“You can’t,” said Elijah. “He regenerates too quickly. He’s faster, stronger, and smarter than any other Withered. I’ve known him for ten thousand years and he’s never lost. Even if you overwhelm him, he’ll just retreat and keep killing and come up with another plan. You’re too close now to let that happen, so bring me on your raid. Get me close enough and I can drain his memory—even if he attacks me first, even if he knocks me down and breaks my bones and reaches in to steal my heart, I’ll be touching him, and that’s all it takes. I can empty his mind and stop him.”
I stared at him. Was his description of Rack’s abilities accurate? Would his plan to get around them work? It all seemed to make sense, but it was so hard to trust him. I wanted to trust him—I felt a … kinship to Elijah that I’d felt with barely a handful of people in my entire life. It had scared me before, because he was a Withered, and it still scared me, but …
But the rest of my team were humans, and they’d done worse things than Elijah had ever even tried. I couldn’t define my morality the same way anymore. There was too much gray area. But how could I judge him without knowing him? I needed time to get inside his head, time I didn’t have.
Or maybe I only needed one more question. “What about his thoughts?” I asked. “Drain his mind into yours and for all intents and purposes you’ll be him. What’s to stop him from continuing his plans in another body?”
“I’m easier to kill than he is,” said Elijah simply. “If his mind takes over, kill me.”
I looked at the mirror again. “I trust him,” I said. “Let’s move.”
16
We moved silently through The Corners, under cover of darkness. Elijah had warned us that Rack would see us coming—that his senses were just as superhuman as his strength—but still we tried to be quiet, if for no other reason than to keep the neighbors asleep and unaware. They had no idea of the combat we were about to engage in: the final battle with the king of the demons. The less they knew the better.
The plan was simple: to trick Rack into a confrontation and get Elijah close enough to drain his mind. Seeing it through would be much harder. Potash was leading the way, a cannula in his nose and a portable oxygen tank strapped securely to his back; he wore his steel machete in a sheath beside it, a combat knife on his belt—a new one, since I still had his old one—and enough guns to arm half the police department. Diana was with him, armed more simply but looking no less imposing. I had, again, suggested that we leave her outside to guard an entrance, but Trujillo had insisted that she be in the first wave. If Rack tried to flee, we’d lose him, no matter how many police officers surrounded the building with automatic weapons. We had to force a showdown, and that meant bringing in the main team. We had to make him want to kill us.
I didn’t like the plan, but I agreed with it. I hoped we lived long enough to see it through.
Ostler was outside, coordinating the attack, and Trujillo and Nathan were staying back in the office, as far out of harm’s way as we could keep them. They weren’t combatants. I wasn’t either, but I was the only person willing to get close enough to Elijah to help him. I didn’t want to like him, but I found myself trusting him in spite of myself. Maybe because we were both the outcasts on the team? I don’t know, and I preferred not to think about it.
I kept my knife in my pocket, my fingers tight around the nylon-sheathed blade. Elijah had no weapons but his hands and whatever ancient power resided within them. He kept patting his pockets, then mumbling and shaking his head; after the fourth or fifth time I whispered softly.
“You missing something?”
“It’s nothing,” he said, “Just a nervous habit. I keep my keys on a lanyard, so I won’t forget them during the times my memory’s all patchy. Sometimes I can’t even find my car, I’m so messed up, but I always have my keys. It’s a comfort thing, I guess, and I’m nervous right now, so…” He shook his head. “I’m fine.”
We were crouched in the shadow of a minivan parked on the street one door down from Rack’s house. Potash was ahead, scouting, and when Ostler gave the word that it was time to move, we’d run up to join him in the first wave. I looked at the house: a blue two-story, made gray by the moonlight. Everything was dark. I looked back at Elijah. “You’ll know him when you see him?”
“He’s hard to miss.”
“I guess that’s true.” I pulled out the knife, turning it slowly in my hands, thinking about the death of Mary Gardner. That’s how I tried to think of it—not as my attack, but as her death. I had nothing to do with it, or at least I didn’t want anything to do with it. I remembered the knife going in, coming out, going in. I remembered the feeling of it, a dizzying blend of horror and elation, of rage and unfettered joy. I had loved it, and that was the worst part: I was lost in a frenzy, far beyond my own control, and I loved every minute of it. I couldn’t allow myself to do that again. To feel that again.
And yet there was a part of me that wanted to feel that more than anything in the world.
“Your knife’s not going to help you,” whispered Elijah.
“Not tonight,” I said. I didn’t say anything else.