CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Just for once, I’d like everyone to be who they goddamn say they are. Was that too much to ask?
Caterina stared at me with her Cheshire cat smile, the gun hanging from her side as if it were no more than a shopping bag. Jesus, was I the only sane person in this city?
Well, given the trail of bodies that lay behind me, my sanity could be debated. Probably in a court of law.
My gaze slid from Caterina to her husband’s body and back again. Her eyes were bloodshot, her mouth twitching every few seconds. She was handling the Chroma well; neither Tania nor I had stayed so calm.
She was waiting for me to speak, it seemed. Christ Almighty. I was being thrown around so much I was getting whiplash.
“Cat,” I started, raising my arms in a desperate pacifying gesture. “Why don’t you put away the cannon?”
She just smiled wider and kept the gun in her hand. With a few slinking steps she was in front of me, close enough that I could feel the heat of her breath against my skin. My legs had checked out along with my brain, and I was stuck standing against the piano, a drugged-up murderess in front of me and a dead gangster at my side. This fucking day…
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Caterina said, “but it needed to be done. You understand, of course.”
The Chroma had sent her round the bend. At least, I hoped it was the Chroma. What the hell had she been thinking? And since when had she been a Tunneler?
“He was a very bad man,” I said, raising my hands. “I’m sure the world will be better now he’s got a few extra holes in him. Now about that gun…”
“He wasn’t bad,” she snapped, and I flinched as she twitched her gun arm. “He was stupid. Inefficient. He would have let the whole Chroma incident pass him by, thinking of it as some new-fangled drug he didn’t need. He’s always been too caught up in the Ink and alcohol trades to see what he could really do.”
“Christ, Cat, tell me this is the Chroma talking,” I said, pushing myself back against the shattered piano. I was still flashing with impulses to flee, but the logical part of my brain kept me still. Something told me that in her current state she’d be something like a wild dog chasing the mailman. Your best bet was to look it in the eyes and keep it from biting you in the ass.
Caterina didn’t seem to be paying much attention to me anyway. She prodded Andrews’ body with her toe, her lips twisting with disgust.
“It was always money with him,” she said. “The territory, the gang, even his marriage to me, it was all just a means to an end. He couldn’t see what the Chroma could truly be used for.”
I didn’t like where this train of thought was going, and I wanted to get off. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be an emergency brake. “Well, it looks like you fixed that. Chroma can’t be used, Cat. It doesn’t play nice with others. I learned that the hard way.”
She smiled then, a smile to set my knees shaking. “Look around you, Mr. Franco. Look what we’ve achieved with Chroma.”
“‘We’? Much as I’d like it not to have been me who scorched those gangsters, I did this. Not you.”
She looked away from Andrews and moved so close I could feel the tips of her breasts pressed against me. Another time, that might have got my engines running, but right now it just made my guts twist all the more fiercely.
I could feel the cold metal of the gun pressed against my side as she wrapped her arms around me, one hand sliding up to stroke my stubble. “Oh come now, Mr. Franco, you’re much too smart to think that. It wasn’t all a lie, you know. Yesterday morning, in the motel room… I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you the truth before, but I just couldn’t take the risk. I didn’t know whether I should trust you. But when I followed you here, and saw you tear apart my husband’s mansion…” She licked her lips, moaning softly. “Then I knew.”
Hell. I’ve met some loony women in my time—in fact, I was having a tougher time thinking of ones who were sane—but this one took the cake.
Still, even despite the gun and the crazy eyes, I wanted to believe this wasn’t truly her. She was jacked up on Chroma, it was a miracle she’d only killed her husband. She didn’t know what she was saying. She couldn’t.
Oh, Cat. I should have known, the first time I saw her.
Beautiful women. They’d be the death of me.
She was so close I could look nowhere but her eyes. In spite of everything, they looked just as pretty as they had in that motel room. That seemed so long ago.
She was waiting for me to ask the question, the only question that could be asked. In spite of myself, the words clawed their way out of my throat, my lips growing dry as they passed. “Knew what?”
“We can be together. You understand me. I know you do.”
