As she stalked out toward the fountain, she heard a series of clicks, and when she looked over her shoulder, she saw that the portal had fixed itself, magically resealing its empty jambs, forming exactly what had been there before with nary a scratch to show for what she’d done to it.
Fury rose within her such that it choked her throat and made her hands shake.
In the corner of her eye, she saw a black-robed figure coming down the colonnade, but it was not her mother. It was merely No’One with a basket of offerings for the Scribe Virgin, her limp shifting her gait from side to side.
The sight of the misfortunate, excluded Chosen fueled her rage even further—
“Payne?”
The sound of the deep voice whipped her head around: Wrath stood by the white tree of colorful songbirds, his massive form dominating the courtyard.
Payne sprang at him, turning him into a target she could fight. And the Blind King clearly sensed her violence and her vicious approach: In the blink of an eye, he fell into his fighting stance, becoming powerful, prepared, and ready.
She gave him everything she had and more, her fists and legs flying at him, her body becoming a whirl of punches and kicks, which he deflected with his forearms and dodged by ducking his torso and head.
Faster, tougher, deadlier, she kept at the king, forcing him to return what she was putting to him or risk getting seriously injured. His first hard strike caught her in the shoulder, his fist crashing into her, throwing her off balance—but she recovered quickly and spun around, leading with her leg and foot.
The impact to his gut rocked him so hard he grunted—at least until she spun once more and struck him in the face with her knuckles. As blood exploded, and the dark lenses o’er his eyes skittered away, he cursed.
“What the fuck, Pay—”
The king didn’t have a chance to finish her name. She plowed into him, catching him around the waist, driving his huge weight backward. There was no true contest, however. He was twice her size, and he took charge with ease, peeling her off of him and flipping her around to hold her, back to his front.
“What the fuck is your problem?” he snarled in her ear.
She slammed her head backward, nailing him in the face, and his grip loosened for a split second. Which was all she needed to break away. Flipping free of him by using his oak-strong body as a platform to fly from, she—
Vastly underestimated her momentum. Instead of landing with her weight perpendicular to the ground, she pitched forward—which meant she hurt one foot badly, her body tumbling wildly to the side.
The marble edge of the fountain kept her from hitting the ground, but the impact was worse than if she’d fallen flat.
The crack of her back was loud as a scream.
And so was the pain.
SIXTY-TWO
When Lash woke up at his hideaway ranch, the first thing he did was look at his arms.
Along with his hands and wrists, his forearms were now shadows as well, a kind of smog- like form that moved as he told it to, and either be nothing more than air or could bear weight at his command.
Sitting up, he shoved off the blanket he’d pulled over himself and stood. What do you know, his feet were pulling a disappear, too. Which was good, but... shit, how long was the transformer bit going to take? He had to assume that if his body still had physical form, with a heartbeat and needs like food and drink and sleep, he wasn’t completely safe from bullets and knives.
Plus, frankly, given all the pieces that had fallen off him, bio-waste management was really fucking messy.
He’d turned the mattress he’d slept on into the biggest Depends on the planet.
A squeak from outside drew him over to the blinds and he parted a seam with his nonfingers. Through the crack, he watched humans going along their lame-ass days, driving by, biking along. Frickin’ morons with their simple little lives. Get up. Go to work. Come home. Bitch about their day. Wake up and do the same thing again.
As a sedan went by, he implanted a thought in the driver’s mind... and smiled as the Pontiac swerved out of its lane, bumped up over the curb, and gunned right at the two-story across the street. The fucking POS powered straight into a bank of windows, smashing through the glass and the wood framing, air bags exploding inside the car.
Better than a cup of coffee to start the day.
He turned away and went to the shitty bureau, firing up the laptop he’d found in the back of the Mercedes. The drug deal he’d interrupted on the way home had been worth the effort. He’d grifted a couple thousand dollars as well as some OxyCs, some X, and twelve crack rocks. More important, he’d thrown the two dealers and the one customer under a trance, gotten them back to the AMG, brought them here, and turned them.
They’d trashed the hall bath by throwing up all night long, but frankly he was about done with this house and was thinking of burning it down.
So... he had a team of four. And whereas none of them had been volunteers, once he’d drained them and brought them back to “life,” he’d promised them all kinds of shit. And what do you know. Junkies who dealt to supply their own habits would believe just about anything you told them. You just had to sell them on a future—after you’d scared the colons out of them.
Which was a no B.F.D. for him. Naturally, they’d been shitting themselves when he’d unmasked his face, but the good thing was they’d hallucinated so many times on acid trips, it wasn’t completely outside their experience to talk to a living corpse. Plus he was persuasive when he wanted to be.
Damn shame he couldn’t brainwash them permanently. But that parlor trick with the Pontiac driver was as far as he could go with the influence: brief and unsustainable for longer than a couple of seconds.
Fucking free will.
After the computer booted up, he went to the Caldwell Courier Journal site...
Hello, front page. The “Farmhouse Massacre” was covered in a number of articles—the blood and the body parts and the strange oily residue garnering all kinds of Pulitzer-light description. Reporters also interviewed the police who’d been there, the postman who’d called 911 in the first place, twelve kinds of neighbors, and the mayor—who was evidently “calling upon the fine men and women of the CPD to solve this terrible crime against the Caldwell community.”
Consensus was: ritual deaths. Perhaps tied to an unknown cult.
All of which was just background chatter obscuring what he was really looking for—
Bingo. In the last article, he found a short two-paragrapher reporting that the crime scene had been broken into the night before. The “fine men and women of the CPD” had grudgingly allowed as how one of their late-night patrol cars had done a drive-by and found that person or persons unknown had ransacked the scene. They were quick to point out that relevant evidence had already been removed and they were putting a black-and-white there full-time from now on.
So the Brotherhood had followed up on his little message.
Had Xhex gone there, too? he wondered. Maybe waited to see if he’d show up?
Shit, he’d missed a goddamn shot at her. And the Brothers.
But he had time. Hell, when his body went full- on shadow? He had an eternity.
Checking his watch, he got his hustle on, changing quickly into black slacks and a turtleneck and that hooded raincoat. Drawing on his leather gloves, he slid his black baseball cap on and gave a gander in the mirror.
Yeah. Right.
Rummaging around, he found a black T-shirt that he ripped to ribbons and wound around his face, leaving room for his lidless eyes and the cartilage that was left of his nose and the gaping maw that was now his mouth.
Better. Not great. But better.
First stop was the bathroom to check and see how his troops were getting along. They had all passed out in a heap on the floor, their arms and legs intertwining, their heads here and there... but the fuckers were alive.