Candace came very close to saying, But he started it.
Then the lights went out.
_____
HE FOUND THE AIR FORCE stewards while they were busy preparing lunch. The two staffers looked annoyed at the loss of light. When they heard him at the threshold of the galley, one turned, already complaining.
“Hey, what the hell is going—”
The words died in the steward’s mouth when he saw the Boogeyman. The steward’s face went slack and he made little choking noises as he tried to work up the breath to scream. But he couldn’t. Horror had robbed him of his voice. He was paralyzed and mute.
Of all the expressions he’d seen displayed by people at their moment of death—rage, fear, grief, agony, resignation—this one was his absolute favorite. It was so perfect, so quintessentially human.
He thrust his blade forward and impaled the steward through his chest, puncturing his lung, robbing him of the ability to speak even if he’d been able to work up the courage. Only then did the other cook turn and see what had happened. She drew a breath to shriek, but he was too fast. He withdrew his blade and stabbed her through the lung as well.
Both were down and bleeding. But not dead yet. He knew he should get moving to the back of the plane.
Still, they were here in the kitchen. And there were so many lovely knives in here: top-of-the-line German steel, all gleaming and surgically sharp.
He could afford to linger for a few minutes, he decided.
After all, who was going to stop him?
“ROBBIE, GET IN the office. Now.”
“But—”
“Candace, what’s going on?”
Her mother looked annoyed by the failure of the lights, but not scared. She couldn’t understand her daughter’s urgency.
Latham and Thomason entered the cabin to check on them.
“What’s happening?” the First Lady asked.
“Probably just a fuse, ma’am,” Latham said. “The plane’s fine. We’ll get it dealt with.”
“The phone went dead as well.”
“It’s not a fuse,” Candace said.
“Ms. Curtis, I know we’ve all had a very harrowing time,” Thomason said. “But that threat is over. We saw it ourselves.”
Robbie, of course, picked up on only one word. “Threat? What threat? Are there terrorists?” He sounded way too hopeful.
“Robbie. Mom. Please. Just get in the security office.” To the agents, she said, “We need to lock them down.”
Another safety feature on board the presidential jet that was kept from the general public: the Secret Service’s onboard office could lock itself into a panic room: soundproof, bulletproof and with its own dedicated air supply.
Candace didn’t think it would keep the Boogeyman out for long. But it was better than nothing.
“I really don’t think there’s anything to worry about—” Latham began.
Then they heard a loud crash from the front of the plane.
“You don’t understand,” Candace said. “He’s not dead. He’s here.”
They were all quiet for a moment. Latham and Thomason looked at each other, then drew their guns.
“Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get inside now, ma’am,” Latham said.
_____
THE BOOGEYMAN was a little disappointed in the filleting knife. He’d just managed to strip the skin from the muscle of the female steward and it was already snagging. He might as well have used a pizza cutter. That at least had been fun as he rolled it over the other steward, cutting triangle-shaped sections from the man’s pectorals and abdomen.
Then something hit him. Hard.
There was no warning. None of his usual dry, arrogant humor. He simply attacked the Boogeyman, flying through the cabin and tackling him, slamming him hard into the galley’s cupboards.
The executive china and Tiffany stemware shattered around them both in a rain of gold-trimmed porcelain and glass. The Boogeyman was surprised for one split second and then simply enraged.
Cade.
THOMASON PULLED THE First Lady into the secure room while Latham went down the corridor.
“Candace, let’s go,” Thomason said.
But Robbie lingered in the cabin, looking after Latham.
Candace knew Robbie had a serious man-crush on Agent Latham. Latham was often assigned to Robbie, and they’d grown close. Thomason often commented that this was because they had about the same level of maturity. Latham was always willing to buy the kid ice cream—his mother’s health food kick had removed it from the menu in the White House—or play a few mind-numbingly violent video games. To Robbie, Latham was the best pal an eleven-year-old boy could have: cool, funny and packing heat.
Robbie took a few steps farther away from them.
“Robbie, honey, please, get in here,” their mother called. She would have grabbed him herself, but Thomason had a firm grip on her arm; he wasn’t about to let her leave a safe location.
“Robbie,” Candace said. “Come on. We’ve got to lock up. Now.”
He ignored her.
“Candace…” Thomason warned. He had his hand on the door, ready to slam and lock it. Candace knew what would happen. In a moment, he was going to close that door whether they were inside or not.
“Rob,” she said, using the name her brother preferred. “He’d want you to be safe.”
Robbie turned back to her, doing his best to be stoic. He took two steps and was almost over the threshold.
Then they heard the scream.
Candace could practically see the idea form in Robbie’s head as he had it.
He hesitated.
“Robbie, no, don’t—”
Too late. He was already off and running after Latham.
Their mother screamed. Thomason yanked her back inside. “Candace, get your ass back here!” he yelled. Her mother, she saw, was kicking and scratching him, trying to get after her son.
“I’ll get him!” she yelled. “Shut the damn door!”
She heard the door click behind her. No going back now.
CADE DIDN’T WASTE ANY TIME. This was going to be the end. One way or another.
