“It’s just like that movie!” Cassie is ebullient. “So spectacular!”
Mo groans again, then pushes herself upright. Her arms and legs are evidently working again, but she feels disgusting, and there’s a stench of voided bowels and warm dampness. Did I just wet myself, she wonders dismally, then decides to ignore the question. She raises a finger and taps something brittle and moist and a lump of something unspeakable falls from her ear. “Okay Google—”
“I think your phone’s toast,” says Alex, wiping his fingers on the grass. “I mean, your handbag’s on fire. Did you have it running as a virtual ward? If so, it died to save your ass.”
She pushes herself to her feet and tries not to retch at the stink. “What’s—”
“Just like Scanners!” Cassie enthuses. “She totally exploded all over you! Well, all over everyone, actually, but none of it stuck to him,” she clarifies. “Well, actually, her worm exploded, but as it was inside her—”
“Stoppit.” Mo gags. “Just stop. Wanna. Be sick.” She has not, she realizes, pissed herself; she’s just covered in Overholt. She doubles over and tries to keep her airways clear as her stomach spasms. It’s not the proximity to sudden death that does it, but the immanent tank-track terror of feeling the Mandate’s power crunching past, taking aim at a frail meatsack animated by the will of the not-fully-awakened Sleeper. That, and the ghastly stench of whatever she’s covered in. “Needa. Shower.”
“Come on, we’ll sort you out.” Alex is solicitous, but inexplicably not solicitous enough to offer her his arm.
Mo staggers across the lawn between Alex and Cassie. They lead her past police and soldiers who are escorting dazed partygoers in the opposite direction, towards the pavilion, which has been pressed into service as a triage station. Alex waves off an offer of first aid. “She just needs a shower and a change of clothes,” he assures them, and the police are only too happy to focus on the nonwalking wounded.
“And a stiff drink,” Mo adds, sotto voce, and Cassie giggles.
They are crossing the ballroom towards the door to the Grand Hall and the staircase beyond, carefully avoiding the paramedics and police officers laying out the dead, when a woman in a black power suit steps out in front of them. “Ah, Mo. Long time no see,” she says, nodding congenially. “And who’s this?”
Mo boggles. “Did he bring you?” she demands. “I thought you were in Camp Sunshine.”
“I was: Persephone let me out, and the SA signed off on it.” Iris nods at her companions. “Who are these? New blood, I see?”
Mo swallows. “Iris, meet Dr. Alex Schwartz and Cassie Brewer, yes they work for us and I’ll introduce you properly later but right now I need a shower and a change of clothes and we really ought to be leaving.” She has to raise her voice to be heard over the hoarse screaming echoing up through the open door leading to the basement lounge.
“I’d noticed.” Iris’s lips quirk. “You might as well make yourself at home; I’m sure Schiller’s people will have left something that fits in their suite. West wing, second floor, room 309,” she adds. Something behind Mo wheezes, a long sighing exhalation like the air departing a corpse’s lungs, and she begins to turn.
“NoNo—” Cassie says just as Iris raises her right hand and gestures at the drunkenly staggering green-eyed chief financial officer whose attempt at stalking them is somewhat impaired by the unshed trousers wrapped around his ankles—then there is a flicker of radiance and the body collapses, animating pattern banished back to wherever the never-living come from. “Oh, that was neat! Can you do it again? May I watch?”
Iris gives Cassie the hairy eyeball. “I think you’d better help Dr. O’Brien upstairs,” she suggests. “She looks as if she’s about to keel over.” There’s a disturbance near the entrance to the chapel; evidently someone else is in a hurry to escape. “Don’t you worry about the feeders, I’ll keep them contained until He gets everything wrapped up.”
Mo’s shoulders slump. “So it’s true.”
“What? You’re up against a greater evil and you still have qualms about making common cause with a lesser one?” Iris sniffs, but there’s a twinkle in her eyes. “Go on, get away with you.” More shamblers are heading their way; Iris steps aside to clear Mo’s path and raises her hand again, to bar them.
“Come on,” Alex urges her. He looks slightly queasy.
“Let’s,” Cassie says fervently, and nudges Mo towards the sweeping staircase. Nothing else blocks their way, and the upper levels look to be eerily quiet after the chaos below stairs. “What was that?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say Schiller was trying to induct the government into his cult until you-know-who blocked him. Which means—”
They’re almost at the top of the first flight of steps when the front door opens below them. Schiller’s greeters are conspicuously absent as a solitary figure in top hat, white tie, and tails, with silver-topped cane tucked under one arm, paces through the entrance and pauses dramatically.
Mo’s knees turn to jelly as the new arrival turns its face upwards and directs the full weight of its vast, drily amused attention on her. “What now?” she asks, a faint note of resentment in her voice.
“Just taking care of business.” He raises his top hat and inclines his head. “Dr. O’Brien, I see you survived after all! And in such elevated company. You do know that your companion is not entirely human…?”
Mo’s self-assurance is shot, but she pulls herself together just enough to put a brave face on things. “Yes, I am aware of that. So, uh, your priestess is waiting for you down in the basement.” She waves at the door to the cellar stairs. “You may need to know the combination to the lock, it’s—”
“Entirely irrelevant.” The implicit force behind his awful smile will give her nightmares in the days and weeks to come. “When I told you that you would serve me, I was giving you a true seeing: you are mine now, and forever more. However, I’ve decided that I don’t want to be the Home Secretary anymore. I’ve raised my game; what this country needs to see it through the coming stellar conjunction is firm government under an enlightened ruler, and I’ve decided I’m exactly the best possible candidate for the job!” The living avatar of the Black Pharaoh beams up at her, like a distant supernova blazing through mist rising from the liquefied atmospheric oceans of a frozen outer planet. “Michael asked me, on behalf of the Board of Directors of your agency, if I could deal with the situation here. Give him my best regards when you see him, and let him know that thanks to Schiller’s diligence in distributing those silly little hosts, I will have the cabinet entirely under control by the end of the night.”
“Eep,” says Cassie, as timidly as a mouse facing a rearing cobra.