“You’ve been jerking the strings on this deal the whole time,” I said. It wasn’t a question, but she nodded anyway, still smiling that terrible smile. I closed my eyes, but that just made me more aware of her breath on my neck. “I told you about Todd. I told you where to find the Chroma.”
“I’ve known about Detective Todd’s plan for months. One of John’s people—well, my people, in truth—they spotted that bitch O’Neil meeting with him. I had someone investigate the two of them.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t hard to get the truth out of their chemist. I’ve been watching them ever since, mapping out their networks.”
“It was you who had O’Neil killed?”
“Better than that. I killed her myself, her and her bodyguards.” A perfect smile slid into place. “I admit I did enjoy that one.”
My head pounded like someone was going at me with a jackhammer. “So when I told you about Todd, you knew when to move on him, when to seize the Chroma. You had your own people?”
“Some. The others thought they were working for my husband.” She smiled. “They were wrong.”
“And then you started your war. You tried to take Bluegate.”
“Oh, sweetie, I didn’t try. I succeeded.” She ran her fingertips along a scratch Andrews had gouged in my cheek and strained her face up toward me, her lips an inch from mine. “The other gangs are all but crushed. My Tunnelers have done well. Alas, my poor husband didn’t survive the war, but I’m sure most of them will see the sense in following me. And the ones who oppose us, well…”
“Christ, Cat, why? Why the hell are you doing this?”
“I’m going to rule this city, Mr. Franco. There’s no stopping it.” She leaned forward. “And I want you by my side.”
Her lips brushed mine. Warm, moist, inviting. I was getting lightheaded. My left arm was going cold, blood from one of my nastier scratches dripping from my fingertips. Drip, drip, drip.
Wake up, Miles. I wasn’t done yet. I jerked away from the kiss, leaning back as far as I could with my butt against the broken piano. Caterina’s eyes snapped open, her lips still parted slightly, shock morphing into rage.
“What are you doing?” she asked in a tone that suggested my having a pulse depended on my answer.
Naturally, I didn’t want to disappoint. “Hell, Cat, you’re crazy enough to make Norman Bates look like a paragon of reason. I’m nowhere near psychotic enough to board this ride.”
I could tell from her facial twitches my words weren’t going down well. I was bleeding like a stuck pig anyway; if I was going to die, I wanted to die like the asshole I was. I’d been manipulated from the beginning, by the cops, by Todd, by Spencer, by Caterina. Well, to hell with that. To hell with them all.
I was going out my way.
Caterina snarled. Her hands slipped away from me and she flicked her wrist. “I offered you a chance, Mr. Franco. I want you to remember that.” I sensed reality shifting, a Pin Hole cracking into existence.
So I headbutted her in the face.
Not my classiest move, but I wasn’t going gently into that good night. A dull pain split through my forehead as I connected with her nose. She screeched, stumbling back with blood trickling from her nose.
I realized I still had my
nightstick in my hand, a hammer no more, but still effective enough. I whipped it across her wrist just as she got her gun up. The gat went off next to my head, deafening me, then it went flying across the room.
With my ears ringing and my head stinging, I bolted. I couldn’t go toe to toe with her when she was on Chroma, no way in hell. I had to lay low until the drug wore off. The mansion was big; surely I could find somewhere to hide for an hour or two without getting my skin blown off.
Yeah, like my luck was that good.
The open door ahead of me was suddenly shut, reality still twisting around it, but I put my shoulder into it without stopping and crashed right through. Caterina’s scream of rage followed me as I raced up a set of stairs and into a maze of wide hallways.
The off-white walls were covered in portraits of Vei men and woman, but I didn’t stop to study them. Something exploded behind me, nearly shaking me from my feet. I just kept running, taking turns at random.
Caterina’s heels clicked on the floor behind me, sounding like a machine gun. She was fast, and I was growing tired, weak. My blood left a morbid trail behind me. I couldn’t keep this up, and I couldn’t escape. I was royally screwed.
