Page 73 of King Among the Dead

She gulped, and glanced toward Beck, who stared at Castor with glittering contempt.

Castor, who’d been dead earlier. Who Beck had shot through the heart.

He hadn’t changed clothes. Wore the same suit as before, minus his tie, his white shirt soaked through with dried blood.

He smiled, and his teeth were stained red; his face was flecked with it. “There he is. King Arthur. It’s been a long time, Augustus.”

Beck surged forward, straining at his bonds, tendons standing out sharp in his throat. But he couldn’t get loose, and subsided with a deep exhale that lifted the damp hair from his face.

“You’re still an excellent shot,” Castor continued, and unbuttoned his jacket. Beneath, the shirt was dark and crusted with dried blood. He unbuttoned it, and parted the halves…to reveal smooth, unblemished skin. No sign of a gunshot wound. “But something you failed to learn long ago: having the right sort of friends trumps having the right sort of skills every time.”

The conduit, Rose realized with a lurch. The shot had hit the mark, but the conduit had healed the damage. Had saved his life.

Beck rebelled against his bonds again with a curse.

Castor threw his head back and laughed. “God, you’re just the same. Just as stubborn and violent as ever. Did you learn anything from your brother? Can’t you understand you’ll never be anything, Arthur?”

His glittering gaze shifted to Rose, and she stilled, sucked in a quick breath. “I’m surprised to see you’re no longer working alone, though. You’ve made an…interesting…choice in a slaughter partner.”

He started toward her, slow and deliberate, and the revulsion that stirred in her belly threatened to make her sick.

Rose tried to shrink backward; her hands curled to fists…and she felt the cool, hard length of the knife strapped to her forearm. She and Beck both had one. Had secured them in the sheaths, with their straps, beneath the long sleeves of their shirts, before they collapsed into bed.Just in case, he’d said. It was something he did often: sleeping armed. If she could get to hers...

But she was tied tight, and couldn’t move; could only lift her chin in defiance and watch as Castor came to stand over her, reeking of dried blood.

He grinned, head tilting to the side. It was an agile, unnerving, predatory movement on Beck, but one of graceless indifference on this man. He wasn’t someone who ever had to do his own dirty work. He wasn’t looking for weak points, or giving her a proper scrutiny.

“Pretty,” he pronounced. “But young. Too young for this work, I would think.”

One of the death squad goons cracked an ugly laugh. “I didn’t even think he went for girls.”

“Nah,” another one chimed in, “remember those hookers?”

“Oh, yeah. He likes girlssometimes.”

“He likes killing,” another said, and all three of them cackled.

Castor snapped his fingers, and they all fell silent at once. He gave Rose one last, lingering look, and then moved to stand over Beck. “You’ve been busy, Becket. Very busy.”

At no point in the time she’d known him had Rose been afraid of Beck. She wasn’t afraid now – but the way he looked at Castor sent a chill rippling down her back. “Not busy enough,” he said, voice flat, stare vicious.

Castor’s smile was more of a grimace. “You don’t even realize how pathetic you are, do you?” He leaned down, so their faces were nearly level, and Beck’s whole body went rigid with tension as he strained at his bonds. “You can hate me all you want; you can be full of a breathtaking amount of rage. But you areone man, and I amthis city.”

He straightened, and turned; walked back to the center of the room where his conduit stood.

Rose tried to catch Beck’s eye, staring at his taut profile, willing him to glance her way. But he didn’t; didn’t even blink. A muscle leaped in his jaw.

One of Castor’s guards had come to his side – the stern-faced one from before, who’d poured the conduit’s blood into the vat at the factory. His jaw was clenched nearly as tight as Beck’s; his gaze, dark and hooded, swept toward her – one brief, shocking moment of eye contact that conveyed how very displeased he was with this whole situation – then settled respectfully on the floor at his boss’s feet. He extended a small bundle on flat palms, one that Castor unwrapped with an almost delicate touch. A dagger: gleaming, sharp-edged, with an obsidian handle set with rubies. It was comically overwrought…but the sight of it winking in the lamplight as Castor lifted it filled her with fresh dread.

There waspowerin that weapon. It fairly pulsed with it.

“You know,” Castor mused, turning back to face them – to face Beck. She wasn’t relevant here, and she wasn’t going to say anything to make herself so. Was going to continue twisting her wrists subtly, working at the knots that bound her. They were tight, and tied well, but if she could just get the knife in her sleeve loose… “I should really be thanking you, Becket. It was your obsession that led me down the path to research. The path to this.” He gestured with the dagger, seeming to encompass the chalk circles and runes on the floor. “I have the means to bring it to fruition, but you – you had the imagination.” He offered a nasty grin, and a waggle of the dagger tip that seemed to sayoh, you.

Rose heard the quiet sound of an indrawn breath. Beck: he’d sat up straight and stiff; his brow had cleared.

Castor beamed. “Do you understand, now?”

Rose searched the edges of the drawn circles with her gaze, followed them in to their center – to the pentagram.

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