other means.”
Of course he could. This was the nature of Creepy’s game. This was the reason that even Menessos—who had mastered the nuances of manipulation—was wary of this guy. Creepy’s version of the game was played with exponentially raised stakes.
“Like?”
His lips crooked up on one side.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Johnny’s hands shot out, reaching for Aurelia’s neck. His beast slavered, anxious for a kill—but he stopped himself before he touched her.
He pulled himself back.
“Do it!” she cried.
“No. I won’t be a murderer.”
“You already are! You killed Ignatius Tierney!”
Johnny snorted as if she’d kicked him in the gut. “That was different.” Ig had been having strokes and while his cyclical changes corrected the defects, the strokes were recurring earlier and earlier in each cycle. Ig was pitiful. He was going to die anyway. Johnny’s taking his throat had given him the release he wanted as well as the knowledge that Johnny would ascend to Domn Lup. It was what Ig wanted. “It wasn’t murder.”
“Because it was a release from his torment?” Aurelia demanded.
“Yes,” Johnny answered softly, his hands coming to rest in his lap. “Yes.”
“John . . . you have to kill me.”
He stared at the side of her head in the harsh dome light. She still hadn’t moved. A bitter thought chilled his stomach.
“Please. I can’t feel my legs. I can’t move my arms.” Her voice cracked. “Don’t leave me like
She’d figured it out already and had been baiting him, taunting him into finishing her off. But he couldn’t kill her in cold blood. He wouldn’t.
He wasn’t sure what Doc Lincoln could do for her like this. Surely an animal in this condition would simply be put down.
He looked at his hands.
Inside the wreckage, Aurelia began sobbing. “I can’t live like this! Not as an invalid.”
He backed away from the car.
She coughed again and it sounded like blood came up. He turned away. He’d made two steps before he heard, “John. Please. Wait.”
He stopped.
She was breathing fast, so pale. Yet there was sweat on her brow. “You have to go to my hotel. The Renaissance Cleveland. Get my purse. Take my room key. It’s the Presidential Suite.” She coughed again, spat. “In my suitcase, wedged in the bottom left corner, is a key to a public locker at the Greyhound station on Chester Avenue. It’s not even a mile from the hotel.”
He knew downtown well enough that she didn’t have to tell him this, but he refrained from interrupting her.
“Take the key. Get the stuff inside it . . . in the next twenty-four hours.” Another cough. “Do it before he gets it. Do it and your son will be safe.”
Johnny stepped back to the car. “ ‘He’ who?”
She swallowed, spat. “Take it,” she whispered. “Get the key.”
Johnny sat and reached for her purse, which lay on her feet. As he pulled it away his stomach turned over inside him. Beneath the purse, her right foot was twisted to the side and an inch of leg bone protruded from it. Blood was dripping fast, pooling on the tan floor.
If he had doubted the truth of her claim to not feeling anything, that sealed it. He brought the purse up onto the console between them and unzipped the top.
“Who?” he asked again.
Abruptly, Aurelia screamed. “My feet. Oh my God, my feet! John, do you see that!”
Brusquely, he said, “I saw it.”
“I . . . I can’t feel any of that. God, please, don’t leave me like this.”
Johnny’s fingers closed around the hotel key card. He zipped the purse up and replaced it gently, hoping she would calm down once she couldn’t see her feet again.
“Help me,” she begged.
Not trusting his voice to not break, he whispered, “I cannot kill you.”
Shallow jerky breaths overcame her and she sobbed again.
Lights flashed down the road. Four sets. Johnny got out of the car.
When the vehicles neared he recognized the three black Chevrolet Tahoes that the Omori had been using, and the last he recognized as Doc Lincoln’s pickup truck. They parked behind his car on the road and started unloading.
Johnny headed directly for Gregor. “Let the doc in first,” he ordered, pointing at the truck and the plain man who climbed out of it with a large medical bag in hand. Once Doc Lincoln approached Aurelia’s car, Johnny pulled Gregor to the side. “I need you to go to Saranac Lake, New York.”
Gregor nodded. “What may I do for you there?”
“Get my son and bring him to Cleveland.”
The Omori captain blinked twice, showing more surprise than Johnny had expected he would. “Would you repeat that, sire?”
• • •
Johnny sat in his car and called Antonia Brown. “I’m sorry, Toni. I know it’s late—”
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I’m sending a man to Saranac Lake.”
“What for?”
“I’ve learned that someone bugged the key fob to my car. They know about Evan. They know I have a son.”
“ ‘They’ who?”
Johnny’s free hand scratched through his hair. He flashed a look at the car in the field. The Omori had taken one of the Chevys into the field. It sat running with the high beams shining into the BMW while Doc Lincoln was checking Aurelia. “I don’t know exactly.”
“John.”
The question in her voice was clear. “I trust the man I’m sending.”
“He’ll protect us?”
“Yes. He is to bring you and Evan here. Pack only what you need, we’ll send for the rest or replace it.”
“You don’t seriously think it’s that simple to uproot our lives, do you?” she snapped.
Johnny wasn’t sure how to delicately say what he wanted to say. “Don’t you have your affairs in order?” When she’d tracked Johnny down, she’d told him she was dying. She had about six months.
Toni sighed resignedly. “What if I want to die in my home?”
“I will do everything you ask of me, Toni, but I want Evan with me. I want him here with guards I trust around him. I would not ask this of you unless I was convinced Evan’s life depended on it.” He respected her resilience and tenacity. She had struggled on when her husband died suddenly. She had struggled on when her teen daughter, Frankie, wound up pregnant by a boy who disappeared before she could even tell him about the child. She
