Prophet of Bones (29 page)

Paul approached.

As he got closer, he waved.

Alan waved back.

There was something in his stance. Something off about it. Paul’s pace slowed. Alan seemed to sense this, and he turned slightly, his face coming out of the shadows for a moment, and it was then that Paul saw it. The bruises. Two black eyes. A broken nose.

Paul stopped. He was thirty feet away.

“Alan?”

Alan refused to look him in the face. Paul noticed that his hand was bandaged. Soaked through in blood. Blood dripped to the pavement.

“What…” Paul began, but there was no need to finish the question.

From somewhere behind Paul came the sound of a gunning engine. Paul turned. A gray van surged up the street, its bright lights bearing down on them through the darkness.

“I’m sorry,” Alan said. “They made me.”

Paul ran.

He sprinted past Alan along the walkway, pumping his legs as fast as he could. The sound of the engine grew louder, until it was right beside him. He chanced a look and saw a blond man in the driver’s seat, glaring at him. The squeal of brakes and doors opening—then shouts.

“Stop right fucking there!”

“You’re only making it harder!”

“No, let him run.” It was the last voice that brought Paul’s gaze around again. A twisted voice from out of a nightmare.

A dark, hooded figure was stepping away from the van. A long coat flapped in the wind, and beneath the hood Paul caught the flash of something that his mind couldn’t process. A face.

Paul bolted. Footfalls closed in on him. He ran as fast as he could, but it wasn’t fast enough. The thing hit him like a locomotive. A dark man-shaped thing that bulged out from beneath a gray trench coat. Paul slammed into the railing, slipped, spun, fell. He staggered to his feet, turning to look at his attacker. It was a few inches shorter than him but wider. The darkness and a hooded sweatshirt hid its features.

“You’re making this fun,” the shape said.

Paul lunged away but it was faster. Much faster.

The blow knocked Paul off his feet. He hit the corrugated grating.

And now the others were there.

The blond man, grinning in the dark.

In the distance, a scream. “No!” Alan tried to fight them as he was shoved into the open van. One of the men jumped into the driver’s seat and the van sped along the bridge, screeching to a halt right in front of Paul, blocking his view of the roadway.

Paul pulled himself to his feet and hooked an arm around the bridge railing. Here the bridge was still above land, not water. A tangle of branches spread below.

He angled away from them, moving along the walkway, but the hooded shape advanced, cutting him off.

“They don’t get out much,” the blond man said, gesturing toward his hooded partner. “They’re a specialized set. Bad at some things, good at others. But this kind of work, hunting down men—it’s like they were
born
for it.”

Paul backed up against the rail.

“Another step, and I’ll jump.”

The blond man smiled. “Do us a fucking favor.”

They came for him in a rush, the hooded figure moving faster than the others, and Paul leaned backward, the small of his back pressed against the railing. His legs came up … only instead of going over, he put everything he had into a two-legged kick at the hooded, incoming face. The thing’s head snapped back with the force of the blow. Then fast—so fast—a huge arm came up like a piston and smashed Paul in the side of the head, sending him spinning over the rail, and then he was falling.

An iron grip caught him by the ankle.

He looked up in shock, and there was the dark shape glaring down at him. Impossibly fast, impossibly strong. Paul weighed north of two-thirty and this thing had him in one viselike hand.

Paul looked down and saw the tree branches a dozen feet below. It was impossible to tell how high he was. Where he’d land. What he’d land on.

Paul looked up at the leering face. For the first time, he got a good view of it, in the light from a passing car. Under the hooded sweatshirt, the face was impossible. Huge and prognathic, thin lips peeled back from teeth like no human ever had—enormous canines, clenched down with insane intensity. The eyes had no whites—just dark pools of rage.

And then that impossibly strong arm
pulled
and Paul’s two-hundred-thirty-plus pounds were drawn inexorably upward.

Paul used his other foot to kick the demon in the face, and then he fell.

*   *   *

Free fall.

The sound of rushing wind. The soft, supple texture of the last few moments of his life.

