Broken Angels (38 page)

He scrambled for the corresq; the raven-haired Spryte followed her now-familiar pattern twice more before he could get his hand on it. A lack of perfect balance forced him to toss it more than once, but he managed to extinguish all of the light bulbs in the room before Vanessa could strike once more. He and whoever or whatever else was in the room with him were now in complete darkness.

Even though his body ached all over, the parasites now seemed somewhat soothed. Still, Robert had only an inkling of how the darkness might give him an advantage. Despite all of his training and abilities, he couldn’t think of any sure-fire way to defeat the Spryte.

The lack of light was certainly no hindrance to Vanessa. If anything, it seemed to make her more self-assured of her eventual victory. There was no longer complete silence. Robert now thought he could hear her breathing. He even pictured her smiling. Could be the result of his enhanced senses, or maybe the parasites were beginning to play tricks on him. Whichever, the faint sounds might as well have been silence; he still had no clue where in the room Vanessa might be. She could be close. She could be by the door. She could strike him again at any moment.

“Wise move, Rob.” Vanessa’s voice came from nowhere, and everywhere. Gone was Robert’s fleeting idea of locating her position by hearing her speak. “I do my best work in the dark.”

“I figured as much,” he said after taking a moment to listen for a heartbeat. “You certainly look like that type.”

“The use of sight doesn’t appear to be one of your strong suits. Not at the restaurant. And certainly not now.”

No use arguing. She’d made a good point. She’d also given Robert’s inkling more definition. He reattached the corresq to his belt and reached inside his jeans pocket. He’d almost forgotten about what he’d picked up outside of another restaurant. Thank fortune he hadn’t been stupid enough to put it in his jacket pocket.

Robert closed his eye and listened, not for a heartbeat, not for breathing, but for something else entirely. While shifting his body, slowly turning around in one spot, he also shifted control of his reflexes, his instincts, and waited. Let the parasites have their last hurrah.

“Aren’t you going to ask me where your loving partner is?” the chalky voice said.

Robert didn’t respond.

“Or what I’m going to do with Anika, after I’m finished with you?…Sorry—I’m sure you prefer to hear about Kurtis.”

Robert kept silent.

“Or maybe I’ll just escort you to Xyn…and arrange a play-date for you and your lost little brother—
Charles.”

A hand contorted into a talon swept down and scratched the back of Robert’s head, behind the right ear. The hand’s nails drew blood and severed the strap of his eye patch. Robert’s right eyelids parted as he caught Vanessa’s wrist and, with his free hand, struck the lighter, placing it in front of his face. The blackball in his right eye socket cracked, releasing a sliver of radiation that combined with the flame to produce a broader ray.

There was no time for Vanessa to duck or dodge. No time to disappear or even shut her now-shadowless eyes. In the spark of the moment, the Spryte could do nothing but look dead on at the ray as it illuminated her face, passing its skin from a clean, pale sheen to a cleaner lucidity, raising the vitreous fluid within her eyes to just a few points short of boiling while—in a brief mind-to-mind link—Robert saw her brain hiccup, erasing each layer of her conscious mind.

Creature of the fire
.

Vanessa collapsed to the floor. Her body landed at Robert’s feet.

He knelt down and grabbed her in order to ensure she wouldn’t slide away again and, almost as an afterthought, to ensure she was still alive. Her skin was cold and clammy, but she was still breathing, if just barely.

Whether stable or on the brink of death, there was no question in Robert’s mind she’d stay put for a while. He grabbed his eye patch and tied it back on as he raced out of the room.

He made a quick detour into the bathroom. After wiping away all the wet and dried blood, he tried his best to cover his exposed skin. He tied one bath towel across his chest, under his armpits, and he draped another across his shoulders. Short on materials and time, it was the best he could do. He had to hurry and help Ava finish off her opponent, if he wasn’t too late.

When he got to the living room, it appeared he already was.

Ava was lying on the floor, unconscious.

