CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Vidonia pushed herself into the corner as far as she could. The light seemed obscenely bright after so much darkness, and she felt its weight like a spotlight pointing her out. The gladiator turned away from the window it had just thrown Silas through and looked directly at her with its single gray eye. It didn’t move. She couldn’t make herself small enough.
A sound caught the beast’s attention, and its head snapped around to the window again. Had that been a car door? The lights went out, and the room was plunged into darkness again. The creature moved to the window, becoming a dim silhouette in the starlight. Its wings bobbed partly open, but the one side didn’t move right. The broken edge of an arrow still protruded from the meaty joint.
The gladiator leaned through the window. Then it dropped out of sight. She was suddenly alone in the room. She didn’t breathe for a moment. Didn’t think. Her heart drummed, and after a few moments she let herself believe it was gone.
She pulled her way up the wall to her feet. Her body was shaking so badly that she had trouble walking, but she forced herself forward. She navigated through the ruined mess of Silas’s office, past the shards of splintered wood and twisted metal drawers that used to be his desk. At the window, she forced herself to look down.
She wasn’t surprised to see Ben. Something about him being here seemed right, almost as if it had been preordained. This was the endgame, and all the players had their final role to play. The irony was almost biblical, and Vidonia could sense her mother smiling down at the symmetry of it all.
The gladiator became what it was, and for Ben, at least, it was quick. He deserved that much.
It didn’t bite. The attack was less predatory than that, more a thing of anger. The gladiator struck a single powerful blow.
She’d read once that police profilers could ascertain how emotionally involved a killer was with the victim by the placement and severity of the wounds. She wondered what they’d make of Ben when they found him. She wondered what they’d make of his crushed head knocked thirty feet from his body. Would that raise a flag? Would they consider it a crime of passion?
At least it was over for him. She hoped it was over for Silas, too. She realized how much more fragile humanity was than the strange creature. Humans seemed much like glass for how easily they broke.
The gladiator brought its attention to bear on Silas again. It crouched low to the ground and moved toward his broken form, sniffing around his head. Silas turned his face away.
He was still alive.
Her breath caught in her throat.
He was still alive.
Vidonia brought a shaking hand up to her mouth to hold it all in—the laughter, the crying, the screams. Everything that wanted to pour out of her. He was still alive. Tears slid down her cheek and dropped to the floor.
She grabbed the broken sill. Glass sank into her palms, but she barely felt it.
She extended a leg out the window, then shifted her weight onto the small ledge. Her other leg followed, and she let herself drop. She landed in the bushes with a resounding crack. At first she assumed the sound had been her leg or spine. She was in pain, but when she stretched, all her parts still moved. The sound had been a branch that broke her fall. Her butt had taken most of the force of the fall, and for once, she was happy for the little extra padding nature had provided her.
She lifted her head up from the mud, half expecting to see the creature looming over her, attracted by the sound of her fall. But it still knelt beside Silas. It sniffed him, pausing over his front pockets where he had stuffed the eggs. One huge black hand raked down his body, ripping open his clothes and flesh. Silas screamed in pain as the gladiator picked the eggs from his wounds.
Vidonia put her hand over her ears but could not block the sound completely. The screaming continued, and she crawled away on her hands and knees, staying behind the belt of shrubs next to the building. She tried to think of something, anything, that she could do.
There was a loud thud, and the screaming stopped.
She turned and looked through a gap in the shrubbery. She didn’t want to see but couldn’t help herself.
The gladiator’s fist was high over its head. Then the arm came down on Silas in a savage arc, thudding again. Tears slid from her eyes. Any thought that Silas was still alive died with that second blow.
She crawled on her belly with her face in the dirt, not looking, not wanting to see or hear what was going on twenty feet away. The sounds grew softer and farther away. She stopped when her head hit the tire. She looked up, and the car seemed impossibly huge—impossibly removed in time, like an artifact of some forgotten age. Had it really been only a few hours since she’d arrived on those very four wheels? It seemed like an eternity. Everything in the world had changed since then.
Her hand closed on the door handle. She pulled, and the latch popped like a gunshot. She looked over at the gladiator, but its arm still did not stop. It was too distracted to notice. The thick black limb rose and fell like a piston, making of Silas a little dent in the ground.
Tears came anew, and she told herself she wouldn’t look again. If it was coming for her, what could she do, anyway?
She slithered inside, over the passenger seat and behind the steering wheel. She lowered her feet to the floor and raised her body up.
She closed her eyes. “Please, God,” she whispered. “The keys. That’s all I ask.”
Her shaking hand found the ignition. The key was still in it.
She let loose a ragged breath and turned the key. The electric motor buzzed to life. It wasn’t loud, but she couldn’t help looking again, and this time, the gladiator did stop. It cast its baleful eye toward her.
She shifted into reverse and hit the accelerator. The car jerked back from the wall and spun in a half-circle. She turned the wheel, and the car pivoted on its rear axis. She was straining over her right shoulder, hand gripping the back of the passenger seat hard enough to pierce the material with her nails. Still in reverse, she floored it, screaming wordlessly.
The gladiator had plenty of time to react. It even lingered for a moment to scoop up its eggs before it stood. As the car jumped off the pavement and hurtled across the grass toward it, the gladiator raised its wings and thrust upward into the sky.
Or it would have, had the right wing not been damaged by the arrow.
The ascent was crippled, off-sided, and the gladiator’s body tilted in the air as the wings provided different amounts of lift.
The trunk of the car connected solidly with the gladiator’s right thigh, spinning the creature over the top of the car and across the hood to the grass. She hit the brakes immediately, shifted into drive, and floored the accelerator again. It cost only a single second to do this, but still she barely caught it. The creature was up and moving. She jerked the wheel, and its hip collided solidly with the corner of the car, knocking the gladiator sideways to the grass.
It was hurt now. Not badly, but it was hurt. She turned the wheel again, bringing the car back around and throwing turf in a dozen directions. She moved the headlights across the creature as it tried to gain its footing. She screamed again and stomped the pedal to the floor. The car connected solidly. There was a loud crack, and the creature spun away, up and over the hood.
She spun the wheel again, and the headlights swung through the darkness until they found the black, bloody shape moving in the grass. The creature was damaged now. Badly. It crawled toward the building, pulling its broken body forward by its hands. She inched the car forward, using the hood ornament as a gun sight. When the crosshairs were lined up, she stomped on the pedal again.
She heard the clumps of grass pummeling the inside of the wheel wells as she picked up speed, rocking over the bumpy turf. The gladiator turned its eye to the headlights and threw its arm up. It didn’t matter.
