Suicide Kings

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.”

“Who do we have on the inside?”

Lohengrin nodded across the courtyard to where Burrowing Owl was making polite talk with Tricolor, the local ace host and face of all things French and vaguely trite. Snowblind was just behind them.

“That all?”

“You, me. Babel. Cameo. She did bring…”

“Simoon and Will-o’-Wisp,” Bugsy said. “We’ll have firepower if we need it.”

Lohengrin nodded, but he still didn’t look happy.

“Toad Man as well, provided we can convince him to stop the frog’s legs jokes. And you know Garou?”

“Don’t think we’ve met,” Bugsy said.

“Garou!” Lohengrin called. A decent-looking man came over, eyebrows raised in question. “This is my old friend, Jonathan Hive.”

“Good to meet you,” Bugsy said, holding out a hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Garou looked nonplussed, but shook Bugsy’s hand all the same. “We’ve met,” he said.

“We have?” Bugsy said.

“Twice.”

“Ah.”

Garou nodded to Lohengrin and walked away, looking less than amused.

“Apparently, I have met him,” Bugsy said.

“Yes.”

“Well, at least I got the big faux pas of the night out of the way early.”

“Ah, Paris again.”

“And the weather couldn’t be worse,” Siraj grumbled from where he sat next to Noel in the backseat of a Mercedes limo.

Noel looked out at the falling rain and couldn’t disagree. Through the murk and fog the Louvre loomed. The stones were stained grey from dirt, soot, and exhaust. In the dim light it looked like what it was-a fortress.

His was not a fanciful nature, but Noel found himself looking away. “Now remember. Talk, talk, talk,” he said.

“Yes, yes, I know, I’m not an idiot or a child,” Siraj snapped. The big limo breasted the honking, darting minis and citrons like a shark through minnows. Siraj kept his tone offhanded, but the anxiety showed through. “Do you think Weathers will be here?”

“I doubt it. He’s not the negotiating kind. If Nshombo is here it won’t take much effort to drag this out endlessly. Punch the right buttons and he’ll go on about dialectic materialism for fucking hours.”

“Lovely,” Siraj said sourly.

Noel laughed. “Remember, we’re playing the tune here. Enjoy it.”

The car slowed and rolled to a stop at a security checkpoint. Noel, in his role as Prince Siraj’s attache, offered over their identification. The French soldier peered at the papers, then peered into the car, nodded in satisfaction, handed back the documents, and waved them through.

The car joined the line of vehicles disgorging passengers in front of the I.M. Pei glass pyramid. In the west the setting sun managed to struggle out from beneath the hem of the clouds. The glass facets of the building grabbed the fire and glowed red and gold.

Noel checked his watch. It was still seventeen minutes until he could have access to Lilith. He didn’t think he would need her, but he would have preferred to have this party either in full day or full night.

Another soldier, this one in more antique, comic-opera uniform, opened the back passenger door. Siraj stepped out and Noel followed. He shot the cuffs of his shirt until he had the perfect rim of white beneath the cuffs of his tuxedo coat. Noel had opted for the traditional white tie. He didn’t want to stand out in this gathering.

They entered the pyramid.

“Dr. Okimba?” a sleek UN gopher said. “I’d like to introduce some of the Committee members who are providing security for the peace talks.”

Tom Weathers nodded his head. It was still his head. It still felt like his head. But to the glittering crowd beneath the smoked-glass and steel pyramid it was the big, shaven, plump-featured head of Dr. Apollinaire Okimba.

“Your Honor, Simone Duplaix from Canada, whose ace name is Snowblind. And Nikolaas Buxtehude from Brussels. He’s called Burrowing Owl.”

“Enchanted,” Okimba said, cupping the soft hand of the girl in a tight black T-shirt and black jeans and raising it to his lips. Her bobbed hair was electric blue, with a gold stripe dyed in her bangs. Okimba didn’t know her from Grace Slick, but Tom Weathers had met her in Kongoville, before the Committee turned on the PPA-and Tom. “It is always a great pleasure,” he murmured, “to meet a young woman as formidable as she is lovely.”

He turned to the second ace. Burrowing Owl was a short shit about as wide as tall, wearing an odd pointy brass cap, goggles, and old-time leather flying clothes under what was either a feathered cape or folded wings. He clicked his heels and nodded as Okimba shook his hand. The hands were big and red and massively calloused, as if he used them to burrow with. “Deeply honored, sir,” he said.

“Likewise.” This was a groovy power, though one Tom didn’t use much. Which was too bad; he was a pretty good actor, if he did say so himself. He looked and sounded and even smelled exactly like the jurist: a large, fat, heartily affable black man in his early sixties.

