Nocturnal (54 page)

Pookie lurched to the broken railing. He still couldn’t breathe. He rested his gun hand on the broken rail.

Erickson reached his right hand behind his back — when the hand reappeared, it held a Bowie knife.

Pookie aimed.

Erickson raised the knife.

Pookie fired.

The bullet
whinged
off the concrete just a half-inch from Erickson’s hip. The old man flinched, his knife thrust paused. Bryan’s left foot kicked forward, the toe driving into Erickson’s mouth and snapping the white-haired head backward.

Erickson rolled away. Bryan scrambled to his feet, but the old man was faster, raising the knife and rushing forward to swing it down. Bryan’s hands shot up, forearms crossing, catching Erickson’s wrist in the V. Bryan turned and twisted, using Erickson’s momentum against him even as he wrapped his fingers around the old man’s hand.

Erickson flipped, his back hitting the sidewalk for a second time.

Bryan now held the knife.

In that moment, Pookie had a terrifying glimpse of Bryan’s face — that wasn’t his friend, that wasn’t his partner, that was a wide-eyed psychopath. He tried to shout out, to scream
no!
, but he still couldn’t draw a breath.

Erickson started to rise. Bryan snap-kicked the old man in the mouth, driving him back down. Bryan closed and knelt, moving
so fast —
streetlight flashed off the Bowie knife’s blade as Bryan drove it into Erickson’s stomach so deep that Pookie heard the point
chink
into the concrete beneath the old man’s back.

Everything stopped. That crazy look vanished from Bryan’s face — now he just seemed confused.

Erickson struggled, used his elbows to sit up halfway. He looked at the knife handle sticking out of his belly.

“Well,” he said, “I never planned for this.” His head lolled. He slumped backward and lay still.

Pookie’s diaphragm finally opened up, letting him suck in a deep, halting breath. John stumbled down the steps, then to Erickson’s side. He examined the wound even as he pulled out his cell phone and dialed for an ambulance.

Pookie followed, moving down as fast as he could. He saw Bryan stand slowly, saw a patch of wetness soaking the right shoulder of his partner’s black sweatshirt.

“Bryan! You’re hit!”

Bryan looked at his shoulder. He grabbed his collar, stretched the wet fabric away to see underneath. “Shit. I think I need a doctor.” He reached his left hand up and squeezed his right shoulder.

Pookie prayed his hunch was wrong, that Bryan actually
did
need a doctor, but he didn’t want to take that chance. If Pookie was right and Bryan went to a hospital …

The sound of handcuffs clicking home drew Pookie’s attention. Black Mr. Burns had cuffed Erickson’s wrists, moved the hands up over the wounded old man’s head.

“John,” Pookie said, “you got him?”

John looked up. “He’s hurt bad and he ain’t going nowhere. Ambulance is on the way.”

It was bad to leave a scene, double bad as they shouldn’t have been here in the first place, and triple bad because Pookie was technically a civilian, but he had to get Bryan out of there.

Pookie put a hand on Bryan’s back and started guiding him toward the Buick. “Bri-Bri, come on, we gotta go.”

“Go? Dude, I’ve been
shot
. I need an ambulance.”

“I’ll take you to the hospital,” Pookie said. “Way faster, come on.”

Pookie lightly pushed again, and this time Bryan walked toward the car.

Tard saw the brown car pull away from the monster’s house.

And down on the ground, with a knife in his tummy … 
the monster
.

Tard watched all this in utter disbelief. He looked an
awful
lot like the tree in which he hid. He didn’t much care for being a tree, because all the bugs crawled into the cracks in his skin. They tickled and sometimes they bit him.

Sirens blared. Tard hated that noise; it hurt his ears. Down the street he saw cop cars, and … was that?… 
yes!
The pretty, white-and-red amberlamps truck!

The monster wasn’t moving. A blackish stain slowly spread across his brown shirt. The amberlamps was coming for him, because he was
wounded
.

Sly was going to be
so
excited!

B
a-da-bum-bummmm

Rex felt strong arms holding him, cradling him. As he woke, the grogginess faded away — the pain in his belly did not.

Pain
wasn’t really the word for it. He’d felt
pain
before, courtesy of Roberta, courtesy of Alex Panos and BoyCo, courtesy of Father Maloney. This was something different, something on another level altogether.

Despite that burning agony Rex Deprovdechuk felt warmth exploding in his chest. He took in a slow, deep breath — so powerful, so relaxing. It felt like when he’d met Marco, but more so.

ba-da-bum-bummmm

Rex moved his hand, felt at his belly.

Wet.

Wet with blood.

“You’ll be fine,” said a voice that sounded like sandpaper on rough wood. “The wound is already closing.”

Rex opened his eyes.

First, he saw the night sky, black and starless, the clouds above slightly lit up by the streetlights below. He was on the flat roof of a building. Then, Rex saw
them
.

He should have been afraid. He knew that. He should have been crapping in his pants, screaming, trying to rise and run, but he wasn’t afraid. Not in the least.

He recognized them from his dreams and his drawings.

“Hello, Sly,” Rex said.

The one with a snake’s face smiled wide. A snake-face, but he looked … 
young
. Smooth features, tiny scales that gleamed with health. A thick body, each motion athletic, confident. He looked like a bodybuilder covered with a rotting gray blanket that hid his bulky form. Only his head was exposed, showing his pointy face with its yellow eyes and angled black irises.

