Quinn sighed. “It's a big thing, when you realize you're . . . different. Maybe just an outsider, maybe an outcast, even if you invent some of that in your own mind. When you don't feel like you fit in, you don't fit in.” She paused. “That's how I got recruited too.”
He swallowed again. “Recruited?”
“Like you. Only I joined a different kind of army.”
“What kind would that be?”
“Yeah, I suppose it's best to just lay it on the line.” She took the last bite of her apple, pitched it into the garbage can, chewed thoughtfully for a few seconds. “But if you think what you've heard so far is strange, I gotta warn you, that's just the start.”
Dylan nodded, his head numb.
Quinn returned the nod, sat back. “I tried to get to you before you made it to the HIVEâ”
The image of the chase flashed in his mind, instantly angering him. “I remember. When you tried to kill me.”
“I wasn't trying to kill you, Dylan. You're here right now, aren't you? I was trying to stop you. Anyway, that didn't work out. Which is why I took the unprecedented step of going inside an infestationâ”
“An infestation?”
“The HIVE, in this case. But there are several infestations around the world.”
“Infestations of?”
“Are you going to keep interrupting me, or can I get this out?”
“Sorry; go ahead.”
“Anyway, I went inside to get youâsomething I'd normally never do, but you're not a normal case. Hoping to get to you before they did. That's why I had to do more.” She paused. “That's why I had to pull you out.” She paused. “But then I saw the IV mark on your arm.”
The itch. He looked at his arm. “Yeah. The IV was . . . well, it was part of detox.”
She gave him that grim smile again. A smile that made him squirm uncomfortably. “That what they told you? Detox?”
“Yeah. I, uh . . . I have a bit of a problem with painkillers.”
“From your war injuries.”
“How do you know about that?”
“I did some research. Wasn't too hard to find. But the issue now is: you've got a much bigger problem than painkillers.”
“What's that?”
She sighed. “You've been infected with . . . let's just say it's a bad virus. We only have a few hours.”
He spun the cap off the second water bottle and drank. He wanted to gulp it thirstily, but kept himself to a few careful sips. “We?”
“Yeah, we. You have a few hours left as Dylan Runs Ahead. I have that time to convince you it's going to happen. But I should tell you right now: I can't stop it.”
Dylan shook his head, trying to clear cobwebs. His vision had returned to normal, mostly. “What is it you can't stop?”
Quinn took a deep breath, let out a sigh. “I said you were infected by a virus. Usually, that's exactly what it is. But for you, it's more like a . . . a special kind of parasite.”
“And how do you know this?”
She produced a water bottle of her own, drank, wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand again. “Because I'm an exorcist, Dylan. And you've got a demon inside you.”
Dylan stared at the scene across the room from his hotel bed, drew an imaginary line down the wall at the edge of the mirror, let everything from the mirror to the right field of his vision fade to gray. Then he drew a horizontal line across the top of the dresser, eliminating it from view.
“You're doing it right now, aren't you?” he heard Quinn's voice ask. This was a bit troubling, because Quinn had already been erased from view; her speaking threw off the whole pattern.
“Doing what?” he asked.
“The patterns. The . . . separations.”
Separations
, Joni said inside.
Yeah, that's a good word
.
What do you mean by that
?
Quit being all sensitive. You're a warrior. An Apsáalooke warrior
.
A crippled one
.
Yeah, but what's crippling you has nothing to do with your leg
.
So what's it have to do with
?
“Your mind,” Quinn said. “Joni's right. You feel stressed, you feel overwhelmed, you sink into your own mind, do your separations. Put all your hurts in your kill box. And when that doesn't work, you pop the pills.”
“You bill by the hour?” he asked.
“Look, I know where you come from,” Quinn said, apparently unfazed. She held up her arms, showing cuts and scabs, a few uneven scars. “Big difference is, some of mine are on the outside. You keep 'em all inside.”
Inside the kill box
, Joni whispered.
