John took one hand off the steering wheel to cover Caleb’s. “I won’t pretend I didn’t have some sleepless nights, but…you’re a good guy.”
John trusted him even more than SPECTR. Maybe he wouldn’t totally freak when Caleb asked him to set Gray free?
Christ, I hope so.
“As do I.”
Chapter 7
Ironically, their destination lay only a few blocks from where Caleb had originally encountered Gray. The neighborhood hadn’t improved in the last forty days: cracked pavement, faded paint even on occupied buildings, shuttered businesses. A man carrying a paper bag wandered the buckled sidewalk, pausing to take a swig out of the bottle inside. Seagulls dotted the pot-holed parking lot in front of a liquor store not yet open for the day, their beady eyes bright.
John parked in front of a weathered house, which looked like it would fall down in a strong breeze, let alone the next hurricane. Like many old Charleston homes, it stretched long and narrow to catch the sea breezes, and stood side-on to the street. The front door looked out on a vacant lot, which had no doubt once been a verdant garden.
Sean’s sedan pulled up a few seconds later. Unlike John, dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, Sean wore his usual suit, even though it was a Saturday. Maybe he’d gone into the office for work?
John climbed out of the car and hurried to Sean. “Thanks for meeting us.”
Sean reeked of cigarettes even more than usual, as if he’d been chain smoking for days. “Yeah,” he said, glancing at Caleb. “No problem.”
“There’s stuff you need to know,” John said. “About RD. Things Caleb saw. But it can wait. Are you ready to do the exorcism I told you about?”
Sean looked at Caleb again. What was his problem? “I…yeah. Let’s do this.”
John clapped Sean on the shoulder, before jogging back to the car to grab his bag out of the trunk. “This is going to work,” he told Caleb firmly, as if he meant to rip Gray out by sheer will alone.
“I know,” Caleb said, even though he didn’t. But he hoped it did.
As did Gray. “Better John does this to us than strangers.”
Are you sure?
Hesitation. “Yes. Will you look into his eyes? I would like them to be the last color I see.”
Caleb’s chest ached, Gray’s grief mixed in with his own. And he shouldn’t be sad, damn it. He ought to be dancing for joy.
I’m going to miss you. I hope everything goes okay for you. You know, after.
“Do not worry for me.”
I do, though. I will. I’ll think about you all the time. He swallowed against the irrational constriction of his throat. Damn drakul, making him all weepy.
“And I shall carry my memories of you for as long as I exist.”
Weird, to think somebody would remember his life long after he was dead and gone. Gray had seen civilizations rise and fall. Maybe it was a sort of immortality, to think some of Caleb’s memories would still be around, a thousand years from now.
John led the way to the house, Caleb following and Sean trailing last. The lock had been broken sometime in the past, and the hinges shrieked as John shoved the door open. The wet reek of mold floated out, and Caleb wrinkled his nose. Beneath it lay the rotten corruption of ghouls.
“Ghouls here,” he said dutifully, as he stepped inside behind John. The floor creaked under his boots, then creaked again as Sean crowded in after him.
“Good,” Sean said.
Which didn’t make a lot of sense. Caleb started to ask why he’d want ghouls there, when something cold and hard pressed against the base of his skull and—
* * *
John spun at the sound of a gunshot, his hand reaching automatically for his Glock, even though he’d left it in the glove compartment of the car.
What confronted him made no sense, a collection of shapes and colors his brain couldn’t force into something possible to interpret. Sean stood just inside the door, gun in hand and a grim expression on his face. Caleb sprawled facedown on the filthy floor, body limp as a marionette with its strings cut. A pool of blood glistened in the light, spreading slowly out from Caleb’s head.
John couldn’t move. He couldn’t think. His brain spun in circles, like an engine in neutral, as something cold and heavy poured into his gut.
“Caleb?” he whispered. But Caleb didn’t move, didn’t leap to his feet laughing at what had to be a stupid joke, some crazy prank, because this couldn’t be real.
It couldn’t.
Sean took a step back, the floor groaning under his shift of weight, the gun in his hand trembling slightly.