The real Dr. Okimba was a major legal eagle. He was also a counterrevolutionary pain in the ass who made a lot of noise about civil rights for the citizens of the People’s Paradise. Right now the good doctor was enjoying captivity deluxe and incommunicado in a suite in the Nshombos’ vast new palace.

The gopher was burbling about how historical this all was. Tom tuned him out. He was scoping the crowd, checking out the opposition. Several of the Committee members who’d been in Africa last year were there: big Buford Calhoun looking as out of place in his human skin as he would as a toad the size of a Volkswagen; the Lama, snickering at what Tom suspected was a most unsagelike dirty joke; Brave Hawk, visible through the glass of the pyramid overhead as he soared the pink and pale green sunset sky on combat air patrol. No one he couldn’t handle, if it came to that.

Tom excused himself and moved off as if to find a waiter serving champagne. He wouldn’t dare drink it. He didn’t trust himself to keep from showing sudden fury on his borrowed face. He’d just spotted a tall, handsome dude with white-blond hair hanging to the broad shoulders of his Savile Row suit. Men and women crowded around him like groupies at a rock concert. He was the German ace Lohengrin, current chairman of the Committee and global superstar. But Tom knew that broad-jawed smiling face from another setting. Jackson Square in New Orleans. Where Tom had gone to rescue his kidnapped daughter.

“Keep it cool, lover,” Hei-lian whispered in his ear. She and her Guoanbu nerd-gnomes were ensconced in a pension just across the Seine, keeping track of the proceedings via a shitload of little audiovisual pickups studded literally all over him and siphoning feeds from the innumerable media cameras present. “You’ve got a job to do.”

Tom made himself nod. Smile while you can, you square-headed Nazi puke, he told himself. Payback’s a motherfucker.

Then by a trick of acoustics he heard Simone burble to her companions, “Oh, my God, did you see that? That fat geezer totally came on to me!”

Tom allowed himself a grin. I guess I’m glad Doc Prez hasn’t let Alicia feed this fat fuck to her pets after all, he thought. Shit, this is fun.

Siraj opted for the escalator rather than the winding staircase. As they glided down Noel noted the white linen-draped buffet table, the white-coated waiters slipping through the crowds with trays of drinks and canapes for those too lazy to walk to the buffet. The glass above them, the white marble underfoot turned the usual drone of conversation into a sound like clashing cymbals. The setting was fantastic, but as a place for diplomatic conversation it left much to be desired.

Noel noticed Lohengrin’s golden head looming above the crowd. Here and there a leopard-print fez thrust above the crowd, marking the presence of Leopard Men. Secretary-General Jayewardene, with Babel at his side, moved through the crowd looking plump, smug, and serene. Or perhaps that was just him showing a what, me worry? diplomat’s face to the world.

Personally, Noel was worried. There was a level of free-floating tension that was almost like a metallic scent beneath the smell of perfume and canapes.

Siraj walked away to greet Jayewardene. Noel snagged a glass of champagne and started moving toward the buffet. He noticed Lohengrin skittering off in the other direction.

Wondering if it was just coincidence, Noel changed course and moved toward Lohengrin. The young German ace looked around wildly, spotted Jayewardene and Babel, and started heading for them. Tallyho, Noel thought, and ducked into a clump of people. He moved through the crowd, staying out of Lohengrin’s sight until he stepped out of another knot of people directly in front of the younger man.

Klaus reared back like a startled horse. “Didn’t you and I have a weekend in Paris?” Noel asked.

Blood washed up Lohengrin’s neck and suffused his face. “Don’t talk about such things,” he said in a low whisper.

Noel thought back on those times when, as Lilith, he had seduced and pumped (so to speak) the big German ace for information about Jayewardene and the Committee.

“I cared for you. I told you my deepest dreams. I planned for a life together-”

“I used you. Get over it,” Noel said.

Lohengrin’s expression registered both hurt and shock at the blunt reply. “Have you ever cared about anything?”

“Don’t go there, Klaus. I have many things I care about. You just don’t happen to be one of them.”

“Would you ever consider coming back to the Committee?” Lohengrin asked. “We could use you.”

“No, thank you.”

“So, the good work of the Committee means nothing to you?”

“No. I think you’re a bunch of idealist idiots.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because there are things I do care about.”

“I think you are a coward. I think you got scared in Jackson Square, and now you leave others to fight your battles.”

“And I think you haven’t gotten over discovering your Lili Marlene was a boy.” Noel clinked his glass against Lohengrin’s and sauntered away.

