"Good evening," Grevane said, the rich, cultured tones of his voice a marked contrast to the dull, steady pounding at my front door. "My compliments to your contractor. That door is really quite sturdy."
"I like my privacy," I called back. "Is the mortician alive?"
"That's a somewhat fluid term in my experience," Grevane said. "But he is well enough for the time being."
My knees wobbled a little in relief. Good. If Butters was still all right, I had to keep Grevane talking. Barely five minutes had passed since the attack began. Even if the bad guys had cut the phone lines to the whole boardinghouse, the neighbors would have heard the racket and watched the light show from my wards. Someone was sure to call the authorities. If I could keep Grevane busy long enough, they would arrive, and I was willing to bet money that Grevane would rabbit rather than take chances this close to his goal. "You've got him. I want him."
"As do I," Grevane said. "I presume he found the information in the smuggler's corpse."
"Yes," I said.
"And I take it you also know."
"Yes."
He made a thoughtful sound. He was very near the broken window, though I couldn't see him. "That presents a problem for me," Grevane said. "I have no intention of sharing the Word with anyone. I'm afraid it will be necessary for me to silence you."
"I'm the least of your worries," I called back. "Corpsetaker and Li Xian took the information from me this afternoon."
There was a silence, broken only by the slow, steady pounding on my door.
"If that had happened," Grevane said, "you would not be alive to speak of it."
"I got lucky and got away," I said. "Corpsetaker sounded all hot and bothered about this Darkhallow thing you guys have planned."
I heard the angry sound of someone spitting. "If you are telling the truth," Grevane said, "then it profits me nothing to allow you and the mortician to live."
"That's one way to look at it," I said. "But you could just as easily say that it costs you nothing to do it, either. Last night you wanted to make me a deal. You still willing to talk?"
"To what purpose?" he said.
There was the shrieking sound of steel beginning to bend under stress. One corner of the door, up at the top, bent in, letting in cold evening air.
"Hurry," Thomas urged me. "We have to do something fast."
"Give me Butters," I said to Grevane. "I'll give you the information I found."
"You offer me nothing. I have him already," Grevane said. "I can extract the information from him myself."
"You could," I said, "if he knew it. He doesn't."
Grevane snarled something in a language I didn't understand. I heard scuffing shoes, then the sound of a slap and a dazed exclamation from Butters. "Is that true?" Grevane asked him. "Do you have the information about the Word?"
"Dunno what it is," Butters mumbled. "There was a jump drive. Numbers. It was a whole bunch of numbers."
"What numbers?" Grevane snarled.
"Don't know. Whole bunch. Can't remember them all. Harry has them."
"Liar," Grevane said. There was the sound of another blow, and Butters cried out.
"I don't know!" Butters said. "There were too many and I only saw them for a sec-"
Another blow fell, this time with the dull, heavy sound of a closed fist hitting flesh.
I clenched my teeth, rage filling me.
"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know…" Butters said. It sounded like he was crying.
"Look at me," Grevane said. "Look."
I closed my eyes and turned my face a little from the window. I could imagine what was happening. Butters, probably on his knees, being held by a pair of zombies, Grevane standing over him in his trench coat, pinching Butters's chin between his thumb and forefinger. I could imagine him forcing Butters's eyes up to meet his, to begin a soulgaze. Grevane wanted to see the inside of Butters's head, in a swift and harsh attempt to assess the truth.
And Butters would be exposed to the corruption of a soul steeped in dark magic and a lifetime of murder.
I heard a high-pitched little sound that rose rapidly, growing louder and louder until it was a wail of terror and madness. There was no dignity in the sound. No self-control. I would never have recognized it as Butters's voice if I hadn't known he was out there. But it was him. Butters screamed, and he kept screaming without pausing to take a breath until it wound down to a frozen, gurgling sound and died away.
"Well?" asked another voice, one I did not recognize. It rasped harshly, as if the man speaking had spent a lifetime imbibing cheap Scotch and cheaper cigars.
"He doesn't know," Grevane reported quietly, disgust in his voice.
"You're sure?" said the second voice. I moved a bit to one side and stood up on tiptoe to peer out the window. I could see the second speaker. It was Liver Spots.
"Yes," Grevane said. "He doesn't have any strength to him. If he knew, he'd answer."
"If you kill the mortician, you'll have to kill me," I called. "Of course, I'm the only one with the information, other than Corpsetaker.
I'm sure that you psychotic necro-wannabes with delusions of godhood are all about sharing with your fellow maniacs."
There was silence from outside.
"So you should go ahead and take me out," I said. "Of course, when I lay down my death curse on you, it's going to make it that much harder for you to beat out Corpsetaker for the Darkhallow, but what's life without a few challenges to liven things up?" I paused and then said, "Don't be an idiot, Grevane. If you don't deal with me you'll be cutting your own throat."
"Is that what you think?" Grevane said. "Perhaps I will simply walk away."
"No, you won't," I said. "Because when Corpsetaker gets his membership to the Mount Olympus Country Club, the first thing he's going to do is find his nearest rival-you-and rip your pancreas out through your nose."
The door suddenly bent on a diagonal on the top half, folding it in as if it had been wax paper. The door didn't quite go down, but I could see dead fingers reaching up through it, trying to rip and tear the weakened section.
"Harry," Thomas said, his voice tight with apprehension. He drew his saber and went to the door. He hacked at dead fingers that appeared in the breach. They spun through the air and landed on the floor, still bending and wriggling like bisected earthworms.
"Make up your mind, Grevane!" I called. "If this goes any further, I'm going to do everything in my power to kill you. I can't beat you. We both know that. But you won't get the information out of me against my will. I'm not a pansy. I can push you hard enough to make you kill me."
"You would have me believe that you would simply commit suicide?" Grevane asked.
"To take you down with me?" I replied. "Oh, hell, yeah. Count on it."
"Don't listen to him," Liver Spots hissed. "Kill him. He knows he's finished. He's desperate."
Which was true, dammit, but the last thing I needed was for someone to point that out to Grevane. A zombie finger flew past my head, and another bounced off my duster and fell to the floor at my feet, still twitching, a long and yellowed fingernail making an unsettling scratching sound against my boot. The pounding on the door got louder, the whole thing rattling in its frame.
And then, just like that, it stopped. Silence fell over the apartment.
"What are your terms?" Grevane asked.
"You release Butters to me," I said. "You let us drive off with your sidekick in the car. Once we're away from here, I give him the numbers and drop him off. Mutual truce until sunrise."
"These numbers," Grevane said. "What do they mean?"
"I don't have a clue," I said. "At least not yet. Neither did Corpsetaker."
"Then what value do they have?" he asked.
"Someone is bound to figure it out. But if you don't deal with me now, it sure as hell won't be you."