These orders were carried out to the letter, which led to Bright Eyes being evacuated along with everyone else. The informant scanned the crowd and when he realized that there was no sign of Tamaki or the others he’d been told to watch out for, he hurried to the phone to call Hendry Hall.
By then, Tamaki was boarding a private plane.
PANDORA STARED OUT the window, her eyes wide. Down below, the countryside looked so small. It was like she was one of the gods or goddesses of Mount Olympus, looking down upon the rest of humanity from afar.
“All of that is going to be yours.”
Pandora glanced at Hiroshi as he slid into the seat next to hers. He had splashed on more cologne and she wondered idly if modern women were susceptible to its musk. To her, it was a maddening scent, one that stank of lies and broken promises.
“You look displeased,” he said, his eyes narrowing.
“You seek power for its own sake?” she asked. “I’ve seen more men than I could count who did that and it never made any sense to me. It’s obviously a byproduct of Greed and Pride but I do wonder why it affects your gender more than mine.”
Hiroshi threw his head back and laughed. “It’s just in our natures, my beloved. Women and men both desire power, it’s just the way we go about it that differs. Men want dominance. They want the badges of office, the respectful fear in their enemy’s eyes. They want to be able to take whatever they please without even having to lift a hand. Women, now, women prefer to seek the power of the heart. They seek out the most desirable mate and do whatever it takes to capture him. Then they mold him and his seed into the perfect family, lying and stealing to provide for them. They say they do this out of a desire to provide for their loved ones but it’s just another form of power. Women want men to be dependent upon them for food, sex and emotional fulfillment. Their children are taught to cry and run to them for protection. In these ways, women hold on to their small little empires.” Hiroshi waved a hand. “It’s all the same thing. My empire will just be bigger than a woman’s, that’s all.”
“I don’t care for power,” Pandora replied, her voice very low and husky. “I have seen what it does to people. It dries them up like husks and then blows them apart. All I care about is undoing the damage I’ve done, and if it means destroying the entire world, I’d be willing to do that.”
“Power,” Hiroshi said. “That’s what everything comes down to. You want the ability to decide if the world is fit to live. You want to stand in judgment over every man, woman and child to determine if they live up to your standard. That’s biggest use of power I’ve ever heard of: the power of life and death.”
“You don’t understand.”
“But I do! You feel extreme guilt but I tell you, it’s not necessary. I can’t fathom what the world was like before you opened that box but I’d wager that men and women lied, stole and murdered before you did a thing. It’s human nature.”
“The world was more pure before I committed my crime,” Pandora argued. “There were bad people, yes, but things spiraled so badly out of control after I set the demons free.”
Hiroshi reached out and took her hand. She flinched at his touch but did not withdraw. “Look around you. See all that we’ve accomplished and a lot of it is because of our pride, our jealousy, our wrath. Don’t focus on the sins you unleashed but upon all the good things that have spun out of them. Without those base desires, man and woman would still live in shacks, eating off the land. But no more! We don’t have to eke out an existence like that any more. Now we can seize the very heavens! We fly through the air, float over the water and create weapons that lay waste to mountains! No longer do we seek the protection of gods — we are gods!”
Pandora yanked her hand free, her eyes narrowed. “Lust. Gluttony. Greed. Sloth. Wrath. Envy. Pride. Those are the bane of mankind’s existence. And I unleashed them. I will help you only so far as you help me. We will burn those sins out of the human condition.”
Hiroshi paused, looking away from her. When he spoke, his voice was cold but certain. “I do understand, my love. You help me and I will help you.”
IT WAS JUST after dusk when Frankie Bean slid the key into the lock of his apartment door. He was beyond tired, having reached the point where his features were fixed into one expression. Smiling, frowning, doing anything of the kind, really all of that would have required more energy than he could spare.
Frankie was a driver, one of the very best in the city. He’d worked for all the big names: Doc Pemberley, The Undying, Thanatos. All of them had known he was the best when it came to losing a police pursuit or for high-tailing it through the dark, rain-slicked streets of Sovereign. He knew every curve of every avenue.
Today he’d put in a lot of hours behind the wheel. First, he’d driven Hiroshi Tamaki and his crew to the airport. Then he’d played taxi driver for one goon after another, all of whom were cleaning out Tamaki’s apartments and safe houses.
It paid well but it was both nerve wracking and exhausting.
Perhaps it was that exhaustion that caused his normally highly attuned senses to fail him. As he let the door slam shut behind him, he tossed his keys to a small table nearby. He was already fumbling with his jacket and tie before he even bothered reaching for the light.
That was when she got him.
A strong grip seized him by the wrist, whirling him about. He slammed into a chair, sprawling into it so hard that it tumbled over. The back of his head slammed to the floor and for a moment all he saw was stars, bursting before his eyes. Then the lights came on and the most frightening sight imaginable took shape before him.
Sovereign was home to a lot of mystery men, guys who put on a mask or who adopted some colorful second identity, all so they could put the screws to guys like Frankie. Doc Daye, The Dark Gentleman, Lazarus Gray, Fortune McCall; the names were like a who’s who of crime busters.
But all of those guys were pretty straight-and-narrow. Oh, sure, they killed from time to time but for the most part they were content to let the justice system do its work, even when that work was stifled by graft and outright corruption, like it was in Sovereign.
There was one exception, though.
The Gravedigger.
All Frankie knew of her came from whispered conversations in seedy dives but he’d sensed that nearly every word had been true: she wore a red-and-black bodysuit that covered her from head-to-toe and she carried enough weapons to be considered a walking arsenal. She struck from the shadows, landing on her enemies like living darkness. Unlike Gray and the others, she almost always left bodies in her wake. In fact, some of the boys Frankie knew said that Gravedigger enjoyed her work.
Gravedigger knelt atop his chest, driving a knee hard into his sternum. As he groaned in pain, she directed her right hand between his eyes. Frankie saw the point of a miniature crossbow and then felt it against his skin.
“Frankie,” the woman said. Her voice sounded cold but something about it made him think that under that mask, she was a real looker. It was the kind of voice that could make a man weak, even without the added power of a weapon in her hands. “Do you know who I am?” she asked.
“Yes,” Frankie whispered. He hated the way his voice sounded as he answered. He wished he could summon up the courage to spit at her, to call her names, to tell her he didn’t fear her or her crossbow.
There wasn’t enough bravery in his heart for that. In fact, he was pretty sure he was on the verge of wetting himself.