He moved suddenly, his good hand snatching at Breer’s throat before the other had a chance to retaliate. The European’s slender fingers dug through the mush and closed around Breer’s esophagus. Then he pulled, hard. A goodly portion of Breer’s neck came away in a splutter of grease and fluids. There was a sound like escaping steam.
Chad applauded, cigar in mouth. In the corner where he’d collapsed Tom had stopped whimpering and was also watching the mutilation. One man fighting for his life, the other for his death. Hallelujah! Saints and sinners all together.
Mamoulian flung the fistful of muck away. Despite his formidable injury, the Razor-Eater was still standing.
“Must I tear you apart?” Mamoulian said. Even as he spoke, something scrabbled inside him. Was the girl still fighting her confinement?
“Who’s there?” he asked softly.
Carys answered. Not to Mamoulian, but to Marty. Here, she said. He heard her. No, not heard: felt. She summoned him, and he followed.
The itch in Marty was in seventh heaven. Too late to help her, it said: too late for anything now.
But she was close by, he knew it, her presence choking back his panic. I’m with you, she said. Two of us now.
The itch was unimpressed. It smirked at the thought of escape. You’re sealed up forever, it said, better concede it. If she can’t get out, why should you be able to?
Two, Carys said. Two of us now. For the frailest of moments he caught the intention in her words. They were together, and together they were more than a sum of their parts. He thought of their locking anatomies-the physical act that was metaphor for this other unity. He’d never understood until now. His mind jubilated. She was with him: he with her. They were one indivisible thought, imagining each other.
Go!
And Hell divided; it had no choice. The province fragmented as they delivered themselves out of the European’s grasp. They experienced a few exquisite moments as one mind, and then gravity-or whatever law pertained in this state-demanded its lot. Division came-a rude expulsion from this momentary Eden-and they were plumeting now toward their own bodies, the conjunction over.
Mamoulian felt their escape as a wounding more traumatic than any Breer had so far delivered. He put his finger up to his mouth, a look of pitiful loss on his face. Tears came freely, diluting the blood on his face. Breer seemed to sense a cue in this: his moment had come. An image had spontaneously appeared in his liquefying brain-like one of the grainy photographs in his book of atrocities-except that this image moved. Snow fell; the flames of a brazier danced.
The machete in his hand felt heavier by the second: more like a sword. He raised it; its shadow fell across the European’s face.
Mamoulian looked at Breer’s ruined features and recognized them; saw how it had all come to this moment. Bowed under a weight of years, he fell to his knees.
As he was doing so, Carys opened her eyes. There had been a vile, grinding return; more terrible for Marty than for herself, who was used to the sensation. But it was never entirely pleasant to feel muscle and fat congeal around the spirit.
Marty’s eyes had opened too, and he was looking down at the body he occupied. It was heavy, and stale. So much of it-the layers of skin, the hair, the nails-was dead matter. Its very substance revolted him. Being in this state was a parody of the freedom he’d just tasted. He started up from his slumped position with a small cry of disgust, as if he’d woken to find his body crawling with insects.
He looked across to Carys for reassurance, but her attention had been claimed by a sight concealed from Marty by the partially closed door.
She was watching a spectacle she knew from somewhere. But the point of view was different, and it took awhile for her to place the scene: the man on his knees, his neck exposed, his arms spread a little from his body, fingers splayed in the universal gesture of submission; the executioner, face’ blurred, raising the blade to decapitate his willing victim; somebody laughing somewhere nearby.