Tomorrow and Tomorrow (35 page)

Blood pulses from my mouth when I speak and I don’t know if they’ve even understood what I said. I’m swimming in blood and darkness, but I concentrate—I can’t black out, not now.
Think.
This isn’t going to be quick, what they do to me. I need to get out of here.
Christ, Christ—

“Rory, he’s all yours,” says Gregor. A dark, swift shape kneels over me. I see his eyes through the gas mask lenses.

“An eye for an eye, brother,” he says.

He pulls a serrated hunter’s knife and I feel the blade slide cleanly into my shoulder, snagging on muscle and bone as he pulls it out. The knife slides into my chest, rips me as it comes out. I can’t breathe, but don’t realize I can’t breathe—I can’t scream, but still try to scream, my breath like a fog of blood. He swipes his blade across my face like he’s a calligrapher writing something sacred into my skin. Pain flares through the right side of my face, a deep pain—like he’s reached into my skull through my eye socket. I wonder at all the blood—is this all mine? It doesn’t seem possible—

I’m lifted.

It must be Cormac who lifts me.

I’m falling—

They’ve pushed me out, over the ledge. Falling. The apartment recedes from me—

—

“Dominic—”

That voice.

—

I recognize that voice. From where? I try to open my eyes, but can’t.

The camphor scent of coagulant and the cottony rank of blood and gauze, but also the smell of dirt and something like milkweed and grass.

“You need another dose of morphine,” says that voice.

—

Open my eyes—

Everything’s blurred—no, everything to my left is blurred. Darkness to my right. I’m blind to my right side. It’s like a charcoal cloth covers everything to my right but if I close my left eye the world goes dark. Daylight—I can see well enough to know there’s daylight.

I lift my head but the movement cramps through my chest, an agonizing soreness, and I collapse back down, panting. Every breath is pain.

“You’re awake,” he says. That voice.

Timothy.

“Where is she?” I ask him.

“Do you remember what happened?” he asks. “Do you know where we are?”

I’m here. Theresa, I’m here—

“You’re at the site of your apartment in Pittsburgh. Three men attacked you,” says Timothy. “Do you remember? You fell. I haven’t moved you—”

Rory Waverly carving me with a knife.

“I can’t see very well,” I tell him. “Come over here where I can see you—”

He blocks the sunlight when he stands near, but I still can’t see him. I hear him kneel. A damp towel touches my face. He wrings water over my eyes and wipes gently with the towel—once I blink away the water, I can see him, but it’s like I’m looking at him through a scrim of steel wool. He’s examining me with those pitying blue eyes. I want to ping Albion, ping Gav, someone who can help me, but the virtual interface I’m so used to seeing isn’t here.

“You’re very injured,” he says. “I did what I could, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had to practice emergency medicine—not since school. I stopped most of the bleeding. I’m so sorry, Dominic. I didn’t intend for this to happen—”

“Did you kill her? Did you kill Albion?”

“She’s safe,” says Timothy. “She’ll be here soon—”

My body’s numbed from coagulant and painkillers but whenever I move, profound pain ripples through me. Something plastic’s draped over me as a blanket—a tarp, maybe—the corners weighted by bricks. My head’s cushioned by a rain jacket—Timothy’s, it looks like. He’s wearing a T-shirt and khaki hiking pants, but nothing to protect him from the radiation or the rain. His backpack’s nearby, cherry red. What will happen here? Where are the others? Why didn’t they just let me die?

“Did you kill Twiggy?” I ask. “Why? Why her?”

“I didn’t kill her,” says Timothy. “My father knew you’d be interested in her—he’d studied your Adware, knew your tastes. He hired her, made sure she’d cross your path by making sure your cousin worked with her. My father paid her to give you hard drugs so that once you were arrested on felony drug charges I could commandeer your case from Simka. We knew we had to get close to you, one way or another, to find out what you knew about the woman’s body you discovered in the Archive—”

“Hannah,” I tell him. “Her name was Hannah—”

“My father thought he’d taken care of that mistake years ago, but when you found her in the Archive, he panicked. He wanted to have you killed—he thought killing you would solve these problems from the past. I had to convince him to let you live. I told him that we should figure out how you found Hannah, what you knew—what else you might know about us. I convinced him that you might be able to help us with another problem we were having—”

“Albion—”

“The dead don’t stay dead,” he says.

