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Authors: Jonathan Maberry

BOOK: The King of Plagues
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Whitechapel, London
December 17, 5:25 P.M. GMT
Director Childe arranged to have me detailed to the Metropolitan Police unit working the neighborhood around the fire scene. When I explained that Ghost was, among other things, a bomb sniffer, that amped up my usefulness.
No official statement had been given about the three assassins, but rumors within the police department hinted that an American was involved and that the officers might be tied to a terrorist cell responsible for the London Hospital bombing. My name was not mentioned, and yet the constables I worked with treated me with distance and caution. Fair enough, because after what happened outside Barrier I didn’t trust any of them, either.
Everyone in London was paranoid. Everyone had reason.
The search team to which I was attached was composed of more than three hundred officers and detectives, and a comprehensive door-to-door search was under way. Everyone was being interviewed.
First thing I did was visit the fire site. Jerry Spencer was already there when Ghost and I arrived. Jerry was in his fifties, with iron gray hair, an unsmiling face, and intensely dark eyes. His mouth wore a perpetual smile of disapproval and disappointment.
I held out my hand. “Jerry, great to see you. How was the flight?”
He eyed me like I was a side dish he hadn’t ordered. “Joe,” he said without inflection. He kept his hands in his pockets. Jerry looked down at my dog and grunted. Jerry didn’t have any pets. I suspect he wasn’t allowed to.
“Taking it back,” I murmured as I lowered my hand.
“Heard they tried to make a run at you,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Fuckers.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. I waited for him to say something else, maybe ask after my health and well-being. He started walking toward a pair of his assistants who were unpacking his gear from several large metal suitcases.
“Do we have anything yet?” I asked, falling into step beside him.
Jerry shrugged.
“And that means—?”
“It means fuck off until I call you and tell you I got something.”
“Love you, too, man,” I said, and clicked my tongue for Ghost. We left Jerry to it. Gloomy bastard.
I JOINED UP with the constables working the door-to-door. They partnered me with a very bright but also very young detective sergeant named Rebekkah Owlstone. She coordinated two dozen teams and together we met with thousands of residents; we asked tens of thousands of questions. We took names, dates, addresses, observations, speculations, rumors, unfounded accusations, political diatribes, opinions, and crackpot theories. What we didn’t get was a solid lead of any kind. We kept at it through the rest of that terrible first day and straight through into the new day that dawned gray and bleak and devoid of promise. We were no further along than we had been the day before.
I called to check on the shooters, but so far the background checks hadn’t popped up any leads.
We were chasing phantoms.
The State Correctional Institution at Graterford
Graterford, Pennsylvania
December 18, 3:26 A.M. EST
Dr. Stankevi
ius sat upright behind his desk, his palms placed flat so that he could press against the blotter to keep his fingers from trembling. “You asked to see me, Nicodemus?”
Nicodemus stood between the towering guards, a man who was a dichotomy in flesh. His small stature and frail bones suggested weakness and vulnerability, and yet his personality and charisma were like a dark tower of steel and cold stone. He dominated the room and he hadn’t yet spoken a single word.
“Please have a seat,” said the doctor.
Nicodemus’s lips writhed as he sat and there was the gleam of spittle at the corners of his mouth. “Thank you for taking time from your busy day, Doctor,” he said softly.
“It is the middle of the night. What is it you wanted to see me about? Was there something you forgot to tell me yesterday?”
“I have had a dream.”
“A dream?”
“Some would call it a vision.” His eyes were half-hidden by the shadows cast by the bony overhang of his brow.
“What was the nature of this vision?”
“Revelatory. It is a time of great discovery, Doctor. The Imperial Eye has opened and the Eye sees what the Elders see, and it is well pleased. The Eye can see into the minds of the Elders and what it sees is deemed good.”
“I—”
“Plagues will be visited upon the lands of Empire—and upon those who have broken faith with the Sons of Moses.”
“What does all of this mean?”
“The voice you hear is mine, but the servant is a vessel through which the Goddess speaks for all to hear. It is the time for all who believe to rise and be counted. False prophets have been heard throughout the land, but paradise does not wait for the bringers of small fire. The true face of the
All shines not on those who use the sickle to hew down the wheat staffs that grow in the field of the Goddess. The true face of the All shines upon those who have never strayed from the winding path that leads through the desert.”
Dr. Stankevi
ius sighed and leaned back. “Nicodemus, I’m sorry but I’m not in the mood for this. You said that you had important information for me. If you have information regarding the murder of Jesus Santiago, then—”
Nicodemus suddenly leaned forward. The guards jumped in surprise and almost—almost—made a grab for him, but neither of them seemed capable or willing to lay hands upon the little man. Dr. Stankevi
ius recoiled from the wild look in Nicodemus’s eyes. His eyes flared wide so that the whites could be seen all around the irises, but those irises seemed to have darkened from a mottled green-brown to a black as dark as midnight. It was a trick of the light, Stankevi
ius told himself.
A trick of the light.
“
They
are coming,” whispered Nicodemus in a voice that was unrecognizable as his own and barely recognizable as human. It passed through the doctor’s mind like a cold wind.
The room went still.
“How will you be judged when the Sons of the Goddess sit on their thrones? When the Elders reclaim what is theirs and the Goddess reaches out her dark and shining hand across the face of this world, will you stand with the wicked and be cast into everlasting perdition? Or … will you stand with the Chosen and be counted as a warrior of heaven?”
Stankevi
ius felt his skin crawl. When he exhaled he could see the vapor of his own breath. But that was impossible; the thermostat was permanently set at sixty-eight.
Nicodemus bent forward another inch so that now his eyes were completely hidden by the shadows of his pale, craggy brow.
“The Elders have appealed to the Goddess and she has sent her judgment.”
“Wh-what judgment, Nicodemus?” stammered the doctor, his body suddenly wracked by a shiver. It was so cold in the room that his teeth hurt.
Nicodemus smiled so that his full lips were stretched thin over wet teeth. “She has sent Ten Plagues, just as the God sent Ten Plagues in His turn. The first was a rain of fire and ash that filled the streets of the new city. Woe to the children of the wicked that they did not listen, that their hearts were hardened as the Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. But the Goddess did not harden the hearts of the wicked. Anyone who says that she did is a liar and blasphemer. The wicked need no help in hardening their own hearts. They are defiant in their iniquity.”
“What are you talking about? What are these plagues?”
The guards edged away from him, their hands on the riot sticks hanging from belt loops. Neither of them looked at each other or to Dr. Stankevi
ius. Each was locked in his own private moment, each caught up in his own damaged reaction to this man.
Nicodemus sat straight, bringing his face down toward Dr. Stankevi
ius. He opened his eyes and for a moment—for a terrible single moment—his eyes were completely black. No iris, no sclera.
“Lo! And behold the rise of the Seven Kings. All shall fall before them!”
He blinked and his eyes were normal again.
A trick of the light,
Dr. Stankevi
ius told himself.
Just a trick of that damned light.
Nicodemus sat still and did not say another word.
After a few minutes Dr. Stankevi
ius ordered the guards to take Nicodemus back to his cell. When the door was closed and the sounds of their footsteps faded, Dr. Stankevi
ius rose and tottered toward his bathroom. He stared for a long minute into his own bloodshot and haunted eyes. He sank to his knees as a wave of nausea slammed into him; then he flipped up the lip of the toilet and vomited into it. Again and again until his stomach churned and twisted on nothing.

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