Then branches clawed his face, and Paul spun, clutching—boughs coming apart in his hands, body twisting in the darkness, as he smashed through the leafy canopy—the crackle of rending wood getting louder as the thin outer branches bent under his weight, carrying him downward before snapping, and still he hung on, the taste of leaves, pinwheeling, taking on angular momentum as his body careened off the thicker branches.

Sounds like bones breaking, like gunshots; then a huge blow to the back of his legs, and his body swung beneath the branch, spinning—and then a moment of nothing, free fall again, and time slowed to an instant crack.

He hit the ground.

*   *   *

There were two things in the universe.

Darkness.

Pain.

Waking like sleeping. Half-conscious, aware only that he was alive. Shouts rained down from high above. From another world.

“Paul? You dead, Paul?”

“I think he’s dead.”

“We need to check.”

Paul was on his back. The entire world above him. He sat up, and the pain was excruciating. He collapsed into a heap. Blackness.

The men.

The thing.

Paul opened his eye again, slowly this time, trying to remember what he was supposed to do.

His head throbbed. His thoughts were jumbled. Where his spine had once been was now only white-hot screaming pain. His eye burned.

When he thought he could sit up, he did, and the pain laid him out again.

From somewhere above, the garbled shouting grew louder. Then silence. Instinctively, he knew the silence was worse.

They were coming for him.

They.

And that brought it back.

All of it.

He remembered the impossible face. The iron-strong hand.

Paul climbed to his feet and made them move.

His right leg was agony, but it supported his weight.

He limped up the hill for a few steps, then stopped. That hill, he realized, was what they’d be coming down to meet him. He changed course, moving down the hill, toward the water, scrambling through the underbrush. He made his way to the river.

The foliage opened up before him, and there was the sudden expanse of water. Paul crouched and scooped a handful onto his face. It was shockingly cold. He dumped another handful over his head.

Voices drifted down from somewhere above.

They were searching. He looked right and then left, trying to make a decision.

He went left, hugging the shoreline, trying to put distance between himself and the voices. This took him under the bridge and along the other side. He moved as fast as his damaged body could carry him. The limp was getting worse as his muscles tightened up.

The voices grew louder, so Paul moved a few yards up from the riverbank. This way, if they made it to the riverbank and looked downstream, they wouldn’t see him.

Distance was the thing. The only thing. It was what mattered, putting distance between himself and them. When he’d gone another hundred yards, pushing twisted branches out of his way, he allowed himself to veer upward again, climbing the hill. He was on the other side of the bridge now. If they’d sent anyone down the hill on this side, he was finished. It was as simple as that.

He climbed, and the hill grew steeper, the underbrush less dense. The sound of traffic filtered through the bushes above. Soon a streetlight was throwing faint illumination through the foliage. Then, with a last upward surge, his thigh muscles burning, he was up and out.

He stepped onto a crumbling sidewalk. It was like being born.

He kept his head down and limped up the street, away from the bridge. Two blocks over, he circled back toward his car.

If they knew where he’d parked, if they’d left a guard, he was done.

He came around the corner of the building. He eyed his small black Matrix. He saw nobody nearby, but then again, he wouldn’t. Sometimes, pretending you had a choice was a waste of time.

He limped to his car, opened the door, and climbed inside.

He hit the ignition, shifted into drive, and pulled away from the curb. Without putting his seat belt on. Never had that infernal beeping sounded so good.

*   *   *

There were only so many places he could go.

His apartment was out of the question.

Paul drove quickly through the city streets, heading for the highway. It started to rain again.

First he’d need money. That before anything else.

But then a thought occurred to him. Even before money, he had to warn Charles. If they’d followed him to the computer guy, then it was hard to tell what they knew. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch for them to know he’d talked to Charles. Paul flipped open his phone but closed it again. His phone records might be compromised. If not now, then possibly later. If he called Charles, it would show up on a spreadsheet somewhere, and later it might make trouble for Charles. Paul didn’t want that.

