“Hey, Alexi, we can’t do this.” Angkor held up his hands “Do you want DOGs? Because this is how we get DOGs.”
“The fuck is wrong with you?” This wasn’t the kind of thinking and feeling a professional wetworker could never allow to clutter his mind.
“Seriously. Don’t ever point a gun at a Hound.” The sensual promise drained from his face, leaving it sharp and hard and focused. “When I look down the Black, the NO looks back. It sends demons through the gun, Alexi. Big bad ones. You should know that for a fact.”
It took me a moment to digest his words over the humiliating, painful rush of blood to my various organs, and the furious sense of threat that overwhelmed sense, overwhelmed rational thought.
Sense and reason. I was a mage, even if I was a crippled one. My Will asserted itself, and I lowered the muzzle of the pistol, grinding my teeth until they creaked. “I know what DOGs are, you patronizing… you…”
The memory of Zane’s earnest confession stopped me from using the slur, and it died on my lips. In years past, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about saying something like that, but Angkor and Zane had both saved my life. I could learn.
Angkor sighed, though from relief or exasperation, it was hard to say. I knew one thing: he wasn’t scared of me, except perhaps for the awareness that he was in danger of being shot or DOG-bit. You could pretend calm in a situation, but there were just some things you couldn’t fake. His pupils were normal. He wasn’t shaking. His hands were steady, and no sweat beaded on his upper lip. I might as well have been pointing a remote control at him.
“Look, I’m sorry. I’ve had a rough few weeks. My mouth is working faster than my brain.” He lowered his hands, voice thick with contrition. “And I’m not used to Hounds being so… euun… chaste?”
“If they’re not chaste, then I’m not a Hound.” My eyes narrowed.
“Well… technically…” Angkor shuffled in place, biting his lip for a moment. “If you’ve ever eaten the flesh of a Gift Horse, you’re a Hound. It marks you for life. You maybe didn’t know it at the time, but when you ate that heart or drank that blood, your whole body dumped all of its old cells and regrew them on a slightly different genetic code. An improved code, in case you’re worried.”
“Are you serious?”
“There are all these ancient viruses written into our DNA. Gift Horse blood kind of… cleans them up a bit.” Angkor shifted his hips in a way that drew my eye and sent a fresh injection of imagery and confusion straight to the brainstem. “So, when I was healing you, I could see all the signatures of Horseflesh. I wasn’t like, trying to pry or anything. I had to make sure everything I did was in line with your body’s code, or ‘fast healing’ turns into ‘catastrophic cell die-off’ pretty quickly.”
“Noted.” Rescuing this man from The Deacon and his merry band of eyeless freaks was beginning to look like yet another poor decision on my part, but I couldn’t deny that he’d hooked me with something I’d been craving for weeks, maybe months. Knowledge. Deep, powerful knowledge of a subject that I’d only begun to skim.
I was reaching for the bedroom doorknob when a high-pitched female shriek of horror ripped through the air. I winced as dark blue and white flashed behind my eyes.
“Ah, there we go.” Angkor sighed, and held the pistol cupped as he drew up beside me and peered around the edge of the door. “The Lion King has left the building. And now the crying starts.”
Chapter 34
We sidled out into the hall like a fire team, careful to look up as well as around on our way out. Talya’s sobbing racked the tattoo parlor, louder and louder as we reached the entry to the tiled room. She was nude, slumped on her knees, alternately flapping her hands and trying to bury her face in them. The floor looked like someone had been fingerpainting in blood. Her hands were covered in it, and she’d managed to smear it over her belly, thighs and hair in her desperation to get clean.
“Talya, Talya, come on, it’s going to be okay.” Angkor passed me the pistol and went to her empty-handed, crouching down in front of her and catching her wrists as she tried to claw at herself again. “It’s going to be okay, alright.”
“Ya… s’yel… ya s’yeh-s’yeh—” She was hiccoughing so hard that she couldn’t get the words out. It was clear she was beyond English. I kept the guns at my sides and down low as I joined Angkor to the side of her.
“You did nothing wrong,” I said to her in Russian. “Talya, listen to me.”
“I ate them!” She shrieked at me in the same language. “This stupid thing… this… other me… it… I…!”
Her words cut as she retched, clasping at her stomach, and then vomited a bloody mess of torn fabric and metal onto the ground. I stepped back as she went to hands and knees, throwing up what looked like sections of zippers and D-ring buckles, pieces of half-digested nylon and plastic. Anything she’d eaten that was inorganic came up again. Angkor winced, and patted Talya on the back as she choked and hacked.
“Oh my god.” She caught the three words out in a strangled grunt before it kept on going.
“Listen to me.” I went to one knee on her other side, trying to avoid the blood and gristle on the floor. “Listen. These men were dead. They were already gone, Talya. You did what you needed to do to live.”
“No, no no no no.” Talya heaved and wept, her face a red mess of tears, blood and snot. She looked no older than twelve like this, her tenuous maturity stripped away by trauma. The violent retching was already beginning to subside. Weeder bodies were as efficient as they were alien.
“It’s alright,” I said. “You didn’t hurt anyone. Your Chiah, your Ka, it knew they were gone. It wanted you to live.”
She peered at me through swollen eyes, and then at Angkor. Wordlessly, she knelt back, and then folded against his chest and curled her fingers in against his skin, shoulders hunched, head bowed. He held her close, one hand around her back, the other over her hair, and murmured wordlessly as he rocked her. I stayed down, unsure of what to do, but suspecting that it required staying in place to provide support or comfort, or at least a translation.
Angkor seemed to know what he was doing, at least, and Talya gradually sagged into his arms. The hiccoughing and gulping slowed.
“I’m sorry,” she rasped. “I can’t control it. I don’t even remember wh-what happened.”
“You were hurt very badly,” I replied. “Duke freed Vanya and fought his way out to help him escape. He went the same way as Mason. It’s that knife he was stabbed with, I’m sure of it.”
“I can guarantee it is,” Angkor said grimly. “The Temple have StainedGlass weapons.”
“Somehow, I doubt you’re talking about artful church windows. Tell me everything in the car,” I said. “We need to get back to the clubhouse, and soon. Vanya has an army at his command. He’s the Organizatsiya’s recruitment specialist. If he’s got mental sway over Duke and Duke talks, he’ll lead them straight to the clubhouse.”
“Josie’s in there. Clubhouse. Clothes.” Talya croaked. She pushed herself back gently from Angkor, and I looked away as she stood and stumbled away into the house.
“Man… she’s so young,” Angkor said, once she had left.
“She’s not that young. Even someone hardened in the street would have a fit if they inadvertently committed cannibalism.” I picked myself up and started for the bedroom. I needed my holsters, my familiar, and the other small things I had left over from my trip to the warehouse.
“I don’t mean her HuMan self. I mean her entire Axon. Her soul, you know.” Angkor shook his head. “She’s a freshly minted shocktrooper. The latest in Anti-Morphorde technology.”