opposite sides of an open bottle of Clontarf single-malt Irish whiskey. MacDonal, Aylrod, and the others had just left to handle the aftershocks of the shooting and manage the spin control. Ghost slept under the table. I’d cleaned him up and calmed him, but he twitched in his sleep.

  “The man you scalded with the tea is named Mick Jones. You broke nine of his bones. He’s claimed that this was an unprovoked attack.”

  “He’s a lying sack of shit,” I said. “He was the one that said, ‘Happy Christmas from the Seven Kings.’ He was smiling when he said it. A happy guy doing a job he enjoyed. Probably one of the Chosen.”

  Childe frowned into his whiskey. “Well, as soon as he can be transported to a military hospital we’ll see about opening him up. One of my lads, Spanton, will oversee the interrogation. He’s a right bastard, too, so we should get something.”

  I wasn’t chewed up with sympathy for the crooked cop.

  Childe downed a heroic slug of whiskey and poured two fingers into the glass. “All this brings up ugly questions. How did the Kings know you were here for a meeting? Why do they want you dead? How were they able to corrupt three upstanding police constables? And what did they hope to accomplish by killing you? Understand, Captain, that while your DMS field record precedes you, I don’t quite see why the Kings would target you above all others.”

  “Me, neither. I’m certainly not a key player in the Hospital-bombing investigation.” I took a sip that was every bit as large as Childe’s. I was fighting a bad case of the shakes. “I spoke with Church a few minutes ago and there haven’t been any attempts on other DMS agents. Guess I hold the golden ticket in the Lunatic Lottery.”

  We sipped in silence. I wasn’t sure how to read Childe. I knew Church liked and trusted him, but the Barrier director seemed decidedly chilly since the shooting. Granted, he knew the officers, but I wondered if the confusing nature of the incident made him doubt me.

  Well … fuck him if he did.

  He must have caught something in my expression, because he gave me a rueful smile. “We’ll sort it all out, Captain. Here in the U.K. we have a longer history of dealing with terrorists and secret societies than your lot does. From Guy Fawkes to the bloody IRA. Half the time we never know what’s really going on. We catch a few, kill a few, dismantle a splinter cell, but it’s like cutting heads off a Hydra. Twice as many grow back and it’s bloody impossible to say if we’re doing any good.”

  “Better than doing nothing,” I said.

  He grunted and sipped. “It doesn’t feel that way. It feels like all we’re doing is pretending to maintain a shaky status quo while in reality things are slipping bit by bit into chaos.”

  I leaned forward and pushed the bottle away from him.

  “Oh yes, very funny. That’s not drink talking, Joe, and I’m not using this to wash down Prozac. I suppose it’s a kind of battle fatigue. I’ve been in this for thirty-four years and I can’t say with any certainty that I’ve won any wars. I’ve won my share of battles, but the war always seems to go on.”

  It was the first time he’d called me by my first name. A flag of truce? I finished off my whiskey and set the glass down.

  “Before this happened I was going out to play cop. That still sounds like the best way to try and tackle this.”

  Childe looked at me. “After what just happened? Are you in any condition?”

  It was a fair question. I’d fled to Europe because I didn’t think I was in any condition to be part of this sort of thing. Or at least that’s what I thought. Somehow the war always seems to find me.

  “My vacation’s over, Benson,” I said. I clicked my tongue and Ghost instantly returned from whatever dark dreams were troubling him and was at my side. I bent and stroked his head.

  Childe stood and offered his hand. “Stay safe.”

  I laughed, but I shook his hand.

  We went outside into the cold. We were both hypervigilant, and though we saw nothing else the rest of the day, I could feel the eyes of the Seven Kings on me wherever I went.

  Interlude Ten

  T-Town, Mount Baker, Washington State

  Three Months Before the London Event

  Circe O’Tree perched on the edge of her chair and tried not to chew her lip as Hugo Vox read through the most recent version of what had come to be known as the “Goddess Report.” Two or three times per page he reached into a ceramic bowl and took a handful of Gummi worms. He chewed steadily and noisily as he read, and except for the sound of shouts and gunfire from the counterterrorism range outside the room was quiet. The second hand on the Stars and Stripes clock on the wall seemed to crawl.

  When he finished the last page he looked up expectantly. “This is incomplete. You got a lot of data here, kiddo, but I don’t see any conclusions.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Hugo. I don’t know where to go with it. I just know that it’s bad and it’s getting worse.”

  He nibbled a Gummi worm and said nothing.


  Circe took a breath and plunged in. “Ever since I started this I’ve been making connections and tracking patterns. The Goddess, the Elders of Zion, the covert and overt suggestions for violence … there’s a lot of stuff here. The more the Goddess posts, the more the other Internet extremists pick up on it and repeat her comments, add to them, discuss them in chat rooms and on message boards. People are blogging about it, writing essays and magazine articles about it. Not just conspiracy theorists and shock journalists, either. And … it’s spilling over into the real world.”

  She laid a copy of The Grapevine on his desk. The picture showed the fiery aftermath of a Pakistani mosque being destroyed by a bomb in a parcel that had been delivered a few minutes before prayers. Forty-three dead, eighty wounded. The headline read: ISRAEL STRIKES BACK.

  Vox picked up the newspaper and sneered. “This is a rag. This is the same paper that printed Pat Robertson’s comment that 9/11 was God showing displeasure at gays.” He tossed it down on the desk. “I wouldn’t wipe my ass with it.”

  She reached into her briefcase and brought out a stack of other newspapers and began stacking them on his desk one by one. USA Today, the Arizona Republic, the Chicago Tribune, the San Jose Mercury, and The Fresno Bee.

  “Balls,” he said.

  “Every major newspaper has reported incidents that could be interpreted as hate crimes.”

  “Most of these papers retread each other’s—”