Splintered

by Jamie Schultz

  Whatever. Family’s family.

  He kept going, one slow step at a time. After a few minutes, he realized that light, however faint and tenuous, had sneaked up on him. He could see the outline of a doorway and the flat gray plane of the wall beyond.

  Something moved behind him, and a light threw his shadow down in front of him.

  “Freeze, motherfucker!”

  That sounded awfully coplike. He held his hands up, keeping his finger off the trigger of the gun as obviously as possible.

  “Put the gun down! Slowly!”

  He lowered himself to one knee, turning as he did. The flashlight beam was like a hammer to the forehead, and he couldn’t see shit past it.

  He put the gun on the floor and his hand back in the air. “I’m on your side,” he said. “I need to talk to Special Agent Elliot. It’s important.”

  “Push the gun over here.”

  What if these weren’t really cops? he wondered, then decided that was too much paranoia even for him. Again, careful not to move suddenly, he shoved the weapon toward the cop.

  “Facedown. On the ground.”

  “I really need to talk to Agent Elliot.”

  “Now!”

  He lay down. Footsteps approached, at least two sets. Somebody knelt and pulled one of his arms behind his back. If he was going to move, it would have to be now. Two guys, one probably with a gun at the ready, Nail himself lying on his belly with one of the dudes practically sitting on him.

  DeWayne was right. I’m fucked.

  The cuffs went on.

  * * *

  They’d long since left the sounds of fighting behind, and now that safety seemed more or less in hand, all Sobell wanted was out. He wanted to get out into the light and lay eyes on his new partner, and take the demon’s measure. It looked like they were in it for the long haul together, an arrangement Sobell had deep misgivings about, especially now that Belial had taken to mumbling to himself. At first, Sobell had thought the man was talking to him, and he’d tried to listen more closely, but he knew now that, whatever Belial was saying, it had nothing to do with him. Sobell got the impression that the man was conducting a dialogue with himself. Was the body’s original owner still in there, talking to Belial? Sobell had never heard of such a thing, but he supposed it was possible. Hosts didn’t usually live this long, so clearly something unusual was going on here.

  They found light before too long, in the form of a spotlight trained on the doors to the back loading dock.

  “They have the place surrounded,” Sobell said. “We’re fucked.”

  Belial shook his head in a rather overly violent expression of denial. “No. No. Come with me.”

  For a moment, Sobell thought Belial was about to take a second crack at his earlier blaze-of-glory suicide run, but the man—demon—whatever—turned and led them back into the cell block.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Genevieve whispered.

  “That makes two of us,” Sobell said. He pointed at Belial. “Also, I hope he knows what he’s doing. Our fates are likely in his hands now.”

  “God help us.”

  “I doubt he’ll be so inclined.”

  Belial led them to the first cell on the left. “Ink,” he said.

  Genevieve handed over a marker. Belial scrawled some symbols on the door. This time, Sobell was glad to see, they were actually recognizable.

  “Inside,” Belial said.

  The three of them went in. Belial shut the door.

  “What’s going on?” Genevieve asked.

  “Now we wait them out.”

  “Most people won’t notice the door,” Sobell added. “All we need to do is be patient.”

  Belial smiled.

  * * *

  Anna and Karyn emerged from the back of the prison right into the glare of a blazing spotlight.

  “Down! On the ground, right now!”

  Anna held up her hands, and Karyn wasted no time doing likewise. A handful of men in SWAT gear, FBI written in huge letters across their chests, stood a hundred feet or so away. One brought a second spotlight to bear on the two women.

  “Come on,” Anna said. “We’re the good guys here!”

  “On your knees! Hands on your head!”

  She knelt. Karyn, for her part, followed, slowly. She was there but not there. More “there” than she had been, Anna thought, but still . . . not vacant, exactly, but more than preoccupied. Call it progress.

  The SWAT guys approached, patted them down, and somebody gave the okay. One of the guys helped Anna to her feet.

  “My hero,” she said.

  Chapter 31

  “What the hell happened, Owens?”

