Villain. Майкл Грант

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СКАЧАТЬ also begun to guess that there was something about this snakelike version of himself that caused more fascination than revulsion. If anything, the few people whose reactions he’d been able to gauge seemed to find him attractive, even mesmerizing. They stared, but not in horror. Even his fellow denizens of the drunk tank did not recoil in fear or disgust, but turned fascinated, enthralled faces to him.

      Dillon was not in a happy or generous frame of mind. He had clearly screwed up the night before, outing himself as a mutant. And now he was in a cage with men, every single one of whom looked meaner and bigger and tougher than he—well, aside from the weeping tourist in the chinos and canary-yellow polo shirt. But it didn’t matter, because Dillon Poe—this hypnotic, serpentine version of Dillon Poe—was more than capable of dealing with Tattoo.

      Dillon looked up from the floor at the man and said, “You clean it up, tough guy. In fact, lick it up. Start with my hand.”

      Without hesitation Tattoo stuck out his tongue and began licking Dillon’s scaly green hand, as avidly as a dog welcoming his master. It was fascinating watching Tattoo’s rheumy eyes, the expression of brute incomprehension, the alarm, the anger, the . . . impotence. The panic he was helpless to express.

      “Now lick up that mess on the floor,” Dillon said. Instantly Tattoo dropped to his hands and knees. He said, “I don’t want to do this!” but without hesitation lowered his head, his long, grizzled hair trailing in the mess, and began lapping it up like a dog going after a dropped table scrap.

      The entire room stood or sat frozen in stark disbelief. It was like they were an oil painting, all open mouths and wide eyes and expressions of disbelief. One man moaned, “Is this a hallucination? Is this real? Am I really seeing this?”

      Dillon stood—his morph came with a lithely muscular body several inches taller than his own, an athlete’s body—facing Tattoo’s two buddies, who advanced, belligerent but nervous.

      One said, “Hey, Spence, come on, man, stop that! Get up off your knees! Get away from that thing!” He tugged at his partner’s shirt, but Tattoo—aka Spence, apparently—would not stop licking the puke. In fact, could not stop. He tried to speak but only incomprehensible grunts emerged—it’s hard to talk with a mouth full of another person’s vomit.

      The other thug snarled at Dillon. “What did you do to him, freak?”

      “I am really not in the mood to be picked on,” Dillon said. His voice, too, was subtly different now. His normal voice was a bit too high-pitched to ever be authoritative, and he had a slight lisp on “s” sounds. But this voice? This voice was like a musical instrument in the hands of a master. This voice persuaded, cajoled, and seduced.

      The man frowned and stopped, then shook his head in confusion before finding his anger again. “I don’t give a damn what you’re up for, freak!”

      Dillon turned to this fellow, younger than Spence, with a tweaker’s emaciated body and rotting teeth. He would have tolerated any number of insults, but that particular one, “freak,” was something he’d heard too many times in his young life, both at school and at home.

      Freak for having no friends.

      Freak for his physical awkwardness.

      Freak for the way he looked at girls who would have nothing to do with him.

      Freak for being the only one of five siblings who rejected walks and hikes and camping and biking and all the other physically tiring wastes of time his family loved.

      Freak for sitting in his room for days on end watching stand-up comics like Maron, Frankie Boyle, Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Jeselnik, Jimmy Carr, and the few surviving videos of the godfather of stand-up, Richard Pryor.

      And of course, freak for being a survivor of what people called the Perdido Beach Anomaly, but which Dillon, like all the survivors, called the FAYZ.

      “Dude,” Dillon said, “don’t ever call me a freak again.”

      “Okay,” the tweaker said.

      “Say that you promise?”

      The tweaker frowned and grimaced, but said, “I promise.”

      And Dillon almost stopped there. Almost. But Dillon’s life was filled with times when he almost did the sensible thing or the smart thing or the right thing. A whole lot of almosts, and an equal number of “what the hells.” Of the two, “what the hell” was always funnier.

      The truth was he was rather enjoying the fear in the eyes all around him. Fear and confusion and mystification, expressed in frowns and mutterings and the sorts of threats not meant to be heard by the person being threatened—coward’s threats.

      Yeah, Dillon thought, you losers should fear me. Every breath you take is because I allow it. A nasty smirk formed on his lips.

      “I’m not sure I trust you,” Dillon said. “Let’s make sure, huh? Let’s make sure you never call me or anyone else names again. Bite your tongue in half.”

      A spasm went through the room. They leaned forward, disbelieving but enthralled. After all, a tough guy was licking the floor, like a dog determined to get every last chunk of Iams.

      “You can’t make me . . . uchhh ggghrr can’t ma . . .” the tweaker said.

      “Sorry, having a hard time understanding you,” Dillon said savagely.

      The tweaker concentrated hard; you could see it on his face. He was trying to fight, but putting far more energy into obeying. His jaw muscles clenched until the veins in his neck stood out. Blood dribbled from his mouth.

      “Jesus Christ!” someone yelled. Then, “Guards! Guards!”

      “Grind your teeth back and forth and bite down hard,” Dillon said. The sound of dull teeth grinding on gristle was sickening, and Dillon might have relented had he not caught sight of the swastika tattoo on the tweaker’s arm.

       No pity for Nazi tweakers.

      “Hey, can you say sieg heil ?” Dillon asked.

      Blood now gushed from the man’s mouth. Tears streamed from his eyes and mucus from his nose. His eyes were trapped, desperate, terrified.

      “Come on, mister tough guy, gimme a sieg heil.”

      “Ssnk thth stnch ccchuch . . .”

      More prisoners were shouting, agitated, some wide-eyed and fascinated, others appalled, even sickened. And Dillon was sickened in a way that had nothing to do with his hangover. There was something electric about the feeling, but in both senses of the word. The power was shocking, and it shocked him in return. It seemed impossible, just absolutely, batshit impossible, and yet he could hear teeth on gristle. . . . Life shouldn’t be like that, he told himself. That could not be it. Could it?

      “Guards! Guards!” The cries went up with mounting hysteria, and men banged on the bars, all of which was fine with Dillon. He wanted guards to come, because he was more than ready to leave.

      A portly guard came sauntering along, her face a mask of weary indifference. Then she took a look through the barred door and immediately keyed her radio. СКАЧАТЬ