The figure said nothing, staring at him with its luminous eyes. His silent scrutiny, the stealth of his appearance and the fact that he had not answered when he had called out combined to make alarm bells sound in Gabriel’s head. He tensed his arms, testing the bindings. Too tight. He might be able to work his way out of them, given time, but his instincts told him he didn’t have any.
“Are you here to take more blood?” he said, improvising. “They said they’d be back at the next bells…” He breathed out all the way at the end of the sentence, creating space where his inflated chest had been. He moved his right arm, the one nearest the figure, the one he would need to defend himself with if it came to it. It shifted, just a little. He tried to bend his arm, breathing out further, the heart monitor racing again. It shifted a little more, but still not enough. “What’s your name?” he asked, breathing right out at the end of the sentence and trying again to loosen his arm.
“I will not give you power over me by volunteering my name.” The man’s voice was low and filled with malice.
“Suit yourself. My name’s Gabriel.”
“I know what you are.” He moved closer.
Gabriel pressed himself into the bed. He saw something sharp in the man’s hand. He looked around for something to defend himself with if he could get his arm free. The only things within reach were the wires connecting him to the various monitors now registering his growing anxiety.
He tried one last time to free his arm but it was no good. He looked back up at the glowing circles where the eyes should be and did the only thing he could do. He flicked the clip from the end of his finger.
A high-pitched alarm immediately split the silence. “Technically, I just died,” Gabriel said. “People will be running here right now to try and restart my heart.”
The eyes shifted to the door then back to the bed. “Then pray they are quick.” He lunged forward, the metal of the blade flashing in the dark. Gabriel watched it rise up, breathing out as far as possible to create what space he could inside the cocoon of his bindings, then shoved himself violently to one side as it arced down. The movement was enough to jar the bed and shift it a couple of inches so that the blade caught the side of his chest instead of the heart where it was aimed, slicing flesh and glancing off a rib before burying itself in the mattress.
Gabriel felt pain burn in his side, but put it from his mind, staying focused. The stabbing movement had brought the monk’s head close to his own and he seized his chance, spitting full in his face. The monk recoiled, dragging the knife free from the mattress, too shocked to raise it again.
“I carry a mutated form of the infection,” Gabriel shouted at him, his words the only weapons he had, “harmless to me but deadly to others. That’s why they keep me here. You have maybe thirty seconds to wipe it off or you’ll be dead within a day.”
The monk reached up to his face but did not dare to touch it. Beneath the wail of the cardiac alarm the sound of running feet could now be heard. The monk looked at Gabriel one last time then turned and ran from the room, heading back to the bedchamber and the washroom beyond.
Gabriel could feel blood trickling down his side and pooling on the mattress and he wondered if he had any left. The main door flew open and Athanasius rushed in followed by Thomas, Kaplan and a couple of others. “Someone just tried to kill me,” Gabriel said, wincing as bright lights flickered on. “He went in there.”
A loud bang echoed from the bedchamber and Athanasius ran over. “He’s gone into the private stairway,” he said, disappearing after him. “The door’s locked,” he shouted from inside, “he must have a key.” He reappeared and looked down at the blood spreading through Gabriel’s bindings then turned to Father Thomas and uttered a single word with such venom that it sounded like a curse.
“Malachi!”
90
Shepherd was one of the last people at the gate but one of the first on the flight. The guy with the eyebrows had apparently given him priority boarding, another nod to the power of the badge.
He found his seat over the wing and by the window and settled gratefully into it. The sun had struggled into the sky and hung low, just below the clouds, shining straight into his face. He closed his window shade and palmed his phone, figuring he had maybe ten minutes before someone made him turn it off. He had used the time lining up at the gate to try and chase down a number for some local law in Ruin. He was going to ride the Bureau ticket as long as he could, hoping it would take him all the way before he got derailed. Sooner or later he was going to have to answer questions about the MPD searches and why he had held on to and pursued leads rather than share them. There was every chance that this particular flag might go up while he was in the air. Which meant he needed to make contact now while he still had some access and leverage.
He opened the page he had found for the Ruin City Police Department and hit a hot link to dial the main switchboard. A foreign-sounding ring tone purred in his ear then someone answered in a clipped, businesslike tone he understood but in a language he did not.
“You speak English?”
“Little.”
“My name is Joseph Shepherd, I’m a special agent with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. Do you have an international liaison officer I could speak to?”
“Moment please.”
Nondescript music filled his ear as he was put on hold and he watched the rest of the passengers embark. They were all dark skinned and black haired, Turkish people heading back to their country of birth he guessed, answering the call to go home.
“This is Subinspector Kundakçi. How can we help?”
Shepherd told him everything he had learned about Melisa, only stopping short of revealing the real reason he was looking for her. He threw in some details about the missing American journalist Liv Adamsen, hinting that she might be in some way connected. He needed a plausible reason to be calling from an American law enforcement agency to ask about a Turkish national and this was the best he had come up with. He left him his name and number and then hung up just as a stewardess marched toward him, her overmadeup orange face a mask of stern disapproval.
“You need to turn off all electronic devices and have the window shade in the upright position until after takeoff, sir.” She continued down the aisle looking for further infringements of the rules. Shepherd turned his phone off, slid the window shade back up and turned his head away from the direct glare of the sun. He was exhausted, and his nerves were shot after the unbelievable day he’d had. He’d been blown up, crossed six states in various forms of transport, discovered the brutal murder of someone he knew personally and found out that the love of his life was still alive. The flight time to Istanbul was nearly nine hours and he planned to sleep for as much of it as he could.
He closed his eyes and thought of red threads stretching tighter, pulling him toward her. He smiled and settled down in his seat, not daring to tilt it back for fear of incurring the stewardess’s wrath. He was asleep before they turned the engines on. He didn’t see the only other Americans get on the plane and take their seats ten rows in front of him, a man and a woman. She glanced in his direction once before she sat down, briefly registering the man she had last seen through the sights of her sniper scope, then settled in her seat and rested her head on the shoulder of the man, cozying up and getting comfortable for the long flight to Turkey.