He turned, grabbed Billy by the collar, and jerked him to his feet. But instead of verbally abusing him as Darcy expected, he wiped the tears from Billy's face, then pulled him close and hugged him.
“It's okay, Billy. You're okay now. I'm here.”
Billy hung on Black's shoulder, limp like a rag doll and sobbing.
Darcy felt numb. She couldn't fathom the desperation that had brought Billy to this point, and seeing him reduced to such a pitiful state made her want to cry. She had to help him. But they'd come here to talk sense into Johnny, not face Billy's demons.
What if this was all just a trick played by Johnny's eyes to make a point?
As if he'd taken on Billy's gift and heard her thoughts, Johnny leapt to his right, snapped up the fallen gun, and spun to Black.
“Let him go.”
Black whispered something into Billy's ear, and he immediately began to calm. The man appeared not to have heard Johnny's threat.
“Back away from him!”
But Black pulled back, gripped Billy's head in both of his hands, and then kissed him full on the lips.
Johnny cried in outrage and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked in his palm with a thunderclap. Black jerked once. Released Billy and turned slowly.
For a moment Darcy thought that Johnny just might have hit him.
Black's face twitched like a horse's hide, twitching at a fly. Billy stood with his head hung low, completely quieted.
Marsuvees Black strode back toward the cabin, black eyes fixed on Johnny. And as he passed them he spit something out of his mouth.
A copper-jacketed bullet plopped on the sand.
“Welcome to the real world,” he said.
Day Twenty-One
“NO, MA'AM, there's not a bit of bend in him,” Billy said. “Do I need to explain to you how I know that?”
In the National Guard command center, Darcy watched Billy talk on the phone with the attorney general while eyeing a string of monitor panels he'd ordered set up for his personal surveillance. His eyes flick-ered from aerial surveillance to thermal images from one of the observation posts and back again. His transformation from wounded soul to enraged tyrant had become complete over the twenty-four hours since their encounter with Marsuvees Black, Darcy thought. And it frightened her.
But this is what they'd signed up for, and she wasn't about to backpedal now.
Brian Kinnard leaned over a backlit table on which the incursion plans had been drawn up, speaking quietly with the captain, who was dressed in camouflaged BDUs. The Ranger battalion's CO listened in but let them run with the conversation unless directly addressed.
Billy walked to the corner, and Darcy hung close. He'd taken the lead and she wasn't sure how she felt about that. Slightly resentful, but she couldn't very well reprimand him for doing exactly what she'd begged him to do when they were back in Washington. He was forcing Johnny's hand, and he was doing it with surprising command.
His face reddened momentarily, and then he spoke into the phone with black-ice calm. “Then Congress will just have to get used to the fact that laws are worthless unless they are enforced,” he said. “Are you saying that you disagree with the use of force?”
He nodded at whatever she said.
“Exactly.My point.And as I've said, I've been inside his mind and I can tell you that this is going to get bloody. He has no intention of walking out of there with his hands up. The whole valley is drunk on his Kool-Aid. They'll die for their cause and they'll take down the first responders with much more than the pop guns they dumped outside the town for everyone to see.”
Another pause.
“Don't worry about the Net. I know the movement is significant, but the backlash has already started. Over half the country thinks of Johnny and his cult as a band of lunatics. Darcy assures me that the sentiment will grow. If anything, this new hatred toward Johnny demands we take action before people start acting on their hate.”
Billy faced Darcy and studied her with his green eyes. Glasses were a thing of the past for him: he wanted to know the thoughts of everyone in the command center at any given time. Only Kinnard and Darcy guarded themselves from his probing eyes, Kinnard because he insisted, Darcy because she didn't want to unfairly influence Billy, though she wasn't sure he cared any more. Maybe he thought he could resist her charm as Black had.
