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“I’m a hero, whether I like it or not,” Shade said to no one but the steering wheel. “Just thought it would be less . . . terrible.”
She wiped away her tears. She punched the address of the hospital into the GPS—she still had no idea where she was—and, dry-eyed, went to face Malik and Cruz and the consequences of playing superhero.
Vincent Vu had been unable to stay home—it was quickly surrounded by the FBI. So he used two of his meat puppets to clear a home a few blocks away of its inhabitants.
Now he sat on a couch that was not his, watching a much nicer television than he owned. He was watching video of himself, replaying his battle with Napalm, going frame by frame to try to see the speed demon, and the one with snake hair, and the big white beast.
Like a football player, watching tapes after the game.
Abaddon was within him. The beautiful, powerful, devastating beast . . . was him, Vincent. Sooner or later, the voices in his head warned him, Abaddon must be released again.
Vincent figured the voices were right. But for now he was content to watch TV and eat the snack foods belonging to the three dead people lying at his feet.
Tom Peaks had barely survived by de-morphing at the last possible moment as his fire was extinguished and his strength faded under the brutal assault of Abaddon.
He felt the disappointment, even scorn, of the Dark Watchers, but once he was himself again, they were gone, replaced by his own demons.
He had always been a decent swimmer, even made it onto his high school team for a while. He swam underwater as much as he could, surfacing to grab a lungful of air as the battle raged behind him.
He made it to the far side of the channel and barely avoided Abaddon as the monster slunk by. But Abaddon had not seen him, or if he had he’d ignored the wet, naked man panting on the dock.
Peaks was less conspicuous than he would have been under normal circumstances—the area was full of panicky civilians—and a kind, if scandalized, woman offered him some of her husband’s clothing.
He took that gratefully and then beat the woman unconscious with a lamp and cleaned out her purse.
What should he do next? He wasn’t at all sure. But in the back of his mind, a list was taking shape. A kill list. General DiMarco topped that list, followed by Dekka Talent and Shade Darby.
Napalm still lived within him, and Napalm would be unleashed again when the time was right. Of that he had no doubt.
The keys he’d found in the woman’s purse belonged to the Toyota Corolla in her driveway. Peaks saw that the tank was three-quarters full. More than enough to get the hell out of the area, find a peaceful place to hide, and plot what he was sure would be his ultimate revenge.
The Royal Navy frigate Argyll raced south along the eastern coast of Islay. The very hungry caterpillar, now over two hundred feet long, having fed on dozens of sheep, two horses, the contents of various homes and markets and taverns, as well as nineteen humans, including his sister, had been spotted on the coast just north of the Ardmore distillery.
The entire crew lined the rail, watching with mute awe at the great beast contracting and releasing, contracting and releasing as it moved along the top of a cliff.
“Action stations” was called, and the crew rushed to their weapons.
Ten minutes later the Argyll opened up with everything it had. And the caterpillar—once a cranky, teething toddler named Sean—was blown apart.
Flaming fragments fell down the cliff and into the water.
In Islamabad, Pakistan, a creature who could turn men inside out was engaged by Pakistani military. Twenty-three Pakistani soldiers died, and the creature escaped.
Just outside Moscow at the Federal Biomedical Agency, three fragments of ASO-2, which had been recovered on Islay by a hastily detailed Russian FSB agent posing as a tourist, led to frowns of concern at the CIA, where analysts studied satellite imagery of the FSB’s Biomedical Agency campus aflame.
In Evanston, Illinois, Professor Martin Darby—cleared of complicity in his daughter’s actions—tracked the last two ASOs from a newly secure computer and passed along to General DiMarco the grim news that one rock would land in China and the other in northern Brazil.
In the bowels of the Ranch, work proceeded apace.
The FBI were at the door.
“We’re looking for Dekka Talent,” Special Agent Carlson said.
“Well, she’s not here.”
That exchange was repeated in various forms several times more before Agent Carlson—and the other agents behind him and out in the street—grudgingly walked away.
Once they were gone and their car