The conference began with the reception; the Louvre closed for a private party, and how classy was that? Tables laid out with the most expensive snack food known to man. Soft music supplied by a string quartet in somber attire. And milling around like guests at a party, the representatives of the bloodiest war on the planet. Over there by the stairs Prince Siraj, who now commanded the same people who had been trying to kill Bugsy in Egypt. On the far side of the space, Dr. Okimba radiated charm and goodwill on behalf of the PPA. And all around them, spreading out for miles, the greatest works of human art, as if by rubbing Okimba and Siraj against civilization, maybe some of the chrome would stick to them.

The whole thing appealed to Bugsy’s sense of the absurd. He slouched over to the bar-because what better symbol of peace than an open bar-and got another rum and Coke. The Committee was out in force. Lohengrin, smiling and preening in front of the cameras for an international news network. Garou still smirking at him coolly. Toad Man filling up on free prawns.

Cameo folded her arm in Bugsy’s, smiling the way she did when she didn’t mean it. “I just talked to Babel.”

“Uh-huh. Um. You’re wearing the earring. Are you…?”

“Ali’s here, but she’s letting me drive. Jayewardene’s had one of his hunches. There is going to be trouble. He thinks something may happen with Dr. Okimba.”

“Ah. Right. Who’s that?”

He felt her go stiff. “You’re joking, right?”

“Yes, totally joking,” Bugsy said. “Okimba. Doctor. Jurist. Big name in the PPA, chief negotiator, hasn’t killed anyone we know of. So what’s the word? Do we think someone’s going to go for him? Or is he going to turn all ninja assassin in the middle of the talks?”

“I don’t know. But Lohengrin needs people near him and ready without seeming like they are.”

“I’m on the case, boss,” Bugsy said, giving a snappy salute only slightly marred by the lack of two fingers. “Don’t worry about it too much though. Hunches. Gut feelings. Jayewardene’s just nervous, right?”

“Not really,” Cameo said.

“Where is the object of all concern?”

Cameo nodded toward the center of the room.

And there, standing alongside the bad guys’ head good guy, was Noel Matthews, looking slightly less smug than usual. The little Brit had changed a lot since the days when he’d used his skills at sleight of hand to flummox the aces of American Hero. He’d even changed in the time since their adventures in Texas and New Orleans with the nuclear kid. If it was possible for a man to look relieved and hunted at the same time, that was Noel Matthews.

“Hey,” Bugsy said. “Want to go kill two birds with one stone?”

“It depends,” she said. “What exactly do you plan to kill?”

“Trust me. We’ve got the perfect excuse to go hang close to Okimba. Let’s go talk some shop.” Bugsy tipped the bartender and walked across the most elegant, civilized room in Western civilization.

Noel didn’t see him coming until he was too close to ignore. “Mr. Tipton-Clarke,” Matthews said with a half smile. “Or do you prefer Hive?”

“I answer to any of them. You know Cameo?”

Noel nodded politely. Dr. Okimba smiled like he was hoping they’d both go away.

No chance of that.

“I was hoping I’d run into you,” Bugsy said. “We’re doing some work for the Committee, and I needed to ask you something. Maybe you can help out too, Doc.”

“I’m pleased to be of service,” Noel said in a tone that suggested he might not actually be pleased, “but-”

“It’s a little thing. All history and background stuff. Nothing important. I’ve been finding out some more about our partners in peace over in the PPA. It’s been a trip. Have you ever been to Vietnam, Doc?”

Okimba’s eyes went a degree wider. “No,” he said carefully. “I don’t believe I have.”

“We just got back,” Bugsy said with a smile. “Nice place. Lousy traffic. Anyway. I’ve been looking at the early life of our man Tom Weathers, and especially the nice retarded lady Sprout?”

“I am sure,” Noel said, “that Dr. Okimba isn’t-”

“No, please,” Okimba said. “Continue.”

“Bugs,” Cameo said, and the tone of her voice was a warning.

“Well, we all kind of know the Radical’s not the world’s most stable guy. No offense, Doc. But it turns out this one girl, Sprout, is like the only person on the planet he’s not willing to sacrifice. So I was wondering how you knew to grab her in particular.”

“I do not understand,” Dr. Okimba said. “It was Bahir who took Sprout.”

“Well, sure,” Bugsy said, “but that’s Noel. Bahir, Lilith, and

… Oh. Shit. That was still a secret, wasn’t it? Look, Doc. Forget I said anything, okay?”

