Madhouse (25 page)

Whirling, I fired, separating his leg at where I guessed the knee would be under the flowing imitation of coat. His enormous grin never faded. He snatched up the leg and disappeared. At least it seemed that way. I barely got an impression of the direction he'd gone—back the way I'd come.

"Promise,"
I warned as I ran.

She was ready for him, blocking the entrance with her sword. He gave an annoyed hiss, the first non-gleeful sound I'd heard from him, and sprang back to the ceiling and raced along it out of sight of my flashlight. I swore, spun on my heel, and headed after him. That's when I discovered it wasn't only human bodies hanging from the hooks. Leprous hands snatched at me as I ran. More rule-breaking revenants hung twisting on the metal. They clawed and snapped, maddened by their imprisonment…tortured by pain. Yeah, too damn bad for them. I didn't have any more pity than I had had for the one chained in the tunnel.

I pushed through them, ignoring the bloody stripes left across my face and neck. Sawney was the only thing on my mind now. "You're running, Sawney? You afraid your meal's going to kick your ass?"

I couldn't see Niko or Robin, but I knew they were hidden in the darkness waiting to make their move. Robin's job was the same as Promise's—keep Sawney in the cavern. Niko's was to take advantage the minute I got Sawney sufficiently distracted to hold still for a few seconds. All I had to do was make that happen. A couple of seconds … it had seemed a lot more doable when we were discussing it aboveground.

"Sawney," I started to yell again just as he came out of the darkness beside me and took me down. I twisted under him and fired again in his chest. There was a cracking, the sound of rotten pond ice splitting under a spring sun. Clear, cold glass peppered my shirt, fragments of whatever made up the core of the inner Sawney. They burned even through the cloth, like dry ice. I fired again, shoved him hard, and rolled beneath the swipe of the scythe. Not fast enough to save me a slice along my stomach, but quick enough to keep my guts inside where they belonged. I had to get distance between us or Nik would scrap the plan and move in, intent on saving my ass. I rolled again and pulled the trigger two more times, nailing him in the throat. Blood, with the clear purity of rain and the chemical bite of antifreeze, poured out like a wide-open faucet. I skittered backward from beneath it and moved up to a crouch. As for Sawney, chest and throat in ruins—Sawney seemed to be having the time of his life. I noticed his leg was back in place, which seemed to add to his good cheer.

"Traveler."

He was drifting closer, his feet not touching the ground. I'd seen it before with him, but I'd already had my view of the monster world soundly shaken with this bastard—and this would've been nice to do without. I raised my eyes in the joy of denial and tried for that head shot Niko had asked me for earlier.

Too late. Sawney was gone. Not so fast this time, but I wasn't sure if his wounds were slowing him down or he wanted me to keep up to play a little longer. If I had to pick, I'd pick the one that screwed me but good. I followed anyway as this cavern passed into another. The entrance was hidden by a curtain of hooks and corpses. I pushed through them with distaste to find an identical space. More blood, more bodies, and more Sawney. And this time he kicked up the play to high gear. He slashed the moment I passed through the cold flesh. My blood was on the scythe along with the blood of tonight's victim or victims. Not exactly sanitary and the very least of my concerns.

I threw myself to one side and emptied the clip in his direction. It was a lot of bullets and I wasn't sure a single one hit him. His scythe hit me, though, carving a thin slice in my shoulder. Flitting away, he disappeared, reappeared, and sliced the outside of my thigh. I backed away, ejecting the clip and sliding a new one home. The slashes were painful and bloody, but superficial…just for fun. So far. But they would get deeper. Nik wouldn't hold back any longer. As a distraction, I was great. As for getting Sawney to hold still, I might not survive that long. He was too goddamn fast.

But then … I could be fast too.

Time to see if practice made perfect.

Breaking promises. I'd done it a few times now. But sometimes you break them little, and sometimes you break them big. This was going to be fucking huge.

"Traveler."

