CHAPTER 18
THE KILLER PLACED the blood-soaked strip of cotton on the burning altar, watching it singe and catch, black holes burning through, disintegrating the whole into shreds and, from there, into oblivion. He sank, naked, onto the earth, face down, burrowing into the carpet of soft-crinkled leaves, breathing in the scent of dirt and loss.
He lay, crumpled and inert, remembering. The smell was the same. It sent him spiraling back to that October cold snap, the day she died. He’d been playing Dragon, stalking along the stream bed as it tumbled over speckled rocks, growing sluggish along the edges with lumps of forming ice. He bellowed smoke from his dragon mouth, watching it curl in the frosty air, imagining the fire in his belly that had formed it. He roared to the sky, and heard a
