The Devil's Only Friend (29 page)

Nathan frowned. “Back to the crime scene?”

“To the mortuary,” I said. “Elijah’s car is still there from the night he was captured, so he’ll go straight—”

“Absolutely not,” said Nathan.

“He’s not a traitor,” I insisted, “but Rack knows we think he is, and that makes him the only person we can trust right now. His entire cover in Fort Bruce is blown, so he’s probably just as desperate to leave town as we are. If we get to him soon, we can leave with him.”

“Are we talking about Meshara?” asked Brooke. “He’s so sad.”

“I don’t like it,” said Nathan. “He’s a Withered—Brooke is
half
Withered, for crying out loud.”

“Keep your voice down,” I urged.

“Trusting the Withered is what got us into this mess in the first place,” Nathan hissed.

“Do you have any better ideas?”

“Call the FBI and wait for backup?”

“If you want to,” I said. “But let’s at least wait outside of town somewhere.”

He growled, but finally nodded. “Let’s get out of here, then. I hate this movie.”

The bus service in Fort Bruce cut off at ten, with a late service on a few lines that ran until two in the morning. It was nearly midnight. We walked a few blocks to the nearest late-line station, keeping our heads down, listening to the whispers of drunks and hookers and other late-night denizens as we passed them:

“Did you hear what happened in The Corners?”

“Dozens are dead.”

“I heard it was hundreds.”

“It’s like the end of the world.”

Brooke walked close to me, shivering, and after a moment of hesitation, I put my arm around her.

“I love you, John,” she said.

“I’m only doing this to keep you warm.”

“That’s why I love you.”

I thought about Boy Dog, back in my apartment. If we left without him he’d starve, or at least dehydrate, alone in there maybe for days. I had rules to keep me from hurting an animal, even by neglect …

Who was I kidding? I’d broken all my rules. I couldn’t trust them, I couldn’t fall back on them, I couldn’t even blame them anymore. What did I have, if I didn’t have those? No family, no home, no life. A mad girl in my arms, and a dead one in my dreams. I didn’t even have myself.

I wasn’t even sure who I was.

I used to know. I used to be the weird kid, the one who sat in the corners, who didn’t talk to anyone, who hung around with the other weird kid because he never expected me to say anything back. I kept my rules and I kept to myself, and then the Clayton Killer came to town and everything changed. I had to hurt one person to save a bunch of others, but it didn’t stop at one. Now Marci was dead, and my mom, and so many more. Could I justify it with math? How many people haven’t died because I killed the Withered that would have killed them? How many people
have
died because I kicked the hornet’s nest and woke the hounds of hell? If I stop will it get better? If I kill them all, will it stop?

“Where do you want to go?” whispered Brooke.

“We’re going to Elijah’s mortuary.”

“I mean after,” she said. “When we’re free.”

“Free from trouble?” I asked. “I don’t think we can go far enough for that.”

“There’s the bus,” said Nathan. “Run.” We sprinted the last block and made it to the bus just in time, climbing on breathlessly as it pulled out from the stop. Nathan paid, and we sat on an empty bench. He flopped down across from us and pulled out his phone.

“Ordering a pizza?” I asked.

“An air strike,” said Nathan. “I want Langley to wipe this hellhole off the map.”

I glanced at the driver, but he seemed to be ignoring us. I pulled out my own phone and connected to the e-mail server.

You shouldn’t have run,
said the message from Rack.
We have things to discuss.
I disconnected without sending a response.

Was I really ready to just walk away from this? To let a monster that dangerous keep killing? I didn’t know how to stop him—except I did. Elijah was still our greatest weapon, and now we were going to find him. Yes, he might help us get out of town, but there were other ways. Was I going to him because I wanted to escape, or because some part of me still wanted to fight? Was I lying to Brooke and Nathan about leaving? Was I lying to myself? Brooke asked me where I wanted to go, and I didn’t know. I wanted everything to end.

I wanted to end it.

