The Devil's Only Friend (27 page)

“She has all of Nobody’s memories,” I said.

“That sounds like a story I need to hear sometime.”

“Later,” I said. “We don’t know how long it will be before he kills again, or before he tries to contact her again and realizes we’ve discovered him. If you can tell us how to kill him, we can go in and do it now, in force, before he has a chance to reach whatever end game he’s been building toward.”

“That’s what you tried with Gidri in the mortuary,” said Elijah. “You lost two men, and at least two more are injured.”

“Isn’t that worth it to kill someone like Rack?”

He paused, saying nothing as he looked at me. I tried to read what he was thinking, and found him more humanlike in his facial expressions than I expected—certainly more human than Potash. His brow was furrowed, his eyes slightly squinted, his mouth grim and flat. He was concerned. He probably thought we were all going to die. How he would react to that concern, though, I couldn’t guess.

“Let me come with you,” he said.

“We still don’t trust you.”

“I’ve done nothing but help,” he said. “I haven’t attacked anyone, I haven’t done anything alarming, I’ve answered all of your questions.” He leaned forward. “I’m more human than any thousand other people you could ask—put together. I want this shadow war over, and I want your side to win. What will it take to prove that to you?”

“Tell us how to kill Rack.”

“You can’t,” said Elijah. “He regenerates too quickly. He’s faster, stronger, and smarter than any other Withered. I’ve known him for ten thousand years and he’s never lost. Even if you overwhelm him, he’ll just retreat and keep killing and come up with another plan. You’re too close now to let that happen, so bring me on your raid. Get me close enough and I can drain his memory—even if he attacks me first, even if he knocks me down and breaks my bones and reaches in to steal my heart, I’ll be touching him, and that’s all it takes. I can empty his mind and stop him.”

I stared at him. Was his description of Rack’s abilities accurate? Would his plan to get around them work? It all seemed to make sense, but it was so hard to trust him. I wanted to trust him—I felt a … kinship to Elijah that I’d felt with barely a handful of people in my entire life. It had scared me before, because he was a Withered, and it still scared me, but …

But the rest of my team were humans, and they’d done worse things than Elijah had ever even tried. I couldn’t define my morality the same way anymore. There was too much gray area. But how could I judge him without knowing him? I needed time to get inside his head, time I didn’t have.

Or maybe I only needed one more question. “What about his thoughts?” I asked. “Drain his mind into yours and for all intents and purposes you’ll be him. What’s to stop him from continuing his plans in another body?”

“I’m easier to kill than he is,” said Elijah simply. “If his mind takes over, kill me.”

I looked at the mirror again. “I trust him,” I said. “Let’s move.”

16

We moved silently through The Corners, under cover of darkness. Elijah had warned us that Rack would see us coming—that his senses were just as superhuman as his strength—but still we tried to be quiet, if for no other reason than to keep the neighbors asleep and unaware. They had no idea of the combat we were about to engage in: the final battle with the king of the demons. The less they knew the better.

The plan was simple: to trick Rack into a confrontation and get Elijah close enough to drain his mind. Seeing it through would be much harder. Potash was leading the way, a cannula in his nose and a portable oxygen tank strapped securely to his back; he wore his steel machete in a sheath beside it, a combat knife on his belt—a new one, since I still had his old one—and enough guns to arm half the police department. Diana was with him, armed more simply but looking no less imposing. I had, again, suggested that we leave her outside to guard an entrance, but Trujillo had insisted that she be in the first wave. If Rack tried to flee, we’d lose him, no matter how many police officers surrounded the building with automatic weapons. We had to force a showdown, and that meant bringing in the main team. We had to make him want to kill us.

I didn’t
like
the plan, but I agreed with it. I hoped we lived long enough to see it through.

Ostler was outside, coordinating the attack, and Trujillo and Nathan were staying back in the office, as far out of harm’s way as we could keep them. They weren’t combatants. I wasn’t either, but I was the only person willing to get close enough to Elijah to help him. I didn’t want to like him, but I found myself trusting him in spite of myself. Maybe because we were both the outcasts on the team? I don’t know, and I preferred not to think about it.

I kept my knife in my pocket, my fingers tight around the nylon-sheathed blade. Elijah had no weapons but his hands and whatever ancient power resided within them. He kept patting his pockets, then mumbling and shaking his head; after the fourth or fifth time I whispered softly.

