Church thinks that Nicodemus infected me with the Darkness. Maybe he did, but if so, it was an infection laid down on top of something already boiling out of the lowest places in my soul. Maybe the reason that the Darkness did not turn me suicidal or make me take innocent lives was that it was not wholly a product of Nicodemus’s magic—if magic was even the right word. Whatever that trickster son of a bitch did to me was added to what Santoro had already conjured in the dark soil of my damaged psyche. The poet Baudelaire wrote about flowers of hate. Yes, they have grown wild in me, yielding strange fruits.

I didn’t rush at Santoro, or he at me.

It was as if the madness outside this room no longer belonged to either of us. This hallway was the whole world. I raised the Snellig, barrel pointed to the ceiling. He had a Beretta in his waistband, and he took it out with two fingers. We nodded and each set our weapons down on the floor and kicked them away. Then I took the Wilson knife and drove the point an inch deep into the wall. Santoro nodded again and removed a stiletto from a concealed sheath and did the same.

Now we were unarmed.

I have plenty of soldier friends who would think this was stupid. Two grown professionals in the middle of a war fighting a duel. But those people weren’t here. They weren’t Santoro or me. They weren’t in our heads or hearts. They didn’t share our histories. They couldn’t and wouldn’t understand. Nor would their understanding matter. They, like the rest of the world, did not exist for us as we walked slowly toward one another.

There were no taunts, no gibes, no trash talk. His eyes were filled with strange lights. I could once more see shadows creeping into the corners of my awareness. In my heart, the Darkness was struggling to break free. It wanted this as much as I did. The Darkness did not share its reasons with me, and I did not allow it to see into my mind.

There were fewer than six feet between me and Rafael Santoro.

I think we both moved at exactly the same moment.

CHAPTER 178

EAST TEXAS CONVENTION CENTER

LABORDE, TEXAS

Toys had never fought anyone as brutal and quick as Stafford.

Of course, he’d never fought Joe Ledger, and he imagined this was what it would be like. No flashy moves, no concessions to style. Just combat.

Stafford’s technique was basic, but his speed and power were incredible.

From the beginning of the fight, Toys realized that he was very likely going to die.