Crawler wiped at the scarlet streaming from his lacerated lower lip. “He knew nothing about it. It was the plot of only onea broken man, a man your poxed great-grandfather ruined, a man you turned into a beast.”
Baron Sharpe snarled, “You’re not a man!”
Crawler laughed again. “Once I had a wife, and sons and daughters and property. That made me a man. Then my sons were murdered by Sharpe’s sec men, my wife and daughters raped and slaughtered. I was tossed into a stinking cell in a zoo. I was crippled. I was no longer a man, so I was left there to rot and die. But I glimpsed the future and knew that if I struggled to stay alive, I would one day regain my manhood and have my revenge!”
Kane felt like a spectator to the final curtain of a generations-long drama. At the moment, all he could do was watch the last act wind down to its conclusion.
The baron’s eyelids flickered madly, as if he were trying to stem a flow of tears. He stammered, ‘ ‘I took care of you, Crawler. Nurtured you. Loved you.”
Crawler shrieked with hate-filled laughter, blood spraying from his mouth. “If you loved me, it was as a pet! I heard an old saying once…’every dog has its day.’ This is my day, hellspawn!”
The baron trained the subgun on Crawler’s head. “Your last day. Your life is over.”
“If I had a hundred lives, I’d sacrifice them all to buy your doom.” Crawler’s gaze slid back to Kane. “Chill him now. I saw the hatred you harbor for the barons in your heart. This is your opportunity to release it. Cfjl him.”
The temptation to do so was so intense, Kane’s finger fluttered over the Sin Eater’s trigger. He had not followed through on killing Baron Cobalt, even when he had throttled the half-human monster unconscious.
Baron Sharpe stared at him, wide blue eyes wondering, not frightened. Kane realized the insane, hybrid wretch didn’t truly comprehend what was happening.
Kane relaxed his finger on the trigger. He wasn’t about to be manipulated, used like a pawn to commit someone else’s murders. He had done enough of that as a Magistrate.
“No,” he said in a whisper. “You do it.”
Crawler croaked desperately, “I have no weapon.”
“I thought you could sniff death in the offing. Didn’t your doom sight clue you in that if you want this sick son of a bitch dead, you’d have to do it yourself?”
Baron Sharpe tilted his head up at an arrogant angle. “I cannot die.” He turned his back, the rhinestone letters TCB glittering dully. “Do you know what that stands for?”
Kane ventured, “The Creepy Bastard?”
“No!” The baron whirled back around, fringes whipping to and fro. “It means I have already crossed over and back.”
Crawler’s shoulders shook, his body heaved as if in a spasm. Throwing his head back, he laughed until the walls of the passageway rang. Tears flowed down his cheeks in a floodtide.
Baron Sharpe stared down at him impassively, then his lips twitched, parted and he began to laugh, too, a high, quavery titter with notes of hysteria in it. Kane watched and listened and felt slightly ill. He recognized the emotional bond between these two, a symbiosis of hatred and dependence so complex and strong it was the only passion either one of them felt.
Like the interdependent relationship he had shared with Salvo, they needed that hatred as a confirmation they were alive. But Kane had ended his relationship with a bullet.
Crawler plucked urgently at the baron’s leg. “Chill me, my Lord,” he said, his voice choked by sobbing laughter. “Do me this one favor.”
Baron Sharpe cackled. “You got it.”
He leaned down and placed the bore of the Copperhead against Crawler’s forehead. “Crossing over isn’t that bad, you know.”
“I’ll wait for you in Hell,” Crawler promised.
“Don’t do it, Baron,” Kane said warningly.
Baron Sharpe glanced at him, stuck out his tongue impudently and returned his gaze to Crawler.
Kane’s finger reflexively pressed the Sin Eater’s trigger. The blaster thundered once, a short spurt of flame licking from the muzzle. The bullet caught Baron Sharpe high in the chest, smashing through the clavicle, the sledgehammer impact shattering ribs and bowling him off his feet. The Copperhead clattered to the floor.