“You missing something?”

“It’s nothing,” he said, “Just a nervous habit. I keep my keys on a lanyard, so I won’t forget them during the times my memory’s all patchy. Sometimes I can’t even find my car, I’m so messed up, but I always have my keys. It’s a comfort thing, I guess, and I’m nervous right now, so…” He shook his head. “I’m fine.”

We were crouched in the shadow of a minivan parked on the street one door down from Rack’s house. Potash was ahead, scouting, and when Ostler gave the word that it was time to move, we’d run up to join him in the first wave. I looked at the house: a blue two-story, made gray by the moonlight. Everything was dark. I looked back at Elijah. “You’ll know him when you see him?”

“He’s hard to miss.”

“I guess that’s true.” I pulled out the knife, turning it slowly in my hands, thinking about the death of Mary Gardner. That’s how I tried to think of it—not as my attack, but as her death.
I
had nothing to do with it, or at least I didn’t want anything to do with it. I remembered the knife going in, coming out, going in. I remembered the feeling of it, a dizzying blend of horror and elation, of rage and unfettered joy. I had loved it, and that was the worst part: I was lost in a frenzy, far beyond my own control, and I loved every minute of it. I couldn’t allow myself to do that again. To
feel
that again.

And yet there was a part of me that wanted to feel that more than anything in the world.

“Your knife’s not going to help you,” whispered Elijah.

“Not tonight,” I said. I didn’t say anything else.

The night was silent and dark.

“Go!” said Agent Ostler in my ear, and I rose to a run. Elijah stayed close behind me, and we reached the door just as Detective Scott broke it open with a heavy metal ram. Potash went in first, Diana right on his heels, assault rifles up and scanning the corners, hunting for monsters in the shadows. Elijah and I followed behind, hoping that Rack’s attack, when it came, would involve something more targeted than a grenade or a spray of bullets. Everything about him suggested that he would want to finish this in person, face to face, and that was our only hope for success. I held my breath and stepped through the door. Detective Scott brought up the rear, with a half dozen armored cops behind him. Their whispers echoed in my earpiece:

“Clear.”

“Moving up.”

“On your six.”

“Clear.”

A stairway in the main entry led up to the second floor, and two cops watched it while the rest of us snaked through the main floor, making sure it was empty. The house seemed normal, almost disturbingly so, but here and there we saw a hint of something more: one of my Pancho’s Pizza flyers, pinned to the wall with a thumbtack. News clippings about the three victims held with magnets to the fridge, like a proud display of a child’s latest drawing. Stains on the living room couch and carpet, which might have been blood, or might just as well have been anything.

“Soy sauce,” whispered one of the cops, as if he was trying to convince himself that the worst-case scenario wasn’t true.

“He doesn’t have a mouth,” I reminded him. The cop gulped nervously.

We found a basement door near the back, and two more cops stayed to watch that, guarding against a surprise assault from below. Elijah and I stayed close to Potash and soon found ourselves back at the base of the stairs.

“It’s now or never,” said Diana. Potash grunted and started the climb.

“Go carefully,” said Ostler, her voice crackling in our ears over the radio. “Don’t try to kill him, just get Mr. Sexton close.”

“Roger that,” said Potash as he reached the top of the stairs. We paused to listen.

“Welcome to my home,” said a soft, whispering voice. I gripped my knife, pulling it out of the sheath, knowing it was useless. Potash and Diana both turned to the left, identifying the source of the words, and we moved forward cautiously. A door at the head of the landing was open—the door leading in to the master bedroom, I guessed, based on what I’d seen of the house. Was he simply waiting inside for us? Had he known we were coming?

How was he talking?

Potash counted silently, locking eyes with Diana, and on three they burst into the room, all subtlety gone, shouting out commands to get down, to put his hands on his head, and the rest of us surged in behind them ready to run toward the killer, ready to sacrifice anything we could just to give Elijah the opening he needed, but nothing moved, and all we heard was a soft, wheezing laugh.

There was a body in the bed, lying on top of the covers: light hair and fair skin and most of the flesh on his torso missing, chewed to bits by human teeth. The head, as before, was untouched.

The lips were moving.

“Put my hands on my head,” said the voice. The corpse’s eyes were unfocused and glassy. “Of course you would say that. But which hands, and which head?”