“Albion wanted to stay dead. She wanted no part of this—”

“We didn’t know Albion was alive until she disappeared from the Archive—she wanted to disappear, but that’s what exposed her. Albion vanishing was like a dead woman rising to life, and then you found Hannah’s body. My father was haunted by these Lazarus women. He met with his brother and told him he wanted Albion dead. My uncle and cousins remembered Albion. They wanted to kill her, they’ve always wanted her . . . but I couldn’t let them. I can’t let them—”

The door to Room 208 is at least two stories above us, leading into the scorched hallway—I remember falling, but don’t remember hitting—I’m so numbed I feel like I’m hovering inches above my body, like I haven’t quite finished the fall. I glance around—the flowers I’d brought for Theresa are all around me.

“Are you going to kill Albion here?” I ask him. “Kill us?”

Timothy’s incredulous. “I’m saving her,” he says. “I’ve tried to save you. This whole time, I’ve been saving you—”

“Bullshit,” I tell him. “I saw what you did to Hannah. I saw everything, you sick fuck. I saw everything—”

“I’ve saved you three times,” he says. “When you found Hannah, I saved you from my father. I saved you a second time after my father’s party—when you quit working for him, you ceased having value to him, but I convinced him that we could still follow you to Albion. I saved you a third time just a few hours ago, when my cousins were scrambling down here to mutilate you, Dominic—”

“You don’t want me to live,” I tell him. “You’re luring her here because you don’t know where she is—”

“The first night I met you I told you that I’d been saved—”

“When you tore out your Adware—”

“I was Saul on the road to Damascus,” says Timothy. “I lived with the shadow of my father—that Adware, those images that filled my mind, were him. They were
him
.
I slit myself open and tore out my Adware and it was like I was tearing him out from me. I knew I might kill myself but tearing out that Adware was like tearing sin from my soul—”

“Twiggy didn’t have to die—”

“No,” says Timothy. “No, she didn’t, but once she served her purpose, my father saw her as a liability. He gave her to his brother and his sons. Killing her was a mercy, by the time they were through with her—”

“You keep saying ‘my father.’ ‘My father.’ You keep saying, ‘
They
did this.’
You
did this—”

Timothy’s not listening—something’s caught his attention and he stares out over the ruins into the far yard, intent like a hunter who fears his movements might scare off the prey.

“She’s here,” he says. “She’s here—”

“Albion?” I try to scream, but my breath’s frail. “Get out of here. Run—”

I follow Timothy’s eyes and see her. She stands at the base of the slide of bricks. Something formal in the way she stands. She’s come to meet death.

“Dominic’s up here,” says Timothy. “I promised I was with him—”

Albion scales the bricks like she’s scaling a slant of a shallow pyramid, picking a circuit that will keep her wide of Timothy.

“My God,” she says when she draws close to me, “what have you done?”

“He would be dead if it wasn’t for me,” says Timothy, voice edged with—not quite glee, but something proud, catlike, like he’s gifting his owner the body of a bird.

Albion doesn’t cry at the sight of my body—she’s blanched white, but studies each of my wounds like she’s cataloging them, keeping tally for some future reckoning. She sits next to me, takes my hand. Having her so close is like a balm—the scent of her hair, the feel of her as she caresses my face. “Poor Dominic,” she whispers as she touches kisses to each one of my eyes, “poor, poor Dominic—”

“Leave,” I tell her. “They’re coming for you. Run—”

“How did you find us?” she asks.

“My father ruined that doctor, Simka,” says Timothy. “Drugs for sex with high school girls, bullshit he knew would hit the streams. My father snared Dominic’s accounts, sent him an e-mail—it was supposed to look like it came from Simka’s lawyer. When Dominic opened the e-mail, my father could track him. We came to New Castle, found your house, but you were already here—”

“What have you done to him?” she says, her voice like someone grown weary of a long and brutal prank. “Timothy, what have you done to him?”

“Gregor,” he says. “Rory and Cormac—”

“Why did they do this?” she asks.

“They were preparing to do much worse when I stopped them,” says Timothy. “They wanted to open him up, collar to belly—they were going to hang him by the ankles and let him bleed out. I told Gregor that you were the one we wanted, but that you’d run if Dominic was dead. We needed him alive to get you—”

Albion takes the news stoically, like someone used to absorbing sudden horror.

