Page 72 of Unbound

“Fuck the pair of you and fuck your families,” I said, and then there was nothing else to say. I was cuffed and outnumbered and maybe if I did as I was told, Lili might live to see another day.

I got out of the car, stood barefoot on the sharp, icy gravel and raised my face to the biting November sleet. When I breathed in I could taste seasalt.

Both gardai were right behind me now. Stevenson cleared his throat. “Right, Strachan. We need you to move away from the vehicle. Nice and slow, like.” He was trying so hard to sound authoritarian, but his voice cracked.

I turned to face the pair of craven fuckers one last time. “I hope the pair of you rot in hell,” I said, and began to walk.

Confiteor Deo omnipotenti

One step. I picture Lilith the first time I ever see her, a furious and beautiful mermaid on a flickering TV screen

Beatæ Mariæ semper Virgini

And another. Lilith in the lair of Albermarle, defiant and incorruptible

Beato Michaeli Archangelo

Three. I feel the shards of broken glass slice into the soles of my feet. I feel Lilith’s cool, assured hands rubbing arnica into my flayed back

Beato Ioanni Baptistæ

Four steps now. How many more will they let me take? I take a deep breath and imagine Lilith’s clean scent replacing the stench of rotten seaweed and diesel corrupting my lungs

Sanctis Apostolis Petro et Paulo

Five. I still haven’t stopped. Haven’t looked back. I’ve loved the most amazing woman

Omnibus Sanctis et tibi pater

Six. And she’s loved me. Could be worse

Quia peccavi nimis cogitatione verbo et opere

Seven steps. Blood from my torn feet mingles with the puddles made by the rain and fret. Might become evidence, proof that I was walking away, not running, when… No. Don’t even think the word

Mea culpa

Eight

Mea culpa

Nine

Mea maxima culpa

“Do it,” a voice says behind me. I don’t know which one it is

My world explodes in an endless fractal of light and pain

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Lilith

I spotted the battered decorator’s van as soon as I stepped out of the Rossmont’s staff exit. Once upon a time it must have been white but now it was hardly more than a filthy, rusting shell on wheels, and I doubted it had been declared roadworthy any time in the last decade. It was parked in the shadows but I could still make out the unmistakable hulking form of Ciaran O’Halloran hunched in the driver’s seat.

I willed my legs to work and walked over as confidently as I could manage. Ciaran wound down the window an inch, and I saw the array of bruises that Finn had inflicted the day before. The man’s left eye appeared to be entirely swollen shut, and his scabbed nose looked like a horror-movie prosthetic. “Good Lord you’re a mess, aren’t you?” I said, in what I hoped was my most annoying laconic tone, “You look like you fell face-first into a cement mixer.”

For long seconds he didn’t say anything and I watched him open and close his battered mouth like a sad goldfish as he searched for some kind of comeback. He failed to find one. “Just shut your fucking mouth, unlock your phone and hand it to me,” he demanded. “Then get yerself in the back. Quickly. Don’t make me use this now.” He pulled his denim jacket to one side to show me his Glock resting in a crossbody holster and I wondered how long it had taken him to get rid of his hard-on and move away from the mirror when he’d first fastened the straps.