The Perdition Score (Sandman Slim 8)

The syringe hits the floor and Liliane goes down with it. She’s hurt, but pulls out the scalpel and throws it away. A stab in the heart didn’t stop her before. Liliane throws herself at the syringe, but Allegra steps on her hand. Grabs the syringe and slams it into the side of Liliane’s neck. She rolls away, gasps, and pulls the syringe out. But it’s too late. She’s turning as blue as Vidocq.

“Eugène!” Allegra shouts.

I grab him from the floor and put him on the exam table. His face has gone from blue to black.

I look at Allegra.

“What do we do?”

She scrambles to the cabinets, throwing bottles and boxes onto the floor until she finds what she’s looking for. It’s a bottle full of a pale liquid. With trembling hands, she takes a long heart syringe and sticks it through the top, drawing out a large portion of the liquid. I tear open Vidocq’s shirt and she slams the needle into his chest, hitting the plunger when it’s inside. He convulses a couple of times. Breathes once and falls back onto the table. Allegra is crying.

I grab her arm.

“What was that?”

It takes her a second to get it out.

“I put him in the Winter Garden.”

The Garden is a kind of hoodoo coma. It stops all activity in a body pretty much indefinitely. It’s good for poison and zombie bites. Anything where you don’t have a handy antidote in your pocket.

I check Vidocq’s eyes. They’re all pupil.

“Is the Garden going to work?”

“How the hell do I know?” she says. “I couldn’t think of anything else.”

I go over and put an arm around her. Allegra holds on to my coat.

The door opens up and Fairuza sticks her head in.

“Your two o’clock is here.”

She takes one look at Liliane on the floor, skin turning black and blood on her chest, and almost screams. I grab her and pull her into the room.

When Fairuza can look up from the floor, she sees Vidocq laid out.

“What happened to Eugène?”

I hold her by the shoulders.

“We can talk about that later. Right now you need to be very cool. Go out there and tell the two o’clock they have to reschedule. Can you do that?”

She nods and I look at her hard.

“And try to look a little less like you just saw Darby Crash’s ghost. Got me?”

She nods again. Takes a couple of deep breaths.

“I’m okay.”

“Good. Go out there, tell them the story, and stay there until I come out for you.”

“Okay.”

I open the door and push her through.

Allegra is still by Vidocq with her hand on his chest, which is crisscrossed with blackened blood vessels.