The baby’s eyelids open stickily. Its eyes are red, bloody orange-red and compounded. It latches its teeth into the nurse’s arm. The nurse screams; the doctor drops the placenta. As the baby tears its mouth from her arm, bone shows in the jagged wound. Bloody clothing catching, tearing—when the baby swallows, parts of the meat and fabric are still attached to the nurse, and they can’t pull away when Beelzebub lunges forward again, jaws opened wide—I need to get to Addy, get her out of here, but her stomach is still sliced open—
Beelzebub tackles the doctor to the floor, devouring indiscriminately the doctor’s face and the placenta he had been holding just seconds ago. The panicked anesthesiologist is trying to pull the baby off but it’s swelling to the size of a hunting dog, its engorging flesh enveloping the anesthesiologist’s hands, spilling out over the sides like an unstoppable chemical reaction. Beelzebub’s tiny, pudgy hands get bigger, the wrists thickening just as he lands on all fours on the floor; he makes a noise, piercing and high like a toddler’s cry, but horribly distorted.
As the remaining two nurses run, they run into the operating table, metal tools clattering to the floor—the intubation tube is ripped partially from Addy’s throat, and she spasms.
“No no no no no—” I grab the tube; it’s no use trying to put it back in, but I can try to get it out—a nurse crashes into me and I fall to the floor, tangled in my hospital gown, ripping it off, slipping on blood.
Beelzebub is swelling, growing, becoming something four-legged and uneven, not quite horse, not quite hound. His eyes bulge from its head, moving wildly as he jerks up and down, ripping the flesh from his prey, like his eyeballs aren’t quite anchored, like the only thing keeping them from popping out are his strained, wrinkled eyelids. Like all of his parts fit not-quite-right. Two teeth-like protrusions sprout just under his eyes, becoming—tusks—his ears stretch, drooping downward, as though melting in the sun. A nurse lunges at him with a scalpel—but he’s faster than her, and then all I see is coarse, black hairs sprouting down his spine as he hunches over the kicking figure and tears it apart.
One last nurse is trying to get up, screaming and trying to use me for leverage, but I keep slipping back onto the floor, and I can’t stop staring at the thing; she’s screaming until he’s on her, ripping out her vocal cords and stretching, snapping them like rubbery strings. I back away on my hands, boots slipping, until my back hits the wall.
Beelzebub is the height of a well-muscled pony now, and he stoops to reach me. He huffs and sprays mucus, slipping on blood on lopsided, still swelling legs, scarlet, shining eyes reflecting the blue of the dead nurses’ scrubs—and his mouth, opening, opening wider, elongating, jaws big enough to clamp around my head—foul air hitting my eyeballs, the hot stench of blood choking me—
I feel a slamming impact, not against my head, but the wall beside it. Beelzebub kicks off the wall and bounds out the door. I hear screaming, and crashing, some kind of alarm ringing as the PA system activates.
“Code Violet! Code Yellow? Code White!”
Blood. Drips. Off the table and onto the floor. Someone whimpers, crying softly, just like a kid. Addy spasms on the bed, her eyes moving under her eyelids, stuck in a half-sleep as the intubation tube chokes her, her stomach a bloody gash.
I can’t move. I can’t move. I’m curled up against the wall, knowing I should yell for help, knowing I could do something as a blood witch, knowing I should help—but I’m petrified, paralyzed. I hear her dying, and I don’t move. I can’t move. I should… I can’t…
I sit there and listen to her gurgling breath grow shallow.
Until it stops.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Call for Backup
I kicked a cop. I’m fuzzy on the details, but apparently there was a huge fight between the hospital staff and police over who was going to take me. The debate ended with me hyperventilating in the back of a cop car because, well, the pigs had guns. And then… I don’t even know if they were arresting me at that point, but someone was telling me to empty my pockets. So I kicked a cop.
