Chapter 60 705 p.m. EST
Flight had always been one of Allie’s simplest pleasures. She loved the feel of acceleration as a jet sped to the end of the
runway, had always felt a thrill at the moment of lift, when the wheels kissed the tarmac goodbye and sprang into the air.
Flying after dark was best, the way a big aircraft would slide itself effortlessly into the night.
off the starboard wing. Towers bristled from the island, blades of glass and steel, and the surrounding mist glowed with their
lights. The plane rose and rose, and all the while Allie was thinking, We’re in trouble, we’re in trouble, oh, God, we’re in so much fucking trouble.
Robin pinned the bottle of Dragon Yard between her thighs—an unconscious slip back into a former self, Allie thought, because
that was the way a man would do it—and buried the screw deep into the cork. She worked at it with a tanned, straining forearm,
and the cork thumped free, drawing the citrusy tang of the wine along behind it. Allie and Van had finished off their complimentary
drinks and held out their empty champagne glasses for a healthy splash.
“To connubial bliss,” Robin said, after she had poured for herself and lifted her cup to them.
Allie drank her entire glass in three burning swallows.
“Did you know he was going to be on this flight?” Robin asked, narrowing her eyes at Allie.
For a moment Allie thought she was talking about Horation Matthews. Her heart kicked like a rabbit in a snare. Then she realized, from Robin’s sly smile and sidelong look, that she meant Van.
“Daydreamed,” Allie said, and put her head against Van’s chest.
“Drink, drink,” Robin said. “There’s more where that came from, and you need it. You’re shaking like a leaf.”
“Excitement,” Allie said.
The jet juddered like a pickup truck going over a washboarded dirt road as Robin lifted her own cup to her mouth. Wine slopped
into her lap and she cursed floridly. No one in all the world, Allie thought, cursed with the vigor of the English. Lights
flickered. Nervous laughter rippled across the cabin.
“Folks, this is Captain Lucas Vanhoenacker, welcoming you from the flight deck on behalf of the whole crew here on BA 238,”
came a voice over the PA. “We’ll be ascending to thirty-one thousand feet, to reach some clear air, but we still expect to
experience some turbulence for the first hour or two. There’s a large storm system churning over this part of the Atlantic.
With that in mind, I’m going to leave the seat belt light on and ask you to remain in your seats. The good news is that we’ve
got a strong tailwind and expect to touch down in London Heathrow ahead of schedule. In the meantime, our best-in-class cabin
crew will keep you comfortable for the flight. So sit back and relax—”
The plane whammed over a pocket of air, slewed sideways, and dropped hard enough to open a couple of luggage compartments.
Someone squeaked. A few passengers gasped. The two men in the seats right in front of Allie grabbed each other’s shoulders
and laughed.
When the pilot’s voice came back, he sounded close to laughing himself. “So sorry about that, folks. Try not to worry about
the bumps, and thanks again for flying with British Airways.”
Robin Fellows, for one, clearly viewed the seat belt light as a suggestion rather than a command. She pushed herself up and
handed the half-full bottle of wine to Allie.
“I entrust this to your care,” Robin said. “And I’ll be disappointed if it’s not a bit lighter by the time I get back, loves.
I have to see if I can save this skirt, it’s a Helmut Lang.”
She made her way up the aisle, swaying, touching the backs of seats to steady herself.
“The fuck’s going on?” Van asked. “You had a voicemail and it was like someone knifed you.”
“Colin tried to get us before the flight took off.” Allie turned her face to his, as if to whisper sweet nothings into his
ear, and said, “Horation Matthews is on board.”
“No,” Van murmured. “I saw the flight manifest. He can’t be.”
“He can. He is. But he’s not flying under that name. He’s flying under the other name, his old name. Something Mathis, like the singer.”
“Randy Mathers. But even if he is on board, it doesn’t matter. As long as we’re on the flight King Sorrow can’t touch it.
He can’t hurt us. That’s the rule.”
