The King of Plagues

“We’ll start again,” Gault soothed. “The Kings are still free. We still have our resources. The Goddess has so many victories to her name.”

Eris sniffed and shook her head. She didn’t care about the Hospital or the twenty-one dead children of the Inner Circle. She had wanted this.

Eris’s cell rang and she straightened. “That’s Santoro!” she cried, reaching for the phone. She opened it without even reading the screen display. “Rafael, what happened to—”

“Hi, Mom,” said the King of Fear.

“Hugo?”

“Yeah … saw the news. Thought I’d give you a call.”

“It failed!” she yelled.

“Yeah, ain’t that a kick in the nuts? All that planning. All those years of scheming, all the work. Hell, Mom, you spent the best years of your life on that thing.”

She hissed at him.

“Look,” Vox said. “I’m dropping off the radar for a while. Just wanted to let you know that I drained your accounts. Gault’s, too. Nice chunk of change.”

“What? You miserable bastard!”

“Hey, call a spade a spade. Born out of wedlock and all that, what do you expect?” He chuckled. “But listen … I’m not going to cut you off entirely. I left you a nest egg. Whenever you guys reach a safe port, call me on the other cell. My new number’s plugged in.”

“What other cell?” she demanded.

“I left it in the drawer under the TV. Whenever you want to start over again, use that and give me a call. I’m dumping this phone.”

“Wait!”

“Bye-bye, Mom. Hope you two crazy kids can make it work.”

“Hugo!”

The line was dead.

Eris threw the phone across the room, where it struck the wall and shattered. “Damn that ungrateful little prick!”

“What the hell was that about?” asked Gault.

She rattled off a quick recap; then she got angrily to her feet and stalked across the room, tore open the drawer, and snatched up the cell Hugo had left for her.

“What are you doing?”

“He took our money! Our money.” Her voice was a harpy’s screech.

“I’m going to goddamn well tell him to give it back.”

She flipped open the phone and scrolled through the stored numbers until she located one labeled: ME.

“He was always an ugly child,” sneered Eris as she pressed the call button.

The forty pounds of C4 packed tightly into the hold vaporized the Delta of Venus. The blast could be heard for thirty miles in every direction, but they were so far out to sea, no one heard a thing.

Epilogue

(1)

The Sea of Hope became a massive floating crime scene. Everyone who was on board had to be interviewed and checked. That included the performers, many members of Generation Hope, and everyone else. There were protests and threats of lawsuits and actions, but those were hollow. The DMS had just averted the worst terrorist act in history. That bought us all the slack we needed. All of the celebrities and the children of the power players were off-loaded to the Navy ships. Eventually they’d all go home.

Home and alive.

I flew home in a big C-140 with Pink, Taylor Swift, and the guys from U2. DeeDee was aboard, too, with Khalid watching over her. She would keep the eye, but it was damaged and so was her face. It was too early to tell if she’d ever stand in the line of battle again. I had a couple of dozen stitches in my back, chest, and gums, but I was deemed fit to travel. Ghost was there, too. Sedated but alive.

It was all surreal.

The celebs on our plane kept their distance, occasionally shooting strange looks at me. I don’t know what stories they’d been told about me, or what rumors had floated around. And I didn’t care.

But sometimes you can’t tell about people.

“Cuppa?”

I looked up to see who’d spoken and Bono stood there holding two cups of steaming tea. He held one out to me. I took it, hissing at the pain the action caused in every molecule of my body.

“Mind if I sit?”

I tilted my head toward a metal equipment case and he sat down. He was a small man, short and slim. His signature sunglasses were tucked into the vee of his shirt.

“Your name’s Joe?”

I nodded.

“Look, man, I came back to say a couple of things, but I’ll piss off if I’m bothering you.”

“No,” I said. “No, it’s good. What’s on your mind?”

I sipped the tea. It was lousy.

“I made this myself.” He sipped his. “God, it’s piss.”

“It’s hot,” I said, and we clinked mugs.

“Tell me, man … why do you do this sort of thing?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Ask me something I know the answer to.”

The plane flew a lot of miles before either of us spoke. We’d drunk our bad tea. Bono stood up.

“Anyway, man,” he said. “For me and my mates and, I guess, for everyone … I just wanted to say thanks.”

He offered me his hand.

I took it. Then he nodded and walked back to sit with the other members of the band. I smiled. A good guy.

Why do I do this sort of thing?

God, I wish I had an answer to that.

(2)

On December 28, Rudy, Circe, and I took a DMS chopper from the Hangar and flew south into Pennsylvania. We landed outside the walls of Graterford Prison. Warden Wilson met us at the gate.

“Has he said anything?” asked Rudy as we shed our coats in the warden’s office.

“He hasn’t said a word since Dr. Sanchez ordered him placed in solitary,” said Wilson. “I had video and audio recorders placed inside his cell and all along the path from cell to showers and back. Nicodemus is always escorted by four guards that I pick randomly, and the time for his shower varies according to a schedule I make up. A schedule I keep in my head. If there was a leak inside the prison, someone feeding information to Nicodemus, these procedures seem to have stopped it.”

Rudy and Circe exchanged a look and said nothing. Neither looked pleased. Wilson caught it.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said Rudy. “Except that a little subtlety might have helped us findthe leak rather than cut it off.”

Wilson looked flustered and angry. “Well, you could have said that, Dr. Sanchez.”

“He shouldn’t have had to,” I said. Wilson turned aside to hide a face.