  Nail put his hands flat on the table in front of him and tried to ignore the cuffs. If he looked at them, he just got angry, and he didn’t want to join Special Agent Elliot in that department. She looked furious, like she’d had gasoline and rusty nails for breakfast, and she was looking for somebody to unleash hell on.

  “Like I told your guy—I don’t know what happened. I was worried about my friends, so I went looking for them.”

  “You said kidnapping. You said, and I quote, ‘red-fucking-handed.’ Now you’re not so sure?”

  “I saw Sobell go in.”

  “Alone?”

  “With Rhino Vasquez.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And nothin’.”

  “I’ve got ten agents down and my ass in a sling, and you saw nothing?”

  “He was there. What about my girls?”

  Elliot fiddled with her shirt cuffs before answering, “Two out of three.”

  Nail felt his stomach drop to the floor. “Which two?”

  “Ames and Ruiz.”

  “And Gen? You—you find her body?”

  “Nothing. She’s gone, just like that bastard Sobell.”

  Nail was so worried about the first half of Elliot’s statement that the second half took a moment to sink in. “Wait, you didn’t get Sobell?”

  “We’re looking. Meanwhile, anything you can tell us about him or where he might be could help.”

  Oh, this was bad. Sobell was loose. At large, as the cops liked to say. Nail felt stupid. How had he thought this would go down? Somehow he’d convinced himself Sobell would end up dead or in custody, caught “red-fucking-handed,” and with himself in the clear except as an anonymous informant. Now Sobell was running around out there somewhere, and they were trying to get him to straight-up rat on the guy. This shit was bad for Anna, bad for Karyn, probably bad for DeWayne, and certainly bad for Nail himself. So this was what cold sweat felt like.

  “Sobell who?” Nail asked.

  “Do not get smart with me, motherfucker. Not tonight.”

  “You mean Tyrone Sobell? Yeah, we go way back.”

  “I got you on a gun charge.”

  “I will personally buy you a fuckin’ Mercedes if you can find a single bullet on the scene fired from that gun.”

  “The gun had no serial numbers. It had a high-capacity magazine. You don’t have a carry permit. With your record, that probably means five to eight.”

  “A pillar of the community like me? Five to eight months of probation.”

  “You called me. You damn well know you told me Sobell was on the scene.”

  “Got a recording? That might refresh my memory.”

  “Put Sobell on the scene for me. Give me something, and I can get rid of the gun charges.”

  Much as Nail wanted to, he’d seen how this went down. “You already played that game with my brother, and you played sloppy. Damn near got him killed. Might still.”

  “I’m trying to help you, don’t you get it?” Elliot kicked the table leg, then slowly got control over herself. “I want Sobell,” she said.

  “You ain’t got him. You might be able to see how that’s a problem for all of us.”

  “I saw the remains of a greater working at the correctional facility. Do you know what that is?”

  �
�No.”

  “Very serious occult business. It also bears no resemblance to anything I’ve seen before, or anybody in my office has seen before. I think your buddy Sobell has gotten into some very bad shit, probably with some very unpleasant allies.”

  “I believe that.”

  “Whatever he was doing, his activities resulted in ten casualties. Additionally, your friend Ames seems to have been struck deaf, though our physicians can’t find any damage, and Ruiz has no memory of any of the events that wound up with her down there. I need you to tell me what Sobell wanted them for. It’s important.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m not certain, but I don’t think he got to finish whatever it was he started down there. Do you think he’ll be content to leave them in peace now?”

  Nail chewed on that. “Doubt it.”

  “We’re not going to hold you,” she said. “But I need you to go to Ames and Ruiz. See if they want protection. Failing that, see if they want help. There are things we can do off the books.”

  “I can’t promise nothin’.”

  Elliot gave him a tight, humorless smile. “The three of you are short on friends right now, and I think you’re going to need some. Badly.”

  “I’ll see what they say.”

