Twenty Palaces (32 page)

I pushed myself up onto my feet, holding my bloody hand against my bloody shirt. I still couldn't see clearly, and I felt vulnerable as hell. Down the block, the van revved its engine and backed up. It pulled up into a driveway, rumbled over a lawn and drove around the blocking police cars.
 

Jon was getting away with my aunt.

Behind me, the police car sat parked with both front doors open. I ran around to the driver's side and there were the keys, right in the ignition. I was willing to bet every penny I had that was against regulations. I climbed in and started it up.

The light shone on me again; the cameraman had picked the perfect moment to catch me on video. I waggled the fingers of my good hand at him as I drove by, hoping the jurors at my trial might find it charming.

I drove down the street. The light was dim at the end where the police cars--the other police cars--blocked the intersection, but I could still see several silhouettes sprawled across the asphalt.

How many deaths had Jon caused so far? I'd lost count, and now that he'd attacked a bunch of cops, things were going to get
really
ugly. I drove up the driveway over the lawn, following that damn van.
 

I can heal anything now, with the right food
. And the right food was people. As soon as Jon found a place he felt safe, my aunt was going to die.

There was the van ahead and I fell in behind it. The police car had a full tank, and soon Jon would be running on fumes. I just had to stick with him until that happened.

He suddenly slammed on the brakes. I couldn't stop myself fast enough, and the police car slammed into the back of the van, lifting the back bumper and jolting it to the side. I felt a sudden clutching terror that my aunt would roll out the open side door and splash onto the street, but it didn't happen. In trying to right itself, the van side-swiped three parked cars, scraping off their side-view mirrors, then swerved into the middle of the street.
 

I slowed down to put some distance between us, but Jon took off as fast as his lumbering broom closet could go. Shattered pieces of tail light fell into the street, and I sped up to keep him in sight.

The van swerved onto the sidewalk, still accelerating. I could see strings of colored lights hanging in the yard and a crowd of people on the grass. There was music, a picnic table, a barbeque grill.

I slammed on my brakes, but Jon just plowed through.

In the movies, the camera is always set up so the audience can see stunt people diving out of the way of a vehicle just in time. But from my position behind the van, I couldn't see any of that. I saw the grill slammed into the air, gray charcoal falling onto and against the house next door. I saw the stunned faces of the people not in the van's path. I heard screams and the sound of heavy impact. I saw the van jolt from side to side as it went up the gently-sloping lawn, looking for all the world as though it was navigating a piece of rough road.
 

Then the van swerved into an alley and disappeared.
 

There was nothing for me to say. There was nothing I
could
say. I threw the car in reverse and backed into the street. Blood ran through my gritted teeth as I lined up the car, threw it into drive, raced along the street in the same direction Jon had gone.

I remembered, him, only 12, standing on the pitchers mound. I remembered him lying on his back deck, a bloody exit wound in his back. I remembered all kinds of things about him.

But none of it mattered anymore, because he was going to die. I didn't care what he had inside him or whether he was a victim who needed saving. I didn't have room in my head for any of those thoughts, because it was all crowded out by a white hot rage filling me up like an inflating balloon.

This had to stop. I was done trying to save my friend. Finished. I didn't care about being a hero to him or making amends. All I cared about was killing him.
 

It was a simple realization, very clear and very powerful. I was going to murder my friend and I was going to do it very, very soon.

I reached the end of the block, but the van was nowhere in sight. I went around the corner and peered down the alley, but I didn't see him. I couldn't even find a trail of gas on the asphalt.

He had to be close. I knew that much. That battered van of his attracted too much attention. It was going to run dry soon, and he'd have to switch to another ride or go to ground. Me, I was ready to bet he'd go to ground. But where?

I had to be the one to find him. What could the cops do? Shoot him? Arrest him? There was only one thing that had stopped the cousins so far, and it was sitting in my back pocket.

