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Ferox comes over and looks at me hard.
“How many scars do you think you have?”
“No idea.”
“Let’s start a new count. One.”
He takes out the Liston knife and draws it across my chest, making a deep, hard cut. I grit my teeth to keep from making a sound. Just because I’m hard to kill doesn’t mean that bullets and knives hurt me any less than anyone else.
He turns to the other Shoggots.
“Who here has a watch? I’d like to know how long it takes for that cut to heal. Time it, please.”
He goes back to his instruments, wiping my blood off the Liston. I wonder if he did all the body mods to the other Shoggots himself or did he encourage them to do it to themselves?
He says, “Before you got here, we were planning on catching the old Roman ourselves. You see, we know about the angel and that the old ghost knows her secret. After we made him tell us what it is, we were going to sell him. But I think we’ll ease him onto the back burner because now we have you. And I think Sandman Slim will fetch a better price. After I’ve finished my research, of course.”
“I’ve got some research for you. Why don’t you cut me loose and I’ll take you to meet Lucifer and he can tell you to your face what morons you are and maybe you can haul your asses out of Kill City and do something for your family.”
Ferox comes over with a magnifying glass. He sticks his fat thumb into the cut on my chest. I try not to, but I flinch a little. He studies the blood on his fingertips, and when he’s done he wipes it on my torn shirt. He rips it open the rest of the way and starts examining my scars.
“Look, if this is your way of getting to know me, why don’t you just friend me on Facebook?”
He lowers the magnifying glass and goes to a brazier in the corner of the room. Comes back with a small branding iron and holds it to my chest until the skin sizzles. When I’m good and cooked he tosses the iron back into the brazier and goes back to looking over my scars.
“Would someone please time how long the burn takes to set? Thank you.”>Delon reaches into his pack and pulls out a long, thin knife.
“This is a Liston knife, once used by Robert Liston himself. Before the days of anesthetic, he was one of the most famous and fastest amputation surgeons in Europe.”
Ferox takes a step forward to get a better look at the blade. He gestures to a couple of Shoggots on the floor nearby.
“Bring it to me,” he says.
While they’re carrying it up to Ferox I get next to Delon.
“Are you stupid? Giving these psychos a knife?”
“I’m trying to make us a deal.”
Ferox takes his time looking over the Liston, holding it from different angles to see how straight it is. Moving it through the light to test its sheen. He makes a shallow cut inside one of his wrists, testing the amount of pressure needed to break the skin. He smiles and looks down at us.
“Hello, Officer,” he says. “Would you come up here, please?”
It takes a minute before anyone figures out who he’s talking to. Then Diogo takes a tentative step forward in his mall-cop shirt.
“Yes. You. That’s right. Please come up and join me.”
Diogo takes a couple of more steps and stops.
“Don’t do it, kid,” I say.
He looks at me.
“Diogo,” says Hattie.
He’s frozen in the middle of the room. His dim brain is overloading.
Ferox looks annoyed.