He struck first and didn’t let up. He didn’t know if the Boogeyman was now stronger than him or faster. He had to press his advantage while he could.
In the wreckage of the galley, rolling among the broken china, Cade found the knives and other kitchen implements on the floor. The Boogeyman had laid a selection of them out, one by one, as if on a surgeon’s tray.
Cade wasn’t picky. He’d use them all. He grabbed the first one, a long-bladed butcher’s knife, and slammed it through the Boogeyman’s shoulder. He picked up a thin-bladed fish knife and pounded it like a nail through the Boogeyman’s hand. As fast as he could grab them, he picked them up and introduced them to whatever part of the Boogeyman was closest.
He was about to bring down a meat cleaver on the bright yellow mask when the Boogeyman shook him off.
Cade rolled back and gained his feet again.
The Boogeyman was already standing. It slowly, deliberately reached with its right hand and grabbed the handle of the butcher knife, then yanked it out.
The mask’s smile seemed mocking now. That the best you can do? it seemed to say to Cade.
Cade launched himself again. The butcher knife slashed faster than he thought possible. His biceps was laid open all the way to the bone, and the Boogeyman spun easily out of the way.
Cade slid to a stop. They faced each other again, having changed places.
At the very least, Cade thought, now I know who’s stronger in the day.
LATHAM AND THE THREE other agents in the main cabin approached the galley carefully, through the conference room. They heard the slamming and clattering, but no voices. It was an eerie quiet compared to the violence of breaking glass and wood.
Latham nearly lost his footing as the plane hit an air pocket. He wondered what the pilots were doing up front. And where were the stew
ards? The number of alternatives where this all ended happily were dropping to zero, and he didn’t like it.
Suddenly, the wall nearest them cracked and split. Cade’s head and shoulders were forced through the paneling, a pair of bloodied hands around his neck.
Ah hell, Latham thought, more resigned than anything else. I’m going to die.
Cade was pinned halfway through the wall, face battered and bloodied. Through the hole his body had made, they could see a man in a pilot’s uniform with the now-familiar yellow-and-black smile above his necktie.
The Boogeyman reached up and tore a piece of oak trim from the wall. He lifted it, ready to plunge it into Cade’s chest.
Latham remembered the gun in his hand. He fired.
CONTRARY TO WHAT most people believe, a bullet fired on a plane will not result in an explosive loss of cabin pressure if it tears through the skin of the aircraft.
Latham had learned this during his “Flying Armed” class for law-enforcement officers. The worst that could happen, he was told, is that your bullet hits a hydraulic line on its way out. Otherwise, all it does is make a hole.
Still, Latham wasn’t anxious to find out his instructors were wrong. He aimed for the Boogeyman’s body mass and tried to keep his grouping tight.
It did nothing.
Despite another myth created by movies and TV, gunshots didn’t carry enough force to throw a human being back like they were being flung from a catapult. The damage they did was inside the body.
And the Boogeyman—whoever or whatever he was—didn’t seem to mind having .357 slugs inside him. All it did was shake him up a little.
He raised the makeshift wooden stake above Cade’s chest again.
The other Secret Service agents were putting rounds into the Boogeyman as well. At best they were annoying him. But Latham could see they were about to lose their one chance of saving the First Family when that stake came down.
He aimed carefully. He was no sharpshooter. Even at close range, this was going to be tricky.
Latham fired.
His slug tore through the Boogeyman’s upraised wrist, shattering it. The wooden stake fell from his hand as his fingers went dead.
Then they heard the first sound from the Boogeyman. He howled.
THE BOOGEYMAN WAS SO CLOSE. The grin on his face was almost as wide as the one on his mask. He was finally going to kill Cade.
He’d have to remember to thank Helen Holt before he murdered her, too.
Then there was a slap against his wrist and the piece of wood dropped from his hand and he didn’t understand why his fingers wouldn’t grab it again.
He looked at the bullet hole and understood. The wound was closing already, but the damage was done.
He let loose a primal cry of frustration and rage. Then his eyes locked onto the agent who had robbed him of his kill.
Oh, he was going to make that fucker pay.
He was so distracted by his fury that he didn’t realize Cade had gotten his hands up again. His head snapped back as Cade put a palm strike into the underside of his jaw.
CADE REGAINED HIS FEET. This wasn’t going as planned. There was a very real chance the Boogeyman would be able to kill him.
Ours is but to do and die, he reminded himself.
He prepared to hurl himself at the Boogeyman again, but the Christ-damned thing kept recovering faster than he did. His punch should have snapped its spine, torn its head nearly from its shoulders.
Instead, the still-screeching Boogeyman tackled him and took him through the wall again in a full-body tackle.
He needed his ace in the hole. Where was she? Where was—
“CANDACE!” LATHAM SAID. “Get him the hell out of here!”
Latham had turned at a small sound. He was amazed he’d heard it, but then again, he’d been with the kid for almost three years now, watching his every move, watching him grow up.
So he knew what it sounded like when Robbie Curtis was scared.
He’d looked over his shoulder and seen Robbie crouched in the corner, behind one of the seats. Then he saw Candace trying in vain to pry him out of his hiding spot.
