“No, she can’t.” Gabby started to sob, shaking as she collapsed into Beth’s arms. “The boogeyman came, and he tricked Mommy into thinking he wath Daddy, even though he wath a fish with big nathty teeth. And he’th going to make her marry him and live in his houth and—”
Beth gripped the girl tightly by both shoulders. “Gabby. This is important. Where is Mommy?”
The tears came faster than ever. “She’th with the boogeyman. Nema and Papa, that’th Daddy’th mommy and daddy, they don’t believe me.”
“You stay right here. You understand? Don’t move an inch. I’ll be right back.”
“Are you going to get the magic thalt?” Gabby asked. Beth could hear the hope slicing through her fear.
“I’m going to get a lot more than that.”
Jack was there to meet her back in the van. “Think I’ve figured it out,” he might have said, but Beth only had eyes for two things: her keys to Axis and Jack’s pistol.
He moved to block her path. “What are you doing?”
“There’s a little girl. I think her mother’s been taken. We’ve got to help her.”
“Taken?” Jack didn’t move. In fact, he planted his feet more firmly. “What did you tell her? How much does she know?”
“She’s a six-year-old girl, Jack. I don’t think we have to worry about her spilling the beans to anyone. Now, let me through. We’ve got to help her.”
“Beth, listen to yourself.” His voice was as level as a glassy lake. “You can’t help her. Her mother’s gone.”
“How can you be so cold?”
“Because I don’t have any choice. And neither do you.”
“Jack, listen to yourself. She’s a little girl.”
“A little girl whose mother is beyond help. If you want to help her—really help her—you’ll save the fight for when it counts.”
God damn it, he was right, and she knew it. The best she could hope for was to comfort Gabby, to make sure she ended up someplace safe. “Fine,” she said. “Let me go tell her that—”
“No.” Jack’s voice had the same edge as on that first night, the one that stomached no compromise. “You tell her nothing. You tell nothing to anyone. You forget about her. That’s how it works.”
“Let me through.” She pounded against his chest with the heels of both hands. He might as well have been an oak tree for all the good it did.
Jack gripped both of her wrists. He stripped the pistol from her and set it out of reach. “Settle.”
“Settle? I’m not your fucking dog, Jack. Get off me!” She pushed away from him and headed to the door. He could keep his cold detachment.
“You go out there, don’t bother coming back.” Those were the last words Beth heard. There might have been more, but they were cut off by the slamming door.
She found Gabby standing there with a puzzled look on her face. Next to her was the useless fire extinguisher she’d dragged from who-knew-where. “Did you bring the magic thalt?”
“Gabby,” she said, quickly crouching down, fighting to keep the tears out of her eyes, to keep her voice from cracking. “You have to go back to Nema now. Okay? You have to go back there and forget that you ever met me.”
“No! We have to go into the boogeyman’th house! We have to thave Mommy!”
Jack was right. There were no words to say. There was nothing they could do. As hard as his road was, as unforgiving, it was the one she’d set her boots on. Jack Jackson’s highway. He was the one with the map, and she needed to follow if she was to survive. “I’m sorry, Gabby. But we can’t go where your mommy is.”
“But . . .” Gabby started, tears welling up in her eyes. “But when ith she coming back?”
Beth tucked a stray lock of hair behind Gabby’s tiny ear. She had that soft sunshine smell that all children seemed to have. “Gabby, she’s not coming back,” Beth said, knowing that those words would bring the girl one day closer to her own personal sunset, possibly right to the brink.
“No. That’th not true!” She stamped her foot. Balled her fists. Held her breath.
But it was true. It was as true for Gabby’s mother as it was for Zoë, for Ryan, and for everyone else who had fallen victim to the horrors she now fought. And those who remained would always feel their presence, twitching like a phantom limb, but they were gone, and for the first time, Beth felt the weight of that. “I’m sorry, Gabby, but it is true. I wish it wasn’t, but it is.”