Now, I’m sitting in an institution-type chair with my face smushed against a hard table, my wrist dangling down where it’s handcuffed to a table leg. I’m trying desperately not to fall asleep, but the shock of cold steel against my cheek has long faded. My wrist is raw and red where I’ve been twisting it against the inner ring of the handcuff. The dark numbness keeps beckoning, and my heart is pounding with the effort of pushing it back, back, back—I feel like I’m dying with the paddles of a defibrillator clutched to my chest, having to restart my heart over and over again.
Damn it, I should’ve kept my Vigil in a hidden pocket like my penknife and razor blades. Then the cops would have missed it, instead of taking it along with all my other shit. I need a pill, right now—I haven’t had one since leaving Kate’s, and that was hours ago. I can’t fall asleep, not now, now that he’s back and he’s eating people and Addy is dead—
Joy is dead—
Johanna is dead—
A throat clears.
“Listen, we know you’re in shock,” says a disarming, sympathetic voice.
“Shock is no goddamn excuse for attacking a police officer—”
“Chill, man.”
The words find no purchase in my mind, sliding away like fine-grained sand even as I claw at them. Why now, of all times, did I have to get stuck in a dark room with two of the most monotone speakers in existence? I almost plunge into the dark again as an infuriating lullaby of shuffling papers starts up.
“We’re not saying you caused whatever happened in that room, but we need something from you, anything, to make sure everyone else is on the same page. Are you going to cooperate?”
I barely have a chance to respond before a meaty THWACK hits the table, making the steel vibrate against my face.
“When an officer of the law asks you a question, you respond!”
That was definitely the cop with no chill. His outburst keeps me alert for a half-second—hallelujah—and I use the brief moment of clarity to tilt my head up, squinting.
I assume the angry cop is the big white guy with his sleeves rolled up and a blue vein trying to burst through his forehead. The nice cop is short and stout, with deceptively nice eyes and folded ears, the kind you get from wearing a hat all the time. He sighs and extends a hand across the table, continuing to sweettalk me.
“Look, we could charge you for assaulting an officer—we could, but we haven’t yet, given the circumstances—but you’re making choices that are going to force our hand.”
“If I could force cops in the USA to do anything…” I mutter, head drooping. I know I should be demanding my lawyer, but I’m too mad and sad and going to jail doesn’t sound any worse than every other thing that could happen to me from this point on.
Something hollow and plastic rattles onto the table in front of me. My ears catch up before my eyes do; as my head snaps up, my cross-eyed vision centers on a white plastic bottle labeled VIGIL. My bottle of Vigil.
The big white cop smiles when he sees my reaction, thin-lipped and gross. He snatches the bottle up and shakes it like a squeaky ball for a dog. “See, I figured you for some kind of junkie. What are these? Amphetamines?” He twists open the lid, and I bite my tongue to keep from reacting to his grubby hands on my shit. “This have something to do with what happened at the hospital? I fucking bet it does. I bet it’s a gang war. Calling it now: it’s about drugs, and that pregnant broad was some kind of mule—”
“Show some respect, fucker,” I find myself snapping. Anger is pulsing hot behind my ears; I hang onto that, the red glow a lifeline to pull me out of the darkness.
“What exactly was your relationship to Chloe Hargrave?”
I blink, turning to the nice cop. “Who?”
“Chloe Hargrave, the girl who was scheduled for the C-section.” He taps a piece of paper in front of him.
“Chloe… Hargrave?” Addy, my brain supplements. Dear, sweet, sad Addy, drowning in the blue of her own eyes. “Chloe… was that her real name?”
“Yes. We identified her by her fingerprints; she’s been a missing person for almost a year now.” He frowns. “You didn’t know her name?”
I shake my head. Names… so easy to forget. Easy to sell.
The cop looks genuinely puzzled. “If you didn’t know her, why were you there?”
I don’t know, I want to say, but the incriminating sentence that crawls up to my lips is, Because he wanted me to be. I end up pressing my lips together and not saying anything at all.
My pill bottle rattles again, and my head whips around like a weathervane. The shitty cop is snickering, Vigil in hand. “You want this? Talk to us, and you just might get it back. Sing, birdie, sing.”
