Kill the Dead (Sandman Slim 2)

“I’ll get you a jar,” says Muninn, heading for the shelves. “I believe you have your own knife.”

I get up and let Johnny have the chair. He examines the Visible Man model while I get out the black blade.

“You probably want to cut the femoral artery up here near the thigh.”

He points to the Visible Man’s upper leg.

“If I remember right, there’s a lot of blood in there and the skin is easy to bite through, so it should be easy with a knife.”

“Thanks, Johnny. I appreciate this.”

“It’s okay. You’re fun.”

Muninn comes back with a smooth pearlescent black flask with a gold stopper.

“That looks like it’s worth more than the space program. Don’t you have a regular bottle?”

Muninn shakes his head.

“The boy is right. You’re a fun addition to our collapsing city. If it makes you feel better, consider the vessel a gift for poor sleeping Brigitte.”

I kneel down by Johnny’s leg and roll up his sweatpants. He’s still studying the model.

“You ready?”

“Sure.”

I lay the blade on his inner thigh and press. He doesn’t react. I press harder until I break the skin. Still nothing. His surface nerve endings probably died off a long time ago. I shove the blade in until it hits bone, then slice down his thigh until the skin falls open. He doesn’t flinch.

Johnny’s blood is dark and thick, like black maple syrup. It isn’t easy scooping it out, and getting it into the flask is just as hard. I have to sort of trowel it in. I don’t want to rip into Johnny’s leg too much. He still needs to be able to walk. It’s slow going.

“Don’t be shy,” he says. “I don’t know how much you’ll need, so take a lot.”

I scrape out his arteries and veins until the bottle is almost full. When I’m done I look at Muninn. I have no idea what to do with the dissected leg. Muninn hands me a roll of duct tape.

“Can you hold the skin closed for me?”

Johnny puts down the model and holds the two halves of his thigh together. I run tape around his leg from the crotch to just above his knee. When I’m done, he flexes and nods.

“Good as new.”

I stopper the bottle and press it down, making sure it’s tight.

“Mr. Muninn, I have a feeling that your handwriting is better than mine. Would you write down what Johnny said to do with the blood?”

“Certainly.”

He gets a quill pen, purple ink, and an old Fillmore West flyer and scribbles the formula on the back.

I can barely think. There’s something like relief rumbling in my gut, but I push it down. I can’t deal with it until I see what happens with Johnny’s magic juice. I didn’t see Alice in the Backbone and that’s both a disappointment and a relief. I don’t know what I would have done if she’d been there. I’m not a hundred percent sure I could have survived that. There must be a lot more of Stark left in here than the angel wants to admit, because the guilt and fear and anger and hopelessness are squirming around my skull, making the few seconds of relief I felt earlier easy to ignore. I have to keep it together and keep thinking. I want to kill my way out of all this confusion, but that won’t work this time. Going after Mason was simple. Chasing the Kissi was simple. I knew who they were and what they wanted. I’m lost at sea right now, but I have to see this through. Too many people I care about are locked in their apartments hoping they make it through the night. I don’t want to lose any more friends. The Kissi killed a waitress at Donut Universe last New Year’s to get my attention. I don’t want any more dead donut girls on my conscience.

“There you are,” says Muninn.

He takes the flask, holds the note against it, and wraps them together with silk ribbon.

He says, “Go and help your friend. And when you finally figure out what all this business is, your only debt will be to come back and tell me the whole story.”

“It’s a deal.”