The King of Plagues

by Jonathan Maberry

  Cowardice?

  How could Gault have wandered so far from himself that he could not recognize love?

  Not for the first time, Toys wondered if Eris really was some kind of sorceress.

  He and Gault barely spoke unless it was about incidental things. A second round of martinis, travel plans. Nothing of consequence.

  Gault’s time was taken up playing the role of the King of Plagues. He had entered the world of the Kings with a will, and even though bombings were not under his purview, Gault had actively participated in the planning of the London event. He had also selected Fair Isle. Toys was secretly pleased that the Ebola release had fallen flat.

  Rivers of blood my ass, he mused.

  And the woman, Amber Taylor, had dodged away as well. Bloody good for her.

  He knew that although the failures could not be laid at Gault’s feet, they were nonetheless failures connected to his overall plan. The failures were embarrassing to the Goddess as well, and that really pleased Toys.

  Now they were poised for the next round. More killings. More death. And still they hadn’t reached the real centerpiece of Gault’s plan.

  Toys wondered if they would all drown in a river of blood of their own making.

  We deserve it.

  The phone rang and the American answered, spoke quietly for a moment, and then hung up.

  “I need to deal with something,” said the King of Fear as he lumbered toward the door. “You boys make yourself comfortable.”

  He closed the door behind him.

  Toys stood by the big picture window and looked out at the New York skyline. This was the fifth of the American’s offices he had visited in the last few months, and he marveled at the fact that despite the differences in locale, each office was decorated identically, down to the bottles in the wet bar, the brand of expensive furniture, and even the art on the walls. He knew that this all made some kind of statement about the man, but he wasn’t sure what that statement’s message was. On the surface it seemed to suggest a mind that possessed a single fixed image of the world, but Toys knew that this was not the case. He wondered if it was more misdirection on the American’s part. A statement intended to cement a certain limited view of who he was into people’s minds.

  Behind him, Gault sipped a Scotch and soda, the ice cubes tinkling against his lips.

  Toys turned. “There’s still time,” he said.

  “Don’t start,” muttered Gault quietly. “I’m not in the mood to have this discussion again.”

  “We haven’t had this discussion yet. Every time I try to bring it up, you growl at me or storm out of the room. I’m supposed to be your Conscience—”

  Gault snorted, which shut Toys up as effectively as a slap across the face.

  Toys rubbed his eyes. He felt old and used up. “Oh, bloody hell,” he said sharply. “I’m going to say it anyway.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” warned Gault.

  Toys crossed the room and stood in front of Gault.

  Gault took a sip, sighed, then said, “Okay. Have your say. Get it out of your system. I suppose I owe you that much.”

  Ha, Toys mused sourly. If you paid what you owed me, Sebastian, we’ d be thousands of miles away from here and running fast.

  Aloud he said, “When we escaped the meltdown in Afghanistan you were too badly injured to walk. I carried you out of there, Sebastian. Carried. On my back.”

  “You want a sodding medal? Fine, I’ll buy you one.”

  “Hush.” Toys said it softly, and something in his tone made Gault close his mouth on another barb. He gestured with his glass for Toys to continue. “When we escaped and we got onto the medical transport, that was the most frightening time of my life. Not because I thought that they would catch us. No … I was afraid that with everything crashing down I would lose you.”

  Gault blinked in what looked to Toys like genuine surprise. “You didn’t lose me,” he said softly.

  “Yes, I did. Not then, but since then. In bits and pieces. I lost some of you before, to Amirah. I know you loved her, but you have to admit that I did see through her deception all along. If you had listened to me, things would never have gotten out of hand. I know that I’ve said that before and every time I do you and I have a row about it, but it’s true. I was right about her.”

  Gault shrugged and his tone grew harder. “Okay, you were right about her. Bully for you.”

  “Given that,” Toys persisted, “why can’t you take a moment and step back from all of this? The Kings, the Ten Plagues, the Goddess—all of it. Step back and at least consider whether I might be right again.”

  “About Eris?”

  “Yes. In a lot of ways she’s as mad as Amirah was.”

