hippie back-to-nature thing.”
Supernova anger burst inside him. He spun. Hei-lian leapt back like a startled cat. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” he shouted in her face. “What the fuck?”
There was more surprise than fear in those wide black eyes. But there still was fear. Colonel Sun, consecrated to service of Guoanbu and country since prepubescence, survivor of decades of full-contact play in some of the world’s most blood-soaked open sores, did not scare easily.
But Tom was the most powerful ace on Earth, except maybe for Ra. He swatted fifty-ton main battle tanks like bugs. She knew far too well what he could do with her. “Nothing,” she said. She managed to keep her voice almost steady. “I was just making a joke. Trying. Failing.”
The stricken look on her face stabbed through him like that Kalashnikov slug through the back. He let out a big breath. The anger had already vanished, as quickly as it had lit. It left behind a kind of clammy, shaky emptiness.
“I’m sorry, man,” he mumbled. “Didn’t mean to rattle you like that.” You got to maintain, man, he told himself. You can find another woman. But there’s way more at stake here than that. More than he dared let anyone suspect. Not Hei-lian. Not even Sprout. More than he cared to let himself think about. Everything.
Shaking his head, he turned back to the rail and the river and the gathering birds and evening. “I’m just a little uptight these days.”
She was back, pressed against him, stroking him soothingly. Mingling sweat made a slick membrane between them. He respected the nerve it took her to approach him.
“The Sudan?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, leaning heavily on the rail. “Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time.” Tom picked up the soda, now past tepid to near hot, chugged half of it. He wished he dared let himself have even one beer to take the edge off. But he didn’t. Hadn’t in the almost decade and a half since he’d… come into his own. Nor had he gotten stoned. He couldn’t allow himself to alter his brain chemistry. “Nshombo’s always been hung up on Muslims, especially Arabs. He remembers it was always the Arabs who encouraged the slave trade, thinks they mean to bring all that back.” He shrugged. “Shit. They even might. In South Sudan we found some local Muslims-they call themselves Arabs, even though they don’t look any different from their neighbors-keeping animist tribesmen as slaves. We gave the slave owners to their own slaves. Perfect propaganda by deed. This Caliph’s just a puppet, and Siraj is a Western wannabe. I’m cool with putting him up against the wall. But in ten years. Maybe five. When we’ve shown the world the revolution works, made this place the People’s Paradise in reality as it is in name. It’s too early. Way too fucking early.” Tom turned away to lean on the rail. “And Alicia’s pet aces
… they’re too big a risk. Look at what happened with the last one.”
“Dolores.” She laid a hand cool on his shoulder. “Butcher Dagon killed her.”
Tom turned away. “Alicia’s first success story, and look how that turned out.” The sun poured in crosswise beneath the thatch awning as it sank toward the mangal and the big river’s origin in the Chapada Diamantina in the middle of Bahia state. The light had softened, lost some of its sting. But the air stayed still and hot, the humidity thick enough to swim in. The bugs, ever-present, had gone from busy to frenetic.
Tom blew out his lips in a sigh and turned to Sun with a lopsided grin. “What say we go inside and get, you know, horizontal?”
Jackson Square
New Orleans, Louisiana
And then she’s back in the pit.
Adesina is crouched down. Her hair has come undone from its braids and is a tangled cloud around her face. She looks feral.
Michelle glances around. Corpses. Check. Leopards. Check. Adesina. Check. No bunnies. Check.
She closes her eyes hard and wills herself back to New Orleans.
Juliet and Joey were staring at her. “What was that you were saying?” Juliet asked.
“I wasn’t saying anything,” Michelle replied.
“Hell you weren’t,” Joey said. “That was some fucked-up shit, Bubbles. You were talkin’ in tongues.”
Michelle wanted to shake her head, but she only managed to move it a little. “No. That was Adesina.”
Ink and Hoodoo Mama glanced at each other.
“Hey!” Michelle exclaimed. “I saw that!”
Juliet stroked Michelle’s forehead. “Sweetie, you’ve been in a coma for a year. You’re probably tired.”
“I am not tired,” Michelle snapped. “Hello? Coma? I am plenty rested. And I’ve been having these weird dreams that I’m pretty sure aren’t dreams. No bunnies.” Michelle glowered up at them. “You can stop with the looking. I can see the two of you.”
But then they weren’t looking at each other. They were staring at her. Any other time she might have laughed at the expressions on their faces. “What the hell? I swear I didn’t fart.”
Juliet pointed at Michelle. “You’re bubbling.”
Michelle looked down at her hand. A large bubble was forming on it. It glistened, iridescent and beautiful, and it felt as if it could go on for days.
She released the bubble, and it drifted up to the ceiling. Then her hand was shaking and she thought she would lose control. A horrible nausea flowed through her again. And then the power was tearing at her. Fire in her veins. But she could bubble.
Somewhere Over the Atlantic Ocean
From New Orleans they flew to New York. From New York they’d fly to Rome. There they would transfer to a smaller plane bound for Addis Ababa, where they would board an even smaller plane bound for Dar es Salaam.
Wally shook the foil packet the flight attendant had handed him a couple of hours earlier. He leaned across the aisle (Wally needed an aisle seat; people complained about sharing an armrest with a metal guy) and said, over the rumble of the engines, “Want my peanuts?”
Jerusha shook her head, still studying the maps spread over her tray table. She’d been studying them since they left New York. She studied a lot. “No, thanks.”
It was dark in the cabin. The flight attendants had dimmed the lights, to help people sleep away the time zones. Wally had traveled a lot since joining the Committee, but he still hadn’t learned how to sleep on an airplane.
He yawned; his jaw hinges creaked. Wally stretched until the metal in his seat groaned. He made another attempt to focus on the guidebooks they’d purchased, but they were full of stuff he didn’t understand. He figured it would all make more sense once he got there.
The in-flight movie looked good; it even had a couple folks laughing. But the headphones didn’t fit him.
“Hey, Jerusha?”
“Uh-huh?”
“What do you think we’ll find over there? In Congo?”
In a stage whisper, Jerusha said, “The horror. The horror.” She grinned, as if she’d just made a joke.
Wally stared at her.
“Maybe we’ll find an ivory dealer.”
Wally shook his head, slowly.
“Joseph Conrad? Heart of Darkness?”
Wally shrugged.
“It’s a book.”
“Oh. I don’t read much.” He shrugged, but inwardly he cringed. This was the sort of admission that attracted cutting remarks the way magnets attracted iron filings. He braced himself for the inevitable sneer.
But something strange happened: she shrugged, too. “You’re not missing anything. I had to read it in high school. Royally hated it, too.”
“We had to read The Great Gatsby. That’s the longest book I’ve ever read. I had to ask Mr. Schwandt for an extra week, but I finished it.”
“Good for you.” Weird-it sounded like she meant it. No sarcasm. “Oh, I know. Do you see many movies?”
“Oh, sure. Lots.”
