Public Enemies (22 page)

“There's Cuppa Joe,” Kian reminded Buzzkill.

“Good idea.” That was where Kian first made me an offer I couldn't refuse, and he'd said the place was company owned. Which meant we might find other creepy things waiting for us there, but they should be aligned with Wedderburn, and we weren't trying to keep Aaron a secret from him.

“I'll get the Mustang,” Kian said. “Wait here.”

Aaron tried to follow and I took his hand to stop him. It surprised me how cold he was; I could feel it radiating even through his gloves, an inhuman sort of burn that whispered of corpses and frozen boys crawling through the snow with burning blue eyes. When he swiveled his head to look at me, I trembled and tried not to shrink away. Buzzkill showed no such delicacy; he gave the kid a wide berth as we moved past him. White flakes spattered down, lazily guttering from the gray clouds above. Everything in the world was sepia or silent movie, except for Kian's car and his green, green eyes. I got in back with Aaron while Buzzkill rode shotgun.

“You can talk on the way,” our scary driver invited.

So we told him the abridged version of events, ending with Aaron's current state. Buzzkill didn't say a word, which surprised me. He was psychotic but a surprisingly good listener, a quality you didn't expect in a killer clown. Once Kian stopped talking, Buzzkill angled in his seat to take a closer look at Aaron, who cowered against me. I didn't blame him; the evil clown face was still pulsing in subliminal strobe, whispering against his illusion of normalcy.

“He smells human underneath,” Buzzkill said. “But there's something else too.”

Buzzkill slipped a pair of spectacles on, stared at the kid, and then shuddered. That did
not
bode well. Quietly, so as not to alarm the kid, I took off one of his gloves and wrapped my hand around his. He thought I was trying to warm him up and gave me a grateful smile. Guilt battered my casual façade because I was actually feeling for a pulse at his wrist. For few seconds, I thought he was dead and it took all my self-control not to scream and fling myself against the opposite side of the car. But then I found it, very slow and sluggish, like I'd expect from a person with hypothermia. But he wasn't showing any of the other symptoms.

What the hell is going on?

The killer clown didn't say anything else until we got to Cuppa Joe. As before, the place was populated with elderly people yet I didn't think they were human, something about their eyes and teeth and the veins in their hands hinted at monstrous otherness. The same waitress from before greeted Kian with a warm smile, Buzzkill less so, and she was neutral when she studied Aaron and me. Going over the specials, she seated us at a back booth, away from everyone else. That was probably wise.

“What can I get you?”

“Bloody virgin,” Buzzkill said.

“You think this is a bar?” Shirl demanded.

“I said virgin, didn't I?”

The woman sighed but wrote it down. I asked for hot chocolate and Aaron just nodded. I took that to mean he wanted the same. Kian got coffee. Then she went off to leave the ticket for the kitchen, spiking it onto the spinning wheel. This diner was so retro. We waited for our drinks because there was no point getting into it, only to be interrupted. Once we had our beverages, I took a sip, because while the patrons here might be creepy, they had a great kitchen. Buzzkill stirred his eerily red cocktail with a celery stalk, making me wonder if it
was
virgin's blood.

“Go on,” I encouraged.

“Something's latched on to him, something old.”

My thoughts sprang immediately to the Harbinger because I remembered how he'd fed on Nicole and how he planned to devour Kian's essence entirely. But, no, that didn't track. While Nicole grew pale and listless, she never forgot who she was. So it stood to reason that whatever had a hold of Aaron, it wasn't Harbinger related.

“Do you know what it is?” Kian asked.

Good question.

Buzzkill shook his head. “It'd be faster if you just put on the glasses.”

Reaching across the table, I took them. They looked like plain aviator shades, but they couldn't be, if they'd help me understand the thing feeding on Aaron's memories. Taking a deep breath, I slipped them on and glanced over at the boy. I barely swallowed a scream. The rest of the world paled, became distant and two-dimensional, but at the base of his neck, something hideous perched. It was grotesque and swollen, throbbing with energy that swirled in awful violet and citrine swirls. With each pulse, it felt like I was watching it draw Aaron's soul out through his brain stem, though the answer probably wasn't that simple.

