Suicide Kings

  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 al
most 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.”

  Saturday,

  December 19

  On the Lualaba River, Congo

  People’s Paradise of Africa

  Sleep had become an ephemeral, abstract concept to Wally. Sleep was the thing his body tried to do to pass the time between attacks from Ghost. His exhaustion was so complete that he could nod off almost instantly, but Ghost woke him too frequently for the sleep to do any good. He never got more than an hour or two before she returned.

  She’s just a little kid, he reminded himself. Wally wouldn’t let himself be angry. Not with Ghost. Somebody had made her this way. She was just a little girl.

  But that was little consolation, when their interaction unfolded the same way every time: Ghost hit him with the knife. He woke up. He tried and failed to catch her. She receded into the jungle.

  Over and over and over again. All night long.

  When morning finally came, Wally woke to find the sun shining in his eyes. He moaned and rolled over, trying vainly to fend off the headache. But it was the perfect recipe for a migraine: massive sleep deprivation capped off with a burst of sunlight straight into his tired eyes.

  Sunlight? Wally sat up. Rays of light streamed through the tatters of his shredded tent.

  Ghost, it seemed, was just as frustrated as Wally.

  Ellen Allworth’s Apartment

  Manhattan, New York

  Bugsy swam slowly up toward consciousness. The ceiling was familiar. He was at Ellen’s place. New York, thank God. His body felt thick and sluggish. The general sense of illness might have been jet lag or the weird systemic rebellion of having lost too many wasps at once. The sheets and pillow were crisp and cool and deeply comfortable, except that was desperately hungry.

  He levered himself up out of bed and stumbled to the living room. The pajama legs were too long, folding up under his feet and trying to trip him. Ellen, alone on the couch, was gently stroking the ruined fedora. Will-o’-Wisp. Nick.

  “Hey,” Bugsy said. “You okay?”

  Ellen looked up at him, the corners of her mouth turned down. “Sure,” she said. “It’s just . . . I’m still a little messed up after Paris. I didn’t know Garou, but I had coffee with Burrowing Owl before things got bad. He was a nice guy. He was going to Marseilles after the conference. Now he won’t.”

  “Yeah. I mean, you could take him, I guess. If it’s important.”

  “I could,” she said. Her voice was tired and thin. “They’re all like that. My Nick. Mom. Aliyah. All of them. I’m always the last chance. The one hope of doing whatever it was that wasn’t done before they had to go.”

  “You don’t have to, you know,” Bugsy said.

  “Of course I have to.” She held up Nick’s hat, as if it was a counterargument. “I’m one of them myself, right? The queen of holding on after it’s too late.”

  How long had it been? he wondered. How many years exactly had the real Nick been gone, and Cameo holding on to the memory of him. Keeping the reminder of his absence fresh every time she put the hat on, pulled him into her body again, talked with him. How many times in that private internal conversation had she told him how much she loved him? How many times had he said it back to her?

  He was looking at a wound that was never going to heal, bleeding again. “Hey,” he said gently. “I know this is hard. Seriously. At some point, you’ve got to let him go—”

  “No, I don’t. I can’t. I can’t let any of them go, Bugsy, because if I do, then they’re dead. Really dead. Finally dead. Permanently. As long as I can bring them back. Talk to them. Be them . . .”

  As long as you can do that, nothing ever ends, Bugsy thought. As long as you can do that, you’re going to be carrying everything and everyone forever. Your mom. Your boyfriend. My girlfriend. You’re responsible for keeping all of them alive, because they’re already dead. You poor bastard.

  “Yeah,” Bugsy said. “Okay.”

  On the Congo River, Congo

  People’s Paradise of Africa

  The pit. Again. Michelle is sick of the pit. She is sick of the smell, and the dark, and the bodies.

  “Adesina?” she sighs. “Where are you?”

  A hand drops onto her shoulder and she jumps. When she turns, no one is there. The pile in the pit shifts. It moves as if possessed.

  “Adesina!”

  “Miss! Wake up, miss.”

  Michelle jerked awake.

  “Your friend,” Kengo said. “I’m worried about her.”

  She pushed her hair back from her face and sat up in the bunk. “Did she sleep?”

  Kengo shook his head. “I don’t think so. Maybe a little. She just keeps staring into the jungle. And she says things. Is she crazy?”

  “You mean more so than usual?” Michelle poured herself a cup of water from the container on the small galley counter. It was warm and brackish, but given how crappy her mouth tasted she figured it could only help. “I’ll go talk to her.”

  She went topside. It wasn’t raining, but the humidity was so high it might as well have been. The sky was overcast and there was a preternatural quiet.

  Joey was still sitting on the back bench of the boat, huddled in the poncho.

  “You should take that off,” Michelle said. “It’s not raining anymore.”

  Joey glanced up at her and Michelle was shocked to see how bad she looked.

  “I’m cold, Bubbles. Really fucking cold.”

  Michelle squatted down and took her hand. It was icy and she wanted to sympathize, but she didn’t have time for Joey to fall apart. She needed her to be Hoodoo Mama.

  “You’re going to get sick if you don’t rest,” Michelle said. “At some point we’re going to be walking, and you need to be stronger.”

  “Walking through blood?”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  Joey leaned in closer to Michelle and started stroking her arm.

  “I’m cold, Bubbles,” she said again. Her voice was thick with Cajun honey. “I’m so cold. We could warm each other up. You remember, like we did back home. It was cold then, too.”

  “It wasn’t cold,” Michelle said, pulling away. “It was in the middle o
f a hurricane and it was a mistake. I’m not making the same mistake again.”

  “You’re a hard-ass, Bubbles,” Joey said sadly. “I always thought you were so nice, so fucking sweet with your blond hair and your green eyes. Not anymore. You’d walk over corpses to do what you needed to, wouldn’t you?”

  “Maybe,” Michelle said. “But I don’t want to be walking over yours. Go get some sleep.”

  Joey pulled the poncho over her head and then handed it to Michelle. “They’re all so fucking little,” Joey said. “Do all the kids die here?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just trying to save one.”

  Joey stumbled past her and went inside the cabin.

  And as Michelle watched the jungle slip by on the river, it began to rain. She pulled on the poncho and lifted the hood over her head.

  Then, over the rain, she could hear something that made her want to cry. It was the sound of Joey and Kengo fucking. Joey was using Kengo to fuck away whatever was preying on her out there in the jungle.

  On the Lualaba River, Congo

  People’s Paradise of Africa

  Something had to give. It did, finally, around midday.

  Wally guided his boat into a shaded cove along the river when the rain came. The patter of raindrops on his head felt like somebody had taken a jackhammer to his skull. Even the tiniest ripples on the water vibrated the boat enough to make Wally moan in agony. He’d given Jerusha all of their painkillers, so he had to ride out the migraine.

  He wondered if he shouldn’t just give himself over to the PPA. Anything had to be better than this.

  Wally lay down in the boat. What point was there in going ashore? His tent was useless. He closed his eyes. Sleep claimed him instantly.

  Until his leg erupted in searing pain. Wally yelped. He sat up, fast enough to rock the boat.

  Ghost huddled over his shin, jabbing at a rust spot with her knife. She pivoted the knife, digging at a rivet. Wally realized she was trying to pry his rivets out, to open up his leg and get a better target. It hurt like heck.

  “Hey, knock it off,” he said. He reached for her.

  Ghost saw him, and dematerialized again. But her preoccupation with the rivets in his leg delayed her just a fraction of second, which was enough time for Wally to dart forward and touch the blade with a fingertip.