“Four of them,” said Brooke, sitting on her bed in the dementia ward. She was more lucid today than she had been in a while, and we were making as much use of that clarity as we could. She looked at me with worried eyes, but I watched as her expression shifted into a sly smile. Even lucid, there was a lot of Nobody mixed in with Brooke. “Four Cursed in one place is dangerous.”
“Do you mean the Withered?” asked Nathan. “Or is this a new group?”
“They are Withered and they are Cursed,” said Brooke. Her voice changed abruptly, sounding almost like a different person’s—small and weak and scared. “They used to call themselves the Gifted, and some of them still do, but Nobody never did. Sometimes Nobody did. Only when Kanta was around to hear it. He still believed in the old days, but not me; I hated them all.”
She was shifting in and out of memories, sometimes speaking as Brooke, and sometimes speaking as Nobody. I felt a tight pain in the center of my chest, listening to her, fearing again—for the thousandth time—that Nobody wasn’t really dead, that some part of her survived in Brooke’s bloodstream, talking through her and controlling her. Worse than the fear was the guilt, knowing that I was responsible for what had happened to her, and all I wanted was to make that feeling go away. I wanted to make everything go away, to take Brooke and take myself and just disappear somewhere—as if solitude could miraculously cure us both. I didn’t because I couldn’t. There were demons here, and I was the only one who could stop them, and every day I wasted was another day someone else could end up like Brooke. I pushed away my fear and my guilt and locked them up tight, where no one could ever know they were there, and I looked at Brooke with cold, emotionless eyes. If she thought she was Nobody, that was good; we needed Nobody’s memories. I told myself it was true. I glanced at Nathan and let Brooke speak.
“Kanta wanted to unite us all,” Brooke continued, “to bring us all together like a club or a secret society. Club’s not the right word: cabal. He said we were stronger together, and I guess that’s turning out to be true.” She pointed at the photos I’d brought of Applebaum’s chewed-up corpse, turned face down on the little bedside table because she didn’t want to look at them.
“Did Kanta unite them?” I asked. I knew the Withered stayed in touch now and then, which was why Mr. Crowley had caused so much concern when he’d stopped communicating completely. But it had always been a loose group, and the idea that they were actually organized was frightening—it implied focus and direction, and direction implied movement, even if it was only metaphorical. What were they moving toward, and why?
“He only united some,” said Brooke, and she folded herself into a haggard ball, drawing her knees up to her chin and hugging them tight with her thin, bony arms. “The ones who thought like he did. Rack was the worst.”
“Rack,” I said quickly, catching onto a memory. “Mary Gardner said something about Rack.”
“Mary Gardner?”
“Agarin,” said Nathan, using Mary’s Withered name.
“Agarin said something about Rack when she was standing over Agent Potash,” I said. “She said she’d wanted to leave him for Rack, but she didn’t have time so she’d have to kill him herself.”
“You don’t want to be killed by Rack,” Brooke whispered.
“I don’t want to be killed by anyone,” I said, looking through Trujillo’s page of Withered identities. “Who is Rack?”
“The king,” said Brooke.
I glanced at Nathan again. “Rack’s not in Trujillo’s notes. Have you ever come across the name before?”
“It might be a title,” said Nathan. “It’s not similar to any names like Meshara or Hulla, but it’s awfully similar to ‘rex’ and a dozen other words like it. Most Indo-European languages have a word for ‘king’ that’s at least partly related to ‘rack.’”
“You have it backwards,” said Brooke, more confident now. I wasn’t sure if Nobody or Brooke was the more confident personality. “Rack didn’t get his name from their titles; they got their titles from his name.”
Nathan stared at her a moment, then frowned and made a note. “That is a very disturbing thing to think about.”
“Are you saying that Rack is so old,” I asked, “and so influential, that our word for ‘king’ is just his name?”
“Not our word,” said Nathan, “just … a lot of people’s words. The strange part is that Sumerian isn’t an Indo-European language, so that relationship isn’t as strong as I’d like. But the name Kanta is Hindi, which is obviously Indo-European, which suggests that the different Withered might have come from a single point and then spread out. But it would have to be an incredibly long time ago—”
“How long?” I asked.