Best to warn him in person. Tonight. Before things had a chance to spiral any further out of control.

It was a thirty-minute drive across the city.

When Paul finally pulled onto Charles’s street, he made a point not to slow down. He drove past the building, searching every shadow, working up his nerve. Again, nothing suspicious. By now Paul had realized that this didn’t mean much. There’d been nothing suspicious at Alan’s place, either. He parked two blocks away and walked it.

The sidewalks were puddled, but at least the rain had stopped. Paul kept his head down, walking with purpose. If he saw anything fishy, he’d take off, he decided. He’d never been much of a runner, and now, with his leg screwed up, he’d be even worse, but maybe with enough of a head start, he figured, he could make it back to his car. These were the things he was thinking about as he approached Charles’s apartment.

The windows were dark. Nothing stirred. Up and down the block, people slept in their beds, oblivious to the world outside their locked doors.

At Charles’s front door, Paul stopped. He listened. He put his ear to the door. Nothing.

He knocked.

A few seconds passed with no sound.

No shuffle of feet.

The door didn’t open.

Paul knocked again, louder this time.

Again, nothing.

He turned to leave, but in the dim glow cast from a streetlight he noticed the bootprint planted in the lower middle of the door. He noticed then, too, the jamb was slightly askew, as if somebody had closed the door, and then somebody else had it kicked in.

Paul tried the knob.

The doorknob didn’t turn, but the door swung inward, broken from the jamb.

He pushed inside. The door made a soft thud as it coasted into the doorstop.

Absolute darkness.

“Charles!” he called out, moving into the entranceway.

There was only silence.

“Charles, it’s Paul. Your door wasn’t locked.”

His hand fumbled at the wall, searching for a light switch. He found one, and the living room burst into view. He moved deeper into the apartment but saw nothing out of place. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“Charles, are you okay? I’m just here to check on you.”

Every book neatly in its shelf. The room neat and tidy.

Perhaps Charles was just out for the evening.

A late-night stroll. A trip to the movies.

But, of course, these suppositions all felt wrong. It was nine
P.M.
Paul would have bet his life savings that Charles hadn’t seen a movie in ten years. And late-night strolls could be dangerous. Charles would never have done that.

Of course, talking to Paul had been the real danger.

In the kitchen were the drawings from earlier. The birds. Only here was the first indication of something strange. Most of the drawings were stacked on the table, like during his visit, but a few had fallen to the floor. In the middle of the linoleum was a large torn drawing. Paul bent and picked it up. Only half a bird—the missing piece cut a jagged wound across the bird’s upper torso. The top half was missing. Paul looked around the kitchen but couldn’t find the other half of the drawing.

He moved down the hall, toward the bedrooms. “Charles!” he called again, though he’d lost hope of hearing a response. Now he only prayed that Charles wasn’t home. He pushed open the first door. The bedroom was clean and tidy, the bed neatly made.

Paul made a quick glance into the hall bathroom, which was empty, and then moved finally to the second bedroom. The last door. He turned the knob and pushed the door open. He flipped the light on.

He flipped it back off again.

He closed his eye. He breathed, trying to unsee.

The second bedroom had been used as a storeroom for art.

Charles was on the bed.

Paul took a deep breath and flipped the light switch again.

One arm was twisted beneath him. The other was draped downward, pointing at the floor.

His face was nearly unrecognizable. Only by his sweater, and his thin limbs, and his curly, sandy hair was Paul able to recognize him. Paul stepped farther into the room, moving closer. Charles’s eyes were half-lidded, caked in a thick crust of blood. His skull had been crushed in on one side like a dropped pumpkin. His throat was a bloody ruin—flesh torn wide, bright and freshly red, the blood not yet even congealed. A thick wad of paper was balled up and shoved into his mouth as a gag. Without having to look, Paul knew. The missing half of the bird drawing. He’d choked to death on it.

Blood coated the blue wallpaper in a fine mist. A crushed filing cabinet lay on its side in the corner.