“That's fine, Lyndsay. But I'm asking you to expand our authority to the use of reasonable force. We gave them twenty-four hours from sun-set, but we might as well have been speaking to the dirt. The Net feeds have the whole world glued to that valley, and they saw me issue the ultimatum. If we don't execute justiceâ”
Billy listened for a moment.“Hold on.”He handed the phone to Darcy. “Talk sense to her, please.”
She took the black cell and lifted it to her ear. “Hello,Miss Nadeau.”
“Darcy,” the attorney general acknowledged her politely.
“Why the hesitation?”
“No, dear, no hesitation. But I can't just turn over our police and military forces to two civilians, I'm sure you understand. I'm just establishing some ground rules.”
“I think you're missing the point. It's time to make the president good on his word to deal swiftly with extreme prejudice. To do that, we must have certain authorities, surely you understand.”
“Of course. Yes, but I want any decision you or Billy consider to pass through me. I, in turn, will need to get the president'sâ”
Darcy snapped at that. “How dare you throw the president in my face? He's indebted to
me
. We know his dirty little secrets, and don't think that we haven't put them in a very safe place. Are you already forgetting your promise to let Billy and me do what is necessary to effect this change?”
Her own anger surprised her, but the thought of smug Lyndsay Nadeau sitting in Washington, second-guessing them now, made Darcy want to fly back and forcibly remind the woman of her power.
“You're not suggesting that this is the favor I promised,” the attorney general said. “You're asking for the head of Johnny Drake?”
Darcy had all but forgotten their agreement to be granted whatever they asked in exchange for their help. That had been a last-minute negotiation, thrown into the pot for good measure.
“No,” she said.“Don't be stupid. I'm demanding that you give Billy the authority he's asking for. Tell Kinnard to pass the order. Neither of us has any intention of abusing that power;
please
, you know it's only a fraction of the power we already have. Or would you rather I rip Kinnard's glasses from his face and tell him myself?”
That brought silence.
“I'm not threatening you,” Darcy said. “I'm just telling you that Billy and I are two people you have no choice but to trust.”
Or kill
, she didn't say. An unnerving thought. A very real thought.
Black's statement to Johnny spun through her mind.
Welcome to the real
world
, he'd said. Meaning what? No amount of thinking brought clarity.
“Put Kinnard on,” the attorney general said.
Darcy crossed the room. “Thank you, Lyndsay. We'll keep you up-to-date. I can promise you no force will be used except in the most extreme case.”
“If you do use force, remember,Mr. Drake first,” she said.“He's already used force to resist arrest by blowing up the road and refusing to turn himself in. There would be some fallout, but frankly I wouldn't mind. Someone has to take the fall for this.”
“So you do agree, then.”
“I never said I disagreed. The world has to accept the full enforcement of the law at some point. It might as well be now, before half the country gets swept up in this movement.”
Hearing it like that, Darcy realized that the exchange wasn't just about Billy jockeying for position. Paradise was much closer to an escalation involving violence than any of them realized.
“Let's hope it doesn't get to that,” she said, and handed the phone to Kinnard. “The attorney general.”
Is that what she wanted? Johnny killed? Or worse?
Darcy returned to where Billy stood by the window, looking out over the tarmac, where six or seven helicopters waited in the dusk. The dead-line was less than an hour awayâthey would go in under the cover of darkness.
“You okay?”
Billy's jaw muscles bunched. “Sure.”
He'd refused to talk about his encounter with Black. The attack was nothing short of a rape, and Darcy had decided to give him space to deal with it on his own before interfering in any way. But she couldn't ignore the incident any longer, regardless of what wounds it would open.
“Walk with me.”
She led him from the command center out onto the tarmac. A few army personnel carriers that had been used to transport guard forces to the perimeter around Paradise, roughly fifty miles south, now sat behind a barbed-wire fence, silent. Dozens more like them were parked along the two roads leading into the valley. Between the small operations base here and the staging area above the valley, the National Guard had the capacity to put a thousand soldiers on the streets of Paradise within thirty minutes of the order.
