I dropped to the floor, covering my head, barely half a second before the wall behind me exploded in a shower of splinters and drywall dust. My ears rang, and I was dimly aware of more gunshots—I couldn’t hear them because I was still deafened from the first one, but I could feel them, like deep, distant thuds that seemed to rattle my bones. I tried to move toward the bathroom, thinking the tub might give me better cover, but I was still cuffed to the pipe—and I’d dropped my lock pick. I looked around wildly, scattering the debris from the gunshots, flicking aside another cockroach that I hadn’t even seen was there. I found the plastic fragment just as the wall next to me shook with another impact, but it wasn’t a gun this time. The two agents were grappling.
I shoved the pick into the handcuff lock, trying desperately to find the tiny mechanism I’d found before. Where was it? The wall shook again, dislodging more plaster, and I could see flashes of movement through the bullet holes. My hearing came back slowly, and bit by bit the physical hits and thuds became audible as well—a crack as a body hit the wall. A grunt as someone absorbed a blow. A high-pitched cry as Sutton either gave or received a powerful punch. Where was the catch in the lock? I’d found it before. I had to find it again or—
“I don’t want to hurt you!” shouted Harris. “Please stop me!”
Somebody grabbed the phone off the desk—I didn’t see who, just a hand in a suit coat sleeve that could have been either one. The hand yanked the phone away faster than I could discern any details, ripping the cord out the wall, and I heard it ring suddenly—not a long, controlled trill from an incoming call, but a short metallic tone as some internal piece of metal rebounded off a solid surface. Behind the ring was a crunch, and then a thud as a body fell to the floor.
“I didn’t want to do it,” said Harris. He was crying. “Please don’t make me do it.”
Footsteps. A long, gravelly scrape as he dragged a chair across the floor. He was coming for me now. The table moved, clearing his final path to come around the corner.
And the handcuff sprung open.
I leaped to my feet, stumbling backward into the bathroom. Was he getting his gun? Did he have any bullets left? His hand came around the corner, holding the black telephone like a club, and I kicked the door closed to buy myself time. They’d taken everything, right down to the flimsy plastic garbage can … but they’d forgotten one thing. I jumped up and grabbed the rod for the shower curtain, hanging all my weight on it; it was barely attached, one more chance for the motel to pinch another penny, and it snapped down from its place on the wall just as Harris kicked the door open. I swung the shower rod with all my might, trailing the curtain like a flag, and caught him in the side of the head before he’d even come into the room. The force slammed his skull against the door frame, and he dropped to the floor like a stone.
I stood in the bathtub, my ears still ringing, my heart still pounding. Sam Harris. I wanted to hit him again, to feel that one perfect moment of crunch as the metal broke the bone—no, I wanted to stab him. It was always my favorite, so sharp and bloody and perfect—
No.
I didn’t want to do any of it.
I wasn’t out of control, and I wasn’t under Rain’s control, either. I was me. And I was in charge.
I dropped the rod and it clattered to the ground in a billow of beige plastic sheeting. I stared at the body and swallowed. Was he alive? Was Sutton? What should I do? I could hear shouting in the distance; someone had heard the fighting, or more likely the gunshots. Were the cops still here? What would they think when they found me here, the only one left standing?
I stepped out of the tub and over Agent Harris’s body. His legs trailed out past the sink, and on a sudden impulse I bent down and slapped the open handcuff around his ankle. He wasn’t evil, but if Rain had gotten her hooks in him, I couldn’t have him following me. I stood up, and then realized I hadn’t even stopped to check his pulse—I was so concerned about stopping the bad guy, I hadn’t thought to save the good guy. Even when it was the same person. I went back and put my fingers on his neck. His heart was beating. I moved out of the alcove and into the other room, finding Agent Sutton slumped along the floor and pausing to check her pulse as well. She was alive, but the bump on her head from the telephone was already as big as a golf ball. Both of their guns were on the floor as well, but I didn’t know how to check if they still had bullets. I kicked them under the bed and left Sutton with her stun gun. If she woke up before Harris did, she’d need it.
