“Just the hand. Leave the cleaver where it is.”
“If you insist,” he laughs.
Talking to him is unnerving. When everything I say is a joke, I can’t gauge his tone. And he doesn’t have a heart or eyes, so I’m screwed there too.
He pulls his hand free of the cleaver and holds it to the end of his wrist. The bones knit back together in a few seconds.
“Now, monster who no longer kills monsters,” he giggles. “Why have you come all this way?”
I g
et closer.
“Don’t get me wrong. I still kill monsters. But not today. Today, I’m here to warn you that someone is coming to kill you.”
“If not you then who?”
“Have you ever heard of Wormwood?”
That gets some big yuks. He howls, sniggers, and guffaws for a long time. I can’t tell if he’s scared or thought the question was genuinely funny.
“And here I was running from you,” he chuckles. “I ruined some books escaping my tower.”
“Sorry, but I didn’t have your number. It sounds like you know who Wormwood is.”
“That I do,” he laughs. “But why would Wormwood care about me?”
“I don’t know, but your name was on a list of people to be murdered.”
That really cracks him up. He laughs and laughs, but I get the feeling that might be how a cackler sounds when it’s in pain.
“I’m not surprised,” Hijruun says with the smallest chuckle. “So many friends in so many realities have been taken. And you say it’s been Wormwood’s work?”
“Yes.”
“But which one? Each is more awful than the other. I can scarcely believe such malevolence,” he screeches.
“I know what you mean. I’d like to kill them all.”
Hijruun looks at us with his hollow eyes.
“Neither of you is human, am I right?”
“I’m half-human,” I say.
“Then forgive me cursing you and all of your kind. Of all the evils I have seen in the centuries of my existence, I’ve never seen a species so dedicated to its own ruin and corruption.”
“What do you mean?” says Candy.
Hijruun looks at her, then back to me.
“You know of Wormwood and the newer so-called Wormwood? Tell me which one is worse.”
“That’s easy. The faction. They’re religious nuts killing everything in their way, in any reality, to get control of the world. Never trust a crusader.”
He looks at Candy.
“And you agree?” he giggles.