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Then he was on the cot in his room, staring at the mandala on the ceiling. Its hypnotic curves sucked him up, tossed him in the air. He swooped with the stunt kite over a desert landscape. The colors of the kite were so bright against that vast, aching blue.
turn it around
He followed the cord down to the figure far below. Tall, dirt blond hair, buzzed so short it was mouse brown. The man lifted his face.
It was Kev, but not the Kev that he remembered. This was a Kev Sean had never known. His face was thin, seamed and hard. His eyes distant. The entire right side of his face was puckered with scars.
Sean opened his streaming eyes, stared at Liv, lying on that table.
She told him she loved him. While he held a blowtorch over her.
turn it around
His mother held out the length of gray tubing.
He took it, held it to his eye. It was no longer gray plastic. He was looking through a throbbing red wormhole. He gathered his strength.
turn it around
He dove. The universe screamed with him as he raced through the wormhole, burrowed into the polluted place that was Osterman’s brain.
He sank the talons of his will into the other man’s mind, and reeled. These were not his hands, clutching the scalpel. Not his muscles trembling, not his limbs holding this body upright.
Not his, this dead, rotting heart, that somehow still beat.
He couldn’t keep this up. Pressure was building. There was no valve to release it. He spoke, haltingly. Alien vocal folds vibrated, the pitch and timbre all wrong, and he fumbled with the wrong teeth, the wrong tongue, but still, the words came out, of Osterman’s mouth.
“Goodbye, princess,” he said thickly. “I love you.”
His/Osterman’s hand whipped up, slashing the scalpel deep into the man’s carotid artery. Sean felt the awful pain of it. The heat of the arc of blood that sprayed, spattered across Liv. It welled over his/Osterman’s chest. A series of soft explosions popped, in his head.
Darkness rushed in, and swallowed him whole.
Liv beatand flailed against her bonds as Osterman flopped down on top of her. His dead weight crushed her lungs. His hot blood pumped out, soaking into her blouse, trickling over her ribs. His face dangled over her ribs, wet mouth gaping, eyes white-rimmed like a mad horse.
She shrieked, bucking madly, bowing herself up in an arch until the heavy body shifted and slid into a heap on the ground.
Sean still stood, his face blank. She screamed his name, but his eyes no longer saw her. The blowtorch fell, bounced, still hissing.
Sean toppled, rigid as a tree crashing down. He hit the rolling table of improvised torture implements. It tipped, and the stuff clattered and crashed to the floor. So did the big, uncapped bottle of alcohol.
The liquid glugged out onto the floor tiles in a spreading puddle. Rivulets reaching out like tentacles, towards the blowtorch, hissing on the floor. The clear liquid inched closer to the tongue of blue flame.
Swoosh, fire found the volatile liquid, and a thread of flame raced its way back to the big mother puddle.Whump, the pool caught fire.
Heat crackled, roared. The air shimmered and shook.
The girl tied to the radiator began to scream.
The raggedy holein the foliage of the rhododendrons was just big enough so that Miles could watch the guy approach. Big and meaty and thick, muscle going to fat…that lantern jaw, those pale eyes, where had he seen that guy?
The tape. It was the grave digger from Kev’s tape. Fifteen years older, heavier, thicker, but it was him. Even the rolling, apelike walk was the same. A knee-weakening rush of fear pulsed through him.
The guy slowed down, and grabbed a walkie talkie off his belt. He put it to his ear. “What the fuck is it now? You gotta learn to wank off by yourself, Brice. Don’t ask me to jerk your willie for you, because I got my own—” His voice trailed off. “Fire? In C Building? What thefuck?”
He spun around, and took off at a dead run.
Miles scrambled to his feet and took off after him. Anything that made that guy run had to be Miles’s business. He had to keep this guy in sight while staying somehow invisible himself.