The motion snapped something in John’s chest, releasing him from stasis. With a hoarse cry, he ran to Caleb’s unmoving body, only to be brought up short by Sean’s gun.
“I’m sorry,” Sean said. No color remained in his face, his skin as bleached white as Caleb’s. “It had to be done.”
“No.” No, this wasn’t real. Sean hadn’t just killed Caleb, hadn’t shot him execution-style in the back of the skull, hadn’t…
But it was. Caleb had just died at Sean’s hand. His boyfriend, killed by his best friend.
John screamed, an inhuman sound without words. Heedless of the gun, he flung himself at Sean. “No, why, Goddess, why—”
The door burst open. Men and women dressed in paramilitary gear streamed inside, all their guns trained on John. “Freeze! Federal agents!” one shouted.
John froze instinctively. An instant later, rough hands grabbed him, throwing him against the wall and yanking his arms behind his back. Plastic cuffs snapped into place, and they shoved him unceremoniously toward the door.
No. No, he couldn’t leave Caleb here. Caleb depended on him.
He’d promised.
He set his heels, fighting like a madman, screaming Caleb’s name until his throat was raw. It didn’t matter; there were too many of them, and within seconds he’d been dragged from the abandoned house.
Black vans with the SPECTR logo on the sides sat in the street. The back doors of one flew open on some signal, and the agents shoved him inside.
“What should we do about the body?” one of them asked.
“Nothing,” Sean said. “It’s not habitable for the drakul, not with most of the brain gone. It will have moved on to the next corpse. Let the ghouls clean up the mess.”
Sean climbed inside, and the doors slammed. The engine of the van roared to life, and a moment later it lurched forward, taking John further and further away from the abandoned shell which was all that remained of Caleb.
* * *
The van rocked as it sped down the highway, but John didn’t sway with it. He concentrated on holding himself very, very still, because his skin had turned to glass, just a thin, brittle shell wrapped around a scream, and any movement might break him.
Tears slicked his face, running in a silent stream from his eyes, and snot coated his upper lip. Clogged sinuses made it hard to breathe, but he didn’t care. He might as well suffocate here, seated between two armed guards, his hands cuffed behind him.
“You’re probably wondering where we’re headed,” Sean said, as if the silence went on too long, and he couldn’t stand it anymore. Maybe he couldn’t; there had never been silence between them, just a conversation stretching back to their first meeting as teenagers.
John didn’t look at him. Couldn’t. His oldest friend. His best friend, the one who’d been there for him through everything, pain and joy, sorrow and triumph. Who’d saved his fucking life just two days ago, only to destroy it now.
“RD,” Sean went on. “It’s…well. Secure.” He shifted on his seat, a rustle of coat and a whiff of stale cigarette smoke. “I’m sorry, John. Fuck, you have no idea how bad I feel for you. It had to be done, and you’ll thank me for it someday, but right now—”
“Thank you?” John almost didn’t recognize his own voice. Lifting his gaze at last, he stared at Sean, who flinched back from meeting his eyes. “You murdered Caleb. How could you
…why…?”
Sean sighed, shoulders slumping, as if John’s bewildered hurt took something from him. “Because you couldn’t have exorcised the drakul. I called Forsyth as soon as I got off the phone with you, talked it over with him. He knows things about them, things you and I don’t. Not even the two of us together could have gotten it out of Caleb. If it had stayed contained at RD…but it had escaped once already. It was just too dangerous to risk capturing it, at least while it was still in a living body.”
“So Caleb had to die?”
“Yes!” Sean met his gaze defiantly. “Damn it, John, you’ve been out of control since this whole cluster fuck started. I don’t know if the drakul screwed with your head, or if it was all just your damn death wish. If we’d left it in a living body, we would have ended up with something no one could control. Do you have any idea how many people would have died, starting with you?”
“‘Forsyth told you this, did he?”
“Yes, but he didn’t need to. I saw it for myself, long before. You would have, too, if your head was on straight.”
How could this have happened? How could John have missed the signs Sean had turned against him? “You take orders from Forsyth now?”
