Day of Doom by David Baldacci

Book Preface

The etched glass goblet sat on an exquisite marble countertop. The countertop was in the bathroom of a luxurious hotel room. The hotel room was in New York City, where luxurious hotel rooms are fairly common. The goblet looked like a reproduction antique that one might find in an eight-hundred-dollar-a-night deluxe room at the Ritz-Carlton. Only the goblet wasn’t a beautiful reproduction. The hotel hadn’t placed it there. Someone else had. And the goblet wasn’t empty. It was, in fact, about to be used. The boy reached down and gripped the goblet. In it was the potion he’d completed, a mass of reddish-green liquid that pooled in the glass container like a deadly slime about to be unleashed on the world — a description that was not so far off the mark. He lifted the goblet and touched it to his lips, and then tipped it back. The contents slipped past his lips, entered his mouth, and washed down his throat and into his belly. He gave a small shudder as the foul concoction landed firmly in his gut and his taste buds roared their disapproval.