01 - Goblins (24 page)

He spread his arms. “It’s silly, you know. I die, you die, it isn’t going to
do you any good.”

Her voice deepened. “I’m already dying.” She held out her hand. “It doesn’t
work anymore.”

He couldn’t believe it when her fingers
shifted,
flesh to splotchy
green to smooth cream, and back. Except two of her knuckles stayed dark far
longer.

She giggled. “What a bitch, huh? Instead of getting famous, I’m getting
dead.”

He didn’t know what to say. Somehow, “You’re under arrest for murder” sounded
awfully stupid.

She giggled again, and that was when he saw the madness—in the tilt of her
head, the movement of her eyes.

“Why?” he asked, gesturing at her skin. “Didn’t you know how dangerous it
was?”

“Sure.” She waved the bayonet idly. “But do you know how much a cop in a burg
like this makes? A dispatcher? Do you know how much that bitch gave me every
month?” She laughed and rocked back, rocked forward quickly, bracing herself
again. “She had pictures, I saw them, I can read, I knew the risk.
Besides…” Her voice faded.

He waited, not moving when she began to toy with the coat’s buttons, opening
them, closing them, opening some and leaving them.

She wore no clothes beneath the coat, and that didn’t surprise him. For what
she could do, and had to do, clothes would have been a problem.

What he needed now was for Scully to get into position to cover him when he
made his move. He had to. He couldn’t stand here, waiting for her to decide it
was time, and he wasn’t about to let her go. No matter how sorry for her he
felt. Which he did as she began to ramble about the tests in the room below the
hospital, about the solution baths and the injections, about spying on her
friends and on strangers and—

“—feeling such a sense of goddamn power, Mulder. Power.” She grinned; her
teeth were brown and black. She whispered, “Power.”

“Maddy,” he said, “don’t do this.”

“Oh, knock it off,” she snapped, straightening, the bayonet catching silver
light from the rain. “You can’t appeal to my better nature. I don’t have one
anymore. You can’t offer me a cure. You, and you,” she shouted to Scully, “can’t
offer me a damn thing.”

“How about living a while longer?”

She laughed, and brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “Who’s going to stop
me, you? Her?”

“I can bet Elly’s called the police by now. They take one look at you, they
won’t stop to talk.”

“Big deal. I’ll be gone.” She bounced a little on her rump. “Don’t you know
I’m the Invisible Woman?”

Her eyes again, shifting, frowning. Scully had moved to his left and was
moving to get behind her. One step at a time.

“She’s not fast enough, you know.”

He lifted his right hand. “Fast enough, if she has to be.”

Maddy tensed.

He knew it was coming, and as soon as he recognized it, the calm finally
returned.

The wind nudged her, and she hugged herself, then slipped off the coat.

He only just managed to keep his expression from reacting to the sight of
her, skin rough in one place, seemingly raw in another, dark clouds of color
rippling across the ridged plane of her stomach.

“You know something?” she said, licking her lips, gauging distance.

“What?” He kept his voice quiet and steady.

“I learned a lot from that bitch. I’m going to tell her that before she
dies.”

“Like what? What can you learn from killing people?”

She grinned. “That I like it.”

He saw her toes flex.

“Please,” he said, just before she giggled. Just before she jumped.

* * *

There was no time to pull his gun from his pocket. He twisted away from the
blade and, at the same time, fired through the coat, lost his footing in the
slippery grass and fell on his back.

Maddy screamed when she landed on her hands and knees, spun around, and tried
to stand.

“Stop!” Scully ordered, rushing up, aiming low.

Mulder couldn’t stand, couldn’t move; he could only watch as Maddy Vincent
feinted with the blade, then tried to run-crawl at him.

“Stop!” Scully yelled.

Maddy toppled onto one shoulder as if someone had put a boot in her back, and
screamed again, stabbed the ground, and slumped whimpering into the mud.

As Mulder pushed himself to his feet, as Scully braced herself behind the
woman, he saw the blood seep out from under her arm.

