“Stay with him. He doesn’t have anyone else.”
“Where are you going?”
I didn’t answer her.
“Laytham, what are you doing?”
“Making this right,” I said, “as right as I can. Tell Grinner and Christine I’m sorry. Tell him to take all the rest of the money out of the dummy accounts he’s set up for me. It’s his now.”
Anna shook her head slowly. “No. No, you’re not doing that, you’re not going out in some stupid blaze of glory. I don’t care if you believe it or not, but there are a lot of people who love you…”
“I know,” I said. “I’m doing this for them. No more people dying for me, no more people sacrificed on my altar. You tell Lauren…” I couldn’t fit the words in my mouth. They were for real people, real boys with a whole soul and no blood on their hands. “Anna…”
She nodded. “Come back and tell us, tell us both.”
“Hell, tell that fat sack of a hacker I’m sorry. There have been so few things in my life that were … real. You, you were all real.”
I walked through the halls of the temple of suffering, each room a gallery of pain. I stole a few things I’d need from a nurses’ station and found my way outside.
* * *
Theodore Ankou’s eyes fluttered open. He was tangled in fifteen-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. His hotel suite window burned from the light of a million counterfeit stars in the heart of the city. My hand was on his throat. His eyes snapped to full predatory awareness, obviously shocked that I had been able to sneak up on him, to get this close. He was about to shrug off his mortal guise and send me flying across the room when he felt the hypodermic needle resting against the plump, pulsing jugular vein in his neck.
“So, Mr. Ballard,” he whispered, careful to not move too suddenly against the needle, “to soothe your damaged ego at your failure to keep poor dead Caern safe, you are now the avenger, is that it? Pathetic. Didn’t you learn anything from my little lesson? You did what you always do. You kept yourself alive, hale and hearty. You preserved your legend, even if good people had to die to do it.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I did, and you’re right, I’ve done it before, screwed over people, had them die so I didn’t have to. It’s funny, there was a time, it seems like a million lives ago, when I would rather die than do something like that. What happened to that me? Was he real, is this me real? So, you see, your lesson was more of a refresher course than a revelation, Theo. I wanted to thank you properly for it all the same.”
“My men are trained to sense a whisper of power, a hushed word, even a violent thought. They will be in here any moment,” he said.
“No, they won’t,” I said. “I killed them. Caern had a little gift from her mother, an artifact from the old country. It hides one from scrying and detection spells very well. They never knew what hit them, just like you, Theo. You’re alone with an unwashed, savage ape at your throat. How does that feel? I want to know.”
Ankou swallowed hard, and his artery squirmed against the surgical steel of the needle. He was sweating a little too. “You think I’ll behave as you did? I am Fae, a superior being. How do you know that manticore venom will even affect me?”
“If it didn’t turn you into a vegetable, you’d have become a hurricane and shredded me by now,” I said. “You wouldn’t be sweating. You wouldn’t be afraid.”
“If you leave now, I’ll pay you what you’re due for the service you rendered me,” Ankou said.
“You wouldn’t be bargaining, would you?” I said. Anger darkened his eyes, but the fear remained.
“I have money,” he said, “a large amount, bearer bonds in a case with me. In the safe in this room. It’s been enchanted to destroy everything in the safe unless the proper code is entered as the password. You can’t magically bypass it. I’ll give it all to you if you leave me unmolested.”
“Combination?” I said. Ankou’s face changed just slightly. He felt on steadier control now, was using me again, as it should be.
“How do I know you won’t inject me and then just take the money?”
“How do I know you won’t kill me the second I take this hypo away?”
“I give you my word,” he said. “I swear upon the singing star of the First World. I swear upon my family name. What assurance can you give me that is worth anything to you, Ballard?”
I thought for a moment, then I said, “I swear on the soul of your daughter. You have my word, on Caern’s soul.”
Ankou was silent for a moment. “You thought she was your salvation, didn’t you? Thought that if she could leave behind all her pain and all her failures, you could too. She climbed out of the pit, so you thought you could as well. She was your hope. I see. Very sentimental, very in keeping with who you are. Very well, on Caern’s soul.”
He gave me the combination to the safe. I felt him relax a little, the tension of his demise leaving him with my payoff.
“You didn’t have to kill her,” I said, my voice cold shale. “Why did you?”
“It was always my intent,” Ankou said. “She would never give me the heir I needed, never submit to her proper place in the scheme of things. And she had tainted her womb with human seed, produced a half-breed bastard as the only one to carry on my family name, and another abomination stewing in her belly … disgusting. The thought of my blood out in the monkey world being diluted down to nothing … no. You are a prideful man, you understand, even if you wish you
