Read The Devil's Only Friend Online
Authors: Dan Wells
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #United States, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Supernatural, #Suspense, #Science Fiction & Fantasy
The Devil's Only Friend (32 page)
A broken mirror and a bathroom covered with blood. The most horrific thing I’d ever seen. If I said yes, those horrors would never haunt me again.
What choice would Potash make, if Rack had offered this to him? “Choosing was the hardest part,” he’d told me. Killing was easy, choosing was hard. The power to kill meant nothing if you didn’t know where to apply it. Sometimes Potash made the wrong choices and good men like Elijah died. But Potash chose anyway, because somebody had to, and all the guilt and the pain and the darkness stayed on him, and no one else would ever have to face it. Elijah had made the same decision, living with the pain he’d caused Merrill Evans to make sure it never happened to anyone else.
I couldn’t make that choice if I didn’t care. I couldn’t make any choices at all. And if the right choices hurt the most, then fine. I’d hurt the most. But it would be me.
I closed my eyes and said goodbye to peace.
“Are you ready?” asked the corpse. “We have people to meet.”
“I need something first,” I said, and stooped down to search Potash’s pockets. The weapon I needed was on his shin: a small leg holster, holding a slim, two-shot handgun. I pulled it out and stood up.
“You won’t need that puny human weapon,” said the voice, but I shook my head.
“We’re not actually going with you. Sorry if I gave you the wrong idea.”
The dead voice laughed again. “You can’t possibly hope to use that gun against me—”
I shot Potash in the face, shattering his mouth and jaw with both bullets,
boom boom!
The voice disappeared. “Not really,” I said. “I’m just sick of your evil-villain monologue.” I looked Rack straight in the eyes. “If you’re going to kill us, shut up and kill us.”
Brooke grabbed my arm again, trying to put herself in front of me, as if her frail body could shield me from the demon king’s wrath. I pushed her gently, stepping up next to her, and we faced the Withered side by side. He stepped toward us, looming like the shadow of death.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Were you not done talking?”
Rack flew into a rage, smashing the cars and the tools and the entire garage in a frenzy of destruction—hands and feet and charred black tendrils lashing out in a primal fury. He paused to look at me, then smashed another window and threw Potash’s body at the wall in a burst of terrifying strength. He paused, his chest heaving, the soulstuff swirling like a hurricane of tar, and I gripped Brooke’s hand tightly as he stalked back toward us.
“It’ll be okay,” said Brooke. “I’m ready to die with you.”
I shook my head, trying to sound braver than I felt. “Not yet.”
Rack stopped, his eyes seeming to burn with an inner fire, and then he stooped and swallowed Nathan’s heart.
I locked eyes with him, and never looked away.
“You fool,” said Nathan’s body. “You insignificant, asinine fool! I’ve offered you power! I’ve offered you a seat on my own right hand! And you throw that all a—” He stopped suddenly, his brow creasing sharply in an expression of concern. His chest was roiling, the poisoned heart already absorbed into his body. Spreading the poison as fast as he could heal it. “What have you done?”
“Kind of fitting that Nathan should be the one to kill you,” I said. “He’s the one who helped me to figure out how you work.” He fell to one knee, clutching at his chest. “And that means I know how to make you stop working.”
He dropped his other leg, sagging on both knees. “I…” Nathan’s voice was thin and desperate. “I am invincible!”
“Obviously not,” I said. I took a step toward him. “You need hearts to sustain you, just like Elijah needed memories. You can’t live without them. And your regeneration won’t work right if you’re drawing your power from a poisoned heart.”
“I have lived ten thousand years,” said the voice, and there was almost a whine in it now, a petulant scream of a spoiled child. “I will not die here, like this, like nothing! I will have the death of a god!”
He was practically lying down now. I walked closer, stooping to pick up Potash’s machete, testing the weight, feeling the handle firm in my hand. “This is the other big difference between you and me,” I said. “If I want something dead, I kill it. No pointless monologuing.”
He started to speak, and I cut off his head.
“Ssssssssssssss,” said Nathan’s mouth, dead in midsound, and then it went slack. Rack’s skin spit and popped like a pot of hot tar, and his body dissolved into ash.
* * *
We took Elijah’s car to my apartment, where I peeled off my bloody clothes and piled them in the sink. I took a hot shower, scrubbing the rest of the blood away, and when I came out Brooke had changed into some of my clothes. She was sitting on the floor scratching Boy Dog behind the ears, whispering to him in a language I’d never heard before. I got dressed, too, and filled my backpack with all the food and water I could carry.
I didn’t have much to leave behind. I packed another few sets of clothes and all my cash, and then looked through Potash’s duffel for any cash he might have been hiding. True to his word, there were no weapons, but I found a stash of small bills and documents and addresses—his “go bag,” I assumed, for if he ever had to disappear. He’d lived in the darkness his whole life, and being on our team hadn’t changed that. The passports with his name and face were useless to us, but I took the rest.
It was nearly 5:00
A.M.
and the city would be waking up soon. Most of the night’s horrors would be new to them—the slaughter in The Corners, the devastation of the police force, even the inexplicable double homicide at the mortuary—but the worst horrors were gone now. Rack was dead, and the man who’d helped him. The killers who’d stalked this town for months were done forever. And now the Demon Girl and the Murder Boy were leaving as well.
What did I do that I didn’t have to do? That was always the question. Figure out what we choose when we’re free to choose anything, and you’ll know who we really are. I saved Brooke when I could have run. I chose to be hurt when I could have chosen to never be hurt again. I was a killer, cold-blooded and ruthless, but I was a hero, too. Or at least I was trying to be.
Elijah’s car was damaged from Rack’s rage, so we took mine instead. Brooke climbed in the passenger seat, and Boy Dog in the back, and we drove for three hours before the winter sun finally peeked up behind the horizon.
“I love you, John,” said Brooke. Or maybe it was Nobody. I kept my eyes on the road.
“Rack said he had people to meet,” I told her. “Let’s see if we can find them.”
DAN WELLS
lives in North Salt Lake, Utah, with his wife, Dawn, and their five children. He is the author of three previous novels about John Wayne Cleaver, as well as
The Hollow City
and the popular Partials Sequence of young adult books. Visit him at
www.thedanwells.com
. Or sign up for email updates
here
.
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Contents
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE DEVIL’S ONLY FRIEND
Copyright © 2015 by Dan Wells
All rights reserved.
Cover photograph © Getty Images
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