Destroyer of Worlds (10 page)

She stepped past him, heading for the door.
“I’ll leave you alone to think about it. Let me know when you
decide.”

The door closed behind her, leaving him
alone in the filthy old house, stinking of ghouls and mold. The
second abandoned house he’d died in.
From
now on, I’m sticking to brightly lit high rises.

Gray stirred.
“What will you do?”

Leave it to Gray to get right to the
point. For a being who had existed a few thousand years, he wasn’t
much for wasting time.
I guess we have to
make a decision, huh?

“
No. The choice is yours
alone.”

Gray’s words came as a surprise.
What? It’s not just my life we’re talking about
here.

“
I know. But it is not the
same.”
Gray brushed against him, or at least it felt
like he did, in the shared space of their brain. A purring tiger,
leaning up against Caleb, warm and solid.
“Of course I would prefer to stay with you. To experience
beauty and hope and love. And even despair and grief, because these
things give a weight to my existence I never had before. But you
wanted none of this. You never wished to hunt demons, only to live
a life of paint and brush, of color and texture.”

We have a better chance to save John if we
stay together.

“
Yes.”
A
hesitation.
“But John does not want me. If
we choose this, we may lose him.”

Caleb sighed.
Yeah. We probably will.

He started to run his hand through his
hair, but his fingers snarled in a tangle of semi-dried blood. God.
Sean had shot him in the back of the head. He ought to be dead.
More, the bullet should have rendered even his corpse
uninhabitable, sending Gray on.
Can we
die?

“
I do not know.”

Will we age?

“
I do not know that
either.”

So if I’m crazy enough to choose to stay
together, we’ve got no idea what will happen to us?

“
Does anyone?”
Gray countered.

Well, most people can at least count on
getting old and eventually dying, yes.

“
SPECTR may destroy us
tonight,”
Gray pointed out, apparently under the
impression he was being helpful.
“Presumably an explosive device powerful enough to vaporize
most of our body would not leave enough to heal.”

If you’re trying to reassure me, you’re
doing a bad job of it.

“
There is no reassurance to
be had. There never is.”
Old, old memories rose up,
bleached of color and feeling: standing up atop a mud-brick
ziggurat, its platform awash in the blood of the hundreds of
sacrifices it took to call him into this new form, this
heavy-limbed creature.
“When I was first
summoned, I did not know what would happen. I did not understand
anything, save I could yet hunt and feed.”

Must’ve been scary.

“
It was…strange. And I was
alone. Now, we are together.”

“
Yeah,” Caleb said aloud. At least they
had that. He remembered again the feeling of perfect love, of being
held by something vast and alien, which would never leave him.
Never turn on him.

If he did this, he’d lose everything. No
chance of an ordinary life where he painted and worked odd jobs to
get by. He might not understand the full consequences of letting
the possession become permanent, but he knew for damn sure his
future would be full of blood and screaming.

He wasn’t a hero like John. John, who
wouldn’t be at all happy about this decision, who would probably
see it as a betrayal of everything he believed in. Caleb would be
just another faust.

But at least John would be alive to hate
him.

“
Okay,” Caleb said aloud. “Let’s find
those ghouls, power up, and save John.”

Tiffany pulled her sedan into the enclosed
garage of one of the enormous homes along the barrier islands. Like
many of the houses, the floor plan was elevated, which left the
ground-level area beneath the first floor free to be used as a
garage or storage area. This garage was completely empty, without
even the usual random junk people couldn’t bring themselves to
throw away, on the offhand chance they might need it someday.

She pulled the sedan well off to the side, as
if leaving room for more vehicles. “The others will be here
shortly,” she said, climbing out of the car. “I’m going to change
clothes. You get some of the blood off your face. This is going to
be bad enough without having you looking like something out of
their worst nightmare.”

Caleb scrambled out of the car and followed
her up the rough wooden staircase leading to the living area. “What
is this place?”

“
A safe house. Now stop asking stupid
questions and wash up. There’s a bathroom through
there.”

The house smelled unused, but someone had
kept it dusted and stocked with towels, at least. Probably guns and
ammo as well. Not too different from a Fist safe house, except the
Vigilant were on the other side of the fence when it came to
NHEs.

“
You do not trust
them?”

It’s not that.
Except it was.
They’re going to help
us get back John, and maybe try to stop whatever the hell Forsyth
is up to. Which is a good enough reason to go along with them for
now.

The mirror above the sink revealed a horror
show. A mask of dried blood coated one side of Caleb’s face, and
more blood ringed his mouth from the three ghouls Gray had happily
chowed down on in the abandoned house. Blood stiffened his hair,
and something had dried into one of the locks half-glued to his
face. He pulled it loose; it was a fragment of skull.

His skull.

Legs shaking, he leaned his back against the
door and slid to the floor. “Oh God,” he whispered, putting his
hand to his mouth, while his stomach turned over queasily. Sean had
shot him in the head, blown open his skull, scrambled his brains.
He shouldn’t be sitting here. He ought to be dead.

“
But you are not. Why do you
insist on dwelling on such things?”

“
Because I’m sitting here staring at a
piece of bone out of my own fucking skull,” he hissed.

“
I grew it back.”

Hysteria clawed at the back of Caleb’s
throat, but he swallowed it. They didn’t have time get crazy about
things. The day slipped away, and sitting on his ass freaking out
wouldn’t help.

He turned on the water, washed his face and
neck, and rinsed the worst of the gore from his hair. He kept his
eyes closed the whole time, though, relying on touch, not wanting
to see the red water swirl down the drain. When he finished, he
toweled his hair and stepped out into the living room to wait for
Tiffany.

