"I'm adding Bug to this conversation, Cowboy," said Church. "He has something you need to hear."

Bug came on the line. "Are you okay?"

"Doesn't matter," I snapped. "What do you have?"

"Okay," he said, "you told me to get inside Artie's head, right? Well, I went back over everything I knew about her. What she wanted, what she did. I thought about the stuff said about her at the trial. Stuff about her psychiatric history."

"Cut to it, Bug. Tell me you have something."

"Yes," he said, "I think I know what she's going to do. I think I know how she's going to win this."

It was hard to hear.

It hurt.

Not because it was surprising. But because there was so little time to do anything about it. Even as we crowded into the Black Hawk, I was certain that Bug was right.

About Mother Night's plan.

And about the fact that she was going to win.

Chapter One Hundred and Six.

Westin Hotel Atlanta, Georgia Sunday, September 1, 1:50 p.m.

Mother Night took a long, hot shower, washing away the dried wine she'd vomited all over herself. Washing away the blood from the two Secret Service men.

Every time she thought about the looks on their faces as they died it made her laugh. Their arrogance was insulting. They'd come in, holding their guns down at their sides, smiling, expecting her to do what? Faint? Fall down and cry? Beg?

f.u.c.k that.

With their first step across the threshold they snapped the silver wire she'd placed at ankle level and that triggered a pair of compressed-gas dart guns. The chemical dropped them in their tracks. Dying, but not dead. A little fun with chemistry.

She pulled them into the room, closed the door, wrapped duct tape around their ankles and wrists and across their mouths, and let them watch as she carved pieces off, bit by bit, from each. They tried so hard to scream, but paralysis kept their pain and terror trapped inside. Afterward she'd covered them with a blanket. It was fun while it lasted, but overall it was pretty disgusting.

It was the first time she had ever killed anyone with her own hands.

She'd done it as a challenge to her inner voice, daring Artemisia Bliss to say something. To try to do something.

But that voice seemed to be gone.

p.u.s.s.y.

Before taking her shower, she called her teams at the CDC and the Locker. One call was answered, and she heard what she wanted to hear. The other call was not. Ah well. That could mean anything.

Off to the shower.

She turned off the water, dried herself, spent some time to get her makeup right, and then stood for almost twenty minutes in front of her open closet, trying to decide what to wear.

The original plan had been to go over to the Hyatt in costume, dressed as Lucy Kuo from the video game Infamous 2. There was all sorts of subtext and meaning in that. All about betrayal and revenge.

The costume was in ragged pieces scattered all over the room.

She could remember destroying it, but not quite exactly why. The fugue had started then, and events at the edges of it were fuzzy.

The other costumes had less meaning, though some were very s.e.xy and would look great on TV.

Which was the problem, as she now considered it.

If she wore a costume to the final act, that meant she was playing a character. Would the character eclipse her?

Probably.

Not entirely, of course, because-hey, she'd spilled blood, coast to coast. The name Mother Night was never going to be eclipsed.

The face, however, might.

And wouldn't that suck?

It would certainly suck some of the meaning out.

So, in the end, she dressed as Mother Night. The wig, the sungla.s.ses, the skin tones and piercings. It was, after all, what her fans would want. What they'd appreciate. She had no doubt at all that she would have fans. Her anarchist fruitcake children were all devoted to her, even though-let's face it-she didn't give a stale fart about them. They should all have had "means to an end" tattooed on their foreheads. Useful, fun, occasionally charming, but dumb as hamsters. And yet, fans, every last one of them.

There would be others.

That was the nature of power. People idolized it, mythologized it. People showed up at events like DragonCon dressed as Hannibal Lecter, as Freddy and Jason and Pinhead. As Darth Vader and Dracula. As Nixon and Bin Laden. As killers both real and unreal. There were always those among the vast sea of disempowered who wanted to borrow power by wearing a fake ident.i.ty. That was the central pillar of fandom, and Bliss knew that in earlier years she was as guilty of it as anyone.

So the best way to use that, as well as honor it, would be to give them the role model in point of fact.

And so, as Mother Night, from gleaming black Betty Page hairdo to spike heels, she was the uber-terrorist, Mother Night.

It would not surprise her one bit if there weren't already three or four girls in the seething crowd of conferees dressed as her. Certainly no one would look at her in this environment and believe her to be the real Mother Night.

Not yet.

Soon, though.

G.o.d, yes. Soon.

Her clothes were fun. A short plaid skirt that showed a lot of leg. White stockings that ended two inches below the hem and were clipped to a cream lace garter belt. A half-shirt that showed her hard-muscled bare midriff, and a vest with lots of pockets. Gunbelts slung low over her hips. The guns were bright yellow water pistols. Lace fingerless gloves with a frilly ruff at the wrists. A blood-red circle-A on her shirt. No bra. Lots of jangly bracelets with gold and silver zombie-head charms. The last touch was a backpack crammed with goodies.

Her lipstick was the most whorish red she could find, and she bent and kissed her own mouth in the mirror.

Her mouth. Not the pouty mouth of Artemisia Bliss.

Before she left the suite, she picked up her cell, typed a single digit in a text message, and sent it off. She smiled, thinking about how much fun Ludo Monk was going to have.

