CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The plan was simple. It was the kind of plan a monster would make.
Alex would create a diversion. A small, controlled explosion in a dumpster a block away. Enough to draw eyes, to create a surge of panic. In that chaos, I would move. A ghost in a stolen, too-large coat, the hood pulled low. I would walk through the terrified crowd, find the Carters, and do the thing.
The Anchor was in my right hand, tucked against my palm. The cold metal seemed to have leeched all the warmth from my body. I was a walking corpse, waiting for a command.
"Remember," Alex said, her voice a low hum next to my ear. She was checking the charge on a small, blocky device. "You are a leaf on the water. You flow. You do not force. You brush past the boy. Contact is all that's required. Do not speak. Do not look at them for more than a second."
I nodded, my throat too tight for words. I was nothing. A shadow that damns.
"The charge is set for ninety seconds." She met my eyes. There was no encouragement there, only the flat assessment of a technician about to initiate a procedure. "Get into position."
I slipped out of the ruined building and into the alley that ran behind the sanctuary. The air here stank of rotting garbage and fear-sweat. I could hear the low murmur of the crowd on the other side of the wall—a hundred nervous conversations, a child crying, the fragile sound of hope trying to be brave.
I leaned against the cold brick, the Anchor a brand in my fist. Ninety seconds. The length of a television commercial. The time it takes to microwave a meal. The time I had left before I committed an act worse than any murder in my past.
Sixty seconds. I saw Leo's face, the way he'd looked at his father, trusting him to make the world safe. I saw Mark's gentle hands. Sarah's weary, loving eyes.
Thirty seconds. A memory, sharp and unwelcome: Lily, age three, running through a sprinkler, her shrieks of laughter pure music. The memory was followed instantly by her psychic scream from the office building. "Daddy! It's so dark!" The two sounds, joy and terror, collided in my head, a feedback loop of agony.
Ten seconds. I took a breath that felt like shards of glass in my lungs. I was a killer. This is what killers do. We take. We break. We stain.
The explosion was a dull, wet thump that vibrated through the ground. It wasn't loud, but its effect was instantaneous. The murmur of the crowd snapped into a sharp, unified gasp. Then came the shouts. "What was that?" "Is the demon here?" "Get back!"
The panic was like a living thing. I pushed off the wall and rounded the corner, melting into the stream of people who were recoiling from the sound, surging back towards the community center's main doors. I was a salmon swimming upstream, my head down, my shoulders hunched.
I saw them. The Carters were on their feet, Mark pulling Leo and Sarah close, his body a shield.
My heart wasn't racing. It was beating slow, heavy, funeral-dirge thuds in my chest. Each step forward was like wading through cement. The space between us, maybe twenty feet, felt like a mile. I saw the details with hyper-clarity: the frayed edge of Leo's jeans, the way Sarah's hand gripped Mark's arm, a small, healing cut on Mark's forehead.
I was five feet away. I adjusted my path, angling to pass just behind them. I was like a leaf on the water. A shadow.
Leo was turned, peering over his father's arm, his eyes wide with a fear that had no name for what was coming. I was right behind him. The scent of his shampoo—something fruity, cheap—hit my nose.
Time slowed to a crawl.
I lifted my hand, the one holding the Anchor. I didn't make a fist. I let my fingers go slack, the cold, hard edge of the metal box exposed in my palm. I took the final step.
The Anchor brushed against the back of Leo's arm, just a whisper of contact between his small, warm jacket and the ancient, cursed metal.
It happened in an instant.
A jolt, like a static shock, but deep inside my bones. The Anchor in my hand grew instantly, searingly hot, as if I were holding a coal from a hellfire. At the same time, I felt a sickening lurch in my gut, a metaphysical hook setting deep, as if a line had been cast from my soul and had just snagged on his.
Leo flinched.
He didn't cry out. He just shivered, a full-body tremor, and pulled his arm in close, rubbing the spot. He looked around, confused, his young face scrunched up. He looked right past my hooded form. He didn't see me. But he had felt it.
It was done.
I kept moving, flowing with the crowd now, putting distance between me and the family I had just condemned. The heat from the Anchor faded, leaving it cold and inert again in my sweaty palm. But the feeling of the hook remained, a grotesque new sense, a tether leading from my black heart to an innocent boy.
I didn't stop until I was back in the alley, around the corner, out of sight. Then I fell to my knees behind a overflowing dumpster and vomited. There was nothing in my stomach but bile and guilt, and I retched until my throat was raw and my eyes streamed.
I had done it. I had made a child a target for a god. I had looked into the face of a family's love and spat on it.
Footsteps. Alex appeared, silent as ever. She looked down at me, at the puddle of sick, at my trembling form. There was no disgust. No pity.
She reached down and plucked the Anchor from my limp fingers, wiping it clean on her pants before tucking it away.
"It's done," she said, her voice the same flat, professional tone. "The link is established. I can feel it from here. A bright, shining beacon. The Archon will have felt it too. It's already hunting."
She looked at me, still kneeling in my own filth.
"Now we prepare. Get up, David. The hard part is over."
I looked up at her. She was wrong. She was so terribly wrong.
The hard part was just beginning.