The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(66)

Vosch looked at me. He looked at Jourdain.

“Alfred has taught me mercy,” Jourdain said. “Does that not beg mercy?” He smiled. “He has offered me forgiveness. Does that not beg forgiveness?” The smile traveled from Vosch to me. Vosch smiled too. I was surrounded by grins.

Jourdain’s. Vosch’s. The skulls’.

Jourdain said, “Put away the gun, Vosch . . .”

Grinning.

“It should not be quick.”

Vosch got it right away. Too bad I didn’t. He was on me in two long strides. I looked for the gun in his right hand. I should have looked at his left, because that’s the hand that held the two-foot-long, dragon-headed black dagger.

He slammed it into the same spot I stabbed Jourdain, only my rib didn’t deflect the blow. The blade slid straight into the center of my chest.

Vosch. Jourdain. The skulls.

Grinning.

00:04:34:19

Their faces swam in and out of focus in the torchlight, and their voices seemed far away beneath the wailing of the wind and the rattling of blood in my chest.

“He’s dead already,” Weasel said. “Look at his eyes. They don’t blink.”

“No, he’s alive,” Vosch said. “I hear him breathing.”

“Hey, Kropp,” Flat-Face II said, poking me in the ribs. “You alive?”

Light and shadow dueled across their faces. They reminded me of fun house masks or those carnival sideshow creatures leering at you through yellowed glass.

“Call him, Alfred,” Vosch said. “Call down the Archangel! You are his beloved—surely he’ll save you. He will bear you up in his hands lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

“He won’t come,” Weasel predicted. “Kropp’s pissed him off.”

“No,” Flat-Face II said. “He won’t come because he don’t care.”

Weasel touched my side and squinted at his bloody fingertips, turning them in the golden light.

“Gave him this, though,” he said, and he stuck his fingers into his mouth, tasting my blood. Vosch told him to cut it out. “Can’t hurt,” Weasel said. “I got a bad ticker. You know, the kid’s kinda like a vampire, only the opposite.”

“You’re both wrong,” Vosch said. “He won’t come because he doesn’t exist.”

“Well, I’m not saying whether he does or doesn’t,” Flat-Face II said. “But you can’t just say there’s nothing, Vosch.”

“Why not?” Vosch asked. “If there was something that loves us, how do you explain that?” He pointed over my head at the skulls on the ledge.

“Who said anything about love?” Flat-Face II answered with a rumbling laugh. “I’m just saying you can’t say for absolutely one-hundred percent there ain’t anything. It can’t be all random.”

“Why not?” Vosch asked. “Randomness explains it just as well. Better, in fact.”

“I told you,” Weasel said crossly. “The kid killed off all the knights, and that pissed God off. It’s what God does to people who piss him off. Like how he smote the Egyptians, all those plagues and such.”

“What kind of God is that?” Vosch said.

“The kind you don’t piss off,” Weasel said.

“I think we should let Alfred settle this,” Vosch said. “What do you think, Alfred? God is there, but you’ve upset him terribly and he’s punishing you, letting you die a slow and painful death? Or God is there and he is as indifferent and bored as a teenager at a bad movie, texting his saints while he waits for the closing credits to roll? Or God is there not at all, and heaven is merely the empty space between the stars? What do you say? Do you say, ‘Wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes’? Or do you say, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani’? Or do you simply say, ‘Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink’? Speak up, Alfred. Settle our debate.”

“He’ll be here soon,” I said. It hurt to talk.

“Right!” Vosch said sarcastically. He thought I was talking about the Archangel, but I wasn’t. I pushed myself up, using the hard stone behind me for support, and stumbled toward the cave’s mouth. They didn’t come after me. They just kept arguing about God.

I fell to my knees on the shore of the little inlet. I coughed, and my mouth filled with blood. I began to crawl toward the steps. I could hear the rise and fall of their voices as they continued the argument. Was God there or not there? And if he was there, what was he doing there? Why wasn’t he doing anything down here? Over my head, the stars seared through the blackness around them, and the stars were silent about it.

I began the slow climb up the stairs.

He would come. I knew he would come.

I wanted to be there when he did.

00:00:12:44

The helicopter that brought him came in from the east, silhouetted against a crimson sun.

I was waiting for him at the edge of the cliff. Three hundred feet below, the incoming tide smashed against the jagged stones that rose from the sea like the teeth of the dragon from my dreams.

The chopper landed. I stood. I wouldn’t be able to stand for long: I had lost too much blood.

Out hopped a tall, thin man dressed in an expensive suit and carrying a gold-handled black cane. Next, a very tall, gray-looking guy with a hound-dog face and enormous hands, and finally a lithe blue-eyed blonde.