Dead Harvest (31 page)

  The creature flexed its hand, and thick claws pierced my chest, but still I didn't flinch. Its borrowed eyes searched my face for any sign of duplicity, its own features twisted with suspicion. And then, suddenly, Veloch released me, the suspicion draining from its face.

  "You speak the truth, so far as you believe. I shall help you in your quest."

  "Thank you," I said.

  "If I find that I have trusted you in error, I assure you, you will pay – and the girl as well."

  "Of course."

  "Tell me, Collector, what made you so sure that I would choose this path? After all, my fate is sealed – redemption, for me, is forever out of reach."

  "Maybe. Maybe not. But it's not too late to try. Besides, if you sealed your fate, you did so by choosing to rebel – by choosing freedom over the bonds of servitude. It was a choice that, by all rights, wasn't yours to make, but you made it nonetheless. I guess I had to hope you'd make another."

  "Uh, guys?" Kate said, voice tight with tension. "If we're all on the same side now, could we maybe move this somewhere else?"

  "The girl is right – you must go. You and I are wellmet, Collector."

  I grabbed Kate by the arm and dragged her toward the station. The lights of the train were nearly upon us. But when Kate saw Veloch standing fast, she stopped.

  "Wait," Kate said. "You're not coming?"

  "No, child – not today. Perhaps someday we will meet again. I hope for your sake we do not. Now, go!"

  At that last, Veloch roared, and Kate was shaken into action. We sprinted toward the station, while behind us, the train hurtled ever closer.

  The tunnel shook with the force of the train, now just thirty yards behind us. Veloch's roar only seemed to build, swallowing the noise of the train whole until nothing remained but the demon's cry.

  Twenty yards, ten.

  I sprinted with all I had, Kate keeping pace by my side. Though I dared not look back, the shadow of Veloch that the subway's lights cast through the tunnel seemed, impossibly, to grow, until only the faintest trickle of illumination slid past.

  Far too late, a screech of brakes.

  In the moment of impact, I glanced back. Though the force of it shook the tunnel like an earthquake, and the sheer volume of the crash rendered me momentarily deaf, it's what I saw over my shoulder that will stick with me always: Veloch, eyes closed, arms clutched to his chest, a beatific smile gracing his warped and twisted features. The demon was near as tall now as the train itself, which crumpled around Veloch like a hatchback around a maple. For a moment, the demon didn't move, didn't flinch – it just stood stock-still while, impossibly, the train cleaved to either side of it, raining sparks as it ground along the tunnel walls, the metal yielding to Veloch's flesh as if it were stone. Then the life drained out of Veloch's face, and its massive body fell beneath the train, which, now unimpeded, surged forward once more.

   The train bore down on us again, this time as a shrieking, flaming mass of twisted metal. The lights of the station loomed large, just a dozen yards ahead of us. But the train was coming fast, and hard as we were sprinting, it was all I could do to keep my feet.

  Kate reached the station first, hauling herself up onto the platform and rolling clear of the tunnel entrance. I was not so lucky. Blood streamed from the wound in my leg, and I was growing weaker by the second. The heat of the flames licked at my back, and I knew the train was close. What's worse, even if I reached the station in time, as battered as I was, there was no way I was gonna be able to haul my ass up onto the platform. As the train squealed ever closer, I realized this vessel would be swallowed beneath it just as Veloch's had been.

  But then, a hand. It reached down toward the tracks from the platform, just at the entrance of the tunnel. As the heat of the flaming wreck singed my neck and back, eating holes through the flannel of my shirt, I leapt, grabbing Kate's proffered wrist as she clamped down on mine.

  And as I swung weightless toward the platform, forty tons of twisted metal bearing down behind me, I closed my eyes and prayed.

 
 

I tumbled onto the platform, the flaming wreck of the train clipping my ankle as it sailed past and sending me skittering across the tiles. I came to rest in a dingy yellow corner littered with gum and filth and smelling faintly of piss, and as I lay there, taking stock to see if I'd brought all my limbs with me, I thought it might just be the most beautiful place I'd ever seen.

  Kate lay on her back just a few feet away, her chest heaving with exertion, her face beet-red and drenched in sweat. As her eyes briefly met mine, though, I saw they were wild with life, as I'm sure mine were as well. What a sight we must've been, although there was no one there to see us; out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the last stragglers from the platform fleeing streetside up the stairs. I guess nobody wanted to stay to watch the train wreck. Thinking back to the station we'd just come from, I suspected the people in this one had no idea how lucky they just were.

  "You OK?" Kate asked. I rolled onto my side, watching her as she rested her head against the station floor and lay staring at the ceiling, chest heaving with breath after gasping breath. She looked as exhausted as I felt.

