Church spread his hands. “Hugo Vox is dead. The Seven Kings are dead. The Red Order is in disarray, and the King of Thorns is dead.”
“So is your wife,” countered the priest. “Or… should I say wives. How many have you buried so far? Do you even still remember their names?”
Church said nothing.
“How many of them knew your name?” asked the priest. “One that I know of. Two, if you’ve told that witch, Lilith.”
“Leave Lilith out of this.”
“What about your children, my friend? Did any of them know who — or what — their father was? Did you even whisper the truth to them when you put flowers on their graves?”
“Taunting me with my sins is a card you’ve already played, Nicodemus,” said Church. “Once played, it loses its power.”
“Does it?”
“Yes,” said Church. “You’ve never understood that about me.”
Brick began knocking louder on the window. Church could hear the man calling out in anger and alarm.
The priest shrugged. “Very well. If I can’t play a useful card about the past, then let me play one about the future.”
“By all means. Your predictions have never been as accurate as you pretend. What is the nature of your latest forecast?”
“Bugs and bombs, my old friend,” said Nicodemus. “Bodies and blood. And the hounds of hell running loose.”
“Ah, you’ve come all this way to be cryptic. You disappoint me.”
“Oh, was I being too vague for you? Did I make it too tricky a riddle? Forgive me, my friend, and let me be very specific. Minimum three billion. Conservative estimate. Maximum four point eight. Probably high, but it’s possible.”
There was a sharper sound as Brick hit the driver’s window with the butt of his pistol. Once, twice. A crack appeared, but the reinforced glass held.
“What are we talking about? Money? Since when do you brag about how much you steal?”
“Never,” said the priest. “And not now.”
“Then what —?”
“Bodies.”
Church smiled faintly. “Ah. I find it rather sad that you try so hard to take credit for things that other people do. You pretend to be the mover of mountains,” said Church, “but we both know you’re not. Who’s your patron this time? I’m surprised you have any friends left.”
Nicodemus held up his hands, acknowledging the point. “Sure, you stopped Sebastian Gault and El Mujahid, you stopped the Seven Kings, you stopped the Red Order and the King of Thorns, you stopped Mother Night, and you stopped the Jakobys. They’re all dead, and you can brag because their scalps are dangling from your belt. Hail the conquering hero. But it’s all for naught, I’m afraid. You killed a whole generation, but you missed their progeny. You were and are too blind to see what was coming up behind them. Quietly, carefully, learning from everything they did and everything you did to them. And surpassing them all. That’s the funny part. You, in your posturing and violence and arrogance, have been as great a teacher for her as I’ve been. You like to think that you’re protecting the ‘little people,’ the average citizen. The herd. You like to think that you serve a higher purpose, but at the end of the day you’re preserving a corrupted status quo. You could use your resources to fight a different and better fight. You could have used MindReader to tear down the fat cats who rape this planet and are turning the very air into a cloud of poison. You could have used your beloved DMS to stop the politicians in this and other countries who wage war because it is in their best financial interest instead of shooting so-called terrorists. You waste your time treating the symptoms, because you lack the courage to carve out the disease. My beloved protégé knows this about you, and about everyone like you, and she will repay you for being complicit in everything that has gone wrong with this world.”
“That’s a nice speech. It’s naïve but well phrased. It’s also enormously disingenuous, considering that in the past you have aided Hugo and others like him. You supported the cabals that were the architects of the global political dysfunction.”
“They were a means to an end.”
“You don’t have an ‘end,’” said Church. “You’re a sad and lonely creature, and you live out in the cold dark. You like setting fires. It’s the only thing that keeps you warm.”
“Maybe. But those fires are so very pretty.”
Church took the cookies out of his case while Brick continued to hammer on the window. He took one and bit off an edge. “You are, and have always been, a parasite, John.”
Church watched to see how the use of that name would affect Nicodemus. The man nodded slowly. “It took you long enough to work that out.”
“John the Revelator, preaching the gospel of a curated technological singularity. That’s new, even for you.”
“I have seen the future and preach the good word,” Nicodemus said, then burst out laughing. “You should see how they eat it up. Whole rooms filled with the best and the brightest. Even the ones who think they’re so egalitarian come to point when I get to the part where I tell them that they are the chosen ones, the nerdy meek who will inherit the earth.”
“I don’t for a moment think you genuinely believe in the benefits of such a thing, and your motives for wanting to attempt it are clear enough. But do you actually believe that you have the power and the resources to bring about such a catastrophe?”
“Time will tell.”
“I suppose it will.” Church took another bite, chewed for a moment, then asked, “You said that your protégé was a ‘she’…?”
“Oh yes, my friend, it is a lovely young woman. Or, at least, she was. Not much meat on the bone these days, I’m afraid.”
“Tell me, is this mystery woman a twin by any chance?”
Nicodemus frowned, and Church thought that for a moment the man was actually surprised, even confused. He recovered quickly, though. “No. She is an only child, with an intellect that is so lush and beautiful and a heart filled with red shadows. She cannot be bullied and she cannot be frightened. She’s past all that. There’s actually nothing you can do to hurt her.”
Church shrugged. “Hurting her is a quality of revenge. I’m more interested in stopping her.”
“There is no chance of that. The countdown is already over.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t be here.”
Nicodemus shrugged.
“So,” continued Church, “why come to me now? Why come at all? You never do anything without a reason. Not even small, mean little things. Or is it that you’re so marginalized by whatever is happening that you need a fix of attention?”
“I’ve come to say goodbye,” said Nicodemus. “But first I wanted to tell you that you’ve lost, that everything you think you’ve been fighting for is all set to burn. I wanted to see the fear in your eyes when you finally accepted that you’ve been fighting a losing battle all along.”
Church brushed lint from his tie, yawned, and said, “I’ve heard that kind of claim before and it has never been true. I even see fear in your eyes.”
Nicodemus leered at him. “Is that what you see? My, how clouded your vision has become in your dotage. No, my friend, what you see is my true delight in knowing that everything you’ve worked for, everything you’ve done to try and whitewash your soul, will fall down and something new and glorious will rise in its place. She will curate the next phase of evolution, and the things you treasure and pretend to love will wither and die.”
“You’re ranting,” said Church. “It’s unbecoming.”
“Go ahead and mock me, kinsman. If it offers some comfort to you, then be my guest. Make no mistake, however, that I have won and you, you arrogant bastard, have lost. The new world order is coming. It is almost here. Look at the walls of the world as it is. Can you hear the foundations crack? Can you smell the rot that eats at the roots? I can, and I came to tell you, because it pleases me so very much that you cannot stop it. No, no, no. And isn’t that delicious?”