“Very good,” Chien said.
“See? She does not say ‘very well.’”
“Well, maybe I do,” Duvalier said tightly.
“A risk few will notice.”
“Security won’t let her get much done, unless she’s got a backpack nuke along with that Kurian.”
“Oh, you think the disguise is to work a nasty mass murder of delegates? You could not be more wrong. This disguise is just a temporary one, in order to get in close enough contact to—well, it is best if that stays a secret as well.
“We don’t need the original anymore,” Von Krebs said. “I intend to mix pleasure and pain with you from here until your death. It will only help me evolve into the higher form the Kurian Order has put me on the stairs of becoming.”
He was insane.
She tested the cuffs. He’d put them on too tightly for her to wriggle out. Once an Oklahoma police reservist had taken her into custody and put her in cuffs. When she whined that they were too tight, he loosened them—after all, she was in the back of his car and there was a steel grate between them… .
He was dead within two minutes of loosening the cuffs. She’d straightened the wire necklace she’d been wearing—it was an old coat hanger—and stabbed him in the eye when he turned around to check on her after she faked a bloody nose.
They’d made a mistake. The handcuffs were sound enough, but the chair they’d put her in was a relic. She kicked herself backward, and as she hit the ground the backrest splintered.
She bent her spine, wriggled through the cuffs, a difficult feat for anyone but a young gymnast or a Cat. She got her foot against the chain and pushed hard. A hand came out, bloody.
The pain would only help.
The Kurian doppelgänger backed away. It was odd to see herself look panicked.
Von Krebs stepped forward, a long-bladed Liston knife in his hand. She picked up the broken chair and hurled it at him. He ducked just long enough for her to get to the Other Duvalier.
She got nails and teeth into the bitch and the disguise vanished. Instead she was wrestling with a living umbrella of muscle.
Von Krebs came, blade held high, and she rolled, putting the Kurian between herself and the Mitteleuropean. He altered his slash, but still took a chunk out of the Kurian’s back.
That sent a shock through the Asian girl and her face writhed in pain. Well, dance with the devil and he’ll step all over your toes. Von Krebs himself recoiled in horror that he’d injured a Kurian.
No time to let up. She drove stiffened fingers into Chien’s throat and the girl coughed blood like she’d been given the Heimlich.
The Kurian released its grip on the naked girl and humped across the floor. Duvalier stomped hard on its back and it folded up around her leg, clawing. She drove the heel of her foot in hard, dragging it across the floor as she went after Von Krebs, leaving a trail of bloody bluish slime that was the Kurian’s juice. The grip began to relax, but it still had the hook-tipped tentacles in her flesh.
“Stay back,” Von Krebs said, waving the long knife.
“Fuck you. Traitor.”
He probably saw the hate in her eyes. He came at her while the Kurian was still fighting. She dropped and he overshot, tripping over her and dropping the knife.
They both reached for it and she got the handle before he did; his fingers closed on the blade in what turned into bloody agony. She relished the feel of pulling the blade out of his grip, knowing she was severing flesh and blood. She threw herself across him and opened his throat, cutting off his scream with a wet, blubbering cry.
Throwing on her coat, she hurried away from the lighthouse. No telling what kind of alarm had been sounded. Of course, they were expecting a version of her to be returning to the conference… .
Risking a trip through the dilapidated little village that they’d avoided on the way up, she saw a small house under guard. Boards were nailed across the windows and the door had a chain on it. Perhaps the small Finnish garrison was being held prisoner inside.
Why not just kill them and free up the manpower? she wondered.
Perhaps the Reapers needed feeding.
She hurried down to the dock that held the Windkraft.
“Ist das—”