There. Slash. Gone again, but I heard the faintest rustle of bodies behind. Niko was coming, and I hadn't done my job. Not yet. But I would. I said I would, and I was keeping my word there even if I was breaking it somewhere else.

"Yeah, I'm a traveler." I could feel the sweat soaking my shirt and jeans. "One like you haven't seen before, asshole."

I saw him through the hanging bodies, the scythe duplicating his grin. "Travelers, they are all the same to Sawney Beane. Go here, go there. Horse, no horse." The smile, always with the damn crazed smile. "All the same."

"Not me." I gave a grin of my own—wild and savage. "Not this traveler."

So I traveled.

As before, I didn't build the gate before me; I built it
around
me, and I was gone. I reappeared behind him and nailed him in the back. Then he vanished and I vanished with him. I fired, missed, traveled, fired again. Sometimes I hit him, sometimes I didn't. But he couldn't shake me, no matter how he tried, because I was a nightmare. I was this monster's nightmare just as he'd been one to so many others.

I saw Nik from the corner of my eye now and again, and also occasionally saw Promise and Robin fighting off revenants. I wondered what I looked like to them, as I glowed with a sickly gray light and disappeared, reappeared, disappeared, reappeared…Maybe like a rapidly sped-up movie—a fast-forward of blood and metal.

I was bleeding again from the nose; I tasted the salt. The ears too, like in the museum, but I was also bleeding from my mouth. I swallowed the copper of it and went on, because that was fine; better than fine. It was just goddamn great. And I was laughing—because once I pushed through the pain, once I embraced the head-crushing agony—traveling was fun as hell. And I liked it far more than was good for me, because it tasted just like Sawney said I did.

The next time I faced Sawney I put one in his forehead and when I flashed behind him I emptied the clip in the back of his head. While grinning through blood-coated teeth, I fired bullet after bullet, blowing away the curve of skull to show the glassy mass within, taking that head shot Niko had once asked of me in the subway.

That's when Sawney turned his head completely backward to grin at me. In his mind, it was all fun and games, even if we both died. With the sound of bones cracking, his body turned at a slower pace to keep up with his head. The scythe rose high.

And this time I didn't flash out. This time my brain tied itself in an exhausted knot and the traveling flowed out of me, riding on the blood. But that was all right, because, for once, Sawney was standing still.

Which was when Niko set him on fire.

The flamethrower had been concealed in the oversized backpack Nik had been hauling. Although whether Sawney would've known what it was was debatable. Although Sawney knew a lot of things he shouldn't, thanks to Wahanket probably. Even without that help, he would've learned fast in this time and place. Yeah, one smart son of a bitch. Too bad for him that wasn't going to help him now. Too damn bad.

As I staggered back from him, the stream of flame enveloped him and he went up like a bonfire. Covering him from head to toe, Niko manipulated the fiery stream like a fire hose, and from the look on his face, he was enjoying it as much as he said he would. Sawney, however, was not. The insane laughter had turned to insane screams. The hooked revenants and the ones on the ground screamed with him. Sawney whirled in the air, bright as the sun, singeing and burning the bodies around him. The screams…they didn't stop. They went on and on as Sawney spun faster and faster. Niko kept the flame on him.

"Now, you bastard," he said quietly, "now comes your justice."

And while Justice was blind, she could give you one helluva sunburn. He burned for what seemed like forever. I watched silently as I used my hand and then my sleeve to mop the blood from my face and spat out the red stuff as well. The headache was fierce, but not as agonizing as it had been. I'd either broken through the wall or just flat-out broken period. Either way, I couldn't have cared less as I watched that monster begin to fall in on himself. The hair was gone, burned away. The crystalline spine and skull were naked to the eye and melting like glass in a furnace. In other places, the flesh, already black, was hardening, then crumbling to ash beneath him. And still the screaming went on. I was glad my ears were already bleeding. It saved some time.

"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.

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.

She inclined her head. "The Herdsman." She bowed it again. "Tammuz." Then again. "Pan." Lifting her head, she smiled. "Our God. Our never forgotten, fleeing God. How we have missed you."

