Page 35 of Dead Beat

“You’re not a god. You’re a sadist,” she said.

“Is there a difference?”

Alex felt exhaustion seeping back into her, the thrill of capturing Kittscher dissipating and leaving only a sense of futility. She didn’t know how much of Rudolph Kittscher was left in this demon, protected by whichever salt guardian had chosen to watch over him, and she wasn’t sure it mattered.

“You liked draining the youth and hope from anyone unlucky enough to cross your threshold.”

“It’s important to enjoy your work,” he said. “I’m a scientist. I’ve been gathering data.”

“What did you to him? How do we reverse it?”

“You can’t. Time flows one way.” He glanced up at Alex through his lashes. “For most of us. I know what you are. I drank your friend’s knowledge along with his hopelessness. It seems our bargain with hell is fulfilled.”

Alex rose. So what if he knew she was a Wheelwalker? She was a lot more concerned about Alban Reed than this bastard.

She set the Voynich Coffin on the floor.

“He has more to tell,” said Darlington warningly.

“I’m not putting him in. I just want him to know we can.”

Kittscher’s eyes fastened on the puzzle box. “Oh my,” he said on a long breath.

Alex reached out with every bit of force she could muster and seized Kittscher’s essence. The familiar sludge poured into her, cold and heavy, and she grabbed for the back of the chair as the weight tried to buckle her … but there, at the edges, the gleam of Theo’s youth, bright gold. She tried to seize hold of that glimmer, but it slid away from her. Beneath the sludge, something more … His salt guardian, the shape of a bear curled around the memory of the real Rudolph Kittscher, polished mahogany, the sudden, decisive chop of a cleaver. His father had been a butcher. He had hated him. The blood on the apron. The smell of death. He had fought his way free of the stink of the slaughterhouse, with nothing but his own brilliance to see him through, his ambition carrying him to Yale, and then through a door that should have always remained closed.

Alex spat him back out.

“I don’t go down easy, do I?” asked Kittscher, unruffled. “What a gift you have. How did you manage to keep it from Golgarot?”

Alex ignored him. “I thought I could glean enough of Theo to give him back his life, but there’s nothing left.”

“Noble sentiments have no place in this work,” chided Kittscher as if he were actually disappointed in her. He reminded her eerily of Professor Walsh-Whiteley. “You’re going to lose. Do you not understand that?”

“Maybe,” Alex conceded. “I’m not what they call graceful in defeat.”

“Why are you fighting so hard? This isn’t Armageddon. The armies of hell won’t run roughshod over the world. It’s just a little more tragedy, a little more death. Have you read the news lately? Who’s going to notice?”

“How can you be so certain?” Darlington asked, and he sounded genuinely curious.

“Because we know the deal we made.”

“And you trust Golgarot to keep to it?”

“I do. These were bargains made in blood.”

“Spell it out,” said Alex. “I want the specific terms and the names of the other pilgrims.”

Kittscher tsked and shook his head from side to side in a slow, deliberate rhythm. “If you know my kind, you know I’m not interested in making this easy.”

A demon never would.

“Good fortune for Reiter. Knowledge for you. And if a few people lose their souls, you get to live forever, so who cares?” Alex demanded. “One more time Lethe failed to protect the people you swore to watch over.”

“We are the shepherds,” Darlington said.

Something flashed in Kittscher’s eyes, the memory of who he’d been or maybe nothing at all. “You blundered into this. You’re as much to blame as we are. At least we made our plans carefully and prepared for the dangers ahead.”

“Did you, now?” Darlington asked. He looked like the good student, deconstructing a thorny text. He looked like a demon captured by a new puzzle. “Alex, would you be kind enough to join the others and leave us for a while?”