I grabbed Agent Harris’s keys from the top of the dresser and opened the door. If anyone was watching, they were too far out in the dark for me to see; everyone else was probably hiding from the gunshots, and there were no police in sight. They’d left from their first investigation here tonight and hadn’t had time to respond to this new one yet. I jogged across the parking lot, climbed into Harris’s SUV, and drove away.
The roads were dark and the sky was lit with streetlights and neon. I stopped at the first traffic light, still trying to catch my breath. What should I do? I had the means to leave again, and to get so much farther than before; they’d track the SUV, but I could abandon it in another town, or, better yet, give it to someone and head off in a different direction. That could throw them off for days.
But the problem was here. And I didn’t want to feel again the way I’d felt when Mills—when Harris—had found me. Like I’d abandoned the people who needed my help. The light turned green, but I didn’t move forward. The problem was here. Jasmyn had said once that everyone was worth saving.
So, I guess I had to save them.
I took my foot off the brake and turned the wheel to the left. I knew Jasmyn’s address—I wouldn’t be much of a paranoid obsessive if I didn’t—and it was just a few miles away. If Lewisville really was filling up with Withered, and if Harris really had called for reinforcements, this town was about to be another war zone, maybe even worse than Fort Bruce. I still didn’t know where Rain was, but I knew where my friends were, Jasmyn and Margo and Harold. I could help them, at least, maybe get them out of town before the real trouble started. I checked the mirrors compulsively as I drove, expecting at any moment to see lights and hear sirens behind me, but nothing came. I pulled into the parking lot of Jasmyn’s apartment complex and looked at the clock: 3:38 A.M. I left the SUV running as I jogged up a flight of old cement stairs to Jasmyn’s apartment, and I knocked on her door.
And waited.
I knocked again. Could she even hear me? Maybe she slept with earplugs or something, or a white-noise machine to drown out ambient sound. I pounded on the door harder and counted to ten as slowly as I dared, then pounded again and shouted.
“Jasmyn! Wake up!”
“Shut up out there, it’s the middle of the night!” The voice had come from another building across the parking lot. I ignored it and banged on the door again.
“Jasmyn!”
“Robert?”
I heard a bolt scrape in the door frame, and then the door opened about two inches, stopped by the chain. A bleary-eyed face appeared in the crack of light, but it wasn’t Jasmyn.
“Al!sha?”
“Robert, it’s the middle of the night. What are you doing here?”
“You need to get out of here,” I said. “You and Jasmyn both. Is she awake?”
“She’s not here, she said she had something to do.”
Crap. “Do you know where she went?”
“Robert,” she said, “are you okay? Is Jasmyn okay?”
“Do you know where she went?”
“She went to work,” said Al!sha. “It was like midnight or something. I don’t know why.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll go there. Do you have a car?”
“You can’t have my car.”
“I don’t want your car, I want you to get in it and drive away. Anywhere you can go that’s not in Lewisville—family, friends, whatever, just get out. Will you do that?”
“Why would I do that? What did you do?”
“I haven’t done anything,” I said, “but somebody’s going to. Get out now.” I turned and ran back to the SUV. Al!sha called after me once, but only once, and then she closed the door. I didn’t know if she believed me or not, but I didn’t have time to wait around. If Jasmyn was headed to the mortuary then maybe …
Wait.
Jasmyn.
I got into the vehicle and closed the door, then sat there, thinking. Withered were incredibly hard to identify because they usually just looked like normal people—Rack being the obvious exception. But there were two things about the Withered that were usually true:
First. If a Withered could shape shift they could be anybody, but if their powers swung more toward body stealing—and a lot of them did—it was easier to steal teenage bodies. Teenagers were turbulent enough as it was; the foods and the music and the people they liked could change from week to week, or even day to day, so a Withered could step into their life and assume their role without raising a ton of questions. They could do an imperfect impression of the person they were trying to imitate, or even a flat-out terrible impression, and the people in their life would chalk it up to puberty or hormones. So there was that.
Second. If a Withered didn’t steal bodies or shape shift at all, that meant they still had their original bodies from ten thousand years ago. Rack had had his, and Assu, and one named Yashodh. And they had all looked distinctly nonwhite. The old valley they sometimes talked about was probably in the Middle East somewhere; Nathan had theorized it might be in Turkey.
