Free The Echelon Vendetta by David Stone

out on me, kid. Cinch up good and tight with that belt there, or you’ll pass out.”
    Dalton tied off the tissue pack, twisted the belt tip in under the band, and jerked it in tight. Naumann shook his head.
    “Not that tight. You’ll kill tissue. Back it off a bit.”
    Dalton loosened the belt a notch. Underneath the wad of Kleenex the blood was welling up, but more slowly, seeping into the
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    compress. Dalton swayed as he looked down at it, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Naumann was gone.
    He sat down heavily on the toilet, shaking violently. At his feet the bathroom floor was covered in blood, smeared rectangles of bloody red tile. His suit pants were dappled with it and his shoes were stained almost black. The bathroom mirror looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. He leaned against the tank and let his head roll backward. The soft white light came back again, growing brighter, and his blood began to sing in his ears. His lids grew heavy again and he let them slowly close.
    A brassy bellow from the other room snapped him upright, Naumann’s baritone vibrato, full of striding jovial life:
    “Micah! Wake up. Where the hell’s your booze?”
    He got to his feet, swayed, steadied himself on the tank, stepped around the blood pooling in squares across the tiled floor, and went back into the main room. Naumann was standing in front of the dresser. He had the top drawer pulled open and was riffling through Dalton’s shirts. He looked up when Dalton came into the room.
    “The minibar’s empty, you drunken sot. You always have something in reserve.”
    “I think I finished it all.”
    Naumann waved that off with a sideways flick of his hand.
    “Not you. How much have you had today, by the way?”
    Dalton tried to give the question some thought while Naumann watched him. Was he really going to have a chat with this hallucination? Dalton decided that in reality he was passed out on the bathroom floor right now and that this was all a dream, the kind of out-of-body experience he had always heard about but never actually believed in.
    What the hell.
    When in Wonderland, talk to the Cheshire Cat.
    “I started this morning. I believe I never stopped.”
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    Naumann leaned an elbow against the top of the dresser and shook his head slowly at Dalton. “Man, I have to tell you, Micah. You look like death.”
    “I look like death? I look like death?”
    Dalton sat heavily down on the bed, cradling his bloody left arm, and watched in a detached but vaguely appreciative way as Naumann went through the rest of the dresser drawers, rapidly and efficiently, as if he were tossing a crib for an entry unit.
    Finding nothing, Naumann turned and pointed down to a place beside Dalton’s feet.
    “How about your briefcase?”
    Dalton reached under the bed and pulled out a travel-worn leather case with solid gold fittings. He threw it on the bed beside him. Naumann came over to the bed. He ran his hands over the top and then down the sides, stopping at the left-hand hinge plate. Sitting this close to him, Dalton caught an autopsy-room smell of disinfectant and dried blood coming off Naumann.
    He managed to give every appearance of not being sickened by this. Naumann was an old friend and, although dead, deserved some consideration for what he had just been through.
    Naumann found the release and pressed it and the case popped open. He stood up and shook his head slowly. “Same trigger you’ve always had. You should change it.”
    “I’m on it. If I live through the night, I’ll make it a priority.”
    “You think you’re dying?”
    Dalton let out a slightly self-pitying sigh. “I think so. I think I’ve passed out from loss of blood.”
    “What about the spider bite?”
    “Or that, yeah—from the spider bite.”
    “And now you’re ...where? Lying on the bathroom floor having an out-of-body experience? Don’t go into the light, Carol Ann?”
    “Yes. Something like