A soccer ball bounced out from between two cars, and Hammer slammed on the brakes. He slowly drove around it, then sped up toward the corner. I roared after him and chased him through Hammer Bay. He crept through stop signs and red lights, blaring his horn, screeching to a halt when he came too close to another car. This was his town. He was not going to break anything in it-at least, not where anyone would see.
I managed to clip his taillight when he braked for a woman on a bicycle, but it wasn’t enough to stop him. He raced past the supermarket, past the hospital, past the last biker bar at the edge of town, then he crested a hill and vanished onto the highway.
If I couldn’t keep up with him in town, I was never going to be able to follow him on the winding highway.
I rumbled up the crest in the hill. Hammer was pulling away. I picked up the Uzi with my left hand and leaned it out the window. I didn’t have any other choice now, and there were no innocent bystanders to worry about.
I fired on him, trying to keep my shots low, near the tires. My aim was crap and the gun bucked like crazy. His back windshield shattered, and he swerved as he ducked below the dash. I punched holes in the trunk, for what ever good that did.
The magazine ran dry. I was reaching for the second one when Hammer, still ducking below the dashboard, swerved across the center line. A pickup truck loaded with gardening equipment rounded the curve ahead, heading straight for him. The driver blared his horn.
The vehicles swerved away from each other. The pickup slid onto the shoulder of the road and rumbled through the gravel. Hammer overcorrected, angling across the road and over the shoulder. He hit the brakes too late and smashed into a tree.
The pickup driver slowed to a stop, and so did I. I saw Hammer’s air bag deflate back against the steering wheel. Hammer was hurt, but I knew he wasn’t out of commission. I tossed away the empty gun and climbed from the driver’s seat.
“Did you see what happened?” the pickup driver said, not really looking at me. “He swerved right into my lane!”
He rushed toward Hammer’s car, intent on helping him. Hammer shoved open his door and stumbled out of the car. He was holding the Uzi. The pickup driver stopped suddenly about ten feet away and said something like “Whoa, friend…”
Hammer pointed the weapon at me. I fired.
He blossomed with bullet holes and fell back against the car. He lay still. The driver fled back to his truck like a perfectly sensible person.
I rushed over to Hammer and took his gun away. The bullet wounds were already healing, but slowly. Without the silver wire, the connection between the man and the predator must have been faint.
Using the ghost knife, I sliced off his clothes. I found an iron gate on his shoulder, just where it had been on Cynthia and Cabot. I cut through it, letting the black steam and gray sparks arc into the air.
There was another sigil on his stomach. It was a circle with flames at the four cardinal points and a single eye at the center. This one didn’t look like a tattoo, though. It looked, and felt, like a tumor that had grown under his skin. I slashed the ghost knife through this one, too. There were no jets of steam or sparks, but Hammer’s bullet wounds stopped sealing over.
As an experiment, I slid the corner of the ghost knife through his wrist. His skin split apart as if I was using a scalpel. He was dead.
The pickup truck raced away. I climbed into the Crown Vic and found an old leather-bound journal. It fell open to a page that read “To Call and Bind a Great Wheel, Which Will Grant You Favorable Outcomes.”
On impulse, I pulled out Charlie Three’s wallet. I found five hundred-dollar bills and ten twenties. I took them all. This had been a valuable lesson for him.
I tucked the book under my arm and went back to the van.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I drove back into town. I should have dumped the van, stolen a car, and made a run for it, but I doubted I would get far. Half the town had seen me at the casino, the hospital, the police station, and during the car chase through town. The FBI or the state police were probably already looking for me.
Besides, I had no choice. Charles Hammer might have left another copy of his spell book in his tower. I had to finish Annalise’s work and burn it down.
I drove through town without incident. Traffic still seemed lighter than it had. Most of the people must have been on the north side of town, where two columns of black smoke rose toward the sky. I pulled into Hammer’s driveway without attracting any apparent attention. There were no police cars waiting for me, and no one seemed to have come to the house. The front door was still wide open.
I went inside and let myself onto the terrace. There was no lighter fluid beside the barbecue, but there was a long lighter, a bag of charcoal, and a charcoal chimney. That would do. I tore some pages off Charles’s kitchen calendar and squirted olive oil on them. Then I put the paper on the bottom of the chimney and the coals in the top.
I’d almost forgotten about the sprinklers. I followed the sprinkler pipes along the ceiling to the place where they joined the main water system beneath the kitchen sink, and turned the valve all the way off.
Then I stood and opened the fridge. I was hungry, sure, but I had another thought nagging at me.
On the bottom shelf of the fridge, Charles had left three porter house steaks. I carried them along with the lighter and chimney to the tower.
I set the lighter and chimney on the landing inside the door. Then I sprinted up the stairs with the steaks in hand.
Annalise was still there. One look at her and I knew my idea was crazy and useless. I opened the first package and, with the ghost knife, cut a long strip from the steak. Annalise’s mouth was wide open in a frozen scream. I stuffed the piece of meat into her throat.
I did it again and again. If I was crazy, I was crazy. Maybe they would put me in a nice, uncomfortable psych
