slayer's chest and repeated the punch over and over again, battering the skull until the bone helmet went soft. And he just kept going, sticking to the task until the very structure of the man's face let go, the head becoming a loose bag, his opponent dead and then some.
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"Finish him!" Xavier called from the sidelines.
Van looked up, panting hard. "I just did."
"No...finish him!"
"How?"
"You should know what to do!" Xavier's pale eyes shined with an eerie desperation. "You must!"
Van wasn't clear on exactly how much deader he could make the guy, but he grabbed the lesser by the ears and twisted until the neck snapped. Then he eased off the body. Though he had no heart that beat anymore, his lungs burned and his body was deliciously logy from exertion... except the logy didn't last.
He started to laugh. Already the strength was returning to him, just pouring in from somewhere else as if he'd eaten and slept and recovered for days.
Xavier's boots landed hard in the ring and the Fore-lesser strode over, furious. "I told you to finish him, goddamn it."
"Uh-huh. Right." Christ. Xavier just had to suck the triumph out of the moment. "You think he's walking away from this?"
Xavier shook with rage as he took out a knife. "I told you to finish him."
Van tensed up and leaped to his feet. But Xavier just bent over that messy, punching bag of a lesser and stabbed the thing in the chest. There was a flash of light and then... gone. Nothing but black smudges on the ring's tarmac.
Van backed up until he hit the fencing. "What the hell..."
From across the way, Xavier pointed the knife right at Van's chest. "I have expectations for you."
"Like... what?"
"You should be able to do that"-he jabbed toward the disintegration mark with the blade-"on your own."
"So give me a knife next round."
Xavier shook his head, a bizarre kind of panic flaring in his face. "Fuck!" He paced around, then muttered,
"It's just going to take time. Let's go."
"What about the blood?" Man, that oily black stuff suddenly made him dizzy.
"Like I give a shit?" Xavier picked up the dead lesser's duffel bag and left.
As Van followed him out of the parking garage, he found it really fucking annoying that Mr. X was playing it like this. The fight had been a good one and Van had won. He wanted to enjoy the feeling.
In strained silence, the two of them headed for the minivan, which was parked blocks away. As they went along, Van scrubbed his face with a towel and tried not to curse. When they got to the car, Xavier slid behind Page 173
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the wheel.
"Where are we going?" Van asked as he got in.
Xavier didn't answer, just started to drive, so Van stared out the windshield, wondering how he could get away from the guy. Not easily, he suspected.
As they passed by a new skyscraper that was going up, he eyed the men pulling the nightshift. Under electric lights, the union crews were all over the building like ants, and he envied them even though he'd hated doing what they did.
Man, if he were still one of them, he wouldn't be dealing with Mr. X's crap attitude.
On a whim, Van lifted his right hand and looked at his missing pinkie, remembering how he'd done it. So fucking stupid. He'd been at a construction site, cutting boards on a table saw, and decided to take the guards off the machine to make the process go faster. One lapse of focus later and his finger had ended up flying through the air with the greatest of ease. The blood loss had seemed tremendous, the stuff leaking all over him, covering the saw's flat back, soaking into the ground. Red, not black.
Van put his hand to his chest and felt nothing beating behind his breastbone.
Anxiety trembled down the back of his neck, like spiders slipping under his collar. He glanced at Xavier, the only resource he had. "Are we alive?"
"No."
"But that guy was killed, right? So we must be alive."
Xavier's eyes shot across the seat. "We're not alive. Trust me."
"What happened to him, then?"
Exhaustion flared in Xavier's pale, dead stare, the drooping of his lids making him look like he was a million years old.
"What happened to him, Mr. X?"
The Fore-lesser didn't answer, just kept on driving.
Chapter Twenty-four
Marissa materialized on the terrace of Rehvenge's penthouse and nearly collapsed. As she lurched for the sliding door, he opened it