It took all of Tom’s self-control to keep from frying both men where they stood on general principles. “How dare this man show his face at a peace conference!” he boomed, volume rising. His bull-hippo bellow echoed from the pyramidal roof; everyone else had stopped talking at once. Heads turned to stare. “I demand that this man be arrested immediately! He is a spy, an assassin, an international war criminal! I demand justice.”

Jonathan Hive’s eyes had gone wide in a suddenly pale face. “I didn’t mean to pee on anybody’s parade-”

Around them voices broke the silence like so many falling crystal goblets, some brittle with confusion, others sharp with anger. Tom’s fury had welled up like lava as his own voice rose. It was the look in the Englishman’s indigo eyes-half stricken, half calculating-that convinced Tom of his guilt. “You ratfucker,” he screamed, making no pretense of hiding his own voice. “You kidnapped my daughter!”

He raised his arms as if reaching for Noel Matthews’s throat. Flame billowed red from his palms.

“Oh, shit,” Bugsy said, and his body literally exploded into a cloud of green wasps. His clothing puddled on the white marble floor.

Noel threw himself to the side, and the blast of flame roared past him. He felt its searing heat upon his cheeks, smelled burning hair, and felt the bite of fire on his shoulder.

Dr. Okimba’s round fat face was shimmering, running, changing. Into Tom Weathers.

And Noel was on fire. A quick glance revealed the flames dancing across his tuxedo jacket. He needed to get the fuck out of here, but he didn’t want to transform into Lilith in front of half the world’s media. Ripping off his jacket, he grabbed a glass of bourbon from a man’s hand and tossed it on the flames. They roared up greedily, consuming the alcohol. Noel whipped the coat into the face of an oncoming Leopard Man.

All around him people were shouting and guns were appearing, the muzzles like small dark mouths ready to spit death. Weathers was coming after him. Apparently incinerating Noel was not going to be enough. Weathers wanted his hands on him.

Noel seized a champagne bottle out of an ice bucket. He placed his finger over the top, shook it hard, and sent the resulting fountain of bubbly into Weathers’s face. As the Radical roared and cursed, Noel danced away from him, grabbed Prince Siraj by the back of his tuxedo jacket, and pulled him off his feet, out of the line of fire. Siraj landed hard on his back on the marble floor. The fire alarms were howling, and the sprinklers sprang to life. Water pattered onto Noel’s body. He kicked off his shoes. The force of the fall had driven the breath from Siraj’s lungs. He lay gasping in the center of the floor.

Fortunately, in addition to being hard, the marble was slick. More so now that it was wet. Noel tangled his fingers in Siraj’s collar and dragged the winded leader behind him beneath a banqueting table. “Stay down,” he hissed.

“Fuck!” Tom yelled in pain and anger. His eyes stung from the champagne, and the green insects were all over him. Each sting felt as if a hot needle had been plunged into his flesh.

He wreathed a hand in fire and slapped himself where he felt the insects crawling, then loosed another blast of flame at those buzzing around his head. Wasps fell to the floor like crisp black snowflakes, along with a few hapless bystanders. It didn’t help. The wasps kept coming. Tom went insubstantial, moved from the green cloud of pain. Then he phased back in and flamed them.

He became aware of his Leopard Man detail fighting to keep his back clear. Alicia’s pets had shape-shifted; those who couldn’t scythed bullets from Micro UZI and Beretta 93 machine pistols. Screams erupted from the crowd.

Pivoting widdershins, Tom jetted flame from his left palm. An operator from the home-team Service de Protection des Hautes Personnalites had jammed a hand inside his suit coat. The man shrieked as a plasma burst lit him up. He fell to the shiny floor, dead on the instant. The cartridges in whatever handgun he’d been going for cooked off like a string of fireworks.

Something heavy hit Tom on the back. His chin cracked against the polished concrete floor. White sparks shot through his brain. Pain ripped into his left shoulder, accompanied by rank animal smell and guttural growling. Rough fur rasped his left ear.

Tom got palms on smooth concrete and thrust upward hard. Although whatever the hell was gnawing on him weighed as much as a big man, Tom’s superhuman strength snapped him upright. Reaching back with his right hand he grabbed a handful of coarse fur and muscle like wound steel wire. The jaws clamping his trapezius slackened. The beast squealed as Tom dug fingers in.

He found himself holding a huge black wolf by the scruff like a naughty puppy. It twisted in his grip, snarling, trying to bite. Bloody drool trailed from its jaws. Shreds of Tom’s muscle dangled from its teeth.

“ Fuck you.” Turning quickly, he flung the wolf up and away with all his ace strength. The creature shot up and hit one of the metal braces that made up the pyramidal roof. It howled as head and hindquarters shattered the tough glass-laminate panels on either side of the strut. Limp, the beast plummeted. What hit the floor with a sodden thump was a naked dude.