“Yes, inside the kill box,” Quinn said. “But I don't think the kill box can hold all the pain, can it? Or the pillbox, for that matter.”
Dylan felt a sheen of light sweat on his skin. Inside, his muscles, much like his mind, ached.
Quinn stood from her chair, approached, pulled a prescription bottle out of her pocket. “Percocets,” she said. “I think those are your favorites.” She set it on the nightstand beside his bed.
He tried to control the pain, but his body refused to listen. “I . . . I told you I went through detox inside,” he said. “They gave me drugs to control the withdrawals.”
“And how's that working for you?” Quinn asked, sitting on the bed beside him. “You telling me you're not jonesing for your fix?”
He looked at the bottle, knowing what she said was true. The moment he saw the flash of that prescription bottle in her hand, he felt like he'd caught a glimpse of a long lost love.
“You're not going to ask, are you?”
“Ask what?”
“Ask anything. I just told you there's a demon inside you, and you clammed up.”
“You also said you're an exorcist.”
“Not really what we call ourselves, but yes. That's the easiest way to think of it.”
“You don't look like a Catholic priest to me.” He grimaced. “Or a nun.”
“Which is why we don't really like the term
exorcist
. People think of Linda Blair spewing green pea soup, priests with holy water.”
“But in reality, it's mentally imbalanced women with paper clips.”
She shrugged. “It's a whole lot of different people. But yes, people who are, as you say, somewhat mentally imbalanced. We call ourselves the Falling Away.”
“The Falling Away?”
“Second Thessalonians 2:3: âLet no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition.' ”
“What day will not come?”
“The day we are gathered together once again with God. But when we talk about the Falling Away, it really has two meanings: the Falling Away in this verse refers, literally, to humankind falling away from God. But there's a second Falling Away as well: the falling away of our old selves when we take up the cause and follow God's plans for us. When we acknowledge what we are chosen to do.”
Quinn paused, considering, then looked at him once again. “I have a lot to tell youâthings I've learned over years, and I have to cram it into a few hours for you. So let me just start by showing you something.” She rose and came to the bed to help him up.
His body ached again, his leg especially. Something he hadn't experienced inside the HIVE.
“What is it?”
“Just come with me.” She piloted him toward the motel room door and opened it. A blast of cold air rushed past them as they went outside and to the adjacent room. Quinn unlocked the door to this room, opened it, and motioned him inside.
The room was a mirror reflection of the one they'd just been in, right down to the particleboard furniture and the ever-present odor of stale pizza.
On the closest bed, tied and gagged, lay Webb.
“Webb!” Dylan cried, rushing across the room and pulling off the gag. His friend stared at him, sullen and dark-eyed, saying nothing.
“Are you . . . okay? How's the shoulder?”
Webb made no attempt to move. He simply stared at him with a look of hate and answered in a low, guttural voice. “You're the one who got me shot.”
Dylan felt himself recoil a bit at the venom in Webb's voice. “I, uh . . . let me just get you out of this,” he said.
“Don't untie him,” Quinn's voice said from across the room. He turned and noticed she had set her briefcase down on the other bed; it now stood open, its lid toward Dylan. “Not yet,” she said, retrieving something from the briefcase. She held it up: an old, leather-bound book that seemed to somehow . . . glow.
“You can't just tie him here andâ”
“He's fine. Go ahead and ask him some more questions.”
Dylan turned to Webb once more. “What happened to you? I mean, I haven't seen you forâ” He turned to face Quinn once more. “How long's it been?”
“I pulled you out of there two days ago; you've been in pretty rough shape. I knew you'd be out for a while, so I've been tapping into the HIVE communications system. Amazing what you can do with a good Internet connection. Anyway, imagine my surprise when HIVE jettisoned Webb yesterday.”
“Jettisoned him? What do you mean?”
“Why don't you ask your friend?”
Dylan turned to look at Webb once more, whose eyes seemed as dark and cold as two deep, empty wells. “What happened, Webb?”