But where would Jon go? Breaking the law, hiding from cops--this was all new to him. He must know that his van was too conspicuous. He might as well hang a "Call the cops" sign on the side.

But he also needed to feed. He needed to take my aunt somewhere he felt safe, kill her, eat her, and then venture back out into the world. Once he looked like a normal human, he could carjack someone and run for the border.

Mexico, probably. Somewhere he could summon more cousins, if he still had a copy of that damn spell. Or maybe he'd seek out Wally...

I stopped myself. It wouldn't do any good to start imagining some other trouble in the future. I had to fix the problem in front of me. Jon would go somewhere he felt safe, but where? His parent's house was on fire. Macy and Echo's house had already burned down. Payton's home, whatever that was? No; the cops had to have found his body by now. He wasn't thinking clearly but I figured he knew better than that.

Then I realized exactly where he would go.

Fifteen minutes later, I found Jon's van crookedly parked in the shadow of an old oak tree. Across the street was the same baseball field where he and I had played as kids, rain or shine. It was also the same field where I'd hidden out to study the stolen spell books.

There was no one in sight. I could hear sirens in the distance and I knew time was running out. I pulled close to the van, wondering how long it had been there. It was dark and still, with nothing visible through the gaping hole in the side but shadow.

There was a big flashlight mounted on the dash, so I yanked it free and shone it into the van.

Jon immediately bolted from the vehicle. His head was still a bloody mess, and even with Theresa slung over his shoulder, he ran like a horse at full gallop.

I threw the car in reverse to line him up in my headlights, then drove onto the sidewalk after him. He was already partway up the grassy slope, and I raced after him. I didn't have a lot of weapons left, but this car was one of them.

Jon looked back at me, then shrugged Aunt Theresa off his shoulder. She fell onto the grass. Hard.

I swerved to avoid her, getting a feel for the car's sloppy handling on the muddy field. Unencumbered, Jon ran even faster; I stomped on the accelerator.
 

He was headed for the right field fence and the trees beyond it, but I caught up with him in center field. I felt the car surging forward, and I was aching to see him vanish under my hood, just as those party-goers must have gone under the van.

Jon glanced over his shoulder then spun, jumped to the right and bounded over the roof of the car.

I looked in the rear view mirror and saw him fall onto the grass. I slammed on the brakes and twisted the wheel, letting the car fishtail, scraping up turf, so I could come at him again.

I felt a twinge of guilt at ruining the field, which was so absurd that I laughed out loud. It didn't sound like the laugh of a sane person. I pressed the accelerator all the way down and started after him again.
 

In the distance, I could see Aunt Theresa on her feet, hobbling toward the sidewalk. Thankfully, Jon was running in a curve, away from her, heading for the cinderblock dugout.

He wasn't going to reach them. The police car was heavy and full of power, and I was gaining fast.

He glanced back at me again, and I suddenly remembered the chase games we'd played as kids. Jon never dodged the same way twice in a row. With my good hand, I reached across my body and grabbed the driver's side door handle, steadying the steering wheel with the forearm of my left hand.

Jon faked right but jumped to the left; I was already opening the door, bracing it with all the strength I had left. They collided with a crunch that filled me with an ugly happiness. Jon smashed through the window glass, toppled over the door and landed on his neck. It was a gruesome fall that would have killed a normal man.

I slammed on the brakes. Aunt Theresa was still limping away; she didn't look back and I was glad of it. The police sirens became louder as though someone had turned up the volume knob, and I saw them racing down the street toward us.
 

There wasn't much time. I threw the car in reverse and leaned out the open door to see where I was going. Jon tried to scramble away, but it was pretty clear his legs were broken, along with one of his arms.

I hit him with the bumper and felt the car lurch as the back wheel rolled over him.

I rolled out of the driver's seat, suddenly exhausted again. There wasn't much more left to do. The wheel sat squarely on Jon's abdomen, and the way it flattened his crushed torso was as sickening as his bloated, misshapen head.

I took out my ghost knife.