“To predate Indo-European language?” asked Nathan. He whistled, looking at the ceiling as he calculated. “I’d guess early Neolithic era, maybe even before. Ten thousand years at least, and possibly more.”
“They say they used to be gods,” I said. “With these abilities, at the dawn of human civilization, how could they not be?” I looked at Brooke. “Was Nobody that old?”
“I was a goddess,” she said, staring at the window. “The goddess of beauty and love, and women would come from all over the world to see me—though of course the world was smaller in those days. Just a valley.”
Nathan looked queasy. “I’m not comfortable with the idea that an ancient god ate a man’s leg behind a cheap motel.”
“Rack didn’t eat him,” said Brooke, suddenly very serious. “Rack doesn’t eat legs. He doesn’t even have a mouth.”
I leaned forward. “What do you mean he doesn’t have a mouth?”
She pressed her lips tightly together, then covered the bottom half of her face with her hand. “No mouth,” she mumbled, barely intelligible through her fingers. “No nose, either. Just eyes and soul.”
“A soul?”
“Black tar,” she said. “Ash and grease.” She put one hand on the bridge of her nose, and the other at the base of her sternum, sectioning off about twelve inches of her body. “He doesn’t have a face because he doesn’t need a face. The dead speak for him, and his soul takes whatever it wants.”
“The dead speak for him?” asked Nathan, but I focused on the latter statement.
“What does he want?” I asked. We had to know what he was missing to figure out what he had.
She emphasized the hand on her chest, as if showing how much of her rib cage was above it. “He doesn’t have a heart.”
I sat silently for a moment, trying to imagine what such a person would look like. Eventually I just shrugged and made some notes in one of Trujillo’s heavy binders. “Mary—I mean, Agarin—said she didn’t have time to wait for Rack. That means he’s probably not here yet, which is the only good news we’ve heard in weeks.”
“But he’s coming,” said Nathan.
“One monster at a time,” I said. “First we have our cannibal; let’s deal with him before we have to deal with him and Rack together.”
“We’re so dead,” said Nathan, shaking his head.
“Think back,” I said, catching Brooke with my eyes. “Think deep back into all those memories, into everything you know about the Withered, or the Cursed, or whatever you want to call them. Which one eats people?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have to know,” I said, and held up the picture again. She shied away from it, scared or disgusted or both, but I kept it up where she’d be forced to see it when she stopped averting her eyes. I’m so sorry, Brooke. “Look at the picture again, Nobody.” I hoped the other name would shock her deeper into the Withered’s memories, forcing her to remember more. “What does it remind you of? Where have you seen this before?”
“You’re freaking her out,” said Nathan.
“She’s half demon,” I said, trying to feel as cold as I could, “I’m not showing her anything she hasn’t seen before.”
“Just … knock it off,” he said, and pushed the photo facedown on the table. “Let’s go through the names instead. What can you tell us about Meshara?”
“He remembers,” said Brooke.
“You’ve told us that before,” said Nathan. “What does it mean? Can he read people’s minds—maybe remember other people’s memories?”
Forman—or Kanta—had possessed a kind of mind reading ability; he could feel other people’s emotions. But the downside was that he couldn’t turn it off. Maybe Meshara was similar, constantly thinking other people’s thoughts? That could explain why he isolated himself so completely from the rest of the world, working a lonely night job surrounded by the dead. No competing thoughts to get in the way of his own. It might also explain why his only friend was an Alzheimer’s patient—maybe Merrill Evans didn’t have enough of his own memories to intrude on Meshara’s.
But then he would have read my mind as well, I thought, and he’d have known that I was hunting him, and nothing he asked me would have made any sense. My brief conversation with him had convinced me that Meshara wasn’t hunting us. I still believed that—the other three might have been, but not him.
“What about Djoti,” asked Nathan. “That’s a name you’ve used a few times, possibly Egyptian in origin. What does Djoti do?”
Rack doesn’t have a heart.… I thought.
