The Devil's Only Friend (17 page)

“Until such time as you no longer care what they think.” Did I care what they thought? They didn’t care what I thought. I had to fight just to make myself heard in our meetings; I was the child prodigy, brought in as a specialist, but they never let me do anything. Not the way I wanted to do it. I worked by getting to know the Withered, by slipping in the back door of their lives and listening while they talked. That’s what I’d done with Cody French and Mary Gardner, but we couldn’t do it now. I’d met Elijah once, but I’d never found a way to speak to him again; the few times he’d come back to Whiteflower I’d been out on other assignments, coffee runs, stakeouts of empty buildings, and stupid things that anyone else could have done—but I was the kid so why not send me? And forget about getting to know The Hunter. Gidri and his mystery companions had an uncanny knack of giving the slip to police surveillance, and we had no idea where any of them were. It was hard to disguise yourself as the boy next door when you didn’t know what door to be next to.

Brooke had lived next door to me. I’d watched her through her window at night, watched her sleep. Now she was trapped in that room, and I was trapped out here, and I just wanted to—

One, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one.

“Until such time as you no longer care what they think, we must find another way of communicating.” It was a message for me, I was sure of it. So why not send one back? I couldn’t kill someone, obviously, but I could do a letter to the editor. What would I even say? “Hi, this is John, tell me about yourself.” I was hunting him, not dating him. And, of course, as soon as I put a letter in the paper the others would know it—the protocol was laid out right there in his note: the headline and the code phrase and everything. I couldn’t talk to The Hunter without Ostler and Nathan and everybody else freaking out. I was hemmed in. They wouldn’t let me work, they wouldn’t let me talk, they wouldn’t let me do anything. I crumpled the letter in my fist, only to growl at the sheer uselessness of such a gesture.

The fire was mewling, even more piteously than Boy Dog. A fire was a thing of chaos, the ultimate expression of life and freedom, and in this tiny metal box it had nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to eat but the little I gave it. It made me sick to look at it, so anemic and wasted, and I used another plank of wood to lever it out, dumping it on the ground to watch as the flames hissed against the snow and sputtered and died, too disorganized to maintain their heat. I kicked a pile of snow over the blackened patches of wood and then suddenly I was stomping on them, jumping up and down, screaming in a wordless rage at the sheer wrongness of the entire world. It didn’t work, it didn’t make sense, it didn’t do anything the way it was supposed to. The way I wanted it to. Boy Dog waddled out of his table cave and howled, with me or at me I couldn’t tell, and I jumped and growled and stomped on the boards, but they didn’t have anything to break against, and after a while I collapsed onto a snowy bench, exhausted. I didn’t know if the tears in my eyes were from sadness or the bitter cold.

I had a heart now, but I didn’t know how to use it.

Boy Dog barked a few more times, his hidden stores of energy not yet spent, and then shuffled toward me and put his head on my leg. I put my hands on my head, like I was being arrested, too worried that if I touched the dog I’d try to hurt it, to break it like I hadn’t been able to break the wood. I closed my eyes and the tears came faster.

I needed to talk to Brooke. She couldn’t help me and I couldn’t help her but she was all I had, the only hint of the life I used to know. I stood up as gently as I could, dislodging Boy Dog as gingerly as possible, and fished in my pocket for my phone. I’d turned it off when I’d slipped away from Potash—he was supposed to stay with me like before, my babysitter again now that he’d gotten out of the hospital. But he’d been in a meeting with Ostler so I’d slipped away, with nothing but a text message to let them know I hadn’t been kidnapped. I saw The Hunter’s letters on the ground, trampled in the ash and snow. I picked them up and wadded them into a ball, waiting while the phone booted up. There was no sense leaving any evidence that I was the one who’d been here.

My phone chirped hysterically when it connected to the network, and I glowered at the thought of how many angry messages I was sure to have. I scrolled through the list—thirteen texts and twenty-one calls. They must really be pissed. I started dialing Trujillo’s number, to tell him I was coming in to Whiteflower, when suddenly my phone rang. It was Diana.

“Hello?”

“Dammit, John, where the hell have you been?”

“Secret dance lessons,” I said, “what’s going on?”