We rode for fifteen minutes, and then walked for seven more through back streets to the mortuary. The light was on in the garage, and we reached the big bay doors just as one of them started to open. I pulled Brooke to the side, and Nathan ducked behind me, and when the door was fully raised we peeked around the corner. The garage held four vehicles: two of them were hearses, behind the second bay door that was still closed; the third was Elijah’s car, and the fourth was a heavy pickup truck, with a snowplow on the front and some kind of plastic tank in the trunk. The garage had its own private gas pump, and Elijah was using it to fill up his car.

Nathan had his gun out, but I frowned and waved him back, mouthing “put that away.” We didn’t want to scare our only ally.

Elijah must have heard us, because he looked up, his eyes wide with fear, and then swallowed nervously when he recognized my face. His body shook with a tremor of agitation and he went back to his work.

“Wasn’t expecting to see you,” he said.

“Hello, Meshara,” said Brooke softly. “It’s been a long time.”

He looked at her more closely. “You’re Brooke?”

“Sometimes.”

“You’re leaving town,” I told him. “We want to come with you.”

“So he can find us all at once?” Elijah shook his head. “No, thank you.”

“Just far enough that we can lie low,” I said, walking in. Brooke and Nathan followed. “Just the next town over, that’s all we ask.” I was about to tell him that we trusted him, that I wasn’t like the others in the police station who’d been to afraid even to talk to him, but Elijah’s next words shocked me.

“I don’t trust you,” he said.

“You don’t trust
us
?” asked Nathan.

“Why should I?” asked Elijah, looking up again from his work. “You hit me with a truck.”

“I’m sorry,” said Brooke.

“Look,” I said, but Elijah shook his head and stormed toward me; Nathan cringed and stepped back a few steps.

“No,” said Elijah, “you look. I left the Withered years ago—millennia ago. I don’t like them, I don’t like their methods, I don’t like the way they think they can do anything they want to anybody just because they’re stronger. They used to be gods and they think they still are. Humans are their playthings. And then when I finally got back in the fight and I picked a side because you—you, of all people—convinced me that it was worth it, it turns out you think exactly the same way. We’re your playthings, and you can play god with our lives. I thought you were different.”

“I told you we were right,” I said. “I never told you we were different.”

“Maybe you should have,” said Elijah. He glared at me a moment longer, and the age behind his eyes seemed suddenly overwhelming, ten thousand years of weariness. I didn’t have an answer, and he turned back to his work. “I’m leaving,” he said again. “You can find your own way out.”

He pulled the gas-pump nozzle out of the car and turned to put it back on its hook, when suddenly a loud crack split the air and Elijah dropped to the floor. I stumbled back, my ears ringing from the sound, and looked at Nathan. He didn’t even have his gun out—his empty hands were clamped tightly over his ears, his face locked in a grimace. Brooke looked like she was screaming, but I couldn’t hear anything. I looked back at Elijah, struggling to get up, but he was hit by two more shots. I could barely even think from the shock—could barely process what was happening—but Brooke grabbed my arm and pulled me past Elijah to the end of the car, yanking me down into cover. I peeked around the edge of the hood in time to see a dark shape hurtling in through the garage door, a man streaked with dirt and blood. Elijah groaned, regenerating too slowly; the intruder raised his arm and a long, sharp machete flashed brightly in the light. He swung once and took off Elijah’s head.

It was Potash.

I staggered to my feet. “You killed him!”

“That was the point,” growled Potash.

“He was on our side!” I shouted. “He wasn’t even that—he was on a better side. We’re the ones who betrayed
him
!”

“He was a Withered,” said Potash. “We’ve danced around too long, trying to understand them, to ally with them, and what has it gotten us? The whole team’s dead, and I’m done dancing. It’s time we kill who needs to be killed, and finish this once and for all.”

“He didn’t need to be killed,” I said, dropping to my knees beside the body. Elijah was good—he was better than we were. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

Elijah’s body collapsed, turning to ash and grease before my eyes. Soulstuff, he called it. Too corrupt to do anything but rot. In seconds his body was a bubbling pool of gritty black tar.

I felt the knife in my pocket.

“You were right,” I said, climbing slowly to my feet. I looked at Potash, covered with cuts and scrapes, his chest heaving from exertion, his ruptured cannula held to his nose with one hand. He had killed one of the only good people I knew. I said it again. “You were right.” I pulled out my knife. “It’s time to kill whoever needs to be killed.”