Beth looked up from the crying mess of child and spotted a woman in her early sixties clipping down the sidewalk. She was dressed in a pantsuit that might have been stylish twenty years ago. Beth heard her angry swish from half a block away. By the way she zeroed in on Gabby, it could only be Nema. Beth moved close to the little girl, gripping her tightly as she whispered, “Gabby, I promise you. I’m going to kill the boogeyman. Now, forget me.”
“Gabrielle!” Nema called. “What are you doing out here? You had me and Papa worried sick.”
“We saw your daughter out here playing with this.” Beth pointed to the fire extinguisher, trying to look as nonchalant as possible.
“Granddaughter,” the woman corrected. “And who are you?”
“Just a concerned citizen. I work over there. At the nightclub.”
“No,” Gabby whined, yanking on her grandmother’s hand. “Thith ith the girl I wath telling you about. The one who gave me the magic thalt.”
Nema narrowed her gaze at Beth. “Is that true?”
“Magic what?” Beth scoffed. “Boy, kids and their imagination.”
“Hmmm,” the woman said, and turned without a word further. Beth heard Gabby’s sobs grow faint and finally disappear as they plodded back down the sidewalk.
Fifty-one
Jack met her at the door. He shoved a plastic bag into her hands. “There’s your clothes.” He tugged out a few twenties and slapped them on top. “And there’s bus fare. I’d better not see you around here.”
“I’m sorry,” Beth said softly.
“You’re past sorry. I gave you a chance. You blew it. Get on that bus, or you’ll wish you had.” She’d threatened to compromise the mission, threatened to expose them, and for a lost cause at that. She couldn’t be trusted to follow orders. Couldn’t be trusted at all. It was time for her to go.
“Look, I said I’m sorry.”
“I don’t have time for sorry. I don’t have time for the small things. For some little girl’s feelings.”
“Jack. This is crazy, You can’t—”
“You have no idea what I can and cannot do.” What a fool he’d been for letting her get to him. For letting her in. Into his van, into his world, into his life. “I can’t trust you. Trust costs.”
Beth didn’t move.
“What are you waiting for? Didn’t you hear me? You’re done.”
Her eyes met his. “Okay, Jack. I’ll leave. I’ll leave you alone. But before I go, I want you to know something. That little girl out there. Her name’s Gabby. She’s a small thing that you don’t have time to worry about. But if it wasn’t for that girl telling me to look out the window when I did, you might not still be here. I think that’s worth the five minutes it took me to let her know that her mother wasn’t coming back.”
“Save it.”
“Save it for what, Jack? Save it for whom? You said it was our job to protect the innocent. There’s a lot more to innocence than just counting up who’s still alive at the end of the day.”
Jack wanted to tell her to keep her Hallmark sentimentality to herself. That he’d been fighting these things since Beth wasn’t much older than that girl she’d risked everything to comfort. But he couldn’t. His voice was as frozen, as if he’d been struck by one of the creatures.
“You’re right, Jack. Trust costs. And you’re not willing to pay the price, are you? When’s the last time you trusted an
yone besides that dog?”
“That dog saved my life,” he said weakly.
“I saved that dog’s life . . . and yours, Jack. And yours, remember.” She turned toward the door. “Good-bye, Jack.”
Jack had no words. Had he spent so many years coiled like a spring that he’d finally snapped? Was he really going to cut from his life the only other person who’d ever known what it was like for him? He’d built his life around killing those things. Eradicating them in the name of protecting the innocent. For so long, it was all he’d known. But in the end, what would it mean? There would always be more of them. Those horrors were making more of themselves right under his feet.
But there was only one him. Only him to fight them. And if he drove Beth away, there would always be just one. He would be alone until the day they finally took him down. And then he would lose. They all would. That crazy old man had called him the One. Jack knew now that those words were not a prophecy, not an augury; they were a rebuke, an admonishment. Trust cost. It was time to pay the bill. “Wait.”
Beth stopped, hand on the door.
