“Okay.”
“Here we go.”
The light changed from a red blink to a green blink. She looked to her right, saw the image of herself with her sunglasses fill the monitor. Billy had freed his eyes.
Now she did the same.
Darcy looked into the camera lens, silent for a few seconds. She hadn't considered what she would say. It had to be something definite. Unmistakable. Something that would get a physical reaction from him so that she wouldn't have to depend on his word.
“Billy . . . you're afraid of Black, aren't you? He terrifies you, because you know as well as I do that he's your brainchild. You created him. All of this is your fault. You're to blame. If Black is evil, then you are the father of that evil, isn't that right? You should be on your knees, weeping, begging the world for forgiveness.”
Her own breathing had thickened as she slashed him with her words. She dared a glance but couldn't see if he was reacting, because his back was toward her.
She had to take him to his knees!
“Billy, you useless scum, get your lousy, worthless self off the chair and beg; beg like you deserve to!” She was shouting, letting herself go. “You did this to me! It was your ideaâyou went down first, you deceitful little runt!”
Darcy surprised even herself at the emotions that she'd put into those words. Is that how she really felt? She sat on the stool, breathing hard. Kinnard had turned and was watching Billy. She followed his gaze.
Billy sat upright, hands on his lap. Then he replaced his glasses, stood, and calmly exited the room.
He hadn't been affected? How could he not have been wounded by her words? They'd hurt even her, just saying them!
He stepped inside her room and stopped. Perhaps he had been too distraught to weep.
“Anything?”
“No.”
“That's impossible.”
“Did you mean what you said?”
But she wasn't listening to him. “Maybe the words mean nothing to you! Maybe I was wrong!” Only one solution presented itself to her.“Take off your glasses.”
“Darcy, it didn't work.”
“I have to know! Take off your glasses. Now!”
He slowly lifted his hand. Slid his glasses off.
“Now you listen to me, you beast, you are
terrified
of Black because you brought him to life, here in this world. This is all your fault; you did this to me! I've spent the last decade paying for your selfish ambitions, weeping like a child, running scared from my dreams, waking up drowned in sweat. Now, you get on your knees and weep like you have made me weep!”
Billy's shoulders had started to shake after the first sentence, and by the last he was falling. Not to his knees as she'd demanded, but to his side, where he curled up in a ball and began to sob.
“I'm sorry . . . Oh Darcy, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry . . .”
Tears flooded her eyes and she blinked them away. The test had failed, then. Her power was localized and therefore drastically inferior to what she'd hoped.
She'd accomplished nothing but to wound the one man she loved.
“Leave us,” she snapped at Kinnard.
He stared at her for a long moment, then walked for the door. “Take your time. I'll be outside.”
Darcy waited for him to leave, watching Billy writhing on the floor.
What had she done? If there was a guilty soul in this room, it was her!
She rushed to him, fell to her knees, and threw herself over him.“No, Billy, no! I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. Please don't cry!”
But he didn't let up. So she held him tight and cried with him.What had she been thinking, leveling this kind of brutality at him? It had only been the truth, that much was now clear. Or at least, Billy believed it to be the truth.
She held him for a long time and begged him to be still. The test had failed. She'd destroyed Billy and the test had failed.Anger flushed her face.
It occurred to her that neither of them wore glasses. If she'd wounded him with her voice, she could heal him with it, couldn't she?
She knelt beside him, hushing him gently. Took his head in her hands so that he faced her.
“No, Billy, listen to me, you don't have to do this. Look at me, look at me, baby. Please look at me.”
But his eyes were clenched and he was still sobbing.
“Look at me!” she snapped.
His eyelids opened slowly and she stared into his tearful green eyes. “Don't cry, Billy. Please don't cry. I am as guilty as you are. This isn't your fault. You don't have to fear Black. It's true, you wrote him, but what you did, you can undo. And I love you, Billy, I love you. Hear my mind, hear my heart, do whatever you do, climb inside my head.You know that I love you! Stop crying, please stop crying.”
She said it all so quickly, flooding him with her power. He stilled immediately.
“You see? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you.” She quickly added, knowing he could read the truth in her mind, “And if I did, I was wrong. Please forgive me, tell me you forgive me.”
He swallowed. “I forgive you. Tell me, Darcy. Tell me that you love me.”
She did, washing him with her gift. “I love you, Billy.And you love me. You love me more than you've ever loved any woman.”
Darcy brought her lips to his and they kissed deeply, smothered each other with comfort. She'd never been so direct with him, never presumed to tell him how he should feel. Only what he should do for her. Meddling with his mind was stepping on hallowed ground.
But the moment called for it.
Billy pushed himself to his knees and looked around, disoriented. “We're alone.”
“I sent him out.” Darcy stroked his hair.
“So the test failed.”
And with those words Darcy felt her mood shift, subtly, but enough for her recognize it.
“Evidently.” She looked away from him.“I really am sorry for this, Billy.”
“Don't be.We both know there's plenty of truth in what you said.”
He stood and walked out to the middle of the room, hands on hips.
“Have you ever wondered if this is all part of a much larger plan?”
“I think that maybe you've been talking to Johnny,” she said pushing herself to her feet.
“No, really.What if we were actually drawn to Washington by forces we don't understand yet?”
“Maybe. So what?”
He turned around and faced her. They were still both bared to each other. “Maybe we should leave. Just pack up and run.We couldâ”
“No!”
“No?”
“Just because Johnny does his thing in anonymity without obligation doesn't mean we need to go chasing after him.”
“That's not what I meant.”
“We can't leave.”
Billy looked into her eyes and read her mind, she could see it in him. So she countered quickly.
“Don't tell me you haven't thought about what our power could accomplish here, Billy.” She stepped toward him.“Deep down inside, you feel it as much as I do.Who wouldn't? The desire to see just how far we can take this.”