The room I found myself diving into was a bedroom that looked so lifeless I doubted it’d ever been used. A guest room, maybe. The huge bed looked lost in the center of the room, with high ceilings stretching above it. A matching set of antique wooden bedside tables flanked the bed, and a vanity complete with polished mirror sat along the opposite wall to catch the light from the wide windows. A makeup kit sat on top, apparently the only non-furniture item in the room. There wasn’t even a phone for me to call for help.
I closed the door as quietly as I could, already knowing it was useless; the blood I’d left behind me made for a perfect trail of bread crumbs. For half a second I considered shoving the vanity against the door like they always do in movies, then decided against it. It never stopped the monsters, and it sure as hell wouldn’t stop a Tunneler.
I put pressure on the worst of my cuts and backed away from the door. Think, Miles. I could make a jump from the window, maybe break an ankle or two. Hell, I could just toss myself out headfirst and speed this whole thing up a little.
It was already plain there was nothing in here I could use to defend myself. I chucked my nightstick on the bed and shoved my hands in my pockets, feeling around for something I could use. I wished I hadn’t thrown away my knife so carelessly, but I still had maybe a third of a bottle of Kemia and my standard collection of Pin Hole coins. Rolling them through my fingers, I tried to come up with a use for them, but it was hopeless. Any of the cute little tricks I’d used to get away from Todd or the cops wouldn’t do me a lick of good now; Caterina would reverse them and blow me away before I could say, “Boo.”
The clicking of Caterina’s heels slowed, getting louder, and then stopped completely. She’d found me. I picked up my nightstick and backed away from the door in case she set it on fire or put a lightning bolt through it or something.
Instead, there was just her voice, purring through the crack in the door. “That was very mean of you to attack me like that, Mr. Franco. But I understand. You’ve been under a lot of pressure lately, and you had to lash out. I forgive you.”
“That’s awful big of you, Cat,” I said, still going through my pockets and praying something useful appeared in there. I was rethinking my policy against guns. “What say we forget this whole thing and have some friends round for a bit of fun? I know some great folks, they bring their own handcuffs. I’m sure they’d love you.”
Her laugh drifted through the door. I could only stall her for so long; once she decided it wasn’t worth talking to me I’d be no more than a bug for her to squash. If only I had a little more Kemia I could make myself a Tunnel to Heaven, try to outrun her that way.
But no, she’d just disrupt the Tunnel behind me, and I could deal without going through the whole ordeal of a collapsing Tunnel again.
The thought didn’t strike me hard, like a bomb going off in my brain. It was more like a worm nibbling its way through my ear. Like all my recent plans, it was stupid, suicidal, and crazy, but my luck had to turn one of these days. Hell, my last crazy plan had ended in me killing a few dozen people; this one couldn’t be much worse. It’d be a freaking miracle if I could even pull it off.
“You still in there, sweetie?” Caterina asked, knocking lightly on the door.
“Sure am, babe.” I crossed the room to the makeup box on the vanity and flipped it open. There had to be one in here. There had to be. “I’m just getting myself prettied up for you.”
“I don’t understand why you’re being like this. Don’t you see what I’m trying to do?”
“Sure I do. You fancy yourself Queen of Bluegate.” Ah-ha. I pulled the golden bullet of lipstick from the makeup kit and held it up to the light, unscrewing it. A deep red, a blood red. Fitting, I guess.
“Don’t be silly,” Caterina said. “I’m trying to make this city better.”
“Yeah? That was Todd’s plan too. You guys must’ve got on like a house on fire.”
I crept closer to the door, not wanting her to know exactly where I was in case she got sick of talking. This wasn’t going to be a circle, it wasn’t going to be a normal Tunnel. I had no training for this, no experience, just my gut and a sense of desperation only countered by the silent calm of blood loss. I bent down and began drawing the lipstick along the hardwood floor in a large triangle.
“Miles, I’m being serious. I want you with me. I want you by my side. You’ve seen how corrupt this city is, how pathetic. Todd thought he could solve all its problems by bringing the gangs down, but he was an idiot. More gangs would rise in their place, there’s too much money in Bluegate for it to be any other way. This whole city is rotten, all the way through. But if we took Bluegate, if we controlled it, we could make it better. We could root out all the evil, we could bring justice to the city. Isn’t that what you want? Don’t you want to be the hero?”
