Nathan wasn’t saying much of anything. Maybe he was groggy, or maybe he didn’t like the fact that his door was open and strangers were walking back and forth, peeking inside as they did. He had one bullet wound between his left shoulder and upper chest. The second bullet, meant for his heart, had instead hit the burner in his suit jacket. A nurse showed me the burner’s battery—she showed it all around the nurses’ station, remarking on the miracle of a bullet that had hit the battery so hard it had pushed it out the back of the phone into the metal case, cracked one of Nathan’s ribs, but not cut into his flesh. The partially flattened bullet, like a tiny medal, was still embedded in the battery.
Why had Lydia screamed my name? What did she mean that I would be the death of Nathan? Harbinger. Why had a nameless Sack called Nathan that name? That was a damn Sack name, no use trying to convince myself otherwise. I asked myself these questions as I sat outside Nathan’s door waiting for Claude to leave. After a couple minutes of silence from the room, I rapped my knuckles on the doorjamb and poked my head inside. Claude got the hint and left after telling Nathan he’d be back in a few minutes.
Nathan looked awful. That was the first thing that came to my mind, frivolous as the thought was. Unshaven, dark rings under his eyes, pale, tired skin. I shut the door behind me, dragged a thankfully lightweight chair from the wall to his bed, and sat.
“You should go home,” he said in a raspy voice.
“I’m so sorry about Lydia,” I said. “So sorry.”
He said nothing.
“I have to thank you ...” I hesitated, fumbling for the right words. What do you say to someone who saved your life by risking his own? When he threw himself between me and Lydia’s gun, he thought he would die. He should have.
“It’s all right,” he said.
“All right? That’s it?” With my free hand I massaged my temple.
“Go home,” he said, his eyes focused on the far wall of his room.
“And I’m sorry about Hall. I know you wanted her to be restored. So did I, I guess.”
More silence.
“How many Sacks were in that room?” I asked. “I kept hearing dragging sounds and bangs.”
“Two. They were hiding.”
I shifted in my seat. “I know this is a horrible time to ask, but I have to know.” How selfish I sounded. A few hours ago his wife had shot him and then been shot herself. But this could not wait another hour. Everything depended on his answer. “Why did that Sack call you Harbinger?”
He closed his eyes for a minute, and I thought he was going to opt for sleep and so wiggle out of answering the question. But he opened his eyes and turned his head my way. “I wasn’t sure you’d heard that until I saw how you looked at me.”
“Because you scared the crap out of me.”
“Yes, I know.”
“So?” I leaned forward in the chair.
“He called me that because that was my name.”
I exhaled loudly, sounding like I’d been socked in the stomach.
“I didn’t recognize him, but he remembered me,” he said. “That hasn’t been my name in six years.”
“What were you?”
“An Elation.”
“Shit.” I sprang to my feet, took two long strides to the door, then whirled to face him. I told myself not to cry. Damned if I’d cry in front of him, no matter how betrayed I felt. There he was, doing the silent thing again, waiting for me to calm down, take a breath, and all that crap. I refused. “You liar. No wonder you wanted Hall to be restored. She’d be another Elation in Gatehouse.”
He nodded. “You’re right. I wanted there to be someone else.”
“Another Sack. Along with Lydia.”
He grimaced. Her name was the thrust of a knife. “Yes.”
“An Elation.” I let go with a strangled, mirthless laugh. “No wonder you’re so good at killing.”
Another knife thrust.
I took a step toward the bed. Even an Elation couldn’t hurt me from his hospital bed, I told myself. No matter what he did, what move he made, I could make it to the door in time. But that was dishonest. Because what I thought down deep, what I knew, was that he wouldn’t hurt me. He’d just saved my life. But I wanted to think the worst of him, and I wanted him to know I was thinking it.
“God, how you must laugh at everything I say to you.”
“Never, Jane.”
I took two more steps toward the bed and stood between it and the chair. “So, Harbinger, you’re restored?”
He nodded.
“Says who?”