It didn’t look black at all.

It looked red, and it didn’t stop.

He leaned over and took the bayonet from her hand, held it close to his eyes
for a moment and placed it on the bench. Scully pressed three fingers to the
side of the woman’s neck, then checked her wrist. She rose awkwardly, a hand
pushing through her hair, and Mulder took off his coat and spread it over the
goblin’s body.

He stared at it for a long while, until he laughed once, sharply, realizing
he had been waiting for her, like the Invisible Man, to return to normal, now
that the adventure was finally done.

But she didn’t.

She just lay there.

Mulder didn’t know how long it took to answer the questions, for Scully to
make sure the body would be placed in the right hands for the proper
examinations, for the cold to finally leave him, for him to finally feel dry.

But it was after eleven that night before he was able to sit in the Queen’s
Inn and stare at the plate of pancakes in front of Hank Webber.

“Please,” Hank said. “Don’t say it’s amazing.”

“It is, but I won’t.”

Scully was at the counter, ordering coffee and tea, and finding out just what
the cook would make this late on Saturday night. Mulder waited until her back
was turned, then lifted a finger to get Hank’s attention.

“Protest not,” he said. “Don’t insult me with denials. But how many times
have you called Douglas since we’ve arrived, to tell him how many times I didn’t
follow the book.”

Webber almost choked, but he managed to hold up his fork and say, “Just
once.”

“What?”

He looked embarrassed. “I couldn’t. I mean… I like you. And
I didn’t see that you were doing anything really wrong.”

Mulder grinned as he stretched his arm across the back of the seat. “Webber,
I don’t care—that’s damn amazing.” He looked out the window, but all he saw was
the night and the rain. “You know that Douglas is probably a plant, don’t ask me
by whom, and he probably won’t be there when we get back. You know you’ll
probably be transferred somewhere else once we get back and the paperwork is
done.”

“Sure. I figured. But hell, it was fun while it lasted.”

Mulder laughed, a little sadly, because he knew poor old Hank probably
wouldn’t be with the Bureau for very long. “Fun” wasn’t exactly the way to
describe the way it worked.

“And by the way,” he said, “in all the excitement… thanks.”

Webber waved it away. “Not needed, Mulder. I was just doing what I had to,
you know?”

And he blushed.

Scully slid in then, clucked at Webber’s choice of a meal, and fussed with
her napkin while she waited for her order. “You do realize, Mulder, don’t you,
that that was an incredibly lucky shot. By all rights, you should be dead.”

He knew that. He had especially known that when he had seen the rent across
the front of his coat.

The blade had come a lot closer than he’d thought; it had sliced clear
through the cloth.

“Don’t ever try that again.”

“Believe me,” he said. “I won’t.”

They ate, then, in companionable, weary silence, interrupted only by a phone
call he took at the register. When he returned to the booth, he only said, “They
found Tonero’s body. Shot once. He was in Dr. Elkhart’s apartment.”

“And her?” Scully asked.

“Gone. Not a trace.”

“They’ll find her,” Webber said confidently. “After this weekend, half the
country’ll be hunting for her. Don’t sweat it, Mulder, the case is closed.”

“I suppose,” Mulder said. He looked out the window, through the rivulets of
rain. “I suppose.”

Scully touched his shoulder, light and quick. “Mulder, don’t.”

He didn’t look. “Sure.”

They both knew he was lying.

Because, he thought, looking through his dim reflection to the woodland just
beyond, what if they don’t find her.

What if, next year, or the year after, you’re walking down the street or
climbing your steps or standing on your porch or you’re waiting for a bus, and
an arm comes out of a wall or a tree or…

He stretched a finger toward the glass, watching its reflection stretch
toward him.

…a simple pane of glass.

The lights flickered for a moment, and for a moment the reflection vanished.

He rubbed his arm absently, watching the headlights of a car he couldn’t see
float past and disappear.

We’ll never know they’re out there—

Armies of living shadows.

Slipping through the night.

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