“The hero? Me? Christ, lady, I wouldn’t know what to do with that. All I want is for my friends to be safe and a couple of bucks to rub together. Anything more than that is just gravy.” I put the finishing touches on the triangle and emptied the bottle of Kemia onto it.
“That’s…unfortunate.” To her credit, she actually sounded sad. She gave my heartstrings a good tug despite myself. “I have to come in now. If you’re not with me…”
“Yeah,” I said, stepping back from the door. “I know.”
The door slid open almost mournfully. Maybe it was the blood loss talking, but as Caterina took a step inside, her dress shimmering around her, I could almost believe she really didn’t want to kill me. And despite everything, despite the bruises and blood on her face from where I struck her, she did look beautiful. She stared straight at me, and I found myself meeting her eyes without fear.
“Please don’t make me kill you,” she whispered.
I shrugged. “You gotta do what you gotta do.”
“Miles, I think I love you.”
My heart twisted, a dull pain deep in my chest. I held back my emotion behind a brick wall and closed my eyes. “Sorry, Cat. That’s not enough.”
The Tunnel wasn’t like anything I’d ever opened before, and it required a different mind state to anything I was used to. It wasn’t about chaos or order, it was about life and survival. It was animalistic.
I opened my eyes just as she noticed what lay beneath her feet. She stood in the center of the triangle, her mouth dropping open just enough to let out a gasp. And then the Tunnel opened.
Quick as a cat she hurled herself backward into the hallway, a vengeful spark of fire leaping from her fingers and singeing my hair. I stumbled to the side, trying to gain some measure of cover behind the bed, already knowing it was useless. If my gambit with the Tunnel failed, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to save myself.
Caterina picked herself up, cast a disdainful look at the triangle Tun
nel, then turned her attention to me. Lightning leaped up around her, making her hair stand to attention. Hell. This was what I got for having convictions.
And then came the screams, a sound that made my heart leap and my stomach knot at the same time. Caterina must’ve heard them too—they were kind of hard to miss—and her lightning faltered as she stared at the Tunnel.
The six-legged creature that leaped out of the triangle-shaped hole in the ground wasn’t from Heaven, and it sure as hell wasn’t from Earth, but I recognized it nonetheless. You don’t forget a face with as many teeth as that. It was one of the creatures that attacked Vivian and me while the Tunnel to Heaven collapsed around us.
Despite the gut-kicking panic of the situation, I spared myself a flicker of awe at what I’d managed to do. As far as I knew, no one else had managed a Tunnel between anywhere but Heaven and Earth. Back in school I’d heard the theories that Tunnels passed through other dimensions, but it was all just post-doc student posturing. Not one of them had a shred of evidence to back up their hypotheses, or any idea how to construct a Tunnel that could reach the other dimensions.
The fur-covered animal—I had to come up with a name for it, if I survived long enough—was bigger than most dogs, and its long canines dripped with saliva. It skittered around on the floor, sniffing at the air with its flat nose, and let out another piercing scream.
The open Tunnel pulsed with energy, matching the raw animal awareness calling from a distant part of my mind, and then the creature wasn’t alone anymore. Half a dozen more of the vicious-looking things scrambled out of the Tunnel, one after another, forming up into a pack around the first one. The spark of pride I felt at outdoing the ivory tower academics quickly faded. Perhaps I hadn’t thought this through as much as I should have. I gripped my nightstick tighter as one of the creatures faced me and started screaming.
Caterina hiked up her dress and pulled a new snub-nosed gun from the holster strapped to her thigh. At the same moment, the first drooling creature leaped at her. She got the gun up and fired, sending a spray of pink blood across the slavering horde of creatures, but its momentum carried it forward, crashing into her and throwing her backward. Her mad eyes flashed.
I caught sight of a tight stream of flame flying from Caterina’s fingers as another pair of the creatures skittered in, teeth gnashing. For a moment my heart strings quivered, and a flash of guilt went through me. But by that time I had my own problems. One of the creatures seemed to have taken a liking to me, or maybe it just thought I smelled tastier than Caterina. I stumbled backward and bumped into the bedside cabinet, but it kept advancing on me, emitting brief bursts of noise. I lost count of how many eyes it had. It’s not like it mattered. They were all fixed on me.
