Heaven's Spite

21

I figured the Monde Nuit was the last place anyone would expect me to go at this point. Shafts of sunlight pierced the gloom, because the lights downstairs were all turned off now. The entire place looked like a stage set, dusty and disused, every angle subtly off and placed that way for show.

Perry was trussed up like a Christmas goose, double pairs of silver-plated handcuffs doing their duty at wrists and ankles, the larger sizes around his elbows and knees. Anya had gagged him, too. His eyes were closed; the gaping hole in his throat was closed but not completely healed. He mercifully didn’t even try to squawk. He was heavy deadweight, and I checked the cuffs every time I set him down.

Belisa obeyed every time the chain was twitched, stumbling around as if she was blind. She’d follow verbal directions, too, and I wondered if she was playing dumb or if the chain had something to do with it. With just the collar on she’d been pretty peppy, and obviously she couldn’t take it off.

Another mystery to solve.

Still, I heaved a sigh of relief when I got them both up the stairs and into the office. The chain pulsed obscenely in my hand, Chaldean runes flinching away from my fingers. The metal was warm; it almost felt alive.

The white bed was torn to shreds, the bar a ruin of glass and mirror shards. Riverson was nowhere in sight. But the closed-circuit cameras were still working. I put Belisa in a corner facing the wall, like the bad little girl she was. It was work to haul Perry’s unresisting weight along the floor, but getting him up the stairs had been the hard part. The scar was burning, the feeling working deeper and deeper, as if it would hit bone soon. It never had yet—but still.

The small room leading off his office/bedroom was glaring white tile on all four walls and the floor. An iron rack stood off-center, closer to the far wall than the door. The ceiling was a blank pane of fluorescents, their harsh glare bouncing off the table set to the right along the wall.

A rosewood case, its gold latches unbuckled, sat in the precise middle of the table. As if waiting for me. My skin turned cold and tight, except for the hard little pinprick bumps of gooseflesh.

Perry didn’t struggle as I got him fastened into the iron rack. His eyes were still closed, lips moving slightly around the leather strap of the gag. Spread-eagled, slumping from his arms, the front of his shirt blackened and his suit spattered. I made sure he was fastened in securely, testing each strap twice. His fingers moved like little white spider legs, and he didn’t help or hinder. I popped the gag, and his mouth gave it up without complaint. It was slick and wet, but I stuffed it in a pocket anyway.

When I stepped back, his eyes opened slowly. For a moment he looked half blind, indigo threading through the whites like veins and sending questing tendrils into his glowing irises. His lips still moved, writhing obscenely, and a faint rumble of Helletöng rattled away from him in concentric rings.

I waved an admonishing finger. “Now, now. None of that.”

The ’töng bled away, like a freight train vanishing in the distance. He stared at me, and the indigo retreated from his irises. Finally, he licked his lips, and his voice was a hoarse ruin of itself. “We were always going to come to this, Kiss. Always.”

Careful, Jill. Make this his mistake, not yours. “Let’s start with Saul, Perry. Who has him?”

“Perhaps I did take your cat.” He grinned through a mask of rotting ichor. “Perhaps not. What are you going to do now?”

It wasn’t time to play the biggest card I had, yet. Instead, I reached up and touched the Talisman. It arched up under my fingers, cool metal that somehow conveyed the impression of faraway flame, a heat not quite felt against my skin. “Who has him now?”

The strap across his forehead was as tight as it would go. He tried to move his head, couldn’t, and rolled his eyes, still grinning. “Now why would I tell you that? With him out of the way, you’re so much more amenable. So much more pliant.”

That’s what you think. I turned away. Headed for the table. The rosewood was slick and satiny as I opened the case.

The flechettes lay arranged neatly against dark-blue velvet, each one a razor gleam. There were tiny ones that fit over the fingertips, curved and straight ones as long as my hand, other assorted shapes and sizes. The largest was as long as my forearm, its cutting edge curved slightly and a blood-groove scoring down its fluid length.

“Ohhhhhhh…” Perry sighed. “How much will you hurt me, Kiss? You see what a good little hellspawn I am. I take things from your hand I would take from no other.”

Don’t tempt me. But it was too late for that. I took my time, running my fingers over the flechette handles, considering each and every one.

I’d used them all. Before Perry had welshed on his end of the deal by playing with Sorrows, I’d been in here every month. More often than not he had me strap him into the frame and start cutting. Sometimes it was a beating, and he grinned each time I broke his pale, hard hellbreed shell. Once he lounged in his bed, narrow pale hairless chest exposed, and toyed with a dish of strawberries while he asked me questions. What my favorite color was. What I wanted to be when I grew up. What I thought of politics.

All a game, to get me to respond. Gathering up little bits of psychology, storing it up for the day I stepped over that hairline crack and into his world.

The day I was damned. The day he owned me.

It might end up being today, if you let it. Careful, Jill.

I picked up the largest flechette. The metal handle, scored for traction like a gun butt, was ice-cold. The scar chilled, too, a warning.

My face settled against itself. My pulse dropped, as if I was waiting on a rooftop for a target to show. I wasn’t as calm as I could be. For one thing, the skin of my right cheek was twitching as if a seamstress was plucking at it with a needle.

For another, the Talisman was rumbling too. Louder than the Helletöng, the subsonics striking the tiled walls and reverberating. The Eye’s song swallowed the unmusical nastiness of Helletöng, turning each limping broken hiss and groaning curse on its head, blending it into an even greater theme.

Something about that helped, though I don’t know why. I let out a sharp breath and was suddenly, mostly, back in control of myself.

Except for another worried little thought. Why would Perry give it back to me?

When I turned, I found Perry considering me. The indigo had bled out of his eyes, and they were bright, glowing blue around the too-dark pupil. The border between pupil and iris shifted, each an amorphous blob of darkness with a red spark buried in its depths.

He’d never done that before.

The tip of his tongue crept out, wet cherry-red, and touched the corner of his mouth. “You look lovely.”

I felt the smile pull up my mouth, baring my teeth. An animal’s grimace as I crossed the room. “Why, Perry. Thank you.” The tip of the flechette caressed his cheek. I considered it, drew it up his smoke-tarnished skin to the corner of his left eye. “How would you like to be blind?”

Not a twitch of uneasiness, but he was so very still. “You can’t.”

“I can put silver in the holes once I’ve dug your baby blues out.” I cocked my head. “Wouldn’t that be interesting.”

His expression—interested, avid—didn’t change. “Then I could no longer see your beauty, Kiss. I would miss that.”

The tip dug in a little. There was nothing human under that shell, but I was fairly sure if I twisted my wrist and scooped, the eye would pop out. I knew the blade was sharp enough to cut him, whatever metal it was. No silver, because it didn’t fire with blue sparks when it got near him.

“Last chance, Pericles.” The calm descended on me. “Saul. Who has him?”

He grinned. Like a skull.

And then he told me. I didn’t even have to cut him once.