“We’re asking the wrong questions,” I said suddenly. Nathan looked at me in surprise. “Forman said the Withered were defined by what they lacked: Crowley didn’t have an identity, Forman didn’t have his own emotions, Nobody didn’t have her own body. They see what humans have and they want it for themselves.”
“She has a body now,” said Brooke.
“You said Rack doesn’t have a heart,” I told her. “What does Meshara not have? What is he missing?”
“He can’t remember,” said Brooke.
I frowned. “You just said he can.”
“Maybe she’s flipping into a new personality again,” said Nathan, and he leaned forward, speaking slowly and loudly. “We want to talk to Nobody—to Hulla. Is she in there?”
“Wait,” I said, slowly piecing it together, “she said it right: Meshara can’t remember, and he can. He doesn’t have his own memories, so he remembers your memories instead.”
“He was the god of dreams,” said Brooke.
“Does he dream other people’s memories?” I asked.
“He takes them,” said Brooke. “Straight out of your head—boop—like a refrigerator.”
“The Sumerian god of dreams was Mamu,” said Nathan. “He was the child of the sun, and shifted between genders.”
I gave him a sidelong glance. “You just know that off the top of your head?”
“Kid, I’ve written two books on Mesopotamian mythology; why do you think I’m on this team?”
“Well,” I said, looking back at Brooke. “I’m glad we’re finally figuring that out. Can Meshara change genders?”
“He has one body,” said Brooke. “A million minds.”
“That might be the same thing,” said Nathan. “Or he might have been some other god of dreams in some other culture. Ten thousand years is a long time.”
“But why does he work in a mortuary?” I asked Brooke. “Why work at night? Why avoid people? Why visit Merrill Evans?”
“Why do you avoid people?” asked Brooke.
I blinked, staring at her for a moment, then nodded. “That’s a fair point. Maybe he’s just … introverted. There doesn’t have to be a supernatural explanation for everything.”
“There was another Mesopotamian god named Zaqar,” said Nathan. “He was the moon’s messenger, and he communicated through dreams.”
“We’re getting too far out into tangents,” I said, shaking my head. “We don’t need to write papers on these people, we just need to find them. Let’s stick with the basics: who else is in Trujillo’s notes?”
Nathan leaned over one of the binders. “In their talks together, restricting the list to Withered we haven’t found yet, Brooke has mentioned Djoti four times, Yashodh three times, Gidri three times, Nashuja twice—that one’s Minoan, kind of cool—and Husn, Dag, Skanda, and Ihsan once each.” He looked up. “That’s quite a list.”
“Start with Djoti,” I said, turning to Brooke. “What does he lack?”
“Eyes,” said Brooke.
I raised my eyebrows. “That’s … pretty straightforward.”
“Does he steal other people’s eyes?” asked Nathan. “Wasn’t there a serial killer who stole eyes?”
“Make a note and come back to it,” I said. “We need to find our cannibal first.”
“What about Yashodh?” asked Nathan. “What does he lack?”
“Yashodh is weak,” said Brooke, her voice suddenly contemptuous. “Even weaker than Nobody.”
Nathan nodded and started writing. “So he lacks strength?”
“Nobody wasn’t physically weak,” I said, putting out my hand to stop him. “That comparison implies something else—mental weakness, maybe? Emotional?”
“People love him,” said Brooke. “Even today. It’s not fair.”
“If he takes people’s love that means he … doesn’t have any of his own?” I struggled to wrap my mind around the sheer strangeness of the Withered’s existence. “He doesn’t love, or … he doesn’t love himself. He lacks self-respect. That certainly fits with Nobody’s psyche, but it doesn’t tell us much about him.”
“It doesn’t make him sound like a cannibal,” said Nathan.
“A lot of cannibals eat people they want to be like,” I said. “Everything from South Pacific tribesmen to … Catholicism.”
“Excuse you?”
“Catholics are a great example,” I said. “They want to become more Christlike, so they eat the flesh of Christ.”
Nathan stiffened. “As a Catholic I’m deeply offended by that characterization.”
