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“Yes you are.” He pauses. “You were telling me about how many people you’ve killed.”
“No. I wasn’t.”
“Back in London, old Inspector Abberline and the rest of the Met think I only took five. I took plenty more than that, believe you me. There were a few in the country, but south by the coast was best. Like the lovely beach we just left. Do a day’s excursion to Brighton or Portsmouth. I’d find saloon trollops and rip them down by the wharfs. Toss their innards to the birds and fill their bodies with stones to weigh them down. They’d slip into the sea like it was waiting for them.”
“20100">nough, you twisted fuck.”
We walk on, Jack staring at his feet. Each step leaves a shallow impression in the thick dust that covers the sidewalk. If the posse is behind us, we’ll be easy to track, but I don’t have time to worry about that now. Each step is a second hand on a clock ticking away the time. Jack said it would take a day to get to Eleusis, but I’ve already lost track of how long we’ve been walking.
“None of this is a coincidence, you know,” says Jack.
“Yeah. You had a great personal ad on Craigslist.”
“Assuming I’m who I say that I am and assuming that you are who you say you are, do you truly believe that two such infamous killers could cross paths through simple happenstance?”
“Are you talking about divine intervention, Jack? Because that kind of blows your no-God theory.”
“Not God. Some other, more subtle force that’s thrown us together toward a higher purpose.”
“Listen, we’re in Hell and there are about fifty billion killers down here, so I was bound to meet someone like you. It could have been the Boston Strangler, Ted Bundy, or Freddy Krueger, and every one of them would tell me exactly what you’re telling me now. There’s nothing special about our road movie. It’s nothing more than the flip of a coin.”
He slowly shakes his head.
“I don’t believe that. There’s a reason for this. We’re fated to do something together.”
“Yeah. You’re going to take me to Eleusis. When we get there I’m going to shake your hand and we are going to go our separate ways.”
“There has to be more to it than that.”
“Trust me, there doesn’t.”
“Maybe our doing the thing is the payment I need.”
“It won’t work, Jack. Look at our histories. We’re lone wolves. We don’t work with partners. When we get to town we go our separate ways. I’ll be grateful I’m there and you’ll be grateful you’re not still a Hellion’s paperweight.”
A steam vent explodes nearby. The blast of heat and vapor knocks me back. I think I hear a rumbling behind us. There might be a truck coming or it might just be the sound of the vent. I push Jack and we break into a trot.
Jack says, “May I see your knife? I have a great fondness for knives.”
“No.”gn=201D;
I look back at our tracks in the dust. You could see them from space. Maybe Jack wants us to get caught. We need to get off this street. I take his arm and push him onto a side street that’s clean of dust. The vent spews again and the street moves below us. A palm tree falls and crushes a dusty pickup truck. Jack pulls me back in the other direction.
We run to the street we’d been on before. The air is full of dust and we can’t see where we’re going, but we run anyway. If there are any sinkholes or faults in front of us, we’re fucked. We can barely see each other. But the tremors and the noise die down after a minute and the street goes back to being solid.
Jack looks at me.
“I assume you won’t stray from the path again.”
“You’re the boss, Jack.”
“Well put.”
WE’RE HEADING FOR what looks like low hills, but as we get closer, it’s really an area where the streets have buckled wildly, like black icebergs jutting up from the street. Eleusis is on the other side.
We turned off the dusty street twenty minutes earlier. Most of the signs in this neighborhood are in Spanish, but the residents are the same mix of dazed Hellions and lost souls we saw in Hollywood. They sit in cars and wander between strip malls like sleepwalkers.
Where the hell are you, Alice? What are you doing right now, Candy? I’d rather be having the worst time possible with either of you than having the best with my knife-happy tour guide. I know I told Candy to take the blood cure from Allegra, but I wouldn’t mind letting her show Jack here what a Jade looks like. Try to hurt this woman, you little shit.
