Madhouse (Cal Leandros, #3)(52)

I turned my attention back to Sawney. The redness of his eyes was barely detectable and the scythe hung limply from the ebon-skinned hand. His back was to the wall, and how he was staying suspended there, I couldn't have guessed and didn't bother to try. I was more interested in how he was going to come down. It was going to be hard and it was going to be messy, and I wanted to be involved in both of those.

Boggle wasn't done with him yet, however. She soared across the open space—a cave-in, falling in a completely improbable direction. She hit Sawney and the wall and took both down. There was a cascade of tile and concrete, flesh and bone, and it all disappeared under the water about thirty feet away. Revenants and their parts bobbed in the resulting tidal rush.

"She's not like the old boggle, is she?" Robin was unwounded except for a long scratch along his jaw, and if Promise weren't wet, she would've been as pristine as before we'd entered the subway tunnel. "He was a lazy creature." He continued watching the water roil frantically where Boggle and Sawney had vanished. "Deadly, but content with the status quo. I doubt this one would be. She's beyond magnificent."

"Thinking of asking her out?" I asked with a snort. Not even Goodfellow had the balls for that.

"I don't date those with children." He touched a finger to his jaw and wiped meticulously at the blood. "It takes the focus from where it should truly lie."

"With you." Promise carried it with a heavy dose of irony to its natural conclusion.

"Am I wrong?" Finishing with the blood, he used his free hand to comb carefully through his curls. He was grooming himself. In the aftermath…hell, it wasn't yet an aftermath…during, he was grooming himself during a battle. "There are those who wish to experience me and those who wish to kill me. If that's not exclusive focus, what is? You can't be considered self-centered, if you sincerely are the center of all attention, now, can you?"

I didn't respond. The violent disturbance of the water had stopped, and as I took a step forward, Niko's hand settled on my shoulder. "Wait," he ordered. "She doesn't need us getting in her way." That we didn't particularly need to be torn apart by a blood-enraged boggle, he left unspoken. The water rippled, calmed…

Then it turned blacker than it already was. The will-o'-the-wisp of our lost flashlights was slowly vanquished by billowing darkness. I didn't know what color Sawney's blood was—despite temporarily having his arm chopped off, Sawney hadn't felt it necessary to bleed a drop for us. What I did know was that boggle blood was black. A spill of octopus ink, just like this.

"I'll pass on pick of her litter. Raising carnivorous offspring does not fit my lifestyle." Robin, along with Niko, had fished a secondary flashlight from her jacket pocket and lit the place up. But the light wouldn't touch some things and Sawney was one of them.

He rose out of the water and hung inches above it. In one hand he held either a handful of cloth, a blanket, or … shit. Scales. The material rippled with scales and was lined with the black velvet of blood. "These caves"—drop by drop that same black fell from the point of the scythe to the water below— "they are not the chill of the sea caves of home." He shook it, his new blanket, to the rustle of the largest piece of snakeskin in the world. He'd skinned her, and, from the blood that had poured free, he'd done it while she was alive. The dead didn't bleed. I imagined, also, that the skinned didn't live long after the process.

"I shall wrap myself in it when the cold finally comes." The bright blaze of his eyes was back as he pulled the skin up to his face and rose higher in the air. "Ahhh, the sweet smell of a mother. The incomparable scent of orphans. I cherish your gift, travelers."

I'd let the Glock go, but never the Eagle—not with what it held. I pulled, fired, and with three shots, I saw Delilah coming up behind and below Sawney. … I saw it through him. The hole was not quite the size of a grapefuit, although the rounds should've blown him in half. There should've been Sawney on one side of the tunnel and f*cking Beane on the other. Whatever he was made from was as hard as stone…harder. Delilah wasn't deterred. She hit him. Landed on his back and wrapped her jaws around his neck with room to spare. He was man-sized. She was not. She was Wolf and Kin and she dwarfed him. Not as Boggle had, but enough that she could've torn through Ms throat as if it were paper. Could've.

Should've.

Didn't.

She leaped free a split second before the scythe would've opened her up. When she landed, she was shaking her head hard as if her jaws or teeth ached. Gritting my own teeth, I aimed and pulled the trigger again, this time aiming for his head. But he was gone. Between one blink and the next, he'd faded like smoke. He was fast, Niko and I had seen how fast in the warehouse, but this…Christ. How can you hope to kill something you can't possibly catch?

Quick or not, he could've gone in only one direction. I refused to believe he could've gone over our heads without us seeing at least a flicker of motion. I started forward down the tunnel, only to be knocked backward by a wave of water and flesh. Raw, weeping flesh. Horrifically injured, she'd been stripped of skin from neck to crotch. Flayed and still alive.

"Where?" Boggle roared, arms uplifted, fists clenched. "Where? Where? Where?" Turning, she pounded those fists against a wall to bring down another section next to the rough entrance she'd made. "Where? Where? Where?" Whirling, she snatched up the nearest creature, which happened to be a wolf, and pulled him into two pieces like a tasty piece of taffy. The lupine jaw snapped feebly for several seconds afterward, and it was far more disturbing than I wanted to admit.