"What?"
"Farther, it had to be done."
"You? You . . . killed my son?" Harnes said. His voice seemed to come from someplace other than his throat-perhaps Jocelyn still had his breath, or maybe I did-so that he was only a man mouthing silently in a vacuum. He still showed no emotion, other than the slight hint of confusion. "You did this?"
I saw the dragon emerging in Jocelyn's eyes, and stared in lost captivation as it began to overcome her-the lizard beneath the beauty, cold and primordial, jealous and savage.
"Once Teddy was dead you became even more brazen," I said. "You approached Shanks to handle Frost. Your rage was showing." In fact, it started to show again in her loveliness, the shadows moving in her features, and I had trouble speaking and watching at the same time. "Why his face? Why did you cut off his face with Crummler's shovel? Because you saw too much of yourself in it?" Yes, yes, look at her. "Teddy didn't turn against his father. You did."
"Father," she said. The word held such extreme importance for her that she seemed to be saying prayers and making sacrifices upon an altar. "He'd betrayed you. It could not be permitted."
"You did this?"
Jocelyn flicked her wrist casually toward me and I knew the black night she had wrapped inside of would all come rushing out in this moment. I dodged toward Harnes hoping she wouldn't fire if I was too close to him. The shot sounded impossibly loud and Anna lurched sideways, rising slightly-it seemed as if she might actually be standing, about to take a step toward me. I reached and she flopped into my arms, and said, "Oh, dear."
I found my grandmother's blood on my hands and the world grew tight and too painfully well lit. I closed my eyes and opened them again.
Jocelyn twisted and pointed the gun at me. I wheeled blindly and flung myself aside as she fired. Nick Crummler backpedaled and hurled himself at Li Tai as Jocelyn straightened her arm and aimed at her mother. She fired twice more before I dove onto her. We dropped to the floor heavily and rolled into the darkest corner, where we belonged now. Shadows tore at us. Her facade fell in on itself and her nostrils flared, and I saw all the welts of her strange soul rise to the flesh. I watched her became a hideous caricature of beauty, her face haggard and deeply fissured, nose drawn into a snarl and lips skinned back in a sneer. She tumbled against me, desiccated, more terminal than the dead chauffeur.
Everything stilled. I knew my face looked the same as hers. She fired again. I felt warmth slithering out of me. I reached down and grabbed Jocelyn's wrist and brutally pulled it backward, wanting and needing to hear the bone snap. She easily squirmed from my grip and brought the heel of her palm up viciously into my jaw. More blood spurted, but I didn't mind the dragon's bite now. It felt too good letting loose my own beast.
Nick Crummler rose and punched Harnes once in the mouth, and the madman who had poisoned his wives and imprisoned the mother of his own insane child slid to the floor where he stared at me. I pulled my fist back and drove it forward into Jocelyn's stomach, and still she sneered at me. She smashed me in the mouth once more and I slugged her on the chin as hard as I could.
A soft sound faded in.
A second later I heard it again, and once more, much sharper, and knew it as my name.
"Jonathan. I'm all right. I'm all right, dear. Stop it, you'll kill her!"
I got my hand around Jocelyn's neck and squeezed as tightly as I could, not caring where the next minute took me so long as it took me away from here, but before I got there she was suddenly gone, yanked backward by her long hair into Harnes' lap. He reached for the wine glass, broke it against the edge of the table, and tried to slice her throat open with the shard of the shattered stem. He wasn't angry, not even while he calmly tried to hook her jugular. "You killed my son. My son."
Nick punched him in the mouth again, took the broken glass out of his hand, and looked around the room.
For a man who had been a denizen of Panecraft and lived inside a cardboard box, eating garbage in the street, he sounded damn sure of himself.
He said, "All of you are crazy."
SIXTEEN
I knelt beside by grandmother. The bullet had passed through the thick folds and layers of clothing near her neck. The heavy sweater had scorch marks on it, and her hair had been slightly singed. I tore the tiny rip open wider to get a better look, and vaguely wondered why I was using my left hand instead of my right. The ridge of her shoulder had an inch-long crease that had mostly crusted, yet still dribbled a little blood.
"I'm fine, dear, I'm fine."
"You're bleeding."
"No, look," she said. "It has already stopped. Let me attend to you."
"Me?"
I stared down at myself and saw my right hand still opened into a claw as though waiting for Jocelyn to press her throat back into it. My arm dangled oddly and was entirely drenched with blood.
"Jesus," I said. "I don't feel it."
"Jonathan, you're in shock."
"That's pretty helpful."
"We've got to staunch the wound." She stretched like she would hug me or pull me down onto her lap. Instead, she lifted my jacket and untucked my shirt. "You're not wearing a belt."
"So I put on a little weight. I think you're supposed to tear the hem of your skirt at a time like this."
"Perhaps if I was your love interest and we were fleeing mafiosi."
My arm kept leaking. I shook free of my jacket and Anna yanked out the lining, making a tourniquet. It wasn't until she said, "There," that I started feeling woozy.
Lowell hadn't used his siren. Like Nick Crummler, he simply appeared in the room, his gun drawn but pressed down tightly to the side of his leg.
I hadn't realized Nick was even still in the house. He looked over his shoulder at Lowell and muttered, "Oh hell."
Lowell took it all in, stood beside me, and said, "Your phone ain't worth shit."
"I've begun to realize that."
"Ambulance is on its way."
Harnes and Jocelyn lay unconscious on the floor, tangled in the dark corner that reminded me of the tapered lighting effect of Crummler's cell. Li Tai sat in the center of the room, her hands folded in her lap, showing no emotion besides a ruddy glow of vindication lighting her visage. Nick and Lowell eyed each other very carefully.
"This is Nick, huh?" Lowell asked without really asking. I nodded. "Think you can explain this all to me in less than an hour, Jonny?"
I thought it would take a month to clear it up, but the short form only took ten minutes.
"Who killed the guy out in the limo?"
"Maybe cancer, or maybe Harnes poisoned him.”
“Why?"
"He's a psychopath."
"Christ, we're going to have Wallace exhuming bodies for weeks."
Nick Crummler scratched at his beard and said, "Well, now that we all know my brother is innocent, I guess I'll be going."
"You killed a man," Lowell said.
"Whatever he was, he was less than a man. If you'd seen him in action you'd understand that and would've done it yourself. I saved the kid's life."
Lowell was actually three months younger than me. He nodded and said, "I know, but you realize I can't just let you leave."
"I have to admit I was hoping."
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't give me a bothersome time here."
Nick cocked his head, considering it. "I understand your situation, Deputy Tully. But if I get taken in there're a lot of reasons a man like me can get put away for good that have nothing to do with what I'm arrested for." He pointed at Harnes, but Lowell didn't turn his head. "It's happened before, and I wound up in that asylum under the care of a bastard who liked to wear steel-toed boots to crack ribs and sap somebody three times a day for the fun of it." He smoothed his beard again. "I'm sorry, I can't go with you."