“This is unwise, my friend,” Lenoir called. “You have at most one shot left, assuming your weapon is double-barreled like mine. I have two. Even if you somehow manage to kill me, I have an ally, one who cannot be harmed by your pistol. But you know that already.”
He waited. There was no sound.
“Do you hear that? It is quiet below us. That can mean only thing: your friends are dead. You are the last one alive. I would very much like to keep you that way, but I have little control over the creature I came with.” A stifled sob sounded from the other side of the bed. Lenoir knew that terror only too well. He almost felt sorry for the man. But he kept his voice carefully devoid of pity as he said, “He will be here soon. If he sees that you are cooperating with me, he may stay his hand. Otherwise . . .” He let the word hang in the air, malignant and oppressive.
“Keep it away from me.” Spoken in little more than a whisper, the plea barely had enough strength to cross the room.
“I will do what I can.” It was the truth, and the most he could promise, but it still felt like a lie. “Put your weapon on the floor and kick it toward the windows where I can see it.”
For a moment, there was only silence. Then something heavy sounded against the floor, and a flintlock skittered out from behind the foot of the bed. It came to rest near the far window, spinning lazily over itself. It was a single-barreled weapon. Lenoir was sure he had seen only one gun. He prayed he was right.
“Now stand up slowly and keep your hands where I can see them.”
The man stood. His arms stuck out at his sides, as rigid as boards, and Lenoir could see that he was shaking. He wore a sword belt, but the scabbard was empty. Lenoir gestured with his pistol. “Where is your blade?”
“I—I don’t know,” the man stammered. “I don’t remember.” Lenoir might not have believed him, but at that moment a dark stain spread across the front of his trousers. In his fear, the poor wretch had wet himself.
“Who are you?” Lenoir asked, deciding to start off easy. He was young, perhaps twenty-five, with long blond hair and wiry limbs. Lenoir thought he looked familiar. “You work for Zera.”
The man’s gaze flicked briefly to his gun, as though he were reconsidering his surrender. Lenoir doubted he would go for it, but he kept his pistol trained on the man’s chest all the same. “Yes,” the man said finally.
“Where is she now? Is she with Los?”
The man’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly before he averted his gaze, staring down at his boots in a pathetic attempt not to give anything away.
“Where are they?” Lenoir demanded. The man continued to stare at his boots. Lenoir sighed. “We have been through this, my friend. It is in your best interests to answer my questions.” More silence.
“My turn,” said a familiar voice, and Vincent stepped out of the shadows.
The man shrieked and leapt for his gun. Lenoir dove for the cover of the stairwell. The gun went off. For a moment, everything was still. Then came a moan unlike anything Lenoir had ever heard, a sound of pure despair that froze his blood.
Lenoir straightened. The young man was on his knees, his head bowed in resignation. Vincent stood over him.
“Don’t kill him!”
The spirit turned, and Lenoir had to bite his lip to keep from crying out. There was a hole the size of a cherry just above Vincent’s right eye. It had already begun to close; in a few seconds, it would be gone. “I am not a fool, mortal,” the spirit said disdainfully, seemingly oblivious to the ghastly wound. “If I intended to kill him, he would already be dead.” Vincent turned back to the young man, who had begun to sob quietly. “What do you mean to do with him?”
“Ordinarily, I would hang him off the balcony by his ankles.” Actually, Lenoir had only done that once, and it had proven to be more trouble than it was worth. But it sounded good. “But since you are here, I don’t think we need to bother with that.”
He crossed the room and knelt in front of the young man. Grabbing a fistful of straw-colored hair, he jerked the man’s head back so that he was looking into Lenoir’s eyes. “I want to show you something.”
Releasing the man’s hair, he pulled back his sleeve to reveal the hideous scar on his forearm. He slapped the wretch’s forehead to make sure he was looking. “See this? Do you know what this is?” The man shook his head frantically. “No? Have you never seen a cadaver, my friend? This is dead flesh. Necrotic, it is called. The flesh of a corpse. Do you know how I got this?”
The man’s face crumpled, tears and mucus and saliva streaming forth as though someone were wringing out a wet cloth.
“I got it from this creature beside me, this spirit of vengeance. You saw what he has done to your friends.”
“Keep it away from me,” the man pleaded again, his eyes screwed shut.
“Tell me where they are.”
“They told us not to get involved with her. They said this would happen!”
“Who?”
“The others. My cousin and me, we needed the money. But the others she tried to hire, they said no. They said it was bad business.”
“You should have listened,” Lenoir said gravely. “Now tell me what I want to know.”
“Spare my life! Spare me, and I’ll tell you anything!”
It would have been so easy to lie. Lenoir had done it thousands of times before, with little enough justification. Surely even God Himself could not blame Lenoir for lying now. Yet he could not bring himself to do it. Instead he looked up at Vincent and said, “The arm.”
He moved aside as Vincent unhooked the whip from his belt. The man scrambled to his feet and tried to flee. Lenoir did not even bother trying to stop him. The scourge caught his arm as he ran past, and the scream it tore from his throat forced Lenoir to shut his eyes.
Lenoir counted to five. It might have been longer, for he could barely concentrate over the screaming. Panic thrummed in his nerves, and he struggled against an almost overwhelming urge to flee. His instincts surged against his willpower like a raging river threatening to breach a dam, but he held his ground.
“Stop.”
He forced himself to open his eyes. To his relief, Vincent obeyed immediately, giving his wrist an expert twist to dislodge the scourge. The young man lay on the floor, limp and shuddering. The flesh on his arm was black. Blood oozed from the puncture wounds, dark and strangely thick. The man’s eyes rolled back slightly, and for a moment Lenoir feared he would pass out. Instead he lurched suddenly and vomited.
“I know how you feel,” said Lenoir, but in spite of the words, there was no sympathy in his voice. “It is a curious sensation, is it not? The body scarcely knows how to process it, the mind still less. The barbs are like the fangs of a venomous snake, only instead of pouring poison into your veins, they suck the life force from you. Or so I imagine—who knows what effect that cursed weapon truly has? It is better, I think, to have the whip around one’s neck. That way, you die before you are forced to feel your flesh rotting, before you are forced to smell your own blood congealing. I for one do not wish to savor my death. When it comes, I want it to overwhelm me, not sneak up on me like some miserable thief.” He found himself staring at Vincent as he spoke these words. As usual, the spirit merely returned his gaze impassively.
He returned his attention to the young man at his feet. “What about you, friend? How do you want to die?”
The man looked up at Lenoir with haunted eyes. “I want to die old, in my bed.”