“Get to the mortuary immediately—as fast as you can. We found Rose.”

I looked at my car, a hundred feet away through the snow. “What? At the mortuary?”

“Are you running?” she demanded.

“Yes,” I said, and broke into a run. Boy Dog followed, panting with exertion. We still didn’t know who had kidnapped Rose, but finding her at the mortuary meant one of two things: either Elijah had taken her there, or she’d shown up the way most people show up at a mortuary. “Is Rose dead?” I asked. “Did Elijah kill her?”

“Elijah’s not even here,” said Diana. “Gidri’s gang showed up about forty-five minutes ago, with Rose slung over their shoulder—we haven’t dared make contact so we don’t know what condition she’s in.”

So Gidri kidnapped Rose? But why? Did Elijah tell him to? Was Elijah the leader of the whole wretched group?

We could figure out why later—first things first. “Don’t make contact,” I said. “Every human in that building will die.”

“That’s the problem,” said Diana. “The cops won’t believe us—they still think this is some kind of drug ring and they’re gathering at the gas station around the corner.”

“Gathering?”

“Armed and armored,” said Diana. “They’re going to go in.”

*   *   *

I screeched to a stop on the edge of a crowd of cop cars, their lights turned off in the hope that the mortuary half a block away wouldn’t know they were there. I left Boy Dog in the passenger seat, hoping that he’d be okay—would I be back soon? Would he freeze? I couldn’t hurt him or allow him to be hurt; I had to follow my rules. I hovered a moment in indecision, then ran toward Agent Ostler.

“Where have you been?” she snapped.

“Selling cigarettes to children,” I said. “Have they gone in yet?”

“Do they look like they’ve gone in?” She pointed to the massing crowd of police in armored vests and helmets, clutching assault rifles as Detective Scott gave them a final briefing. Fort Bruce was too small for a real SWAT team, but in every situation they typically encountered, this group would be enough. This was not a typical situation.

I counted them as quickly as I could. “Looks like eighteen guys? Against four Withered?”

“And all four are here now,” said Diana, walking toward us. She had a bulletproof vest of her own, with a small radio handset clipped to a strap on the shoulder. “Elijah drove up right after I talked to you. That puts him twenty minutes late to work, if that means anything.”

Ostler sneered. “It’s a miracle he didn’t drive past this … bonehead parade. Surprise might be our only real weapon here, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Are you going in, too?” I asked Diana. “That’s a death trap in there.”

Detective Scott approached with a frown, his handheld radio squawking. “This is your last chance to be straight with me,” he said. “We’re not going to let that woman die, but that’d be a whole lot easier if you’d just tell me what my men are going to find in there.”

“I’ve told you before,” said Ostler. “They are ancient creatures we don’t even begin to understand—”

“They are not vampires!” Scott hissed. “They’re not ghosts or goblins or whatever other lies you keep insisting on telling me. I have eighteen good men, with families at home, and if you can’t stop this charade long enough to tell them the truth—”

“Don’t send them,” said Ostler. “If you refuse to believe anything else I say, at least listen to this: anyone you send in there will die, and you will not blame me for being anything less than clear about that.”

Boy Dog howled from my car, lost and primal.

“You’re not a part of this community,” said Scott. “You can waltz around here and watch our people get killed and kidnapped and then you can leave, but we have a responsibility here. We have to get up every morning and tell our neighbors we’re doing everything we can to protect them, and if that means going in there, then that’s what we do. It’s eighteen on four, with no sign of heavy weapons on any of the suspects. We have to take this chance.”

“Send them in,” I said.

“He doesn’t have the authority to give you that permission,” said Ostler quickly.

“And she doesn’t have the authority to stop you,” I said. “You go, you do your thing, but you remember what she told you.”

The detective’s voice dropped, and he spoke through clenched teeth. “What is this?”

“It’s a war,” I said. “It’s been in the shadows for centuries—for millennia maybe—but if you’re determined to start the first real battle, we can’t stop you.”

Scott looked back and forth among the three of us, then stormed off with a snarl. “Bunch of freaks.”

“What are you doing?” Ostler demanded.