  * * *

  Sobell brushed the dust off the edge of a cheap-looking plywood desk and sat. The room was small but adequate, an old bit of unused office space in a strip mall. He’d kept it off the books for just such an occasion, never really believing he’d be reduced to sleeping in it. Dining on Cheez-Its and soggy pizza from the corner 7-Eleven.

  Belial stood in the center of the room, arms crossed, face working in its relentless way. The stink rolling off him could have stunned a polar bear. If they were going to be living in close quarters, the demon was going to need a primer in human personal hygiene.

  Genevieve sat in the corner, her expression slack and exhausted. Not too different from how Sobell felt, actually. She was chewing gum. About once every minute or so, she’d chew a single time.

  Lastly, Erica Tran stood just inside the door, looking like she might run out it at any second.

  “They took nineteen men in,” Erica said. Her face had taken on a greenish, ashen look. Possibly the fluorescents, but maybe she was simply going to be sick. “Seventeen others were hospitalized, including six federal agents. And eleven were killed. Including four federal agents.”

  “Shit,” Genevieve said.

  “So?” Belial said.

  “There were actually very few gunshot wounds, according to my contact. Most of the men simply gave themselves up. The casualties came from—well, there are conflicting accounts.”

  “We know what the casualties came from.” Well, sort of. “Have we been associated with this in any way?”

  Erica frowned. “There’s a lot of noise about you.”

  “What kind of noise?”

  “Nothing specific. Just vague ‘wanted for questioning’ stuff.”

  “We could have worked something out,” Genevieve said, looking up through her eyelashes at Belial. “Karyn was going to cooperate, and then you’re all ‘no, you can never leave, bwahahahaha.’ You need to learn to take yes for an answer, you stupid fuck.”

  Belial’s hands knotted into fists, and a sneer pulled at his lips.

  “Calm down,” Sobell said. “Now is not the time. You’ve squandered your army, Belial, and for a second time. You should appreciate your allies when you can find them.”

  “Don’t presume to give me orders.”

  “No orders, just advice.”

  Belial’s lip twitched, but he added nothing. Sobell turned back to Erica. “So we’re in the clear?”

  “Not exactly. What do you know about the FBI’s Non-Standard Investigations Branch?”

  “I can’t say the name rings a bell. Is it safe to assume that’s not the forensic accounting department?”

  “They’ve issued a warrant to go through all the things in your office.”

  “Another one?”

  “And all the things, in fact, in your entire building and in twenty-seven other properties you own or can be shown to own substantial portions of, directly or indirectly.”

  “On what evidence?”

  “That part of the warrant is sealed.”

  Sobell raised his eyebrows. “That sounds rather illegal. I seem to recall there being some sort of constitutional amendment regarding that, in fact.”

  “The warrant has been issued. We can fight if something goes to trial, but the search is going to start regardless, if it hasn’t already. There’s nothing to find, is there?”

  “That . . . depends what they’re looking for. I’d have said no if you hadn’t invoked the Non-Standard Whatsit. As it is, I’m not sure.”

  “I would guess that they’re looking to tie you to the deaths of several federal agents.”

  “We should be fine, then. I don’t have the faintest clue how to conjure up whatever the hell that thing was.”

  Belial grunted. “None of this matters. The oracle gave us direction. Instructions. We need to start work.”

  “On that much we agree. I’m just trying to figure out if I need to keep my devilishly handsome face out of sight, or if we can work with relative impunity.”

  “Out of sight,” Erica said. “No question. The FBI is working like crazy going through tonight’s evidence. You need to clean up and stay down until we know what they find and whether they’re going to issue an arrest warrant.”

  He looked at Belial, who was grinding his teeth together and flexing his cheeks in a way that was wholly unlike smiling.

  “Wonderful,” Sobell said.

  * * *

  Anna exited the police station, squinting into the afternoon sun and still fuming from the endless inquisition, and came to an abrupt stop at the top of the stairs that descended from the front door. Karyn stood on about the fourth stair. She faced out into the parking lot, and damned if she didn’t have a half-smoked cigarette burning down between the fingers of her right hand.

  Karyn turned and looked up at her. A huge smile formed on her face.

