"Where is Sawney Beane's home? Not here."
As my eyes adjusted I saw more … up in the rafters. An unnaturally wide killer grin. Tangled ropes of hair, white stained with red and brown. There was the impression of a sweeping bulk of a cloak or coat, but face and hands…they were nothing but blackness. Inky shadow come to life.
The impossible stretch of smile widened. "I see you." Tiny embers sparked to life, the cheery red of an autumn fire. "Travelers."
Travelers. And we knew what Sawney Beane did with travelers.
I fired instantly. The bullets hit. I knew that although the monster didn't move. There was no attempt at evasion, only the echo of gunfire and that ever-present leer. The bastard didn't flinch, didn't shift under the impact, didn't register the blows at all. If I didn't have the confidence of my aim, I would've wondered. But I hit him. … It simply didn't matter one damn bit.
"Educational," Niko mused.
"Glad you think so," I grunted as I slammed another clip home. Just another day at the office…until the late afternoon sun chose that moment to shift to twilight, plunging the warehouse into a dusky purple gloom. What few lights had been on joined the sun in disappearing, deepening the gloom to the impenetrable.
And then it began to rain blood.
The color was impossible to discern in the thick murk, but I knew the smell, knew the slick consistency against my skin. "What the fuck?"
There was the sound of rushing air and then a meaty thump inches from me. Another body, and from the sound as it hit, this one had most of its flesh intact. There was another thump and another as the charnel house above continued to fall. I didn't know how Sawney had kept them up, and I didn't care. I only wanted to get my hands on the son of a bitch.
"I'm going up," Nik said grimly. "You cover him here if he tries to escape." There was no sound of departing footsteps—this was my brother after all— but he was gone.
I moved my own foot a few inches to one side to place the first body. As my eyes adjusted I could make out a vague outline, a crumpled form…arms, legs, a mound. Pregnant. She'd been pregnant. I couldn't make out any more than that and I didn't want to. She'd been alive; now she wasn't.
When the next body fell, I thought I was ready for it. How much fucking worse could it be? Stupid goddamn question. Sawney was the stealer of mothers, children, and babies. The taker of lives, flesh, and hope, because in New York everyone was traveling. From place to place, everyone was on the move. And to someone who preyed on travelers, that meant everyone was fair game.
Sawney hit me from above…the one body that wasn't dead, but we weren't done yet. Not by a long shot. He hit hard and with a weight I wouldn't have guessed. He was an avalanche—not one of rock, but of ice. Cold, wherever he touched me. The burn of dry ice on my neck and jaw as he tasted me. I felt the slide of the tongue over my carotid artery as hands pinned my head. "Different, traveler. You taste different."
I struggled to pull breath back into my lungs that curled abused and beaten beneath bruised ribs. But I didn't need to breathe to pull a trigger. I jammed the muzzle of the 9mm into the mass that squatted on top of me and emptied the clip I had just put in. Like before, I got jack shit for my trouble.
"Full of sulfur spice and ancient earth and a world far from here."
Auphe, he was tasting it in me. That stuttered my lungs to painful life. I wheezed and used the oxygen to propel my body into motion under him. I tried to roll, dropping my gun and pulling a knife from the calf sheath. My fingers passed through the slit in the denim and fastened around the rubber hilt. My roll was less successful. Flickers of scarlet light still burned into mine. Hanks of knotted hair smelled like a slaughterhouse and felt like rope against my skin. And that grin, that goddamned grin, was still inches from me.
Then it was in me.
Teeth went through jacket and shirt, into my chest, and ripped a piece of me away. Sawney had succeeded where the Black Annis had failed, and he had done it so easily. Had made me food, and I hadn't been able to do a damn thing about it. Food. There's a special horror in that, a particular twisted terror in a part of you being eaten.
It hurt, but not as badly as it should. The shock of it muffled the pain, wrapped it in cotton, and let me plunge the knife into his back without hesitation. What it could do that the gun couldn't I didn't know, and when his grin widened, I got my answer. And with that answer came other things. There was blood on my face—my own blood—and the sound of a purring swallow.