The Magicians - Lev Grossman [182]
“I’m afraid not, dear boy,” he said.
He opened his mouth wide, too wide, as if his jaw were unhinging like a snake’s, and placed both of Penny’s hands in his mouth. He bit them off at the wrists.
It wasn’t a clean bite. Martin Chatwin had blunt human teeth, not fangs, and it took an extra shake of his calm, middle-aged head to fully crush the wrist bones and detach Penny’s hands. Then the Beast dropped him, chewing busily, and Penny fell back on the sand. Arterial blood sprayed crazily from the stumps, then he rolled over and they were underneath him. His legs thrashed like he was being electrocuted. He didn’t scream, but frantic snuffling noises came from where his face was pushed into the sandy floor. His sneakers scrabbled in the dirt.
The Beast swallowed once, twice, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He grinned, almost embarrassed, holding up one finger while he chewed: give me a moment. His eyes narrowed with pleasure.
“Shit shit shit shit shit . . .” somebody wailed, high and desperate. Anaïs.
“Now,” Martin Chatwin said, when he could speak again. “I’d like the button, please.”
They stared at him.
“Why,” Eliot said numbly. “What are you?”
Martin took out his handkerchief and dabbed Penny’s blood from the corner of his mouth.
“Why, I’m what you thought that was.” He indicated Ember’s motionless body. “I’m a god.”
Quentin’s chest was so tight that he kept taking tense irregular little breaths, in and out.
“But why do you want it?” he asked.
Talking was good. Talking was better than killing.
“Just tying up loose ends,” Martin said. “I would have thought it was obvious. The buttons are the only things I know of that could force me to return to Earth. I’ve got almost all of them rounded up. Just one more after this. Goodness knows where the bunnies got them. I still haven’t figured that out.
“Do you know, when I first ran away, they hunted me like an animal? My own siblings? They wanted to bring me home. Like an animal!” His urbane manner cracked for an instant. “Later Ember and Umber came looking for me, too, to try to deport me, but by then it was much too late for that. Much too late. I was too strong even for them.
“That bloody cunt of a Watcherwoman is still at it, with her damned clock-trees. Mucking about with time. Even now their roots go halfway through this bloody world. She’s next after you, she’s still got a button. The last one. Once I’ve got hers I really don’t think there’ll be any way to get rid of me at all.”
Penny rolled over onto his side. He looked up at Quentin, his face strangely ecstatic, though paler than ever and covered in sand. His eyes were closed. He had the stumps of his wrists pressed tight against his chest. His shirt was wringing wet with blood.
“Is it bad, Q?” Penny asked. “I’m not going to look. You tell me. How bad is it?”
“You’re all right, man,” Quentin muttered.
Martin could not suppress a joyless clubman’s chuckle at that. He went on.
“I’ve been back once or twice, of course, by myself. Once to kill the old bugger, Plover.” His smooth brow crinkled, and he looked thoughtful. “He earned that. That and more. I wish I had him to kill again.
“And I nipped through once when your Professor March bungled a spell. Just to keep an eye on things. I thought somebody at Brakebills might be planning something—I get a sort of sense of the future sometimes. It appears that I was right. Though I must have eaten the wrong student.”
Martin clapped his hands together and rubbed them in anticipation.
“Well, that’s all bygones,” he said, perking up. “Let’s have it.”
“We hid it again,” Alice said. “Like your sister Helen. We buried the button. Kill us and you’ll never find it.”
My brave Alice. Quentin