Chapter Fifty-four
Starbucks
Southampton, Pennsylvania
December 19, 5:49 P.M. EST
Then the moment crumbled to dust as sirens burned the air and hearing returned to our gunshot-deafened ears so that we heard the screams of those still clinging to life.
“Top!” I yelled.
“Clear!” he called as he and Bunny came out from their points of cover and swarmed the dead, kicking away their weapons, checking for pulses behind the appearance of death.
I turned and ran toward Rudy, but Circe was there, pushing him down. She had a knife in her hand—God only knows where it came from—and she was cutting his sleeve away, yelling at him to hold pressure there, there, dammit, changing from the person who had just killed into the doctor who had dedicated her life to doing no harm. Tears glittered like diamonds at the corners of her eyes.
“Dr. O’Tree,” Rudy said in a voice slurred by shock and pain, “it’s a pleasure to—”
“Shut up,” she snapped.
“Okay.”
As Circe worked, her gaze kept flicking up and past me. I followed her line of sight and saw the six small holes clustered in the center of the driver’s windshield of the van. The figure inside was slumped sideways, eyes wide and fixed and nothing much else remaining of his face.
DeeDee knelt beside Circe with an open field surgical kit. She popped a surette of morphine and jabbed it in Rudy’s arm. He said something in Spanish that sounded like “I love you,” and passed out.
I tried to help them, but they waved me off.
“Inside! The people!” Circe cried in a voice that was as fragile as cracked porcelain.
The sirens were getting louder. Help was coming. Thank god.
I ran to the front of the destroyed Starbucks just as the first police cars came screeching into the parking lot.
I stepped into a scene from hell. The ceiling lights had all been blown out. People were screaming. Those who could still scream. I looked in through the shattered window. Too many of the sprawled figures lay still and silent, their voices silenced forever. The place looked like it had been spray painted with red, but it wasn’t the cheerful holiday red of Christmas.
There were no other shooters. The woman in the Grinch shirt was on her hands and knees, splinters of glass glittering in her hair like stardust. She looked around at the carnage. Then she looked down at the figure that lay beside her.
Marty Hanler.
She screamed. I couldn’t blame her.
“Federal agent!” I yelled. “Police and ambulances are on their way. Everyone stay down!”
Top and the others swarmed past me to provide first aid.
Ghost stood above the last of the shooters. The only one still alive. I had to step over the dead and dying to get to him.
“Off,” I said quietly, and Ghost released the ruin of an arm. “Watch.”
The man was white from blood loss, but he was far from dead, the wound in his neck was bad but not fatal, his arm was probably a total loss unless he got to a top-notch microsurgeon in the next hour or so, but even with all that he would live. When he looked up into my eyes I could see the precise moment when he realized that surviving this was not going to be any kind of mercy.
Not for him.
Interlude Thirty-seven
The Seven Kings
December 19, 5:51 P.M. EST
When the American came back to his office he found Toys sitting on the floor, his shirt covered in drying blood, dark stains on the carpet. Toys held his head in his hands as if it would crack and fall apart if he didn’t press the broken pieces together.
“Holy shit,” said the American. “What happened?”
Toys sniffed, shook his head. “I tried to tell him,” he mumbled. “I tried to explain the danger he was creating for himself.”
“Ah,” said the American. “Yeah, I could have told you that was a waste of time. He hit you, huh?”
Toys sobbed into his hands.
The American took a clean towel from the wet bar and poured ice cubes into it and handed it to Toys. Then he took a bottle of Don Julio tequila, pulled out the stopper, and dropped it on the bar. He placed his back against the wall and slid down to the floor so that he sat next to Toys. He nudged Toys with his knee and handed him the bottle. Toys shook his head.
“Take a fucking drink,” growled the American.
Toys sighed, took the bottle, and drank a careful mouthful through torn lips. Coughed, gagged, drank another. He handed the bottle back and the American took a pull. For the next ten minutes neither said a word. They passed the bottle back and forth and let the minutes harden the cement that held their thoughts together.
“He’s going to get himself killed,” Toys said.
“Probably.”
“It’s your mother’s fault.”
“It’s both their faults. They were made for each other.”
They each took a pull.
“I think I’ve been fired as his Conscience.” Toys tried to laugh about that, but his lips hurt too much.
“You’ll always have a place with the Kings, Toys,” said the American.
Toys looked at him. “Why? I’m Sebastian’s luggage. What am I to you?”
“Don’t sell yourself short, kiddo. You have clarity of mind. You can see the Big Picture without getting seduced by the shiny little details.”
“You mean I’m a cynic.”
“I prefer ‘realist,’ but yeah.”
Toys held out his hand for the bottle, took a pull.
They drank in silence for a long time. Then the American said, “I don’t have anyone to talk to.”
Toys looked at him in surprise. “What? You have—”
“Santoro? He’s a psychopath. I use him the way I’d use a gun. Point and shoot. But if it came down to where he had to decide between me and Mom, you know how he’d jump.”
“Is it going to come down to that?”
The American nodded. “Yep. You know it is.”
Toys sighed. “Sebastian, too. A Goddess, a King, and the Angel of Death. Very nice. You could build a heavy metal album on that.”
The American laughed. “Guess you’ve figured out that the whole ‘no secrets’ thing between the Seven Kings is a frigging joke. Always has been. Some of them take it seriously, and I pretend to … but I always hedge my bets. I don’t trust easily. With the Kings, I’ve made a fortune. I’m damn near richer than God, but I don’t really enjoy it. I fuck around with money because what else do I have?”
“‘When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.’”
The American grunted. “A misquote from Plutarch, but it hits the bull’s-eye. My point is, though, that I can’t trust the Kings. I can’t trust Santoro. And I never trusted my mother. I’m glad I wasn’t actually raised by her. She was a rich debutante when she had me, but she gave me up and my dad raised me. He was a blue-collar guy. When he struck it rich, they got married, but by then I was in college. I didn’t know how corrupt she was until I was twenty-two or -three, and I didn’t know how crazy she was until I was thirty. She was already working on this Goddess thing when I created the Seven Kings.”
“That long ago?”
“Sure. She’s brilliant, but she’s totally fucking nuts. Gault is perfect for her. Brilliant but nuts.”