Luxuria part eight
disclaimers in part one
Vicki had always found waiting hard. Even stakeouts had required a special exercise of patience for her. She paced Henry's home, restless and a little frightened. What had been done to her? What did those damn marks mean? She had been in bed with the incubus without incident until she'd allowed him to actually enter her. Then he'd died. But with Henry, they'd gone way past that point before whatever activated her marks had . . . activated them. What kind of twisted demon wanted her to never have sex? Was that it-she was supposed to be some kind of bride of Satan? She felt a little sick. She wished Henry would get back. God, Henry. She tried not to think of him feeding because it summoned up for her how he felt and how he looked and how he smelled.
She took off her glasses in order to rub the bridge of her nose. She hated opening her eyes with her glasses off, these days. She hadn't wanted to face the reality of how bad her eyesight was getting. She opened them now. The details of Henry's apartment blurred into darkness, but oddly, the edges of walls and furniture glowed faintly. In fact, a number of items in the living room had a nimbus around them. The area where Henry worked on his graphic novels glowed so brightly it could have had a shoplight on. Curious, she walked toward it, navigating confidently through the room despite not really being able to see the furniture. Not see it normally, anyway. The outlines were clear to her like faint Christmas lights running along the edges. Standing before the inked pages Henry had up on the walls, she was stunned. Unlike the details of the room which faded from her view, the pictures were more clear to her than anything she'd ever seen. Not just the lines Henry had drawn, but other things. There were other scenes, richer details, all overlaid on the drawings. As she looked, she could read the story without any words, and it was vivid and complete. She felt she was looking at the events as Henry imagined them, where his pen drawings could only sketch a skeleton of the living tale. Enraptured she wandered from wall to wall, page to page, soaking in these levels of unarticulated imagination. Finally overwhelmed, she put her glasses back on and the room returned to normal. She sank into a chair.
What the hell was that?
And what the hell was taking Henry so long? She really had to talk to someone about this. She fished out her phone. She had messages from Mike at work, Mike from his cell phone, and from Coreen's cell. Without listening to them, she called Mike at home. He'd be off duty by now. No answer. She called his cell and got sent straight to voice-mail. Damn. It was late to be calling Coreen, but Goth-girl had been keeping later and later hours as had Vicki herself, since partnering with a vampire.
She played Coreen's voice-mail messages and listened with growing horror. She called her back.
"Coreen, I just got your message. How horrible. Are you all right?"
"So so. Vicki are you at the office? You'd be my hero if I could tell everyone I had to go into work."
"Oh, now you want to come to work?"
"It's awful around here. Renee's parent are here. Have you talked to Mike?"
"No. Was he on your case?"
"They wouldn't let him. But the guy who did it-he had a message for you."
"For me? What do you mean?"
"Seriously, we need to talk. This guy was completely out there and he gave Mike a message for you. You need to talk to Mike, too, if you can get him this late. Can I meet you?"
Vicki thought fast. Henry's was not the place for a pow-wow, not if Mike would be involved. "Okay, meet me at the office."
###
Mike arrived at the abandoned Annex, very uneasy, and killed his headlights as he approached. This part of the waterfront had had no urban renewal and still consisted of shipping warehouses and empty sheds hulking in the dark like canyon walls blocking the city lights. The Annex itself was much newer than the old Provincial Lunatic Asylum on Queen which had long since been replaced by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, but it stood condemned and awaiting the Historical Society's bid to raise funds to buy it. Fenced in and locked up, it was still not difficult to see how easily it could be a base for illegal operations. Not a quarter of a mile further along the waterfront was the warehouse which had housed the Necrodome, for instance. He saw no other cars in the vicinity.
The chain link fence surrounding the property had razor wire on its top, but the gate on the drive stood open, its chain lock dangling. Mike parked some distance from the gate, refusing the ominous invitation. He loaded his gun with the remaining silver bullets Coreen and given him, pocketed a flashlight, and checked again that his cell phone had a signal. The rain was unrelenting, but he decided against the umbrella. He intended to do some sneaking around, and it would be too noticeable.
Turning his raincoat collar up, he picked his way around the exterior of the three-storey building. He saw no one, but on the lake side of the building a flickering light shone fuzzily on the top floor. All right, someone was here. Back at the car, mindful of the times his own unexpected arrival had saved Vicki's and Fitzroy's asses, Mike added his tire iron to his weaponry, peered once more around at the rainy night and started through the front gate.