I put the SUV in gear and pulled back onto the street.
If Rain was a shape-shifter she’d be impossible to detect, but if she was either other body type, both of them pointed to Jasmyn. A young girl or a Middle Eastern girl. Why hadn’t Jasmyn wanted to talk about her past? Because she was a demon queen? And why had Margo taken her in with no prior knowledge or references of any kind? Was Jasmyn controlling her mind?
Rain had attacked me literally the first day I appeared in town. How had she known I was here? I can believe that Rain would know who I was, especially if she’d been working with Rack, but I’d only met a handful of people that day. It had to be one of them.
I didn’t want it to be Jasmyn, but it’s like I told the agents: my job wasn’t to find the pieces I wanted, it was to find the pieces that were there and then figure out how they fit. And if the puzzle came together into a portrait I didn’t like, well, there wasn’t anything I could do about that. I didn’t get to pick my own reality. And I sure as hell wouldn’t have picked this one if I did.
The lights at the mortuary were on. I pulled up to the curb and got out, walking slowly to the front door with my backpack over my shoulder. It sang a little song as I passed the motion sensor, and then Harold stepped out of the door.
“No one’s allowed in,” he said. His voice was hollow, like he was an empty shell dressed up as a person.
He was already a thrall. Did I dare to get any closer? If she just turned me into a thrall as well, then everything I’d worked for would end—I wouldn’t be dead, but I’d never get to make my own choices ever again, and that seemed even worse. My body would be doing whatever the Dark Lady wanted, with my mind just watching, helpless and trapped.
Just like Brooke when Nobody had taken her over.
“I’m here to see Jasmyn,” I said. I couldn’t run away anymore, and I couldn’t let anyone else lose their lives to these monsters. “It’s me, Harold. You can let me in.”
“She doesn’t want you here,” said Harold.
I took a step closer. “Does she know it’s me? Maybe she told you not to let anyone else in, but I’m okay. She knows me. You know me.”
“I’ll ask her,” he said, and then he just stood there, staring at me dumbly. I waited for several seconds before venturing to ask:
“Are you going to go—”
“She says no,” said Harold. “She says she knows it’s you, and that your name is John Cleaver, and that she’s always known it was you, ever since you got here.”
“Okay,” I said. I licked my lips, trying to think. She hadn’t taken over my mind yet, so maybe I could keep him—or her—talking. “Did she say why?”
“She doesn’t have to say why,” said Harold. “She’s the Dark Lady. She’s the beginning and the end.”
“And if I come inside anyway?”
“Then I’ll kill you.”
“But you don’t want to,” I said. “Just like the others didn’t want to. They tried to fight it, but they’re not as strong as you are, Harold, you can fi—”
“Of course I want to,” he said. “It’s all I want in the world.”
I stared at him, and then I felt my shoulders sink as the truth set it. Because of course.
“You want what she wants because you’re not new,” I said. “She’s been controlling you for twenty years, and there’s nothing of your own will left.”
His answer was so soft I almost didn’t hear it: “Twenty-five.”
“Because Jasmyn’s here,” I said, “but she’s not the Dark Lady.”
“Of course not.”
I nodded. “Margo is.”
“The light that shaped the world,” he said. “The mother of darkness.”
Of course it was Margo. The absolute authority that the others only orbited.
I couldn’t give up yet.
“What is she doing?” I asked.
“Talking.”
“To who?”
“To Jasmyn,” he said. “And Carol. And Shelley Jones.”
So Jasmyn wasn’t a thrall, then. They were talking. But what did Margo have to say to Jasmyn at 3:30 in the morning? And to Carol and Shelley? I didn’t know why Jasmyn was there, but I could guess about the other two: they were the survivors, left behind after the deaths of their only companions. Rain hadn’t been killing lonely people, she’d been making other people lonelier. Sadder. She was destroying the only things that kept them going, and replacing them with pain.
Pain that she could take away.
“She’s doing the ritual, isn’t she?” I asked. “She’s going to make more Withered.”
“They are Blessed.”
“Then take me in there,” I said. “Take me in to the ritual.” I took a deep breath, and said it as firmly as I could:
“I want to be a Withered, too.”