The Last Smile in Sunder City (The Fetch Phillips Archives #1) - Luke Arnold Page 0,97

ribs, put one knife between my legs and another on my throat.

“I have been ordered to clean up this mess, Mr Phillips. I might as well start with you.”

30

I was strapped to my chair. First, he used the cord. That probably would have done a good enough job (the kid knew his knots) but then he went down to the broken filing cabinet and came back with the rest of the rope. Every inch of line I’d used in my trap was now wrapped around my body.

The kid hadn’t gagged me but I didn’t have much to say. I was still too thrown by the story he’d told me, wondering what it meant for Rye or for January or for the world as we know it.

Flyboy sat down on the desk and looked at me. His two knives were out. Without them, I probably would have kept struggling till he knocked me unconscious but the shine on the blades settled me down.

“I’ve been on the same trail as you have,” he said. “With more tact, of course. More care. But the same dead ends, it seems. I only saw the Professor once. Weeks ago, along with Samuel Dante and Sydney Grimes. I was the one that told them about the evolution.

“That’s what I’ve been doing for months: traveling the continent, informing League members outside The Chamber on what’s been happening. It’s protocol not to put anything about the Marrowkin in writing. You can imagine why. The oldest members of the Blood Race still remember what it was like when they were treated as a curse. Hunted. If this news got out, Vampires would go straight back to being the pariahs of society. They couldn’t survive that kind of treatment. Not any more.”

“So, you really are just the messenger.”

He shrugged. “At first. Then, one of the Marrowkin came to Sunder, trying to recruit others to the cause. Sydney and Samuel played along, like they were going to defect from the League and join up with the other side. They set a trap and they sacrificed their lives killing the traitor. I received a letter from Samuel, asking me to return. By the time I got back, the teahouse was full of corpses, Rye was gone, and you were going around town making an idiot of yourself.”

Well, that explained a few things, but not what really mattered.

“You think Rye is dead?” I asked.

“I did. But…”

“The girl.”

“Yes.” He sighed. “The girl.”

He was tired. Tired and frustrated. But there was something else. Something I recognized because I spent so much time wrestling with it myself. The kid was ashamed.

“What did you do wrong?” I asked.

He looked up, shocked that I’d read his mind so clearly. But, like most guilty men, he was eager to unburden himself.

“It’s a risk every time, delivering this information. We need League members to know what they’re up against but there’s always a chance it goes the other way. It was my job to assess which members could be trusted. Looking at the Professor, knowing his mind, I thought there was no way he could…”

“No way the kind-hearted teacher would turn himself into a monster? Of course not. A few weeks ago he was happy to fade into the darkness because he didn’t have a choice. Then you came along, Flyboy. You told him a story and you gave him a little bit of hope.”

He nodded. He knew that when this whole thing wrapped up, there would be bloody fingerprints leading all the way back to the choices he’d made and the chances he’d missed. In truth, I was worried about the same thing.

“Quit moping, kid, and let’s put our heads together. Have there been any other signs of him since you got back in town?”

“No. None.”

“So he could have left.”

“Perhaps, but I don’t think so. New Marrowkin don’t move around a lot. Not till they get readjusted to the limitations. The one that came here, the one they killed in the teahouse, he was one of the first. He’d been that way for months. It took him a long time to start traveling.”

“You’ve lost me, kid. What limitations?”

He looked at me, slowly. He was putting something together in his head and decided he didn’t want to share the pieces.

“I shouldn’t be talking to you,” he said, getting up.

“Hey, Flyboy, wait! We can be a team on this. Maybe there’s something I’ve found out that you haven’t.”

He didn’t even bother to answer. He’d found his own little kernel of hope