Give the Devil His Due (The Sanheim Chronicles, Book Three) (26 page)

The knife called to him. Sanheim had given it to him, a present originally designed to kill Kate.

Take the knife
, Kieran thought.
It’s only fitting.

Yes, it was fitting. He wasn’t sure his plan called for it specifically, but the synchronicity of having it was too good to pass up. The knife would work perfectly for what he had in mind.

Kieran put the knife back in the bag and stuck it in his jacket.

“Kieran,” Tim called suddenly.

He jumped in response, sure that Tim had seen him and would tell Kate what he was doing. His plan would be over. And maybe that was for the best. As always, he remained deeply ambivalent about the success of his own endeavors. Hadn’t he done enough damage already? His plan was madness. Maybe he should be stopped now.

“Yes?” he called out.

Tim gestured excitedly to a box.

“I think I found them,” Tim said. He was digging through the box.

Kieran sighed in relief. Tim hadn’t seen him. There was no way he would let that pass if he had.

Tim fumbled with the box and pulled out a sword. He flashed his light on it and it reflected off the walls. It too seemed to glow, though Kieran knew that was impossible. He didn’t know how the knife was made, but the sword was forged by human hands. It shouldn’t have any supernatural powers.

“There, did you see that?” a voice said from outside. It came from just down the hall.

Tim gave Kieran a panicked look and practically jumped over a pile of boxes to hide behind them. Kieran, on the other hand, was standing in the middle of the room. He looked around frantically for somewhere to flee, but there was no way out. Unless he made a huge racket, he had no time to take cover behind the boxes with Tim.

As the handle on the door turned, Kieran looked behind him at the oversized storage locker. He hurriedly stuffed himself inside. He had just managed to fold his limbs in when the door to the storage room opened and a light came on. Kieran quietly pulled the locker door shut behind him, hoping he hadn’t made much noise.

“I swore I saw lights in here,” the voice said again, speaking more loudly.

“You’re imagining things, Gary,” another voice said. “You’ve been jumpy ever since the attack on the station.”

“You didn’t see it, dude,” the first voice said. “It was like something out of a fucking nightmare. It had no head.”

“You mentioned that,” the second voice said. “Several times.”

“It. Had. No. Head,” the first voice said. “I’m not making it up. A bunch of us saw it.”

“Well, Kaulbach insisted he saw a head underneath the outfit,” the second voice replied. “He said the guy was wearing a bulletproof vest.”

“The shots went through him,” the first voice responded. “Kaulbach is full of shit.”

“Anyway,” the second voice said. “There’s nothing here. Look.”

They stopped talking as they presumably looked around.

“I saw something,” the first voice responded.

Kieran heard him start opening lockers.

Shit,
he thought.
When they catch me, they’ll find the knife. Even if the police don’t keep me, I’ll still be a dead man when Kate finds out.

“What the hell are you doing?” the second voice said. “A person can’t fit into one of those.”

“I heard voices in the hallway upstairs earlier,” the first voice responded. “I’m sure I did. Then there were lights in here. Something is up.”

Kieran heard him open and close a few more lockers.

“Look in the boxes, will you?” the first voice said.

“If it’ll make you shut up, I’ll do it,” said the second voice.

Kieran closed his eyes and tried to keep from hyperventilating.

Here we go
, he thought.

He wasn’t this nervous when the police caught him the first time. But that had been part of a plan. This… this was a stupid risk. Yes, the sword was part silver and kicked ass. And yes, the shield would likely help too, but did they really need them? And then there was the knife. He was such an idiot.

The first voice was closer, still talking with his partner. Kieran couldn’t tell how close, but he heard a locker slam near him. He could hear the sound of the guy’s partner rummaging through boxes. He kept waiting for the shout that would come when he found Tim.

The first voice was right near his locker now. He couldn’t see much, but he could make out the guy’s shape through the slats. He waited for him to open the door.

“Fuck this,” the second voice said. “I’m not going to spend my night going through boxes, Gary. There’s nothing here.”

“I saw something,” the first voice responded. He was just two feet from Kieran.

“So what if you did?” he said. “Come on, let’s go upstairs, get some more coffee and relax. I’m tired of this shit.”

With that, the second cop apparently left. The officer in front of Kieran let out a loud sigh. He seemed to be looking around the room, as if waiting for something to jump out at him. After a minute, however, he slammed his hand on Kieran’s locker. The noise reverberated through Kieran’s skull and he had to work hard to keep himself from crying out.

“Damn it,” the cop said.

Kieran saw the officer walk away from the locker, and then the light went out. He heard the door slam.

“Wait up, Phil,” he heard the voice call. “I don’t like being alone down here.”

“You scared of the dark too?” the other officer called back from down the hall.

“Fuck you,” Gary replied.

Blessedly, the voices receded. Kieran heard the two of them talking as they apparently went through the door to the stairwell.

Kieran waited ten minutes before trying to extricate himself. Then he tried to open the locker door, but without an inside handle, he wasn’t sure how that was going to happen.

Maybe Tim is going to leave me here,
Kieran thought.
Maybe he’s already left.

But just as that thought occurred to him, someone quietly clicked open the locker door. Kieran was relieved to see Tim standing outside.

“You ready to get out of here?” he asked.

Kieran crawled slowly out of the locker, bending and twisting his limbs as he did so. He felt sure he pulled a muscle in his back. When he finally emerged, he saw Tim was holding the sword and shield.

“Let’s take it nice and slow, okay?” he said. “That was far too close for my taste.”

Kieran nodded and the two quietly opened the door and crept through the police building. They worked their way upstairs without a word. Not until they were outside did Kieran finally start to relax.