“Are they here now?” she asks.

“Gregor and Rory are waiting for you at your house,” says Timothy. “I told them I’d bring you there. Cormac is at our camp here, waiting for me. We won’t have much time to get out of here before he comes looking for us—”

Albion removes a compact mirror from her pack and holds it up for me to see my reflection. Although she doesn’t angle it so I can view my entire body, I see enough—my chest wrapped in bandages and gauze, blood seeping through. My forehead had been slashed, almost torn from my skull, a ragged gash running from just above my right eye up across my scalp. Sloppily applied coagulant coats the stab wounds and slashes, a cloudy gel that’s hardened into a medicated carapace. My eyes are ringed with bruising, my mouth swollen. My right eye socket is crushed inward, the eye almost black with blood. She removes the mirror.

“Why are you helping us?” she asks.

“I’ve changed,” he says. “Alby, I’ve changed—”

“They won’t let this rest,” says Albion. “They’ll kill you. They’ll kill all of us—”

“There is a way out,” says Timothy. “I need to convince my father and my uncle that you’re both dead—”

“Don’t listen to this,” I tell Albion. “This man is a murderer. You showed me what he’s done. I’ve seen what he’s done to you, I’ve seen what he’s done to Peyton—”

Albion flinches at Peyton’s name.

“Albion,” says Timothy. He slides a flat white box from his backpack. He lifts the lid and reveals my Adware resting in a cushion of folded cloth. It looks like a tangle of golden wool, stained by flecks of my blood. “I removed this from him. It’s the only way—I need to send this to my father. I’ll tell him that I killed Dominic, disposed of him—as long as I have this, he’ll believe me—”

“That won’t be enough,” says Albion.

“No, you’re right—this won’t be enough,” says Timothy. “He’ll hire people to check my work, to look for Dominic’s body. He’ll want proof after proof of his death. He’ll want access to his account information, all his passwords. He’ll need to be certain that any shred of evidence that Dominic has found against him is eradicated. Dominic will need to get out of here. Out of the country, preferably—”

“Don’t listen to him,” I say. “Don’t listen to any of this—”

“Dominic needs to go to a hospital,” says Albion. “He’ll need money. You’re asking him to start a new life—”

“Money won’t be an issue,” says Timothy. “I’ve prepared everything—”

Albion turns to me. “Dominic, we can do this. There’s another place we can go, somewhere far up north—”

“You don’t understand,” says Timothy. “I can convince my father of Dominic’s death by giving over this Adware, but Dominic never mattered to him like you do. Convincing him that you’re dead without presenting your body to him will be much more difficult. I need to take you away, Albion. I need to hide you somewhere I know my father can’t look. I have a cabin in Washington State—it’s a private place. You’ll be comfortable. I’ll take you there, tell them all I killed you and disposed of you like they taught me. We’ll come up with something to show him, some images, as proof. Alby, come with me—”

“You killed her,”
I tell him. “You killed her and you’re killing her again. Albion, what he did to you—”

“I remember everything,” says Albion.

“Listen to me: God changed me,” says Timothy.

“You’re wrapped up in all this death,” I tell him. “You’re trying to convince us of Christ, you’re trying to convince yourself that you’ve changed, but all you want is to take her away again, to keep her for yourself. Look at you. You’re desperate. You don’t look like a man who’s found peace—”

“I was never offered peace in this world,” says Timothy. “Every day I live with the weight of what I’ve done. I was never offered anything remotely like peace, but I am offered grace. I want to work to earn God’s grace—”

“Grace isn’t God’s to give,” says Albion. “Grace is ours to give.”

Timothy’s eyes are quavering pools, his face fatigued. He’s several inches shorter than Albion and watching them is like watching a supplicant before a queen.

“Let Dominic rest,” says Albion. “Timothy, we should talk. There are arrangements we need to make—”

Timothy injects me with medication from a clear bottle. Albion kisses my forehead, my eyes, my lips. I feel numbness beyond the numbness of the medication, like my soul has dropped through the darkness of the earth to slumber in the soil. I listen to the ringing in my ears like listening to chiming bells, straining to hear what Albion and Timothy are saying to each other, their voices at first just whispers but swelling into a clipped argument. I can’t distinguish their words—I try to listen, but the numbness swallows me just like it has swallowed every other pain.