Mohawk gave his cohorts a curt nod. “All right, we’re leaving,” he said.
“
They paused to grab Blondie’s corpse by its arms and legs, which meant they had to holster their weapons. The second I saw those Baikals stored I pulled my own gun. I didn’t intend to shoot. We were at stalemate. I understood that. So did Mohawk, who’d pulled a Glock 37 from behind his back the second Vayl showed his hand.
“When do we get the dog back?” Mohawk demanded.
“We’ve got your number,” I told him. “We’ll call at dusk to let you know.”
Mohawk wanted to linger, do more negotiating, but shouting from a lower floor told him he was out of time. “Dusk,” he said firmly, trying to make it an order. They took off. I went to the door, but by the time I got there the hall held only a dusty gold chandelier and a framed print of a bunch of Christians being eaten by lions.
I turned to compliment Vayl on his quick thinking. But Dave stood in my way. “The cut on your back—I think it looks more spectacular than it actually is.” He winced and touched his fingertips to his jaw as his own injuries pained him. “You probably won’t even need—” But I didn’t hear the rest. A face, that face, had emerged from the pool of Blondie’s blood. I knew it was real because Ziel perked up his ears, looked straight at it, and then decided he wanted to bury his face in the gap between Vayl’s shirt buttons.
As my
“That’s new,” I murmured.
“What did you say?” asked Dave.
“I said that’s a new deal for me. Not needing stitches.”
“And not dying,” he added. I glanced up at him. Were we reverting to weird jokes? Already? I looked back at the face, hovering over the floor like a huge red mask.
Because the face was staring in my direction, and once again he was horribly happy to see me.
Dave said something about leaving his first-aid kit in the bedroom when he’d changed clothes. As he went to retrieve it I wished he could’ve dabbed a little Neosporin and stretched some gauze across my damaged cerebrum. Vayl seemed pretty intent on Ziel, who’d gone slightly batty once he’d been set down, demanding lavish praise and repeated apologies for how he’d been threatened just now. Tarasios, still sitting in the spot where he’d collapsed earlier, seemed fascinated by the ceiling bots, so I decided it was as safe as it was ever going to be to confront my vision.
“What do you want now?” I hissed to the face.
“She is nearly finished with me!”
“Who?”
“The Destroyer.”
“This riddle shit is really pissing me off. Who is she?”
“You must stop her! Before she kills me!”
“You’re alive?”
A look of confusion twisted the face so severely that for a second it became an indecipherable blob. When I could make out features again, it blinked at me with such despair I actually felt a flash of sympathy. “It seems, for me, the answer is not so simple. But you and your
“The Trust?” I whispered. “Or you?”
“We are interchangeable.”
“Why?”
“Because . . .” The face drooped in defeat. “I cannot remember.”
Tarasios began to sing again. Not Elvis this time. Ed Cobb’s “Tainted Love.”
“Yes!” The face raised his bloody brows in triumph, shouting so loudly that I slapped my hand to my forehead. “Her mangled notions of love have brought me to this. You must undo the coil. You must save me. Save me and you save the
“But you just said my
“We are all One!”
“You are really bonkers, you know that?” I wasn’t exactly sure I was addressing the face.
“It is
“Her who?”
“I cannot capture her name in my mind. The . . . the
I cleared my throat. “Dude, you’ve dialed the wrong number. I’m just here for Samos. That’s it.”
His sigh ended almost in a sob. “Then all is truly lost.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
It would’ve been great to spend the rest of the day flat on my stomach recuperating. Sleeping. Dreaming of a world minus one highly annoying