The Georgia accent was long gone, as was the bold snap of her eyes. Now there was only cold. Cold voice, cold eyes, cold satisfaction.

"Tammuz? The Babylonian god?" Niko's sword was up as was my gun, but we were thoroughly outnumbered in the weapons department.

Robin shrugged lightly. "Like you've never given anyone a fake name?" He settled back on his heels, dropping the point of his sword toward the floor. "What am I thinking? Of course you haven't." Cool and breezy. It was the Robin we'd first met, one who was so accustomed to hiding who he was and being exactly as his race was painted: shallow, thoughtless, full of uncaring conceit. It was easier to see your sins catch up to you if you didn't care, right? But he did. If he hadn't, he would've told us the truth. Whatever was going on … whatever this was, he felt guilty over it. He felt regret, and he cared a great deal.

"You really were a god?" I asked in disbelief. In the bar he'd told me so while drunk as a skunk, but who'd believe that he was telling the truth more or less?

"In vino veritas.
If you drank more, you'd know that." Then the façade fell and he rubbed his eyes wearily. "I'd ask what you want, Seraglio, but I think we already know that, don't we?"

"The Banu Zadeh tribe does not forget slights, no matter how old. No matter how many thousands of years pass. And the slight of a god is a shame to a people that cannot be forgiven or forgotten." Her finger tightened on the trigger until the knuckle paled to light gold against her darker skin. "Babylon is no more. Our tribe has dwindled to what you see before you, but we have you to thank for that. When you left us"—her voice became a hiss—
"deserted
us, the sickness came and the fury of the mightiest storm the desert had seen came. Within months, half the tribe was dead. You took your presence and you took your protection and now we are all but gone from the world. Because of you. All because of you. But"— her smile returned—"those ancestors that were spared have allowed their descendants to claim vengeance. We are all that is left of the Banu Zadeh, but we will be enough."

Robin could have said it was coincidence, the disease and storm, that he'd never been a god, only an imposter, but I wondered if his "abandoning" them was all there was to it. Particularly when the remnants of the tribe had chased him for thousands of years bent on vengeance. I could see how easily whatever it was had happened. When we'd first met him, Goodfellow was the loneliest son of a bitch I'd seen. Pucks didn't seem to stick around each other much. The ego seemed to be part of their genetic makeup from what I could tell from the two I'd met. No wonder they went their separate ways. The clash of narcissism would be explosive. And the majority of other nonhuman races hated and scorned pucks. Thieves, con men, egomaniacs, it was the accepted image. And, hell, it was true, but Robin had proven he was more than that. He stood with us and had since the beginning. He'd faced death with us more than once. It hadn't been sheer loneliness that had driven him to that, but that had been part of it … at least in the beginning.

I didn't think it would've been any different in the days of Babylon. I could see him coming across a desert tribe and being different enough that they were suspicious of him. But if he were a god, and I was sure he had a few Houdini-style tricks to dazzle ancient humans, then they'd welcome him. Embrace him. No contempt. No hatred. Just acceptance, friendship, worship. Who could turn down a little worship? Not your average person, and definitely no puck. Eventually Robin would bore and move on. It was his bad luck on the timing was all. Of course, if he'd still been there when disease and natural disaster reared their heads, it might not have gone any better for him than it was going now.

"You cursed us with your abandonment," she continued. "As our tribe has died, so will you."

"And you think you can kill a god?" Promise inquired with the perfect touch of dismissal. I didn't think it would cast enough doubt in them to work, but it was worth a try.

"Even gods can die." The dark eyes were unrelenting in their determination. "We've seen many things in our long search, my people. Generation after generation has seen wonders and horrors, and we've seen the deaths of gods. We have killed many ourselves. Your kind," she said to Goodfellow with a righteous vindication curving her lips. "They were never the right god, never you, but we killed them nonetheless. They were not you, but they were like you. Uncaring and undeserving of existence."

