“I know how you feel, buddy. I’m a”—pause for monster belch here—“a smidge under the weather myself. Love stinks, didja know that? Well”—he nodded wisely—“I’m here to tell ya. It stinks like . . .” He paused to think about it, took a whiff of his own armpits, and nodded his head. “Yup, that would be me.” His eyes wandered over to us. “How you doing?” he asked. “Enjoying your stay at the Heartbreak Hotel?” He suddenly launched into an amazing imitation of Elvis. “It’s down at the end of Lonely Street at Heartbreak Hotel.”
Overbite and the Old-Timer looked at each other, shrugged, and pointed their guns at Tarasios.
“Everybody freeze!” We did. Mostly out of surprise because the command came from the forgotten vampire who now stood in the bedroom doorway, hair standing on end, shirttails hanging, scratches running down his cheek, and a large malamute tucked under his left arm. Ziel’s head drooped and every few seconds he licked at his nose, which I suspected had taken a thump sometime during his struggle not to be caught by the dude who currently dangled him like a naughty child.
“Here is what we are going to do,” Vayl said. He stared down Samos’s men, one by one. The certainty in his voice a concrete barrier, he went on. “You are going to pull your men out of this room. You have until the count of three, after which I will crush this animal like a beer can.”
Overbite’s face went red. I got excited. Maybe that was the sign that Bergman’s little robots had finally done their job. But no. The explosions going off inside his brain had nothing to do with my sci-guy’s technology.
Vayl said, “One.”
The Old-Timer raised his eyebrows at Mohawk. “I’ve seen bluffing. That’s not it.” Actually it was, but only I knew Vayl well enough to tell.
“Two.”
Mohawk gave his cohorts a curt nod. “All right, we’re leaving,” he said.
“All of your men,” Vayl insisted.
They paused to grab Blondie’s corpse by its arms and legs, which meant they had to holster their weapons. The second I saw those Baikals stored I pulled my own gun. I didn’t intend to shoot. We were at stalemate. I understood that. So did Mohawk, who’d pulled a Glock 37 from behind his back the second Vayl showed his hand.
“When do we get the dog back?” Mohawk demanded.
“We’ve got your number,” I told him. “We’ll call at dusk to let you know.”
Mohawk wanted to linger, do more negotiating, but shouting from a lower floor told him he was out of time. “Dusk,” he said firmly, trying to make it an order. They took off. I went to the door, but by the time I got there the hall held only a dusty gold chandelier and a framed print of a bunch of Christians being eaten by lions.
I turned to compliment Vayl on his quick thinking. But Dave stood in my way. “The cut on your back—I think it looks more spectacular than it actually is.” He winced and touched his fingertips to his jaw as his own injuries pained him. “You probably won’t even need—” But I didn’t hear the rest. A face, that face, had emerged from the pool of Blondie’s blood. I knew it was real because Ziel perked up his ears, looked straight at it, and then decided he wanted to bury his face in the gap between Vayl’s shirt buttons.
As my sverhamin dealt with the dog, the face blinked a couple of times, rolled its red eyes as if trying to get its bearings. And then it rose into the air.
“That’s new,” I murmured.
“What did you say?” asked Dave.
“I said that’s a new deal for me. Not needing stitches.”
“And not dying,” he added. I glanced up at him. Were we reverting to weird jokes? Already? I looked back at the face, hovering over the floor like a huge red mask. Nope, I’m not laughing yet. In fact, I’m trying pretty hard not to scream.
Because the face was staring in my direction, and once again he was horribly happy to see me.
Dave said something about leaving his first-aid kit in the bedroom when he’d changed clothes. As he went to retrieve it I wished he could’ve dabbed a little Neosporin and stretched some gauze across my damaged cerebrum. Vayl seemed pretty intent on Ziel, who’d gone slightly batty once he’d been set down, demanding lavish praise and repeated apologies for how he’d been threatened just now. Tarasios, still sitting in the spot where he’d collapsed earlier, seemed fascinated by the ceiling bots, so I decided it was as safe as it was ever going to be to confront my vision.
“What do you want now?” I hissed to the face.
“She is nearly finished with me!”
“Who?”
“The Destroyer.”
“This riddle shit is really pissing me off. Who is she?”
“You must stop her! Before she kills me!”
“You’re alive?”
A look of confusion twisted the face so severely that for a second it became an indecipherable blob. When I could make out features again, it blinked at me with such despair I actually felt a flash of sympathy. “It seems, for me, the answer is not so simple. But you and your sverhamin are essential. Only you can save the Trust.”
“The Trust?” I whispered. “Or you?”
“We are interchangeable.”
“Why?”
“Because . . .” The face drooped in defeat. “I cannot remember.”
Tarasios began to sing again. Not Elvis this time. Ed Cobb’s “Tainted Love.”
“Yes!” The face raised his bloody brows in triumph, shouting so loudly that I slapped my hand to my forehead. “Her mangled notions of love have brought me to this. You must undo the coil. You must save me. Save me and you save the sverhamin.”
“But you just said my sverhamin was supposed to save the Trust.”
“We are all One!”
“You are really bonkers, you know that?” I wasn’t exactly sure I was addressing the face.
“It is her you must kill,” he insisted. “The Destroyer. Kill her!”
“Her who?”
“I cannot capture her name in my mind. The . . . the Deyrar.” Oh. Her.
I cleared my throat. “Dude, you’ve dialed the wrong number. I’m just here for Samos. That’s it.”
His sigh ended almost in a sob. “Then all is truly lost.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
It would’ve been great to spend the rest of the day flat on my stomach recuperating. Sleeping. Dreaming of a world minus one highly annoying Deyrar who everybody wanted dead, including me. In that world Vayl and I would never stop at one kiss. The brush of a hand would lead to a night full of caresses. Yeah, I pretty much wanted to spend the next nine hours in Fantasyland.
Dave wouldn’t allow it. As he worked over my back he whispered, “Tarasios may know a way to get Vayl out of this mess.”
I looked over at him from where I sat the wrong way around in a library chair. He’d passed out on the floor right next to the pool of blood. “The guy has the IQ of a cornstalk,” I said. “I doubt he knows why Disa goes night-night when the sun rises, much less how to break the binding.”
“He may have seen something though,” Dave insisted. “They were getting along fine last time I saw him. And now he’s turned lush.” He paused, came around the chair to confront me. “Tell me I was never in as bad a shape as him.”
I took some more time to look over Disa’s reject. “I don’t know. What kind of condition were you in when you punched those officers?” I gazed up at Dave, working to keep an expression of mild inquiry on my face.
His face went blank. Pale. For a second I wondered if he’d had a stroke. Then his nose scrunched, followed closely by his top lip. Anybody who’d followed his sports career through high school and college would’ve recognized that snarl. It had won more football games, wrestling matches, and track meets than any other expression in his arsenal. “I’m done being that guy,” he growled.