  “So?”

  “I think she believes that she is a goddess.”

  “Again … so?”

  “She isn’t,” Toys said viciously. “She’s a woman who knows that despite good genes and some natural longevity, this is the last blast for her as a sexual icon. Once her beauty really starts to fade, the other Kings will lose interest. Remember that ‘glamour’ is another word for an illusion or spell. That’s what she’s cast. Because she acts the part of the Great Beauty of the Ages, she is taken as such. It’s affectation, and she’s charismatic enough to pull it off. She’s also probably scared out of her mind because she has to see, day by day, that she is nearing that line when, once it is crossed, she will become ordinary. A woman. Not a goddess. An old woman.”

  “You’re jealous of her,” sneered Gault.

  “No. Even I’m not that damaged … and don’t think that you can do me any harm by attacking my sexuality. I’m not conflicted about who I am, Sebastian. I know who I am. Just as I know who you are.”

  “And what am I, O wise and mighty Conscience?”

  “You’re a fool,” Toys said acidly. “If you were merely naïve and oblivious I could forgive it, but you’re the smartest man I’ve ever known. Ever. So, this refusal to see Eris for who she is, and to refuse to see this Ten Plagues madness for what it is, that’s deliberate and stubborn foolishness.”

  “You’re treading on thin ice, Toys, and your time is almost up.”

  “When you conceived the Seif Al Din project I objected to it, as you may remember. Not because I’m capable of taking the moral high ground—we both know I’m too thoroughly corrupt for that—but because it wasn’t a good balance of reward and risk. A mistake could have led to a global pandemic, and very nearly did. If it wasn’t for Joe Ledger and the DMS, your mistake would have been the very last one in history.”

  “Joe Ledger is a dead man,” sneered Gault. “He slipped us in London, but I’m going to have his guts for garters.”

  “Will you listen to yourself? You’re obsessed with him as if he’s the cause of your problems.”

  “He is.”

  “He isn’t. You’re not a supervillain and he’s not your arch nemesis. This isn’t a sodding comic book.”

  “Don’t be insulting.”

  Toys sighed and flapped his arms. “Now, here we are again, standing at the brink of another needlessly risky venture. What are the rewards? You want to cripple the Inner Circle? Really? Since when did they mean anything to you? Four months ago you’d never heard of them. But then Eris fucked the last bits of common sense out of your head and suddenly you are willing to launch a program that will not only cause countless deaths but could very easily spark conflicts that will tear nations apart. Why? What do you think you’ll accomplish with that?”

  Gault said nothing. He sipped his drink and watched Toys with hooded eyes.

  “Shall I tell you then?” asked Toys.

  “Oh, by all means. Show me how smart you are.”

  “This isn’t about being smart, Sebastian, so don’t try to turn it into a contest to see whose brain weighs more. I know you’re smarter than me. You’re smarter than almost everyone. You’re just not as smart as you think you are.” Toys stepped closer. “You want to rise above your h
uman weaknesses, Sebastian. Just as Eris wants to rise above the truth that she must inevitably age, you want to rise about the truth that you can be hurt. You’re both playacting at being gods because you can’t stand the thought that you are human. Flawed, limited humans.”

  Gault finished the last of his drink and set the glass down on the American’s desk. “Go to hell,” he said softly, then shook his head. “No … rot in hell.”

  He turned toward the door and Toys laid his hand gently on Gault’s arm.

  “Please, Sebastian … I’m begging you. Don’t do this.”

  Sebastian Gault hit Toys in the face. A single wickedly fast punch that caught Toys in the mouth, bursting his lips against his teeth. Toys staggered back, clamping his hands to his bleeding mouth, shocked into a horrified and broken silence. Blood welled from between his fingers and dripped onto his shirtfront.

  Gault looked down at his own fist as if surprised that it had just done that. “Rot in hell,” he said again. Quietly, without emphasis, his voice as dead as his eyes.

  He turned and left the room.

