Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(126)

Miles kept grappling. He was losing ground. He had the raw strength, but he didn’t have the agility, the practice. He was clumsy, slow, still figuring it all out. Greaves was just too f*cking good.

So he fell back on the one thing he seemed to have a special knack for . . . pissing the guy off.

He spat blood from his mouth. “That’s the best you can do?”

Greaves’ eyes widened, and he gathered his energy for the final, fatal blow, arms lifting again. Miles braced himself—

“Geoff’s awake,” Lara said softly.





29


Greaves’ wild-eyed gaze whipped around to her, saw her crouched near Geoff’s cot. “Get away from him!” he shrieked.

Lara’s body literally rose up into the air, as if she were a cat being swatted with some huge hand. She landed twelve feet across the room on her side, hard. The ceramic Persephone, knocked loose from her prison, lay a few feet away from her, snapped off at the base, but still whole. Lara grabbed her by the ankles.

Greaves was staring at his son, astonished.

Geoff’s eyes were open and enormous in his shrunken face.

Lara struggled to her feet. Greaves had forgotten her. He was still immobilizing Miles, who swayed, locked in that unnatural pose, staring at her. His eyes flicked to the statuette in her hand, to Greaves, then back up to her face. His lips moved, silently. Now.

Greaves’ mouth gaped as he moved toward his son, arms outstretched. His eyes were almost soft. “Geoff? Ah, God. Geoff.”

Geoff tried to move his cracked, purplish lips, but no sound game out. His eyes were clouded, gummy, and dimmed. He looked past his father toward Lara. His lips moved. She could see the boy Geoff staring at her, his huge blue eyes very clear as the smothering darkness closed around him. Silently mouthing a word, but she was so rattled by the double realities, she couldn’t read it. She didn’t understand.

“What is it, son?” Greaves moved closer. “Open your mind. I’ll read it directly if you can’t talk. I’ll do anything you need.”

She suddenly understood the word Geoff had tried to mouth.

Now.

She bolted across the room and swung the statuette, bashing the side of Greaves’ head with it. He grunted, staggered.

Miles sprang up the second he jolted free of Greaves’ telekinetic clinch. He grabbed the older man, and flung him higher than was humanly possible.

Greaves landed—on her broken sculpture. Skewered. One stalagmite protruded from his throat, another from his belly. His eyes were wide, infuriated, and the room trembled with red rage . . .

The feeling softened, dissipated. His eyes went empty.

Miles fell to his hands and knees, panting. Lara stared at the thing in her hand. It no longer looked like a statuette. It looked like the murder weapon that it was. Persephone’s face, which had been a delicate glaze of flesh tones and pinks, was shiny and wet with blood.

It fell from her stiff hand to the ground, clattering and spinning.

Sudden movement caught her eye. Geoff was rolling off his cot. He hit the ground, landing on his back.

She hurried over to him, catching her breath when she saw the blood. It welled up, gushing from a terrible wound in his throat, and another in his wasted, concave belly. Blood streamed down the side of his head, too, shockingly red against his gray skin.

Then she realized, with a shudder of confusion, that he was not bleeding. Or rather, it was the dream Geoff that bled, the child-man, in her vision. She was staring at them both simultaneously. The wasted older man’s skin was still unmarred. And yet, she knew somehow that the wounds were still fatal.

He gazed into her face, lips moving silently. She leaned down, sliding her arm beneath his shoulder. Cradling him carefully. The little boy, the skeletal man. One and the same. And both dying.

“Oh, Geoff,” she whispered. “God, Geoff. I’m so sorry.”

Miles knelt beside her. His eyes were haggard and shadowed.

“He melded with Greaves,” she told him. “I felt it. Total fusion. He opened his shield, and his father just . . . swallowed him. The wounds . . . those are Greaves’ wounds, but he has them in the dream world. I can see them. He’s bleeding to death. Except that you can’t see it.”

Miles’ hand clasped her shoulder, squeezing. “Oh, baby.” His voice was rough, shaking with exhaustion.

“He woke up for me.” Lara cradled him, her face wet. “Geoff. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Geoff formed a word, with bluish, flaking lips.

“What was that?” Lara bent, put her ear to his lips. Strained with every nerve to hear him.

Free. It was a faint, creaking sigh of a sound, she was not sure from what plane of existence. But she heard it.

She lifted her head, startled. He was smiling with his eyes.

As she watched, that smile evaporated, leaving his wasted body a delicate husk in her arms. The boy had faded from her mind’s eye.

Lara gently laid him down. She closed his eyes and could not speak, or move, or breathe. Just seeing that beautiful blond boy child. Her quiet friend. Her little guide. Flying free, at last.

“Rest in peace,” Miles said, hoarsely.

She nodded. Miles helped her up onto her feet. She turned to him, reaching out, eyes tear-blinded. Laid her hands against his chest, just to feel how warm and solid and real he was.