Part 21 (2/2)

”I don't know,” she said. ”But it helps everything that came after it make sense. I had nightmares for years. I'd wake up convinced there was someone in the apartment. A man who was going to . . . Anyway, I didn't put that together with Eric until now. And now, it seems obvious.”

”I'm sorry for what he did to you,” I said. ”Not repentant. Just . . . sorry.”

”That's more than enough,” Kim said. ”That's fine.”

The rage in my heart was starting to flutter, the fire going out. I looked down at the coffin. The pale light glittered off the black surface. The bones seemed alien and unreal. They had more in common with rock than with human flesh and frailty. For a second, I felt the swelling, oceanic sorrow behind my own anger. A presentiment of what was going to come.

”I don't know if I can do this,” I said.

”Chogyi Jake, you mean?”

I've got the boy, boy, boy, boy down in the dark. Down in the dark he'll stay.

”How long do you think he was alive?” I asked, motioning toward the bones with my chin.

”Not long,” Kim said. ”Hours. Not more than a day, even with the rider. You can see where they carved sigils all along the inside. There?”

I did see them, now that she pointed them out. Hairline swirls and strokes that covered the inside of the coffin so thickly they became a texture. I imagined Declan Souder's hands clawing at those sigils in the darkness, screaming as the air grew thicker and closer and the rider raged, tearing through his mind. I wondered if he'd known, even as he designed the prison, that he'd end here, deep beneath it. I suspected that he had.

”I'm not going to be okay after this,” I said.

”I know.”

”Do we have to do it?”

”Yes, dear,” Kim said. ”We do.”

THE LOCK on the main door to the shelter was bent past repair, but Aubrey had managed a decent barricade, two of the bunks turned on their sides and stacked one on top of the other, then the s.p.a.ces where bodies would have slept filled with boxes and crates, the overall ma.s.s growing past the point where the door could be forced. Hopefully. Ex and David had encountered less luck.

”We have lights,” Ex said. ”The interment box is solid. It barely needed anything. And I salvaged enough straight nails from those boxes, I'm fairly sure we can seal the coffin at all the critical points.”

”That sounds good,” I said.

”But we don't have a hammer.”

”What about a chunk of the concrete from down there?” David said. ”There were some pretty decent-sized bits.”

”Check,” I said, ”but be careful. A lot of it's crumbling. It might crack the cement instead of driving the nail.”

Ex shook his head, but he said, ”I'll look.”

”There's an old X-ray machine down there too,” I said. ”It might have something heavy enough to use. A bar or something.”

Below us, Aubrey and Kim were clearing debris away from the bared earth so that we could stand at the cardinal points: Kim to the east, Aubrey to the north, Ex to the west, and I'd take south. Chogyi Jake would be in the middle, with David standing guard to see that nothing interrupted. I could hear their voices coming up the stairway. Chogyi Jake was still sitting at the head of the stairs, his eyes closed, his head resting against the handrail's pole. He looked pale and sick and still, but his rib cage worked in hard, sudden bursts. Some meditation I'd never been taught. Something for warriors, maybe. For someone preparing to die.

I couldn't imagine what was going on in his head, so I tried not to think about it. It would only wind up with me going over, intruding, talking to him. If I thought I had anything that might comfort him, I'd have done it, but I only would have been trying to make him comfort me. David looked from him to me and then down.

”What else can I do?” he asked.

”Nothing,” I said. ”We'll start soon. It'll be over.”

”Yeah,” he said. ”It's almost six o'clock.”

”Long night.”

”They're coming in. Up there, the first bunch of people are probably coming in,” he said. ”Nurses and doctors. The guys who work the coffee bars.”

”Probably are.”

”This is going to . . . I mean, this is going to blow things open,” he said. ”Spirits. Possession. Magic. The whole thing.”

”No, it won't,” I said. ”They're going to show up. It'll be weird. Then we'll lock that b.a.s.t.a.r.d thing back down, and it'll go away. At most, it'll make the Fortean Times. The world isn't going to know what happened here, and it isn't going to care.”

David was quiet for a minute.

”What if it gets out?” he said.

I thought of Kim and Eric, the magic he'd used to wreck her life.

”They won't know it then either,” I said. ”It's just one of those secrets that keeps itself. Right up until you're in the middle of it.”

”He knew, though. Grandpa Del knew.”

”He did.”

”I screwed up his life's work.”

”Well, it's not like he told you to be careful. And really, even if he had, what would you have done?”

David squinted down toward the stairway. His wide face tensed and relaxed, and tensed again.

”Seriously,” I said. ”If he'd taken you aside when you were a kid or left you a letter or something. Told you that there were spirits from outside the world, and that he'd used his talents and abilities to lock one of the biggest and nastiest up by getting buried alive under a hospital, do you think you'd have been better prepared? Or would it just have been more evidence for a genetic component for your breakdown?”

”Yeah, probably that last one,” he said. ”A secret that keeps itself, eh?”

”I had to have proof too. When I found out? I got my clock cleaned by a haugtrold that had taken over this cop's body. Put the original guy into his girlfriend's dog.”

”Really?”

Despite everything, his voice had a sense of amazement. Wonder. Had I been like that? Awed by the truth behind the world. Overwhelmed by the sudden unveiling of a bright, dangerous version of everything that had been walking beside me the whole time. I probably had, but I couldn't quite imagine it now. I wondered what he'd make of it if I told him all my stories: the Invisible College in Denver. Mait Carrefour in New Orleans. Midian Clark, vampire chef. The thing with that guy in London. I'd almost forgotten that one myself. I could imagine mistaking it for glamorous.

And, I realized, that was how I'd seen Eric. He'd known more. He'd done more. And so I'd made him into the hero of my own private comic book. Eric h.e.l.ler, gentleman adventurer. Force for good. Decent human being. It hadn't had anything to do with the real man.

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