“Garou!” he heard somebody shout.

“I fucking hate shape-shifters,” Tom said.

SPHP types hustled screaming attendees out the door. Others aimed guns at him. He took flight and laughed as they ripped each other with full-auto bursts. A couple went down. Another staggered backward, screaming into the mouth of a leopard that was biting his face and raking his guts out onto his Armani shoes with black hind legs.

The Radical torched a couple more pigs, then touched down as their buddies booked. Even brave men weren’t eager to tangle with somebody who could fly, toss you like a Frisbee, and set your ass on fire. He swiveled his head, searching chaos for Noel. The sneaky little shit needed badly to be burning.

Bullets flew overhead. A woman screamed in agony, and flames splashed across a stone pillar.

The long drape of the tablecloth hid them. But there was an itch between Noel’s shoulder blades. The flatware and the mahogany table were not going to stop one of Tom Weathers’s plasma blasts.

And indeed a second table, about three feet to their right, blew to pieces. A long splinter flew into Siraj’s leg. The prince shrieked, grabbed his calf. His hands turned red as blood pumped between his fingers.

There was no time for first aid. The room reeked of smoke and blood. Noel was nearly deafened. The screams and shouts that filled the room seemed to be coming through cotton batting. Noel needed Lilith. Needed her now.

He put the fear in a little box and set it aside. He did the same with his thoughts of Niobe. Noel concentrated, and felt his body begin to shift. Then the table was flung over revealing them like bugs under a rock. China, crystal, and flatware ware clattered all around them.

It was one of the Leopard Men, grinning, enjoying the moment. The closest thing to hand was a fish fork. Noel snatched it up, rolled, and came to his feet. Only inches separated them. Noel could feel the man’s breath, warm and liquor-laden, on his face. He drove the small fork deep into the man’s eye, and gave it one final slap that left it lodged in his cerebral cortex.

Never gloat, he thought… and heeding his own advice he finished the transition to Lilith, grabbed the writhing Prince Siraj, and got the hell out of Paris.

The woman with Prince Siraj was pale as ice, with raven hair cascading down her back. Her eyes were silver. Lilith. Hot sweaty nights in Africa flashed through Tom’s memory.

All the time I was fucking her, she was fucking me. Well, now I’m going to fuck her up. Payback’s a bitch, bitch.

But no sooner had he seen her than she was gone, and Siraj with her. Tom roared and loosed a sunburst at the place where they’d been standing. The heat bubbled paint on the walls and made the lights explode. Connections clicked in place in his mind: The golden-eyed man-the silver-eyed woman-they’re both Matthews!

“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” a voice said in a German accent you could spread mustard on.

Lohengrin. Tom whirled, and showed him teeth.

And suddenly the big guy was encased in plate armor that glowed a soft white. On his arm a shield, in his hand a broadsword, on his breastplate the Grail. A winged helmet covered his entire head.

“If it isn’t Heinrich Himmler’s wet dream,” said Tom. “Well, you’re broiled bratwurst now.” He raised his hand and gave the German a blast of flame. It hit the shining shield. And splashed.

Even Tom’s faster-than-normal speed wasn’t enough to get him fully clear of the whistling sword stroke as Lohengrin stepped forward. He winced as the glowing blade laid his left cheek open, and came back with a full-power palm-heel shot to the middle of the shield.

The knight flew back, bowling over aces, nat security, and Leopard Men in human and leopard form. Lohengrin hit a wall. The wall lost. He slumped down from a sort of vertical crater. Tom saw a leopard snatched off the floor and into the air by what looked suspiciously like a long, pink tongue. Fucking Buford, he thought. Then something erupted through the floor right beneath his feet, knocking him up and over. He hit hard on his ass, jarring his whole spine. A dark form hovered over Tom. Burrowing Owl. Those were wings, outspread now, though they didn’t flap. The Belgian ace folded them and dove helmet-first at Tom.

Tom rolled right. A grinding whine rattled his teeth in their sockets. Tiny cement bits stung his face. He threw up an arm to protect his eyes. When he dropped it the flying man had vanished. He’d left a hole drilled right into the dark cement of the Louvre entry floor. “How the hell did he do that?”

Lohengrin answered with his longsword. Tom rolled right. The blade bit into the cement for half its three-foot length. Tom rolled back, swinging his right foot across him in a fierce crescent kick. He caught the blade’s flat. He expected the blade to snap. Instead it ripped a big divot out of the cement as it snapped from the knight’s gauntleted hand. Then it vanished.

