Page 181 of Dead Beat

Elation flooded through her, power in an avalanche, unstoppable, unfathomable. Now she understood Golgarot’s dire appetite, the great tragedy of knowing you would never feel full again. Alex drew in a deep breath. A different girl would feel some kind of remorse. She would sense the gravity of the step she’d chosen to take. Alex’s only thought was that she was going to have to work hard not to get used to this.

Alban Reed crumpled to the ground.

Girard lay on the snow between the trees, moaning, his face and hands streaked with blood. He tried to sit up, and the barn owls leapt on him again.

“Do you understand this?” Darlington asked.

Alex shook her head. “I thought they were hunting me.”

“When I asked Huilca about the owls, he said, They see what we do not. He said they wait and they watch.” He turned to her. “Alex, maybe they were waiting for you.”

The abomination. The mistake. The thing her father’s order had worked so hard to prevent.

Cautiously Alex took a step toward Girard. The owls turned their odd white faces to her, their black eyes staring. The sounds they made now were soft chirps, brief exclamations.

“I … Thank you?” She looked back at Darlington and he held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I think we can manage from here?”

They hopped and chirped, then took silently to the air, settling once more in the branches. Alex’s little-girl heart had once dreamed her father would arrive with a family to watch over her, to protect her. This wasn’t quite what she’d imagined, but at least they wouldn’t argue over politics at Thanksgiving.

Alex squatted beside Girard. Up close, she could see the owls had carved ragged trenches into his flesh.

“Hospital,” he groaned. “Help me.”

“Sure thing, buddy. We just need to handle a few things first.”

She nodded to Darlington, who grabbed Girard by the nape of his neck, dragging him toward the house as he kicked feebly at the gravel.

“I won’t tell anyone,” Girard whimpered. “I don’t know anything!”

“Do we believe him?” Alex asked.

“Turner will figure out how far they spread your secret.”

“No one else knows,” Girard gabbled. “There are too many prohibitions in the order. I swear, we just wanted the nexus for ourselves.”

Darlington considered. “It would be stupid for him to say that when he knows we could just kill him and tie up the final loose end.”

“Tempting,” Alex admitted.

“Some restraint, Stern.”

Girard tried to break away from Darlington’s grip.

“Go ahead and run, little man,” he rumbled, giving Girard’s body a shake. “See what happens if you make me catch you.”

She and Darlington had agreed to keep Dawes and Turner removed from the uglier part of this business. They needed plausible deniability, and they both had a firmer grip on what was strictly moral. Alex didn’t want them to lose that, not given the work that lay ahead with Lethe.

She had never planned to kill Girard, though very possibly he deserved it. But death didn’t come to those who had earned it. Reed had demanded a nexus; now he had one, even if he would never get to use it. His body would be found in the trunk of his Audi and Girard would be behind the wheel—though he’d have no memory of how he got there or much else. He might not even remember his name when he finished the bottle of water Dawes had prepared for him. Girard’s teaching days were done. Tough to lecture when you had no recollection of the subject.

It was cruel, but Alex had never promised to be kind.

Spring

Evening settled over Black Elm and Alex wondered if they had seen the last snow of winter. The air felt different tonight, as if the cold had simply lost interest and was moving on. They had spent the afternoon transporting Girard and Reed to a parking garage in New Jersey. Turner had questioned the professor extensively about just how many people knew Alex’s secret; then Dawes had seen to a cursory healing of his wounds to make sure there would be no tricky questions about owl attacks. And then at last they had handed him a water bottle and instructed him to drink.

“I don’t think it’s over,” Dawes had said on the drive back to New Haven. “Someone else at Lethe may have a connection to Reed and Huilca’s brotherhood.”

Or there could be somebody out there researching Wheelwalkers, someone who wanted a nexus or who wanted to prevent one. There was nothing Alex could do about it. One fight at a time. One disaster done and another brewing. There was also the matter of the Bridegroom. Alex hadn’t forgotten her debt to him or the cost it might carry. But that was the way people had always gotten along: by owing each other something.