“Sorry,” I said, shrugging. “The trouble is, in our case it’s backward: usually the one who loves is the one who eats, but Brooke said they love him. Why would eating people make them love him? Though if he can force people to love him before he eats, so much that they don’t fight back, that could explain why Applebaum died without a struggle.”
“Don’t change the subject,” said Nathan, setting down his pen and cocking his head aggressively. “Are you honestly equating the Eucharist with cannibalism?”
“I read an article on cannibalism a few years ago,” I said. “You can look it up later—we don’t have time to argue about it now.”
“Because you’re going to get eaten,” said Brooke. Her eyes were wide and bright, like she was happy and just trying to be helpful.
“Tell us about Gidri,” I said, thinking back to the next Withered on Trujillo’s list. “What does he lack?”
“He wants to be king,” said Brooke.
I glanced at Nathan. “Isn’t Rack the king?” Back to Brooke. “Are there opposing factions vying for control?”
“That’s a common enough theme in a lot of mythologies,” said Nathan. “The tradition of intrapantheon squabbles might be a reflection of infighting between the Withered who inspired those mythologies.”
“If they’ve been fighting for ten thousand years you’d think they’d have worked something out by now,” I said. “Or just killed each other, with only one person left standing on each side of each conflict.”
“They could have new conflicts,” said Nathan. “I mean, look at them—the Withered are a mess. They used to be gods, and now Meshara works as a night driver in a mortuary. Any glory they used to have is gone. Maybe Gidri’s decided that Rack’s not doing his job as king, and wants to take over.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll kill each other,” I said. “Or maybe we’ll get really lucky and the war they’re starting doesn’t involve us at all.”
“I don’t want to be trapped between two armies of warring demons,” said Nathan. “Your definition of ‘really lucky’ is not the same as mine.” I started to respond, but the door opened behind us, and I looked over my shoulder to see Diana come into the room with a paper in her hand.
“Hello, Lucinda,” said Brooke. “Have you milked the cows yet?”
Diana pursed her lips. “Looks like it’s been a fun day in here. Anything useful?”
“Plenty of good info,” said Nathan. “Probably useful in the long term, but nothing that’s going to help us not get murdered tonight.”
“Don’t get murdered!” said Brooke, her face suddenly lined with grief.
I stared at Nathan just long enough to make him look away, then turned to Diana. “What’s up?”
“Two things, actually,” said Diana. “Good news first: the security camera at the mortuary got a clear look at one of our mystery men.”
“You’re supposed to start with the bad news,” said Nathan.
“Trust me,” said Diana. “Let’s get this out of the way first.”
I took the paper from her hand. It was a still image from a camera feed, black and white and poorly lit: one man stood hunched by the door, picking the lock, and beside him was the tall man, but neither’s face was visible. The third man, however, was looking out at the street, as if scanning it for trouble, and the camera managed to catch his face perfectly. He was younger than Elijah, late twenties maybe, with a face so handsome it was almost pretty. I studied it a moment, then handed the image to Brooke.
“Do you recognize him?”
She sneered. “Gidri.”
Nathan sat up straighter. “The king guy?”
“The Withered have a king?” asked Diana. “That’s great news.”
“Gidri’s not the king,” I said. “He’s the one who wants to be king.” I looked at Brooke. “Are you sure that’s him?”
“Can’t you tell?” demanded Brooke. Her face was curled up in an angry glare, practically snarling at the paper. “Just look at him.”
“What does he lack?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Brooke spat.
“Then … what does he have?” I asked. “What can he do?” It seemed like there were some bad feelings between Gidri and Nobody—she didn’t like any of the Withered, but I’d never seen her this riled up before.
“He’s gorgeous,” said Brooke. “I hate him. I hate him! I hate him!” Without any warning she tore the photo to shreds, and while I was still trying to figure out what had made her so mad, she leapt forward, snatching Nathan’s notes and shredding them as well. He swore and grabbed them back, taking what he could and staggering backwards, knocking over his chair in a desperate attempt to get out of reach. “I hate him!” Brooke shouted, and leapt for Trujillo’s binder, which I’d been looking through. Diana pulled it away at the last second, and I pushed past her to grab at Brooke’s arms, trying to stop her. She screamed in a rage, no longer capable of coherent sentences, and Diana ran for the door while Nathan stooped down to salvage what he could of his torn papers.