“Communicating,” I said bitterly. “The Hunter wants a corpse, and the police are determined to die. It’s a win-win.”

“I’m going with them,” said the radio on Diana’s shoulder, and I realized it was Potash’s voice, rough with static.

“Stay in the car,” said Diana. “You can barely breathe.”

“No,” said Ostler, “I’m sending you both—first in the door, since you’re the only personnel with any experience fighting Withered. If we can save even one of these idiots’ lives, we will.”

“Yes ma’am,” said Diana, and she ran off with her rifle—not her long sniper, but a short automatic that would be better in close quarters.

Ostler handed me a radio. “If you have any brilliant insights, now’s the time to let them know. They’re the only people who can fight these monsters, but you’re the only person who can think like one.”

I looked at the radio in my hand, then back at Ostler. “No radio silence?”

“The cops are going to be broadcasting the whole time anyway.”

“All right then.” I paused. “Do you and I get vests, too?”

“You’re not going in there,” she said firmly.

“And you’re so sure that what’s in there isn’t coming out?”

She frowned, but walked to her car and opened the trunk, revealing an array of armor and weapons. I took off my bulky coat, shivering in the night air, and pulled on a vest. Ostler did the same. I clipped the radio to a strap on the front and switched it on.

Words hissed across the radio channel like ghosts.

“Team One in position.”

“Team Two move to the back entrance.” It sounded like Detective Scott, but I couldn’t be sure. “Team Three, stay here to cover the retreat.”

“Potash,” said Diana, “you need to hurry it up.”

The only answer from Potash was labored breathing and the sound of boots in the snow.

“Form up along this wall,” said Detective Scott. “Weapons hot.”

“Shoot anything that moves,” I said. “Chairs, shadows, cats, I don’t even care. Anything you don’t kill will kill you.”

Ostler scowled. “That’s your great advice?”

I laughed dryly. “If you thought the raid on Mary Gardner was reckless and stupid, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

“You’re broadcasting,” said Diana.

“Go team,” I said. “We’re all out here cheering for you.”

I should be in there,
I thought. Not part of this raid, but the only one on the raid, and instead of a raid it would just be quiet, unassuming John Cleaver, picking up a night job to make a few extra bucks. I could learn about the hearses, dazzle Elijah with my knowledge of mortuary life, and over weeks and months find the cracks in his armor. I could kill him if they gave me time.

But there was never any time anymore. The war had started and this was its future: terrified men without a hope of survival, future corpses lining up for The Hunter to eat.

Elijah absorbed memories from the dead. The Hunter ate people and possibly controlled their minds. Gidri we had no idea about, and we didn’t even have a name for the final man. I had nothing I could tell the team.

“Go,” said Diana, and the hiss of the radio was joined by the click of a lock opening, of a door swinging wide, of weapons being readied. Boots thumped and spare magazines jangled.

“They’re arguing,” Diana whispered. “No, they’re fighting. Something’s gone wrong.”

I heard crashes and a loud, feminine scream that was probably Rose, followed by an inhuman roar whose origin I could only guess at. Seconds later the channel erupted in the sound of gunfire, and I heard Diana shout “Potash, fall back!”

What could I tell them that could save their lives? That Elijah should have been good? That kidnapping Rose felt like a betrayal I didn’t even understand? I heard Potash’s ragged breath and something that sounded for all the world like an axe biting into wood. The woman screamed again, and then I heard Diana’s voice, her words short and clipped.

“I have one still alive in here but I can’t hit him without hurting the woman.”

“So try harder,” I said, but something didn’t feel right. She’d said she had “one still alive.” Were all but one of the cops already dead? But I could still hear them shouting over the radio. Was she talking about a Withered, then? Did she have one of them already dead and another alive but not killing her? How was that even possible? Unless they weren’t Withered at all.

“I need backup,” said Diana. She sounded like her teeth were clenched tightly shut from fear. “He’s healing.”

So they were definitely Withered. What was going on?

“Please don’t shoot us,” said Rose, barely audible through Diana’s radio, and I froze.
Don’t shoot us
. She’d said “us.” One of the Withered was still alive, so close to Rose that Diana couldn’t risk a shot. And now Rose was pleading for his life.

I started running.