Chapter Twenty-Nine
Vishous had filed every incident report. All of them.
In spite of Allhan’s resolve to read each one, he only got through a dozen or so before he couldn’t bear to see anymore.
It was all just too gruesome, the body counts of civilians, the injuries that the Brothers and fighters sustained, the grim reality of the dates, compounding and amplifying until the nightmare of war felt like something that was settling on his chest. It was a relentless, week-after-week onslaught, and he couldn’t help thinking how far back the conflict went—or measuring how many more entries there were to come in the future.
He settled for checking the “Filed by:” line.
Vishous’s name was there every time. And when he finally reached the report covering the events of last night, Allhan couldn’t help thinking that the words had been dutifully typed out even though the Brother had been in that highway accident and ended up with injuries.
After making a note of where the two males had been interrogated, Allhan closed down the browser and rubbed the back of his aching neck.
He knew vaguely where the address was downtown.
It was in the grid of avenues, in the true field of combat where most of the buildings and walk-ups were nothing but shells scavenged for anything of value, where lessers and the Brotherhood had been battling for longer than he cared to calculate.
Over and over again, it was the worst kind of Groundhog Day.
How did they continue to fight? Especially because after all this time, they had to know that it was just going to start again at the next nightfall?
The Lessening Society was a bottomless pit of recruiting, Lash sending out an ever-replenishing army of undead, a terrible tide that only ever flowed, never, ever ebbed.
For centuries here in Caldwell.
For centuries before the Brothers came here to the New World.
Letting his head fall back, he stared at the HVAC vent over his head. It was pumping out gentle, warm air, and the armchair under him was comfortable, and he wasn’t bleeding and in pain. He wasn’t scared for his life—
Well, at least not at this instant.
So much death. And if he passed on the address to Rhamp like he’d promised, wouldn’t he just be setting up those three males?
Where was the line between ahvenging the dead and getting somebody else killed?
“No,” he said hoarsely. “This has to stop…”
Taking out his Samsung, the text he sent to Rhamp was short: Soz. Can’t find address. Thx.
Then he silenced notifications because he didn’t want to hear it. He should never have promised a damn thing.
Getting up from the chair was a production. Then again, ever since the change, he’d noticed that if he sat too long in any one position, his new body stiffened up. Fortunately, a deep stretch wiped clean a lot of the aching, and then he was heading out of the library with no limping.
Just before he stepped into the hall, he paused and looked back at all the old books.
And thought of the generations of warriors who had lived and fought before this current incarnation of the Brotherhood.
The hyperventilation came on hard and strong, strangling his throat, clogging his lungs. Directionless and disorientated, he started walking fast even though he couldn’t breathe, the elemental panic that set up shop in his brain screaming that he had to run. Run fast. Before the boogeyman got him.
He even looked behind himself.
There was nothing predatory in his wake, nobody with a knife raised coming for him.
Oh, but his stalker was right there, tight on his heels, anyway.
The lies he had told, the manipulations… the faulty plan that in his arrogance he’d constructed with only partial information, his ego and stupid, youthful ignorance filling in the rest of the details.
The fact that he’d decided from the get-go to give the Brotherhood a heads-up before he had his last meeting with the slayer had been the only way he could even begin to execute his exit strategy.
And he’d always told himself that as long as they knew they’d been compromised, they could get everybody out, and lie in wait for the enemy on a battlefield they controlled.
Vishous, in all his brilliance, had fortified this facility in ways that were close to incalculable and very definitely infallible.
Did it suck they’d have to move? Yeah, sure, but they had infinite resources, and it was arguably a good idea not to be too entrenched for too long at any one property.
He’d even managed to convince himself, in his dark and undecided moments, that he was doing the Brotherhood a favor. He wasn’t betraying them. He was delivering the enemy to them, and for a noble reason.
To protect his sister.
But as Allhan arrived at the door to the residence he’d been welcomed into, he thought about the differences between him and his hosts. On his side, things were complicated and duplicitous and dangerous. On their side, their charity was simple and profound and clear.
They had seen that he was all alone and had taken him in.
He had repaid their kindness by spying on them.
In the disparity between the two sides of the sad equation, he was revealed as a monster. A monster who had fooled himself into believing that he was just like everybody else, merely in a tight spot that was not of his own making.
Except he had killed his own father, for godsakes.
As he turned the door handle and pushed, he needed time to think, time to plan a way to get out of all this—
Vishous was sitting over on the sofa, an ashtray balanced on his black-leather-clad thigh, a stream of smoke exhaling in front of his face so that he was obscured briefly.
Doc Jane was in the armchair next to him, her legs tucked under her seat as Allhan used to be able to do, her blue scrubs unmarked by blood, a pair of banana-yellow Crocs kicked off on the floor in front of her.
Both of them had their eyes down, and in unison, they looked up at him.
Doc Jane had a professionally pleasant expression on her face.
Vishous looked like he’d eaten something that hadn’t agreed with him. Which was the Brother’s way of trying to smile.
In all the time Allhan had spent with them, he had never, ever known them to use the living room as anything other than a dumping ground for duffle bags and footwear.
Oh, God, they know everything, Allhan thought.
This is really happening.