Jerusha plunged a hand into her seed belt, but she knew she was dead, that it would be on her in a moment.
More gunfire rattled from the ridge behind her, tearing the ground directly in front of the creature. The were-beast snarled in defiance, a roar that made the hair stand on the back of Jerusha’s neck, but the creature turned and leaped away back down the slope, vanishing into the undergrowth.
Far down the slope, she saw the second child for an instant: with his gaunt, haunted face. Then he turned and followed the other boy down the hill.
It seemed to be over. The forest was hushed, even the birds silent after the clamor of the guns. Jerusha went to the Leopard Man, snagged in his cage of vines. She heard Cesar scrambling down toward her and she waved him back. “Go to the others.”
“You need me.” He hefted the gun. “For this.”
She knew he would do it, that he was more than willing to kill the man, that he knew as well as she did that there was no option here. She also knew that Cesar was still only a child-a child who had seen too much death and violence already. He didn’t need to be part of this. He didn’t need this memory to color all the others. She shook her head. “No.”
“If you leave them alive, they will come after us again,” he told her, his dark eyes stern. His lips pressed tightly together into a dark line.
“Go to the others,” she told him again. “Make certain that they’re all right, that there aren’t more soldiers after them. That creature may come after them next.”
Cesar stared at her for several seconds. Finally, he shrugged and went back up to the ridge; she heard him call to the other two.
“Let me go, plant lady, and I promise you I will leave,” the Leopard Man said. Jerusha turned to him. He was gazing at her. Blood drooled from a cut on his forehead and one eye was swelling shut. “I will take my men with me. Let me go. I swear this. The truth.”
“How do I know you will keep your promise?”
The man licked bloodied lips. “I give you my word. I swear to God. I swear on the lives of my wife and children, who will weep if I die.”
“You have children?”
The man nodded. “Yes. In my pocket, there are pictures. I could show you.”
“You have children,” she repeated, “and yet you could do what you have done to these other children?” Jerusha said it softly, and the man’s eyes narrowed. He shifted abruptly back to leopard form, snarling and roaring; she tightened the vines around him, around the soldiers. She was crying as she manipulated the plants: in frustration, in fear, in rage. She heard them scream, heard the screams fade to moans as the vines clenched tighter, sliding up to wrap around throats, to slide into open mouths to choke them. The were-leopard at her feet clawed futilely at the ground, and again he shifted back to human form. He was staring at her, but the eyes were now dead and unblinking.
She watched for a long time, until she was certain that he was no longer breathing.
On the Lualaba River, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Ghost materialized out of the darkness at the edge of his campfire, silently watching him. Her toes dangled an inch from the ground. Light from the coals glimmered on her dark eyes. She looked diaphanous in the silvery moonlight.
Wally’s eyelids slid lower… lower… The muscles in his neck relaxed. His head dropped. The effort not to fall into a dead sleep made his eyes water.
Ghost’s feet drifted into his narrow, blurry field of view. She reared back, winding up for another whack with the knife. Wally jumped up and lunged at her.
His body passed clean through her. Ghost’s body had no more substance than a wisp of smoke. He landed beside the dwindling campfire with a clang and a thud. “Ouch.” He looked up. Ghost stared down at him, expressionless as always. “What’s your name?” he asked.
She drifted back into the jungle. Silent. Unreadable.
He stood, brushed himself off. But Wally knew she was out there, waiting and watching. So he sat cross-legged beside the dying fire and called out, “My name’s Wally.”
The answer was a silence punctuated only by the chirping of nocturnal wildlife.
23
Friday,
December 18
The Louvre
Paris, France
The security detail for the peace conference was an unholy melange of mercenary commando and hotel concierge. The hotels for blocks around the museum were booked. Negotiators for the Caliphate, emissaries from the People’s Paradise of Africa, UN experts and security, the press of fifty different nations. The perimeter was a greatest hits album of the Committee. Walking in toward the Louvre, Bugsy saw three different flyers floating menacingly in the cool Parisian air. Snipers dotted the rooftops like postmodern gargoyles. In the courtyard, milling around the famous I. M. Pei glass pyramid, were groups of men and women in suits and soldiers in urban camouflage.
When they came close enough to see the familiar forms of Lohengrin and Babel, Simoon released his arm. As if by a common understanding, Simoon reached up and plucked out the earring, and Ellen was walking at his side. Not two lovers in Paris, but two colleagues working for the Committee. And Lohengrin didn’t have to figure out the right etiquette for talking to a dead girl.
Klaus had the lock jawed look that Bugsy associated with the Teutonic God-Man feeling like someone had stepped on his dick. The fog was burning off, the first blue of the sky peeking through. Babel and Ellen were speaking in French. Apparently Ellen spoke French. The things you learn. “So how’s the war?” Bugsy asked.
Lohengrin shook his head, the jaw clamping tighter. “We were putting together an exploratory subcommittee on sanctions against the Nshombos,” he said, the round, full vowels cut almost short with frustration. “Only word got out. Now I have eight memos condemning the existence of the subcommittee and a second subcommittee forming to explore better methods of creating exploratory subcommittees.”
Bugsy chuckled. Lohengrin frowned deeply, then smiled, then laughed and shook his head. “There was a time when we were effective. Now, it’s all become bureaucrats talking to bureaucrats over drinks at the Louvre while people suffer.”
“Isn’t that always what it comes to?” Bugsy said. “I mean, look at what we’re doing. A peace conference. What exactly is that but a place for the kids with the most toys to get together and have a gentlemanly conversation about who’s going to kill the most innocent people? We wouldn’t be doing this at all if hauling out tanks and missiles and battle-ready aces wasn’t actually more destructive, right?”
“I know,” Lohengrin said with disgust. “And yet those days in the desert, marching from the Necropolis to Aswan with the army of the Caliphate slaughtering people and biting at our heels? Then at least we could do something.”
Aswan. Where Simoon had died.
“Yeah,” Bugsy said bitterly. “The good old days. So what’s my line?”
Lohengrin tilted his head. In all fairness, it was a pretty obscure way to ask the question.
“Where do you want me?” Bugsy said. “I’m here being all secure and detailed. I figure…”
Lohengrin nodded and took Bugsy’s elbow, leading him a few steps away from Babel and Cameo. “We need you for coordination. A few dozen wasps here and there throughout the perimeter, but not so many that you would seem… out of place in the reception hall.”
“So no dropping a leg or anything.”
“No.”
“Okay, but I’m going to need warm spots. Sluggish, half-dead wasps aren’t going to fit your bill.”
Lohengrin frowned.
“Cleavage works,” Bugsy said. “If you’ve got anyone with cleavage. Hey! Joking. Just joking. But seriously, it does work.”
“I’ll do what I can. But if trouble comes, I want you to warn us. I do not like the mix of people here. Too many armed men, and it stops being security.”