“That’s what I thought too,” Allie told him. “That’s what he told me. But Colin said not to believe it.”
“What do you mean? Who told you the flight would be safe if you were on board?” Looking at her with sudden horror.
“King Sorrow. He told me if I was on the flight tonight, no one had to die but Horation.”
“You—you decided to get on the plane because King Sorrow told you to?” Van asked. What little color was left in his face drained out of it. He reached for the wine, tugged it out
of her hand, and drank straight from the bottle.
She pulled it away from him and jammed the cork back into it, worked the corkscrew free. That corkscrew was a reassuring weight
in her hand, the silver length of the dragon pressing into her palm like a rosary, like a holy medallion.
Van shook his head. “No. No. We’ve got a deal. King Sorrow swore he would protect us. I remember. It was a few years ago, and I was stoned as fuck, but I remember that much.”
This was wrong wrong WRONG WRONG. They had fucked it up—of course they had fucked it up, a drunk and a cokehead, there had never been any hope they could get it right.
She didn’t know how they had fucked it up, but somehow they had.
She knew it in her stomach. They were Jayne Nighswander and Ronnie Volpe in the Ranchero, on a one-way trip to the incinerator.
And only they could’ve fucked it up so badly, her and Van.
Gwen would have somehow avoided the danger. Colin would’ve seen King Sorrow
was laying a trap—because that’s what it was, Allie understood that now, and she had run straight into it, as fast as her
little legs could carry her—and found a way to invert it, use the lizard’s own scheme against him.
And Arthur . . . Arthur would never take anything King Sorrow said at face value. What had Arthur told them once? Words were
a dragon’s weapon, every bit as much as fire.
Then Robin was back and it was Allie’s turn to move. She couldn’t stay in her seat anymore. Her anxiety was a loaded spring,
ready to punch her to her feet. She undid the seat belt and plunged into the aisle, past Robin, started toward the waist of
the plane.
No sooner had she started moving toward the front than the plane banged and shook and pitched her to one side. She reached
out to steady herself before she could go down, wound up putting her hand on the crotch of the man sitting in the row in front
of her, as if grabbing for his balls.
“Oh, jeez!” she cried, pulling away.
He smiled sociably up at her. “No worries. Usually, I’d have to buy a lady a couple drinks to get that far.”
He was forty-ish, with a round pleasant face and a head of curly mouse-colored hair. Kindly eyes blinked behind a pair of
gold-framed square glasses. The man sitting next to him, in the window seat, was in every way his twin, except he was thirty
years older at least. The older man smiled up at her, the corners of his very blue eyes etched with fine wrinkles.
“Excuse him,” the older man said. “He has a childish sense of humor. He got it from me.” His eyes narrowed. “Are you all right?
Are you going to be sick?”
None of us are all right, she wanted to say. This plane is never going to land, she wanted to tell him, and the moment she thought it she knew it was true. She had never had a truer thought in all her
life.
“I never get airsick,” she said. “I’m a very good flyer. I’m just a bad walker. So sorry, hope I didn’t squash anything.”
“Only my romantic hopes,” said the forty-year-old, clapping a hand to his chest. “I may have overheard you’re getting married tomorrow. When they bring the drinks around, I’ll raise a glass of rum and coke to you.”
“I hope I’m getting married tomorrow. He may not want me if I wet myself.”
She pushed herself upright again and swayed on down the aisle, while the plane rattled and rumbled. At the edge of her vision
she saw Frank Heck watching her stagger along, his eyelids heavy and the eyes beneath them watchful and sly.
She swatted through the curtain into the darkened compartment at the waist of the plane. The gloom already smelled faintly
of the lavatory, an antiseptic odor that only somewhat covered the stronger scent of urine. Curtains blocked the view into
the front of the plane. A carpeted staircase climbed to a second floor. The gangly flight attendant with the bristly chin
was on his feet, doing something with the microwave. He caught her eye as she made for the head.
