The sound is gurgled.
Sullen retracts one hand, reaches back, snatches up Klein’s gun, and uses it as leverage, helping to tear his jaw apart. Sullen’s broad back obscures much of my view, but I hear it. Tendons snapping. Teeth, too. Bones popping. The strangled scream of a dying man.
“You fucking traitor. You fucking idiot.” Stein is hunched over, one hand on the ground, another over his chest as he tries to crawl to his doctor. “Release him,” he snaps, breathless. “Release him, you pathetic piece of shit. You sorry excuse for a human being, let alone a son. You are worthless.Worthless,do you hear me?!” He is screaming now. “You are nothing but a pathetic piece of?—”
I aim at his head.
I squeeze the trigger. Once. Twice. Three times.
His head explodes at the same time Klein stops making any sound.
Sullen is bowed.
His back rises and falls.
Then he turns to glance at the remains of his father.
Then me.
And he smiles.
His dark eyes spark.
Silence settles in the ringing in our ears.
I drop the weapon.
And we run toward one another.
Chapter 39
Karia
Isit in front of Sanford Rule in the library.
A pile of bodies litters the house outside, and underneath this floor, two begin to rot. Constance, Arthur, Rex; they’re all dead. Two drivers as well. Isa and Von took care of three of them, and Cosmo did the rest, defending both of my friends when anything got too close. Stein and Klein were able to snag Sullen thanks to Cosmo’s…diversionof putting me underground.
So I’ve been told.
But now, as Sullen washes his hands guarded carefully by Cosmo and Fleet, who is more animated than I have ever seen him—he and Elliot both called out locations and positions when the lights went out and thus aided in the murders—I am alone with Sanford Rule.
Alivia and Maude’s tasks were less bloody, but just as important, even if I don’t like to think of Maude that way. They both asked questions as the battle raged. Everything is documented in written and auditory records. I can only hope it will be useful later.
But now I need to hear it directly from the source before the source becomes a corpse.
Sullen would not want me in here. That is why he is “guarded,” although distracted is probably the better term. He tore a man’s jaw apart with more or less his bare hands. He can handle Cosmo and Fleet if he decides he wishes to. For now, Sanford Rule—the hope Sullen once thought he had in the dark—sits before me, and he is all mine to dissect.
“Karia Ven.” The man nods toward me. He looks pinched, dehydrated, his wrinkles deep, his suit having seen better days. His hair is oily, tucked close to his scalp, as if he needs to bathe.
He likely will not, ever again.
I cross one leg over the other. I have blood on me, from Stein’s brain matter, Klein’s thigh wound. I have dirt in my hair. Glass too, from when they blew in the windowpane to distract us from their real entrance. None of it matters to me now.
As I face Sanford Rule, I lounge in the plush velvet chair as if I own this place, and practically, I do, don’t I? It’s mine and Sullen’s now.
I drum my arms along the padded armrests. “Cosmo has been threatening you, and now it’s my turn.” I say it slowly, with a smile. My knees are two inches from Sanford’s, in his own chair, books spanning the wall behind him.
Some of them—on science and anatomy and religion—I will burn.
