“Third floor, then?” Daphne said over the clanging din from the speaker at her back.
Izzie nodded. They made their way back to the stairwell, and started up the next flight of stairs.
The third and fourth floors proved to be more of the same. Cubicle farms, mostly, with corner offices for management, supply rooms, and communications hubs. Izzie and Daphne both put down two more of the Ridden each, while Izzie stunned another security guard insensate with her Taser. But still no sign of Patrick.
The effects of the ilbal had grown even more intense. Izzie and Daphne had reached the point now where they were communicating almost entirely nonverbally. A simple glance or quick gesture was enough to express almost any idea, and it was almost as though they were able to read one another’s minds. But their tension levels only increased as they ventured further into the building without meeting serious opposition, and the flames that surrounded each of them flickered with a growing intensity.
And while they were not feeling the nausea or foul tastes that they normally associated with the nearness of the Ridden, there was something else that was beginning to dominate their perceptions. Izzie could think of it only as a sense of mounting wrongness, of things not being as they should be.
It wasn’t until they stepped out onto the fifth floor of the Pinnacle Tower that Izzie had a better idea of what that sense of wrongness was trying to tell her.
“Hello, ladies.”
Patrick Tevake stood facing the door to the stairwell, his arms at his sides. He was wearing the same clothes that he had on the last time Izzie had seen him earlier that day, but they seemed to fit him differently now. Or perhaps it was the way he was standing, a different posture than he normally held.
“Mind turning down the noise?” Patrick waved a hand absently, and that was when Izzie realized that he wasn’t focusing on either of them, but looking vaguely in their direction. “We need to talk.”
Izzie stepped forward, and it was only as she drew a little closer that she began to see the thin tendrils of shadows that rose up from the crown of Patrick’s head.
“Come on, there’s no need for further unpleasantness,” he said, and turned his head toward her, eyes blinking slowly.
Whoever it was looking out those eyes at them, Izzie realized, it wasn’t Patrick.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Patrick was surrounded by darkness on all sides. He could feel nothing, hear nothing, taste nothing, but he was awake and aware. He had the distinct impression that there was something that he needed to remember, but his thoughts slipped away from him like quicksilver whenever he tried to focus on them.
Had someone just spoken? Was there something that he was supposed to say? Something he was meant to do? A notion lurked at the back of his head, planted there in childhood, but Patrick struggled to think what it might be.
The darkness was all consuming.
The darkness was all.
The darkness was.
Izzie brought the stock of the shotgun to her shoulder, the barrel aimed at Patrick, but kept her finger well away from the trigger.
“Daphne,” she said without turning around. “Kill the music.”
“Wait, are you sure that’s a . . . ?” Daphne began, but Izzie cut her off.
“Go on, turn it off.”
They were in a large, empty atrium that seemed to fill most of the fifth floor, with only a single door on the far side of the room. And aside from Patrick and the two of them, no other people to be seen.
The music blaring from the boombox came to an abrupt stop in the middle of a screeching guitar solo, and the sudden silence that filled the large, empty space was almost deafening.
“Thanks for that,” Patrick said, a hand to the side of his head. “Was having trouble keeping it together with all of that racket.”
Izzie raised the barrel of the shotgun so that it was pointed directly at his face. “Patrick, are you in there?”
He smiled humorlessly, meeting her gaze. “What’s left of him, maybe. But not for much longer.”
Izzie narrowed her eyes. “So who am I talking to?”
“Your friend here has been lucky enough to take part in the Merger,” he said, gesturing airily with his hands. “But unlucky enough that he wasn’t a willing participant in the process, so it was a pretty unpleasant experience. The good news is that it won’t last.”
Izzie’s aim wavered as she took that in.
“So you’ll let him go?”
The sound of his barking laughter was jarring coming from that familiar face, even as it twisted into an expression of remorseless cruelty. But the shadows that rose from his head twisted and morphed in time, as if dancing with amusement.
“No; it won’t last because soon there won’t be anything left of him.” He took a step forward, and only stopped when Izzie jabbed the barrel of the shotgun in his direction. “Which is why I want to talk to you now, while this body is still able. Offer you the same chance that I offered him, see if you two are any smarter than he was.”
Izzie felt a tap on her elbow, and out of the corner of her eye saw that Daphne had stepped forward and was standing by her side.
“What do we do?” Daphne said out of the corner of her mouth, leaning in close.
Izzie only shook her head in response, not sure how to answer yet.
“Now, look,” he went on. “You two have been retiring my
