He ignores me and looks at Eddie over my shoulder. “You won’t shoot me,” he says. “You might hit your friend here. Besides, you need what’s in my head. You said so yourself.”
“You’re right,” Eddie replies. “But you don’t need both legs.”
With no hesitation, he shoots him in the calf.
Red Hands screams—a clean, high sound, stripped of philosophy, of composure, of every pretense he's ever wrapped around his violence. Just a man in pain. Just meat and nerve and the truth he's so fucking obsessed with, served back to him on a bullet.
He collapses onto his side, hands flying to the wound. Blood weeps through his fingers, but Daddy's cold shadows thread toward him and slow it to a seep, frost crystallizing along the wound's edges.
We cannae have him bleeding out, ye ken?
“Fucking bow to her,” Eddie shouts, and it makes my ears ring.
“Aye,” I tell Eddie without looking back. “There’s my detective.”
I squat, put my mouth by Red Hands’s ear, and let my voice go real low. “Listen to me. Do ye ken the liturgy? It goes like this: we do not worship at your altar. Ye will worship at ours, and we told you to bow.”
He groans a laugh through clenched teeth, still thinking he’s clever.
Sera’s breath hitches. “James. Eddie.”
I go still. Every part of me quiets at her voice. The sound of it is everything. Cracked and dry and barely there, but everything.
“What do ye need?” I ask her, nae taking my eyes off Red Hands. “Say it. I’ll fetch it, kill it, kiss it, whatever order ye like.”
Her tongue wets her split lip. “Water.”
From out of the darkness rolls a bottle of water, a gift from Daddy from…somewhere. Eddie is already moving toward it. He snatches it up, twists off the cap, and crosses the lines of the Seal, quick as ye like.
Gently, he tips it to her mouth. She drinks like a sinner forgiven. Her eyes close for one breath and open sharper.
“More,” she whispers.
“Slowly.” He gives her more, one hand cradling the back of her head, his fingers disappearing into her dark hair.
The line of her throat moves. What’s left of my soul tries to leave my body and go live in that swallow.
“Good girl,” I tell her, and the monster in me purrs because she is drinking and alive and looking at me like I’ve made a dramatic entrance back into life.
She coughs, looks at Red Hands, and something settles in her expression. Something final. “He’ll bow…when I’m upright.”
“Time to go,” Eddie says. “We’ll need him mobile.”
“I can carry him on a stick,” I offer brightly.
“Alive,” Sera croaks.
Her eyes don’t leave Red Hands.
“Aye, and then he’ll know for sure he’s failed.” I lean in so he can feel the cold that emanates from me. “Ye hear her? That woman ye thought was a canvas? She’s the painter. You’re the red.”
Daddy moves like a storm cloud learning to smile. The concrete floor vibrates beneath him, a purr that I feel in my shadow-splinted bones.
“Daddy,” my Prayer breathes before she passes out again.
“Right, then,” I say, standing. “We’ve had our appetizer. Let’s serve the main.”
I give Red Hands the merciful kindness of a boot to the temple, gentle as a lullaby. He goes out.