The interior showed unmistakable signs of vandalism and decay. The beam of Mike's flashlight showed gang graffiti and other murals on the peeling walls. The walls otherwise were intact-they'd been constructed of concrete block, not drywall and lumber. Tile and linoleum floors were cracked and in many places, missing. The place stank of something Mike couldn't and didn't care to identify. The staircase he would have to climb looked less than secure, wooden supports rotted and planks showing breaks and holes. He hunted around for some scrap lumber to carry with him to cover holes with, and found quite a few pieces of sturdy plywood. His hands were getting rather full, now, but he figured he could drop them all if he needed to.
He reached the top floor without incident, quiet and listening, flashlight off. He heard nothing but the muffled rain on the roof. He saw no light, but he knew which part of the building it had been in. He crept toward the only door on the lake side of the landing. Unlike other doors he'd passed, this one was of metal and was securely in place on industrial-strength hinges. Were it not that he knew there had to be a window beyond this door, he would have guessed it housed a proverbial padded cell, it looked so secure. The Annex had had many uses over the years, but at one time it had held the most violent and criminal of the insane.
Mike didn't expect to be able to open the door, but it swung silently out at his touch. Perhaps it needed electrical power to work. The room beyond was not padded, and was rather large. He shone the beam of his flashlight around the four walls, catching reflection from some kind of distorted window, and from of all things, a television monitor installed in the concrete wall, useless wires dangling. The room held nothing else. A recreation room at one time, perhaps? But where was the light coming from that he had seen? He set down his tire iron and one remaining large rectangle of plywood.
The window was actually a portion of the wall constructed using those glass bricks so popular mid-century for letting in light without allowing anyone to see in. That explained why the light had been so fuzzy looking. He supposed they were also effective for keeping criminally insane inmates from smashing a window. The television was decades old and useless, but built in so securely, it couldn't be stolen by vandals. Mike was vaguely surprised no one had at least smashed its face.
As Mike turned back toward the door, his flashlight beam fell on the piece of sturdy plywood he'd set against the wall. There, burned into one corner of it was a familiar symbol in a circle.
"Shit," he swore, forgetting he'd meant to be stealthy. He crossed the room to look at it. It was the same symbol that was at Kate's crime scene.
"Detective," said a voice by the door. Mike just about jumped to the ceiling.
"Christ! Fitzroy!" he gasped, grasping his flashlight with two hands since he'd almost dropped it. The man in the doorway flinched away from the light in his face. Mike pulled the beam away. "You nearly scared me to death. Where's Vicki?" He wasn't entirely relieved to recognize the intruder. Meeting a vampire with a grudge against him in the dark in an abandoned building was the stuff of nightmares. And while he'd cautiously accepted that Fitzroy's motives and actions were not by nature evil, the spooky circumstances inflamed all his earlier suspicions.
"I thought she was with you," Fitzroy said. "Actually, I thought you might be her. What are you doing here?"
"What are you doing here? Weren't you up here with a light before?"
"I just got here and heard you. Vicki called me and said to meet her here. Where is she?"
"She's not with me. She told me the same thing."
Behind Fitzroy, the door slammed shut. Fitzroy whirled to it and tried to open it. Mike joined him, and confirmed what he somehow knew would be the case. It wouldn't budge. Mike looked at the vampire, who looked back at him with an expression of dismay.
"Shit," Mike said.
###
"Have faith in my vision? That's ridiculous. The guy was a nutjob, Coreen."
They were in Vicki's office. Neither Henry nor Mike could be reached. Besides phone messages, Vicki had also left a written note in Henry's place. His failure to call made her uneasy. Being made uneasy by a man not calling made her angry.
"I'm not so sure," Coreen said earnestly. "And I don't think Mike was sure either."
"We've got other things to work on." She indicated the files on her desk. "These are all the closed homicide cases in the last month where someone unlikely murdered someone else unpremeditated. I think Astaroth is using easily solved murders to hide the ritual slayings he needs to draw the pentagram and come through to our world. I don't know if a month is long enough; I don't know how long it's been going on. We need to find some pattern, so we know which ones count and which ones don't. Until we can draw the symbol on a map we won't know where the next sacrifice will take place."
