He felt like he’d been swallowed whole by darkness. It was so thick and stifling that it made it hard to breathe. Where am I? The last thing he remembered was Kody holding on to his leg in the ambulance while she talked to the attending EMT. Everything else was a total blur. Am I dead? Where would a dead Catholic Malachai spend eternity, anyway? That was a scary and sobering thought. And a question he didn’t ever want to have an answer for. All right, if I’m not dead, the next baboon who hits me with a board is going to get it shoved someplace real uncomfortable on his body. In fact, Nick would turn his attacker into a human or demon Popsicle with it. Yeah, that’d learn them. Smelling something rancid in the thick opaque air, he grimaced and held the back of his hand to his nose to try and block it. Gah, what was that? Smelled worse than burned powdered eggs, and he’d mistakenly thought nothing could outdo those. Well, nothing other than the one and only time he’d made the mistake of walking into the men’s restroom as Stone was walking out of it.