His eyes were wide, drinking in her words. She took his hand.
“I want us to do this, Billy. We're here for a purpose,we have these powers for a purpose. We have no reason to be their sniffing dogs any more.”
“We could go a long way . . .”
“Think of the good we could do!” Darcy knew that she was exploiting him, but she did it because she knew he wanted it. She walked around him, turning him slowly, her hand over his.
“We've already skated on thin ice. Let's dance on itâwith this power; what do you say?”
“We do have a lot of power,” he said, grinning.
“So my powers don't work through the Net. There's more than enough good to be done locally.”
“We couldn't be too obvious, you know,” he said. “We don't need more enemies.”
“That's right. But we could make more friends. We'd have to start with something very calculated. Something the council approves of. But something quiet.”
“Work our way through this town like ghosts in the night.”
“Exactly.”
Billy grinned. “I can see you've given this a lot of thought.” And he meant it literally. He'd taken the thought right out of her mind.
“I have.”And then she said something she hoped he would forgive her for if the need ever arose.
“I need for you to go with me on this, Billy. I know you want to, but I want you to promise me that you'll trust me and do whatever it takes. Promise me. Whatever it takes.”
He hesitated only a moment, and then answered with a coy grin.
“Whatever it takes. I swear it.”
Day Eight
ANY ILLUSION some may have fostered that the nation was not facing a crisis of monumental proportions was shattered Wednesday morning when the nation's capital woke to find six victims, all black, hanging from six consecutive streetlights on First Street, directly in front of the Capitol.
The victims: three males between the ages of thirty-five and sixty, two females in the same age bracket, and one older female in her sixties. They were discovered when security officer Joseph Custer arrived at his station at six. Three guards, whose names had been withheld from the press, were found dead in a Dumpster behind the National Gallery of Art, little more than a block away.
Five of the six bodies found hanging from the streetlights had not yet been identified to the press. But the identity of the sixth could not be hidden for the simple reason that most of those who lived in Washington and half of those who lived in Nevada knew him.
He was the well-heeled and occasionally outspoken Democratic sena-tor from Nevada, Ben Manning.
By six thirty, footage of the lynched bodies taken just before dawn, presumably by those responsible, had been widely circulated on the Net. The victims looked unreal, like scarecrows floating against a gray Halloween sky, until the camera zoomed in on each face, each crooked neck, snapped by the heavy ropes from which they hung.
Darcy had woken, showered, dressed, and walked out into the living room to find Billy on the phone with the images frozen on the screen behind him.
He hung up. “Gotta go, come on.”
“What's going on?” The images on the Net screen behind him answered her question in a matter of moments. Six had been lynched in front of the Capitol. She felt nauseated and turned from the pictures.
“Take a look.”
He stared out the glass wall overlooking the corridor that extended from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol. A sea of people pushed in on a perimeter that had been established around the entire corridor, including the White House.
“What happened?”
“Over a hundred thousand. It hasn't turned violent yet, but nobody's holding their breath.” Billy paused. “One of the victims was Senator Ben Manning.”
“What?” She was stunned. “
The
Ben . . . ?”
“From the council. Yes.”
She blinked, unable to come to grips with the idea that the man was actually dead. Had she had any part in that? Her thoughts refused to connect.
Fire trucks and police cars lined the streets along the Mall below, lights flashing. Several dozen military response vehicles, likely from the National Guard, D.C. Police, and monitored by the Secret Service, crept along Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues. Several armored vehicles had been stationed around the White House.
“The keg of gunpowder is blowing up,” Billy said. “I'll explain more along the way.”
“Kinnard's here?”
“Downstairs. Annie Ruling is waiting for us at the White House.”
Darcy's pulse spiked. “We're meeting the president?”
“I don't think so.”
He hurried to the door, yanked it open, nodded at the armed guard stationed at the door, and quickly crossed to the elevator, followed closely by Darcy. She started again the moment the door slid shut.
“The council?”
“I don't know.”
“Then who, just Annie?”
“I don't know, but she called us directly and insisted no one know that we were meeting.”
“Other than Kinnard?”
“Other than Kinnard.”
Darcy stared up at the floor lights as the elevator car dropped. “She's making an end run.”
“Maybe.”
The bell chimed, and they stepped out into the basement loading zone, where Kinnard waited, phone fixed to his ear. As dark as it was, she wondered how he could see anything with those glasses on. Then she remembered that her sight was darkened as well.
He rounded the truck's hood and climbed in behind the wheel as guards opened their doors for them.
Billy told her what he knew as Kinnard piloted the car up Arlington Boulevard, headed for Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge. They were stopped at a checkpoint and quickly waved through when Kinnard flashed his ID.
He shut his phone and activated the bulletproof glass partition between the cab and the back. “Morning, kids. I'm sorry, it's just a tad busy out there.”
“Why are we going to the White House?”
“Because that's where Annie Ruling and Lyndsay Nadeau want to meet you. But I'll let them speak for themselves, if you don't mind. Don't worry, our route is safe. The crowds are contained north of the White House. Just sit tight.”
The glass partition rose, sealing them off.
They pulled onto Constitution in silence. No tour groups or crowds gazed upon the Lincoln Memorial or the reflecting pool on their right. Ahead, the Washington Monument pointed to the sky, tall and stately, like a lighthouse for the nation.
They took a left on Seventeenth before the monument. Darcy had shrugged into a charcoal cotton dress with spaghetti straps and a lace hemânot exactly White House material. Her dark hair hung past her shoulders, slightly disordered by design, but if she was to become a regular in this town, she might want to consider a new style. She thought about sliding off the silver snake bracelet that coiled around three inches of her right wrist. And the silver choker chains around her neck.