But how? He tried to recall how she’d done it, but the procedures were too elaborate-the washing, the silence-and surely he had scant opportunity to make his voyage before circumstances changed. His only source of hope lay in the fact of his bloody shirt-the way he’d felt, on his way here, that Carys had snapped some barrier in his head, and that the damage, once done, was permanent. Perhaps his mind could go to her through the wound she’d opened, tracing her scent as relentlessly as she’d pursued his.
He closed his eyes, shutting off the hallway and Whitehead and the body lying at the European’s feet. Sight was a trap; she’d said that once. Effort too. He must let go. Let instinct and imagination take him where sense and intellect could not.
He conjured her, effortlessly, putting the bleak fact of her corpse out of his head and evoking instead her living smile. In his mind he spoke her name and she came to him in a dozen moments: laughing, naked, puzzled, contrite. But he let the particulars go, leaving only her essential presence in his aching head.
He was dreaming her. The wound was open, and it pained him to touch it again. Blood was running into his open mouth, but the sensation was a distant phenomenon. It had little to do with his present condition, which was increasingly dislocated. He felt as though he was slipping his body off. It was redundant: waste matter. The ease of the procedure astonished him; his only anxiety vas that he’d become too eager; he had to control his exhilaration for fear he throw caution to the wind and be discovered.
He could see nothing; hear nothing. The state he moved in-did he even move?-was not susceptible to the senses. Now, though he had no proof of the perception, he was sure he was abstracted from his body. It was behind, below him: an untenanted shell. Ahead of him, Carys. He would dream his way to her.
And then, just as he had thought he could take pleasure in this extraordinary journey. Hell opened in front of him-
Mamoulian, too intent on the Razor-Eater, felt nothing as Marty breached him. Breer made a half-run forward, lifting the machete and aiming a blow at the European. He sidestepped to avoid it with perfect economy but Breer pivoted around for a second strike with startling speed, and this time, more by chance than direction, the machete glanced down Mamoulian’s arm, slicing into the cloth of his dark gray suit.
“Chad,” the European said, not taking his eyes off Breer.
“Yes?” the blond boy replied. He was still leaning on the wall beside the door, posed there like an indolent hero; he had found Whitehead’s cache of cigars, pocketing several and lighting one. He blew a cloud of dusty blue smoke, and watched the gladiators through a blur of drink. “What do you want?”
“Find the pilgrim’s gun.”
“Why?”
“For our visitor.”
“Kill him yourself,” Chad replied nonchalantly, “you can do it.”
Mamoulian’s mind revolted at the thought of laying his flesh on such decay; better a bullet. At close range it would lay the Razor-Eater to waste. Without a head even the dead couldn’t walk.
“Fetch the gun!” he demanded.
“No,” Chad replied. The Reverend had said plain speaking was best.
“This is no time for games,” Mamoulian said, taking his attention off Breer for a moment to glance across at Chad. It was an error. The dead man swung the machete again, and this time the blow found Mamoulian’s shoulder, lodging in the muscle close to his neck. The European made no sound but a grunt as the blow fell, and a second as Breer pulled the blade out of its niche.
“Stop,” he told his assailant.
Breer shook his head. This was what he had come for, wasn’t it? This was the prelude to an act he’d waited so long to perform.
Mamoulian put his hand up to the wound at his shoulder. Bullets he could take and survive; but a more traumatic attack, one that compromised the integrity of his flesh-that was dangerous. He had to finish Breer off, and if the Saint wouldn’t fetch the gun then he’d have to kill the Razor-Eater with his bare hands.