Pay Dirt Page 25

  The Viking loomed over me, twirling my revolver on his finger. “York thought you might come this way if you survived Morley’s Vengeance. Honestly, I never thought you’d get out of the factory alive. But I asked York to let me watch out for you, just in case.”

  I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. It had been a long time since I’d wanted to kill someone as badly as I wanted to kill him.

  “Stuckey’s actions have resulted in the deaths of many of my brothers and sisters,” he said. “I think you conspired with him to achieve it. How else could you have escaped with your life? The two of you cooked it up while you were in that office together, didn’t you?”

  The other male cultist—a young guy with a man-bun—started to poke around the crash site. He opened up the back door of the car to retrieve the sword I’d taken, then found my bag and started rummaging through.

  The Viking looked at me, cocking and decocking my revolver. “Stuckey told you where the tomb is, didn’t he? I know he knew more than he was letting on. York needs that location, heathen. If you know something, I suggest you start talking. Convince me I shouldn’t just end your life now.”

  “Ah, go to hell.”

  He shrugged. “Well, I tried. Doesn’t matter. We’ll find it eventually. We’ve been very patient. We don’t mind waiting a little longer.” He looked down the street, toward the town. “This is where it will start, you know. This is where they’ll arrive. We just have to open the door for them. Once we find the tomb—”

  “Brother,” Man-Bun said. “Look at this.”

  I didn’t think my heart could sink any further, but it did. The cultist was holding the torn map Stuckey had annotated. He handed it to the Viking. I tried to push myself to my feet, but the female cultist put her foot on my chest and shoved me back down before lazily aiming a pistol in my direction.

  The Viking held the map up to the beam from their vehicle’s single remaining headlight. His brow furrowed for a few seconds as he puzzled over it. Slowly, a smile spread across his face. He grinned down at me.

  “I knew you and that fat old bastard were holding out on us.” Without taking his eyes off me, he addressed his friends. “We’ve got what we need. Get the bodies into the car and let’s get out of here.”

  As the two cultists moved to obey, the Viking shoved the map in his pocket and cocked my revolver one last time. He slowly lowered it until I was staring into the darkness of the barrel.

  “You should’ve taken York up on his offer, heathen. Oh well. I prefer it this way.”

  My mouth ran dry. I’d been shot before. It wasn’t fun. And somehow I didn’t think the Dealer would be along to save my ass this time. Behind the gun, the Viking smirked at my fear. A real psychopath, this one. As he looked into my eyes, his finger tightened on the trigger.

  “Uh, brother?” came Man-Bun’s voice.

  “What?” snapped the Viking.

  I tore my eyes away from the Viking and found the other cultist by the passenger door of our crashed car, looking over at us.

  “What should we do with the woman?” he asked. “I don’t think she’s quite—”

  A hand reached out from the dark of the car’s interior and grabbed the cultist by the arm, wrenching him back with surprising force. His shout became slurred as his head slammed into the door frame.

  A second arm darted out from inside the car, wrapping long fingers around the cultist’s throat. Even from several feet away I could hear cartilage and bone cracking. Man-Bun’s wild flailing became slow, and then he went still.

  “It’s back!” the female cultist shouted. “Morley’s Vengeance!”

  But it was not Morley’s Vengeance that crawled out of the car, still clutching the dead cultist by the throat. It was a monster that knew only rage. It was dead, and yet undying.

  It was Lilian.

  The crash had left her twisted and broken. One side of her skull was caved in. Her jaw was unhinged—it hung open with a lopsided sneer. Where the skin had been torn away, I could see the shine of muscles moving beneath. Though one of her arms was clearly broken, she held up the dead cultist as if he weighed no more than a baby.

  Her hair had fallen across her shattered eye socket. The other eye was open and searching. It held no pupil, but the white swirled with smoky blackness.

  It was Lilian. And yet it wasn’t. There was none of Lilian’s easy grace, or her biting wit, or her bullshit-piercing gaze. This was something wearing her skin. Something whose only purpose was to kill.