Police cars skidded to a halt on the grass around us. A woman shouted "FREEZE! Don't you make another move!" I could hear their equipment jangling as they ran toward me, but I didn't glance up at them.

"Ray," Jon said, meaningless red blood dribbling from his lips. "Ray, don't do it. Despite everything, there's still a bit of me in here."

With my ruined, bloody mouth, I said: "I know, Jon. And you have a debt to pay."

I threw the ghost knife. It plunged through his forehead into the ground. A geyser of black blood burst out of him.

There was a gunshot, and everything became dark and cold.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I was surprised to wake up in a prison hospital--I'd expected to be put out of my misery right there in the grass. I slept as much as they would let me. I answered their questions in a deliberately groggy and incoherent way, and the injuries to my mouth helped make it convincing. Eventually, they left me alone.

Two cops had fired a total of twelve shots at me. One skimmed across my biceps, barely furrowing my skin. A second grazed my temple, giving a serious concussion and hairline fractures in my skull. The doctors told me I would recover completely if I took it easy.

My shirt had seven additional bullet holes in it, but because I had not been harmed, the police decided that those other shots had missed me. They offered no explanation for the holes. Annalise's spell had saved my life again.

I went in and out of consciousness for the next few days, and at some point I had surgery on my gunshot hand. I didn't know about it until after I woke up and saw the new bandages. A trustee told me I was lucky, but I couldn't concentrate on him long enough to find out why.
 

It healed pretty well. I'll never play guitar, but I can make a fist, which is better than I had a right to expect. One of the nurses told me that, when I was older, it would probably ache before a storm. She didn't understand why I laughed.

Before I was even able to sit up in bed, a tall, slender blond man struck up a conversation with me while he was mopping the floor. He dressed as a trustee, but his glasses were very thin and very expensive, not prison-issue at all. I figured him for an informant.

I was right, but he didn't work for the police. He turned out to be Callin's friend--at least, that's what he claimed. He was the friend with enough power to destroy the city and everyone in it.

He didn't look like much, but neither had Callin.

He asked for my story. I figured he was really there to kill me, but maybe, if he heard the truth, he wouldn't make the whole city slide into the sea or something.

I told him everything, leaving out one detail: The copy of Callin's spell book I sent to my cousin Duncan in Maine. I didn't want Duncan killed just because he got an envelope in the mail.

He listened intently, his expression nearly impossible to read. Maybe he was a great poker player or maybe he didn't have human emotions. I didn't ask. In any event, he heard the story from front to back, only nodding at a couple of points, then, instead of killing me, he promised to visit again.

After he left, I realized I hadn't asked his name. Probably for the better.

A few days later he turned up again. The cops had been trying to get me to sign a statement saying that I killed Jon, Macy, Echo, Payton, Andrea, Oscar and a lot of other people. They were hot to find someone to prosecute because they lost six of their own in that fight on Jon's street. It was a bad scene and a tragedy for the city. As the most disreputable survivor, I was supposed to be the scapegoat.

But I resisted. I figured it was only a matter of time before Callin's friend--or Annalise--returned and pulled my head off. I didn't have any hope of getting out of this mess, but I sure as hell wasn't going to cooperate, either. They were going to have to tie the noose without my help.

When Callin's friend returned, he was dressed as a lawyer, and he had brought another lawyer in an Armani suit with him. Callin had hired Mr. Armani for me; I felt like the proverbial fattened calf.

The friend told me he'd recovered the spell books I'd buried. They were a real find, he assured me--copies of a book the society had been hunting for centuries. He assured me I'd given them "an important lead," whatever that meant.

He made me retell Wally's part of the story, and the trip to Nettle Philip's house, too. We talked about where Wally might have gone and what he looked like. I had the impression my old friend was a new priority for the Twenty Palace Society. Good. I hoped they made life interesting for him. Interesting and short.

We also talked about the cousins, how they behaved and what they looked like. Maybe he was putting together a pamphlet.