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"Makethis right"

"Okay," Luther said and put the gun into the folds under the Deacon's chin and pulled the trigger with thein his eyes

"That fucking do?" Luther shouted and watched the man tip to his left and slide down the back of the booth "Kill h he kneas dead

"Fuck!" Luther screaun clutched against it and screa to pull hie in his own blood and Luther kicked a chair out of his way and crossed to the stage with his ar up at Luther with no more life in his eyes than Jessie's

For what felt like an hour--and Luther would never kno long he stood there exactly--they stared at each other

Then Luther felt a new version of himself he wasn't even sure he liked say, "If you live, you'll have to come kill me, sure as sin"

Smoke blinked his eyelids once, real slow, in the affi rmative

Luther stared down the gun at him He saw all those bullets he'd scored in Columbus, saw his Uncle Cornelius's black satchel, saw the rain that had fallen, warm and soft as sleep, the afternoon he'd sat on his porch, willing his father to come home when his father was already four years five hundred un

He watched the surprise flash across Smoke's pupils Smoke's eyes rolled and he burped a thimbleful of blood down his chin and onto his shirt He fell back to the stage and the blood flowed from his stomach

Luther raised the gun again It should have been easier, theacross the river right at thisthe dark shore into another world All it would take was one er to be sure He'd had no hesitation with the Deacon So why now?

The gun shook in his hand and he lowered it again

Wouldn't take the people the Deacon associated with long to put all this together, to put him in this room Whether Smoke lived or died, Luther and Lila's time in Tulsa was done

Still

He raised the gun again, gripped his forearm to stop the shakes and stared down the barrel at Sood minute before he finally faced the fact that he could stand there for an hour and he'd still never pull that trigger

"Ain't you," he said

Luther looked at the blood still leaking out of the hed He stepped over Dandy's corpse