human male both froze. Then the delivery boy’s eyes popped wide and his hands went up. Jo, who was bent to the side and holding a pizza box awkwardly, looked like she would have done the same if she could have.
Then her eyes dropped down.
And . . . not to his weapon. As they peeled wide, she was clearly shocked at his nakedness.
“I just dropped the p-p-p-pizza,” the teenager stammered. “I swear. That was all.”
Jo moved slowly, righting herself. “I was taking the change from him at the same time—”
“—that the box slipped—”
“—out of his hands.”
Syn breathed in and smelled absolutely no fear at all coming from his female. Putting his weapon down by his thigh, he nodded.
“Y-y-you want a refund?” the delivery boy asked. “I can give you a refund. I mean, I messed up—”
“Whatever she wants goes,” Syn said as he stepped back into the bathroom and shut the door.
Hanging his head, he wondered what the hell was wrong with him.
Oh, wait. He knew that list all too well.
And one of the entries was that a gangster had ordered Syn to kill the very female . . . he had insisted on going home with.
Mr. F ran in a straight line. He ran fast. He ran quiet. With the speed of a sprinter and the endurance of a marathoner, he went deeper into the rough areas of Caldwell, to the places where he wouldn’t have trod back when he’d been on his wanders as an addict. He passed by apartments and then tenements and then crack dens that sprouted like weeds in abandoned buildings. And still he kept going, his breathing even and steady, his legs churning, his feet landing solidly.
No, no, no—
The word banged around his head to the rhythm of his footfalls, and every time it hit the inside of his skull, he saw an image of those dirty white robes, that spilling shadow under the hem, the menace that contaminated the night air with its arrival. He did not know its name, yet he recognized who it was.
The one who had found him under the bridge. The one who had taken him to that abandoned strip mall. The one who had drained him and filled him with something terrible—
The end of the alley arrived with no preamble. One minute Mr. F had an endless, shitty road ahead of him through the forest of tenements and drug houses. The next, his path was blocked by a twenty-foot-high chain-link fence littered with plastic bags, off-kilter “No Trespassing” signs, and random pieces of faded, dirty clothing. Like the thing was a strainer in a drain.
At least he knew this flimsy barrier wasn’t going to be a problem.
Taking a running jump, he sprung some ten feet up and gripped a hold into the links with fingers like steel cables. Hand over hand, he climbed for the coils of barbed wire at the top, his upper body strength so great that he could allow his legs to hang free—
A hand clamped on his ankle.
And as soon as the contact was made, the wash of feelings that went through Mr. F was horrible, every sadness he had ever felt, all the fears he had ever had, each regret that had ever dogged him, coalescing in the center of his chest, a pneumonia of emotion. As strangled gasps came out of his mouth and he pulled at the fencing, trying to get himself free, tears came to his eyes.
Because he knew who had come for him and he knew he was not getting out of it. And not just the grip on the bottom of his leg.
He had made a bargain, and the fact that it had been one-sided and he had not known what he was agreeing to, was not going to matter—
“Did you honestly think you could run from me?”
The voice didn’t come from under Mr. F’s feet. It came from back in the alley proper behind him. Craning a look over his shoulder, he saw the dingy robes standing some thirty feet away, and there was nothing corporeal that he could see on his ankle. Yet the grip was even stronger now, pulling him down, dragging him back to the asphalt, back toward the evil.
“Truly,” the warping voice said. “Did you think you could get away from the likes of me, your creator. Your master.”
Mr. F fought the drag with everything he had, his fingers ripping down the links, the fence rattling, a black stain streaking on the vertical