“Ma’am, this isn’t the best time to be out of your seat—”
“Need the little girl’s room, bad,” Allie said and clapped the door shut behind her.
She dropped the lid and collapsed onto the toilet just as the plane hit the next burst of rough air. This turbulence was of
an entirely different order than any that had come before. It was as if flak were exploding outside the jet, buffeting it
from either side. The plane shook and shook, and the light went out, and in the total darkness she braced herself against
the walls. One of the cabinets under the sink popped open, banged shut, swung open again.
“I hope they’ve got something tasty for tonight’s in-flight meal,” King Sorrow said from the black hole under the sink. “I
know I’m looking forward to mine.”
His great eye opened and stared out at her: yellow sclera, with an infected red shot all through it, and a black pupil as
big as a mail slot. The plane jolted and the fluorescent lights flickered back on and for an instant he was gone. Then the
plane took another hit and the light went out again and that eye reappeared.
“I thought the seats in coach were bad,” Allie said. “How’s it under the sink?”
King Sorrow laughed. “I’m not really here. You know that. There’s a part of me inside you . . . inside all of you. That’s
what you’re seeing now. The real me is a mile or two off your starboard wing. More or less. I’ve almost come all the way through.
I’m dropping in and out of your reality like a stone skipping across the surface of a loch. They’ve got me on radar, flicking
in and out of sight. Not just your pilots. NORAD. They might scramble F-16s. I’d enjoy that. I’ve never fought a modern fighter
jet. I was over Dresden in World War II, but the German air defenses were of a far cruder nature.”
“You fought for the Allies?” Allie heard herself asking, as if it mattered.
“I fought for Joe Stalin. Well. Not Joe. For his mystic. Wolf Messing. Less of a wolf, more of a goose, I’m afraid, and in
the end, his goose was well cooked. But the firebombing of Dresden? Oh, that was a good night.” He paused, then said, “Come
to think of it, I’ve never obliterated a passenger jet before. This plane is bigger than me! The secret to a happy life is
always finding new challenges.”
“You can’t touch this plane. Van and I are aboard, and you made a promise. You swore to protect us. You swore that this plane
would be safe, as long as I was on it.”
King Sorrow’s unblinking eye looked amused. “Oh, darling, how could you misunderstand me so? I said if you were on this plane,
no one but Horation needed to die. And I meant it! No one else needs to die . . . as long as you kill Horation yourself before
midnight!”
“That’s . . . that’s not fair. You can’t. You swore to protect us.”
“I swore to protect you from ENEMIES, my love, not gravity.” Now he did chuckle. “I told you I would protect you from any
man or woman who stood against you. But I am neither man nor woman. I also told you that come Easter morning, I will have
the life I am promised, or I will have one of your lives as forfeit. If I am required to claim the latter to win the former,
I am content I have still kept my word to you.”
“There are children aboard.”
“Oh, Allie. I had a sympathetic, loving heart once—it was delicious.”
“Please. I’ll riddle with you.”
“But we’re already riddling, Allison. Don’t you see? If Horation Matthews is alive, aboard this 747, when it crosses an international time line
into midnight, I will tear this fucking aircraft out of the sky and send four hundred and one souls to their doom, yours and
Donovan’s included. But you can save them! The power lies in your nimble, piano-playing hands. The only question is how. That’s
the riddle before you this evening: How are you going to murder the man on this crowded flight, at thirty thousand feet, before
someone stops you?” He closed his eye in a slow wink, then opened it again. “It isn’t all bad, Allie. It is the fondest wish
of Donovan McBride’s heart to live the rest of his life with you at his side. And the way tonight is going, I think he’s going
to get what he wanted. Who says dreams don’t come true?”
The plane struck turbulence again, and this time the light flickered on and off as the whole superstructure shook. Unhappy
cries rose from beyond the bathroom door. Then, abruptly, they skated into still air. The light in the lavatory came on and
stayed on. The door beneath the sink flapped back and forth, showing the shallow, empty space behind.