I swung my nightstick as it lunged and landed a glancing blow at the point where one of its front legs connected to its body, but I was weak and tired, and the thing kept on coming. It sunk a mouthful of teeth into my arm and swung me in a circle. I had to grit my teeth to keep the scream from leaving my throat. Christ, now I probably had alien rabies.
The air on the other side of the room crackled with lightning and a couple of the creatures went flying back, even as two more jumped out of the Tunnel. They raced in and joined their buddies in surrounding Caterina, leaving me blessedly alone. Except for the one intent on tearing my arm off. I spun around and slammed the creature into the vanity’s mirror, sending glass raining through the room. The damn creature didn’t budge, just clamped its jaws down all the tighter and started screaming again.
All right, to hell with this thing. I slammed the butt of my nightstick into its side. I had more important things to worry about than some interdimensional spider-dog. The fact that it was me who brought this creature here in the first place was beside the point.
I whacked it again and again, ignoring the jolt of pain that shot up my arm with each blow. Finally, before I could start screaming, the pressure of its jaws lessened a little. Before it could clamp back down again I rammed my nightstick into a gap between its teeth and pushed down on it, trying to get some leverage. The creature whined and squealed, but gradually I pried the jaws apart and hurled it to the floor.
God, I was so tired. My arm stung like I’d dipped it in acid, and I tried to keep the world in focus. “Ugly little son of a bitch, aren’t you?” I said to the creature.
It responded by jumping at me again, going for my throat this time. I was ready for it. I slipped to the side and brought the nightstick down on its skull. It hit the ground with a thud, tried once more to get up, then stumbled back to a lying position.
I felt a little sorry for the thing, but not sorry enough to be nice. I wedged my foot under its flailing body and kicked it back to the triangle Tunnel. It rolled into the black abyss and fell from my sight, back into whatever crazy place it came from.
I took a moment to press a hand over the new holes I’d developed in my arm and assess the situation, by which I mean I stared openmouthed at the havoc Caterina and the creatures were wreaking back in the hallway. She’d charred several of the creatures to perfection, and put bullets in another couple.
But she wasn’t quite the avenging angel anymore. She had her back to the wall, bleeding from half a dozen bites across her arms. Her dress didn’t look so sexy now it was torn and coated with blood. The wall behind her was cracked and smoking, the victim of a few stray lightning bolts.
Only four of the creatures were left alive. She gritted her teeth and took a shot at the creature directly in front of her, but missed the other one sneaking around to the side. It dashed forward and planted its teeth in her leg, and she let out a yelp.
I should’ve been proud that one of my plans was actually working for once, but this was getting out of hand. I’d have time to smother my guilt and consider the paradigm-shifting nature of this new Tunnel later. For now, I needed to get out with most of my skin intact and get Todd’s Chroma so I could save Vivian. Caterina forced me to this, she could deal with the goddamn consequences. I wasn’t going to get sucked into some goddamn heroics. Not again.
Caterina desperately tried to shake the creature off her leg, but all that did was give another one the chance to latch onto her other ankle. Her screams reached banshee-pitch and she toppled to the ground. Her gun spoke again and again until it was empty, and another creature went down. There was no way she could set the creatures on fire when they were in so close to her. Even if she could, I doubted she could maintain the concentration to punch open a Chroma-enhanced Pin Hole with so many creatures trying to get themselves a piece of her flesh.
I vaulted the Tunnel to get back out into the hallway. It took me close to Caterina and the creatures, close enough for me to see the bloody gashes across her skin. No, Miles. Don’t be stupid.
I bolted past and the creatures let out rapid hooting screams, almost sounding like victory cheers, and then they started dragging Caterina along the floor toward the Tunnel.
“No!” she screamed, flailing around and trying to gain purchase on the wooden floor. “Miles!”
The agony in her scream turned my spine to jelly. I’d heard screams like that throughout Bluegate before. I sometimes wondered why they even bothered screaming; they must have known no one would come to save them. No one ever did in this city.