“Sucked in there, had to get out. They told me they'd give me a ticket anywhere, so I took it.”
“Took it to where?”
“Boston. They said there were other people I could work with there.”
“Doing what?”
Webb seemed confused, maybe even scared for a few moments, then the icy hardness returned to his eyes. “What's it matter? Not like it was gonna be any worse than running drugs with you.”
Dylan felt a hand on his shoulder and flinched. Quinn pulled her hand away quickly as she sank to her knees on the dirty carpet beside Webb's bed.
“Sorry,” he said. “I justâ”
Don't like to be touched
, Joni's voice said.
“I don't like to be touched either,” Quinn said. “Or to touch others. But contactâreal, human contactâis something we all need. So I make myself.” She opened the book, laid it on the bed beside Webb's head, turned, and looked at Dylan. “So tell me: anything seem strange about Webb here?”
“Other than the fact he's tied up?”
“Yes, other than that.”
Yes
, Joni said.
His eyes. His . . . everything
.
No one asked you, Joni
.
“That's a good way to put it,” Quinn offered. “His everything is different. But it doesn't have to be.”
“What do you mean?”
Quinn put her hands on Webb's head, closed her eyes, began to mutter something quietly under her breath. Something slow and repetitive.
After a few moments, Dylan realized she was praying.
Webb, for his part, didn't scream or thrash; he seemed calmâoddly calmâwith Quinn's hands touching him. He stared vacantly at the ceiling, as if unaware of anything else around him.
Dylan watched in silence for a few moments, then felt the air around him starting to . . . darken. No, that wasn't quite right. It was gettingâ
Wetter
.
Yes, Joni. Wetter
.
The room felt humid, as if a storm were gathering on the horizon. Dylan stood, peeked at the mirror on the far wall. As he'd expected, condensation was forming on the surface; a thin trickle worked its way down the smooth glass surface.
A sudden intake of breath brought his attention back to Webb. Dylan snapped his head around, started to say something, but was frozen in place by what he saw.
Webb's mouth was open wideâalmost impossibly wideâas a dark mist poured from it.
That's the wetness, the humidity
, Joni's voice said.
Dylan thought briefly of touching the dark cloud, but something inside told him that would be . . . painful. Dangerous.
He looked at the top of Quinn's head, but her eyes remained closed, her head bowed. Even though he couldn't see her mouth, he knew she was still whispering a prayer: he could hear it in the air, mixed in withâ
The wetness
.
Yes. The wet cloud coming from Webb's mouth also whispered, but not just in one voice. Dylan thought he could catch the murmur of hundreds, maybe even thousands, trapped inside the black mist.
After several seconds the liquid smoke stopped and Webb's mouth closed. Slowly, naturally. As if he'd just finished one long, languorous yawn.
The cloud hung in the air above him for a moment before Quinn started to tremble. She quaked, and Dylan started to touch her shoulder, make sure she wasn't having a seizure of some kind.
But just before he touched her, the cloud . . . well,
imploded
might be the best word. It folded in on itself, emitted a quick burst of light like the world's brightest flashbulb, then disappeared in a burst of air. Dylan felt the force of the blast, kissed by drops of water, push past his face.
“Dylan?” He looked down at Webb, whose eyes had changed once again. That vacant, hard look was gone, replaced by . . . fear, maybe?
“Hey, Webb. Good to see you.”
“What just happened?”
Quinn stood slowly, closed her Bible, retreated to the other bed, and sat without saying a word. Dylan stared at her a few moments before returning his attention to Webb. “I have no idea, Webb.”
Webb sat up on the bed, coughed into his hand. His shoulder didn't seem to be bothering him in the least. “I had this . . . this strange dream.”
Dylan felt Joni shift inside, but she said nothing.
“A dream?” he asked, trying to sound casual. “What kind of dream?”
“I don't remember it, really. I mean, I don't remember what happened. But I remember I was supposed to tell you something. To give you a message.”