Neither surprised Tom enough to put him back. But the glowing fist-sized spiked ball whistling down toward his face did. He threw up an arm, managed to block the morningstar’s stubby handle. It didn’t stop the ball on its chain. It whipped around and slammed into the side of Tom’s head, just behind his left eye.

Once more superhuman reflexes saved him; he yanked his head sideways far enough to keep from having a spike driven into his brain. But the ghost steel bit painfully into his temple. He felt his left cheekbone break, shoot pain back through his brain like white lightning, tasted blood as a spike pierced his cheek.

Tom kicked. His sole caught the spectral tasset that protected the top of Lohengrin’s right thigh. The knight’s feet shot out from under him. His faceplate shattered cement beneath him as the morningstar disappeared.

Head pounding, Tom jumped to his feet. Lohengrin popped up just as quickly. A spike-backed battle-ax appeared in his hand. “Shit, where do you get those?” Tom asked, and loosed a sunbeam. It struck the center of Lohengrin’s breastplate. It seemed to shatter into a hundred backscatter shafts of blinding light. Tom heard screams as bystanders got scorched.

He launched an overhead right at Lohengrin. If he didn’t knock the knight into something hard enough to jelly his bones, he’d at least stun the fuck enough to finish him. But the German learned fast. Rather than blocking with his shield he swung it up like a tailgate. Its edge jammed painfully into Tom’s biceps, jamming the punch midflight. Its freight-train momentum still blasted Lohengrin back, skidding across the floor with a shriek of ghost-steel digging furrows in concrete. But he caught Tom a glancing shot under the arm with his ax.

Tom gasped and dropped to one knee. The blow had either busted several ribs or chopped them right through. And Lohengrin had kept both his feet and his grip on his weapon. His ice-blue eyes glaring over the top of his shield from behind narrow eye slits, he charged.

But Tom learned quick, too. He flung his left palm up toward the ghost steel-masked face. Lohengrin read the threat within the gesture. He tried to throw himself aside. He was almost fast enough to defeat Tom’s movement. But not faster than light. The sunbeam clipped the left side of the winged helmet, enveloping his eye slit. Tom saw hell-glare flare within.

When Lohengrin hit the floor and rolled onto his back he was once more a studly German dude in a suit, with arms outflung and the left side of his face a smoking mess.

Bugsy saw the room from ten thousand angles, each one of them moving, spinning, trying not to get killed. He’d lost too many wasps already. If too many more went down, he wouldn’t be able to re-form. Endgame. Over. Dead unless Cameo used some little tchotchke of his to haul him back out of the grave. He swirled around, going in for fast stings on the PPA Leopard Men, distracting the guys with just guns, and trying to stay clear of Tom Weathers.

Then Lohengrin went down, ghost steel armor blinking out like it had never been there, and Tom Weathers towering over him for the kill.

Ah fuck it, Bugsy thought, and dove in.

From all across the Louvre, the wasps dove in toward a single target: Tom Weathers. The Radical turned at the sound of wings, flame dancing out. Bugsy split, shifted, tried to avoid the fire. He felt wasps cooking off like a deep, unspecific ache. Lohengrin was moving, moaning. He had his hands up, cupping his seared face.

Not letting you kill him, Bugsy thought and pressed in. A dozen wasps got through, stinging Weathers on the back of the neck and curling around toward his eyes.

Ellen’s voice came out of nowhere. “Bugsy! Drop! ”

No. Not Ellen’s.

Simoon’s.

Bugsy retreated, pulling his wasps together in a corner near the men’s room. The wind picked up, grit in the air. Bugsy shifted his insect bodies into the more familiar flesh. There weren’t enough. He could feel his breath rattling in his lungs. The tendrils of sand in the air bit at his skin.

Which meant it was shredding Weathers.

Simoon’s wind shrieked like a banshee, the sand looking more like a fog. The glass pyramid was already pocked and white where she’d brushed against it. Weathers, in the worst of it, lifted off his feet, arms and legs swinging, and crashed against the wall.

“That’s my girl,” Bugsy said weakly. “Get him.”

Baghdad, Iraq

The Caliphate of Arabia

They landed hard on the red-and-black Persian rug. Noel left Siraj whimpering on the floor, ran, and yanked an embroidered runner off a table. He couldn’t help but notice in one of those odd dislocating thoughts that always float past when a person was in a crisis that he hadn’t disturbed a single item of bric-a-brac on the table.

Returning to Siraj, he pulled out the splinter and wrapped the leg tightly in the runner. He stood and wiped his bloody hands down his pants. “I’ll let them know you’re here. They’ll get you to a hospital.”