  "Yeah. You?"

  "Yeah. But what about Veloch? Is he dead?"

  I shook my head, and then realized that, facing the ceiling as she now was, there's no way she could have caught that. "No," I said. "Just his vessel."

  "Is that why they didn't go all buggy and stuff like Merihem did? Because we didn't really
kill
them?"

  "Yeah. Most higher order demons, like Merihem or Beleth, have the ability to walk among us unseen – to trick our eyes and minds into seeing them as human. They'll possess someone if it suits their purposes, but it's hardly a necessity. The foot soldiers don't have that kind of power. If they want to hide their demon natures, they're forced to take a human vessel. Of course, a human vessel is nowhere near as powerful as an actual demon, but the upside is, it makes the demon less vulnerable to attack – if they get bounced from their vessel, they just retreat to their physical selves. Merihem didn't have that luxury, and now he's gone for keeps – hence the big, messy exit."

  Kate fell silent for a moment while she caught her breath. "So those people they – what's the word – inhabited?"

  "Possessed."

  "Right. Possessed. Those people they possessed – we killed
them
, though, right?"

  "Sort of," I said. "I mean, it's complicated. See, when a demon takes a host, it's not like when I do. I was human once, so human is how I see myself. If I remake a vessel in my image, I'm just rearranging their thoughts, the occasional mannerism – and even then, it takes time. When a demon possesses someone, they have a tendency to warp that person in their image. To some extent, they can't help it, although many use it to their advantage, as our friends back there did – they bring with them their strength, their speed, their
everything
, until not much of the host being remains. Those guys back there warped those bodies faster than I'd ever seen. Even if we had the time for an exorcism – which we didn't – I doubt they would have survived."

  "So what does that mean about me? How'd the demon that killed my family change
me?
"

  I sat up and looked at her, unsure of how to respond. After a moment's reflection, I decided to tell Kate the truth. "I don't know."

  She seemed to turn my answer over in her mind as if inspecting it, and then she nodded. "So where
are
their physical selves? Where do they go, when you expel them from their vessels?"

  "I have no idea. Hell's a big place."

  "I thought you said that
this
was hell."

  "For me, it is. For others, as well. But hell's not just this island, this city, this
planet
; it's
everywhere
, just a hair's breadth away from the 'reality' you see. You ask me, that gives them plenty of latitude to hide."

  "Can they come back?"

  I nodded. "All we did was slow 'em down."

  "Well, then," Kate said, climbing to her feet and extending a helping hand to me, "what do you say to not being here when they do?"

 

We emerged from the station at the corner of Lexington and Sixtieth. Overhead, the gray sky deepened toward black as evening settled over the city. Sirens wailed in the distance – in response to the train wreck, no doubt. The midtown traffic must've slowed them up, though, because so far, they were nowhere to be seen. My thoughts turned to the hulking mass of twisted metal that sat burning beneath our feet, and the people doubtless trapped within it. I pushed those thoughts aside. There was nothing I could do for them. And if I failed to keep Kate safe, there was nothing I could do for anybody.

  "Come on, we've gotta get moving." I took Kate by the arm, and led her away from the station. But just a few steps later, I stopped cold.

  The squat storefront of
Mulgheney's
sat huddled before me, spilling neon red across the sidewalk like the last sixty years had never happened. Actually, that wasn't quite true: you could see those years in the film of grime that coated the storefront windows, in the dulling of its chromed marquee; a few feet above the door, an ancient air conditioner – not yet present when I'd last laid eyes on the place – dripped rust down the transom below. But all of that was swept away by the wave of remembrance that washed over me. The reek of the place, all cigarettes and whiskey and cheap cologne. The heady mix of lust and greed, of sin, that I'd mistaken for good cheer, for the promise of a better life for me and Elizabeth both.

  No. Looking back, that wasn't true. I hadn't mistaken it for anything. Even then, I'd known better. Somewhere, deep down, I'd known exactly what it was that I'd so blithely bargained away. After all, I know better than anyone that's the way these bargains work. If the mark doesn't understand the stakes, then the deal is null and void.

  So yeah, I'd known. I'd known it all along. And if I had the chance to do it all again, I'd probably play it the same. Guess I'm not one for learning my lesson.

  As I stood there, staring at the place, a shiver coursed down my spine. A bead of sweat trickled down my side. Kate peered at me with concern. "You OK?" she asked.

  "Just a shiver," I told her. She put an arm around my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. Then, the sound of sirens growing ever louder, we set off down the street.

 

  "I did what I
had
to do," I said. "I did it for us."