I was at the edge of the pit, staring down into the darkness, when James Allen called my name. As I turned away from the pit, the report of my own pistol echoed behind me. “Bowman, no!” He’d cleared the jammed barrel.
I spun just in time to see the gun recoil in the foreman’s hands. The bullet hit Orthus square in the forehead, between and below his ears. He seemed to jump up and back with the impact, then settled onto his rump.
Orthus fell much too slowly to be real, as if time had begun to drag. He landed on his right side, half-in the grave he’d been digging. For a moment, his gaze met mine, and he whined. Then his eyelids dropped softly, and the red glint in his eyes blinked out.
ELEVEN
“Orthus!” I cried, surprised by the pang of grief washing over me.
The dog lay motionless, his reddish-black head and front paws stark against the snow at the edge of his own shallow grave. I charged Bowman, my hands still cuffed at my back. “You stupid son of a bitch! He wasn’t going to hurt you;youwere threateninghim. He was just trying to bury his kill. That’s his right, and his responsibility, which you’d know if you’d ever shot at anything more than a fucking paper target!”
Bowman stared up at me, eyes still glazed in shock. He made no move to defend himself when my left leg flew in a beautiful, low roundhouse, perfected from hours in the gym and more real-life practice than I could even begin to quantify. I hit the meaty part of his right thigh, and he crumpled to the ground almost willingly, as if that’s where he’d wanted to be all along. He sat on one hip at my feet, staring at the ground, my pistol half-buried in the snow by his knee.
“Get me out of these damn cuffs so I can kick your ass!” I demanded, too furious to think straight. Orthus was just a dog. Just a stupid, creepy dog I’d barely even known, yet watching him die made me want to skin Bowman inch by inch. Or maybe bury him alive. Or throw him into the pit, with Hagen. Or…
“Alexandra.” Allen’s voice was soft, but insistent.
“What?” I shouted, kicking snow in Bowman’s face. I had to do something or I’d lose my temper and go for the gun, even in handcuffs. I was in no mood to be scolded, especially by a wraith who’d last influenced the physical world sometime during Roosevelt’s administration.TeddyRoosevelt.
“Look.”
I followed Allen’s line of sight and my gaze settled on the canine corpse, still hanging over the edge of the hole he’d been digging. At first, I saw nothing else. Then his visible eye twitched. When it twitched again, I realized he was blinking. Orthus was still alive. Or maybe aliveagain. The technicalities didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was blinking—and presumably breathing—despite the bullet buried somewhere in his brain.
“Get these cuffs off me,” I snapped, looking to Allen for help, because in shock, Bowman was practically worthless. Allen arched one eyebrow at me and reached down to put his hand through the foreman’s head. Completely through. Like, in one side and out the other.
Shit. The wraith was corporeally-challenged, and the human wasn’t expected back in the world of reason and consequence any time soon. Wonderful.
“Bowman!” I shouted. He made no reply, so I nudged him gently with my foot. When that didn’t work, I nudged him not-so-gently. “Bowman! Look at me.”
The foreman looked up slowly, his gaze traveling my entire body before finally settling on my eyes. “What?” His voice was distant, his pronunciation mushy.
“Get up and give me a hand. Your life is directly connected to that dog’s. If he lives, so will you. If not, I’ll throw your ass in the pit with Hagen. I’m sure Allen would love the company.”
Bowman blinked, as if trying to clear his vision. “Who’s Allen?”
“Never mind.” I huffed, tossing a stray strand of hair from my face. “Get up. I need you to find the keys to these fucking handcuffs.” He stared at me, and I rolled my eyes. “Up. Now. Or I give Allen permission to haunt your ass for all of eternity.”
Finally, after the longest five seconds of my life, Bowman pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. His pants were caked with compacted snow, and he was probably freezing. But then, I’d rolled around on the ground too, and at the moment the only thing standing between me and a severe case of hypothermia was the body heat I’d worked up fighting Hagen.
“Will you go look for the keys while I wake him up?” I asked, glancing at Allen. The wraith took off toward Dirk’s body as I moved directly into Bowman’s line of sight. With my arms pinned behind my back, I had to shake my head to catch his attention, because he was zoning out again.Fucking humans, and their fragile psyches. Had I ever been like that?
“Alright, Mike, stay with me now.” I moved to one side, urging him to turn with me, so I could watch both him and Orthus at the same time. It worked, and I was encouraged. “That’s right, come this way a little more.”
Bowman complied, and I smiled at him, trying to remember how to be intentionally friendly. It was coming back to me slowly. Smiling was a good start.
“I know you’ve seen some things you’d like to forget, and with any luck, you’ll be able to do just that. But right now, I need you to pull yourself together for me. If we’re going to get out of here before broad daylight…” One glance at the rapidly lightening sky told me we were almost there. “…I need some help from you. Can you do that?”
Bowman nodded, but he looked unsure.
“Good. That’s a start.” I had to get him talking. Surely that would snap him out of what was obviously full-blown shock. “Allen, how you comin’ on that key?” I asked, without taking my eyes from the large but apparently delicate foreman.
“I can’t reach into his pockets, but at a glance, this one doesn’t appear to have it.”
“This one” was Dirk, and I was willing to bet that even in life, he hadn’t had much of anything. Including a brain and a functioning set of balls.
Allen walked across my field of vision, heading toward Orthus and the two-piece corpse.
“Okay, Mike, let’s chat for a few minutes while…”
