Page 92 of Dead Beat

“I want you to get every bit of useful information about Wheelwalkers and these priests you can out of him. And then—” She tapped Huilca’s forehead, leaving a bloody fingerprint there. “Then I want you to place a prohibition on him. Make sure it goes deep, as deep as the one he put on my mother. Wipe my name and any memory of this place from his mind.”

“Alex—” Huilca began.

“My name is Galaxy,” she rasped. “The name my mother gave me.”

Then she fainted.

32

Darlington was watching her fall. One moment she was Alex in her natural state—vengeful, enlivened by anger, her honesty more intimidating than her rage. Then her eyes rolled backward and her body went slack, as if her strings had been cut, as if the power had simply gone out.

He lunged for her as Dawes stumbled forward, cradling her wounded hand. He caught Alex in an awkward slide, grabbing her up against him. He was startled by her lightness. It was frightening, as if she had no weight to keep her in the world, a wingless bird of hollow bones.

“Darlington!” Dawes cried.

Luis Huilca had yanked the knife from his arm and was bolting for the front door.

But Il Bastone was having none of it. The knob refused to turn in Huilca’s hand. He grabbed the urn off the small rattan table where a bust of Hiram Bingham III had once sat before Dawes used it to bash in Blake Keely’s skull.

“Stop!” Dawes shouted. With a ringing command that was one step shy of a demon’s growl, she snarled, “You break that stained glass window and I swear to every god there is I’ll kill you myself.”

Huilca hesitated. Darlington seized his chance and held up a coin of compulsion. “A token,” he said. “A coin of passage.”

Huilca might be full of ancient blood and wisdom, but he was as susceptible to the shine of gold as anyone else. “What is—?” he had time to ask before his fingers closed over the coin and his face went slack.

Two coins of compulsion used and the year still so far from over. There would be no more from Manuscript. The magic was too challenging to work, and he wasn’t interested in putting Lethe in another society’s debt.

“How long will it hold?” Dawes asked.

“We’ve got roughly two hours before we have to reinforce it. Can you type?” he queried Huilca.

“Not quickly.”

They sat him down at the dining room table with a pen and yellow legal pad.

“Write,” Darlington commanded. “Everything about this order of priests, who’s in it, what they know about Wheelwalkers, what they know about Alex, what resources they have.”

“If Alban Reed is a member,” Dawes added. “And who else we need to look out for.”

Darlington paused, cursing his slowness and giving thanks for the mind of Pamela Dawes. “That’s how he knew she was a Wheelwalker.”

“It could be,” she said, the good academic; a theory was not proof.

Darlington got the first aid kit and bandaged up Huilca’s puncture wound well enough to stop the bleeding. He’d probably need to see a doctor when he woke up wondering where he’d been and why he had a hole in his shoulder. Neither he nor Dawes liked the idea of leaving Huilca alone, so they texted Tripp to get him to babysit, though they called it “standing guard.”

“And hurry,” Darlington urged. Alex was losing blood and they needed to get her upstairs. “Dawes, did you replace your salt—”

“I’m not in danger from Tripp,” she scolded, but she pulled her collar down, revealing a less elegant version of the salt lace pearls she’d given to Mercy.

“All the same, maybe we get him a juice box too. I don’t want him eating Huilca.” At least not until they had all the information they needed.

“Smells like blood in here,” Tripp said when he appeared a few minutes later in his salt suit. “Oh shit, did Alex get shot?”

Darlington pointed at Huilca. “Just keep an eye on him, and if he does anything other than scribble, you shout.”

Tripp gave a solemn nod. “I will keep the watch.”

Darlington carried Alex up the stairs to the armory, where they used smelling salts to bring her back around. She was conscious but delirious and so pale she looked nearly green.