Fantasmagoria (28 page)

“I’ll kill Erasmus Pimpernel, and in return, you tell me where I can find Gilbert.”

She didn’t have a teenage body, Jack thought, but she had a teenager’s experience. She was direct, unsophisticated, transparent. “What do you need him for?”

“I don’t know why they want him. I just have orders.” Lette snuffed her cigarette. “Is it a deal, Jack?”

“I’ll think about it.”

She traced his keyhole again. “You know I can’t take that for an answer.”

Jack grabbed her hand. “And if you dismember me, you’ll never find him.”

Lette dropped her smile. “The people I work for--”

“You mean the Second Army of the Master Race.”

Lette didn’t respond.

“Pugs is a lap dog. Always has been. Vain little prick, too. There’s no way he would have offed his boss on his own. Too risky. And where the hell did he get you, huh? You wander into town offering work as an assassin? No. And then there’s the megalosaurus. Not like someone can hop over to Savage Island and pick one up. But you all live there in your compound with the high walls to keep things like that out. Your masters are behind it, behind him, aren’t they? So what do they want?”

Lette pulled her hand away. She stood up. Smoke from the extinguished cigarette twirled around her head. “I already told you, Jack.”

Jack thought for a minute. He retraced the conversation in his mind. “War.”

Lette stared at him.

“The Amazons are trying to start a war between the Empire and the Aminal Kingdom. Why?”

“Not trying. Succeeding.” She glanced at the window.

“Shit.” Jack nodded. “You wanted to bring the Cultural Inquisition here.”

Lette smiled. “Poor Jack. Still missing the big picture.”

“What does Gilbert have to do with it?”

“Nothing. I told you. I don’t know why they want him.”

Jack stood up and hunched over to put his pants on. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me where I can find the rest of your people.” He kept his back turned. “Your secret base or whatever.” He stayed hunched even as he buttoned his shirt.

“I need to know where he is Jack.” Lette strode around the bed. “I can’t let you leave--”

Jack turned and pushed her out the window with her arms full of Pugs’s explosives, detonator armed. He ran for the door as she fell to the street below. He was certain the blast wouldn’t kill her, but at least he’d have time to get away. Maybe.

The explosion ripped a hole in the building and knocked Jack clean through the far wall and into the stairwell. He bounced and rolled down two flights. Everything shook. His ears were silenced by tin ringing. Dust and smoke filled his nose and coated his eyes. He wiped his face.

Lette stood naked in the debris before him. The open street was behind her.

“Fuck . . .”

Her belly was ripped open and a loop of intestine was showing. Most of her right thigh was missing. Jack could see the bone, like black metal. Her dark blood had already clotted and covered the gashes in her arms and face. Her jaw dangled again. The bomb had torn her open, but she was still on two feet. And healing.

Her eyes were on fire.

Jack figured the voices were back.

Lette stepped forward through the faceless, open crust of the building as the tank shell, fired from the street, exploded into her midsection and knocked her through the wall. The shrapnel shredded what was left of the staircase, which fell on top of Jack, protecting him from the splatter of her black acid blood as it bubbled through the walls and floor. Then another shell hit. And another. And another. It was a barrage. Imperial tanks. Jack had to cover his ears.

Minutes later he was being dragged down the street behind a troop carrier, surrounded by white-armored knights.

(THIRTY) Here Lies

“Well,” Vernal growled. “This is awkward.” He sat in Erasmus’s office with his arms tied to a chair. His left hand, the one with the missing finger, was bandaged. The palm of his right hand was swollen and caked with blood. His half-smile bared his chipped teeth. He had never seen Erasmus Pimpernel. It wasn’t what he expected.

“I want the key.” Erasmus was calm.

“I don’t have it.”

“Who does?”

“I gave it to Jack.”

“You gave it to Jack.”

“Yup. And he’s going to come through those doors any minute now and kill every last one of you.” Vernal was tired, and his voice shook. He’d been running for days. He’d been hit in the head more times than he could count. He’d lost blood. He’d barely slept.

