finished with it?'
'They tried.' I told her how we'd found my body in a Dumpster behind the Tooth and Claw restaurant.
'Why not just incinerate your body at the Foundry?' she asked. 'Seems like that would've been easier.'
'Baron didn't want any evidence at his place,' I said. 'A good forensic sorcerer would've been able to find traces of my body's ashes. It's doubtful anyone would've even thought to check the Foundry for such evidence – especially if Baron's coup succeeded – but he's too smart to leave anything to chance. That's why he agreed to reattach my head to my body when we called. He didn't want to arouse any suspicion. Better to just go along and fix me. Besides, that way there was someone else to take the fall for the theft. And since Baron helped put me back together, that further deflected suspicion from him.'
'Seems like Baron thought of everything,' Overkill said. 'Except how good a detective you are.'
She gave me that look again, and Devona scowled. I decided to start talking again before they could resume arguing.
'I'm not sure knowing the truth makes any difference,' I said. 'Who can we tell? Dis and the Darklords are still sleeping, and while I'm guessing their servants are right now trying desperately to wake them, there's no guarantee they'll succeed. Edrigu didn't wake up when Baron had my body steal Osseal from around his neck. If Edrigu slept through that, I doubt someone shaking him by the shoulders and shouting in his ear will do the trick. Same for the other lords.'
'We could try to tell Quillion,' Devona ventured.
'The Adjudicators and Sentinels probably have their hands full trying to deal with the rioting,' I said. 'I'd try to call Quillion, but our voxes are destroyed, and none of the others in the city are working, so that's out. We could try to tell him in person – assuming we could make it through the rioting monsters and reach the Nightspire – but I fear Quillion would destroy me on the spot for escaping Tenebrus before I had a chance to get a single word out.'
'To hell with Quillion,' Overkill said. 'Let's just go to the Foundry ourselves, kick Baron's ass, and take Osseal away from him. The rioting should stop then, yeah?'
'I suppose so,' I said. 'But since when did you become the hero type?'
'I'm not. What I am is a gal who likes her fun and right now the idea of fighting my way through a city of murderously insane Frankenstein monsters sounds like a blast!'
Devona regarded Overkill for a moment. 'You really are a very strange woman. You know that, right?'
Overkill just grinned at her.
I considered Overkill's suggestion. Back when I was a cop on Earth, I once saw a piece of spray-painted graffiti on an alley wall that read Justice = Just Us. All too often, that was the way it worked in Nekropolis. Who else was there to deal with Baron? Besides, the sonofabitch had used me like I was nothing more than a puppet, and I was determined to make him pay for it.
'It won't be easy,' I said, thinking aloud. 'The Foundry's as well protected as a military base – and I very much doubt we'll be able to get there on foot. Hell, I'm not sure we could get there by car, given how bad it is out there.' I thought about Lazlo, but I doubted his cab had been repaired yet, and there was no way it could get us through a city of rioting monsters in the condition we'd last seen it in.
'We don't need to drive all the way to the Foundry,' Devona said. 'We could take the-' She winced, her face scrunching up as if she was experiencing a sudden, intense pain.
I understood. Devona had been about to say Under walk, but the tongue worm the Dominari had given her had jolted her with a burst of pain to warn her not to speak the word.
'Take what?' Overkill asked, but we ignored her.
'Yes!' I said, but my enthusiasm for the idea quickly waned. 'But we still need to get there.' The only entrance we knew about lay in a warehouse on the other side of the Sprawl – and there were a lot of Baron's psychotic creations between us and there, every one of them eager to tear us into teeny-tiny pieces.
'I don't know what you two are talking about,' Overkill said, 'but if you need to get across the Sprawl, I can help you out.' She grinned. 'I've got a ride.'
'You know, if someone had told me two days ago that I'd be riding shotgun inside Carnage with Overkill at the wheel, I'd have told them they were crazy.'
'Funny how life works out sometimes,' Overkill said.
From the back seat, Devona muttered, 'Hilarious.'
My love was obviously not thrilled to be stuck in back, especially since that left me sharing the front seat with Overkill, but we'd decided that each of us needed to be next to a window so we could fight if necessary, and there were only two windows on each side of the car. Still, given the scowl that had etched itself onto Devona's face since we'd climbed into the car, maybe I should've volunteered to sit in the back.
Only a few minutes earlier Overkill had led Devona and me from the alley between Nosferatomes and Matango to a spot a block away where Carnage was parked. We encountered more than a little resistance from Baron's mad monsters as we went, but between the three of us, we managed to discourage them from rending us limb from limb, and we made it to Carnage. The car's black paint was bleached white in places, evidence of his time bonded with the Conglomeration, but otherwise he looked little the worse for wear. We all hopped in, and the possessed car roared away from the curb like a Caddy out of Hell.
The streets of the Sprawl were clogged with wrecked and abandoned vehicles, not to mention pedestrians running for their lives from pursuing monsters. Carnage wove through the chaos with consummate skill and we made our way toward the Dominari-owned warehouse. As we traveled, Overkill explained how she'd come to team up with Carnage.
'I was already out looking for you, like every other hunter in the city, when one of my sources told me you'd been spotted tangling with Carnage on Sybarite Street. I hurried there and found Carnage stuck in the Conglomeration – nice move, by the way. By that point he'd almost extricated himself, and it didn't take much help from me to get him the rest of the way free. I intended to pump him for information about his encounter with you, maybe get a lead on where you were headed, when Orlock called. Once I knew he had you and Devona on ice, I wanted to get there as soon as possible, so I proposed that Carnage give me a ride and we'd split the bounty.'
'More like Carnage overheard the call and threatened to kill you if you didn't cut him in,' I said.
'That's one interpretation,' Overkill allowed. 'By the way, he still expects to be paid, and considering how you tricked him when you last met, he expects to be well paid.'
'I suppose I should be grateful he's more mercenary than vindictive,' I said. I had no idea where I was going to get my hands on the amount of darkgems Carnage would want, but I decided to worry about that later.
I'd never been close enough to Carnage to look inside it… him… whatever. The dashboard display was lit with the same crimson glow as his headlights and the interior was done entirely in black. The seats were leather and Devona later told me they felt slightly oily, as if they were living skin. She also said a faint odor of brimstone issued from the car's vents.
'Wait a minute,' Devona said to Overkill. 'You can talk to Carnage?'
'Sure,' Overkill said. 'There isn't a language in Nekropolis I can't speak, at least well enough to get by. Though I admit I'm not as fluent in possessed automobile as I'd like to be.'
The more time I spent around Overkill, the more impressed I was by her. My feelings must've showed on my face, for Devona leaned forward and punched me none-too-gently on the shoulder.
'Keep you mind on the job,' she said, her fangs fully extended.
Overkill glanced at Devona in the rearview mirror and just smiled.
Because Carnage was alive (in a sense) and intelligent, Overkill didn't actually have to drive. She rode behind the wheel, holding on to her P-90, which she'd reloaded as soon as we'd gotten into Carnage, gaze sweeping the street ahead for signs of trouble as we drove. She'd loaned Devona her 9mm, and I had my. 45 and both of us had some magical items left over from what Shrike had brought us. We weren't exactly loaded for bear, but we weren't unarmed, either.
The scenes we saw as we made our way through the Sprawl were nightmarish even by Nekropolis's standards. Victor Baron built his creations to be tough and virtually unstoppable, and so far they'd lived up to their reputation. Buildings had their doors torn from their hinges, their windows shattered, and skeletal streetlights had been snapped in half. Cars – some that had been run off the road by Baron's vehicles, others that had been picked
