“Pan!”
She turned away, partly so she could scan for an exit, partly so Herc wouldn’t see her face. It was taking every ounce of strength she had to stay upright, her body a broken engine on the verge of stalling. Everything hurt. Everything. Especially her chest. Although hurt was the wrong word. It wasn’t pain so much as a grinding, awful sense that this time she’d gone too far. Her heart pulsed weak and wet and the vertebrae in her spine scraped together. There was a trapped nerve in there, and it felt like somebody jabbing her repeatedly with a scalpel. She wasn’t taking in enough air because one of her lungs hadn’t fully reinflated. Her contract had worked, but only barely. A few more seconds, maybe, and they’d have had her.
The underground parking lot was hell on earth, literally. The scattered remains of the demons lay beside the corpse of the driver, identical only in the absence of life. The truth was he didn’t know how lucky he was, to be dead, to be cold. There were far worse places the living could go when their hearts stopped beating and their bodies started cooling. She’d almost found out exactly how bad those places were.
No time for that. No time for what-ifs. There would be a SWAT team down here soon, and she didn’t want to be around when they started firing bullets or questions at her. She couldn’t take the exit ramp, the whole world would be watching by now. But there was an access door in the far wall. Half a door, anyway, with a demon-shaped hole in one side where something had pulled loose. It hung off its hinges, swinging in the currents of heat that circled the parking lot, beckoning her like a finger.
“… zztt … oing?”
The earpiece was history and she plucked it out, chucking it. She walked toward the door, going as fast as the wreck of her body would let her. The molten heat of the adrenaline was cooling into solid metal in her limbs, weighing her down, the reality of the situation bleeding back in. Had she died back there? She rubbed the scar on her chest, the mottled skin completely numb. The thought frightened her. It terrified her. Because for an instant, when the demon’s blade cut through her heart, she’d felt the world dissolve, felt something take hold of her soul, wrench her down through the fabric of reality into whatever waited for her below. Only an instant, then the contract had kicked in. But it had been close.
It always was when you traded for the big one. When you traded for invulnerability.
She stepped over the dead driver, her foot almost slipping in a puddle of blood. She didn’t even know his name, even though he’d been working with them for weeks, even though she’d shared a Wendy’s breakfast sandwich with him that very morning. Not a man, not a human, just a corpse. It’s all he ever was. And better to think of it that way, better to stay cold than to burn in the fire of regret and guilt and shame.
Forrest, though. He was different. Not a driver, not a bodyguard like Herc. He’d been an Engineer, the same as her. She could still see him being dragged into the molten ground, screaming even though his head had been obliterated. She could still hear him. She would hear him for the rest of her life—him and all the others. Just one more name in the Book of Dead Engineers.
“Sorry,” she said, then regretted it. It wasn’t her fault. He’d known what the risks were when he’d made the deal. He’d known the price he would have to pay. If she took responsibility for him, then she’d have to take responsibility for the rest of them, and then she’d be buried by guilt, her soul as tormented as theirs.
Ostheim should never have let them get so close to the end of the contract, though. This was his fault.
Behind her she heard shuffling, a grunt, a pathetic wheeze, and she didn’t have to look back to know what was going on. She did anyway, if only to scowl at Herc as he lifted a hunk of plastic between his fingers, inserted it into the kid’s mouth. An inhaler. He pressed it a few times, massaging the boy’s chest. Then he hefted the unconscious body over one shoulder. He fired a look right back at her, one that said, What you gonna do about it?
He was right. They needed Engineers. They needed them all the time, the way a butcher needs a yard full of chickens. The kid, he’d appeared out of nowhere, had maybe—maybe—distracted one of the demons long enough to let her ruined flesh knit itself back together. But he was still just a boy, and a dying one at that, if his pitiful breathing was anything to go by.
But that was always Herc’s problem, his big, stupid, bleeding heart.
Pan reached the door, pushed through into a concrete stairwell, a haze of smoke making her eyes water. There was a choice of down or up, but the thought of heading even deeper beneath the earth after what she’d just felt made her stomach want to explode out her mouth. She headed up, running for a couple of steps before her battered heart slowed her to a walk.
“Place should be big enough to make us invisible,” growled Herc behind her. “Cops’ll be setting up a perimeter outside, but we should pass as civvies.” He coughed. “You might wanna lose the crossbow, though.”