I make a fist under the table, my wrist chafing against the handcuff. “I don’t trust the word of a pig.” The nice cop opens his mouth—I shoot him a glare. “Especially the pig playing good cop.”
The asshole cop chuckles; it makes me feel small, like it’s supposed to. I hate that. I hate cops. At least with assassins and mercenaries, it’s not personal; they just see you as a walking bag of money. With cops… it’s like I can see the thought bubbles floating over their heads when they look at me. Oriental. Queer. Addict. Easily missed.
A knock at the door, and not even a pause before it opens. The asshole cop scowls. “Hey, we told you we were going to be in here—”
A uniform is frowning in the doorway. “Someone’s here for the suspect.”
I scowl too. “Oh, so I’m a suspect now?” Then I see who’s coming through the door.
First comes a woman in a gray trenchcoat, with this gigantic 70’s Farrah Fawcett haircut that curls outward from her face, a long fringe sweeping across her eyes. Trailing after her is a shorter man in small, rectangular sunglasses, wearing a suit and tie that looks to be cutting off circulation at the neck. He would be intimidating if his shoulders didn’t slope down so much.
The newcomers flash badges: FBI. One of the cops questioning me curses, but they both get up without a fight. The agents take their places; I see all three cops’ heads tilt in unison as they stare at the Farrah Fawcett hair. Farrah glares at them until they leave—damn it, my bottle of Vigil still in that asshole’s hand.
When the door closes, the suited man pulls an engraved coin out of his sleeve and places it on the center of the table. I hear a slight, static chhkkk from the ceiling corner, and I know the camera that’s supposed to be recording us has mysteriously malfunctioned. The woman starts speaking.
“Harrietta Lee, on behalf of the Council—”
I startle as I recognize her voice. “Oh shit, it’s you!”
She pauses, mouth twisting. “…Excuse me?”
“Yeah, you, from a month ago! You were one of the Enforcers who put me on house arrest, during the Nádasdy thing—you were wearing a hoodie back then. Uh, wow. They really did you dirty with that haircut.” I can’t discern the details of her face. Try as I might, it’s like invisible hands grab me by the sides of the head and force me to look back at that terrible, terrible hair.
Farrah sighs heavily, squeezing her temples. “New cover, new uniform. Casual clothing didn’t cut it for an FBI agent.”
“You know her?” the slope-shouldered man, whom I don’t know, demands. Farrah waves him off.
“We’ve met. It’s why they sent me; figured she’d be more willing to talk to someone she knows.”
I perk up. I mesh with wizard cops almost as badly as I do with regular cops, but at least wizard cops are a direct line to the Northeastern American Regional Council—and those mages have juice. Seven powerhouses, each roughly at Bautista’s level—oh, wait, five since Katlin Nádasdy murdered one and maimed another last month. No, hang on—four, since I maimed and sort of murdered Nádasdy shortly after that. Jesus, last month was a mess.
…Regardless, I know I’m not equipped to deal with the reborn Lord of the Flies, but the Council sure as Hell might be. I trip over my own words as I babble, “About what happened in the hospital room, it was—”
“No, not about that,” Farrah says.
“Wh—” I blink, stunned. “…You don’t want to talk about the supernatural massacre on civilian property?”
Farrah actually has the gall to sound annoyed with me. “We’re investigating that on our own. Your testimony is appreciated, but not necessary.”
Anger roils in my stomach, along with deja vu. “You know what happened the last time you didn’t listen to me, right?”
Somewhere under all that ridiculous fringe, Farrah’s eyes narrow. “We lost a member of the Council, yes. We still haven’t found replacements for all the missing heads. Which is why we are incredibly, incredibly concerned about the disappearance of another Councilor, also tied to you.”
It takes a moment to click. “Bautista?”
The Enforcers sit up. “You know.”
The air sours.
Shit.
Farrah’s mouth is going a mile a minute. “What do you know about her disappearance? What was your involvement? Is she alive? Where did you put her?”
“I don’t—I only talked to her before she left—”
“So where did she go? We need her, Lee.”