  Toys sank slowly to his knees, blood running in lines down his chin and splashing on the floor. He caved in around his pain. Not the pain of torn lips and mashed gums, but the red howling ache in his chest.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, and wept.

  Interlude Thirty-six

  Regent Beverly Wilshire

  Beverly Hills, California

  December 19, 5:37 P.M. EST

  Charles Osgood Harrington IV—known as C-Four since he was thrown out of college—was a total pain in the ass. Everyone knew that and agreed on it. The media loved to hate him and ran paparazzi pictures of him almost daily, usually peeing in a sacred fountain in Italy or in a perp walk after a DUI, or those infamous pictures of him during his first and second stays in county correctional facilities or work-release camps. C-Four’s father’s lawyers hated him because he was so irredeemably arrogant and unrepentant in court that he instantly alienated judges and juries. The members of the various boards on which his father, Charles Osgood Harrington III—Three to his cronies and the press—was the chair. The stockholders hated him because each time his personal life detonated onto the headlines the shares in the family companies—Harrington Aeronautics, Harrington-Cheney Petrochemicals, Harrington and Milhaus Fuel Oil Company, and the fourteen others—tumbled. The administration of Yale hated that they were coerced into pushing him through with a degree even though he rarely attended a class and was never sober, but the Harrington family and their friends wrote checks larger than the outrage of the board of regents. Even C-Four’s friends only stayed with him because they thought he was richer than God and liked to show it off by spreading cash around. On a whim he flew the cast of Gossip Girl to a clothing-optional island. Another time he bought a hotel just to throw a party, and once he purchased a Mercedes dealership on a bet and then lost it in a run of poker hands that same night.

  When his name came up on programs like Dr. Phil and Ellen, kindhearted but misinformed guest stars speculated that C-Four suffered from emotional damage that was the result of having been too famous even from birth. They discussed how the rich and privileged bear a terrible burden because they can’t be real and said that C-Four’s escapades were no different from the early excesses of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, both of whom had been romantically linked with him at one time or another, at least according to the tabloids.

  Three only had one son. His daughter, Victoria, had married a civil-rights lawyer from Boston and was now only tolerated at Christmas. The keys to the kingdom would be passed to C-Four.

  Father and son sat in leather chairs by a penthouse window in the Regent Beverly Wilshire. A tall Christmas tree sparkled and glowed behind them. Neither of them had decorated the tree and neither cared who had. Three had barely registered that there was a ten-foot tree in the room. C-Four had draped unused condoms on it like tinsel.

  “I would prefer you not go,” said Three.

  His son waggled the engraved and gold-embossed card. “Are you fucking kidding me, Dad?”

  “Watch your language.”

  C-Four snorted. “Oh, right, ’cause you don’t want me to spoil my image.”

  “No, I just don’t appreciate you talking like you’re from the gutter.”

  “Fuck that.”

  Three fumed into the amber depths of his Scotch.

  “This gig is going to be too cool to miss.” He reached for the return envelope, which had fallen to the floor. He fished a pen from his pocket, scrawled a brief note, stuffed the card into the envelope, and licked the glue. When he was done, he held it up between fore and index fingers. “You should be happy they even invited me.”

  “If I had known about it in time I would have made sure you weren’t invited. It isn’t appropriate that you should go. No one at Yale remembers any ‘good old times’ with you. At best you were a figure of fun, and I suspect you received that invitation out of pity.”

  “Thanks, Pop. Always nice to know that you care.” C-Four shook his head and finished the last of his drink. “Besides, this isn’t one of those über-mysterious Inner Circle things. And it’s not for you and your crew of vultures and thieves. For once it’s my generation instead of the corrupt old farts you hang out with.”

  “‘Corrupt’?”

  “Sorry, Dad, was that the wrong choice of words? Would ‘insanely manipulative’ be better?”

  “Charlie …”

  “Don’t even try to call me that. And don’t pretend that I don’t know what you and your Inner Circle Bonesmen are all about. Christ, everyone with Net access knows about the shit you assholes pull.” C-Four held up the sealed return envelope. “Besides … this is going to be the party of the century.”

