Chapter 94.
When The Host reenters the room, Alek is leaning down, saying something into Carlos Lopez’s ear that only Lopez can hear.
Alek stands and leaves Lopez where he is on the ground. Lopez stays on the floor a moment longer, breathing hard.
Alek picks up her fallen knife.
Then she holds out both knives—hers and his—handle-first, offering them back like she’s returning borrowed tools.
The Host takes them.
“You must know he would have killed you if given the chance,” The Host says calmly. “Driven that knife up into you and as close to your brain as he could get it.”
“I’m not him,” Alek says.
Then she adds:
“And just so we’re clear? I’m not you, either.”
Lopez slowly gets to his feet, glaring at Alek as he does.
If looks really could kill, she thinks.
“Since we are both still alive,” Lopez says, turning his attention to The Host, “this should be judged a draw. And since there has been no resolution, I am demanding a rematch. Immediately if possible.”
Alek sees The Host smile.
“You’re demanding?” he asks Lopez.
Lopez corrects himself. “I am requesting a rematch,” he says.
“And I can totally understand why you’d feel that way,” he’s told.
“But this wasn’t a draw, sir. It wasn’t even close, and you know that, Mr. Lopez.
The only way there would have been a more clear-cut resolution—so to speak—is if Ms. Andrich slit your throat from ear to ear when she had the chance. ”
The Host is beaming now as he adds, “Now please do me the favor of—”
What happens next happens so fast that this time Alek has no chance to stop Carlos, who lunges for one of the knives in The Host’s hands.
But then, to Alek’s amazement, The Host’s hands are suddenly a blur of motion and Lopez is screaming out in pain again, so much louder than before.
Carlos stares down in shock at the two knives sticking out of his midsection, blood pouring out of him.
Only the handles of the knives are showing.
When Lopez manages to pull one out and then the other, his hands covered in blood, two guards have appeared. They half lift and half drag him out of the room, Lopez shouting curses as he goes, even with his hands pressed to the wounds in his stomach.
When he is gone, The Host turns to Alek.
“I hate a sore loser, don’t you?” he says.
“You could have killed him,” she says, still in a mild state of shock over what she’s just witnessed.
“How do you know I wasn’t trying to do just that?” is his answer. “Why didn’t you kill him when you had the chance?”
Alek doesn’t blink.
“Simple,” she says. “He was already dead.”
“May I ask what you were telling him when I came back into the room?” The Host says.
Alek wipes her own blood from her hand with the edge of her shirt.
Then says, flat as steel:
“I asked him who was a little girl now.”