“This,” the customer said.
Then he vanished.
“Where’d he go?” Romano called.
Wary, Pendleton leant back to grab his rifle.
“I don’t know,” the boss said. “Watch out for-”
The customer cut the boss off when he appeared before him. With a linen-white hand, he lifted the boss up by his neck and held him aloft.
“You asked what I want you to do?”
Romano jumped to his feet and reached for his guns. Before they’d even left his holsters, the customer dropped the boss, knocked the son of a bitch to the ground and took his weapons. It happened in a moment, so quick Pendleton had trouble believing it.
At least until the customer idly tossed both of Romano’s guns to him then went back to pick the boss up by his throat. Pendleton considered turning the guns on the customer but there was no point; the fight he’d knew might come had already happened and they’d lost.
“I’ll tell you what I want you to do; your job. You were hired to scare an Irish priest into giving us something he took from us. I need this object and you were hired because you’re supposed to be strong enough to get it. I granted you tools to help but the whole point was for you to work out how to get it yourselves without alerting every twobit operation out here.”
“So… you’re… okay with a massacre now?” the boss wheezed. “You said… you didn’t… want any blood.”
“I’m saying you should do whatever you need to do to get it. Anything. Do you get me?”
“We’ll figure something out,” the boss croaked.
The customer held him for a moment longer, considering the boss like he were a circus freak. “Good,” he said.
And then he was gone. The boss dropped to the floor in his absence, coughing and spluttering, tears streaming down his eyes. Pendleton didn’t go to help; the boss hated other people trying to help him.
Romano picked himself up a few seconds later – probably because he thought the way was clear – and moved to to get his guns from Pendleton. He looked sheepish, had enough sense to be aware that he’d betrayed his cowardice.
But the customer reappeared between them before Romano could claim his guns. The idiot shrieked at the sight and fell back; he’d probably fainted.
That basically left Pendleton alone with the customer, what with the boss still suffering. The weird pale man turned to Pendleton, knelt down, put one hand on each of Pendleton’s shoulders and pressed his mask close.
“Your stupid friend asked if you were scared of me. You said you weren’t.”
Pendleton tried to shrug but the customer’s immense strength prevented him doing so. It seemed impossible for such dainty, thin fingers to contain so much strength but there they were, pressing him down like a vice.
“I only had his word for anything about you,” he said.
Those silver eyes floated down to meet his. “Are you scared now?”
Questions and answers. He hated them both. But Pendleton figured he ought to be honest. “No. I ain’t scared.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve not seen anything to be scared of,” Pendleton replied. “You’re stronger and better than me but many people have been. It’s nothing new.”
The customer laughed. At least, Pendleton assumed it was a laugh. The noise was so atonal as to be difficult to classify.
“Well then,” the customer said, “let me show you something new, something for you to be scared of.”
Slowly, he reached up, unhooked the mask from one of his ears and leant in so that only Pendleton would see what lay beneath. Not that he needed to, with Romano having taken the chicken’s exit and the boss struggling to breathe, but it signalled his intent to show this only to him.
Then the customer removed his mask.
His mind didn’t accept what he saw for a moment because it was so… wrong. So utterly wrong. But when it accepted what he was seeing, Pendleton screamed for the first time since he was a boy. And then his mind was full of questions, ones that would only lead to answers he didn’t want to hear.