The file on top of the stack was of the murder where Mike had noticed the symbol. As Vicki talked, Coreen slowly withdrew the blown up photo of the symbol and stared at it.
"Vicki," she said, eyes wide, "this symbol is on a brick on my hearth."
"What, are you sure?"
"Yeah, I noticed it tonight because it kind of looked like your tattoos. It's small though." Coreen looked down at the photo and her tone changed. "Right by the fireplace tools."
"But, your roommate's murder doesn't fit the pattern. That was some stranger off the street, right?"
"Yeah, but," Coreen nibbled on her lower lip, "if he hadn't killed her, someone else was going to. With the fireplace poker."
"Someone else? Not you."
Coreen looked away and then back, looking upset. "I can't explain it," she cried. "It was like being possessed. For real."
"Did you tell the police?"
"I told Mike. We were trying to reach you."
Vicki grabbed the phone and stabbed at the numbers. "Dammit, Mike, why don't you call me back?"
"Vicki, did you tell Mike your theory about the killings?" Coreen asked as Vicki clamped the phone handset to her ear trying to will Mike to answer.
"It was his idea," she replied, distracted. Two rings, three . . .
Coreen bounced a little. "But that's another thing the guy said. The killer. He told Mike that Mike had already figured it out."
Vicki stared at her, then slammed the phone down. "And you think this guy really knew something. I suppose he was cute."
"Hey!" cried Coreen. "He killed my friend. I don't care what he looked like." Vicki was about to apologize, when Coreen shrugged it off. "He was cute. But you should have been there and heard him. And you know what? I'd be under arrest for murder now if it weren't for him. He may have killed Renee but he saved me. So what am I supposed to think?"
Vicki didn't know. A lot of things were starting to come together for her, and she had the feeling that she didn't have much time. Both Henry and Mike being MIA didn't make her feel any calmer, either. "So according to this guy, I'm supposed to trust my vision."
"Have faith in your vision." That's what he said his message was. But he couldn't give it to you because any power that tried to take what it wanted from you would die. That's what he said. Because of those." She pointed at Vicki's wrists.
Vicki sank onto the couch. The incubus wanted sex. Henry wanted blood. "Oh my living God," she said. "But, what vision? My vision of world peace? My vision of me winning the lottery? Some dream? My failing eyesight?"
"I don't know," Coreen said, but Vicki was on her feet and whipping off her glasses.
"Wait. There's something I forgot to tell you."
###
Henry felt the door long enough to sense the magic in it and snatched his hands away in disgust.
"Don’t you have super-sensitive hearing or something?" Celluci demanded. "Didn't you hear someone out there about to close the door?"
"There was no one there," Henry said. "There's no one else in this building." He looked around the room. Sturdy cement-block construction on all walls. Floor and ceiling of reinforced concrete.
Celluci had his cell phone out, so Henry tried his as well. No signal. By Celluci's irritated shaking of his phone, he had none either.
"You knocked a heavy door down back in that school for the gifted with practically your pinky," Celluci said. "I remember you were pretty pleased about it."
"Not this one," Henry said, keeping ahold of his temper. Celluci was only scared and it was no time for them to be at each others' throats. So to speak.
He heard Celluci take a deep calming breath. He'd figured out the same thing. He switched off his flashlight to save the batteries. Henry approved. "You'll be surprised how well your eyes adapt in a little time," he said.
"What the fuck is going on?" Celluci asked in a low, forcibly calm voice.
"Something's happening with Vicki's tattoos," Henry told him. "I assume it's Astaroth again."
Celluci was quiet for a moment, then in almost a normal tone of voice, said, "I think he's been committing murders again. He's found a way to keep them off the radar screen. So are we the final sacrifice? I thought that was Vicki's gig."
"We may be bait for her."
"Or he keeps us locked up here so we can't help her."
Henry hadn't thought of that. His own heart beat faster with fear. They had to escape. He started a more thorough search of the room.
"So how long have I got?" Celluci asked.
"What do you mean?"
"How long - until I'm your dinner, vampire?"
Henry's angry retort died unsaid as he stood before the layers of glass bricks that served the place as a window. He regarded them with a horrible feeling in his stomach. They were as rigid as the masonry that held them. The room was utterly empty, nothing to block them with. "I wouldn't worry, Celluci," he said. "You've got longer than I do."
