“Ephraim…”
“Tell those bastards to fly faster.” I force a smile. “Be seeing you.”
I close the connection. The Duke was listening and he’s recovered his senses if not his looks. “Why…”
“Where are the children?” He spits blood at me. I wipe it off my face. “Stay.” I train the Omnivore on him and fetch the bonesaw from its table. Its shape is an acute triangle. “Now, how does this work?” I toggle the switch. The teeth saw the air with a low hum. A cauterizing laser glows above the teeth.
“You rat…”
“Sorry, slick, can’t hear you. Speak up!”
“Gorgo!” The music drowns out his voice. I slap him anyway and turn up the music with his datapad so his screams won’t be heard outside the room. I come close to his ear and hold his right arm on the table. “You killed one of mine. You owe a debt, Duke.”
He looks up at me. “Kill me, and she will skin you alive. I’m a Duke of the Syndicate!”
“Where are they?” He just stares back, madness clawing out from inside his eyes. “All right. Time to collect.” I lower the bonesaw into his wrist. The saw shakes in my hand as the tiny teeth serrate flesh and bone. Blood hisses as the cauterizer burns closed the capillaries. He thrashes
and drools, screaming like my friends did all those years ago.
Being on the other end of the saw doesn’t make the screams any better. I clap a hand over his mouth.
“Shh. You weren’t meant for this sort of pain,” I say in his ear. “You feel too much. Your nerves are too raw. There’s no shame in telling me. Where are the children?”
“In the vault,” he whimpers.
“Where is the vault?”
“Two floors down…East…wing.”
“What is the combination?”
He hesitates.
“You have only one hand left, Sir Duke,” I say.
“It’s biometric.” His teeth chatter. “Voice and retinal.” Shit. I was betting everything that he’d have them nearby as part of his collection, but I gauged him wrong.
He sees me doing the mental math. “You need me.”
“You’re right about that. Anyone guarding the vault?”
“No. That’s why we have a vault.”
I let him go and he cradles his arm to his chest, whimpering in pain. “There, there,” I say. “Let me see.”
Tentatively, he shows it to me, and as I bend to look at the damage done, he lurches up at me with something long and sharp emerging from under the skin of his left hand. I twitch my head at the last moment. Blade misses my throat but goes into my face, through my cheekbone, rattling along the upper right molars and sticking into the gums. He twists it. I grunt and stumble back as he tries to pull the wrist blade out and stab me again. I grab one of the spent wine bottles and swing it at him. The bottle hits him in the right cheekbone, collapsing the frail bone. He grunts and falls down to the ground, his body heaving from shock.
I pull his blade out of my gums, hissing when it grates along the teeth and then slips out through the cheek. A subdermal blade. I hurl it to the ground and drool blood out of my mouth. The Duke is crawling away from me, his face bloody, stump on his right arm weeping blood from the charred skin.
Stupid, Eph. Stupid.
I grab him by the back of his robe and hoist him up. He’s featherlight. I shove the gun under his jaw. “You try anything again and I peel your head off at the root,” I say through the blood. “You’re going to take me to the kids. Then I’m going to leave with them and you can go back to your life. Do you understand?” He looks at me with wild eyes. I slap him in the face. “Do you understand, Duke?” He nods.
I drag the man to the door. I don’t know how I convinced myself this would go more smoothly. Can’t believe the extent of the plan was to “call in the cavalry.” Rolling in my own self-loathing, I tear off a piece of my shirt, ball it up, and stick it into my mouth against the wound. My eyes tear up. Be slick. Calm down. But I can’t stop the hammering of my heart. It feels like I’m going into cardiac arrest. Gotta move. With a finger trembling from adrenaline, I unlock and open the door. It hisses back.
The hall is empty. No sign of thorns. I stare down the barrel of my trembling Omnivore. Nothing moves after a minute. “Guess they went to get a drink,” I say with a laugh. “Never trust a crow to do a Gray’s work.” I push the Duke forward, letting him lead a little through the halls. We pass a doorway where his bodyguards are watching a race and smoking. I grind the pistol into the back of the Duke’s head in case he might call out to them, then we’re past and to the lifts. My body is pulsing with adrenaline. I press the button and wait for the lift, my bloody fingers leaving a smudge. I’m about to wipe it off when voices come from around the corner. I drag the Duke hard away from the lift to the hallway adjacent and hide around the corner just as the men come to the lift bank.
“—they say she’s coming tomorrow.”