“Six years, first as a hunter, then at Gatehouse. And you, I would think.”
“Don’t pull that on me. Don’t guilt me. What did you do?”
He looked at me blankly.
“What did you do?” I said again, spitting out each word. “What made you want to be restored?”
Not a word. He wasn’t going to speak, he wasn’t even going to fight back.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
Tears began to gather in his eyes. God, that frightened me.
At last he spoke. “I used to send people out to kill innocents. Desires, Alarms, Resolutes. They listened to me.”
“What a sense of power.”
“At the time it was.”
“So why give it up?”
He rubbed away a tear. It was the strangest thing, seeing him cry. It didn’t evoke sympathy, it scared me. It was upside-down wrong.
“Six years ago I sent an Alarm to Highway 68. I knew it was popular with tourists.”
I opened my mouth but nothing came out.
“Six years ago this past October.”
“Shit.” I moaned. I took a step backward and ran into the chair. “Oh, shit. Jesus, Nathan.” I covered my mouth to keep from screaming.
“When he came back,” Nathan said, “he showed me the photo on his cell phone.”
“Oh, God, God.” I stuck out my arm, trying to put a halt to the inevitable.
“I didn’t know who it was. I didn’t know Emily or you.”
“Bastard.” What started out as a gasp became a shriek. “Bastard! Murdering bastard!” I shook with rage. My hand closed into a fist, and I stepped forward and raised that fist high over his chest. He flinched but did not move to block me. That moment froze in my mind—in my eye, because I saw myself, full of bile and fury, ready to bring my fist down on the bullet wound he had taken in my place. I turned from him and doubled over, sick to my stomach, sick to my soul.
Claude had heard my screams. He flung open the door and raced toward me, his expression telling me he had known about Nathan all along and had braced himself for my reaction.
“Jane, please listen,” Nathan began.
I stormed from the room, tears filling my eyes, blurring my vision. I had no idea where I was headed. A nurse in the hallway looked my way but mercifully left me alone. Near the nurses’ station, unable to take another step, I lowered my head into my hand and wept. I saw white shoes, a nurse, approach me, then another pair of shoes, a man’s shoes, and those shoes led me gently through a door and into a stairwell just a few feet away.
His hands on my good shoulder, Claude guided me until I sat on the stairs, then he sat down next to me, dropped his hands, and let me cry. When he spoke, his voice was warm but firm. He was going to tell me something, and I was going to listen.
But I spoke first. “My friend Kath, my friend the Sack, told me I was naïve. She said it would be the death of me.” I forced a laugh. “That’s what Lydia said to Nathan. I’d be the death of him. That bastard. She betrayed him, and he betrayed me.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re wrong.”
I glared at him, angrily wiping the tears from my cheeks. “Yeah? Did he murder your sister?”
“He didn’t murder Emily.”
“Don’t say her name. You didn’t know her.”
“I know about her.”
“How?” I shrunk from him
, appalled by his over-the-line familiarity. Then it hit me. “Nathan told you. Excuse me, I mean Harbinger.”
“Don’t do that.”
I sniffed and wiped my dripping nose. “How the hell did that murdering Sack ever get into Gatehouse?”
“He contacted them.”
“That’s it?”
“They didn’t trust him for a long time. He became a hunter first, and Gatehouse sent him on the most dangerous returns they had. Dozens of them, one after another. He was supposed to die, of course. He knew that.”
Claude was talking nonsense. “Then why did he do it?”
He looked at me as if I’d attended some class for an entire semester but failed the final. “Penance. Redemption.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Redemption isn’t possible.”
“You’d better hope it is.”
I jabbed my finger at him. “Don’t you dare equate what I do with what Sacks do.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. Sacks who kill deserve to die, and if they’re allowed to run rampant because we’re too cowardly to fight them, innocents will die in their place. But if you think you’re going to reach the end of your life without need of redemption, you have a surprise coming.”