“Yeah?” She doubled around the bend, snatching in breaths as she continued up. “I lose the bow, you lose some teeth.”
“Just saying,” he replied. “Nothing quite says crazy like a big-ass seventeenth-century weapon hanging off your back.”
She ignored him, reaching the door to the ground level. There was an alarm going off, she realized, and she could hear footsteps and screams from the other side. A stampede. Perfect. She opened the door a crack, peeking past to see a corridor, people flowing out of wards, bare feet slapping on the floor. A few orderlies and security guards were doing their best to herd them toward the back of the hospital. Herc was right, the bow was a little conspicuous. But there weren’t more than a dozen of these things in existence, and Ostheim only owned three.
She grabbed the collar of her tattered Kevlar shirt and pulled, the Velcro tearing. Shrugging it off, she wrapped it tightly around the bow, leaning on it like it was a walking stick, standing there in nothing but her bra.
“Well, that’ll take their minds off the crossbow if nothing else,” said Herc, his eyes scrolling over every inch of the stairwell except her. Even past the blood and dirt she could see him blush.
“Perv,” she said, pushing through the door into the crowd. It didn’t take one of the guards long to pick her out, his eyes widening as he executed the perfect double take. She didn’t need much help looking like a patient, coughing violently as she was swept along with the tide. Another guard was standing at the end of the corridor, ushering everyone to the left. Pan used her crossbow to hold herself up, limping around the corner to see a big double door up ahead, splashed with sunlight. The sight of it almost brought tears to her eyes. Probably would have done if the heat of the fire hadn’t singed her tear ducts shut.
There was a line of cops outside, beady eyes assessing everyone who left the building. Pan did her best to look the way normal people probably looked when they saw death, her face crumpling, her hand covering her eyes, her shoulders lurching like she had broken down into sobs. It wasn’t exactly an Oscar-worthy display but it must have done the trick because they waved her on toward a posse of waiting ambulances and first responders.
Pan ducked between two trees at the side of the road, hopping over a low metal fence onto the street beyond. There was a rustle of leaves and Herc appeared, trying to maneuver himself over the iron spikes, the boy still slung over his shoulder.
“Little help?” he said.
“Your new boyfriend,” Pan replied. “You love him so much, you carry him.”
“Do you always have to be such an icy bitch?” He stumbled, almost fell, clutching the kid like a sack of potatoes. A couple of teenage boys walked past holding skateboards, both of them ogling her, oblivious to everything except her exposed bra. She pulled the shirt off her crossbow, gave them something else to ogle, sent them skittering. They were on a side road, a couple of cars parked next to the curb. They weren’t exactly flash, but they’d do. She made for the closest one, used the butt of the crossbow to shatter the driver’s-side window.
“Do you always have to be such a miserable old git?” she replied as she popped the lock, the central locking clunking.
“Do you always need thirty seconds to come up with a riposte?”
Herc opened the rear door, slid the kid inside. Pan waited until the big guy had straightened before shaking her head at him.
“That’s a lot of effort for a skinny kid,” she said. “You should have left him up there, with the paramedics. Saved yourself some bother.”
“He’s seen us, Pan. Seen them. Can’t take the chance he won’t talk.”
“Left him to die, then,” she offered. “Not like he’d be the first. Hell, we’ve lost a dozen Engineers in as many months, what’s one more corpse for the cleaners to bag up?”
This time Herc’s eyes narrowed, his face turning to stone. He didn’t reply, just stared at her. If looks could kill, and all that. She had to turn away, her own cheeks heating, suddenly ashamed. She hissed out a humorless laugh to cover it.
“I’m glad you find this so funny, Pan,” Herc said, pushing past her, his disgust oozing off him in waves. He folded his body into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and started ripping out wires from the dash. She stood there a moment longer, chewing on the stew of emotion that bubbled up from her stomach, wanting to punch Herc in the face, wanting to scream her lungs out at the sky, wanting to curl up beneath the car and cry and cry and cry. And it was only because she couldn’t work out which of those feelings scared her more that she walked robotically to the other side, opened the creaking door, and clambered in.
Herc fired up the engine, revved it.
“You had to pick a goddamned Honda?” he said, and it was almost an apology. “Come on. We need to get hold of Ostheim before he sends the whole Pigeon’s Nest down here looking for you.”
Pan didn’t answer. She just stared out the windshield, watching the world start to roll past, happy to be cold, to be hard, to be made of ice.