“Never mind me,” Siraj gritted, through teeth clenched against the pain. “Get a gun. You have to go back. Go back and kill him. Make certain of it this time.”

“You seem to be under the misapprehension that you can still give me orders. Quite wrong. You just lost your hold on me. The secret is out. Weathers knows, and there’s nothing you can do to me. Now my wife is a target, and I’m more concerned about her than I am about you. Here’s some free advice. Never sleep in the same place twice, and get yourself some good doubles. Good luck.”

And he teleported away.

The Louvre

Paris, France

“Fuck!” Tom exclaimed as the wind slammed him into a wall upside down. He felt like a character in a fucking cartoon. The fire blasts he’d desperately launched in all directions had fatally flamed several people, including at least one Leopard Man. But he didn’t know who the hell was doing this to him.

The wounds Lohengrin had dealt him were weakening him fast from blood loss. Tom willed himself insubstantial and dropped to the floor as the miniature twister spun him back out in the middle of the room. By now most of his escorts were down. They’d been able to do little more than keep the enemy aces off Tom’s back. Now they converged on him with a vengeance.

A blow to his kidney made him gasp with pain. He turned into a right hook that busted his jaw and spun him back, and caught a glimpse of a big handsome woman in a suit, with black shiny braids flying about her dark face. She’d been introduced to Dr. Okimba as Wilma Mankiller, a Canadian strongwoman ace from the Blood branch of the Blackfoot Nation.

Tom prepared to flame her. Again the floor surged beneath him. He hit hard and rolled across the floor. Burrowing Owl flashed right through the spot where he’d been and ground his way into the floor without seeming to slow. That dude’s starting to piss me off.

Tom saw another figure flying beneath the pyramid. It launched a beam at him: red, white, blue. The fallen Kraut knight wasn’t the only one who knew the danger of an aimed palm. Tom hurled himself away. The French ace Tricolor’s signature beam seared Tom’s right side as its main energy blasted the floor. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Tom shot back a fire blast. Three-toned light flared around the slim figure. Fuck. Force screen.

He was plucked off the floor and caught in a bear hug from behind. He thrashed his legs and snapped his head back, but the Blackfoot ace was a canny enough grappler to keep her face away from his attempts to pulp it with the back of his skull.

Tom knew he was stronger than she was. He could’ve broken free. If he hadn’t already been weakened by all the battering and bleeding. It was all he could do to keep from passing out from the pain her embrace caused to his seared and busted body.

Through agony-slitted eyes he saw the flying Frog aim his hand again. He phased out. Wilma Mankiller bellowed in surprise as the tricolored beam hit her.

Almost at once Tom rematerialized. Going insubstantial took more out of him than any other power. He dropped to his knees and was instantly bowled over as Burrowing Owl erupted through the floor beneath him again.

In midair Tom flung out an arm. White light lanced from his palm. The beam transfixed the flying man’s torso. He dropped straight down smoldering without making a sound.

Other aces were all around him, crowding in, pummeling him, but they couldn’t use beam weapons for fear of toasting each other the way Tricolor had toasted Mankiller. But they hurt him. He felt his left arm break. Something else lanced through his guts from behind, almost buckling his knees. He lashed out in all directions. He managed to knock down a guy who looked like he was made of some transparent semiliquid crystal but felt like metal, won free of the scrum, if not the fucking hateful bugs.

Something wrapped itself around his waist. It clung as if covered with glue. He felt himself yanked off his feet, saw he was being pulled toward a car-sized toad squatting to one side of the melee. “Oh, fuck me,” he moaned. He had no choice but to go insubstantial again. The bulbous eyes seemed to bulge more than usual as his captive passed clean through him. Tom stopped behind Toad Man, spun, grabbed him by a hind leg. Then a flashbulb went off in Tom’s skull. White dazzle filled his eyes as migraine pain blasted his brain.

Snowblind. He’d never experienced her power firsthand but he knew what it did. The blindness would last for minutes; if he stayed here he was well and truly fucked.

But the pain also shocked enough adrenaline into his system for one final surge of super strength. He flung Toad Man up at the pyramidal roof. Then he launched himself in normal flight, steering toward the crash.

Agony bathed his legs as some sort of energy beam brushed them. For a split second he expected to implode his skull on an intact strut. At this point he could give a fuck. Instead he felt cold high-altitude air on his face, smelled diesel fumes and fireplaces. He was clear.

With no perceptible interval he was in orbit, feeling vacuum tugging at his skin and the cold of space sucking warmth from his bones.

But alive. And free.

For now.