Sean’s lower lip jutted stubbornly, an expression so familiar it brought a fresh wave of grief washing across the strand of John’s soul. “He tried talking to you, but you were too loyal to Kaniyar. But he worried about the drakul—”
“The drakul has a name.”
“No, it doesn’t. Because it isn’t a person!” Sean ran a hand over his face. “Just listen to me for once in your damned life, John. Forsyth asked me to keep an eye on it, and you. And I agreed, because the drakul…shit. I wasn’t sure if Forsyth was right, okay? I had my doubts. It hadn’t hurt you yet, and Caleb seemed like a nice guy, and I thought maybe everything would work out. Then Will came back into town.”
“Will?” What the hell did John’s ex have to do with this?
“Yeah. He wanted to get back with you. And it seemed less and less likely we’d be able to exorcise Caleb. I had a talk with Caleb, to convince him to get out of the way and let Will have a shot.”
“You asshole.” Hot anger formed in John’s chest, and he clung to it because it was small and understandable, and gave him something to concentrate on besides the abyss yawning under his feet.
“You don’t understand.” Sean sat back, looking tired. “I confronted Caleb, asked him how he could justify putting you in danger when the thing in his head might go out of control at any minute. And you know what he said? He said, quote, ‘we would never’ hurt you. We.” Sean shook his head. “It had fixated on you, John. And I knew right then I had to do something, anything, to keep you safe. Even if you didn’t want me to.”
John slipped further toward the abyss, its sucking maw dragging him in, like a black hole whose gravity was grief. “Ours,” Gray had said, after an incubus nearly tricked John to his doom at the lighthouse.
Gray felt something for him. He’d never know what, but…something.
“Goddess,” he whispered, bowing his head to hide a fresh round of tears.
“That’s why you’re here now,” Sean said. “To keep you safe. And I’m sorry about Caleb, I truly am, but there weren’t any other options left after he broke out of RD last night. The drakul is weaker in a dead body than a living one. I had no other choice than to force it into a habitable corpse.”
Sean’s eyes lost their focus for a moment, staring into nothing, and he swallowed hard. “No choice,” he repeated then blinked back to the here-and-now. “But the drakul might still be drawn to you, which is why we’re taking you to RD for a little while. If it comes shambling up, it will be a lot easier to trap now, when it can’t heal the body it’s in. And in the meantime, you’ll get what you need. Therapy. A chance to rest.”
Therapy or brainwashing? Did it even matter any more? John felt hollowed out, as if his emotions were too huge to experience, leaving behind only numbness. Gray was still in danger, and John would be the bait in the trap for him.
Please let Sean be wrong. Please let the “we” and the “ours” have meant something else. Let Gray not give a damn one way or another about John, let the drakul hate him if it would just keep Gray safe.
Sean leaned forward again, resting his fingers lightly on John’s shoulder. “It…it’ll be okay. I know it doesn’t seem like that now, but it will. The docs will help you get your shit together, get over this death wish of yours.”
John swallowed against the roughness of his throat, and forced his gaze up, to meet Sean’s eyes. “You’d better hope they don’t,” he said quietly, as something congealed into hardness deep inside. “You’d better hope you’re right, and I get myself killed somehow. Because otherwise, I’m coming for you, and there is nowhere on this earth you’ll be able to hide.”
* * *
Caleb floated.
He became aware of his own existence gradually, like a dreamer waking from sleep. Or perhaps a sleeper moving into dream, from nothingness into something not quite reality.
He hung suspended in warmth, a chick curled in a shell. Safe. Held.
Loved.
Whatever wrapped protectively around him knew him completely. Every virtue and flaw, every moment of triumph and second of shame, every impulse of generosity and every selfish act.
It knew him. And it loved him, without reservation or condition. He didn’t have to do anything to earn its affection, or even to keep it. It loved him, always had, always would, and such was simply the way of things.
He’d never felt such peace.
“Of course I love you. You are my other self.”
A name came back to him. Gray.
