Chapters (73)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Prologue
- Part IAnnie
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Part IIHarry
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Part IIIAnnie
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Part IVHarry
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Part VAnnie
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Fifty-Four
- Fifty-Five
- Fifty-Six
- Fifty-Seven
- Fifty-Eight
- Fifty-Nine
- Sixty
- Sixty-One
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Also by Linwood Barclay
- About the Publisher
“Oh, sweetie,” Annie said. “I’m so glad you did. Reach up and let me give your hand a squeeze.”
As Annie lowered her hand toward him, he raised his up and their fingers touched.
Charlie placed something in Annie’s palm.
He did it, she thought. He got the message. And he might never have figured it out had Nabler not revealed himself to Charlie, however briefly.
She moved the object about in her hand, confirming that it was what she hoped it would be. The small sculpture she had made from plasticine. The rat-wolf figure that stood on its two hind legs that had come to her as a vision when she had sketched it out on a sheet of paper, and then created in three dimensions.
Why am I making this? she had wondered at the time. Now she knew.
“Thank you, Charlie,” she said, and then, with the last scintilla of free will in her possession, she swiftly brought the figure to her mouth and bit off its head.
Sixty
She wasn’t able to bite through the wire armature, of course. But her teeth sank right into it, and then she pulled away, tearing the molded head off the way one might rip the meat off a barbecued rib.
And then she spat it out.
Annie and Nabler dropped to the floor, their elevated embrace having come to an abrupt end.
She hit the floor on her side and rolled, while Nabler landed on his feet—or, more accurately, ratty paws—with his hands clutching his throat, a bluish-green liquid spilling out between his fingers. He let rip with a scream that drowned out the trains still stampeding about the layout.
A few tendrils of viscera, a brain stem, were all that linked his head to his body as he staggered about the room. Those tendrils gave way, and the head landed on the floor with a plop. But what amazed and horrified Annie was that he continued moving, the proverbial chicken with its head cut off.
Nabler wasn’t done.
Even without eyes, his body sensed where Annie was and came for her. She was still reeling from the fruity potion and Nabler’s embrace and was unsteady as she scrambled to her feet.
The timing, she believed—and hoped—was just about right. Charlie had shown up when she’d needed him most. She’d acquired enough power so that when she bit off that head, the so-called “mirroring” effect kicked in. But, judging by Nabler’s headless lunging in her direction, it hadn’t quite been enough.
She looked to her hand, to see what else she could do to the figure, but it was not there. In her fall, she had lost her grip on it.
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