Pratt was outside in the corridor now. The door had automatically closed but we could hear him cursing the little quadcopter. “Get thee behind me! His coming is soon at hand!”
Once the blade sliced through one plastic cuff, I didn’t bother with the remaining one. I sliced through the plastic that bound my ankles, and now I had to get Deloy down. Surely his shoulder was dislocated. Any avid student of BDSM knew not to keep dangling in suspension cuffs more than five minutes. In addition, Pratt had idiotically used carabiners, and I had to force Deloy’s ass up off the chair for a few seconds while I unhooked him.
Meanwhile, outside Pratt was batting his arms around and shrieking at the unmanned drone. I saw him through the filmy glass waving and yelling vaguely Biblical shit. “Let my law no longer be under attack, as my holy lands have been taken from me! Let all know how they treat my priesthood on earth, so I shall be to them a savior!”
Deloy stepped into his pants as I buttoned mine, then we crept to the clean spot in the glass. The drone was making threatening movements toward him, swooping down low, then coming to within inches of his face.
“He’s going to shoot it,” whispered Deloy.
“Not if I can fucking help it.”
I opened the door quietly. Pratt’s back was to me, but the drone could easily see me, so I waved. I was still mighty groggy from the Rohypnol, so I had to blink several times to get a bead on Pratt’s stupid skull.
“I shall cause my power to be holy on thee!” Pratt screamed at the bobbing and diving toy. “My purposes are eternal. No one can stay my hand!”
“Get back,” I told Deloy, who stood at my side.
“I’m not missing this,” he said with a thrill in his voice.
I raised the shuriken just before the plane made a darting dive for Pratt’s throat, mid-tirade. “Let children be of most favored protecting, innocent of sin—agh!”
He dropped the pistol to clutch his throat. That’s when I threw the star, in the brief second before Pratt collapsed on the cement. It gave me immense satisfaction to see and almost feel it stick about an inch into the back of his neck. I ran over, first grabbing the pistol and then stabbing it into the waistband of my jeans. The drone, now hovering motionless over our heads, had slashed Pratt in the soft part of his throat with its blades.
The slashing alone wasn’t fatal, although copious amounts of blood already pooled on the cement. The shuriken stab was more a distraction than a wound. But now Deloy was rushing up, his face contorted with a rage I’d never seen. He whipped the pistol from my jeans before I could stop him. My own fingers were scrabbling with Pratt’s bowtie, untying it.
I had every intention on strangling the motherfucker to death.
“Deloy, no! This is on me. See that drone there? It’s recording everything we do.” I lassoed Pratt’s neck with his yellow flowered bowtie and cinched it tight around the fat throat. Pratt made those dry choking sounds a dog makes when something is stuck in its throat. “This is my payback, Deloy. I don’t want you getting involved in this.”
Deloy’s yell was blood-curdling. He held the pistol with both shaking hands. “It’s my payback, Levon! He murdered the boy I loved after corrupting him! I want the satisfaction of shooting him through the fucking skull.”
“That’s not you, Deloy.” I could feel the life ebb from Pratt’s body. His struggle ceased. He’d vacated his earthly abode, but Deloy didn’t know that. From the corners of my eyes I saw some fellow patch holders come creeping into the school atrium. Gideon was first, holding his piece at his side. Sledgehammer and Yosemite Sam were next, both gripping their irons too. Dingo was last, gripping the notebook up that flew the drone. The drone had a good shot of Pratt’s death throes as his tongue flopped from his mouth. My arms were bands of searing hot metal as I clenched every minor muscle to keep the bowtie tight. “You’re not a murderer.”
Deloy’s arms trembled even more. It was a wonder he could even aim the gun. “He makes me want to be a murderer.”
“Look, don’t shoot. You might shoot me. Put that gun in your fucking pants.”
Now Gideon came around Deloy’s side of the body. “Yeah. Hand the gun over, Deloy. It’s Pratt’s gun, so we need to agree what to do with it.”
I held the bowtie in a vise grip long after the body stopped breathing. “Yeah. You helped me bury Pratt, Deloy. Everyone knows that.”
Deloy didn’t even look at the gun as he surrendered it to Gideon. All the murderous rage suddenly drained from his face. “Really? He’s…buried?”
Dingo was there, picking up his precious drone that now had blood on its blades. “We all saw it, Deloy. Levon couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Well, ah—” Deloy sauntered over to the old gnarled leafless maple in a raised bed. Various items of clothing hung from the branches as if to dry in some long-ago stage play. “Think these’ll fit me?” He needed a shirt.