"Prometheus, look what you have wrought," Robin marveled at my elbow.
The revenants that remained had turned to run, and I didn't have the energy to lift my gun to stop them. Without Sawney, they were little threat. Promise took the head of one in passing, but as for the rest…screw it. We let them go. They wouldn't be hanging around Columbia anymore, and like cockroaches there would always be more in the city. No matter how many you stepped on, they would always be there.
Sawney burned on. He clawed the air as his insides turned into a river of melting ice or evaporated with an ugly, chemical-tainted hiss. We didn't have a stake to roast him on as they had had in the fifteenth century, but twenty-first-century technology made up the difference.
"No, travelers. No."
There was only a black, twisted thing left now…small as a child and shot through with a glitter of smoked diamonds. When the plea didn't work, the laughter came back, a harsh caw through disintegrating vocal cords, but crazy as ever. "I will be back. From ashes and bone to flesh and murder. You cannot stop me. None can."
"Promise?"
She moved at Niko's rapping of her name and lifted a bottle from her bag. Smaller than Nik's backpack, it held one thing only … a glass bottle of sulfuric acid. "If you can come back from a few scattered molecules"—Niko's smile was cold and sure "we'll certainly be ready and waiting to see it."
Either he smelled it or somehow sensed what it was, and for the first time the laughter and screaming combined into one sickening whole. Insanity wasn't so fun for Sawney anymore; true insanity was being pulled from the shores of mortality by a riptide of acid and flame. I hoped it hurt. God, I hoped it hurt, and I hoped he was as terrified as every one of his victims had been.
Especially one tomboy little girl who'd lost her sunshine barrette.
Then it was over. The small dark form fell in on itself and the flames burned wildly on the ground. Niko kept the flamethrower going for another five minutes before finally switching it off. The embers flared, then dulled, leaving only ashes and blackened bone. It had taken him over five hundred years last time to come back from that.
It wasn't long enough.
Promise poured the acid in a steady stream over the remnants. They smoked and melted into the ground. It hadn't taken an army after all.
He was gone.
22
The trip back through the bodies wasn't any less terrible knowing the reason for all that death had been eliminated. The people were just as dead as they had been before. We killed the hooked revenants, but left them hanging. Cleanup on this scale wasn't something we were set up to do even if we were inclined. Ken Nushi would have to deal with that or, with the way bodies were disappearing lately, he might not. Instead of cobbler elves, could be there were little mortuary elves that cleaned up the scene of the massacre with tiny mops. I t made as much sense as anything else. Something had definitely been at work cleaning up Sawney's first victims—the bodies in the park.
Right then I couldn't have cared less. Good for whoever. Way to take initiative.
Niko had given and would continue to give me hell for breaking my word about the traveling. I had weeks of humiliating ass-kickings in our sparring future. I grinned to myself and spat a last mouthful of old blood. Nothing said family like having the Kung Fu King wipe the floor with your butt. It was better than a card any day.
"Zeus, kid, you look like a nonunion-sanctioned human sacrifice." Once we made it through Sawney's tunnel and up to the man-made one, Robin got a good look at the blood drying on my face and grimaced.
"Been to a lot of those?" The bleeding had stopped, and, although my head still hurt, the pain was bearable…more so than it had been in the museum. Much more so. That meant something. I thought I'd wait awhile to find out what.
"Human, no." He still had his sword out to deal with stray revenants and used it to salute me with a happy leer. "But I had a virgin or two tossed my way."
"That's right, because you were a god," I snorted, remembering his drunken rambling from the bar.
"Yes, because I was a god. Did you expect anything less?" The normally sly grin had abruptly turned into something tired and old.
I felt the same way. It had been one long night. My head ached, the multiple scythe slashes burned, and I wanted a shower. I wanted to sluice away the blood and the taint of the black water. I wanted to be clean again. Then I wanted to sleep, a nice utterly satisfied sleep.
But people in hell want a really good antiperspirant too, don't they?
The stairs up to the basement rocked under my feet, from one side to the other. It took me a second to figure out it was exhaustion and not an earthquake. We didn't get many of those in New York, but you never knew. I rested a hand against the wall and used it to brace myself every third step or so. Halfway up, I felt a small hand at the base of my back supporting me. I looked back to see Promise looking up at me with a finger held to her lips. As long as she had lived, she knew all about the male ego. I tried to pretend that I didn't need the help, but I did get up the stairs quicker than I would have without it.
Ahead of us, Niko and Robin were already on the stairs to the first floor. Promise and I closed and padlocked the trapdoor. It would give Nushi the extra time he needed to get some sort of supernatural cleanup crew. It also gave me a chance to catch my second wind and make it up those stairs without Promise's assistance. The lights were low in Buell Hall and it was silent, peaceful. I could've dozed as I walked, but I kept the lids up and tried to stay alert. There could still be revenants. There could be security doing a sweep. Nushi would speak up for us, but that would put him in a position he'd probably sooner avoid. So, as we hit the small lobby, a gloom-shrouded two-story affair, I was as sharp as I could manage under the circumstances.
It wasn't enough.
I don't know what it was. It could've been I couldn't smell through the blood in my nose or that
the smell was one that I expected here—just background. Cinnamon and spice and everything that was so nice about college girls. But it wasn't only cinnamon. It was cinnamon and honey, a scent I'd caught several times before. When she walked out of the shadows I made the connection…way too goddamn late.
Seraglio.
She wasn't alone. She was flanked on one side by three men and on the other by two more men and a woman. They all had the same glossy black hair and dusky skin. They were of average size compared to her small stature, but other than that, they all had the same look to them. It was more than an ethnicity; they looked related. Family. They all had guns as well. Those weren't matching, but what the hell?
"Seraglio." It was Robin. He said her name with resignation, and as I looked over at him, I could see that he was expecting this. Not her, no, but this. Once a human had made one of the assassination attempts, he'd known who was behind it. All of our pressing hadn't moved him to tell us, but he'd known. I didn't think he'd known that it would come so soon, though, and with us in the crosshairs with him.