Continue to part nine
Vicki had always found waiting hard. Even stakeouts had required a special exercise of patience for her. She paced Henry's home, restless and a little frightened. What had been done to her? What did those damn marks mean? She had been in bed with the incubus without incident until she'd allowed him to actually enter her. Then he'd died. But with Henry, they'd gone way past that point before whatever activated her marks had . . . activated them. What kind of twisted demon wanted her to never have sex? Was that it-she was supposed to be some kind of bride of Satan? She felt a little sick. She wished Henry would get back. God, Henry. She tried not to think of him feeding because it summoned up for her how he felt and how he looked and how he smelled.
She took off her glasses in order to rub the bridge of her nose. She hated opening her eyes with her glasses off, these days. She hadn't wanted to face the reality of how bad her eyesight was getting. She opened them now. The details of Henry's apartment blurred into darkness, but oddly, the edges of walls and furniture glowed faintly. In fact, a number of items in the living room had a nimbus around them. The area where Henry worked on his graphic novels glowed so brightly it could have had a shoplight on. Curious, she walked toward it, navigating confidently through the room despite not really being able to see the furniture. Not see it normally, anyway. The outlines were clear to her like faint Christmas lights running along the edges. Standing before the inked pages Henry had up on the walls, she was stunned. Unlike the details of the room which faded from her view, the pictures were more clear to her than anything she'd ever seen. Not just the lines Henry had drawn, but other things. There were other scenes, richer details, all overlaid on the drawings. As she looked, she could read the story without any words, and it was vivid and complete. She felt she was looking at the events as Henry imagined them, where his pen drawings could only sketch a skeleton of the living tale. Enraptured she wandered from wall to wall, page to page, soaking in these levels of unarticulated imagination. Finally overwhelmed, she put her glasses back on and the room returned to normal. She sank into a chair.
What the hell was that?
And what the hell was taking Henry so long? She really had to talk to someone about this. She fished out her phone. She had messages from Mike at work, Mike from his cell phone, and from Coreen's cell. Without listening to them, she called Mike at home. He'd be off duty by now. No answer. She called his cell and got sent straight to voice-mail. Damn. It was late to be calling Coreen, but Goth-girl had been keeping later and later hours as had Vicki herself, since partnering with a vampire.
She played Coreen's voice-mail messages and listened with growing horror. She called her back.
"Coreen, I just got your message. How horrible. Are you all right?"
"So so. Vicki are you at the office? You'd be my hero if I could tell everyone I had to go into work."
"Oh, now you want to come to work?"
"It's awful around here. Renee's parent are here. Have you talked to Mike?"
"No. Was he on your case?"
"They wouldn't let him. But the guy who did it-he had a message for you."
"For me? What do you mean?"
"Seriously, we need to talk. This guy was completely out there and he gave Mike a message for you. You need to talk to Mike, too, if you can get him this late. Can I meet you?"
Vicki thought fast. Henry's was not the place for a pow-wow, not if Mike would be involved. "Okay, meet me at the office."
###
Mike arrived at the abandoned Annex, very uneasy, and killed his headlights as he approached. This part of the waterfront had had no urban renewal and still consisted of shipping warehouses and empty sheds hulking in the dark like canyon walls blocking the city lights. The Annex itself was much newer than the old Provincial Lunatic Asylum on Queen which had long since been replaced by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, but it stood condemned and awaiting the Historical Society's bid to raise funds to buy it. Fenced in and locked up, it was still not difficult to see how easily it could be a base for illegal operations. Not a quarter of a mile further along the waterfront was the warehouse which had housed the Necrodome, for instance. He saw no other cars in the vicinity.
The chain link fence surrounding the property had razor wire on its top, but the gate on the drive stood open, its chain lock dangling. Mike parked some distance from the gate, refusing the ominous invitation. He loaded his gun with the remaining silver bullets Coreen and given him, pocketed a flashlight, and checked again that his cell phone had a signal. The rain was unrelenting, but he decided against the umbrella. He intended to do some sneaking around, and it would be too noticeable.
Turning his raincoat collar up, he picked his way around the exterior of the three-storey building. He saw no one, but on the lake side of the building a flickering light shone fuzzily on the top floor. All right, someone was here. Back at the car, mindful of the times his own unexpected arrival had saved Vicki's and Fitzroy's asses, Mike added his tire iron to his weaponry, peered once more around at the rainy night and started through the front gate.
