“Why didn’t you—” he started to ask Violet.
Root ripped the back door open and bent to peer inside. It saw the crate, and its hideous face blossomed into an expression of putrid satisfaction. Sickened, Malcolm put the police car in gear, just as Root tore off the metal screen separating the front seat from the back and wrapped long, pale fingers around Violet’s neck.
“Stay,” the thing said in that hideous rasp.
Malcolm hesitated. Violet tensed.
A single headlight flashed in the police car’s rearview mirror. A loud, throaty engine screamed up beside them—the roar of an old motorcycle.
The rider dropped the bike. Pulled a gun. Blew out the rear driver’s-side window, and then shot Root three times, pushing the creature out of the car. Whatever it had been shot with, they were no ordinary bullets. Flames came from the wounds, and the monster shrieked and dug its clawed fingers into the bullet holes, trying to stop the pain, to dig something out.
The other monster, the one Malcolm had gotten the better of, rose again. It reached for the biker, who pivoted out of its path and smashed the monster’s skull against the rear of the police car. The biker drew a gleaming machete from a hip sheath and hacked at the monster’s neck, breaking bone and tearing sinew. Sheathing the blade, the biker stood on the creature’s back and twisted its head off, ripping it loose from the last bits of gristle.
Tossed the head. Waited for it to land on the pavement. Shot it with that same gun. The head burst into flames.
“Jesus Christ!” Violet cried out.
The driver’s-side door opened.
The biker kicked Malcolm in the leg. “Shove over, fuckface.”
Malcolm obeyed on instinct. He knew that voice.
The biker hit the gas, the tires squealed, and the police car hurtled forward.
“What’s happening, Malcolm?” Violet yelled, twisting in the seat to see who might be following. “Who the hell is this?”
The biker pushed one hand through her hair to keep it out of her face.
“Violet,” Malcolm said. “Meet my sister, Jennie Wise.”
“Jennie?” Violet replied in wonder.
“So you’re the sister-in-law, huh?” Jennie said, glancing at her as she drove, the car tearing around a curve, headed into darkness.
“Violet, yes.”
“Well, Violet. You’ve got terrible taste in men.”
22
Elias sat on the chest of a big fireman as if the dying man were a park bench. He held the giant’s arm in his lap, slurping blood from the wrist. The fireman had tried to fight back, but when Elias slammed him to the road and pounded on his chest, shattering his rib cage, all the fight had left him. Now he just twitched, mouth opening and closing like a fish dangling on the end of a line. Blood bubbled from his lips, and that made Elias smile, because it was a look they shared, mouths and chins smeared scarlet.
The smile vanished in seconds. Each swallow of the fireman’s blood flowed through his body, a salve for his pain, but it faded instantly. Sating the hunger made him tremble with vitality, and it seemed to heal his wounds, but with limits. The hole in the back of his head had closed, just a soft spot of rubbery flesh, the skull not yet hardened, like a newborn’s fontanel. The same was true of the socket where his left eye had been. Ridged, pliable flesh had grown there, closing the wound, but the eye was gone.
Elias had murdered the cop who’d shot him, but he wished he could bring the son of a bitch back to life and have a do-over. He wanted to make him suffer for the lost eye, but it was too late.
Worse than the eye was the underlying pain. It had been there from the moment he’d come back from oblivion in the baggage car. He’d been overwhelmed by the noise and scents and the way he could feel the darkness outside, even though he’d been inside the train. He’d wanted to hurt Violet, to break Malcolm, even as some little flicker within him shimmered with regret, and hopedto save them. There’d been violence, and then the screaming of the train’s wheels breaking free of their tracks.
All of that had distracted him from the gnawing pain. His new skin hurt. His tendons felt like sharp splintered things shunted into his flesh. His bones ached so deeply that his gnarled fingers itched to dig down to the marrow and tear it out. The pain pressed down on him, and he kept sucking at the fireman’s wrist in an attempt to keep it at bay. But the blood had stopped flowing and had to be drawn out. He could taste the temperature difference now. The man was dying. Or, maybe—
“Dead.”
Elias looked up to find Root looming over him. The rain had washed it clean, and its skin glistened blue-white in the dark.
When it spoke, its voice seemed to come from deep inside.
“It is finished here. We have only hours until sunrise.”
