lover, but he knows his call for inaction will enable Xavier to act…and then Raymond Rice will unleash his version of the Whirlwind on People of Color.
And you will die, Xavier Prince.
You and all of People of Color everywhere will die.
Serena shook her head.
To what…she could not say. “My plan leaves the most important decisions to them. I think that you fail to see that our adversaries have been seduced by a calling that he does not have the will or means to finish.”
“On that we agree,” Ryan nodded his head. “And you’ve taken bold steps before.”
Serena felt her head shaking again. “They were necessary steps and this time is no different. My plan gives Xavier his victory. Our price includes that he will have to surrender himself and all he finds precious to have it.”
“Everything that has come before, even when Keaton snatched Chris Prince and all those other boys the first time is a campfire in comparison to what we are facing now, Serena. There would be no backing down, any retraction.”
Serena said: “I think my plan is the correct way to proceed. I won’t let you down, sir. I won’t let the Caretaker down.”
Rice lowered his head. “We’ve already done that.” He moved on to the other matters at hand. “I’ve been told that you and Rohm took care of the traitors at the sanctuary.”
Rohm explained to him quickly and efficiently. She added that they were close to retrieving the Clifton boy when the APD lucked up and found him first. Rice asked them the next obvious question to whether either of them believed that their little paradise had been compromised.
Both agreed that it had not.
“Tell me about Keaton,” Rice asked them. “To think that I’ve known the man for the better part of 30 years and yet I still don’t know him; I got your text earlier about this transformation that he’s undergone. You said that he is truly Hugh Keaton now. You think that the Louis persona, a far less intrusive personality has been pushed into a recessive state.”
“I do,” Serena was glad he understood her diagnosis the first time. “Dr. Hicks-Dupree conclusions, when she was with us, turned out to be on the money after all. She repeatedly said that the key to our investment reaching his full potential was to dig past the exoskeleton that Louis was. Louis turned out to be little more than a kindhearted boy who Keaton’s uncle gave to his own version of the flames.”
“Caretaker briefed me on some of the same suspicions many years ago.” Ryan said. “But I would be cautious with him, even though it seems that you have him reined in. If I remember correctly, Angel warned you that a third persona, one that no one, including the doctor herself, could predict how it would behave or react to the stimuli that Keaton has been presented so far.”
“I remember her words.”
“I only want to know if you are still in control of this Hugh personality.”
“I am.”
“I’ll hold you to that, Serena.”
“I’m fully aware of my responsibilities to Pandora…and to you, sir.”
“Now that I’ve been released from my own double life, I will be more engaged in what goes on during our operations moving forward. It starts right now. If and when you release this CD to a House in Chains, I expect hourly briefs from that point on.”
“Yes, sir,” Serena said.
As the former Deputy Director of the FBI spun to leave the flames behind them all seem more agitated than any time before. It’s like hellfire. She’d caught the scent of freshly burning flesh as if it were roasting next to her. At first she thought, however foolishly, that it was the draft rushing in from the opening and closing of the hotel room’s door.
And then for the briefest of an interlude, Serena wondered if Rohm could see what she saw as well. The gaze on the other woman’s face must have been like the one she had when she first discovered the flames for herself shortly after her father sacrificed him and her mother to the Dragon.
“Oh my, God, Serena,” Rohm said. “What has happened? I’ve never seen your flames react this way before. I don’t understand what I’m seeing here. I want to but I can’t.”
“Quiet, Rohm,”
She went to the floor screaming at the top of her voice. Tears streamed down her face.
“Serena, are you alright?” Rohm asked her. “Are you hearing my voice? Can you tell me what is going on with you?”
After a moment the older woman said: “The Dragon is calling out to me like never before.” She said through her tears. “She is warning me that this is my final chance to avert her scorching Atlanta again. This is my last chance to maintain order.” Serena searched deeper…saw…him. “Why didn’t I see it before, Rohm? Why didn’t I see him before now?”
