Chapters (70)
- Also By Lindsay Ellis and Available From Titan Books
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Author’s Note
- Part 1: It’s A Fool Who Plays It Cool
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- Part 2: Love Has A Nasty Habit Of Disappearing Overnight
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- Part 3: A Crowd Of People Stood And Stared
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- Part 4: Happiness Is A Warm Gun
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- A Fiction Agreed Upon
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
“Where is he?” Obelus repeated, posture unmistakably antagonistic. “I demand that you take me to him.”
She wondered if he could tell how afraid she was, how loud her breathing was in this goddamn reverberant cave. “No.”
“Your kind cannot fathom him,” said Obelus. “My dear symphyle needs his own kind. He will only do harm to yours. Take me to him, simple creature. You are beneath all of this.”
Even with his memories “suppressed,” his vile personality was still intact. Perhaps there was much he didn’t remember, but he knew their relationship within the amygdaline hierarchy, and in his mind, Cora was so far beneath them they might as well be using different units of measurement. Simple creature. Disposable animals. Nonpersons.
Vincent.
The adrenaline that had been gasoline on her terror was now gasoline on a plume of rage. This was still the same person, the same monster. The same murderer. She raised the pulse emitter toward him. Obelus clearly knew exactly what that was and what she was doing, because his antagonistic posture only sharpened, and he backed away. “Why do you do this?”
She stood up, shoving the pill bug into her jacket pocket, images flashing in her mind as answers to his question. Obelus disintegrating the blast door at NORAD. Obelus digging his claws into her body, ripping her to shreds. Vincent Park giving her the Yamaha guitar. Vincent Park half-conscious in the back of a van after an accident Obelus had caused. Vincent Park turned to dust.
“Because you killed my friend.”
She fired, and the flashlight shorted, plunging her into darkness, and it was only here that she realized how poorly she had thought this through. That rage plume was immediately doused by terror. She heard something, perhaps Obelus stumbling. In a panic, she pushed the trigger, but nothing happened.
Fumbling, she backed away from him, spilling the batteries out of the flashlight, switching them around, and then jamming them back in, bashing them until the light turned back on, shining it at the cave entrance. Obelus seemed like he was righting himself.
Then something changed in Obelus’s posture, his expression. His eyes flashed, focused. Something inside him that had been previously severed had now reconnected.
He recognized her.
She raised the now-drained pulse emitter, but before she could even press another impotent click, a telekinetic shove knocked it out of her hand, and a second one threw her onto her back, causing her to drop the flashlight. She scrambled to get it back, whipping it back toward the entrance of the cave, only to find it no longer blocked.
Obelus was gone.
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