Veronica Blake was lying next to her, in the arms of Darryl. Neither one appeared alive.

TWENTY-ONE

Robert checked the blonde one first.

Veronica was still alive—barely. Much like her partner-in-crime upstairs. He took a deep breath before checking on his own partner.

Alive
.

Darryl was naked, bruised, scarred, and bloodied—far uglier than he’d ever want to see himself—but he was still breathing. Still tethered to the land of the living, holding on to fraying ropes.

Robert put his trembling fingers on the face of his right-wrist-watch. Adam got the message and responded—tersely, it seemed— he’d be sending someone to clean up the mess.

Robert sat on the couch and stared at the three bodies on the floor. He tried to ignore his now erratic breathing, tried to ignore the truck-on-gravel sounds as he also tried to reconstruct what could’ve happened. Best he could figure it, Darryl had probably freed himself and, while making his way out of the house, had come across Ava and Veronica, fighting. Or maybe he’d come on the scene shortly after Veronica had gotten the best of Ava. But then what? The crystalline bow on which Ava had been so keen probably hadn’t been of any help. It lay by her side, colorful as a pattern seen through a kaleidoscope.

Robert focused on Darryl. Minus a lot more clothes, his body looked very similar to the way he remembered Ava looking when they’d first found her. He also noticed something else. A diamond-encrusted band was on Darryl’s left hand, encircling his middle and ring fingers. Robert looked closer. It was a golden ouroboros, twisted into a figure eight—a diamondback snake eating its own tail.

No clothes, no watches, but an expensive ring—two rings attached to one another, and to Darryl. Robert wondered about it. He then looked at Ava and wondered about her diamond pendant, the pendant she didn’t have when they first found her but which she’d been wearing when she broke in to his apartment. Ava and Darryl—Robert tried to draw connections…

But it was hopeless. He was losing himself, was soon to be lost to the world.

He saw the dots, the tiny little blisters running up and down his arms. They were swelling—mushrooms—starting out cream-white and turning pink, then darker pink as they grew. He saw the wavy lines on his palms, electric blue, clustered, out of which radiated a skin rash, black, the color of mold. And something was crawling on his chest.

Robert grinned, then chuckled, then launched into an all-out hysterical laugh.

He could smell it—the odor that was putting poetry in his mind. Not some nineteenth-century English poet; this time, some nineteenth-century French poet, named…He couldn’t remember. Memory was fickle in one’s death throes. He could remember the poem itself. Hell, he was living it…

Odors. Potent perfumes that could penetrate glass. Or bone. Rotten marrow. A rotting brain…leaking the acrid aroma of time. A thousand thousand sleeping thoughts awakened to intoxicate the evaporating soul…drunken, and dunked into the miasmic pit of infinity.

This isn’t how Davin went. His first. His first time. And Leigh… This is how her father, the surgeon, feared she’d end up if she kept up with a black, diseased bastard like Robert Omari Goldner. The thought of it, that’s what could compel a prominent doctor to—in a fit of rage—aim a shotgun at his daughter’s high-school classmate. The woods outside Sterling were an escape—then Xyn— then Darryl…Or did he have the order confused? Maybe he had it all confused. His memories were absconding, leaving him in bits and pieces.

Robert heard a noise. It wasn’t his lungs. It was kind of like a droning sound. Low, barely detectable, but he heard it. It was coming from another level of the house. Downstairs, through the open door to the right of him. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever heard, at least not while on Reality’s surface.

He summoned what strength and energy he could, focused it toward one goal, and heaved himself off the couch. He stumbled toward the door, the corresq in his hand. His legs weren’t very sure of themselves, but he made damn sure his fingers were. He wasn’t about to take any chances. He’d a feeling that whatever he was going to find down those stairs, he wasn’t going to be happy about it.

With an equal mix of clumsiness and carefulness, Robert made his way down, looking every which way with every type of vision the rebellious parasites would allow him.