Cade and the Boogeyman tore through the remains of the wall. They collided with two of the other agents. One fell to the floor, screaming, while the other was knocked out cold and strung painfully over two of the seats.
That left Latham and one other agent. They exchanged a quick glance. Latham went for Robbie and Candace. The other agent went to help Cade.
Latham crouched down and got between Candace and her brother. “Hey, buddy, come on. Go with your sister. Get back in the safe room. We’ve practiced this before, man.”
“No,” Robbie screamed, reduced by tears and fear to a little kid again, all his straining to be tough erased in a moment. “David, you come, too! You come with us! Right now!”
Ah, God love this kid, Latham thought.
“This is my job, buddy,” he said, grabbing the boy and scooping him out of the corner and into his sister’s arms. “Keeping you safe.”
“Latham,” Candace said as she took him. “You could—”
“Don’t argue,” he snapped at her. “Get him back and get him safe.”
He turned and went back toward the staff offices, where the Boogeyman’s momentum had carried Cade.
He took one look over his shoulder again to see that they were on their way to the back of the plane.
Robbie had one arm outstretched as his sister hauled him bodily down the aisle, screaming Latham’s name. “David!”
It almost broke Latham’s heart.
And then the Boogeyman tore it from his chest.
THE BOOGEYMAN WAS GOING to win this time. He knew it.
Unable to hold a weapon in one hand, he pummeled Cade down with his fists, prepared to reduce him to nothing more than a blood pudding quivering on the floor if that’s what it took.
But, again, one of the humans kept putting more bullets into him.
By sheer luck, one of the rounds tore out his right eye, turning that side of the plane into a wet blackness. It would take hours, even with his physiology, to grow a new one.
Clearly, he’d have to deal with this.
He spun and faced the Secret Service agent. The man, a pasty blonde, managed to stand his ground and keep firing.
Unfortunately, he didn’t realize his clip was almost empty.
His pistol froze up at the same time Cade tried to attack from behind again. The Boogeyman was smarter this time. He yanked up on a window shade and brilliant sunlight streamed into the plane. It hit Cade in the face, blinding and burning him. The Boogeyman took two steps across the compartment and punched a hole right through the agent’s face.
It was only one more step from there to the other one, the one who’d robbed him of his earlier victory over Cade. That one was stupidly looking the wrong way. Without breaking stride, he pointed his left hand like a knife and plunged it through the back of the man’s rib cage. His fingers hooked and he yanked, bringing as much of the agent’s insides out into the light as he could.
CADE WAS FURIOUS with himself. He was too slow, too weak, to do anything to save the agents. One of his eyes was swollen closed from the burns and the beating. He felt bones shift in his chest.
He was barely to his knees when the Boogeyman dispatched Latham.
The Boogeyman turned and faced Cade. He held up the bloody innards like a trophy. The mask’s smile seemed to ooze smugness and victory.
Cade’s fangs jutted from his mouth, like a parody of a smile in return.
This time, the Boogeyman was going to beg for death.
CANDACE BEGGED. She pounded on the door. She threatened. She pleaded. Then she begged some more.
She’d dragged Robbie, kicking and screaming, away from the fight. He saw Latham’s chest explode. He knew his friend was dead. He kept trying to go back.
Finally, Candace got him to the secure section of the plane.
But Thomason would not open up. Not fo
r anyone.
It was protocol. So a terrorist or assassin could not use some family members of the president as hostages or bargaining chips to get at the others.
At first, all Candace heard was the sound of her mother shouting at Thomason. Then she began hitting him. Hard. “Those are my children!” she screamed. “My children!” Candace then heard Thomason shout an obscenity and heard her mother spit.
Good for you, Mom, she thought. Bite him again.
But Thomason was trained for this. There was a brief struggle, a sharp sound of surprise from the First Lady, and then her voice quieted to an indistinct murmur. Candace had always suspected the agents carried drugs to sedate them if they grew uncooperative. Now she knew.
“Thomason,” she said, her mouth right up to the seam in the door. “My brother is out here. He’s eleven. Eleven.”
A long pause.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Curtis. I really am,” Thomason said. His voice sounded like something dredged from the bottom of the ocean floor.
He had his job to do.
So did she.
She hugged Robbie tight to her. He must have been scared. He didn’t pull away.
Candace looked her brother in the eye. “Robbie. I need to do something. I never meant for you to be out here with me. But now I need your help. I need you to do exactly what I tell you. Can you do that?”
Robbie nodded. His chin trembled a little. But then his mouth set and he looked as fierce as possible for someone too young to shave.
“Let’s fuck his shit up,” he said.
THEY MET WITH ALL the grace of a car crash.
Cade unleashed a blindingly fast series of punches. The Boogeyman took them all. Then he grabbed Cade and began pushing him, slowly, inexorably, back into the beam of sunlight.
Cade pushed back. But he was already weaker. If he had not taken fresh human blood recently, he never would have lasted this long. The sunlight was the glare of a simple fact, an inarguable truth: he was not made to exist in the day.
He felt the sun on his back. His knees buckled. The sunlight hit his neck and the flesh began to blister and crack. His power washed out of him like water down a drain.
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