"Why didn't you simply shoot me in my bed?" he asked. "It would've been easy enough for you." Although it wouldn't have been. Robin would've heard the slightest out-of-place noise. He hadn't lived this long without picking up a thousand and one tricks of survival.

"First, we had to be sure you were the right one." With her other hand she held up a gold armband with what looked like lion heads carved on the ends. "One of the first things we learn as children. The one offering that you took with you. I searched your apartment and finally found it. You kept it all this time. The sentiment moves us." Yeah, why was I not believing that?

She tossed it at his feet. "I could've tried at the apartment, ended you there, but no. You come and you go. The days you spend at work, or so you say. Six nights out of seven you are gone whoring, fooling others into believing you'll never leave them as you left us. I never knew when you would
grace
me with your presence so that I and my brothers could be waiting. Besides, facing a god on his home territory where he is his strongest, we are more clever than that. And we've come to know through several other of your kind that you are all but impossible to poison. The sirrush proved that." I thought of all the food she'd given me and felt my stomach roil. "So we tried several times to kill you with the sirrush, the Hameh, our brother." Pain flickered behind her eyes. "I do not believe you deserve to see your death face-to-face, a warrior's death, not one of treachery for you are a treacherous creature. But now I see we acted as you did, cowardly and without honor. The same death you chose to inflict on my people. You destroyed us as a people and now as the last of our people we must face you to do the same. And we will be more honorable than you."

"There aren't many who aren't," he replied matter-of-factly before dropping his sword. It hit the armband with the musical sound of a bell ringing. "So, you will let them go, then the others … as you are honorable, and they've done nothing to you."

A self-sacrificing puck. The world would stop if it knew, but the world didn't know Robin like we did. He had it in him. Until this moment maybe even he didn't know, but it was there. What a hellacious way to find out.

"I sincerely doubt they would go, Almighty One. Even now they stand with you instead of shunning you as they should. They know what you have done now. Where is the shock and horror at your shame?" She shook her head. "No. They are not your kind, but they are like you. Take them as your servants into whatever afterlife a god claims." The smile was reflected by those who stood beside her, her tribe. Not one of the smiles was a pleasant one.

"How'd you find us?" Niko asked abruptly. "And how did you find Robin at the subway? We weren't followed." And we hadn't been. Any one of us would've picked up on that.

"A GPS tracker in his cell phone. The modern age is a marvel of technology. The following of a god becomes simplicity. A human outwits the divine. The world has come full circle."

"But finding Robin to begin with had to be a bitch." Kind of like her. "Over two thousand years. Way to hold a grudge."

"It's retribution. Only blood will answer the debt." It was hard to believe this woman had once made me breakfast. She and the others were all the same unyielding stone. I guessed if you were going to be a hard-ass, seeing your living, breathing runaway god before you would be the time for it.

"If you give a damn, I am sorry," Robin said quietly to them. "Whether you believe it or not, I truly am. Not for what you think, but I am sorry." Sorry for what he'd done and sorry for what was coming.

There was no give, in their eyes or their faces, and I realized: We were going to have to kill them. All of them. Humans. It didn't sit right. I didn't think it ever would, but it was getting easier. After all, I'd been more than happy to kill that bastard in the subway. Of course, here we might not get the chance to. We were good, but we were facing seven guns. Promise could take a number of hits and stay on her feet. The same wasn't true of the rest of us. At least one of us was going down; it was a fact, one that sat hard and undigested in my stomach. We were thoroughly fucked.

Unless…

Unless I could get behind them. Get the drop on them. It might make the difference.

And that's when I discovered another difference, the one Sawney had made, what he'd pushed me to. I guessed I owed that murdering bastard a favor, because the knot tied in my brain was gone as my mind got the second wind my body had. The effort to head him off, the mind-rending strain to be faster, the necessity of ripping reality time and time again had finally punched through the scar tissue that had held me back these past weeks. It was wide open.
I
was wide open.