She shook her head. Her hair was snow-white, with subtle threads of lustrous brown sewn through it. Candlelight reflected in her eyes so that it looked like she was on fire inside.
“No, lovely boy. I have my eye on you. One of these days you’ll be a king.”
Sebastian laughed. “A king of what?”
“What would you like to be king of?”
“Not of bloody England. Too much nonsense and fluff.”
“You could be the king of your own world,” she said. “A king of the microscopic world of viruses and bacteria.”
“Oh, very nice. Behold the leper king—”
“Shhhh!” Eris pressed a finger to his lips. “No. Not a king of the common cold or the king of cancer. One day I think you will be the King of Plagues.”
He almost laughed again, but there was something about her tone when she said those words that stopped him. “The King of Plagues.” Saying it as if it was a real title for an actual king. No mockery. This was not a joke to her.
Sebastian Gault had looked deep into her burning eyes. “Tell me,” he had whispered.
And she told him. Not much, but enough. She broke off a delicious fragment of the truth and whispered it in his ear, and it was that seed, planted there in the shadows that smelled of their passion, that grew into Gault’s dreams of empire. The many paths that led away from that moment in his life trailed away into infinite possibilities, but one—that one—was paved with gold.
The King of Plagues.
“And if I am a king,” he whispered as he pulled her on top of him, “will you be my queen?”
“No,” she breathed, her voice husky and dark, her hand reaching down to guide him inside. “No … I will be your goddess.”
Afterward, he had made love to her so hard that they both wept and ached all the next day. And each time an unwise step or movement speared pain through either of them, they remembered and laughed. It was not the sex that they remembered but the idea that had fueled it.
The King of Plagues.
And the Goddess.
THE FLIGHT WAS long and the crew did not inform them of their destination. From the duration and the angle of the sun, Gault judged that they were in southeastern Canada. Looking out of the porthole suggested east, and Gault was sure that they were still in America.
When the plane landed they were both relaxed and composed and accompanied the two Asians without comment or protest. The plane had set down at a large private airstrip by the water, and the boat ride across the river was quick and comfortable.
As the boat coasted to a gentle stop at the dock, Gault nudged Toys with his knee. Toys looked up to see a woman step out of the shade of the boathouse and into the bright sunlight. Even Toys, whose taste tended toward fashion models of both gender of the type once known as “heroin chic,” lifted his eyebrows in appreciation. The woman was tall, slender, with snow-white hair that lifted and snapped in the breeze off the water. She wore skintight white sporting slacks and a bikini top that was little more than triangles of brightly colored cloth. Her feet were bare and she wore silver jewelry at throat, ears, fingers, toes, and navel. Sunlight flickered around her as if the daylight kept reaching out with quick and naughty touches. Her body was lithe and fit and the only concession to makeup was a fierce red lipstick that was an immediate challenge.
“Well, well,” murmured Toys. “Not exactly Snow White, is she?”
“Good God,” breathed Gault. “That’s Eris.”
“I thought you said Eris was his mother.”
Gault laughed. “That is his mother.”
Toys turned to Gault with a half smile, but he wasn’t joking. Then Toys took a second and longer look at the woman as she walked toward them.
“If that’s cosmetic surgery, I’ll marry her doctor.”
“No. Just bloody good genes and a refusal to age like ordinary mortals. I don’t know how old she is, but she has to be in her sixties.”
“You’re killing my youth-centric sensibilities.”
Gault laughed. As soon as the boat was tied to the cleats, he leaped onto the dock and walked toward Eris with his arms wide. She beamed at him like a happy panther and hugged him fiercely, showering kisses on him, even on the bandages. As Toys approached, Gault gave him a look that said, Well, she’s not my mother.
Eris turned, graceful as a dancer, and gave Toys a quick and frank appraisal. “Who is this delicious beast, Sebastian?” she said in a husky voice that was English with a soupçon of Boston. “Is this the clever one who’s been keeping you out of trouble all these years?”
“Sweetheart,” Gault said, “meet Toys. Toys … this is Evangeline Regina Isadora Sanderson. Lady Eris to the commoners and Goddess to those who really know her.”
“Toys … mmm, now that’s a name with real potential.”
Toys took her hand and kissed it in a way that was at once elegant and filled with self-referential mockery. Eris gave him a wicked grin. At close quarters he could see that she was indeed older than she at first appeared, but no one would ever guess fifty, let alone mid-sixties. The bikini top was challenged to restrain abundance; her eyes were as green as a tropical sea and flecked with sparks of gold fire.
“Welcome to Crown Island,” she purred.
“Thank you for having us,” said Toys.
Eris eyed him up and down. “I haven’t had you yet.”
Then Eris hooked their arms so that they bookended her and led them toward the huge fortress of a building that was McCullough Castle.
Above them the sun was a furnace, and Gault wondered what was being forged in its heat.
GAULT AND TOYS were escorted to separate rooms.
“Divide and conquer?” Gault asked with a smile.
“Divide, yes, conquer—no, lovely boy. We want you to be comfortable. Travel is such a bore. Take a hot shower. Fresh clothes will be laid out. Someone will come to fetch you in an hour.”
One of the two silent Koreans stepped up to Toys and led him down a side hall.
When they were alone, Gault took Eris’s hand and led her a few steps away from the second servant.
“What’s going on, love? This is weird even for you.”
She laughed. “Mystery and intrigue is all the thing, lovely boy.”
“I’m not the boy I once was,” Gault said bitterly. He touched his bandages. “And I’m no longer ‘lovely.’”
Eris shook her head. “Bruises will heal and you’ll come to love your new face.”
“I wasn’t talking about my face,” he said distantly.
“Oh, God, are we going to have a gloomy existential conversation in a drafty hallway?” But before Gault could reply, she kissed him lightly on the mouth. “Go and make yourself clean and pretty for me.”
Chapter Fifteen
Breaking News: CNBC
December 17, 2:55 P.M. GMT
U.S. stock markets closed today after an apparent terrorist attack on the Royal London Hospital. The newly renovated hospital was completely destroyed, and early estimates number the dead at four thousand. That number is expected to climb.
Though the incident in London happened before the opening bell, trading went into full flight-to-safety mode as points were chopped off by panicking investors. Stock markets in Europe and Canada have also plunged.
SEC commissioner Mark David Epstein has not said when trading would resume.