Chapter 184 183: The Face

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The attic lamp buzzed and flickered.

Serena's eyes went wide.

Behind the stranger, a black shape clung to the wall like a gecko—hair hanging loose, a paring knife already high in its fist.

She never got the warning out.

Soren didn't turn. He pivoted at the hip and drove a side kick into whatever was dropping on him.

The body left the floor, smashed through the attic wall, and vanished. Three stories down, something heavy hit wet earth.

"Fine," Soren said. "You already saw me. Might as well take you both."

He stepped through the hole and dropped to the lawn.

The thing in the mud wore pink silk pajamas. It was trying to get its limbs under it. Soren walked over and put a boot on its back, pinning it into the dirt.

He crouched, pushed the wet hair aside, and finally saw the face.

"Ugly."

Worse than the deformed things he'd already met.

There was no skin. Raw red tissue bulged in the open air. A bare eyeball sat loose in the meat, rolling as the body struggled. Rain-soaked black hair stuck to the flesh in clumps.

He looked again. Then he looked at the pajamas.

Something was off.

A normal set buttoned down the front. This one had no buttons on the chest at all. The collar sat on the back.

"You've got to be kidding—"

A horror movie surfaced. A husband catches his wife at the mirror in the middle of the night. He lifts the hair at the nape of her neck and finds a second face smiling at him from the back of her head.

Purple power gathered behind Soren. A spectral hand closed on the monster's throat and hauled it off the ground.

The hand turned the body.

Even ready for it, his scalp crawled.

Watching it on a screen and standing in the rain with it were not the same thing. The sickness didn't come from how grotesque the raw side was. It came from a human face appearing where a human face had no business being. The uncanny valley, live and close enough to touch.

The other side was a different woman entirely.

Fine features. Mud in her hair, but the bone structure underneath was still clean. Eyes shut. Skin bloodless. She looked deeply unconscious, gone from the world.

"Two faces. One body."

Soren looked from the sleeping face to the snarling wreck on the reverse.

Born that way—or built that way later?

He didn't stay in the rain to decide. He went back through the hole in the wall, dragged the body with him, and lashed it to a second post.

Then he tapped Serena's cheek. She was still staring at nothing.

"Hey. Wake up."

He pointed at the woman slumped in the ropes. "You know her?"

Serena snapped back. She flicked a look at him first—fear, and the fresh memory of a man kicking a monster through a wall, jumping after it, and jumping back in. For a second she'd wondered if she'd wandered onto a film set.

She studied the sleeping face and shook her head.

"I've never seen her."

Soren looked from Serena to the other woman. His expression went odd.

They were too alike. One younger, one a little older, and otherwise poured from the same mold. Serena herself didn't look that old. Mid-thirties, maybe forty.

"Did you ever have a kid?"

Serena's face changed. She shook her head hard, denial tumbling out too fast.

That was answer enough. Soren nodded and let it drop.

He studied the two of them—close enough in age that, standing together, they could have passed for mother and daughter or a pair of sisters—and rubbed his chin.

Even if she'd given a child up, that still left the thing on the back of the skull.

Curiosity won. He pulled out his phone and dialed the number Rodin had given him. An outfit that handled this kind of work would have files.

Three rings.

"Hello? Who is this?"

A man's voice.

Soren didn't waste time. "Rodin sent me."

Noise exploded on the other end. When the man came back, the tone had tightened into something careful.

"What can we do for you?"

Soren glanced at the phone. Official people were not usually this polite.

"You've got my location. Send someone. I want to ask a few things in person."

"And look up a name. Serena May."

Tied to the post, Serena heard her own name and started screaming. Soren frowned, picked the rag up off the floor, and stuffed it back into her mouth.

The man on the line had heard the shriek and the muffled noise after. Silence stretched.

"Y-yes. Our people are on the way."

Soren hung up and put the phone away.

Someone hammered on the front door downstairs.

"Sis! You home?"

A young girl's voice. "Mom made a casserole. She told me to bring you some and check on you!"

Soren paused. He looked at Serena, then at the woman with two faces.

Wrong guess, then.

A little sister and a mother, just like that.

He ignored the knocking and leaned against the wall until it stopped.

A few minutes later the house went quiet.

Then a window scraped open in another room, followed by a sharp cry of pain.

Soren sighed, went downstairs, and came back with a struggling girl under one arm—shoulder-length blonde hair, kicking the whole way.

He sat down in the chair afterward and looked at the three women bound to the posts.

Sometime tonight, without meaning to, he had become a kidnapper.

He studied the blonde.

Young. Clothes and face said high school, maybe a college freshman.

What surprised him was what she did after the first jolt of fear. She didn't whimper the way Serena had. She looked around the attic, then at him, curious more than scared.

"I'm not going to hurt you."

He kept his voice even. "I need you to answer a few questions. Nod if you understand."

She nodded fast.

He pulled the rag out.

She sucked in air, then beat him to the first question.

"Who are you? Why are you in my sister's house?"

Soren's eyebrow ticked up.

"She's your blood sister?"

He pointed at Serena. "What about her? You know this one?"

The girl glanced at the two-faced woman and shook her head.

Soren went quiet.

The map was messier than he'd thought.

A sister who hadn't been in the picture. A two-faced monster for an older sister. And a woman the monster had dragged here who might have given a child away.

"What's your name?"

"Sydney Lake."

She didn't stop there. "Are you a serial killer? Or are you one of those FBI guys they talk about—the ones who show up for the murders?"

"What murders?"

"You're not from around here."

Sydney looked pleased, like she'd scored a point.

"There's a killer in the city. He broke into this house first and murdered my sister's husband. Then he started killing doctors downtown. The cops still haven't caught him."

Soren listened.

"What's that got to do with your sister? They think she paid someone?"

Sydney checked both ways, then dropped her voice.

"The killer isn't the worst part."

"Every time he murders someone, my sister sees the whole thing in a dream. Clear. Like she's standing right next to him."