The interior showed unmistakable signs of vandalism and decay. The beam of Mike's flashlight showed gang graffiti and other murals on the peeling walls. The walls otherwise were intact-they'd been constructed of concrete block, not drywall and lumber. Tile and linoleum floors were cracked and in many places, missing. The place stank of something Mike couldn't and didn't care to identify. The staircase he would have to climb looked less than secure, wooden supports rotted and planks showing breaks and holes. He hunted around for some scrap lumber to carry with him to cover holes with, and found quite a few pieces of sturdy plywood. His hands were getting rather full, now, but he figured he could drop them all if he needed to.
He reached the top floor without incident, quiet and listening, flashlight off. He heard nothing but the muffled rain on the roof. He saw no light, but he knew which part of the building it had been in. He crept toward the only door on the lake side of the landing. Unlike other doors he'd passed, this one was of metal and was securely in place on industrial-strength hinges. Were it not that he knew there had to be a window beyond this door, he would have guessed it housed a proverbial padded cell, it looked so secure. The Annex had had many uses over the years, but at one time it had held the most violent and criminal of the insane.
Mike didn't expect to be able to open the door, but it swung silently out at his touch. Perhaps it needed electrical power to work. The room beyond was not padded, and was rather large. He shone the beam of his flashlight around the four walls, catching reflection from some kind of distorted window, and from of all things, a television monitor installed in the concrete wall, useless wires dangling. The room held nothing else. A recreation room at one time, perhaps? But where was the light coming from that he had seen? He set down his tire iron and one remaining large rectangle of plywood.
The window was actually a portion of the wall constructed using those glass bricks so popular mid-century for letting in light without allowing anyone to see in. That explained why the light had been so fuzzy looking. He supposed they were also effective for keeping criminally insane inmates from smashing a window. The television was decades old and useless, but built in so securely, it couldn't be stolen by vandals. Mike was vaguely surprised no one had at least smashed its face.
As Mike turned back toward the door, his flashlight beam fell on the piece of sturdy plywood he'd set against the wall. There, burned into one corner of it was a familiar symbol in a circle.
"Shit," he swore, forgetting he'd meant to be stealthy. He crossed the room to look at it. It was the same symbol that was at Kate's crime scene.
"Detective," said a voice by the door. Mike just about jumped to the ceiling.
"Christ! Fitzroy!" he gasped, grasping his flashlight with two hands since he'd almost dropped it. The man in the doorway flinched away from the light in his face. Mike pulled the beam away. "You nearly scared me to death. Where's Vicki?" He wasn't entirely relieved to recognize the intruder. Meeting a vampire with a grudge against him in the dark in an abandoned building was the stuff of nightmares. And while he'd cautiously accepted that Fitzroy's motives and actions were not by nature evil, the spooky circumstances inflamed all his earlier suspicions.
"I thought she was with you," Fitzroy said. "Actually, I thought you might be her. What are you doing here?"
"What are you doing here? Weren't you up here with a light before?"
"I just got here and heard you. Vicki called me and said to meet her here. Where is she?"
"She's not with me. She told me the same thing."
Behind Fitzroy, the door slammed shut. Fitzroy whirled to it and tried to open it. Mike joined him, and confirmed what he somehow knew would be the case. It wouldn't budge. Mike looked at the vampire, who looked back at him with an expression of dismay.
"Shit," Mike said.
###
"Have faith in my vision? That's ridiculous. The guy was a nutjob, Coreen."
They were in Vicki's office. Neither Henry nor Mike could be reached. Besides phone messages, Vicki had also left a written note in Henry's place. His failure to call made her uneasy. Being made uneasy by a man not calling made her angry.
"I'm not so sure," Coreen said earnestly. "And I don't think Mike was sure either."
"We've got other things to work on." She indicated the files on her desk. "These are all the closed homicide cases in the last month where someone unlikely murdered someone else unpremeditated. I think Astaroth is using easily solved murders to hide the ritual slayings he needs to draw the pentagram and come through to our world. I don't know if a month is long enough; I don't know how long it's been going on. We need to find some pattern, so we know which ones count and which ones don't. Until we can draw the symbol on a map we won't know where the next sacrifice will take place."