  C-Four got up and walked over to the wet bar, mixed a complicated drink, drank half of it standing there, and then strolled to the Christmas tree.

  “In what way?” demanded Three.

  C-Four took another pull on the drink. “I doubt you’d …” His voice trailed away and he stood frowning at the tree.

  “You doubt I’d what?” snapped his father.

  “Hm? What?” C-Four looked at his father with a confused smile on his face. He touched his cheeks. “What?”

  “You said you doubted that I’d—what?”

  C-Four’s confused smile flickered like a lightbulb whose filament was burning too thin. He shifted uncertainly and Three could see that there was something wrong with his son’s face. It looked weirdly uneven. Knobbed. Almost … blistered. “I …”

  “Charlie, what’s wrong?”

  His son tore at his collar, exposing his throat. All along his upper chest and neck dozens of red spots were appearing, rising from pinpricks and swelling into boils even as the young man stood swaying.

  “Good God!” yelled Three. “What the hell did you do to yourself?” C-Four’s fingers twitched and the glass tumbled from his hands. It hit the thick Persian carpet, bounced, and splashed ice and alcohol over his bare feet. But the young man did not seem to notice. He stood there with a half smile, brows knit, head cocked into an attitude of listening as if he was pondering some great internal mystery. Boils blossomed across his face and on his hands. When he touched the ones on his face, they burst with sprays of red mist.

  “Careful, dammit … ,” his father said, starting in his chair. Then he froze in place as C-Four raised dreamy eyes toward him.

  “I feel really …”

  And blood exploded from his mouth and nose.

  “Charlie!”

  Charles Osgood Harrington III erupted from his chair as his son’s knees suddenly buckled and he dropped. C-Four landed on his knees and fell sideways against the tree. The whole mass of it—tree, tinsel, ornaments, condoms, and fairy lights—canted sideways with the young man on top of it. Blood geysered from C-Four’s mouth and the boils on his skin burst. His father was thirty feet away and he crossed the room in a shot.

  But C-Four was already dead.


  Chapter Fifty-two

  Starbucks

  Southampton, Pennsylvania

  December 19, 5:42 P.M. EST

  Hanler saw me and stood as I approached. He offered me his hand and gave me a single-pump shake that was dry and rock hard. Marty Hanler was in his mid-sixties, with receding gray hair and a deepwater tan. He had bright blue eyes that looked merry but were as focused as a sniper’s eyes. He peered past me out the window.

  “Is that Circe? Wow … she’s really … filled out.”

  When he straightened he caught sight of my face. My expression flipped some kind of switch inside his head, because immediately the caveman receded and the writer stepped forward. He cleared his throat and looked at Ghost. “That’s a good-looking shepherd. Is he friendly?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “Can I pet him?”

  “Can you type without fingers?”

  He stuck his hands in his pockets.

  We ordered coffee and sat in the back and there was some nice cover noise in the form of a mixed tape of pop stars singing Christmas songs. Ghost lay down between our chairs, within petting reach, but Hanler didn’t rise to the bait.

  I’d met Hanler through Mr. Church, but I’ve known about him since college. His espionage thrillers always hit the number one spot on the bestseller lists. So far, four of them had been made into movies. Matt Damon starred in the last one. I owned the DVD, but I didn’t say that to Hanler.

  “Mr. Church said that you had something for me.”

  “‘Church,’” he said, smiling with teeth so bright I felt like I was getting a tan. “I’m still not used to calling him that. He’ll always be ‘Deacon’ to me.”

  “Is that his real name?” I said, pitching it to sound offhand, but Hanler flicked his shooter’s eyes at me.

  “Good try.” He laughed. “Ask him.”

  I grinned. “Which means that you don’t know, either.”

  He shrugged and sipped his coffee. “Okay, I called the Deacon because I think someone took an idea I had and maybe put it into practice in the most terrible possible way.” He cut me an amused look. “Settle down, Dick Tracy … . I’m not here to confess. I said I may have come up with the scenario, but I’m not part of a global criminal conspiracy.”