  “Oh my God,” Anna said. “This is, like, the first time ever you didn’t have to bum a cigarette off me.”

  Laughter from the both of them, and then Anna rushed down the stairs. She hugged Karyn so hard it got a squawk out of her.

  “Hey! You’re going to squish this,” Karyn said. Anna eased up a bit, and Karyn pulled another cigarette from her shirt pocket. “Bummed it off a guy just for you,” she said.

  “It’s you, right? You’re really in there?”

  “Slow down—I’m still not getting everything. If I concentrate, sometimes I can follow, but mostly I get a mess. I’m still seeing all the same stuff I was before, it’s just that I’m also seeing the normal stuff more clearly. It’s . . . hard to explain.”

  “It’s fine. It’ll be fine. We’re gonna be—hey, you got a light?”

  Karyn lit the cigarette. Anna didn’t even draw off it yet, just stood on the stairs, breathing. There was still so much to take in, and she’d had no chance to process anything while the cops went over and over and over her story. Karyn’s return to the regular world was just one piece, though by far the best one. Genevieve was another, and Anna was still sorting through her anger over what was either a chickening out or a straight-up betrayal, and—

  “Hey, what’s going on?” Karyn asked, looking down at Anna’s hand.

  Anna followed the line of her gaze. Anna’s left hand had curled into a trembling claw, and only now did she consciously register the urge to do violence. She straightened her fingers with an effort and held them steady.

  And there was that.

  “They demonated me,” Anna said.

  “I know. I got one, too.”

  “Huh?”

  “This,” Karyn said. She held up her hand. The splinter was a dark line under her thumbnail, clearly visible in the sunlight. “I don’t know if it’s the d
emon itself, or just some kind of, I dunno, demon telephone, but it communicates with me. It’s also basically tethering me to reality at this point, I think.”

  Anna rubbed her temple. She felt the murder slowly drain from her face. “I think mine’s driving me crazy.” She paused, weighing her words. “I think I’m gonna kill someone real soon if I don’t get a handle on this. I kinda don’t even care who.”

  Karyn tapped ash from her cigarette. Anna wasn’t sure if Karyn had heard her or not. It didn’t much matter. A few words one way or the other were nothing compared to the situation they’d suffered during the last couple of months.

  “We got played,” Karyn said.

  “I know,” Anna said.

  “I’m starting to think we got played right from the start.”

  Anna wiggled the cigarette between her finger and thumb, watching the ash flake off the end and flutter to the stairs. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  “The monster in Mendelsohn’s basement—it’s the same as the demon helping me navigate. And it’s, like, Hector’s worst enemy.”

  “Belial,” Anna said. “Sobell kept calling Hector Belial.”

  “Either way, the thing in my head hates him. It.”

  “What’s that mean?” Anna asked.

  “I don’t know. But I’m tired of getting jerked around. Sobell used us. Belial used us. I don’t even know what we’re in the middle of now, and I don’t know how we get out of it.”

  “I’ve got some ideas about that,” Anna said. Lots of thoughts, none very well examined. Thanks to Van Horn, she knew Sobell was dying, and thanks to Karyn, they all had the same sketchy clues regarding whatever it was he needed to stay alive, as well as whatever it was Belial sought. Leverage on Sobell might mean freedom, and leverage on Belial might mean—well, somebody had to know how the hell to get rid of her demon. “Later, though. This ain’t the best place to talk about it.”

  Karyn nodded. “Yeah. One way or another, I’m through getting played.”

  The door behind them opened and a cop walked by, killing the conversation for the moment. Anna studied Karyn’s face, amazed at how happy something as simple as Karyn looking back at her made her feel. Almost everything was fucked. Sobell and Belial were out there, somewhere, cooking up God knew what. Anna had a murderous demon in her head, and if she didn’t get rid of it, it would most likely kill her. Karyn harbored a demon of her own, it seemed, and there was no telling what it wanted from her. The situation with Genevieve was so far beyond fucked that Anna couldn’t even think about it without getting pissed off all over again.