“Yes.” Regret. “It has been too long since we fed. Our healing has been slow. I am afraid this will hurt.”
It’s okay. He didn’t know what would hurt, but he knew the other—Gray—wouldn’t let him come to any real harm, if he could prevent it.
“Are you ready?”
For what?
“To breathe.”
Aren’t we breathing?
“No.”
We probably ought to, don’t you think?
“Yes. Hold tight. As I said, this will hurt.”
The protective cocoon of love and warmth began to peel back, and the light grew brighter. Agony spiked through his head, pieces of his skull grating against each other as they shifted back into place, and Caleb—
—drew breath.
He jerked off the floor with a gasp, his lungs desperate for air. His entire body ached, as if he’d overexerted every muscle and left it screaming for oxygen. When he blinked, his lids scraped over corneas gone dry from exposure to the air.
“Fuck!” Caleb blinked rapidly, tears washing over his eyes for lubrication. Vision blurred, a smear of colors, then came slowly into focus.
A pair of women’s shoes stood on the filthy floor in front of him. He lifted his gaze slowly, past dark-skinned calves and an expensive skirt, to find Tiffany Ward staring back at him with shocked eyes.
“Never mind,” she said into the cell phone against her ear. “The situation has changed. I’ll call you back.”
Chapter 8
“Agent Ward?” What the hell was she doing here? For that matter, what was he doing here?
She watched warily as Caleb shoved himself first to his elbows, then to his knees. He was in a house, warped boards beneath him, the stink of mold mingling with the savory scent of ghouls to make his stomach cramp.
God, he was hungry.
The house. Right. John planned to exorcise him. But John had disappeared. There was only Tiffany. And blood—a big pool of it on the floor. His mouth tasted of rust, like he’d been sucking on one of the iron gates surrounding the houses in the historic district. Raising his hand, he touched his face, found something congealed and tacky against his skin. “What happened?”
“A bullet entered our skull at the base. We sustained a great deal of damage, and it
took time to heal, especially as we have not fed for a while.” Shame. “I do not know what happened otherwise. Keeping you with me took all of my concentration. I am sorry.”
“Somebody shot us in the back of the head,” he said numbly. Fuck, his pronouns were slipping, and in front of an agent, even.
An agent. A SPECTR agent. Oh hell.
“You did this!” he accused, scooting back from her. “Where’s John? If you’ve—”
“Having your brains scrambled must have taken off a few IQ points,” she said, lip curling slightly. “Sean shot you.”
“Sean?” No way. “He and John are best friends. He wouldn’t.”
Tiffany shrugged, her long braids whispering against the expensive fabric of her suit. “Forsyth must have gotten to him. Once we heard you broke out, we tried to put a tail on John, but he was already gone. I knew if he’d told anyone else about his plans, it would be Sean, so we watched him instead. Sure enough, he led us straight here. A few minutes after you three went in, SPECTR vans surrounded the place. They dragged John out at gunpoint. Sean wasn’t under guard, and climbed in one of the vans without any signs of coercion. Make of it what you will.”
Caleb rubbed at his eyes. A part of his mind babbled over and over again he’d been shot in the fucking head. He shoved it aside; turning into a gibbering heap wouldn’t help anyone right now. “John. Where did they take him? Is he okay?”
“He just saw his best friend shoot his boyfriend in the back of the head. If he’s okay with that, you seriously need to trade up.”
Oh, God. Caleb sagged against the floor. “John,” he whispered.
“Focus.” Tiffany snapped her fingers in front of his face. “There’s no time to sit around moping, hear me?”
Caleb glared up at her with narrowed eyes. She wanted him to focus? Fine. “You said ‘our people.’ You’re one of them, aren’t you? The moths. Just like Brimm. So why the hell should I listen to anything you say?”
“We’re called the Vigilant. And Brimm wasn’t one of us. Well, not anymore.” Her lips tightened. “He left SPECTR when he found out the bottles imprisoning exorcised NHEs aren’t being destroyed, the way they’re supposed to be. We recruited him, but he went crazy, stole a bunch of our books, and disappeared. Fucker.”
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