Part 37 (1/2)
”Let's get out of here,” Winn said, grabbing her arm. ”I'll tell you everything.”
At the car, Deem watched as the two Navajo men placed Sani in the back seat, lying down.
”Will he be OK?” Winn asked one of them.
”He's breathing, so I think so,” the man replied. ”We're done here. Thank you.” He extended his hand to Winn, and he shook it. Then he got in the Impala and they drove off.
”Goodbye to you, too,” Deem said as their car disappeared in the distance. She grabbed her Big Gulp and took a sip. ”Ugh. Warm.”
”Let's get a cold one,” Winn said, starting up the Jeep and driving them back into Kanab. ”No 7-11 here, how about Walker's?”
”I'll take it,” Deem said, waiting for him to park in front of the store. She jumped out of the Jeep and ran inside. Winn followed. They both bought drinks and snacks.
Winn began the drive back to Leeds. ”You want to call Carma, let her know our ETA?”
”Sure,” Deem said. She pulled out her phone and gave Carma a call. She told her they'd be about an hour.
”Wow, it's later than I thought,” Deem said, checking her watch. ”How long were we in there?”
”Longer than it seemed,” Winn said. ”Couple of hours.”
”I think I've been pretty patient,” Deem said. ”Let you take me to the store, get me all caffeinated up, get something to munch on for the ride back. My sugar's all balanced now. Are you gonna tell me what the h.e.l.l happened in there?”
Winn smiled. ”I'm a blank,” he said, looking at her.
”A what?”
”A blank,” Winn said. ”That's what Sani called it.”
”What's a blank?”
”I thought it was odd that you, your mother, and your aunt all were targeted by the skinrunner, but not me.”
”True.”
”And then, once we were inside the school, I couldn't see any of the things you saw.”
”You saw the ghosts in the auditorium.”
”Those were just normal, downwind ghosts, naturally there,” Winn said. ”Not put there by Ninth Sign, like the bear. When it came to him, things that used his power, I was a blank. Like the sounds you heard, the animal in the hall, the blue light, all of that.”
”Did you see him? Ninth Sign? When Sani confronted him?”
”I saw a man. They talked back and forth.”
”You didn't see the bears? The f.u.c.king bats?”
”No, none of that. Just a man, standing there talking to Sani.”
”Is that what Sani was talking to you about, by the car, before we went in?”
”He had me swallow something,” Winn said. ”A small, round, flat rock. It was hard to get down. He called it a compa.s.s.”
”Ninth Sign said something about a compa.s.s,” Deem said. ”He told Sani what he was doing was a waste of time, because he didn't have a compa.s.s.”
”Sani hid the compa.s.s in me,” Winn said. ”All those green barriers, all over the complex? They were to alert Ninth Sign if a compa.s.s came through. He knew it was the only thing powerful enough to threaten him. Hiding it in me was Sani's way of keeping it hidden from Ninth Sign long enough to get close to him, so he could disperse him.”
”Is that what he did? Disperse him?”
”Sani told me Ninth Sign was too powerful to simply kill. He had to split him into the four elements, to weaken him. He needed the compa.s.s to be able to do that. Then he scattered what was left, underground.”
”Why not tell me?” Deem asked. ”Why keep me in the dark while it was going on?”
”Sani said you'd already been tagged by Ninth Sign from when we went in earlier. If you had known about the compa.s.s, Ninth Sign would have picked it up in your thoughts and tried to take it out of me. Sani needed the element of surprise.”
”I saw you duck when the bats flew,” Deem said. ”But you couldn't see the bats, could you?”
”No. I fell over when Sani removed the compa.s.s from my stomach. I'm guessing if he caused bats to fly at the same time, it was to create a distraction.”
”How did he get the compa.s.s out of you?”
Winn raised his s.h.i.+rt. There was a two inch scar in the center of his chest, just below his pecs. It was bright red, and looked sore. ”He warned me it would leave a mark,” Winn said, lowering his s.h.i.+rt.
Deem remembered seeing Sani point at Winn's chest when they had been talking before they went in. Now that she had the whole picture, she felt a little sheepish for being upset.
”I guess I owe you an apology,” Deem said. ”For being so snippy before.”
”I couldn't tell you,” Winn said, ”or you would have had to wait outside the fence. And I knew that would have really p.i.s.sed you off.”
”True,” Deem said, sucking on her straw. ”I would have been angry if you'd said, 'wait in the car,' and then the four of you went in without me. Did you see the snake? The spear Ninth Sign threw?”
”I saw the spear, and I saw the guy catch it. Which was pretty cool.”
”It turned into a snake in his hand,” Deem said. ”Bit him. The other guy cut it off him, but I thought for sure he was poisoned.”
”I'm pretty confident all three of them were full of some kind of protection,” Winn said. ”Probably drank a gallon of it before they came.”
”So you're a blank?” Deem said. ”I wonder exactly what that means. If it means more than just being impervious to Ninth Sign's creations.”
”Don't know. I'm not too happy about this scar though.”
”Worried it might screw up your love life? All the little s.e.xpots in Moapa will run away screaming from the ugly scar? Like you're the Beast?”
”I'll have to make up a story, like a battle scar,” Winn said. ”Something that will make them want to sleep with me even more.” He turned to Deem and gave her his widest, most charismatic smile.