The Enforcer next to her extends his palms flat on the table. And I see it. His fingertips split at the ends, each forking once to form two curving claws, a seamless transition from the material of finger to chitin. Beetle anatomy.
I look back at Farrah. She’s staring at me urgently. I look back at the other Enforcer’s fingertips, hoping she’ll follow my gaze, but she doesn’t. I meet the man’s eyes—I see nothing behind the sunglasses, but there’s a smile at the corner of his mouth. The fingers, he’s doing it on purpose. Beelzebub says hello. And by the by, where is Bautista?
Fuck.
“I… know where she went,” I lie, cautiously. “But you have to get me out of here.”
“You’re not in any position to make demands—” Farrah starts.
The man raises his hand, which has gone back to looking human. “No no. Let’s hear her out.” Farrah looks puzzled, but she quiets.
“There’s a… cottage, that she and Joy used to live in. Before they both moved to the city. It’s somewhere in the Catskills. That’s all I’ve got.”
Farrah nods curtly. “You made the right choice. Stay here, someone else will pick you up. They’ll deal with the police and escort you home. All charges against you will be dropped—rather, they’ll never have existed.”
I roll my eyes. “Gee, thanks. And then you’ll put me on house arrest again?”
“We only do what is necessary.”
She gets up, beckoning for her coworker to do the same. She opens the door, and he slides the engraved coin back into his sleeve; she’s already gone by the time he reaches the doorway. He turns to me just before he exits, mouthing the word, “Liar.”
I flip him off. He does the same with a clawed fingertip, smirking. Then he slams the door.
I slump in my seat, my head in my free hand. Fuck. I’m not too worried about either the Council or Beelzebub’s people finding Bautista; she has a head start, and I know she knows to be careful. But what gets me, even apart from the Council’s seeming indifference to the hospital massacre, is the fact that they’ve had a demon infiltrate their ranks. How the fuck did that happen? Don’t they have—background checks, piss tests, something? You’d think a demon would stand out, what with the body morphing and inability to hurt people without a name signed on the dotted line—so what the fuck went wrong?
The door swings open, and I nearly jump out of my skin. This new figure has sleek black hair gelled back, penciled-in eyebrows under yellow-tinted shades, and a brown skirt suit that seems out of place in the cold weather.
“Hello, I’m your lawyer,” t
hey say, adjusting their shades with one hand.
I’m too surprised to say anything but “That—that was quick.”
Instead of responding, they toss something onto the table: a shallow tray filled with my belongings. I see my wallet, phone, needle book, and matchbox, surrounded by a smattering of loose paperclips, hair ties, tampons, crumpled receipts, and—my Vigil. I snatch it up, my heart thudding with painful relief. I move to open it with both hands—metal bites deep into my cuffed wrist, and I curse. Still, I manage to force down five pills at once. By the time I’m done, both my hands are free; I look up to see my lawyer looming beside me, dangling the handcuff keys on a pinky.
“Up, up.”
I manage to grab my phone, wallet, and two tampons before the lawyer drags me by the arm out the door. The lights of the police precinct make me dizzy after so long in the little interrogation room. There are too many identical desks, identical computers, people bending over identical paperwork—I’m so preoccupied taking in the space that I barely notice I’m being pulled in the opposite direction from the elevator.
“Hey, hey,” I say, tapping on the lawyer’s arm. “Shouldn’t we be going—”
The elevator doors open. The actual Council lawyer steps through, in a suit, scarf, receding hairline, and long woolen coat.
“Woah, wait a second—” I get shoved into an open office, stumbling. My “lawyer” opens a window, making the wooden slat clap against the sill. They shoo me out onto the fire escape; I find myself raising an arm against the cold, tripping a little over the windowsill. I whirl to face the eyes behind the yellow-tinted sunglasses.
“You. You’re one of his.”
The “lawyer” emerges from the window onto the fire escape to join me, smiling wonderfully. The wind whips through the alleyway, tossing their neat, gelled hair, but they themselves are unflappable. I shiver, one hand closing my coat over my chest.
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