enough to put Hunter to sleep. It would be a simple task to take his gun from him, then use it to ventilate his head in a number of places.
The thought brought a smile to his lips. He liked shooting people in the head. There was an undeniable finality to it.
It was why he killed his mother that way.
She wanted to join his father. So he'd answered her wish. The single bullet had instantly severed her spine at the point where it met her brain. She died instantly.
He didn't need to keep on shooting her until he had no bullets left, but he knew now that he'd done that out of inexperience. And love. He didn't want to shoot the woman only to find that he'd failed and that she would be a cripple for the rest of her days. So he made sure. No walking away, he told himself. Like he wouldn't walk away from Hunter until he was sure he was dead.
'Now,' he told himself. 'Do it now.'
He attacked. Jabbing with the needle.
He felt the solid thud of Hunter's hand connect with his gut, but it did not deter him.
'Die, you freak.'
Dantalion was not sure who had spoken those words. Hunter, or maybe it was even himself; he could not tell.
Hunter's hand twisted against his abdomen. Dantalion felt a corresponding twisting of his gut. Then red searing pain flared and he realised only then that the man had not simply punched him: he had jammed a knife into his body.
So it was Hunter who'd spoken?
Let him have his little moment, he thought. Let him think he's won.
Dantalion smiled. He felt the man slump and knew that his drug had done its work. And his book had been his salvation. Hunter's blade had pierced his book. It had pushed through the cover and the pages within, exited out the back of it, but with barely an inch of the blade embedded in his flesh, nowhere near his internal organs. It wasn't he who was going to die.
The fingers round his windpipe loosened and Dantalion sucked in air. Hunter was lying against his shoulder, as though seeking support. Dantalion stepped away and the man went to his knees. His fingers were still on the hilt of the knife, but he had no strength to use the weapon. Dantalion reached down and teased away each finger individually.
Hunter grunted.
Dantalion snorted and kicked the man over backwards. Hunter slammed against the door marked with Dantalion's blood, throwing it open to reveal a room much brighter than the dark places they'd already traversed. A raised platform made up the nearest end of the room, then dropped away to ground level. The light was coming from below.
Dantalion looked down at the knife standing out from his body. It hung suspended, held by the wound and the weight of the book caught up in his clothing. Dantalion tugged on the hilt, wincing as he felt the knife pull from his flesh. Warm blood trickled down his abdomen and pooled around his groin. He wasn't overconcerned. Once he finished off Hunter his flesh would mend as he transformed into the higher being he'd always been destined to become.
He pulled out his book and wrenched free the blade.
Military issue Ka-bar, he noted. Man-killer by definition. Useless against angels.
Hunter had rolled on to his side in an effort to get up. Dantalion saw the confused expression on his face and was only sorry that Hunter wasn't fully coherent. He wanted him fully aware when he was killed by his own weapon.
Hunter made it to his hands and knees.
Dantalion stood to his side, lifted the Ka-bar.
Then he saw the gun thrust into the waistband of Hunter's jeans.
The thunders of judgement and wrath are numbered.
It was always about the numbers.
He could offer a choice.
'One: knife?' he asked. Then he plucked out the SIG Sauer. 'Two: gun? Which is it going to be, Hunter? How shall I kill you?'
44
One of the more obscure facets of my training had been how to endure torture. I've ran the gamut of methods employed by those who find it necessary to prise information from an enemy soldier. Sleep deprivation, mind games, physical beatings: I had to suffer and defeat them all when a member of the Special Forces. When I was drafted into the team headed by the shadowy men who became known as Arrowsake, I was introduced to further methods. The Geneva Convention forbids torture. But those I fought did not give a fuck for conventions. So it was necessary for me to be exposed to the other methods that some governments and terrorist groups used with impunity.
As soon as the needle went in, and I felt the rushing in my skull, I knew what drug was coursing through my system. I'd felt its effects before. Sodium amatol. Truth serum as it's sometimes referred to. It's an inhibitor. It lowers resistance. It makes you feel drunk. But at the low dosage Dantalion had squirted into me, it wasn't going to kill me. It wasn't even going to send me to sleep.
What it would do was disorient me, take away my strength and make it difficult to fight back. But I knew I could shake off the effects. Given time.
Dantalion kicked me over.
He didn't know, but the pain acted in my favour. It shook off some of the debilitating fog in my brain. I rolled on to my side, looking for him.
My eyes rolled in my skull and I could see his silhouette in triplicate as my vision swam.
Aim for the one in the middle, I told myself. The thought struck me as funny, even as I knew that he was moving to kill me.
I rolled on to my hands and knees. A tide rushed through me, and I was almost sick. My heart felt like a massive bellows in my chest, blood pumped supercharged through my veins. Blackness clouded at the edge of my consciousness. I shook my head. Clear the cobwebs. Clear the cobwebs, I chanted to myself. Fight the drug, push it aside.
'One: knife?' I heard.
Couldn't quite comprehend his meaning.
'Two: gun?'
Fingers tugged at my back and I realised my mistake. I'd shown him my SIG. I didn't have the strength to stop him taking it. I barely had the strength to hold myself upright on my locked forearms.
'What's it going to be, Hunter?'
I sucked in air, holding it, making pressure in my skull to push back the fluttering shadows from my mind.
'How shall I kill you?'
'With boredom,' I told him.
Then I kicked out, pistoning from the knee so that my heel crunched into his nearest shin.
Dantalion howled with pain, and the sound did more to clear my mind than all my previous attempts.
Pushing upwards, I came to my feet. My head swam, and it felt like I was on the deck of a ship in the storm of the century. But I didn't stop. I slammed the heel of my palm into Dantalion's groin, took hold of anything I could find and squeezed with all my might.
Now his pain was given high-pitched voice. Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, sounding like he was going to sneeze. To give him something else to think about, I smacked my forehead into his face.
Not the best idea. The effect of bone on bone set off a tsunami inside my own head, and we reeled apart,