  She looked at me and the two remaining cultists. And she found her next targets.

  She threw Man-Bun’s corpse at us like he was a baseball. It must’ve taken an impossible amount of strength. The Viking had just enough time to let out a squeak before the corpse collided with him. It looked like it hurt. The Viking went down, the cultist’s body on top of him.

  The female cultist decided she wasn’t sticking around to help. She made a break for their vehicle.

  With her unbroken arm, Lilian grabbed hold of the damaged wing mirror hanging off the passenger side of our car. She ripped it loose and hurled it at the fleeing cultist.

  It struck her clean in the side of her face. I thought I heard bone cracking. The cultist hit the ground, groaned, and kept crawling toward the vehicle.

  Lilian strode toward her. It wasn’t her usual cat-like movement. This was purposeful, direct. Her entire being was focused on the injured cultist.

  My body still felt clumsy, but I managed to pull myself to my feet just as Lilian reached the downed cultist. In a panic, the cultist rolled over onto her back and raised her pistol.

  Lilian grabbed the weapon by the barrel at the same time as the cultist pulled the trigger. The gun barked and a hole appeared in the back of Lilian’s hand, spraying flesh and bone fragments into the air.

  It didn’t stop her.

  Without even flinching, Lilian tore the weapon from the cultist’s hand and tossed it away. It clattered against the pavement. Then, silently, Lilian descended on the woman.

  The cultist let out a scream that was cut short when Lilian slammed her fist into the woman’s face. Bone crumpled under the savage blow. As Lilian pulled back her hand, it came away thick with blood.

  Lilian punched her again. And again. And again. Lilian, my friend, a woman I trusted and respected and loved, was turning the cultist’s head to pulp. It was terrible to watch.

  I couldn’t look away.

  A gunshot rang out, echoing down the empty street. Lilian jerked a little as a chunk of her shoulder was torn away. She stopped punching the dead cultist and lifted her head with a snarl.

  The Viking had pulled himself free of the corpse that Lilian had thrown at him. His face was pale and sweaty. His already-bandaged arm hung limply at his side.

  He aimed my smoking revolver at Lilian. He began to move cautiously, taking a wide berth around her. As she turned toward him, he started hauling ass for his vehicle.

  He fired again, shooting wildly. This time the bullet missed Lilian. I heard it ricochet and come whizzing all too close to me. I scrambled for the cover of a doorway.

  Gore dripping from her knuckles, Lilian strode toward the fleeing Viking. He snapped off three more shots as he reached the vehicle. One hit Lilian again, making her jerk and miss a step. Then she continued on, like the goddamn Terminator.

  Taking my chance, I broke from the cover of the doorway and darted toward our crumpled car. My bag was still there, lying just outside the passenger door where the male cultist had been rummaging through it. A few feet away lay that cultist’s body, and beside him lay the sword.

  While I moved, the Viking dived into the driver’s seat of his own vehicle. I heard the engine rev suddenly, but the vehicle didn’t move. Even over the sound of the engine I could hear the Viking swearing. Lilian marched ever onward.

  She reached the door just as I heard the Viking get the car into gear. Her fist punched through the driver’s side window, spraying tempered glass onto the road. The Viking sc
reamed as Lilian reached through the window and grabbed at his throat.

  With a roar, the vehicle suddenly took off. It accelerated forward, clipping the corner of our crashed car. I threw myself backward. The front tire rolled over the already unrecognizable corpse of the female cultist.

  Lilian was dragged along outside the vehicle, her hand still wrapped around the Viking’s throat. Her heels skidded against the ground. As the vehicle whipped past me, I caught a glimpse of the Viking’s face behind the wheel, his eyes bulging.

  Then the car veered suddenly, turning back toward the narrow side road they’d come from. Lilian lost her grip on the Viking’s throat and went tumbling down the road. Tires squealed, and the Viking’s vehicle shot away.

  The tumble that Lilian had taken would have put a normal person in hospital. She was on her feet again in seconds. She took a few pounding steps after the retreating vehicle before it turned a corner. Its lights faded from view. Lilian stopped, paused, and turned.

