Part 78 (1/2)

”So . . . you tell me.You know what the f.u.c.k's going on, so you tell me. Otherwise I got nowhere to go with this thing.”

Another pause, then Aziz nodded to Finn's chest.”Open your s.h.i.+rt.”

Now it was Finn's turn to pause.

”Open it,” said Aziz insistently,”or I walk away.”

Finn sighed, and with trembling fingers, he pulled up the rough cotton s.h.i.+rt to show the hand-shaped burn on his chest.

Aziz sat there with his eyes wide and small fists balled into knuckly knots on the tabletop.Then he rattled off a long prayer in a mix of languages. Like most SpecOps field agents, Finn had a pa.s.sing familiarity with a number of them-he caught words in Pashto,Arabic, Hebrew, and Egyptian. There were many blessings overlapping one another, most of which Finn couldn't understand clearly, and a handful of names repeated over and over again.

”Lilitu.”

”Al-bashti.”

”Iblis.”

”Lilith.”

No mention of Muhammad or Allah. No mention of any other G.o.d, prophet, or saint. Aziz removed a small stone statue from his pocket. It was an earthmother statue, one of the fertility idols, with pendulous b.r.e.a.s.t.s, an enormous stomach, and tubby legs. It also had a hideous face that was painted red and a wide mouth filled with sharp teeth.The stone looked ancient but in excellent condition. Aziz put it to his mouth and kissed each breast and then the feet. Then he put the idol back into his pocket.

The smile he gave Finn was truly appalling. It was filled with awe and wors.h.i.+p, but also with a naked, undisguised s.e.xual l.u.s.t that made Finn's stomach churn and his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es contract into his body.

”You have been touched by her.Touched.”

Finn pulled down the front of his s.h.i.+rt.

”I wish I could kill you so I could carve that from your chest and sew it onto my own skin.” Aziz continued. ”You have been touched by her. Flesh to flesh.”

”You're f.u.c.king nuts.”

That changed Aziz's smile back to something closer to what it had been. Aziz drew a breath and let it out slowly. Finn's chest shuddered as he did that, as if with the aftershock of a prolonged o.r.g.a.s.m. He wanted to vomit.