Sly smiled, a mouth full of needle teeth. He looked at the others. “He knows my name.”

“It’s thim,” whispered the second something. “It’s thim, I can
thmell
it!”

This one was also covered in a threadbare blanket, and he was bigger than Sly. Well,
taller
anyway, but not as thick. He had a fur-covered face and long jaws, like those of a big dog, but the bottom jaw was a little
offset, sticking at a slight angle to the right. His features were also soft, almost like he was in that middle zone between
puppy
and
adult
.

“Hello, Pierre,” Rex said.

Pierre’s long, pink tongue lolled out the left side of the cockeyed mouth. It dangled, dripping spit down onto the rooftop.

Behind Pierre, a third something stood. Taller than Pierre, wider than Sly. Rex had never seen anything so big.

“My king,” it said. The voice was thin and high-pitched. It didn’t seem at home in a body of that size. Rex looked closer and understood why — under its blanket, there were actually
two
somethings. One was a massive man, like one of those pro-wrestling guys, with a tiny head the size of a large grapefruit atop a wide neck. The other something rode on his shoulders. The little one had a tiny, shriveled baby’s body but a head that would have been normal on an adult. It had spindly legs and arms. It had a tail that wrapped tight around the massive man’s big neck.

“I don’t know your name,” Rex said to the thing riding on top of the big man.

“I am Sir Voh,” the big-head said. The end of his tail tapped against the big one’s barrel chest. “And this is Fort.”

A small moan drew Rex’s attention to another figure lying on the roof.

Alex Panos.

Blood covered his face, matted down his blond hair. A torn bottom lip showed the cracked teeth behind it. Rex had never seen a nose broken that bad; a bit of white stuck out from between the eyes, and the rest of it angled sharply to the left.

Rex had been face-to-face with Alex many times. Alex had always sneered, smiled, looked angry, looked at Rex like Rex was nothing more than dogshit on the bottom of a shoe. But not now. Alex’s eyes pleaded for help from someone, from
anyone
.

The shriveled man — Sir Voh — spoke. “We have been waiting for you all our lives. Now you’re here.”

The warmth in Rex’s chest made him smile. Why should he be afraid of these people just because they looked funny? They were his friends. They were the ones who had made his dreams come true.

“Waiting for me? Why?”

Sly picked Rex up, then set him on his own feet. Rex’s legs wobbled a little, but he was able to stand.

“We have been waiting for the king,” Sly said. “The king will save us, lead us to a better day.”

I dream of a better day
. Was that why he’d put that on the drawing?

The pain in his belly remained intense, but it was already fading. “I’m only thirteen,” he said. “I don’t know much about that kind of thing.”

All four of the somethings smiled in unison, even the tiny grapefruit head. The corners of Pierre’s long, hairy mouth shrank back like a panting dog.

“You know,” Sly said. “You just haven’t realized it yet. You’ve been among the prey for your whole life, because you’re a ringer, like Marco was.”

“What’s a ringer?”

“Someone who looks like
them
,” Sly said. “But you are one of
us
. We have come to take you home. We will protect you.”

Alex moaned, then reached out with a bloody, twisted hand.

“Rex,” he said. “Please … 
help me
.”

Pierre kicked Alex in the ribs. It seemed like just a tap, but Alex’s eyes scrunched tight in pain.

“You thut your mouth,” Pierre said.

Rex looked down at Alex. How
pathetic
. “What do we do with him?”

Sir Voh crawled out from under the blanket covering him and Fort, then used his spidery arms and legs to descend the mountain of flesh. The big-headed creature reached the roof, then scurried onto Alex’s back. He wrapped his tail around the boy’s bloody forehead. The tail contracted, pulling Alex’s head back until he grunted and made a little whining noise.

“We killed your enemies,” Sir Voh said. “The
bullies
, the ones who hurt you. We made examples of them, so everyone would know your greatness. This one” — Sir Voh shook Alex’s head — “we saved for Mommy. Unless you want to kill him yourself.”

Fort reached inside his blanket, then held out a massive hand as big as a side of spareribs. In his palm sat a long knife.

Alex saw it. He moaned in fear. Sir Voh held him still.

Rex felt his dick stiffen.
Kill Alex kill Alex kill Alex
. The bully now knew what it meant to feel
helpless
.

Rex reached out and took the knife.

Sly’s yellow eyes crinkled in delight. Rex wasn’t surprised to see a forked tongue sneak out of the face, trace across the left side of the pointy face, flick up over the left eye, then slide back inside.

“Morning is coming,” Sly said. “We need to move. Do you want to kill this one, or take him home to Mommy?”

Rex didn’t know who
Mommy
was, but the four seemed very excited about the prospect of giving Alex to her.

“Rex,
please
!” Alex managed those two syllables before Sir Voh pulled back so far that Alex started to choke.

So pathetic. So utterly pathetic
.

“We’ll take him with us,” Rex said. “But first, open his mouth.”

Pierre knelt and forced Alex’s jaws open.

Rex reached out with the knife.

P
ookie raced down Potrero Avenue. San Francisco General Hospital loomed large on his left. He saw a parking spot, slammed on the brakes and angled in. The Buick’s front-right tire rode up on the sidewalk, but he didn’t have time to worry about that.

He jumped out, ran to the rear passenger door and opened it. Inside, a confused-looking Bryan, his hand still pressed to his shoulder with white-knuckle intensity. Bryan looked around. “Uh, Pooks? The hospital is across the street.”