by Dean Murray
Chapter 13
Alec Graves
East Dixon Lane
Hereford, Arizona
Oblivion led me through the darkness until we were back at our SUV. Jess gave me a worried look as we got close enough for her to see us, but I gave her my best reassuring smile and then turned to Oblivion to see what he wanted us to do next.
Still using nothing but gestures, he had me help Jessica unload Alison out of the vehicle and then he climbed into the driver's seat and I sat down in the passenger seat next to him.
We passed the drive into the center of town in silence and I was left wondering why I was even along for the ride. The werewolves were dead, so Oblivion didn't need protection from them, and Oblivion didn't seem to have any reason to fear the Tucson pack, not given the sheer power of his ability.
Oblivion had punched an address into the GPS before leaving the industrial park, and following the device's directions led us to a quiet little neighborhood that wouldn't have looked out of place anywhere in the Southeastern United States. Oblivion parked us on the street and then after double-checking the address one last time, he motioned for me to follow him as he left the SUV.
Oblivion knocked on the door to a white-brick house and then waited until a tired, middle-aged Caucasian man answered it.
"What do you guys want…?"
The homeowner trailed off as he got a chance to take in the tattered, bloody state of my ha'bit. He stepped back and made as if to slam the door in our faces, but his human reflexes were no match for Oblivion's moonborn speed.
Oblivion grabbed ahold of the man's arm with one hand as he pushed his way inside of the house and then put his other hand over the man's mouth to make sure that he couldn't cry out. Feeling more like a villain than I ever had at any time before in my life, I followed Oblivion into the house and watched as the man in Oblivion's arms started shaking.
At first I thought it was the natural result of being terrified for his safety and that of his family, but then I noticed that his eyes had rolled back up inside of his head. After a few moments Oblivion took his hand off of the man's mouth and moved it up to the man's forehead.
The convulsions gradually died down until the man was motionless, at which point Oblivion gently lowered the man to the ground and then turned and looked at me. I got a frown as though Oblivion was noticing my appearance for the first time. Oblivion ordered me back to the SUV to put street clothes back on over my ha'bit, which I did and then I returned to find that neither Oblivion nor the man had moved while I was gone.
"Who is he?"
Oblivion looked around and then pointed at a frame on the wall. I got close enough to read it and found that it was a medical diploma.
"The coroner?"
Oblivion nodded and then gestured for me to pick the coroner up and follow him. The house was surprisingly big and I initially marveled at the sure way that Oblivion led me upstairs and directly to the man's bedroom. It shouldn't have been a surprise, not in someone who could pull memories out of a person's head, but it seemed wrong for Oblivion to be so comfortable inside of someone else's home, a home he'd never set foot in before tonight.
The coroner's wife was apparently a sound sleeper because she didn't even stir until I set her husband down into the bed next to her. Oblivion was already on her side of the bed by the time I put her husband down, but he didn't touch her until after her eyes fluttered open and she looked up at him.
The process of draining her was eerily similar to what had happened to her husband and after only a short time Oblivion released her and motioned for me to follow him once again.
I almost couldn't believe my eyes when Oblivion opened the door to a child's room. When he took a step towards the bed of a girl who couldn't have been any older than ten I grabbed his arm, forgetting for a moment just how dangerous he was.
Oblivion just looked at me, but the expression on his face was enough to bring me back to myself, to remind me of the fact that right now I existed on his sufferance.
"There isn't any reason to drain her dry."
Oblivion shook his head and held his hand up with his fingers spaced far apart. He slowly brought his fingers together until they were nearly touching and then nodded.
"You're not destroying everything? Just the memories that have to do with the werewolf kills?"
I got another nod, which caused me to release him. I had no real reason to believe him—anyone who worked for the Coun'hij directly wasn't exactly trustworthy—but the simple fact of the matter was that there wasn't anything I could do to stop him.
Destroying the little girl's memories went much more quickly than the process had gone with her parents and she didn't convulse nearly as badly as they had. I wondered how much of that was because he wasn't destroying as many memories or if it was some function of the fact that she didn't have as many memories to search through and her memories were somehow less solidly fixed inside of her mind.