Ellen was kneeling at Lohengrin’s side. She was naked, except for the cameo at her neck. Bugsy was naked. The Louvre was really a hilariously stupid place to be hanging around naked.

The sirens were all around. Men and women in paramedic’s uniforms. Police. At least one SWAT team.

Bugsy knelt beside Ellen. “M’okay,” he said.

“You’re not,” she said.

The gurneys were coming out. Garou’s body covered in a blanket, blood soaking through the cloth. Snowblind was on her feet, but only with the assistance of two medics. She was crying. Buford was walking around, apparently unhurt, but with a stunned expression. Burrowing Owl was dead, too. And there, along the wall, a dozen nat soldiers and security men. And as many of the PPA’s Leopard Men. All of them incapacitated or dead.

Bugsy coughed. His lungs felt fragile. His body felt too thin, like if you held him up to a flashlight, his bones would show. He’d never lost that many wasps at once. He wasn’t sure he could. “Klaus,” he said. “You okay?” Lohengrin did not answer. He turned to Cameo. “He’s going to be okay, right?”

Ellen’s face was the answer. He wouldn’t be okay. Nothing would. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

“I need clothes.”

“I’ll find you some,” she said. “Come on. Give me your arm.”

She found him a security jumpsuit, black and slick but warm. Bugsy let her dress him, let her put her arm under his. Together, they walked slowly back to their hotel, just a couple of blocks away.

“Aliyah?” Bugsy said as they reached the revolving glass door.

“She’s fine. I put the earring away.”

“Okay.”

“I need you to walk a little farther.”

“I’m on it,” Bugsy said, but it took a long moment to get his legs to move.

Back in the room, he collapsed on the bed. The mattress sighed under him. Ellen sat on the little love seat, sipping coffee and looking bleak.

“My fault,” Bugsy said to the ceiling as much as to Ellen. “My fucking fault.”

“You didn’t kill anyone,” she said.

“I pissed him off. My bullshit crap about Bahir and Noel Matthews. If I had just…”

“If you just hadn’t made him angry?” Ellen said. Her voice was soft and sad and amused. It was a voice that knew too much about loss and death and pain. “How many women in the shelter say the same thing, Bugs? It wasn’t you. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you said the wrong thing.”

“I’m always saying the wrong thing.”

“Well, yes, but that’s why we love you,” she said. It didn’t occur to him to ask who we was in this context until later, and by then he was too tired to speak. He heard the shower running. The bed shifted as Ellen climbed in, her arm across his chest, her legs pressing against his.

“I don’t think I can…” Bugsy said. “I mean, you’re beautiful but I’m just kind of…”

“Go to sleep,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” Bugsy said. “Okay.”

He dreamed about fire.

Noel Matthews’s Apartment

Manhattan, New York

She was dozing on the couch with a crocheted comforter covering her. The pop of displaced air as Noel teleported into the flat didn’t disturb her. A book had fallen from sleep-slack fingers and lay on the floor beside the couch. The tail was thrown over the back of the sofa like the body of a heavy python. For an instant it felt almost like a fist had closed on his heart. Noel pressed a hand to his chest, and felt Lilith’s breasts flatten. Nothing must happen to her.

He allowed the muscles and bones to shift, restoring him to his natural form, then knelt down at the side of the couch. Niobe’s lashes trembled on her cheeks, and a small murmur passed her lips. Noel bent even closer to see if he could hear, but it was just a breath of sound.

The skin of her cheek was soft against his lips, and she smelled like Shalimar. He loved the oriental quality of that perfume. She stirred and mumbled.

“My heart,” Noel whispered.

“Oh, it’s you. You’re home,” and her arms snaked around his neck.

“Dearest, I’m here to take you”-he hesitated, remembering her fury in Vienna when he’d tried to lie and hide from her-“someplace safe.”

Niobe sat up. “Safe? What’s happened?”

“Weathers knows that Noel Matthews is Bahir and Lilith.”

She kicked away the comforter. “We can go back to the island. We were safe there.”

Noel shook his head. “No, I’m going to take you to Drake. He can protect you.”

“He could protect us both.”

“Weathers would come after me. A lot of people will get hurt in the cross fire. Maybe even you. I’ll play the merry fox to his hound while I-” He broke off abruptly.

“While you what?” Suspicion sharpened Niobe’s words. “Will people die?”

“Hopefully very few.”

“Weathers?”

“Probably. Hopefully. He seems like a man who holds a grudge.” Noel forced a smile.

“And then it’s over, right? Forever.” She folded her arms protectively over her stomach. Noel nodded. “Promise!”

He pulled her into a tight embrace. “I promise. I will be completely, totally, and forever out of that life.”