I slowed and cast back a look at Caterina. She locked eyes with me, her lips twisting with pain, clumps of blood matting her red hair. They nearly had her to the Tunnel now. She snatched at the doorframe, but her hand was slippery with blood, and she couldn’t hold on. But I needed the distraction to get away. I needed to find the Chroma before it was too late for Vivian.
“Miles,” she said again, her screams nothing but puppy dog whimpers now. “Please.”
Aw, hell. I always hated that word.
I once read a book that claimed there was no such thing as free will. Everything we do, every decision we make, is an inevitable result of a million things that have happened before; there is no other way we can possibly act
. Our lives are linear, and all the “what ifs” are nothing more than an illusion, a game we play with ourselves long after the dust has settled.
I guess if that’s true, it made the choice easier. Because really, it was no choice at all.
Caterina’s feet disappeared over the lip of the Tunnel first, the two creatures dragging her down. She rolled onto her stomach, defeat already clear on her face, but she dug her fingernails into the floor anyway, a futile attempt at survival, the only thing she could do.
I took two running steps and dived, my arms outstretched in front of me like a special-needs Superman. One of her hands slipped out of sight along with her face, but the other clung on for a moment, one long, painful moment, before sliding away.
I thrust my hand over the lip, snatching blindly. I felt skin, warm, soft skin. With a jerk that nearly tore my arm out of its socket, I grabbed her by the wrist, hooked my shoes into a doorway, and held on.
Pain tore up my arm from far too many injuries, but I held tight. The screams echoing out of the Tunnel changed their pitch from victorious to frustrated. There was a tug, and another. Caterina screamed. I think I did too.
“I got you, Cat,” I shouted. Her hand slipped in mine. “Well, kind of, anyway.” I thrust my other arm over the edge and pressed my body against the floor to keep myself from going over as well. “Grab my other hand.”
For a moment, there was nothing, and I wondered if she’d lost consciousness. Then I felt fingers brushing mine. I strained, feeling like I had the puny arms of a T-rex, and then Caterina’s hand grabbed mine.
“Miles,” she said, pain burning any sultriness from her voice.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m going to get you out. Uh, somehow.”
I got as good a grip on Caterina’s wrists as I could and started wriggling backward on my stomach, using my feet in the doorway to pull myself backward. The floor was slippery with blood, and every movement sent a new wave of electric pain shooting through my shoulders, but I gritted my teeth and kept moving backward, bit by bit.
Her hands came into view first, red nail polish scraped away, knuckles bloody and raw. Then her arms, then her face. Her eyes were screwed up tight, tear tracks carving through the dust on her face. I kept pulling until I got her torso up out of the Tunnel, and then she could help by pushing with her elbows.
“Cat,” I said, my voice coming out thinner than I expected. “Are they still on your legs?”
She nodded without opening her eyes and kept hauling herself out.
“Okay,” I said. “We’re going to have to be quick. When I say, I want you to lift your legs up as high as you can. All right?”
She nodded again. I didn’t know if she understood me, but I didn’t have the strength to ask her again. I wiggled back, little by little, to the symphony of inhuman screams.
She got her hips over the lip. The creatures were pulling stronger now, or maybe I was just getting weaker; I felt like I’d been drained of every bit of life.
I got her out as far as her knees, her stomach pressed hard against the floor. For a moment she slipped, and my heart leaped in my chest, but she got back her balance and I kept pulling. The creatures’ fur was visible now, peeking over the Tunnel edge, their eyes swiveling around to face me.
“Okay, Cat, it’s time. Ready?”
“Yes,” she hissed.
“All right. On the count of one. Ready?”
She nodded.
“One.”
She hauled her legs up, bending at the knees. The creatures came up with her, their heads appearing over the lip, teeth piercing both calves. They squealed and rocked from side to side, trying to pull her back down with them. They looked hungry.
They could go fuck themselves.
I released the Tunnel’s energy, switching off the animalistic state of mind that kept it open. The energy fled from me, causing physical pain, like a punch to the gut.
