9:21 P.M.
JOSIE BEGAN TO TREMBLE. SHE WANTED TO FLEE and yet this man, this thing, had saved her life—twice—and currently held Nick’s life literally in his hands.
“We can’t take him to the hospital,” he said calmly. “The people who sent the Nox to attack you will know you’re still alive.”
“Someone sent them?”
“It was a coordinated attack. Contrary to popular belief, the Nox can communicate with one another. And with humans.”
“Those things can talk to us?”
The shadow man stared at her for a moment—or at least she assumed he did—then without answering her question, he slowly turned back to Nick. “He’s going to require stitches to close this kill wound,” he said. “I’ll need your help.”
The shadow man stood up and walked across the room to the table, and Josie heard rattling and scraping as he dug around in his clutter of science equipment. Help stitching up Nick’s head? Was she really going to let this thing near Nick with a needle and thread?
He returned to the cot, but Josie stepped in front of him. “Who are you?” she asked again, feeling the futility of her repetition. Then added, “What are you?”
A breathy, humorless laugh came from the shadow. “I might ask you the same question.”
Josie straightened up, squared her shoulders, and held her head as high and mightily as she could, in her best Jo-like pose. “I’m Jo Byrne.”
This time, the laugh was genuine. It burst from the shadow in a violent explosion, as if his body was unused to the expression. “Sure you are,” he said at last. “Just like the woman locked up in Old St. Mary’s is Dr. Byrne.”
“It is my mom,” Josie said truthfully. This shadow knew way too much about her.
He sobered up immediately. “I didn’t say it wasn’t your mom.” He stepped right up to her, the movement a blurred shade in the dimly lit shed. Josie backed up instinctively until her legs were pressed against the edge of the cot. There was something terrifying about the flatness of the shadow man, like a thinking, living black hole that might suck her past the event horizon of his emptiness if she got too close.
He sensed her fear and backed away. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. His raspy voice ached with indignation.
“I know.” Much to her surprise, Josie actually meant it.
“Then can you step aside and let me save him?”
Josie gazed into the void that should have been his face. The darkness was impenetrable. If she shined a light directly onto his face, she doubted it would illuminate anything. It would be sucked into the darkness, where even the individual photons of light couldn’t escape its pull. She was afraid, and yet she needed to trust this thing who had saved her twice from a gruesome death. She stepped aside. “What can I do to help?”
He knelt down beside Nick. “Hold his head. Keep it steady and still, especially if he starts to wake up. I don’t have any anesthesia.”
Josie’s stomach did a backflip as she crouched at the top of the cot and took Nick’s head firmly in her hands. If he starts to wake up. Oh crap.
The stranger got to work right away. Josie could see his hands moving in the dusky light, dark flashes that swirled around Nick’s head. He worked quickly and confidently despite the dim conditions, as if he had absolutely no trouble seeing in the dark.
“They go for the brain stem first,” the stranger said casually. Just making conversation while he sewed Nick’s head back together. “Kill you or paralyze you. Doesn’t matter. They’ve learned it’s the fastest way to render us incapacitated.”
Josie wasn’t sure if she should respond, but the stranger rattled on, speaking ever more quickly.
“Most people don’t know that. The fact that they learned how to hunt us. That’s the part that should scare people the most. Not the claws.”
“Or the beaks.”
The shadow man tilted his head to the side. “You’ve seen them?”
Josie paused. She thought of the glimpses of wing and the flash of a beak that she’d seen in the darkness. Never distinct, never for longer than a split second, but . . .
“Yes. I’ve seen them.”
“I see.” He didn’t seem surprised. “They’re not quite beaks,” he continued. He drew his arm up, pulling the thread taut, then dove back down. “More like a pickax. They skewer prey, then feed on it.”
For a moment, Josie forgot her fear. “You can see them too?”
“Yes, I see them,” he said. Bitterness dripped from every word. “I see them every night.”
“Oh.” It made sense, in a way. They were both beings of darkness. Two inhabitants of a strange world. But that still didn’t explain why Josie could see them.
He pulled his arm up one last time, then with a flourish, tied a knot in the thread. A flash of metal scissors, a sharp snip, and Nick’s wound was closed.