Page 58 of Price of Angels

“Holly! Don’t run from me!”

The hall emptied into a gallery at the front of the building, one enclosed by a long row of tall windows that perched above the Bell Bar sign on the outer wall below. The light, she knew now, was coming in from the street, the glow of streetlamps and headlights and neon signage in the windows, and the silvery dim glow of the moon, lost amid the smeared yellows and golds of human light.

Holly pressed her hands to the thick glass and tried to catch her breath, watching the traffic pass below her. This was as close to private at they were going to get. No one could see them from the street. Nothing but moldering junk and old ghosts present to witness what happened up here.

Footsteps behind her.

She turned, the window at her back, cold against her shoulder blades, and the ambient light struck off the oversized, childlike angles of Dewey’s face.

His eyes were huge and wet, glimmering with tears. He approached her slowly, now that she was penned in, one hand hovering in the air like he wanted to reach for her, but wasn’t sure if he should.

“Holly,” he whispered. “Holly, we looked all over for you. We were so afraid something bad had happened to you.”

There’d been a time, before, when she’d felt some small shred of sympathy for this man-child, because he’d never been the one to strike her, or take the belt to her. The practitioner of tiny kindnesses in a world of cruelty, his lack of punishment a reward in and of itself.

But she hated him now, as badly as she hated the other two.

“What,” she said through her teeth, “bad could possibly happen to me out here? Away from you?”

Confusion creased his forehead. He took another step closer, and then another. “Holly, why’d you run away? Why would you do that? You know I love you.”

“Did you kill Carly?” she asked, seething, shaking as he crept even closer. “Was that you or Abraham?”

“Holly–”

“You thought it was me, didn’t you? And when you realized it wasn’t, it was too late, and she’d seen your face, and you killed her, so no one would know what you’d done.”

The tears slipped free and began pouring down his cheeks, shining like glass. He snuffled, his face contorting with emotion. “No, no, I didn’t do that–”

“You liar! Why are you here?” she demanded. “Can’t you find some other girl? Can’t you leave me alone?”

“Holly, we love you,” he sobbed. “And we forgive you, for what you did. We–”

His eyes widened, bugging out of his head. He gasped.

Then Holly saw the hand at the side of his neck, the bright glint of the knife blade that pressed across his throat.

“Not a sound.” Michael’s voice came like a low, canine growl from the shadows behind Dewey. His other hand, spectral as it emerged from the darkness, latched onto Dewey’s hair, fingers curling tight, pulling at the scalp.

Steered between the cruel grip on his hair and the sharp blade at his Adam’s apple, Dewey shuffled to the side, Michael a shadowy wraith materializing behind him, spinning him, pressing him back against the wall.

The knife shifted and flared as Dewey swallowed. He breathed in shallow huffs, the sweat gleaming on his face.

Michael seemed inhuman, the way he was so still and coiled, patient in his furious intent. Again, Holly thought of him as canine, like the running silhouette of a dog on the back of his leather cut. All his weight bore down on the hilt of the knife, all of his strength holding back the blade, keeping it from biting into the flesh.

“You want to say anything to him?” he asked her, and she saw the fast glint of his eyes, as he glanced over at her.

Holly shook her head. “No. Nothing.”

Dewey gasped, but Michael moved too fast for there to be a scream. There was no begging or pleading. Dewey’s gasp turned into a low, deep, outward press of breath, like the sound of air leaving an untied balloon.

With a fluid, sure motion, Michael whipped the knife back and drove it between Dewey’s ribs, leaning into the hilt with hands, arms, shoulders, letting his body force the blade through the skin and tissue, into the heart.

When he stepped back, Dewey’s lifeless legs crumpled, and he sank down against the wall. The knife was still in him. There was no blood. His head lolled to the side at an impossible slackness, his eyes open and fixed, his mouth agape.

Dead.

He was dead.

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