  Toward me.

  For a moment, I hoped I’d be able to see something of Lilian in this monster’s eye. Something to tell me she was still in there, fighting to regain control. I hoped that when she looked at me, some spark of memory might return to her.

  I saw only death.

  She came at me like the inevitable march of time. I might have been able to outpace her if I was at my best. I was far from my best. Which left me with two options.

  Fight or die.

  Not that I thought I could win a fight with her. Not after what I’d just seen. She was relentless. The only thing that would stop her was her utter destruction. I couldn’t pull that off. I wasn’t even sure I could bring myself to try.

  I stood, my back against the battered remains of our car, frozen in indecision. Lilian marched ever closer. Half her face was cast into shadow by the orange glow of a distant street light. My eyes darted to the sword, then to my bag. I could see my truncheon sticking out of it. If I was to stand any chance of surviving the next thirty seconds, I’d need a weapon. I’d need to do everything in my power to kill her before she killed me.

  She’ll stop. She’ll remember. This isn’t her.

  But as she closed on me, doubt crept into my mind. Because I was starting to realize that this was her.

  The Lilian I knew was the imposter. That identity was the one imposed by the hag’s magic on this revenant’s body. The revenant, though, that was real.

  I heard her voice inside my head. Can I tell you something? I’m scared, Ozzy. I’m so fucking scared. I don’t want to lose myself. I don’t know who I was before. I’m just getting the hang of who I am now. To lose that…it’d be like dying all over again, don’t you think?

  As I replayed the conversation we’d had beneath the hag’s place, a sudden realization struck me. I darted to the side, making for my bag. Lilian closed on me. I took out my truncheon, tossed it aside, and wrapped my fingers around the strange device Lilian had given me that day, the one that’d fallen out of her handbag while I pulled out Early’s birthday present.

  I was worried it would have been damaged in all the excitement of recent events, but it seemed intact. The fluid-filled glass tube was scratched in a few places, but it didn’t appear to be leaking its contents. As far as I could tell, the wires and electrical doodads hadn’t been damaged either.

  I flipped open the protective bubble at the top of the device and touched my thumb to the switch. Then I looked at Lilian. She had slowed. Not stopped—she was still coming for me. Just not quite as fast.

  “What will happen if I flip this switch?” I asked.

  She gave no sign that she comprehended the question. She continued to advance. Her face didn’t look like hers anymore—what was left of it, anyway. It looked tight, shrunken across her bones like a recently preserved mummy. Her broken jaw hung open, exposing a dry husk of a tongue.

  I swallowed and backed up, still holding my thumb against the switch. My voice now was quiet, but it had nothing to compete with except the creak of Lilian’s bones and the stomp of her footsteps.

  “Will it kill you?” I asked softly. “Is that why you gave it to me?” I waited. “Well? Is it?”

  The revenant didn’t answer. I didn’t think it was capable of speech. Maybe she couldn’t even understand me.

  I couldn’t know for sure what would happen if I flipped the switch. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she was developing a new kind of garage door remote or something. I didn’t understand the magic Lilian could wield. But thinking back to that day, to the look in her eyes…

  “If this is some kind of kill switch,” I said, “it was real shitty of you to give it to me. You understand that? Friends don’t ask friends to blow each other’s heads off, Lilian.”

  Still she said nothing. I backed down the road, but she was speeding up again now, her purposeful stride returning. I looked into her eye. She was dead, and she wanted me dead too. It was as simple as that.

  “Stop, Lilian.” I held up the switch. “Please.”

  She didn’t stop. With a silent snarl, she lurched forward. I closed my eyes. My thumb began to move.

  But her fingers didn’t wrap around my throat. They grabbed my hand instead. The hand holding the switch.

  Her fingers closed around my fist. She was ice cold. I felt the sticky blood of the dead cultists smear across my skin.

  I opened my eyes, staring at her hand clutching mine. Then I looked at her face. She still glared at me with the jealous hate the dead have for the living. An unstoppable hate. And yet, somehow, it had stopped, or at least paused.