Without a word, he took her gently by the wrist and sat her down. “It’s not you I don’t trust, Beth. It’s not even them out there. It’s me. I’m the one not worthy of trust.” From his pocket, he pulled the yellowing Bermuda travel brochure, seeing again just how brittle and fragile the paper had grown over the past twelve years. “That was in my pocket when they arrested me. I’m surprised they let me keep it. Maybe they just didn’t notice or care. It was supposed to be our honeymoon. Sarah and me. That was twelve years ago.”
He reached into his pocket for the engagement photo. He paused to unfold it, letting the images of Sarah and him stand next to each other for the first time since the day he’d printed it out. “That’s her,” Jack said, laying the page gently on Beth’s lap. “That’s Sarah.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“She was.” She was beyond beautiful. Jack shifted his gaze to the fool he’d been all those years ago. “And that’s me. I was just a normal guy. Normal life. Not some Army Ranger, Navy SEAL, CIA sleeper agent, or anything like that. I taught high school science—biology and chemistry—while I worked on applying to PhD programs. I was about your age. Maybe even a little younger.”
Jack felt every muscle in his body begin to seize. A stone formed in his gut. Maybe it had always been there, crushing him from the inside. But she had to know. She had to know the truth, no matter what it did to her or to him. “It had killed eighteen people by the time it showed up in my backyard. Just standing there in the snow. It’d just killed my dog and was feeding. I can still see the blood and fur there on the snow and all over that thing’s face.” He looked straight at Beth. Tears rimmed his eyes for the first time in more than a decade. “Care to guess what it looked like?”
“Sarah.” Beth’s voice was little more than breath.
“It attacked, just a graze, but it was my first taste of their venom. My first scar. It was more than enough. Somehow I managed to get free. I ran inside. I broke a dining-room chair right across the table. I picked up a splintered chair leg—a wooden stake, just like they tell you to do with vampires. Its point was . . . was very, very sharp.
“When that thing came for me, I was going to be ready. It was kill or be killed, pure and simple.” Jack looked down at his hands; he could still feel the splinters digging into his skin. Still feel the kicking, the scratching. Still remember holding that mouth shut with his hand while the body below writhed and then stopped. “And when it did come, I was ready. I ran that stake right through its heart.”
Beth’s eyes had gone wide, her skin blanched to bone-white. She knew there was more to the story. She was waiting.
“Except it wasn’t that thing after all,” Jack said finally. “It was Sarah. It was my Sarah, and I’d thought she was one of them. And I put a stake through her heart . . . through her beautiful heart . . . just like the storybooks tell you to. Just like in the fairy tales.”
He took a step back, practically collapsing onto the console. He gestured for Beth to unfold the rest of the newspaper clipping and watched as she did so slowly. Jack didn’t have to read it to know what was printed beneath his picture. It was seared into his memory like a brand: Accused Serial Killer Schoolteacher Hangs Himself in Jail Cell. Unclaimed Body Cremated.
There would be more questions, and he’d answer them as they came, but for now, he only had one thing left to tell her. “Now do you understand? Why you can’t get too close to anyone? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve killed Sarah since that night. Again and again and again. In my nightmares. When those things come wearing her face. And every time, it’s the same as it was that night. Every time, I die right along with her.”
Fifty-two
The usual?” asked the liquor-store clerk.
“Make it two,” Gil said, slapping his last lousy couple of bucks down on the counter.
The clerk swept up the bills and replaced them with two pints of ninety-nine-cent vodka. “Sorry, bud. We’re out of the bourbon.”
Gil just nodded as he stuck one bottle into each of the front pockets of his field jacket. At that price point, the only difference between vodka and anything else was what type of food coloring they added. He looked up at the clerk, couldn’t have been much older than twenty-one. He was dressed in a baseball jersey and matching hat, nice jeans, and a new pair of kicks. Liquor-store clerk was probably as high as he’d climb on life’s ladder, but it was an honest way to make a buck.
On the wall behind him, Gil spotted a snapshot of the clerk, his arm around a young lady who held in her arms an infant child. “Them yours?” Gil asked, pointing at the picture.
“Last I checked.”
“I’d get outta town if I were you, kid.”
