Allegiance(106)

They just looked at him for a moment, amused and arrogant, and then Reynolds pulled a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door to Matthias’s cell. He didn’t move at first, not sure what game they were playing.

Finally, he stepped out the cell. Funny how once the silver bars were behind him, the room looked brighter, the world more hopeful. “Does this mean you’re ready to talk?”

“I am.” The voice came from the top of the stairs. It had a faint Irish lilt. It was the voice of a dead man.

Holy mother of God. Matthias had never been a religious man, even in his human life, but he felt the heavens and all its angels must be laughing at this cosmic joke.

“I killed you,” he whispered to the newcomer, who walked down the stairs and came to stand in front of him. “I saw you die.”

“You gave it a good shot.” Murphy was thinner. A ragged scar, still red and unhealed, zagged from his right eyebrow to his ear. He wore a patch over his right eye, but his left eye was pale and cold and unyielding.

“I can help you get Greisser.” His voice sounded wild and desperate, even to himself. “I’m a victim, too. He turned me into . . . this.” He grasped a tuft of white hair and pulled. Half of it came out in his hand.

“I will get Greisser in due time, Matthias.” Murphy took a step closer, and Matthias swallowed hard, noticing for the first time the curved silver blade of the knife in Murphy’s right hand. “I will get him without your help.”

“I still have contacts on the Tribunal. I can convince them to support you.” Matthias looked down and said the word he’d always said in his dream: “Please.”

“We’re declaring war on the Tribunal,” Aidan said. “We’ll fight on their terms, on their turf, whatever it takes. You, however, won’t be there to see it.”

Matthias looked down as Murphy raised the silver blade, the overhead light glinting off its surface.

In the old dream, Matthias had met his final moments not with brave defiance but with humiliation, pleading for mercy from the man whose life he’d tried to destroy.

The dream had always reached the same end: his executioner would smile, and the blade would fall.

Aidan Murphy smiled.