  Lilian’s pupiless eye swam with smoky blackness. There was nothing there to indicate any life, any identity. Nothing except the twitching of a muscle above her eye and the tightness with which she gripped my hands.

  “You’re still in there,” I said.

  Her fingers dug into my flesh, crushing with a strength someone her size had no right to possess. She started pulling my thumb toward the switch at the top of the device.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  She made a low, guttural noise and shoved my thumb against the switch. All it would take was a twitch of my thumb and the switch would be flipped. Lilian could easily have forced it. But she didn’t. Couldn’t, maybe.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I’m not going to do it.”

  With a snarl, she shoved me. Hard. Hard enough that I was on the ground before I knew what’d happened. The wind went out of me. Lilian leapt atop me, her hand still crushing mine. She twisted my arm, shoving the device toward my face.

  “Fuck you!” I rasped. “Do it yourself.”

  Her other hand came up, forming a fist. It swung down toward me. I flinched back.

  She brought her fist slamming down into the road. I heard bone cracking and felt the road tremble beneath me.

  She shoved her face toward me, until we were only an inch apart. Her hair fell away from the smashed side of her face, revealing the gruesome extent of her injuries. With an unhinged jaw, she snarled in my face.

  I swallowed. Took a breath. Shook my head.

  “I’m not going to flip this switch, Lilian. You either kill me or find another way.”

  She screamed. It was a banshee’s scream, loud enough to deafen, loud enough to make my bones rattle and my brain leak out my ears. She released my hand and slammed both fists into the road on either side of my head again and again, punching and punching until the road itself began to crack.

  She threw herself to her feet, stalking away from me a few feet and then spinning back toward me with a snarl. She took a step toward me with murder in her eyes, then spun away again. Her battered hands gripped her hair and pulled. She shook her head violently from side to side.

  I pushed myself to my feet, my eyes never leaving Lilian. I looked down at the device I still held in my hand. After a moment’s hesitation, I put it down on the ground and stepped away from it.

  “You’re still fighting, Lilian,” I said. “That’s good. It means you h
aven’t lost. Not yet.”

  I took a step toward her. She twisted in place, torn between wanting to kill me and wanting to protect me.

  “I wish I could help you,” I said. “But I can’t. My magic might only make things worse. I’m sorry. It’s just you, Slim. You’ve gotta figure this out.”

  I took another step closer and she swiped at the air in front of me. Her broken jaw opened wide, and an echoing, groaning voice came out.

  “Get away!” she yelled.

  I stopped in my tracks for a moment, a cold shiver sweeping down my spine. It was the voice of the dead I’d heard. Swallowing, I took another step closer. She snarled in frustration.

  “Sorry,” I said. “No can do. I can’t just leave you like this. Not until I know one way or another. If you turn, others will have to know what’s happened to you. The hag. Alcaraz.”

  “I am death! I am your death!”

  “Maybe. But right now, you’re still Lilian. Don’t lose that. Do whatever you have to do. But don’t lose that.”

  I reached out, laid my hand on her arm. She flinched as if my touch caused her physical pain. Her skin was ice cold. Then, a split second later, it was feverishly warm. And a moment after that, cold. She flickered between death and life.

  The hag’s magic was still working, still striving to give Lilian some semblance of life. Maybe that life wasn’t real. But Lilian was. I knew that now. The hag was powerful, but even she couldn’t create a person from whole cloth. Not a person like Lilian, with real thoughts, real passions, real fears. All of that had already been there. And it was fighting to keep from being dragged back into the abyss.

  Raging, Lilian swung at me. But the attack lacked the brutal ferocity she’d exhibited earlier. I ducked the strike and held on.

  “What can I do?” I said. “What do you need?”

  She groaned. “Connection.”

  “Connection? Connection to what?”

  Her head jerked from side to side. With another groan, she dropped to her knees and slammed a fist into the road.

  “Lilian?” I said. “What do you need?”

  “Coin,” she moaned.