The golden eyes were wide open, protruding from the dark, swollen sockets, staring sightlessly over Sharpe’s shoulder. Blood still poured between her purpled lips.
The body shuddered as though possessed by a violent ague, then went completely limp.
The baron continued to squeeze at the slender neck for several seconds, then he stopped and sat back on the body, his face puzzled. “Doomie’s can’t die,” he whispered.
He stood and kicked at the corpse, shaking his head when there was no resistance, wiping his hands down the front of his white robe, staring at the crimson smears. He looked at the dead woman, a small ocean of blood around her head, matting her black hair.
“Dead?” he said in a loud conversational voice. “Drowned in an ocean of crimson?”
JAK HAD OPENED THE DOOR silently, hearing strange grunting sounds from one of the farther rooms, then a silence.
“Dead? Drowned in an ocean of crimson?” The voice was unmistakably that of Baron Sean Sharpe.
Jak tiptoed onward, seeing a single shadow, motionless, thrown on the wall of the room that he was in, coming through the door of the chamber that he remembered held the bizarre mutie creature that lived deep beneath the surface of the pale sand in its cage.
“So? What the fuck do I care?” It was Baron Sharpe, but who was he talking to? “Plenty of doomies on the beach. And fish in the ocean. Ocean of crimson. Scarlet. Red. Bloodied ocean. Oh, yes, red is the color of my true love’s blood. Go down, you bloodred roses. The old song.” A peal of wild laughter chilled the heart of the albino teenager.
He stepped through the door and saw Sharpe standing there, his back to him, wearing a white robe that was streaked with blood. And lying on the floor at his feet was.
“Emma,” Jak said.
The baron swung around, his right hand falling to the butt of the satin-finish.357 Magnum Ruger GP-160 in his belt. And Jak saw that the crumpled front of his robe was totally sodden with blood.
Emma was lying still, on her back, arms spread wide, her golden eyes already fading in death. She was surrounded by a lake of blood.
“Ah, white-hair! See that your friend here is in a trance. She has been telling me such truths about living and. Living and partly living.”
“You sick bastard!”
For a moment Jak wished that he had taken back his own blaster from Ryan when he’d had the chance.
Regret was for roads not taken, and it was pointless.
“Sick murderous bastard!” he spit, feeling grief battling with a bloody rage.
Baron Sharpe was backing toward the glass wall of the container behind him, with its simulated desert landscape. Jak watched the two images of the man, one facing him, the other retreating in the mirrored glass.
The hand still rested on the butt of the Ruger, but the baron hadn’t drawn it. His milky blue eyes were looking at Jak, as though he were someone that Sharpe recognized from some previous incarnation. “Oh, yes, I think. Your name is Jak, isn’t it? I know you well, I think.”
“You killed Emma.” The voice was flat.
“No. She was dead when I found her.”
“Liar.” The accusation was no louder than a whisper.
“I am the baron of this ville. I am Sean Sharpe. No outlander child comes in here and calls me a liar.”
“Liar,” Jak repeated.
They were about fifteen feet apart.
Now, very slowly, like a lover’s caress, Sharpe had begun to draw the Ruger.
“Yes, I hear what. He will be. I will punish him myself. Yes, I will.”
The Ruger was halfway out.
“She was innocent and meant no harm. No reason chill her. Shouldn’t.”
“Hear my silver tongue, boy.” A crackle of loud laughter rang out, so loud that Ryan heard it as he approached the door to the mutie collection.
The Ruger was full-out, barrel questing toward the heart of the albino teenager.
“Die, mutie.” Baron Sharpe’s mouth was wide open in a smile of purest pleasure.
Jak’s fingers closed on the taped hilt of one of his delicate throwing knives, whipping it from behind his back with a snap of the wrist, sending the leaf-shaped, polished steel blade hissing to its target.