As she reached for the door handle the voice was there again.

Please! it screamed.

"Go away, you stupid b.i.t.c.h."

She tried to reach for the door handle but her hand wouldn't move.

No. I won't let you.

The darkness started closing in around Mother Night. Like before, only she saw it coming this time.

I won't let you.

Mother Night screamed.

Chapter One Hundred and Seven.

Georgia Airs.p.a.ce Sunday, September 1, 2:22 p.m.

"It's called DragonCon," said Bug. "It's one of the largest science fiction and gaming conventions in the world. Something like sixty or seventy thousand people."

"And you think Mother Night is planning a strike there?'

"Yes," he said quickly, "and for a couple of reasons."

"Hit me."

I was dressed in black BDUs that didn't fit well. Everyone had found clothes except for Bunny, who only had pants. Our jet hurtled through the skies at unsafe speeds, flanked by F-15s, with a path cleared by executive order. The National Guard and every cop with a gun was ma.s.sing in four separate staging areas, waiting for the word.

"They spread it over five hotels in Atlanta," Bug continued. "The Hyatt Regency, the Marriott Marquis, the Hilton and Towers, the Sheraton, and Peachtree Place. Brings in about forty million in tourist dollars. And it raises tens of thousands for charities and-"

"I don't need the sales pitch," I barked.

"No, you need to hear this. One of the things they do every year is a ma.s.sive blood drive. Auntie thinks that might be ground zero for Mother Night."

"You sound skeptical. Why?"

"Well ... as devastating as polluting the blood would be, it wouldn't stand out as the biggest event of the last two days. I think she has something else planned."

"They have a ma.s.s gathering of zombies to do the dance from Michael Jackson's "Thriller." They had more than fifteen hundred people there last year. A bunch of celebrities from zombie movies and TV will be there, including the cast from The Walking Dead and George Romero, the guy who did Night of the Living Dead."

"Are you f.u.c.king kidding me?"

Beside me, Top shook his head like a sorrowful hound dog.

"No," insisted Bug. "It's part of the event every year."

"That's where you think Mother Night will hit?"

"I do. At least ... I think so."

"Why?"

"Because it's the only way she can absolutely win."

He told me why.

He talked about Bliss's need to win. About her suicidal tendencies, fueled by boredom and a fear of not being acknowledged as the best. About her growing dissatisfaction because she could not publish anything about the ultrasecret work she was doing, even though that work-inarguably-had helped guys like me save the world. About a child who was so freakishly smart that she could not help but grow into an oddity. Sure, some people-a rare few-manage their genius. But many do not. That old saw about there being a fine line between genius and madness wasn't bulls.h.i.t. Bug cited the doc.u.mentation and case studies.

As he told me this I knew that Church was listening, and I wondered how this was. .h.i.tting him. The entire success of the DMS was built on having the very best. The smartest, the most insightful, the fastest thinkers, the innovators. Was he wondering if his own desire to have an irrefutable A team of the best and brightest was somehow flawed? That it was appropriate to the job we had to do but maybe inefficient when it came to saving the people who did that job. I knew for sure that I had lost psychological ground since going to work for him. Every time I went to war with the kinds of people we had to fight, and every time I faced the horrors that those people inflicted on the world, I went a little crazier. Even Rudy was showing some cracks around the edges, and he was a rock. Christ, he was my rock. He kept me sane, but every day he had to face secondhand horrors as field guys like me unloaded on him in therapy sessions.

Was Church examining his own conscience, wondering if this was somehow his fault?

Was Hu? After all, he'd hired her.

Was Aunt Sallie, who'd taken Bliss on despite personal misgivings?

Was I complicit? I'd let her use me as a sounding board for her explorations of the evolution of evil within a person's soul.

"Deacon," I said, "we have to shut it down. The convention ... we have to shut it down."

Church's voice was heavy and slow. "Cowboy, there are sixty thousand people there. Most of them are tourists staying at those hotels or surrounding hotels. I've been on the phone with the governor of Georgia and the mayor of Atlanta, as well as advisors from Homeland and the National Guard. They believe that any attempt to shut the conference down will likely result in a panic that would send all of those people into the streets. If Mother Night releases a pathogen during that panic, then we will lose all possible control. There would be absolutely no way to contain the outbreak."

"We have to do something."

"We are. National guard and police are moving into position now. Truckloads of barricade materials are being brought in and we are going to try to create a quarantine zone around those five hotels. We have people coordinating the logistics. However, I spoke with the president five minutes ago and he has authorized a fleet of helicopters for air support and we're scrambling bombers from Robins Air Force Base.

"To do what?"

"To sterilize the area." It sounded like those four words were pulled out of Church's mouth with pliers.

Sterilize.

"How?" I asked, though I already knew. It was simply that my mind rebelled at conjuring the word.

"Fuel-air bombs. In the event that we are certain the seif-al-din has been released at the conference, we will burn everything within a six-square-block radius. And if it comes to that, Captain ... G.o.d help us all."

"Then we have to d.a.m.n well make sure it doesn't happen," I snarled. "We need spotters in the crowd. We know what Bliss looks like, in or out of her Mother Night getup.