“What the hell,” I breathed, yanking off the glasses with a trembling hand.

Kian took them, and to his credit, he handled the revelation better, though he paled.

Aaron glanced between us, obviously confused. “Am I sick?”

“Kind of,” I said, as Kian answered, “Don't worry about it.”

This time the look we swapped was loaded with contention. I could tell Kian thought we shouldn't let him know he had a huge, crazy-ass problem latched on to his skull, but I couldn't see any benefit to hiding the truth. Buzzkill clearly didn't care about the kid's feelings, and I was worried that I leaned toward agreeing with the killer clown. Feelings wouldn't save Aaron.

Shit. Maybe I'm already a monster.

“Tell me the truth,” Aaron whispered.

I said, “If he's brave enough to ask, he deserves an answer.”

I let Kian explain as best he could. But it didn't seem to make sense to the kid, who felt around on the back of his head. “There's nothing here.”

Just because you can't see or touch it doesn't mean it can't hurt you.
That was my new mantra, not that it offered
me
any comfort, either. I glanced at Buzzkill, wondering if he had any words of wisdom, but he was drinking his bloody virgin with an indifferent air.

“Wait, you can
drink
?”

“Is that important?” He wanted to know.

“No, but I'm curious.”

“You heard how that worked out for the cat, right?”

“I'll risk it.”

“Then, yeah, I can. Don't have to, but I can. Since I was allegedly human once, my ‘afterlife' has some perks.”

“Perks?” I asked, despite myself.

Buzzkill only smirked.

Oh God.

Aaron wore a blank look while Kian was quietly revolted. He got the conversation back on track. “So about the brain sucker…”

“You got me. I've never seen anything like it.”

“It doesn't come from any of our stories?” I asked.

“None I've heard. But … there are things in the universe that didn't come from humans. Old things. They were around before.”

“Like Allison Vega,” I blurted.

Buzzkill cocked his head in inquiry. “Who?”

“That's probably not her name. She said something about speaking Sanskrit,” Kian put in. He went on to tell the killer clown what we knew of her, including how she feasted on dissent and didn't have a belly button.

“Oh,” he said, losing interest. “In the old days you called her kind demons. But that doesn't mean much outside of religious context. To be fair, I understand why they're pissed at humans. They had a good thing going here before you climbed out of the primordial ooze and made this world your bitch.”

That was a separate problem. I sighed. “I bet they thought it was funny when we started using the collective unconscious to create our own nightmares.”

“At first, probably,” he agreed. “Though you realize I wasn't around, right? On the immortal longevity scale, I'm a fetus.”

“A terrifying fetus,” Kian muttered.

He flashed that awful grin. “Thanks, kid. Just doing my job.”

The sad part, that was true. “This thing attached, it's not a monster we made?”

“No way. It only pops on the subatomic level. Which tells me it's probably some kind of dimensional beastie. I could check with Wedderburn, if you want.” His scary eyes dared me to say yes.

I had a little more hot chocolate before giving him the go-ahead. Asking for information wouldn't be worse than letting him help me save my dad—after he had my mother murdered. Hatred burned like an ember in my chest, until it felt like I didn't have a human heart anymore, like I'd swapped it for a lump of coal, now kindled to a thousand degrees by white-hot loathing. I hoped Buzzkill couldn't see it, or he'd certainly warn his master.

Not that I expected Wedderburn to take the threat I posed seriously.

I hoped he wouldn't survive to regret it.

But I had other issues pressing first. Aaron. My dad.

Lately school didn't even feel like a dot on my horizon when it used to be my whole world. I could feel myself detaching from reality. It was easy to understand why Kian came across as he did when we first met, removed from humanity. Live too long in this world and the mundane one started to feel like the echo, the shadow that belonged to other people.

Buzzkill's side of the conversation didn't help too much. He just repeated what we'd told him and what we all saw through those weird-ass glasses. Then he went quiet, listening.

Aaron got up while Buzzkill was on the phone, head bowed. “Is the restroom over there?”