My nose dripped again and Claude tried to hand me his handkerchief. I refused it. My tiny, useless rebellion. I would drip, sniff, and curse as I damn well pleased. “How did he go from being a hunter to getting into Gatehouse?”
“He survived as a hunter, and he became the best. So about four years ago, they let him in. He entered as Twenty and he proved himself over and over. They even set traps for him at first, to see if he could be trusted. Less than two years later he’d moved up to Two. Remarkable.”
I had to stand, unsteady as I was on my feet. I rested my hand on the railing. “So an Elation was Two at Gatehouse. How many hunters and porters are aware of that, do you think?”
“Very few.”
“Safer for him that way?”
The biting, snarling tone in my voice hadn’t escaped Claude. “Safer for hunters, Jane. Imagine if Sacks knew your porter was a former Elation. They would hunt you down until they got what they wanted.”
“They could do that now.”
“Now that Elizabeth Hall is dead, he’s just a porter again. He’s not that important.”
“A porter who dresses like a jackass of a bank president.” Such pleasure I felt, telling Claude that his friend and former boss was not only a murdering Sack but a joke, making him negotiate between his friendship for the man and his knowledge that as an Elation, Nathan had been the most brutal of murderers.
Claude bristled. “Why do you think he does that? Huh?” He stood to face me. “In this uncivilized world he helped create when he was a Sack, God forgive him, why do you think he does that?”
“I have no fucking idea!”
“Well figure it out!”
Our shouts echoed in the stairwell and the face of the nurse who had shown me the bullet in the cell battery appeared briefly in the door’s small window. A warning glance, I suppose. We had to remember where we were. Claude exhaled loudly, his cheeks ballooning, and sat down again.
“According to you, Nathan should be Head by now,” I said.
“Without a doubt.”
“So why did he leave Gatehouse?”
“He left two years ago.”
I stared at him, uncomprehending. This was an answer? I was fully aware of when Nathan left Gatehouse. Exhaustion setting in, I walked to the stairwell wall and leaned against it, angling my body so my good shoulder took the pressure.
“Two years ago,” he continued, “a name came across his desk.” He tilted his head at me. “Your name. Gatehouse has to approve all hunter applications, so he saw yours. Emily’s name was also on your application. That’s why Gatehouse contacted you, remember? Because Emily died.”
“Yes.”
“Nathan didn’t know her name or yours, but he did know the circumstances of Emily’s death. It’s that memory of his.”
“He told me he saw the photo the Alarm took of her.”
“That’s right.” A warmth and gentleness had entered his voice. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but hell, I’m going to. Nathan’s last act as an Elation was to kill that Alarm.”
I was torn. That Alarm had deserved to die, but I wondered, morbidly, how Nathan had killed him, and as I did, once more I found myself feeling sick and wobbly. So that was why he had never told me the Alarm’s name. And I had thought it was because he didn’t want me to hunt him down, this Sack I’d dreamed of killing for years.
“When he looked at your application,” Claude continued, “Nathan realized who Emily was, and who you were. He tried to keep you out as a hunter.”
I felt another surge of anger. One conflicting emotion after another was overtaking my tired body. Nathan wasn’t just trying to take me off the field now, he had tried to keep me off it before my life as a hunter had even begun. “He knows how important hunting is to me. Why would he do that?”
Claude shook his head sadly. “Because it’s a lousy life, and hunters die.” He leaned forward, forearms on his knees, his eyes piercing mine. “You became a hunter because he sent an Alarm on a task, making you his responsibility. He wanted you to live a long, full life.”
“Bull.” I looked away.
“When he couldn’t keep you out as a hunter, he left his position as Two to be your porter, so he could keep an eye on you. Haven’t you noticed all your returns are in northern New Mexico?”
“All returns are long distance.”
“Not that long distance, not all the time. And haven’t you noticed he only sends you on returns for Desires, even though you’re the best hunter he’s ever known?”
Things I’d wondered about for nearly two years were becoming clearer. I sat down again, this time on the step above Claude’s, and he sat erect so he could see me. “He keeps saying I’ll get to return higher levels some day.”
