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A hideous laugh sounded from high above her.
She looked up. Zhoglo’s face hung over the railing, like a full moon. His mouth was stretched wide in a parody of mirth.
He clapped, slowly. “Bravo, Rebecca,” he said. “You have done me a favor. I was bored at the prospect of killing that blockhead. You spared me that, and in such an entertaining way too. Grisly. Would you like to see? Here, Pavel, help me pull her up. I want to show her the rewards of defiance.”
Pavel appeared beside the other man, his cadaverous face expressionless. Becca could not hold back a keening moan as he pulled her up, a slicing, fiery agony burning her hands as the distance between herself and that smirking nightmare shortened. Finally Pavel grabbed her under the armpits and heaved her over the rail. He set her on her feet.
Blood slicked the chain, the cuffs, her hands. Her fingers were crushed, throbbing with pain. Zhoglo seized the chain and yanked on it. She fell forward, shrieking.
“I love a defiant woman,” he said. “It makes her cringing and begging all the sweeter in the end.” He gestured at Kristoff. “Look at what you did,” he said. “And you are so sylphlike. So delicate.”
Kristoff’s head was flung back, a dark, bloody mark across his crushed larynx. Her fall, her chain, had caught him across the throat and killed him. His face was purplish, his eyes wide. Becca’s gaze darted away, and she suddenly saw the widening pool of blood beside Nick’s limp body. As she watched, Nick started to move.
She let her eyes slide off him as if she hadn’t noticed him. Saw him drag himself to his feet out of the corner of her eye.
Zhoglo clutched her blood-streaked breast in his hands. He lifted bloody fingers to his lips. Slowly sucked them clean, one after the other, smiling. She was about to faint.
Nick took a shuffling step forward. Another.
The noise that had been brushing against the back of her mind finally identified itself. Police sirens screaming. Getting louder.
“The cops are on their way,” Nick said. “Hear them?”
Pavel and Zhoglo jerked around at the sound of his deep voice, and pointed their guns at him. Nick’s hands were pressed to his chest. Blood trickled through them. His eyes were terribly calm.
Zhoglo’s insane laugh shook his big belly. He looked at Becca. “You see, my dear? How it is with me, every time? Always, I must abandon my juicy treats right before I sink my teeth into them. Such a shame to kill you this way, when you deserve to die slowly, screaming. But as I told you before…I can be flexible.”
He shoved her away and trained the gun on her, lips twisting into a hideous leer. Nick launched into the air and slammed into her.
Bam, a gun went off. They hit the ground with all the rib-crunching force of their combined weights, knocking out her wind.
Over Nick’s shoulder, Zhoglo stared down at her for a moment, a look of pure hate in his eyes. Slowly, he toppled forward.
He landed on top of Nick, eyes frozen wide. Blood seeped through his buzzcut silver hair, trickling into his staring eyes and around the thick, swollen lumps of his fleshy face.
What? How…?
Becca was close to smothering under the combined weight of the two men, her lungs hitching in and out. Pavel was the only one still standing. He held a pistol in one limp hand as if he’d forgotten it was there. His eyes were empty in his haggard face.
Lack of oxygen was pulling a veil over her eyes. Blood from two different death wounds pooled around her, hot and thickening.
Pavel nudged Zhoglo’s body with his foot. He flipped it off Becca and Nick, and onto its back. He crouched down, said a few quiet words that Becca could not understand, and spat into the dead man’s face.
Then he rolled Nick’s body off her, on to the other side. Nick flopped onto his back. Air rushed painfully back into Becca’s lungs.
Pavel knelt beside her and pulled her up till she was sitting. He fished something small and bright out of his pocket. A key. He inserted it into the bloody handcuffs and unlocked them.
She stared into his face, utterly confounded.
“Why?” she whispered as soon as she had the breath to speak.
“For my son.” Pavel’s voice was somber. He did not meet her eyes.
She shook her head, uncomprehending, but he said nothing more. He retreated, boots crunching over broken glass into the dark house.
Becca stared after him. The heat of the pooling blood reached her thigh, startling her out of her shocked stupor. Nick. Oh, God, Nick.
She bent over him, peering at the wound in the dim light from the room behind them. It looked awful. Blood was everywhere. His face was ashy pale and his breath bubbled in his lungs.