“Security!” Diana shouted, banging on the locked door and pulling on the emergency cord. I managed to grab Brooke’s wrists and hold them apart, but she lunged at me and snapped with her teeth, missing my face by millimeters. I stumbled backward, trying to avoid her, and lost my grip on her left arm; her fingers raked across my cheek and eye, and suddenly the door burst open and the room was swarming with nurses, catching her and holding her and bearing her backwards, forcing her down onto the bed as she thrashed and howled. I backed against the wall, breathing heavily.
“She’s crazy!” shouted Nathan. “She should be in chains!”
The fact that I didn’t kill him on the spot is perhaps the greatest testament to my self-control.
“Guess she doesn’t like Gidri,” said Diana.
“You think?” asked Nathan. He swore again, looking at the fistfuls of ripped paper he’d saved as if he didn’t know what to do with them.
“There’s no way your bad news beats this,” I said.
“Don’t be so sure,” said Diana. “We got a letter from the cannibal; Ostler wants the whole group to gather at the office.”
I shot her disbelieving stare. A letter from the killer would be teeming with clues. “That’s bad news?”
“You tell me,” said Diana. “He mentions you by name.”
To Mr. John Cleaver, and his Esteemed Colleagues,
I assume I need no introduction; you don’t know my name, but you’ve seen my work and you know what I am—“what” seems like a much more appropriate word than “who” in this instance, as I’m sure you’ll agree. But seeing my work and understanding it are two different things, and that is why I am writing to you. I do not take these actions lightly. I want you to understand them.
First, the proof, so that we are entirely clear: the man in the morgue is named Stephen Applebaum, and you found him behind the Riverwalk Motel. He sustained multiple wounds to the legs, arms, and torso, numbering into the midthirties; I won’t bother with an exact number, as there is likely to be some variance in our counting methods. His stomach contents, as I assume you’ve been informed, will have included two slices of pizza—I was too far away to see the toppings—and a chocolate frosted donut. I assure you that his dietary habits helped make my own meal well-marbled and succulent. To help remove any lingering doubt that I am the one who killed him, I bit off the smallest toe on his left foot, then put his shoe back in place; this detail will not be public knowledge, and will be known only to the medical examiner and, I assume, your team. I am not a poseur, claiming credit for another’s work. I am the one you are seeking.
Now for the explanation. Do not assume from my desire to explain myself that I am on some kind of crusade; I did not kill Applebaum to punish him, and if he was a sinner against some pale set of standards that is none of my concern. I did not kill him because I was righteous, or angry, or vengeant. I did not kill him for something he did or saw or knew. I did not kill him because he needed to die.
I killed Applebaum because I was hungry. I am a predator, and he was my prey. To deny this is to deny the order of nature itself.
You will struggle against me because it is in the nature of prey to do so. The antelope will always run from the lion. I don’t blame you for this or even warn you against it, nor will I waste your time with trite glorification of the thrill of the hunt. You will do your part and I will do mine. All I ask is that you remember this: the only animal safe from a lion is a lion.
Find what the lion fears, and you will have found everything.
“There is no signature,” said Agent Ostler, lowering the letter and looking at us. “It’s written by hand, in what I suspect is a fountain pen. I’ll make a photocopy as soon as this meeting’s over, and overnight the physical letter back to Langley for handwriting and DNA analysis. In the meantime, we need to figure out exactly what the hell this means.”
I stood behind the others, thinking. How did it know my name? Had Forman or Nobody contacted another Withered before they died? Had Meshara really read my mind and discovered my identity? Or were Nathan’s worst fears true?
Was Brooke communicating with the Withered?
“Obviously it’s a warning,” said Diana. “He said it wasn’t, but how stupid does he think we are?”
“Practically every sentence was a threat,” said Nathan.
