Bunny swung his gun around and emptied his magazine into the whole line of them. The dying tripped over the dead, clogging the hatch. They had no angle for return fire. The slide locked back on his pistol and Bunny dropped it without a thought and snatched up an M4. He leaned around the hatch and shoved his arm in, firing as he did so. Holding the weapon one-handed while firing required immense strength. Bunny emptied the whole magazine.
He was grinning.
“Little help!” he yelled as he fished for a fresh magazine. A SEAL ran over to him, assessed the problem, and plucked a fragmentation grenade from his belt.
“Fire in the hole!”
He threw it into the hatch.
The Kingsmen had nowhere to run.
Those who survived the blast were dazed and deafened and bleeding, and they could do nothing when Bunny and the SEAL stood shoulder to shoulder and fired down into the tangled mass of the Goddess’s elite.
Chapter Eighty-six
The Sea of Hope
December 21, 8:09 P.M. EST
Santoro’s hands reached for the syringe. I reached for Santoro. He grabbed the instrument and I closed one hand around his wrist and knotted the other in his hair. The pain in my back was a howling thing, but I took everything it had to give me and bellowed like a fiend as I slammed Santoro face forward onto the deck. His nose exploded. I slammed him again and again.
He stopped trying for the syringe and rolled sideways. I held on with all my strength and tore away a handful of hair and a patch of bloody scalp. Santoro screamed. He lay on his side and tried to kick me, but I blocked the kicks with my bent knees.
I threw the hank of bloody hair in his face and followed it with a punch that shattered bone.
Santoro reeled back, bleeding and dazed, his eyes rolling up in his head. Something abruptly shifted in his eyes and his hands came up defensively to protect his face. I thought it was a ploy … but when he spoke the change was there in his voice.
“No!” he shreiked, the single word drenched with terror. “Please!”
No.
God Almighty.
This monster … this thing dared to beg for mercy.
The very concept of it made me insane with fury. I rolled to my knees and hammered punches down on him. He screamed and screamed, flailing in panic now. Somewhere in his dark mind he had crossed the threshold of combat and entered the territory of defeat. For most people—for warriors—there is a lot of no-man’s-land between those two poles. For most people there is a gradual slide from courage to cowardice.
But not for Santoro.
Something in him snapped and that fast he lost the belief that he could win this fight. Maybe it was the fact that he knew he could not get that syringe, that even if he could somehow escape the moment then he was still as doomed as the rest of us.
Maybe that was it.
I don’t know, and at that moment I didn’t care. I didn’t even see him as I pounded on him. I saw the faces of Zoë and Laura Plympton. Of Charles Grey. Of Mikey, bleeding out on a cold laboratory floor, murdered by his father because the alternative was the possibility that this man, this fucking creature, would find him. And make him into an angel.
My fists were a blur. My arms were red to the elbows. I could taste Santoro’s blood in my mouth as it flew with each impact.
He kept screaming those two words.
“No.”
“Please!”
How many times had he heard them? From his angels. From the people like Plympton and Grey and Amber Taylor, who had been forced by Santoro to look at the photographs and then compare them with the pictures of their own loved ones.
How many times had he heard those two words and gotten an erotic thrill from them?
God.
This man had tortured good people, he had turned innocent people, into weapons of mass destruction. The London Hospital. Area 51. Fair Isle.
This man had ordered the hits on Amber Taylor’s family. And on Starbucks.
I battered his face into red impossibility and then worked on his body. My hands were lumps of pain at the ends of my arms, but I didn’t care. I staggered to my feet and kicked him, breaking whatever I could break.
“Stop!”
The voice hit me harder than I was hitting Santoro. I wheeled around and saw two figures through a red haze.
Circe.
Mr. Church.
And then I staggered backward, my balance failing, my legs buckling. I fell against the wall and slid down. A few feet away Santoro whimpered like a piglet and tried to crawl away, his hand still reaching for the syringe. Far above us the sounds of gunfire seemed to be thinning, becoming more sporadic.
Mr. Church stepped over my outstretched legs and picked up the syringe. He examined it, frowned, and handed it to Circe.
I flapped a hand toward Santoro. “He … he had it. They … the Kings …”
Circe knelt in front of me, her fingers probing my wounds, her face cut with lines of concern. “Joe … oh my God!”
Church looked down at Santoro, who had begun to weep.
Church stepped over and dropped to one knee beside Ghost. His big hands explored the bloodstained fur with a gentleness that surprised me.
“He’s alive,” he said.
Church turned toward me.
“The syringe. He said it was epinephrine,” I mumbled.
“No, it’s not,” said Circe.
I leaned away from her and spit blood to clear my mouth. “The King of Plagues,” I said. “Santoro said we’d all drown in a river of blood. He knows the plan.”
Circe gasped and Church’s face darkened. He rose and walked toward Santoro, who tried to crawl away. Church walked past him and then wheeled and with a savage kick tore a stateroom door off its hinges.
“Circe,” he said, “Captain Ledger needs medical attention. I think the fighting is about over. Stay out of sight until we know who won.”
“What are you going to do?”
Church looked down at Santoro and then slowly removed his tinted glasses and tucked them into his jacket pocket. He squatted and grabbed Santoro by the shoulders and with a grunt of effort hauled him to his feet, spun him around, and thrust him into the room.
“Don’t … ,” she begged.
Church ignored her.
“Dad!”
Church lingered for a moment in the doorway and looked back at her. “Do as I say,” he said. Then he walked into the room.
I stared at Circe.
Dad?
From inside the room the screams began. I staggered to my feet and leaned on Circe as we fled.
Chapter Eighty-seven
The Sea of Hope
December 21, 8:13 P.M. EST
We didn’t go to Circe’s cabin. I staggered along with Circe to find DeeDee. She was still in the alcove, sitting in a pool of her own blood. Alive but unconscious and in very bad shape.
“How is she?” I asked. Circe knelt to examine her.
“She might lose her eye. She needs to be in surgery as soon as possible.”
“God.” I looked back the way we had come and wished ten times as much pain for Santoro.
Footsteps pounded down the stairs and I snatched up DeeDee’s gun and spun around.