Erasmus moaned from his voice box. “Now that’s disappointing. I expected more from you. You gave us quite a run. I think we had more trouble with you than . . . well, than just about anybody. And here we haven’t even started torturing you yet.”

Togo stood to Vernal’s right, and the scoundrel smiled up at him. “My parents always said I was a disappointment.”

The Murderling with the tattooed face glowered down. “I don’t doubt it.”

“I’m going to ask nicely one more time,” Erasmus interjected. “I want the key.”

“Was that a question? That seemed more like a statement.” He looked up to Sciever on his left. “Wasn’t it?”

Sciever smiled at Vernal the way a child smiles at a new toy, full of longing for the pleasures to come. He walked to the bar and retrieved a glass case lined with straw. He set it on Erasmus’s desk directly in front of Vernal.

“Do you know what that is?” Erasmus asked. “Judging by the worm Mr. Sciever ripped out of your wrist, I’m guessing you do.”

Vernal nodded. It was a scythe beetle, also known as a reaper, but larger than any he’d ever seen. It was the size of a football and had thin, deliberate legs jutting from under a black carapace. Two hooked horns adorned its head. The gathering of white speckles on its back resembled a skull.

“We took it off a member of the Black Hand earlier. Big sucker, don’t you think?”

Vernal nodded again. He had seen a scythe beetle attack a man once, only that insect had been half the size of the one before him. They were slow creatures, ambush predators that hid under rocks and in bushes. But the sudden sight of a speckled scythe beetle was enough to induce a scream from just about anyone. As a child, Vernal had enjoyed torturing his family with a realistic rubber toy. He left it in a kitchen cabinet once, and his mother reacted so violently that she knocked over a pan of boiling water and was rushed to the hospital.

A scythe beetle didn’t need speed for anything but its stinger. The toxin inside attacked the spinal nerves, paralyzing the victim from the neck down and ensuring there was nothing you could do to stop it from regurgitating its liquefying acid into the wound and slurping your innards like soup. But you saw and felt everything, even when it crawled slowly, deliberately into the void of your abdomen and began to lay its eggs. Most people didn’t live much longer than that.

“They won’t say,” Erasmus went on, “but I think they breed them somewhere in that shithole labyrinth across town. What do you think?”

“Probably.”

“I mean, look at the size of it. Forget Pugs and his stupid dinosaur. This is a real monster.”

Vernal wasn’t going to argue.

“Put it by his feet.”

Sciever snickered. With bandaged hands, still red and swollen from the wasp stings, the Murderling lifted a pair of large tongs and removed the squirming beetle from its glass prison. Dozens of skinny, segmented legs erupted from its stomach and wriggled in waves like a centipede’s. Sciever held it in front of Vernal’s face. The stubby man couldn’t help but turn away.

Togo bent to the floor and removed Vernal’s shoes and socks, then stepped back as his partner set the insect on the carpet.

Vernal watched as it crept toward his wriggling toes. He tried to laugh. It was funny, right, being trapped like this? If he could see the humor, he thought, he might induce his latent lycanthropy, and that just might break his bonds.

But Vernal wasn’t a humorous man by nature, and the sight of that speckled carapace induced terror in him the same as everyone else. This was no toy. He decided to tell a joke.

“Hey, you guys.” He forced a smile. “You hear the one about the three priests?”

Sciever’s face was rapacious with anticipation. He didn’t take his eyes off the scuttling beetle.

“Stop me if you’ve heard it. So, a minister of Goyen, a priestess of Xueyin, and a Kraxus shaman are deciding how best to use the week’s offerings. The minister says, ‘Let’s build a great church so that all may come to worship at the feet of Our Lord.’ The priestess stops him and says, ‘No, no, no. Let’s give the money to the poor and needy so that they may know the peace of Our Lady.’ And while they’re arguing, the Kraxus-worshiper stabs them both in the throat and takes all the money. Ha!”