18

“Everybody calm down,” said Nathan.

Potash looked at me, leaning slightly back, as if reconsidering me. “What do you think you’re going to do?”

I looked at him closely, my hand tight around the knife. “Why are you doing this, Potash?”

“I think I just explained myself pretty well.”

“Why are you on this team?” I demanded. “What brought you here? Who are you? No one knows anything about you: not your background, not your motives, not your outlook on life. Why are you doing
this
? What are you doing that you don’t have to do?”

“I’m not just a killer you can analyze, John.”

“But you could be,” I said. “In another situation, in another place, if you’d gone down a less official path and I’d gone down a better one, I might be tracking you right now as the worst serial killer in history. You kill people—why? You live apart from the world, even more than I do—why?”

“Because someone needs to do it.”

“So it may as well be you?”

“Better me than someone who doesn’t know how,” said Potash. “I fought that bastard Rack to a standstill—I almost had him—where anyone else would have died. Everyone else did die. I followed him through a cellar so messed up I can’t even describe it to you, and I’ll have to live with what I saw down there for the rest of my life—and anyone else would go mad even trying to.”

“And you haven’t?” I asked, glancing down at the ashy remains.

“Elijah needed to die,” Potash insisted. “They all do.”

“Why?”

“Do you think he’s the traitor?” asked Nathan.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Then why are you asking him all these questions?” asked Brooke.

“Because I want to know!” I yelled. “I want to know what he’s doing here—I want to know what I’m doing here! Is any of this wrong or right? Have I been wasting my time trying to be the good guy, when good and bad don’t even make sense anymore? Elijah was one of the best men I ever met, and this guy just cut his head off, and he’ll probably win a medal for it and I want to know why! Why do our choices even matter if someone can just decide what right and wrong mean? Why did he have to die if this is all just arbitrary?”

“You’re asking why a Withered had to die?” Potash asked. “Do you even hear yourself?”

“What if he wasn’t called a ‘Withered’?” I asked. “What if he was ‘Cursed’?”

“The word doesn’t change what he was,” said Potash.

“What he was was a man,” I said. “He was a driver, and a mechanic, and a regular visitor in a rest home, and yes he made a mistake and yes he was dangerous, but he spent more time trying to be good than any of us have ever spent trying to be anything.”

Potash looked at me, the seconds ticking by, until at last he shook his head. “Making these decisions is the hardest part of our job, but we still have to do it. Killing isn’t just pulling a trigger or swinging a blade—it’s making a choice about who deserves to live and who deserves to die.”

“Elijah deserved to live.”

“That decision will hurt me for the rest of my life,” said Potash, “but now I’m the only one it will ever hurt. He won’t drain another mind, and he won’t make another Merrill Evans, and he won’t endanger another Rose Chapman. The FBI won’t spend any more time or money hunting him down and confining him, which gives them more time and money for the bigger threats, which gives the rest of the world fewer threats to worry about. The world is better off without Elijah Sexton in it.”

“And you?” I asked. “Would it be better off without you in it?”

“Everybody take it easy,” said Nathan, stepping closer to Potash. “Nobody’s going to start anything crazy, or do anything stupid, or—” His hand came up behind Potash’s back, and he shot him through the head.

My ears rang again.

“No!” screamed Brooke.

I jumped back, my eyes wide, my mind reeling. Nathan looked at me and rolled his eyes.

“What, like you weren’t planning to do the same thing?”

“He was…” I didn’t even have the words. I was used to violence, to death and pain and terror, but this was too much, and too random. Ostler and Diana, and now Elijah and Potash—it was all so senseless. “Why?” I demanded again. I tried to follow it up with another question, something biting and insightful, but all I could manage was another “Why?”

“Because he was dangerous,” said Nathan. “He was a wild card we couldn’t predict or control, and he could have outfought all of us put together.”

“But we didn’t need to fight him at all.”

He gestured at me with his pistol. “Then what were you planning to do with that knife?”

I looked down at it, clasped so tight in my hand my fingers were as white as bone. “I don’t know,” I said, closing my eyes. “I don’t know what I was going to do, or what I wanted to do, or anything else. But I didn’t want to kill him.”