The King of Plagues

I leaned back and smiled.

“What?” she asked.

“I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to hear this.”

She was flustered by that for almost a full second.

“You agree?” she said guardedly.

“Agree? While you were talking I was doing a little mental preflight check and, yeah, I had every typical male reaction in the book. Eyes, boobs, legs, the works. And you’re not ‘moderately good-looking’; you’re a fucking knockout and you know it. Or you should know it if you have a mirror. So yeah, I get that attraction is part of the proliferation of the species. And from a purely observational point of view I’m guilty as charged. No question,” I said. “And no apologies.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“I’m as male and horny as the next guy. Maybe the next four guys, and sure, that’s the alpha-wolf drive-to- breed gene firing on all cylinders. Good call. On the other hand, you pointed out that I’m a professional of the kind Mr. Church hires. Not only don’t I think with my biceps or trigger finger; I don’t think with my dick.”

Circe considered that, nodded.

“One more thing,” I said. “Despite the hardwired urges, I’m also not on the market. I’m letting my heart take a long vacation. It might even retire to a cave.”

“Broken heart?” she probed. “Someone dump you?”

I almost let her off the hook, but I actually respected her for her candor. “No,” I said. “The woman—the extraordinary woman—with whom I was in love died.”

Circe’s lips parted, but she said nothing.

“She died on the job. If it wasn’t for her, you and I couldn’t be here having this conversation because the whole damn world would have gone to hell and, yes, in a handbasket.”

I could almost hear something go clunk in her head as a couple of disparate pieces of information fell sharply into place.

“Oh my God,” she said softly. “Grace Courtland? You were the one she was in love with?”

I nodded.

“Did Church tell you?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Grace did.”

That hit me like a punch between the eyes. “Grace told you about us?”

“No … not really. She told me that she was starting to fall in love with someone. Someone … in the DMS. I … I thought she meant Mr. Church.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it; a single bark of shocked laughter burst out. “Church?”

“That’s funny?”

“Funny weird, not funny ha-ha.”

We sat in silence for a moment. I sipped my whiskey and hoped for a nice midair collision.

“As initial encounters go,” I said, “this is a doozy.”

“Where does it leave us? Except literally and metaphorically out to sea?”

“If we’re adults, it means that we can start with a clean slate, a fair mutual understanding, and a shared agenda.”

She smiled. “I like that.”

We shook on it.

“Now,” I said. “It’s your turn.”

She gave me a half smile, kind of a “you asked for it, buster” look, and then told me all about the Goddess.

Interlude Twenty-six

The Seven Kings

Three and a Half Months Ago

Toys tried to catch Gault’s eye, but he was deep in conversation with the King of Lies. They were laughing. In the two weeks since they’d come to the castle, Toys and Gault had grown wary of each other. Gault had thrown himself into the world of the Kings and the Goddess with his whole heart. Toys walked more circumspectly around the fringes, playing the role of Conscience for protective cover but generally feeling trapped.

You, my friend, he said to himself, are in a right pickle.

Suddenly the room went silent and all eyes turned as the door to the chamber opened and Eris came in. She wore a white dress, long and tailored, and although the cut was simple and the design plain, on her it looked like a regal gown. Everyone stood. Each King, each Conscience, got to his feet, and as Eris walked across the room they all bowed.

Not wanting to stand out, Toys bowed as well. As he did so he imagined how good it would feel to slip a knife into her kidney. Do goddesses bleed like ordinary mortals? he speculated darkly.

Eris ascended the throne on the raised dais, then waved everyone else to their seats. They sat like obedient dogs, Toys thought. All except the American, who took his time.

In this lighting, in this setting, Eris looked ageless and beautiful and more regal than anyone else Toys had ever met in the flesh. And he’d met most of the crowned heads of Europe. Everyone beamed at her in a way that Toys thought looked truly … worshipful. That was the only word that fit.

It troubled him.

The King of Famine got to his feet. “Goddess … we are complete again. We are Seven.”

“Seven is the sacred number.” She looked at Gault. “Do you know why?”

He shook his head like a man in a dream. “Tell me … .”

A wicked smile played over Eris’s lips. Toys thought that it was half virgin, half whore, and thoroughly corrupt.

Eris raised her arms as if in invocation. “The world was made during seven days of Creation, and it will end when the Seven Seals spoken of in the Book of Revelation are opened. The number seven is key to every religion, every path to spirit. Look into the sky and behold the seven-starred constellation of Saptarishi Mandalam representing the Seven Sages.”

“Seven upon seven mysteries!” intoned the group.

“The Virgin Mary experienced seven joys.”

“And endured seven sorrows,” the Kings replied.

Toys saw that Gault’s lips were moving. He could not know this information—Gault was a lapsed Presbyterian—but it was clear that he wanted to participate, even to the point of trying to speak a litany to which he had never before been privy. Toys was sure that Gault was unaware that he was doing it, and that alone was frightening, because Gault was always aware. His perception was the thing that had always defined him. Now, in the space of seconds, he had descended into ritual behavior. Cult behavior.

Toys wanted to grab him, slap his face, and drag him out of this madhouse.

“There are seven heavens in Islam and seven fires in their hell,” said Eris.

“Heaven and hell,” said the crowd. “Linked by seven doors.”

“The Jews know this truth,” said Eris. “God told the Israelites that they would displace seven peoples when they entered the land of Israel.”

“Hail the power of Seven!”

Eris spoke of seven dimensions and sets of seven gods and demons in a dozen religions. She named seven dates as the key moments on which history turned, and the seven secret families who brought Europe out of the Dark Ages. She spoke of sevens in astronomy and physics, geography and philosophy. Her voice rose to a screech as she spoke of seven as a core number in sacred mathematics, naming it as the fourth prime number, a Mersenne prime, a double Mersenne, a Newman-Shanks-Williams prime, a Woodall prime, a factorial prime … .

Toys could feel the pull of the magic she wove, and it took every ounce of his will, and every splinter of his