The men in the room let out a laugh, not at the joke, but at Vernal. Even Erasmus chuckled. And humor is contagious, or so Vernal expected, but here everyone’s mirth merely accented his calamity, and Vernal fought the muscles on his face as they tried to tug his mouth into a frown. Tears queued behind his eyes, ready for the charge.

The beetle reached Vernal’s feet. He felt its tiny legs cascade over his bare skin like the running of ants. He shivered. Still no sting.

Togo took another step back.

“Where’s the key?” Erasmus asked.

“I told you,” Vernal repeated. “I gave it to Jack.”

“Where’s Jack?”

“I don’t know.”

“Lies!”

“I’m not lying!” Vernal yelled. He stared at the ascending beetle. “We got separated. In the Old Arcade. There were fucking wereninjas for fuck’s sake! Okay? I turned into a unicorn, and we got separated.”

“Where were you gonna meet?”

“We didn’t have a spot. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t going to let Jack out of my fucking sight.” The beetle crawled up Vernal’s leg. “Fucking wereninjas,” Vernal scoffed. “Right? I mean, for Goyen’s sake, what the hell? How do you stop wereninjas? Jack’s probably dead.”

“Jack’s not dead. I hired those incompetent assholes. If he was dead, you’d be dead. You expect me to believe that you didn’t have a plan?”

The beetle crawled over Vernal’s thigh.

“You have a plan for everything, you worm-dicked cretin.”

Vernal laughed, but not out of joy. Out of desperation. Out of irony. He stared at the beetle. He did always have a plan. Vernal was the man with the plan. Except this time. It was the truth. He hadn’t even considered letting Jack out of his sight, nor—he realized—had he considered lying to Erasmus Pimpernel.

But a lie might have bought him more time, where the truth would never set him free.

“Okay, we did have a plan.” Vernal eyed the beetle as it reached his crotch. “Okay? We had a plan. We were going to meet.”

“Where?”

“We were going to meet! Get it off me! Please! For fuck’s sake get it off me!”

“Do it.”

Sciever lifted the writhing beetle with the tongs.

Vernal panted, arms strapped to the chair, bare feet sweating into the carpet.

“I want to know everything,” Erasmus explained. “Every detail of what you were after.”

“Money,” Vernal lied.

Erasmus’s machine twitched as if Vernal had mentioned the gangster’s mother. “What?”

“I was going to sell Jack back to you.”

“Put the beetle back on him. On his lap.”

Sciever lifted the creature again.

“No, wait!” Vernal didn’t know whether to lie or tell the truth. His heart was pounding so loud he could barely hear his own voice. He was drenched in sweat and bleeding from his palm. “The Genix. I was after the Genix.”

Sciever held the squirming bug in the air.

“Go on.”

“I was going to trade Jack for it. I knew you wanted him more than anything. So when I heard the Jackals found the key, I knew I had to get it. I put it in a metal box, a thick one, with a combination so Jack couldn’t open it. I gave it to him, to keep it safe. No one would keep that key safer than him. I was going to send him back in here. I told him to steal the Genix, but I was going to warn you so you could catch him. You’d have him and the key. And then I’d trade you the Genix for the combination to the box. That’s it, I swear.”

Togo scowled. “What’s a genicks?”

“Shut up!” Erasmus barked. “Where is he?”

“We said if we ever got separated, we’d meet at Dobie’s apartment. You know, the fighter? Dobie knew Jack ‘cuz they all hang out together at The Dive, all those guys. They’re all friends. Just ask Dobe.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not,” Vernal panted. “Dobie was going to introduce me to Jack. It all went through him. Your guys were there, in the bar. They saw us waiting for Jack. It’s the truth.”

But Erasmus Pimpernel was the king of liars. And he knew something Vernal did not. “That idiot boxer is squid food.”

Vernal scowled. “What?”

Erasmus was calm. “We had him right where you are. We beat the living tar out of him. If there had been a plan, he would have spilled it.”