The room’s huge windows faced the ocean. The
sun sparkled off the water; it was almost spring. Not warm enough
yet for many beachgoers, but in a couple of months the strand would
be packed with sunbathers and wedding parties. Would they all live
long enough to see it?

A clock hung on the wall. It was later than
he realized. Time was almost up. Even if he’d wanted to change his
mind, he couldn’t now, unless the closets came stocked with
exorcists alongside the linens.

Another door opened, and Tiffany emerged from
a bedroom, dressed in body armor and carrying an assault rifle. She
ignored his startled look and instead glanced at the clock. “I’m
going downstairs to wait for the others.”

“
Okay.”

She left, and it was just him. Or him and
Gray. It would always be him and Gray from now on.

He went to the window and pressed his palm
against it, feeling the warmth of the sun’s rays. Caleb didn’t
move, just stood in silence, listening to his—their—breath and the
beat of their heart.

Something shifted deep inside. Slid into
place, maybe, or settled, or…he didn’t even have the words to
describe it. Like he’d been out of balance for forty straight days
and had finally found stable footing.

This was it. SPECTR would officially
consider him a lost cause from here on out.
H
ere’s your cue to reveal how it was
all a big deception to get me to cooperate, take over my body, and
shamble downstairs to eat Tiffany.

“
I do not shamble,”
Gray informed him with wounded dignity.
“Also, Tiffany is a mortal, and thus not food.”

You’re no fun.

“
And you have a very strange
definition of fun.”

The sound of the garage door opening below
rumbled up through the building. Caleb let his hand fall and headed
for the stairs.

Two large trucks sat in the garage,
along with an SUV. The smell of exhaust stung Caleb’s nostrils. As
he came down the stairs, Tiffany turned to look at him; he caught a
flash of wariness in her eyes, as if she thought maybe Gray
was
ambling down to kill them
all.

“
Mr. Jansen,” said the woman standing
next to Tiffany.

Caleb almost missed the next step.
“Kaniyar?”

The district chief looked just as she had
every other time he’d seen her, with her hair drawn back and her
dark eyes sharp as knife blades. Like Tiffany, she wore body armor,
and her pet empath, Pittman, stood behind her, watching everyone in
silence.

“
Very good, Mr. Jansen, your encounter
with the bullet left your long-term memory undamaged,” she
said.

“
I…but…what are you doing here? You’re
SPECTR!” He shot a glance at Tiffany, who pretended not to
notice.

Kaniyar arched a finely sculpted brow.
“Astute observation.” Ouch. “RD’s activities are above my pay
grade. I’ve had…suspicions, shall we say. Especially when Agent
Brimm quit so abruptly. Fortunately for me, Special Agent Ward
tipped her hand when she couldn’t resist taunting Starkweather over
his inability to exorcise you.”

Tiffany only glared sullenly.

“
And you were okay with one of your
agents working for the Vigilant?” he asked
incredulously.

Kaniyar smiled grimly. “As long as I knew
about it. As I said, I’ve had my suspicions. What Forsyth and, one
assumes, the director himself are doing is in violation of the
Geneva Protocol, the Glastonbury Accords, and every other law on
the books. I’m not here as a rogue element, Mr. Jansen. I’m here to
put things right.”

Whether a congressional hearing would agree
or not, he didn’t know, but no sense in saying so out loud. “Oh.
Good.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly as she studied
him. “Well. This is what you are now.”

Right—she was an exorcist. He’d almost
forgotten. “I guess.”

She nodded once. “Very well. Consider this a
new field test, if you wish. Now, let’s go get Agent
Starkweather.”

* * *

Caleb clung to the highest branches of a live
oak and peered through the foliage at RD. Back again, just about
twenty-four hours after he’d escaped the first time. Christ, he was
sick of this place.

Thanks to the alterations Gray made to his
vision, he could see farther and clearer than an ordinary human,
certainly at night. Floodlights mounted along the inside walls lit
the RD compound almost as bright as day. No doubt to make it easier
to spot any of Forsyth’s pet demons who gave its handlers the slip.
Or maybe after the sabotage of the day before, they weren’t taking
any chances of betrayal from within.

Outside the walls…Forsyth had been busy. A
makeshift line of wooden sawhorses, festooned with razor wire,
formed an outer defense. Meant to slow Gray down, when he came back
in a dead body, not as fast and powerful as a living one?

“
No. Look more closely at
the ground between the barrier and the wall.”

Caleb did, but saw nothing but trampled
weeds and disturbed earth.
I don’t see
anything.

“
They have concealed
something. Many things. See how the grass is bent, the ground too
flat in places?”

Gray was a born hunter and read signs
anyone else would have missed.
Fuck. Land
mines. Have to be.

Forsyth counted on Gray coming back and
blowing himself to smithereens. Or—terrible thought—blow off his
legs but leave the corpse habitable, so he couldn’t hope to escape
the soldiers coming to haul him off to some hellish cell.

Right now, they had two advantages. Forsyth
didn’t know Caleb had survived and still had Gray inside him. And
he didn’t know about the Vigilant.

Both of which he’d find out very, very
soon.

I could probably set off the
mines with my TK.
Caleb chewed on his lower lip in
thought.
Forsyth will know something is
happening here the second I do it. Then again, he’s going to know
it when we jump the wall anyway, given the spirit wards
there.
God, he wished they had a better plan, but
there just wasn’t any time. He couldn’t risk John in Forsyth’s
hands any longer than necessary. The idea Forsyth might torture him
or try to brainwash him or maybe even force a demon inside
him…

Gray flinched at the thought.
“We are here. We will save him.”

Yeah.
Or die
trying. And if John viewed Caleb as just another faust, someone
who’d struck a deal with an NHE out of fear or selfishness, so be
it. It would hurt like hell, and it wouldn’t be fair…but like
Tiffany said, fair had nothing to do with any of this.