“Who are you talking about, Serena?” Rohm fell to her tears, wanted to be closer to her leader. “I want to be your right hand, the way you were his right hand…the Caretaker. Point me in the direction where I can be the most use to you.”
Serena heard the younger woman, but all of her focus was on the flames…and the figure of a man who existed just behind the hellfire. “I’ve been so blind, Rohm? The answer to all my queries lies with him. I’ve only needed to pursue him all along.
“Well then, we will find him,” Rohm said. “Xavier Prince will be dead within the hour if you wish it. A hundred of his Peacekeepers won’t keep me from killing him.” Rohm rose to her feet, but Serena grasped her by the wrist and then her elbow and denied her the opportunity to stand totally erect.
“No,” Serena said and shook her head continually for emphasis. “Don’t you see, Rohm, Xavier Prince is not the key to dousing the flames of the Dragon’s Whirlwind. He never was.”
“What?” Rohm looked dumbfounded, but that was alright. Serena Tennyson was the Oracle and yet she had not seen it for herself until moments earlier. “I’ve always thought that you believed that Xavier Prince was the key to staving off Armageddon…if he is not, then who is, Serena?”
Serena felt…a smile crease her thin lips through all of her tears.
Perhaps the Dragon wouldn’t resurrect her flames on Atlanta after all.
Perhaps the Whirlwind would be avoided…and the end of all things not as terrible as they had all imagined it would be.
Perhaps they could all avoid being given to the flames.
“We must find the other Prince Brother and quickly, Rohm.” Serena Tennyson said when she found her voice again at last. “I know now that Christopher Prince is the key to all of our salvations.”
Angel
“That son of a bitch must die.” Special Agent Nicholas Sheridan said into the musty air that made up the main conference room of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations building in downtown Atlanta.
Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree heard another agent she’d met just a day earlier, Barry McTavish, slide his chair out from the table, get a cup of coffee and sit himself back into his seat. “Which one are you talking about, sir?” He asked.
“Both,” Sheridan said without smiling to the dozen agents occupying the room of agents.
They all had watched both Xavier Prince’s press conference from outside the Fox Theatre and examined the DVD production that Serena Tennyson had sent to the field office and the re airing of it on the evening news. The stress of the impending situation had taken its toll on everyone involved. The manhunt to find Atlanta’s missing children was one of the largest in the history of the mainland. Angel herself had returned with one of the search parties led by Agent Blue empty handed. No one could ever say that the younger woman wasn’t passionate about her work. Yet, Tabitha whispered to her that she had all but admitted defeat when it came to finding the remaining missing boys. Apparently, Serena had them safely tucked away in a little corner of the world where no one would find them—at least not alive.
Mathew Clifton was recovering nicely, however, and was nearing a release from the hospital. But either he truly didn’t know or was choosing not to share any intimate details of his abduction. Angel had seen cases li
ke his a thousand times before. He will come around. She thought. He’ll be of help to the FBI but unfortunately not in enough time before A House in Chains’ Zero Hour passes and all the consequences that arise from that.
So we have one Prince Brother causing trouble and the other in trouble.
Some of the agents standing here in this very room had complained to her about how Christopher had been treated by their superiors at the bureau. They said that an agent with his record and his years of service had deserved more benefit of the doubt. The bureau should have been more loyal to this man, especially considering how many former FBI agents were responsible for this mess they were in the first place.
Blue planted her hands on her hips, ever impatient. “What are your orders now, Agent Sheridan?”
“First, I want you to give every note, every lead you, the doctor and Agent Prince collected in your investigation of those crime scenes to Felder.”
Angel took a step towards the man who looked as if he had German measles. She was sure that Sheridan would assign her to Felder and anyone else he assigned to the agent’s team. Good enough, she thought, although he wasn’t much of a conversationalist, he had proven to be more than competent in his duties. He had two degrees in the social sciences and it would help her that she wouldn’t have to dumb her analyst when she articulated her opinions.
Felder asked: “And what else, sir?”
“And study the data they’ve accumulated and string together