Crowbones

CHAPTER 91

Them

Moonsday, Novembros 5

Richard Cardosa wanted to sneer at this last bit of bravado from a creature whose spirit had already been broken by an expert in gaslighting and mental abuse. He used those same techniques often enough, so he recognized the signs in someone who had been exposed to that kind of psychological alteration. Did she really think she was healing, that she was ever going to be able to cope with the world when it took so little to push her to the edge of panic and being unable to function? He couldn’t figure out why this fat bit of nothing was so intriguing to the Others. She was prey, a broken thing he hadn’t considered interesting enough to even toy with. And yet, because of her, he’d been trapped in this place with that idiot Roash—and with Ellen, who had decided to end their sibling rivalry by trying to kill off her rival.

Time to go. With the chaos his two bloodsucking helpers were about to create, it would be easy for him to slip away. He’d have to walk out in order to get past the barricades, but he was fit. He could do it. All the attention would be on his twisted, fanged darlings, who had been willing to be led and had been ripe for everything he could teach them. For a moment, he regretted their loss, but their enthusiasm had made them a liability a couple of years ago, and they were a liability now. He couldn’t afford to let the cops or the bloodsuckers make a connection between him and Kira and Viktor.

But that fat bit of nothing said, “Crowbones is gonna gitcha,” as she swayed from blood loss and the effects of the feel-good drug, and he, Richard Cardosa, felt cold sweat pool in his armpits, felt . . .

Rattle, rattle, rattle.

“Monkey man,” a voice sang from somewhere nearby.

“Moooonkey man,” another voice sang.

Rattle, rattle, rattle.

A snarl, and a sense of something moving toward him too fast.

Then thick fog covered the small clearing and he couldn’t see anything.

“Deal with them,” he told Viktor.

He turned and headed back the way he’d come, a straight line that would get him out of the fog.

Sounds of vicious fighting. Screams that might have been delicious if he’d still been the one controlling this project. But he had to get away now, had to . . .

The fog suddenly thinned, and the woman . . .

A face too symmetrical, too perfect, too human to be human. Then he saw the feathers entwined in the long black hair, and when her lips pulled back in a snarl . . .