Rachel let loose with another piercing ultrahigh shriek that rattled all the molecules in his body. Val heard a slap, muffled cursing. “Shut up, you squeaking brat, or I’ll—”
His words were obscured by another shriek, more ear-shattering than the last. Val lunged for the door, peered around the frame.
Zing, a bullet flicked past his ear, ruffling his hair. He jerked back, having ascertained that Rachel’s squirming body still shielded all the good target points. Merde. Trapped, like a fucking rat in a cage. He couldn’t return fire, couldn’t give chase. He was useless.
“I’ve got the gun to her head,” said András, his voice taunting. “Throw your guns out into the corridor, and step out of the room with your hands before you. We’re going to talk to the boss.”
“He’s dead,” Val said wearily.
“Of course he is,” András crooned. “And this screaming little darling will be, too. It can’t be too soon for me.”
“It’s all over. Novak is dead. They’re all dead,” Val repeated.
“Really? If the boss is dead, what reason is there for me not to kill her right now? Or better yet, I could shoot something off her, a hand, a foot. It would be a pleasure, after the trouble she’s given me. At this range, I could probably blow her leg right off at the knee. Shall we see? Should I try it?”
“No,” Val said swiftly. “Don’t.”
“No? You don’t like that idea? Then throw out your guns, fuckhead. Now.”
The gun stocks were sticky with his drying blood. Val peeled them loose from his hand, the Beretta and the SIG he’d gleaned from the dead PSS agents.
“Did you hear what I said, you cocksucking man whore?” András’s voice sharpened with tension. “On the count of five, she loses a foot. One. Two. Three—”
Val let the guns drop. They clattered onto the tiles.
“Kick them out into the corridor,” András directed, pitching his voice over Rachel’s shrieks. “Then put out your hands.”
Val kicked the guns. They slid over the tiles with a clatter.
His hands were dripping blood. He held them out the door, fingers splayed wide, turning them to show that they were empty.
“Step out, and put them on top of your head.”
Val walked slowly out into the corridor, lifted his arms, placed his hands on his head.
András’s arm was clasped around Rachel’s waist, in a cruelly tight grip. Rachel kept struggling, undaunted.
Val wanted to applaud. The child did her mother proud. He stared at András, balancing like a tightrope walker suspended over a boiling lava pit. Blood trickled down his arm, slow and hot and ticklish.
Checkmate. Three steps back. Detached. Floating. Wait for it.
Rachel flailed, flopped, shrieked. András had to struggle to hold her. “Get down on your knees,” he growled. “Stay still, you little shit, or I’ll peel you like a grape.”
Val sank slowly to his knees. Waiting, watching for his opening. Widening out his senses, softening. Wait for it. Wait.
András adjusted his grip, lifting her higher. Rachel flung herself forward against his face, almost as if she were kissing him. Suddenly András yanked her away from his face and flung her to the ground. A red bite wound flamed on his cheek. Broken skin. Blood
Now!
Val let the Walther PPK slide from the sleeve of his jacket and into his hand as Rachel skittered on hands and knees, and darted into the door he had broken through. András shot after her, bullets pumping out, screaming something unintelligible, his hand to his distorted, bleeding face.
Val opened fire with the Walther. Bam, bam, bam. Head, throat, chest.
András toppled across the threshhold, a look of stupid surprise on his face. There was a hole in the center of his forehead.
The sudden silence was disorienting. Val’s cool detachment evaporated the instant there was no desperate use for it. He began shaking convulsively. He almost fell. Caught himself.
He lurched to his feet, limped over to András. Kneeled by him to make sure he was dead. He prodded the man with his gun. The condition of András’s skull convinced him. There was very little left inside it. Good.
He blundered into the room, bumping painfully into various obstacles and trying to intuit where a light source might be. The darkness was so dense. The room appeared to be crowded with bulky furniture covered with canvas dropcloths.
There might be no light source at all. Back in his time, entire wings of the old palace had been left to fall into decay just as they had been in the eighteenth century. No wiring, no modern plumbing.
“Rachel?” He got down to his knees with a grunt of pain, putting himself in the glow of twilight from the door so that she could see him, wherever she was. If she was alive. If András had not shot her.
“Rachel?” He tried to pitch his voice normally, but it rasped and quavered, barely recognizable. “It’s Val, remember? Your Mamma’s friend? It’s all right now. Come out to me.”
She did, to his astonishment. He heard a rustle, a squeak, and a tiny body scrabbled across the floor toward him. Rachel ran into him full on, knocking him onto his ass, and wound her arms around his neck. He grabbed her, held her, chest shaking uncontrollably. She was alive.
Ah, no. Not yet. Please. He could not fall apart. Not yet.
He picked her up, swaying dangerously. He didn’t have much time left. He had to find someone to care for her, to make the phone calls, the arrangements. He could not slide down into oblivion and leave Rachel alone in this slaughterhouse just because all his blood had drained out of his body.
That was no fucking excuse. He had promised Tamar.
He lurched out into the corridor, gasping for air.
“Mamma?” Rachel asked, her voice breathless.
His chest tightened around his heart like a fist. “I’m sorry. I don’t know about Mamma, baby,” he whispered. “We’ll see about Mamma.”
Rachel squeezed her eyes shut, digging her fingers into the blood-soaked fabric of his coat. “Mamma. Mamma. Mamma. Mamma,” she repeated. Like a mantra. Blocking out the world with the magic word.
He envied her the trick.
He scooped up the guns and staggered back toward the Saints Salon, following his own trail of blood. He was not sure what the fuck to do now. He couldn’t show Rachel her mamma naked and covered in blood, not if the unspeakable had happened. Yet Tamar’s vibe dragged at him like a steel cable attached to his insides. Someone was reeling it mercilessly in.
He had a bad moment when he turned the corner outside the Saints Salon and saw the two men, but as soon as he focused his eyes, the shock of blond hair struck an instant chord of recognition.
Connor McCloud, Seth Mackey. Val was so relieved, he might even have wept. He didn’t care.
Connor hurried toward them, his face gray with strain. “Oh, thank God, thank God,” he muttered. “Rachel? Honey? You OK? Holy Jesus, Janos, what’s all this blood? Is she—”
“Not hers,” he said, exhausted. “She’s all right.”
Connor reached out. The little girl relinquished her grip on Val and transferred it willingly enough to the other man. “Mamma?” she asked.
“Oh, honey, I don’t know,” Connor said helplessly.
Rachel began to sob. Val turned away from the sound, and shuffled