“Yeah, straight back that way.” Kian pointed toward an arch way past the last booth.

Buzzkill put down his cell as Aaron left. “I wasn't wrong,” he began. “Wedderburn says the things don't really have a name but he calls them temporal parasites because they tend to latch on to people who are somehow screwed in the time stream. From what he's seen, they're kind of a … cosmic cleanup crew.”

“That doesn't make any sense,” Kian said.

“Think about it. You told me this kid's from 1922, but he's only fourteen years old or whatever. How's that work if he remembers he should be almost a hundred? He's out of time. Not his fault, the Harbinger did something to him. But can shit like that go unchecked?”

“I have no idea,” I said.

“Wedderburn says the answer is no—that the universe hates a paradox. So there are forces outside the game that exert pressure to restore equilibrium. Why do you think he's so hot to lock down his control of the time-travel technology you and your old man invent down the line?” At my expression, he made a face. “Like you don't already know.”

Kian had shown me some confidential files a while back that hinted as much. This was confirmation, however.

“Why is one person so critical to the universe?” Kian asked, talking about Aaron.

“As a former catalyst, you're seriously asking me that? Hell if I know. I can't break it all down for you, I just kill things.”

“So basically, Aaron has a dimensional parasite locked on to him,” I cut in. “Did Wedderburn say what the endgame is?”

Buzzkill shrugged. “It's not set in stone. Sometimes the host dies or sometimes they're just wiped clean, tabula rasa.”

Kian's eyes widened. “If he can't remember that he was born in 1922, it's a soft reboot. He becomes just another damaged kid.”

“Give the pretty boy a prize. And thus, balance is restored,” Buzzkill said.

“He was really cold.” Judging by his pulse earlier, it sounded like this reset might end him. I nudged Kian across the table. “He's been gone for a while. You should check on him.”

Nodding, he stood up and headed off, but he was back in thirty seconds, white faced and breathless. “Aaron's gone, I think he went out the window.”

Swearing, I jumped out of my chair as Kian flung some money on the table for Shirl. I raced outside and around the building, hoping to catch sight of him. He was so young and helpless, despite his chronological age, that I couldn't stop the terror rolling over me. Buzzkill caught up with us in the alley behind Cuppa Joe. He sniffed the air, twice, and froze, but I only smelled the rotten food from the Dumpster, along with a hint of urine.

“What's wrong?” Kian asked.

“Brace yourself,” the killer clown said with dreadful relish. “Dwyer's coming in hot.”

 

HEART IN A BOX

“Pun intended?” Kian asked.

In that moment, I loved him so much that it hurt. The witty one-liners were so much a part of the action-hero role he wanted to play. I couldn't believe he had the presence of mind to snap one off, just before everything went insane. Unfortunately, he didn't have the combat prep he needed, and that scared the crap out of me. Yet at this point I was starting to get why he didn't care about his own safety. I'd lost so much that I'd rather die myself than take another emotional hit. Physical pain was finite, right? Death should be an ending; it wouldn't be a triumph, but if I could die saving my dad, my friends, or Kian, it would be worth it.

Buzzkill smirked. “Hey, I
am
a clown.”

Kian reached for me, taking my hand in a gesture of solidarity. The cold air around us heated, melting the snow accumulated against the alley walls into a swath of steam. At the same time, a glowing nimbus surrounded us from all sides, so bright that it burned out my vision briefly, replacing it with the burn of staring too long into the sun. Sudden terror burst like a rotten fruit. Did this mean Dwyer was leading the strike team personally? I didn't expect that. I figured he'd send minions, like the monsters he'd used to kidnap my dad.

No time to think. I couldn't let my flight reflex kick in either. Fighting wasn't my instinctive reaction, but to survive, I had to. I'd throw down for a chance to save my dad and to defend Kian. Before the temporary blindness passed, I dug into my coat pocket. Cameron should be fully powered up since I hadn't used him since the binding and lessons at Forgotten Treasures. Sucking in a stabilizing breath, I flipped open the compact and whispered the first command Rochelle had taught me.