“That day will never come.”
I should have known. “He’s still at Gatehouse, isn’t he?”
“Yes, but he’ll never be Head. Being a porter takes too much time away from his Gatehouse duties.”
Watching over me was keeping him from being Head of Gatehouse. That was what Claude meant to say. But I wasn’t ready to give in. Rising only as far as Two seemed a small enough sacrifice. “He nearly got us all killed. He actually trusted Hall.”
“And she repaid him, didn’t she? That’s the price of decency and trust. A good half the time, anyway.” Claude slapped his knees, stood, and worked out the kinks in his legs.
“What he did to her, when he sent that Alarm ...” The tears came freely again.
“It breaks his heart every day.”
I looked up sharply. “What do you think it does to mine?”
He held my gaze, and with great tenderness he said, “I’m not minimizing in any way what he did, I’m telling you what he’s done since then, for six years. He can’t atone for that night, but he tries. I think they call that ‘valor.’”
He was asking me to wait and ponder, to not yet declare Nathan unforgiveable. “I don’t know about that.”
“Look, I understand why Nathan wants you off the field, but for now, I’m asking you to stay on as his hunter.”
“Staying isn’t forgiveness, Claude.”
“It is, of a sort.”
Bewildered, I pushed my dirty bangs from my face. “Why does my staying matter?”
“Because Nathan needs to believe redemption is possible, even for him. And you need to believe it too.” He shrugged. “But I can only tell you what I think. I’ll wait in the reception lobby on the first floor, give you a ride home when you’re ready. No rush.”
He put his palm flat on the door, ready to swing it open, but turned back. “Think about why Nathan wears suits and ties. It’s not that hard to figure out.” He pushed through the door, leaving me alone on the stairs.
A puzzle, Claude? Rea
lly? I recalled Nathan at the Halloween party, so out of place alongside the likes of Manifest Manifest and his toady Hollow. Or me, for that matter. He was laughable. Shaving while we were on the run, wearing a banker’s coat, a banker’s shoes—which in the end he had to tear apart while looking for trackers. In this uncivilized world he helped create. Did Nathan think he was bringing a touch of civilization to our world? Or was he creating that civilization for himself?
How do you cease to be a Sack? I wondered. And it came to me that there was only one way. Relentlessly. The change had to percolate from deep down in your soul upward and outward to even the superficial—your habits, your speech, the clothes you wore. Every single thing, every single day. That’s why Nathan hated hunter slang. He wanted no part of its viciousness. His break with his old life had to be complete or it would fail. He constrained himself—reminded himself, punished himself—through the way he conducted his life, and that included the clothes he chose for himself each morning. They were part of his penance and redemption.
Yet both Lydia and Hall had been able to fool him because he needed to believe in redemption. It had made him Hall’s target, the target of Sacks from Santa Fe to Laramie. It was his virtue and the chink in his armor.
Suddenly I was angry again, because I knew his virtue was about to shrivel in that hospital bed and blow away like a crusty speck of autumn leaf. I wasn’t afraid he’d return to his Sack life, I was afraid he would no longer be Nathan—and damn, that made me angry. Why was I, of all people, responsible for the safekeeping of his valor?
Because he saved my life, because he had kept me alive the past two years, because he watched over me. Because I’d always known there was extraordinary valor in him, and because, in that, I wanted to be like him.
I held onto the railing as I stood, still wavering on my feet as I was wavering in my mind. How would I forgive him? I wanted to, and that baffled me. I sensed another never-ending battle looming, this one in my heart, and I didn’t know if I had the strength to face it.
And Nathan? He would have to find a way to forgive Lydia. Knowing him, he already had. Damn him. I pushed open the stairwell door and walked slowly for his room. I didn’t know what I would say to him. I didn’t think that it mattered much. I’d just take a seat by his bed and stay awhile. Manifest Manifest and the LCA were still out there. Sever was still out there. The battle had not ended.
All Souls: A Gatehouse Thriller Page 24
