Part 56 (2/2)

”You can have the opium,” Finn said quickly.”We don't want it.”

In the darkness, the woman spat and Finn felt a searing pain on his cheek.

”You have taken what is mine.”

”No, we haven't,” Finn said insistently, desperate now to make some kind of deal, a bargain that might give him a lifeline.”Look . . . all I want is to get my guys and get out of here.We don't want anything. Nothing, okay? I just want to get my guys and then the four of us are gone.We'll leave you alone and you can do what you want with the-”

”There are four of you?”

”Yes . . .”

The next sound he heard was so strange that it took him a long time to make any kind of sense of it. A series of soft, abrupt moist sounds.

Was this woman . . . sniffing him?

Yes.

The sniffing stopped and there was silence for a while.

Then he heard a small and ugly laugh. He had never heard a woman utter a laugh like that before. It was the way an animal might laugh.

”You are telling me the truth,” said the woman.”You have not defiled the shrines of the lilitu?”

”The what . . . ?”

Another pause, more chuckling.

”Then we are at a place,” said the voice, and suddenly it sounded less alien and more human. Even the feel of it changed. Now it seemed as if it truly was a person squatting over him.The nightmarish delusion that it was a monster began to recede. Not all the way, but enough to keep the terror just beyond reach.”It seems I have taken something from you.”

Soft laughter. Mocking and ironic.

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