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” said Trujillo. “What we perceive as a threat, the man who wrote the letter might perceive in a totally different context.”
Nathan snorted. “What possible context could make comparing us to prey not a threat?”
“The very context presented in the letter,” said Trujillo. “A lion doesn’t eat an antelope because he hates it, or because he wants to scare it, or because he feels superior. A lion is superior, because he eats antelope.”
“Lions don’t send letters to the antelope’s friends,” said Ostler. “He wanted us to know something, or he wouldn’t have communicated. This is not just a courtesy call from a helpful serial killer.”
“Don’t worry about what he wanted to tell us,” I said. I was still embarrassed by my poor analysis of the body, so I was determined to analyze the letter as well as I possibly could. “We can figure that out later, when he sends us another letter. First we need—”
“How do you know he’s going to send another one?” asked Nathan. “Or do you have some kind of inside knowledge we don’t?” He turned more fully toward me. “Why was your name on the letter?”
I didn’t flinch away from his stare. “I don’t know.”
“How does he know who you are?” Nathan pressed. “Or does he know you personally?”
“Easy, Nathan,” said Diana.
“If I knew who he was I’d tell you,” I said. “I want to find him just as much as you do.” Almost certainly more, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud.
“Why wait for a second letter?” asked Ostler. Her authority cut through Nathan’s accusations, and I started speaking again.
“I’m not saying to abandon analysis completely,” I said. “Dr. Gentry didn’t let me finish. First we can look at the clues we have: not what he’s trying to tell us, but what he’s accidentally telling us without intending to. This letter is like a window into his psyche—what does it tell us about him?”
“He’s obviously very formal,” said Trujillo, diving into the profile immediately. He’d probably been planning the same suggestion, but this time I’d said it first. “He uses elevated language and vocabulary, complicated sentence structure, and an almost … scholarly politeness.”
“Contrast that with the nature of the attack,” I said. “The wounds were vicious—you described them as ‘feral’—but this letter was deliberate and intelligent. He obviously has a plan: he figured out where we are, so he could send us a letter, and he figured out who I am. This is not the kind of man who jumps people in alleys and tears them apart with his teeth.”
“Except obviously he is,” said Diana. “Half of that letter was proof that he’s the killer.”
“And why is it so important for him that we know that?” I asked. “He knew we’d doubt it, and he wanted to make sure we didn’t. Is he bragging? Did he write to us because he needs … what? Recognition? Credit? Fear? Don’t think about what he wants to tell us, think about what he wants for himself. What does this letter get him?” It all came back to the same thing. “What did he do that he didn’t have to do?”
Ostler looked at me grimly. “Dr. Trujillo will figure that out. I know you’ve done this before, but he’s a professional.”
“I can do this,” I said.
“You’ll still be studying them,” said Ostler, “but I want you on Elijah Sexton. You’ll be assisting Diana.”
“I can get more done alone,” I said.
“Elijah went to a grief counseling meeting,” said Diana, ignoring my protest. “We don’t know why. The cops’ surveillance team showed up at the same place, tailing the three mystery Withered, who were apparently tailing Elijah.”
“He’s not a part of their group,” I said again. “If the new Withered are following Elijah in secret, that’s just more proof that they’re not allies.”
“Brooke suggested there might be two factions,” said Nathan. “We think this Gidri is leading one of them, so maybe he’s trying to recruit Elijah to his side?”
“Could be,” said Diana. “If we knew what the two sides wanted we’d have a lot more to go on.”
“Why would a Withered go to a grief counseling meeting?” asked Trujillo. “I can’t get over that—it feels like such abnormal behavior based on what we know of them.”
“The counseling group is my assignment,” said Ostler. “I’ll talk to the police and learn what I can about it; Dr. Gentry, you stay with Brooke.”
“What about Potash?” asked Nathan. “I’m not going back into that room without an armed guard and a license to kill.”
“She’s a teenage girl,” I said, feeling anger surge up inside of me, but Ostler ignored the comment.
“If all goes well they’ll release Potash in two days,” said Ostler. She picked up the letter. “You have your assignments; go.”