Potash and Diana scouted the room quickly, checking corners and closets and any nooks or crannies that might conceal an attacker. The master bathroom was attached, and Diana opened the door only to stagger back, gagging. Potash looked at her in alarm, but she shook her head.

“Clear,” she coughed, “and no need to double check. I can go my whole life not knowing what’s in that tub.”

“It’s meat,” said the body on the bed. There were flies on his wounds, buzzing in small circles before landing lightly and rubbing their forelegs together, licking the bloody flesh with tiny black probosces. The mouth moved by itself, as if it were completely independent from the rest of the body. “Puppets can bite,” he said softly, “but they can’t swallow.”

I nodded. “If he’d left gobs of flesh behind anywhere we’d have found it,” I said. “He had to hide it somewhere.”

“He could have burned it,” said Diana.

“I saved it for you,” said the corpse. I walked closer, looking at the thing’s pale skin, and its mouth twisted into a leer I could only assume was a smile. “Do you like it? I don’t have guests often, you’ll forgive me for not being here to receive you in person.”

“Are you close?” I asked.

“Hello, John.”

He could distinguish voices. Or was the room bugged? I didn’t know what he was capable of supernaturally, and what he might need to augment with technology. I’d never known the Withered to have much range on their powers, though, so wherever he was he probably wasn’t far. I frowned and thought of another mechanical question: how long could he use a corpse after he killed it? Elijah said he could only drain a corpse within about twenty-four hours—did Rack’s power over the dead have a similar limit? Twenty-four hours ago we hadn’t even known we were coming. I touched the body’s arm and tried to lift it; it was stiff.

“That’s evidence,” said Diana.

“That’s rigor mortis,” I said. “This body died somewhere between ten and…” I tested it again. “Thirty hours ago.”

“The mouth moves just fine,” said Potash.

“I could—” said Elijah, but I cut him off with an urgent hand motion. If he was using the corpse’s ears to identify our voices, he might not know Elijah was with us.

But then I realized with mounting horror that he might already know. He claimed to know everything. How could he have prepared this corpse to meet us unless he knew we were coming?

“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said.

“We haven’t even cleared the upper story,” said Diana. “You’re just going to trust him when he says he’s not here?”

“I guarantee he’s here,” I said. “This is a trap and we need to get out now.”

“Too late,” the body whispered.

Someone downstairs fired a gun.

It started as shouts, shocked and desperate: “He’s here!” “Look out!” “Behind you!” Urgent and angry, perforated by gunfire, and Potash ran for the door while Ostler screamed in our ears to know what was going on. All too soon, though, the shouting turned to shrieks of pain, howls and sobs and horrific death yells as whatever was attacking tore our armed escort to pieces. Potash roared in defiance, and we shouted for him to come back, to stay together and force the confrontation we needed, but he was gone. Diana swore and followed him back to the stairs, shouting at us to stay with her, and I ran after her with Elijah close on my heels. A spray of bullets tore the floor ahead of me, showering the stairway with splinters, and I fell back, covering my eyes. Elijah steadied me, and I counted to three before running again, steeling myself to face another barrage of friendly fire. As I ran I tried to visualize the house in my head, estimating that the errant bullets had come up through the floor from … the kitchen. The top of the basement stairs. We reached the main floor, jumping over the fallen bodies, slipping in the blood, and ran through the hall toward the battle. Another burst of gunfire tore through the wall, but it was ten feet to the side—a mile away in close combat—and we kept running.

“What’s going on in there?” Ostler demanded on the radio. “Somebody talk to me!”

“We need—” said Diana, but she stopped abruptly. I reached the kitchen just in time to see her fall to the floor, her arm, still clutching her rifle, ripped from her body. Rack was no more than a shadow, seeming somehow unreal and enormous at the same time. He threw the arm at me and I ducked, and Potash roared again and attacked, muzzle fire lighting up the room in a staccato strobe. I caught only a glimpse of Rack’s chest, a roiling mass of ash that seemed to burn his skin around the hole, the dirty yellow bones of his shattered rib cage protruding grotesquely from the edges. His face was a nightmare: wide eyes above, human and furious, a black, greasy hole beneath them. He had no nose, mouth, trachea, or chest. As he stalked through the center of that maelstrom, heedless of bullets, blood streaming from his fingers, I couldn’t help but wonder: we got our concept of “king” from this creature?