Chapter 3 Eddie
Eddie
The steering wheel is slick with my own blood, and I'm holding it with both hands.
Both hands.
The left one works now. Minutes ago, it was dead weight attached to a shoulder that had been reduced to useless, and now I'm gripping the wheel at ten and two, signaling my turns, checking my mirrors, driving the speed limit through streets that don't know a man just died and came back in a parking lot on Birch Street.
The Burger King bags are still on the passenger seat, and I’m sure the burgers and fries inside have gone cold. So have I.
The cold is like a low, steady hum beneath my skin. It's him. Azhrael. Threaded through my veins and my bones.
He’s also outside my car. I can feel him in the shadows that slide alongside, beneath the chassis, pooling in the rearview mirror's blind spots. Following me home to Sera the way a current follows a river.
I flex my left hand on the wheel. The fingers respond instantly with no lag, no tremor. Stronger than before, if I'm honest.
I should be in shock. Physical shock, psychological shock, spiritual shock—pick a flavor. I was shot twice by my former boss, the former fucking sheriff.
I’m pretty sure I died. I remember the moment there was nothing below me but gray. Then something old and cold and vast reached into that gray and brought me back out because Vincent Harrow is still breathing and Sera is not finished.
I am not finished.
I take stock of myself. My shirt is destroyed. The car window is gone, night air screaming through the gap, and there's blood on the seat, the console, the headrest where the second round punched through the leather. I'll need to deal with the car.
But the usual noise in my mind is gone. The second-guessing, the procedural anxiety, the constant low-grade hum of am I crossing a line, am I becoming the thing I'm supposed to catch. Gone. Replaced by sharp clarity.
I don't decide to drive toward Vincent’s house. My hands make the decision for me, the wheel moving before the thought fully forms, and the new clarity in my skull doesn't object.
The porch light is off. All the inside lights are off.
The driveway is empty, but he usually parks his truck in the garage.
I idle at the curb and let the cold darkness beneath my skin reach outward, testing. It's a new sense, this ability to feel the shape of night, to read its texture. My shadows slither beneath his front door and search the house.
Empty. No warmth signature behind the walls, no movement behind the dark windows. The house is a shell. He's not here.
He could be anywhere, disposing of the suppressor on his gun, establishing an alibi at a bar two towns over, buying a drink with a credit card so the timestamp proves he was somewhere else when Detective Eddie Crowe was shot in his own parking lot.
Or he's driving aimlessly, burning gas and adrenaline.
I pull away from the curb and continue toward Sera's house
I know what Vincent did. I know why. I know how he staged Evelyn's body, and I know he drove to my apartment and waited there to kill me.
And I know he thinks I'm dead.
That's the advantage, and it's enormous.
A dead man who's still walking is the worst thing that can happen to a man like Vincent. Because you can't kill what's already died.
You can't silence what's already been silenced and has come back with a devil in its blood.