The Medium

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

He was gone when she woke up. The electric blanket was smoking gently in the corner, so she unplugged it and dumped it into the bathtub before it could burn a hole in the carpet, then went to check the couch. He wasn’t there, either. Vickie was watching cartoons, and Kim gave serious thought to reaming her out, but there was a more pressing matter.

The apartment door was closed but unlocked. She didn’t remember checking it before she went to bed, but locking it was a habit. She belted on a bath robe, stuck Zeb’s revolver inside it, and pattered down the hallway and down the stairs.

The building lobby was thankfully empty. She wasn’t sure what explanation she could possibly offer, but anything she could shoot off the cuff would sound like a hasty lie, and hasty lies attract attention. She tiptoed across the lobby and peered out the door.

He was there, standing on the curb in the warm drizzle, watching the street sign like he was afraid it would come after him.

“Hey,” Kim said. He didn’t turn around.

She sighed and pulled her robe tighter and slumped out into the rain.

“Whatcha doing?” she asked. She looked at the street sign in case he was seeing something she wasn’t, but it looked the same as it always had.

“Have to g-g-go b-back,” he said dimly. His eyes were unfocused. “Have to. B-but… which way?”

She supposed staring at street signs was better than wandering aimlessly through Austin. On the other hand, it was starting to look like Coyote had been right.

“Nope,” she told him. “Not going back.” And then, in case it occurred to him to try anyway: “Seriously, you could wander around forever and just wind up completely lost. Completely. And then you’d never find your way back, would you? No, you’d better stick with me.”

He slumped, too fried to escape that questionable logic. “B-but how long? Am… Am I a p-p-prisoner?”

Kim snorted at the completely rotten irony of that little conversation and grabbed his hand to pull him back inside. Her bathrobe was starting to get heavy with the rain. The contact seemed to jar him awake, and he looked at her with all the mistrust he’d given the street sign. Still, though he flinched and his arm tightened, he didn’t pull his hand away. Like a child, he let her lead him back inside.

“Did you remember anything?” Kim asked quietly. “Got a name, maybe?”

“Rocky.”

“No, that’s what I called you. And I was joking.”

“I d-don’t know another.”

Kim chose the elevator over the stairs, even though it was only one floor up, and stood dripping on the dusty carpet while she waited for the door to ping open. She wanted to ask what had happened to him, what Duran had done, but the elevator wasn’t the place for an instant replay of last night. Besides, if he had any dignity left, it might not survive another round of that.

The door slid open and she pulled him inside. Water dripped from their clasped hands. It was wrong, the way he complied, the way he apologized, the way he sought comfort. The way his arm jerked every so often, like he thought she was going to shoot needles into his palm. The way he didn’t bother to hide his fear, too willing to show weakness. It wasn’t the first time Kim had dealt with the skeeters. If this all went horribly south, it wouldn’t be the first time she’d needed to kill one, either. She’d even messed with a hurt one, once, and the arrogant bastard had accepted her assistance like it was his due, promised her equivalent reciprocity, and made a token attempt to strangle her before she broke his nose. This one was something else entirely.

“Why do you have to go back?” she asked suddenly. She had a gut feeling the answer wouldn’t be his own, it would be something Duran had drilled into him, but she had an equally strong feeling the answer was important. She opened the door to her apartment and brought him in after her.

“Bastian k-keeps me safe.”

The same thing he’d said before, but it only took Kim a second to realize it didn’t mean what she’d thought.

“Say it again? Please?”

His forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “He… B-bastian. Sebastian keeps me safe.”

Most of the undead living in the state of Texas were fairly decent—practical, pragmatic assholes who didn’t particularly care if they hurt people, but didn’t take much pleasure in it, either. They had figured out that killing was poor strategy, attracted too much attention and brought hunters down on them, so they saved homicide for special occasions like birthdays and weddings. They were evil, of course, but it was a mellow, quiet evil that knew it wouldn’t survive long if it made a scene. Sebastian Duran was a completely different ball of wax, the sort that had lived longer than his mind could take, was drunk on his own power, and wanted everyone in the world to feel it. There were plenty more like him, and they all probably had their own sob stories of tragedy that was supposed to excuse their actions but didn’t.

But there were others, too. At least, there were hints. It was an insult they sometimes used. She’d first heard it as uszkodzony, and after she found the right people to ask and learned to spell it correctly, she found out it meant broken. Every so often, one of them spared a life, did something human and kind, and their reasons had nothing to do with strategy or manipulation. That one was uszkodzony, and Kim understood it could sometimes take decades for a reputation to recover. But she’d also heard the word spoken with significance, like it carried a capital letter. Then, it was a name. They. A group. Uszkodzone. Broken Ones. Like for them, it wasn’t an occasional thing, not a fluke. If Duran had caught something Broken, something actually good…

“Who do you think is after you?” Kim asked as she shut the door. She tried to keep her voice neutral, like it was an honest question.

She could almost feel his frown, and she held her breath.

His answer came out slow and filled with shame. “After… A-after… me? No, I… I mean…”

“You mean you’re scared of hurting other people, humans, and if you’re beat up down in the dark, you can’t kill anyone. He makes you safe.”

He nodded, staring at her like she had stood up with a thunderclap and begun to prophesy.

“All the… d-down there… There were… All d-d-dead…”

“Mm. Possible, but I doubt it.”

“What?”

Kim sat on the cleaner end of the couch and folded her arms.

“I don’t think they were yours. I mean, first of all, if he was keeping you from killing people, why would he chuck people down there for you to kill? Second, there were claw marks everywhere, so you did try to get out at least once. If you had fed, you would have been able to break out. I mean, the door didn’t keep me out, so I don’t see how it could keep you in. So you were dry when you got there, and you stayed dry the whole time you were down there. Also, dunno how recent a development this is, but you can’t feed on your own. Or do you think he fed you and then drained you back out again?”

She shot a glance at the ridges of scar tissue at his throat and wrists, understanding perfectly well what they were and how cruel it was to point them out, but she thought it was kinder than letting him think himself a murderer. What she didn’t understand was how well his brain had been wiped clean. He hadn’t known.

He raised his hand to look at the galaxy of shiny, pinkish dots that punctuated the web of veins from wrist to elbow. She saw his white skin go even whiter, goosebumps prickling across his chest as his belly contracted in the grip of a memory that hadn’t been buried well enough. She could see him lose his grip on the world as the flashback bit at him, and she caught him before he could fall straight into the television. Touching was bad, she knew, but she held him still until the whimpering stopped, and then she held his hand and laid out a plan of action.

Then she called Coyote.

“Hey,” she said into the phone. “He’s with us, definitely. Just doesn’t know it yet. Come over, and bring Zeb. Also, I’m going to need men’s clothes and a new electric blanket.”