I rushed through his flat, flipping on lights and calling his name. Nothing. Only the lingering scent of his Bournemouth pipe smoke. My head was spinning, and the wicked rush of adrenaline—or whatever it was—was coursing through my veins.
Back at the front door, I glanced at the candles scattered in the street and from this angle caught what I’d missed before—alley light glistening on wet cobblestones.
. . . I remembered the first night I’d gone to the Iron Horse. Henry had introduced me around the pub like I was already somebody . . .
I stepped onto the stoop in front of the apartment.
. . . The day Henry had buried his wife, Martha, I’d sat up with him all night looking at grainy family photos and watching eight-millimeter family reels. He’d told funny stories about her as if she were sitting there with us . . .
I descended the steps down into the alley.
. . . Just a few months ago, Henry had played me an unreleased Who track that they’d written for him to say thanks for giving them a shot. I’d offered to clean the lint from the vinyl, but Henry said to leave it on, said the crackle made it sound personal. Sharing that had felt like praying together . . .
I dropped to my knees amidst the strewn candles, gently touched the wet stone, and raised my finger to the light. Blood.
“Henry,” I whispered, “where are you?”
Down the alley from the St. Giles end, a man’s voice called, “You there.”
A silhouette was coming my way under the dim streetlights. He was too thick to be the corpse-paint guy, but didn’t look like a cop, either. I stood and started in the other direction. The man’s footsteps turned into a run, and something clattered behind me.
Ah, hell.
I ran. It was . . . I don’t know how to describe it. I should have been dog tired. Dead, really. I wasn’t a fast runner, but right then I felt like I could fly. That hot adrenaline was sizzling down my legs.
“You there!” the man called again.
At Stacey Street, I lost my footing and fell hard on the cobbled road.
The man was closing fast.
“Wait!” His words came muted by the blood racing in my ears. “Let me explain.”
A few yards down Stacey, a row of steel dumpsters hulked in the gloom next to the construction site for St. Giles Playground. I ducked behind one, picked up a hunk of concrete, and peered around the side of the bin.
A couple of seconds later, the guy slowed to a stop beneath the streetlamp at the T-section of Flitcroft and Stacey.
He was wearing a Roman centurion uniform—full-on plume helmet, metal-scaled torso, studded leather skirt. He looked like something right out of the illustrated version of Shakespeare’sJulius Caesar. Broad shoulders, thick waist, muscular thighs glistening with sweat in the lamplight. He had a wide, angular face, deep-set eyes, and a close shave. Even the guy’s considerable shadow seemed odd. Less . . . substantial than the shadow of theMetronewspaper dispenser next to him. And I could have sworn I saw something moving inside it.
He peered down Stacey Street, then left and right down Flitcroft. A second later he dropped to his knees under the yellow glow of the streetlamp, his helmet clanging to the pavement and spinning away. Then he moaned, lurched forward on all fours, and rolled onto his side, his body convulsing. “Maybe it is for the best,” he said in a faint German accent.
I’d been fooled before by bits like this. Gangbangers become consummate actors when they’re caught alone in the wrong neighborhood. But street cons don’t usually come dressed as Roman centurions. Before I could think better of it, I’d stepped out from behind the dumpster and taken a few steps toward him.
He looked up, lips trembling. “I am sorry. I was trying to get to you before anything . . . They will kill me for this. Please, I need your help.”
I kept hold of my chunk of concrete. “What are you talking about?” “You saw it, did you not? The field of stone? The mountain of fire?” He swallowed hard. “You reclaimed your body.”
“How do you know about that?” I took another step toward him. “And where’s Henry?”
The centurion convulsed again, cracking his head against the road. “I can explain. But I need your help first. Quickly. Please.”
When someone chases you, it’s rarely with good intentions.
He cried out again and began writhing on the street. I stepped closer and saw a blue translucent double ripping free from inside his body, almost like a soul tearing away from his flesh. The guy’s skin stretched outward as if stitched to the trembling double that had nearly separated itself from him. The centurion began to go still, staring vacantly up at the streetlamp.
This I’d seen—that faint glimmer of life fading slowly to nothing. Like when I lost my brother Dan. It was something you couldn’t fake. It was also something you couldn’t forget. Istill didn’t know why this guy had been chasing me—it probably wasn’t good—but I couldn’t just let him die there.
I dropped to my knees next to him. He took a quick breath and said through trembling lips, “I am Cassius Classicus.”