The file on top of the stack was of the murder where Mike had noticed the symbol. As Vicki talked, Coreen slowly withdrew the blown up photo of the symbol and stared at it.
"Vicki," she said, eyes wide, "this symbol is on a brick on my hearth."
"What, are you sure?"
"Yeah, I noticed it tonight because it kind of looked like your tattoos. It's small though." Coreen looked down at the photo and her tone changed. "Right by the fireplace tools."
"But, your roommate's murder doesn't fit the pattern. That was some stranger off the street, right?"
"Yeah, but," Coreen nibbled on her lower lip, "if he hadn't killed her, someone else was going to. With the fireplace poker."
"Someone else? Not you."
Coreen looked away and then back, looking upset. "I can't explain it," she cried. "It was like being possessed. For real."
"Did you tell the police?"
"I told Mike. We were trying to reach you."
Vicki grabbed the phone and stabbed at the numbers. "Dammit, Mike, why don't you call me back?"
"Vicki, did you tell Mike your theory about the killings?" Coreen asked as Vicki clamped the phone handset to her ear trying to will Mike to answer.
"It was his idea," she replied, distracted. Two rings, three . . .
Coreen bounced a little. "But that's another thing the guy said. The killer. He told Mike that Mike had already figured it out."
Vicki stared at her, then slammed the phone down. "And you think this guy really knew something. I suppose he was cute."
"Hey!" cried Coreen. "He killed my friend. I don't care what he looked like." Vicki was about to apologize, when Coreen shrugged it off. "He was cute. But you should have been there and heard him. And you know what? I'd be under arrest for murder now if it weren't for him. He may have killed Renee but he saved me. So what am I supposed to think?"
Vicki didn't know. A lot of things were starting to come together for her, and she had the feeling that she didn't have much time. Both Henry and Mike being MIA didn't make her feel any calmer, either. "So according to this guy, I'm supposed to trust my vision."
"Have faith in your vision." That's what he said his message was. But he couldn't give it to you because any power that tried to take what it wanted from you would die. That's what he said. Because of those." She pointed at Vicki's wrists.
Vicki sank onto the couch. The incubus wanted sex. Henry wanted blood. "Oh my living God," she said. "But, what vision? My vision of world peace? My vision of me winning the lottery? Some dream? My failing eyesight?"
"I don't know," Coreen said, but Vicki was on her feet and whipping off her glasses.
"Wait. There's something I forgot to tell you."
###
Henry felt the door long enough to sense the magic in it and snatched his hands away in disgust.
"Don’t you have super-sensitive hearing or something?" Celluci demanded. "Didn't you hear someone out there about to close the door?"
"There was no one there," Henry said. "There's no one else in this building." He looked around the room. Sturdy cement-block construction on all walls. Floor and ceiling of reinforced concrete.
Celluci had his cell phone out, so Henry tried his as well. No signal. By Celluci's irritated shaking of his phone, he had none either.
"You knocked a heavy door down back in that school for the gifted with practically your pinky," Celluci said. "I remember you were pretty pleased about it."
"Not this one," Henry said, keeping ahold of his temper. Celluci was only scared and it was no time for them to be at each others' throats. So to speak.
He heard Celluci take a deep calming breath. He'd figured out the same thing. He switched off his flashlight to save the batteries. Henry approved. "You'll be surprised how well your eyes adapt in a little time," he said.
"What the fuck is going on?" Celluci asked in a low, forcibly calm voice.
"Something's happening with Vicki's tattoos," Henry told him. "I assume it's Astaroth again."
Celluci was quiet for a moment, then in almost a normal tone of voice, said, "I think he's been committing murders again. He's found a way to keep them off the radar screen. So are we the final sacrifice? I thought that was Vicki's gig."
"We may be bait for her."
"Or he keeps us locked up here so we can't help her."
Henry hadn't thought of that. His own heart beat faster with fear. They had to escape. He started a more thorough search of the room.
"So how long have I got?" Celluci asked.
"What do you mean?"
"How long - until I'm your dinner, vampire?"
Henry's angry retort died unsaid as he stood before the layers of glass bricks that served the place as a window. He regarded them with a horrible feeling in his stomach. They were as rigid as the masonry that held them. The room was utterly empty, nothing to block them with. "I wouldn't worry, Celluci," he said. "You've got longer than I do."
Continue to part nine