The edges of the Tunnel pulsed for a second, like the heartbeat of some great animal. The two creatures squealed as if they could sense what was happening, but it was too late for them.
The three edges of the Tunnel snapped inward, faster than I could make out. The floor reappeared like three overlapping blades, missing Caterina’s knees by less than an inch.
The creatures didn’t fare so well. The floor cut through their heads like a laser, shearing cleanly through flesh and bone. The screams cut off abruptly and a pool of pink blood flowed out over Caterina. On one of her legs the remaining bits of the creature’s head dropped off, the jaws sliced through. The other one got caught lower, so the head was mostly intact, and its teeth stayed embedded in her leg.
My strength fled from me and all my aches came back ten times as strong. She looked worse than I felt. The two of us lay there for a moment, panting, Caterina’s hands still in mine. Jesus, I needed a drink.
Finally, I let go and pushed myself to my feet, half dazed as I grasped the black object lying in the blood beside me.
Caterina looked up at me, her face drawn and her hair stuck to her face. “Miles, I—”
I swung the nightstick at her head, catching her in the temple. Her face didn’t even have enough time to register her shock before she slumped back down, unconscious.
I may have been a softie, but I wasn’t stupid.
I stumbled backward and slid down along the wall, all my strength gone. I couldn’t recall hitting the ground, but apparently that’s where I was, because I could feel blood soaking into the seat of my pants.
I was sweating, I think, though it was hard to tell. Everything felt so cold, so numb. I was vaguely aware I should do something about my wounds, but another part of me told me not to worry. It was too late for any of that sort of stuff now, and besides, I was so tired. Didn’t I deserve a little rest?
I sure as hell didn’t want be around to clean up this mess.
Some annoying voice inside me was nagging at me, telling me I wasn’t done yet. I let it complain. I was so sleepy, I doubted I could get up even if I tried. Sparks floated in front of me, or maybe they were butterflies, I’m not too sure. They were pretty.
I closed my eyes.
“Miles!” Something slapped my face, or maybe it was someone else’s face. “Wake up, you stupid son of a bitch.”
I kept my eyes closed and brushed a floppy hand across whatever was annoying me. “Don’t wanna. It’s not even a school day.”
“Miles, if you don’t open your eyes, I’m going to throw your trumpet under a steamroller.”
I opened my eyes. I liked that trumpet.
My eyes weren’t seeing too well. Everything was in double, but a face resolved in front of me.
“Desmond,” I said drowsily. “You bastard. You seriously couldn’t have come ten minutes ago? You would’ve made my life a hell of a lot easier.”
Desmond slid his arms under my armpits and hauled me up into a proper sitting position. “It’s always bitch, bitch, bitch with you isn’t it?”
I grunted at the pain of moving muscles that didn’t want to be moved. “Tania?” I asked.
“She’s fine. We got to her in time. She’s going to be okay.”
Desmond tsked as he inspected my wounds. He disappeared for a second then reappeared carrying a clean white bed sheet and began tearing it into strips. He pressed the makeshift bandages against my wounds. Idly, I wondered what Andrews would say if he was still alive to see what I was using his property for.
Sudden panic gripped me as I remembered what happened. I glanced around, but Caterina was still lying on the ground, sleeping like a baby.
“It was her,” I said, grunting as Desmond squeezed a cut on my shoulder. “Andrews’ wife. Freaking lunatic.”
“Yeah, bitches be crazy,” Desmond said. “I’m getting sick of patching you up all the time, guy. We gotta get you to a hospital.”
I started nodding, eager to go any place with a bed, but then I froze. “No. We’ve got to go to Vivian’s place.”
“The detective? The hell for?
”
I planted my palms on the floor and pushed myself up. Desmond made noises of protest, but the look I gave him must have scared the shit out of him, because he settled for putting an arm around my shoulders to help me up.
“I made a deal,” I said, and brushed away his arm. “I can walk. I’m fine.” I tried to prove it, and found myself leaning against the wall. “I need you to take her.” I pointed to Caterina.
“How come?”
“She’s got a hot date.”
The Man Who Crossed Worlds (Miles Franco #1) Page 28