“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”
“Mighty hard rain’s about to fall, you catch my drift.”
The clerk merely lifted one eyebrow. “Skip town? That what you’re planning on doing?”
“I said if I were you. I got no place to go, and . . .” Gil flicked another glance at the photo. “I ain’t got nothing to lose. You take that from an old prophet who’s just about to retire.”
“Sure thing, buddy. I’ll just pilot the old Gulfstream down to our place in Cabo.”
Gil nodded. They were never going to listen. And with that knowledge ricocheting in his head, he pushed through the door and into the cold New Harbor night.
Gil wasn’t sure what form that rain he’d spoken of would take, but it wasn’t just the Night Angel. It wasn’t just the cops. Or the One. Black Town Cars with pitch-dark windows slowly prowled the streets. And he could have sworn he spotted a black helicopter hovering over the Docklands. Men in suits were poking around his haunts, digging in his trash bins. They’d been snapping pictures of his spray-painted warnings. They’d been asking questions. He’d had to skip Fort Red Rock and go back to the Strip. Sooner or later, someone or something was going to catch up with him.
Headlights hit his back. They belonged to one of those long black cars. It rolled up slowly, keeping pace with Gil as he walked faster. A tinted window wound down. Inside was a spook in a pinstriped suit and wraparound shades. “Evening, sir,” he said as he popped pistachios from a plastic bag.
“Same to you,” Gil offered, right before colliding into two more spooks standing like Jersey barriers on the sidewalk in front of him. He was sure they were spooks. He knew a spook when he saw one. Shades, crisp suits, and that plastic look—as if they’d all come out of a mold. Nothing had changed since Nam.
Back in basic, he and a few of his buddies got tapped by a psy-ops squad. They had them sit in their skivvies as a cadre of eggheads asked them question after question. One in particular stuck in Gil’s mind like a barbeque fork. They’d asked them each to “repeat and complete” the following phrase: Silk, silk, silk. The cow drinks . . .? To a
man, they’d all answered “milk.” All except for Gil. He knew, sure as hell, that cows drank water, and he told those spooks as much. Calves drank milk. Calves and Mormons. They cut him loose after that. Which turned out to be a shame, because the other boys had apparently gotten dosed with some primo government-grade acid.
“Why don’t you let us give you a ride?” said the biggest spook. Christ, he looked like a mountain with a flat-top haircut.
“Thanks away, but got nowhere particular to go,” Gil said, unable to push past them.
“You do now.”
And just like that, he was inside, sitting in a less-than-pleasant jump seat while the spook with the pistachios reclined on the back bench, eyeing him from behind those dark shades. The whole car smelled like leather and vanilla air freshener, and the big spook squeezed into the seat beside him without a word.
“So,” the other spook said in between pistachios. “Heard you been up to a bit of street art.” He flicked an eight-by-ten into Gil’s lap. It was a photo of one of his Night Angel warnings. “Not exactly Banksy, are you? Care to tell me what it means?”
“You can’t read? They don’t teach you to read at the spook academy?”
“Oh, I can read.” Another pistachio. “I can read between the lines, that’s for sure.” Another pistachio. “I can read crazy-ass police reports about vampires, too.” The spook held out the bag. Gil didn’t take one. He knew better than to take food from the enemy. “Suit yourself.” He pulled out another eight-by-ten and held it up. “You ever seen this guy?”
Gil knew who it would be even before he recognized the face. It was the One. It was him for sure. The picture was from ten years ago at least. He was thinner. Life had only started to put him through its wringer. But it was him, all right. The eyes were the same. There could be no mistaking those cold blue eyes.
Gil cursed himself silently. He’d talked to the cops when he shouldn’t have. In his rash foolishness, he’d told them things that were not for their ears, and then their computers had frozen. And now these three spooks just happened to show up. It could be no coincidence. He’d preached the wrong things to the wrong people, and now he was going to pay the price. The Big Man didn’t give points for good intentions. Good intentions got you someplace else. The Big Man wanted results. Now this would be his punishment. His penance for doubting his position, his duty. For doubting the One.
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