Kiss and Die

Chapter 108

Mann lay in the hospital bed. His dreams took him flying on the back of the eagle. His eyes were on the horizon. He soared on the air currents, turned and faced the wind and then swooped. The wind was in his face, feathers beneath his hands, the sun on his back. Then he was falling through the air, hearing Lilly scream, seeing the terror in her face and hearing Helen calling him. ‘Wake up wake up sleepy head.’

Mann tossed and turned. He felt the stitches throb in his hand. Three hours of surgery had reconnected two of his fingers, but the third one, the forefinger, the eagle had recovered from the gardens below the Mansions and eaten it; it had developed a taste for fingers. The wounds from the urumi had cost him two hundred and forty stitches. Thirty of them were across his face; one more scar to add to his collection. He touched his face as he came out of the anaesthetic, prodding it with his numb bandaged hand. The fingers weren’t going to be working for a while.

He looked around the room. He heard Mia’s voice. He felt panic. He didn’t know why.

He heard the footsteps in the corridor. He lay there listening, hearing his heart hammer as he fought to come out from the anaesthetic. Mann heard the swish of a uniform, starch, shoes, leather soles slapping on linoleum. Mann stirred in his drugged stupor. Helen was talking to him again now. ‘Get up! Move. Run…run…she’s coming for you, darling.’ Click, clack down the corridor…He stumbled out of bed and doubled over with the pain. He pulled his clothes from the locker and rested against the bed as he got dressed.