Oblivion motioned me out of the room and then quietly pulled the door shut behind him. A couple of minutes later we were back inside the SUV and pulling away from the curb. Oblivion didn't bother with the GPS unit at any point after that during the night. Apparently he got the directions to his next victim's house directly out of the minds of his previous victims.
Over the next couple of hours we visited the chief of police, a detective and a news reporter. Surprisingly it was the news reporter who was the most paranoid. It was hard to know whether that was because of her profession or because she was a woman, but she was the only one to check out the window before opening the door and even when she opened the door she left the chain on. It didn't save her though. She was in the middle of asking Oblivion who we were and what we wanted when he straight-armed the door with enough force to rip the chain free of the door jamb and knock her unconscious from the force of the door hitting her forehead.
I noticed that Oblivion was much more careful during our time in the reporter's house. He used his sleeve to avoid leaving fingerprints on her bedroom door and when my phone started to ring he forbade me from answering it with a stern headshake.
Apparently he could erase any mental evidence that we'd been there, but there wasn't anything he could do to explain away the broken chain or the spectacular bruise she was going to have on her forehead.
Once we were back in the SUV he motioned for me to go ahead and check my phone. As he got the car moving towards the next victim I got my phone out of my pocket and saw that I'd missed a call from Juan. He picked up after only the second ring.
"You're still alive then?"
"Yeah. I even seem to have all of my memories too."
"How would you really know if that was the case or not, Alec?"
I reviewed the night and couldn't find any blank spots, but when I looked over at Oblivion he just smiled.
"I guess I'll never really know."
"Yeah, well, life is just full of those kinds of mysteries. How much longer are you guys going to be? Jaclyn and the rest of her pack are getting restless."
I turned back to Oblivion. "How many more people do we need to pay a visit to?"
Oblivion held up three fingers but then he shrugged.
"So three you know about but you may find out about others from these three?"
I got a nod. We'd managed to communicate fairly well despite Oblivion's inability or refusal to talk.
"It sounds like we've got at least another hour and a half, Juan. How is Alison doing?"
"She'll live. Jess and Jasmin got her pretty much stabilized, but it turns out that the Tucson pack carries whole blood with them when they go on these little excursions. Once Jaclyn was satisfied that all of her people were stabilized she grudgingly allowed one of her medics to transfuse a unit of blood to Alison, which has her all of the way out of the woods."
"That's good news."
There was a pause and then Juan cleared his throat. "Have you talked to Oblivion about the fact that we were fighting werewolves when he arrive
d?"
"No, it hasn't come up yet."
"Bring it up. You need to make sure that he understands that we got into that fight because we were worried that he had already made it to the meet before us and been drawn into a fight with them."
"Okay, I'll talk to him about it."
"Thanks. There are a couple of people here who are very nervous about what's going to happen. Killing werewolves is still very much proscribed by the Coun'hij."
After I hung up I caught Oblivion looking at me.
"You heard Juan?"
I got another nod.
"Do you agree that we had a valid reason to engage the werewolves?"
Oblivion pursed his lips and then nodded. Apparently he was telling me that he knew saving him hadn't been our primary concern, but that he was willing to let our sin go without reporting it up to Puppeteer.
"What about Jaclyn and her people? Are you going to cause them problems?"
There was more of a pause now. Oblivion let me stew in silence for a couple of minutes before he shook his head.
It was a clear break with the rules that the Coun'hij had established, but for some reason I believed him. I'd taken a risk by asking about the Tucson pack separately because it had acknowledged the fact that they hadn't been fighting under the same pretext we had, but it seemed to have paid off.
There was something about the way that he'd answered that had my mental antennae tingling. I knew I should leave it alone, but I just couldn't seem to bring myself to do so.
"You didn't want to hurt Jane, did you?"
Oblivion refused to meet my eyes. He stared out at the road for nearly five minutes without providing any kind of response. Finally as we pulled to a stop in front of our next target he shook his head minutely. The movement was so slight that I almost could have believed that I'd imagined it, but it had happened.
Oblivion was possibly the coldest single individual I'd ever met, but he didn't seem to take any joy in what he was forced to do as a result of his service to the Coun'hij. As we walked up the steps to steal the memories of yet another person, I wondered what could make someone agree to serve the Coun'hij in such a terrible role.