“Mission accomplished,” Tim said, looking pleased with himself, as they headed back into the night. With the sword and shield in his hands, Tim looked like he was on his way to a Renaissance fair.

Kieran just sighed in response. When Tim turned away, his hand went to the bulge in his jacket. Kieran patted the knife to make sure it was still there.

Chapter 22

The snow arrived without warning. They had been marching more or less uphill for five grueling hours, rarely stopping to rest. The turf was uneven — rocky and steep. But despite the difficult terrain, they had chatted occasionally and even managed some moments of levity between them. Quinn wondered if the unpleasantness of the past evening was behind them.

Then the snow arrived. It didn’t come in stages, with a light dusting followed by a heavier shower. It came instead as a sudden blizzard, with gale force winds that chilled Quinn to the bone.

Until that moment, Quinn wasn’t even sure he could get cold. He’d been largely indifferent to the weather and his clothes. In the excitement of Halloweenland and the cornfield, he hadn’t even noticed where his clothes came from. He’d apparently arrived with the same kind of outfit he wore when he was alive. He was dressed in jeans and a nondescript gray long-sleeved shirt. This was perfect for the experiences he’d had so far, so much so that he had given his attire no thought at all.

But as the snow swirled around them, he quickly grew cold and wished for a jacket. He looked at Janus, who was dressed in only a tee-shirt and jeans, and saw him rubbing his arms to stay warm. Elyssa and Carol were also severely under-dressed for the winter wonderland they were now walking through. Only Buzz seemed unaffected, but he was dressed in the light green jacket he always wore.

Quinn stared at Buzz for a moment, noticing how he kept checking behind them. Quinn thought about Buzz’s jacket again.

He knew that jacket well. In the years he had worked with Buzz, the jacket and man were inseparable. So much so, Kyle had taken the jacket after he killed Buzz to disguise himself. So how was it here? The jacket should be in Virginia somewhere. For that matter, how did they have any clothes at all? How did they have shoes? It was strange that he’d never stopped to consider the practicalities of his situation until now.

The snow was already slowing their progress. In just a matter of minutes, it had snowed several inches. Very soon, it would be several feet. It was getting harder and harder to walk. Quinn tried to see if they were near the top of the hill, but the wind and snow had long since obscured his view. Quinn stumbled over to Carol, who had her arms wrapped around herself.

“Carol,” he called.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m cold, hon,” she responded. “How do you think I’m doing?”

“Where did Buzz get his jacket?” he asked.

“What?” she responded.

“How does Buzz have his jacket? He always wore that when he was alive, but he shouldn’t have it here.”

“I...” Carol stared at him with a puzzled look.

Quinn waited for Buzz to catch up to ask him the same question. Buzz shrugged.

“I had it when I arrived,” he said. “I never thought about it until now.”

Buzz suddenly glanced at his jacket suspiciously.

“Do you think it’s a plant?” he asked with concern. “Like maybe Sanheim hid something in my jacket?”

Quinn gave him an odd look.

“No, Buzz, that’s definitely not what I meant.”

He looked at Carol and grinned.

“I think I’m on to something, right?” Quinn asked.

Buzz looked from Carol to Quinn in confusion.

“What?” he asked.

“I can’t believe I didn’t think about that,” she said. “I just...”

“You took it for granted,” Quinn said. “Which is kind of funny, considering how different you look and talk.”

“I may look like a younger version of myself, but I don’t talk any different, sugar,” Carol responded.

“I don’t remember you saying ‘sugar’ and ‘hon’ before, Carol,” Quinn said. “When Kate met Madame Zora, you didn’t even have an accent. Now you have a thick Southern one.”

Carol looked stunned again.

“I’ll be a monkey’s uncle, you’re right. It’s how I talked when I was…”

“Nineteen?” Quinn asked.

“So what?” Buzz asked. “So she talks like she did when she was young. What does this have to do with my jacket?”

Buzz was still looking at it anxiously, as if at any moment it might attack him.

“Consciously or not, Carol chose an identity that best fit her when she arrived here,” he said. “She’s young again. You look younger too, for that matter.”

“This is what I looked like when I was in Vietnam,” Buzz said.

“Exactly,” Quinn said. “It’s where you got the jacket, right?”

“Why the hell are you so obsessed with my damned jacket, O’Brion?”

“You have it because it’s part of your identity,” Quinn replied. “You wore it all the time when you were alive. When you came here, you brought it with you.”

“So?”

“So we don’t have to freeze on this mountain top,” Quinn said.

“I don’t follow you,” Buzz said.

The wind whipped around them. Carol and Buzz were only a few feet from Quinn, but he could barely see them. Quinn looked up the path, but all he saw was a wall of white.

“Janus!” he yelled. “Elyssa!”

“Quiet, Quinn, or you’ll have the whole gang on top of us,” Buzz said.

“What gang?” Quinn asked, still looking ahead.

“Whoever was following us disappeared a while back,” Buzz said. “I think it probably scouted ahead. It’s here and probably has company.”

Quinn gave Buzz an annoyed look.

“Anyone ever tell you you’re paranoid?” he asked.

“You did, all the time,” Buzz said. “But like I always say, just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

“Great, but if I don’t shout for Janus and Elyssa, we’re going to lose them in this storm,” Quinn said.

He looked at Carol.

“Can you explain this to him? And figure out how we can get ourselves some better clothes?” Quinn asked.

“Where are you going?” Carol asked.

“I’m going to catch up with the others so we don’t lose the one guy who knows where the hell we’re going,” he responded. “Just stay here, okay? I’ll round them up and come back to you. If we’re going to conquer this mountain, we need some better equipment.”