We walked around the sheriff’s car and I didn’t look at the body too closely. He’d been a nice enough man. He’d given me a break with the fake tourist. He’d played pool with Stefan. He had a wife and a little boy. If we’d never come to his town, he’d still be alive. Those thoughts weren’t helpful at the moment and I shoved them down as we headed onto the bridge.
They were waiting halfway across. We stopped forty feet short. The thirteen of them were waiting in various poses. Some stood, some sat cross-legged on the road, Wendy—my eyes locked on Wendy—sat on the threefoot-tall concrete wall that kept cars from plummeting into the river boiling at the base of the dam. Dressed in a small blue sweat suit with a spray of rhinestone flowers across the top, she was kicking her feet idly against the concrete, her fair hair lifted in the wind. She waved at me. “Hi, Michael. Hi, hi, hi. Did you see the birds? They fell like they were a part of the sky at night. Black, black everywhere. I did that. That was me.”
“I know.” Keeping her in view, I turned my attention to Peter who stood in front of them all. Peter who’d led us on this chase, had tried to kill my brother and my friend over and over, who had taken down the Institute from the inside practically on his own. Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater. Peter, the Pied Piper of death. “I’m here, Peter. Now what? How are you going to punish me?” I was tense on the inside, tense enough I could feel the sharp ache of it . . . of waiting for Wendy to try anything aimed at Stefan, Saul, or me.
Peter smiled at me, that same charismatic, smug smile I was sick to death of. He said nothing. “All of this and you’re going to stare at me like an idiot? This is it, Peter. You said I had to pay. I had to be punished. Where’s your big punishment?” I wasn’t waiting. This was a perfect chance and I was taking it. Without their leader, they’d be confused if only for a fraction of a second. It would have to be enough. While I was still talking, I shot Peter in the chest with the tranquilizer cartridge at the new dosage. He had the speed—my speed—to avoid it, and I was ready to keep shooting until I hit him.
But he didn’t move—not before the shot, during, or after. He simply stood and the smile slowly fell off his face.
He looked down at the dart, puzzled, and said, the words already slurring, “What do I say, Wendy? What do . . . I . . . say . . . now?” He dropped bonelessly to the concrete, unconscious.
“Poor Peter,” Wendy chirped before her voice hardened to stone. “He was always so hopelessly stupid.”
She stopped the kicking and leaned a little as if to study me more closely. “The same as you, Michael. You reek of stupidity. You always did. You’re soft and worthless as a human, even worse than one actually because you have the gift. Not much of one, but enough. You never had the will, though.”
“You. God, I should’ve known. Peter was nothing special other than loving to kill, but you—you were always special.” She’d fed him every line, every word, all along. Every action that had been taken, the entire plan, the rebellion, it had all been her. I’d grown. I’d become a man. Wendy had grown and I had no idea what she had become.
As Saul would’ve said, we were well and truly screwed now.
“As special as they came, that I am. And that was a problem. A very large fucking problem.” Her voice had gone from little girl to adult and now it went to as rich with hate as a death row inmate. “I was bored. I’d been bored forever and they kept running out of people for me to kill at the Institute. They also started thinking,” she said, her smile coldly vicious, “and they should have. What would happen when I was bored and the Basement and animal labs were empty? I couldn’t let them think about that too long, could I? Because they knew what would happen. I wasn’t Jericho’s favorite anymore. He was gone and Bellucci—he was always afraid, from the first day he took Jericho’s place. But even if they hadn’t been starting to think I was more than they could handle, it wouldn’t have mattered. I was bored, bored, bored, and there weren’t enough people in the Institute to entertain me. The world, though, the whole, entire world—how much fun would that be?”