He saw five doors when he entered the hall. Four of them were shut. The droning was coming from behind one of the four. Robert performed a quick-and-smart search of the other rooms first, looking for people or anything else of interest. There was nothing. Just that droning sound behind door number five.

He got into a safe position and, after three failing attempts, x-rayed it.

He couldn’t believe what he saw.

It was her. Behind this unlocked, wooden door. Awake. Alert. Waiting. She’d probably even seen him before he saw her. This could be bad. And he was nowhere near full strength.

Robert turned the doorknob.

Marie-Lydia McGillis was sitting cross-legged on a bed, naked, her left hand resting on her stomach, her right clutching a stained bedsheet that covered her knees and feet. She was sitting in an imperfect circle of blood. It had come from somewhere between her legs. She wasn’t bleeding anymore, but she’d bled long enough for it to soak through the bedsheet underneath her and the mattress pad underneath it. And she hadn’t just sat still. There were bloody footprints leading from the bed to where she’d used bloody fingers to write “alVa” on one wall and “saVes” on another.

The rest of her body looked as if it had been through plenty of abuse as well. Acne, scars, blemishes, scratches, bruises. Some of it was normal for a fifteen-year-old girl. Some of it was normal for a Virus-carrier not on the proper medication. The rest were signs of someone who’d had a rough time in life, age and sickness notwithstanding. Robert’s body was slowly transitioning into a funhouse mirror version of hers.

Whatever else had happened to the girl, whenever it had happened, she seemed oblivious to it all. She only stared at Robert, her lips shaped into a Mona-Lisa smile.

Robert stared back. Head tilted and slack-jawed, apparently. He felt a foam-like substance bubbling, oozing out of the left corner of his mouth. He didn’t know what to say, or do. The entire scene was shocking enough to leave him at a complete loss. Marie-Lydia broke the silence.

“Congratulations, Robert Goldner. Looks like another successful hunt.”

Robert tightened his grip on the corresq. “How do you know who I am?” His words came out like a last gasp.

“You’re a friend of the family.”

She’d hardly finished the last word before Robert’s legs gave out. His knees were jelly. He fell to the floor, his skin tightening all over, hardening, cracking. A vomit the color and consistency of oatmeal shot out from his mouth like a Jack-in-the-box’s surprise. It had the scent—
he
had the pungent scent—of raw sewage.

It was his time. But he refused to take his eye off of the angelic face of the recovered treasure. Another lost child found. Sad parents soon to be so happy…

Marie-Lydia stared back at him, her picture-perfect smile unwavering. She winked her right eye as her left flashed an odd hue of red. The right flashed a stranger red color when she opened it. Then both eyes quickly settled to a piercing jade-green.

Then…

It was gone. All of it. The queasiness. The burning. The smells. The rubbery bones. The bumps, rashes, and glowing lines on his crusty skin. The dementia.

Robert now felt strong—as strong as an
angel
could be anyway— and he knew Marie-Lydia was the direct cause. But he wasn’t about to thank her.

He got into a defensive position. Marie-Lydia cocked her head.

“Don’t worry,” she said as she lowered her eyes toward his corresq. “You have nothing to fear from me. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Robert took a full passage-clearing breath, elated that his lungs and throat were clear, noiseless.

“I’m not worried about you,” he said. “I know who you are. I know what you’ve done. And I know where your mind has been. I’ve already contacted the authorities. They’ll be here any minute to help you. They’ll clean you up and, when you’re ready, take you back home.”

“Home?” Marie-Lydia laughed. It was an uncanny laugh, filling the entire room, echoing off the walls. Robert thought he also heard wind chimes as he listened to it. When she stopped, he just heard the droning again. The initial shock of the scene and his subsequent collapse had blocked it out of his ears, but it had never really gone away. The droning had actually become more prominent since he’d entered the room.

“I’m not going anywhere near those people you think are my parents,” Marie-Lydia said.