"Promise," I warned as I ran.
She was ready for him, blocking the entrance with her sword. He gave an annoyed hiss, the first non-gleeful sound I'd heard from him, and sprang back to the ceiling and raced along it out of sight of my flashlight. I swore, spun on my heel, and headed after him. That's when I discovered it wasn't only human bodies hanging from the hooks. Leprous hands snatched at me as I ran. More rule-breaking revenants hung twisting on the metal. They clawed and snapped, maddened by their imprisonment…tortured by pain. Yeah, too damn bad for them. I didn't have any more pity than I had had for the one chained in the tunnel.
I pushed through them, ignoring the bloody stripes left across my face and neck. Sawney was the only thing on my mind now. "You're running, Sawney? You afraid your meal's going to kick your ass?"
I couldn't see Niko or Robin, but I knew they were hidden in the darkness waiting to make their move. Robin's job was the same as Promise's—keep Sawney in the cavern. Niko's was to take advantage the minute I got Sawney sufficiently distracted to hold still for a few seconds. All I had to do was make that happen. A couple of seconds … it had seemed a lot more doable when we were discussing it aboveground.
"Sawney," I started to yell again just as he came out of the darkness beside me and took me down. I twisted under him and fired again in his chest. There was a cracking, the sound of rotten pond ice splitting under a spring sun. Clear, cold glass peppered my shirt, fragments of whatever made up the core of the inner Sawney. They burned even through the cloth, like dry ice. I fired again, shoved him hard, and rolled beneath the swipe of the scythe. Not fast enough to save me a slice along my stomach, but quick enough to keep my guts inside where they belonged. I had to get distance between us or Nik would scrap the plan and move in, intent on saving my ass. I rolled again and pulled the trigger two more times, nailing him in the throat. Blood, with the clear purity of rain and the chemical bite of antifreeze, poured out like a wide-open faucet. I skittered backward from beneath it and moved up to a crouch. As for Sawney, chest and throat in ruins—Sawney seemed to be having the time of his life. I noticed his leg was back in place, which seemed to add to his good cheer.
"Traveler."
He was drifting closer, his feet not touching the ground. I'd seen it before with him, but I'd already had my view of the monster world soundly shaken with this bastard—and this would've been nice to do without. I raised my eyes in the joy of denial and tried for that head shot Niko had asked me for earlier.
Too late. Sawney was gone. Not so fast this time, but I wasn't sure if his wounds were slowing him down or he wanted me to keep up to play a little longer. If I had to pick, I'd pick the one that screwed me but good. I followed anyway as this cavern passed into another. The entrance was hidden by a curtain of hooks and corpses. I pushed through them with distaste to find an identical space. More blood, more bodies, and more Sawney. And this time he kicked up the play to high gear. He slashed the moment I passed through the cold flesh. My blood was on the scythe along with the blood of tonight's victim or victims. Not exactly sanitary and the very least of my concerns.
I threw myself to one side and emptied the clip in his direction. It was a lot of bullets and I wasn't sure a single one hit him. His scythe hit me, though, carving a thin slice in my shoulder. Flitting away, he disappeared, reappeared, and sliced the outside of my thigh. I backed away, ejecting the clip and sliding a new one home. The slashes were painful and bloody, but superficial…just for fun. So far. But they would get deeper. Nik wouldn't hold back any longer. As a distraction, I was great. As for getting Sawney to hold still, I might not survive that long. He was too goddamn fast.
But then … I could be fast too.
Time to see if practice made perfect.
Breaking promises. I'd done it a few times now. But sometimes you break them little, and sometimes you break them big. This was going to be fucking huge.
"Traveler."
There. Slash. Gone again, but I heard the faintest rustle of bodies behind. Niko was coming, and I hadn't done my job. Not yet. But I would. I said I would, and I was keeping my word there even if I was breaking it somewhere else.
"Yeah, I'm a traveler." I could feel the sweat soaking my shirt and jeans. "One like you haven't seen before, asshole."
I saw him through the hanging bodies, the scythe duplicating his grin. "Travelers, they are all the same to Sawney Beane. Go here, go there. Horse, no horse." The smile, always with the damn crazed smile. "All the same."
"Not me." I gave a grin of my own—wild and savage. "Not this traveler."
So I traveled.
As before, I didn't build the gate before me; I built it around me, and I was gone. I reappeared behind him and nailed him in the back. Then he vanished and I vanished with him. I fired, missed, traveled, fired again. Sometimes I hit him, sometimes I didn't. But he couldn't shake me, no matter how he tried, because I was a nightmare. I was this monster's nightmare just as he'd been one to so many others.
I saw Nik from the corner of my eye now and again, and also occasionally saw Promise and Robin fighting off revenants. I wondered what I looked like to them, as I glowed with a sickly gray light and disappeared, reappeared, disappeared, reappeared…Maybe like a rapidly sped-up movie—a fast-forward of blood and metal.
I was bleeding again from the nose; I tasted the salt. The ears too, like in the museum, but I was also bleeding from my mouth. I swallowed the copper of it and went on, because that was fine; better than fine. It was just goddamn great. And I was laughing—because once I pushed through the pain, once I embraced the head-crushing agony—traveling was fun as hell. And I liked it far more than was good for me, because it tasted just like Sawney said I did.
The next time I faced Sawney I put one in his forehead and when I flashed behind him I emptied the clip in the back of his head. While grinning through blood-coated teeth, I fired bullet after bullet, blowing away the curve of skull to show the glassy mass within, taking that head shot Niko had once asked of me in the subway.
That's when Sawney turned his head completely backward to grin at me. In his mind, it was all fun and games, even if we both died. With the sound of bones cracking, his body turned at a slower pace to keep up with his head. The scythe rose high.
And this time I didn't flash out. This time my brain tied itself in an exhausted knot and the traveling flowed out of me, riding on the blood. But that was all right, because, for once, Sawney was standing still.
Which was when Niko set him on fire.
The flamethrower had been concealed in the oversized backpack Nik had been hauling. Although whether Sawney would've known what it was was debatable. Although Sawney knew a lot of things he shouldn't, thanks to Wahanket probably. Even without that help, he would've learned fast in this time and place. Yeah, one smart son of a bitch. Too bad for him that wasn't going to help him now. Too damn bad.
As I staggered back from him, the stream of flame enveloped him and he went up like a bonfire. Covering him from head to toe, Niko manipulated the fiery stream like a fire hose, and from the look on his face, he was enjoying it as much as he said he would. Sawney, however, was not. The insane laughter had turned to insane screams. The hooked revenants and the ones on the ground screamed with him. Sawney whirled in the air, bright as the sun, singeing and burning the bodies around him. The screams…they didn't stop. They went on and on as Sawney spun faster and faster. Niko kept the flame on him.
"Now, you bastard," he said quietly, "now comes your justice."
And while Justice was blind, she could give you one helluva sunburn. He burned for what seemed like forever. I watched silently as I used my hand and then my sleeve to mop the blood from my face and spat out the red stuff as well. The headache was fierce, but not as agonizing as it had been. I'd either broken through the wall or just flat-out broken period. Either way, I couldn't have cared less as I watched that monster begin to fall in on himself. The hair was gone, burned away. The crystalline spine and skull were naked to the eye and melting like glass in a furnace. In other places, the flesh, already black, was hardening, then crumbling to ash beneath him. And still the screaming went on. I was glad my ears were already bleeding. It saved some time.