The King of Plagues by Jonathan Maberry

Author:Jonathan Maberry
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

Interlude Twenty-three

Aboard the Delta of Venus

The St. Lawrence River

Four Months Ago

Sebastian Gault lay with his head on Eris’s naked breast as the stars wheeled overhead. The boat rocked gently under them, dark water slapping against the hull. Far away on Crown Island, cicadas and crickets made the darkness pulse with life. Fireflies were pinpricks of light as they flitted among the tall grasses on the banks of the St. Lawrence River.

“I’m glad you accepted our offer, lovely boy,” Eris murmured.

“You knew I would,” said Gault. “It feels a little surreal, though. Kings and thrones.”

She laughed, deep and throaty. “It is surreal. We’re remaking the world into what we want it to be.”

“I hadn’t expected you to be the driving force for this thing.”

“Oh … you know, ‘behind every great man is a—”

“totally psycho power-hungry bitch?”

“Exactly.”

“And sonny boy is fine with that?”

“He’s less devoted to the Goddess than his fellow Kings, but he’ll do his part.”

“What about the others? Are they all still in your corner?”

“They are,” she said as she ran her fingernails down his chest and over his hard stomach. “I have a special relationship with each of the Kings.”

“God, please don’t tell me that you and your son are—”

“No.” She laughed. “Just the other Kings. I’m corrupt, lovely boy, but not tacky.”

“Thank god for small mercies.”

“Thank ‘Goddess,’” she corrected.

“Ah, yes.”

They lay together and watched as several meteors burned their way through the blackness. Minutes drifted past them on the current of the night.

“Sebastian … ?”

“Mm?”

“You loved her, didn’t you?”

“Who?”

“Amirah. Your pretty little Iraqi mad scientist. You really loved her, didn’t you?”

He closed his eyes, shutting out even the simple beauty of the star field above. “Love is a quicksand pit.”

“You’re being evasive.”

“Did I love her? Yes. Deeply, and despite the fact that she was married to another man, and despite the fact that I had several times planned to kill her, and despite the fact that she betrayed me and tried to kill me, I loved her to the end.” He made a low, feral sound and a shudder passed through his whole body. “I still do, and I wish I could take a scalpel and carve that emotion out of my body. I’m not joking, Eris … . If I could actually cut it out, I would.”

“Is that what your plan is? The course of action you proposed to the Kings—is that the scalpel you want to use?”

He sat up and looked down at her. It was so dark that she was merely a paleness woven into the fabric of shadows.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Eris propped herself on one elbow. “Oh, don’t take offense, Sebastian. You can’t possibly be dense enough to believe that you’re not damaged goods. We all are or we wouldn’t be the people we’ve become. You are one of the greatest pharmaceutical researchers on the planet, a self-made rags-to-riches billionaire, and yet you’ve spent most of your adult life covertly funding terrorist organizations and creating exotic diseases just so you could be the first to bring treatments to market.

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