Unconsciousness, when it came, was a blessing. Stuart blacked out, and the blackness extinguished the light.
EIGHTEEN
9 Grass 1 Lizard 1 House
(Thursday 13th December 2012)
“Did you really have to hit him so hard, Kay?”
“He shot Xolotl. What else was I supposed to do?”
“But he’s just a human.”
“Again — he shot Xolotl.”
“Shot at him. Not the same thing.”
“He had no idea I’d be able to catch the bullet. He meant to kill him.”
“Still, you didn’t have to razzle-dazzle the poor fool to quite the extent you did. Look at the state of him. You could have destroyed him inside and out. We’ll be lucky if you haven’t completely burned out his mind.”
“I’m sorry, Toci, all right? I overreacted.”
“Negating a threat is one thing. But this?”
“Work your magic. Bring him back to health.”
“Oh, I will. Just be more careful in future. He isn’t your enemy.”
“Yes, Toci.”
All this Stuart heard as though from a distance, from behind a thick screen of pain. He smelled a strange smell — neutral, antiseptic, like nothing he could name or knew. He felt remote, lost. Who was talking? He knew those names.
The blackness returned.
His eyelids fluttered open. Light spiked his retinas. Everything hurt. He could just make out a figure bending over him. A woman. Long blonde hair.
Sofia?
Sofia.
He reached for her, even though every muscle in his body begged him not to. He wanted to touch her. He had so much to say. He wanted to forgive her, and rage at her, and hug her, and plead with her.
What it all came down to was a single question.
Why?
Why had she done it?
Couldn’t she have talked to him first? Discussed it with him? Given him the chance to put a counterargument, talk her out of it?
Why go off so selfishly like that? And why drag Jake along?
If only she’d given him some forewarning, even come right out and said that she was thinking about putting herself forward for sacrifice, then he would have been able to do something about it.
But she had hidden the truth from him, keeping it buried in her mad, secret heart.
For fuck’s sake, if she’d told him, he might even have gone with her.
That was how much he loved Sofia: he’d have been willing to die with her rather than live without her.
And Jake.
Just a kid. Barely out of nappies.
His world.
His future.
Stuart’s hand clamped around Sofia’s wrist. His vision swam into focus.
It wasn’t Sofia. Some other woman. As beautiful, if not more so.
She flashed him a businesslike, doctorly smile. In her hand was a device like a syringe and a pistol. In a clear capsule, a cloudy pink lymph-like liquid swilled.
“You need to rest,” she said. “This’ll make you better.”
She pressed the hypodermic gun to Stuart’s arm.
“Repairs. You’ll soon be good as new.”
A moment’s pain.
A numb warmth spreading outwards.
Blackness again.
Jake in all his chubby glory. Gurgling with delight as his father tossed him into the air and caught him. Tossed him and caught him. Tossed and caught.
Never doubting for one second that he was safe. Knowing Daddy’s strong hands would not drop him. Sublimely fearless.
This was all Stuart wanted. All he could have asked for.
To have Jake for the rest of his life, and always catch him, never drop him.
In the faces of the priests the Conquistador killed there was often the same expression. As the sword went in, as life oozed out, a kind of outraged incomprehension. The look of someone who’d been made the victim of a practical joke, an undeserving stooge. I don’t understand. Why me? What did I do?
With each death Stuart had been hoping to claw back some of himself. Murders as milestones on a road to recovery. A metaphysical transaction, the lives of those he hated helping him to regain his own life.
The emptiness inside him never seemed to fill up, though, and this was baffling. The Conquistador’s deeds were supposed to be some kind of cure, a medicine for grief. Why wasn’t it working? How come he never felt any better?
He kept at it, convinced a change would come, a corner would be turned, the longed-for satisfaction would finally arrive. He pushed himself to new heights of daring, wilder and more inflammatory feats of bravado. Putting on the armour became more than an act of provocation and transgression. He began to live for it. He missed it badly during the lulls between. To be Stuart Reston was to be ordinary, boring, a dweller in a world of routine and falsehood, where deals and smiles and handshakes were everything and meant nothing.
He found he was starting to play at being Stuart Reston. The Conquistador was his true self. Both were hollow vessels, but of the two, the Conquistador was by far the more pleasing.
Then came the cop. Detective Inspector Malinalli Vaughn. The only Jaguar Warrior to take the jigsaw of the Conquistador case and fit the pieces together in exactly the right way. She was on to him so quickly. She figured out what nobody else had. In that first meeting between them, she saw past the mask of Stuart Reston, respectable citizen. Peered into his eyes and glimpsed the firebrand within. Nearly caught the Conquistador once. Did catch him, the second time.
He admired her for that. He’d almost welcomed it when she ensnared him on Tower Bridge. Cunning. If he were to be arrested — and he’d known he would be eventually, there had to be an end to it all — then at least he had been arrested cleverly, by someone with the wherewithal to outwit him. Mal Vaughn had proved to be his equal. It had been a short contest, but he knew almost from the start that he’d met his match. Maybe even — whisper it — his better.
And yes, Chel was right, he was ever so slightly infatuated with her, too. She was extraordinarily sexy. She didn’t seem to realise it, which helped. Made her even sexier, in fact. Many good-looking women swaggered through life all too aware of their attractiveness, expecting men to fall at their feet, disappointed if they did, offended if they didn’t. Mal Vaughn was not that banal. She didn’t put on airs, didn’t live by illusions. She was who she was, take it or leave it.
Stuart would have liked to take it. All of it.
The antiseptic smell wafted in on him again. Stuart came to, feeling weird, quite unlike himself. All the pain was gone, but that wasn’t the difference. He felt… refreshed. Yes, refreshed, although that didn’t quite cover the whole of it. As though his mind had been transplanted into a new-minted body.
He pulled himself off the narrow bed he was lying on. He got to his feet. He bounced springily on the balls of his toes.
Invigorated. That sort of described it, too.
He stretched from head to toe. Nothing creaked or cracked. His tongue went to the molar Mal Vaughn had loosened with one of her punches. The tooth was firmly rooted in place again, not giving him gyp any more. The lumps and abrasions left by his scuffle with Zotz were gone. Even his many mosquito bites were no longer bothering him. All the little bumps of inflammation had subsided, and with them the aggravating itching.