The plan was to arrest Johnny and the town council peaceably unless they resisted. The three thousand who'd entered Paradise would be released with a stern warning, only if they went peacefully.
But no one expected either Johnny or the three thousand to leave peacefully.
Darcy walked along the fence. “She's instructing them to give us the authority to use force. But we won't, Billy. Not yet.”
“No, not yet.”
“You're sure Johnny will resist? It doesn't seem like him.”
“And if I'm not mistaken, you seem a little distracted by him.”
His accusation surprised her. “Don't be ridiculous. I'm just saying that he's had his chances to fight and hasn't, even though we know he has the skill.”
“But he is resisting. He's defied us both!”
She couldn't deny that. And why did she even want to?
“Yes, he has. And Lyndsay Nadeau says we have full rights to use force if he doesn't comply in the next hour.” She took a deep breath and let it seep out through her nostrils. “But you and I both know there's more to this story than what the rest of the world sees.”
He didn't agree or disagree.
“So what really happened yesterday, Billy?”
“You tell me.”
“I mean with Black.”
“Ask Johnny.”
“Why?”
Billy shrugged. “It was all his doing.”
“You mean his eyes.”
“That's right.”
“So we didn't really see Black walk out of that cabin? It was just a figment of our imaginations?”
“That's what I'm saying.”
She'd pondered the possibility all through the night.
“I'm not sure it adds up.”
He stopped and turned, eyes fiery. “And your voice does add up? My hearing? What about any of this adds up, Darcy? The way we got these powers? The monastery? The fact that over half of this planet's population believes in some supernatural God or force that can bend spoons and open a blind man's eyes and make another man blind with light? Does any of that add up?”
“No. But the man we saw yesterday came from our own pens, Billy! We saw him ruin Paradise once. He's haunted us ever since that day, and now he's returned to destroy us!”
“You mean Johnny,” Billy said. “Black's come to destroy Johnny.”
She blinked. “So you acknowledge that he's real and he's really here.”
He shrugged again.“You checked the cabin with Johnny after he walked back in. You tell me where he disappeared to.”
“Judging by the way you're acting, I might guess he crawled up inside of you.”
Billy's face paled. She might as well have gut-punched him.
“I didn't mean that. That was unfair. But you have to tell me what happened, Billy. He . . . he kissed you, for heaven's sake!”
“Stop it!” he yelled. Tears sprang to his eyes.
His silence on the matter had been out of shame, and her speaking of it was like salt to the wound. But she had to know what Black's role was here.
“I'm sorry. But if Black's real and really here, in the flesh, then shouldn't we take that into account?”
Billy turned away. Walked a few feet and then back. He grabbed Darcy's hand and spoke quickly, eyes frantic.
“He's after us, Darcy. He's come back for the sinner. It's either Johnny or it's us.”
“He said that?”
Billy didn't respond. “This is all Johnny's fault. I know I was the one who wrote Black into flesh, but now Johnny's using him to tear us down.”
He wasn't speaking with any sense. “Listen to yourself, Billy. First you deny Black is real. Then you insist he's out to kill us. Which is it?”
Billy shook his fist. “Both!”
“How can it be both? You're not stable.”
“Is the devil here, floating around us? Is he really here?”
She wasn't quite sure what to say.
“Is the devil out to kill us?”
“What's your point?”
“He's here, he's not here, he's out to kill us, it's all true, and it's all not true. That's Black for you, and I should know. I wrote him!”
Billy turned and strode for the door, both fists by his sides.
“Billy?”
He walked on.
“Be careful, Billy.”
“Don't worry your sweet little backside, Darcy,” he said without turning back. “I haven't lost my mind.”
Watching the door close under the words Authorized Personnel Only stenciled in yellow, Darcy knew what she had to do.What she wanted to do.
She had just under an hour to get through to Johnny using every means at her disposal.
She spun and strode for a helicopter, where a pilot who'd just returned from a run was still filling out paperwork in the cockpit.