Night couldn’t understand, not really. He didn’t feel emotion the way Gray could, not so long as he was trapped in a corpse.
“The mortal, John, was possessed,” Night said. “He did not choose to remain so.”
“That was different,” Caleb snapped. “John was just a kid then. He didn’t ask to have an NHE summoned into him!”
“But you did not ask for this, either,” Night pointed out.
Caleb’s hands spasmed on the steering wheel. “That’s different,” he snarled, his voice dropping a register as Gray rose within him. “Those were demons. Food.”
Night cocked his head curiously. “Would you have eaten John if you had found him possessed?”
A mix of fury and horror stole Caleb’s ability to speak. Gray roiled wordlessly inside him, emotions resonating and tangling between them.
Because Gray as he had been back then, walking around in stolen corpses, absolutely would have viewed a possessed John as a snack.
“I did not know…” Gray managed. “I did not know. And it did not happen. This is…is foolishness.”
“We’re not talking to you about this anymore,” Caleb snarled at Night. “We’re almost there, so just don’t say anything unless you spot the fifolet.”
Gray curled up, making himself smaller. “You did not ask for me to possess you. John did not ask to be possessed. What if he did not wish for us to come with him because I remind him of what was done to him?”
That isn’t it.
Gray fell silent, but Caleb could feel his uncertainty. But Gray had to be wrong. John didn’t look at them and see what had happened to him. He wasn’t thinking back to Caleb’s incessant bitching about wanting to be exorcised those first few weeks and looking at it with a fresh eye. Whatever he remembered, it wouldn’t change the fact that he loved them, loved Gray. It definitely didn’t explain why Caleb was starting to feel like a bystander to what was happening with John, left behind twice in a row now.
Fuck. Maybe the fifolet would rip Night’s head off and they wouldn’t have to put up with any more of his stupid questions.
Caleb slowed once they turned onto Old Highway 51. If the fifolet was trying to flag down cars, they’d likely see it well before it could smell them. With any luck, they’d be out of the SUV and on it before it could even realize it had brought two predators down on itself.
The narrow road was dark, except for the occasional glimpse of headlights from the interstate. Presumably the only people who regularly used it were ones looking for access to the wildlife area, which didn’t seem like a popular place to visit four days before Christmas. With any luck, the fifolet wouldn’t have many choices besides them for a meal.
“Remember,” Caleb said as the rough asphalt grumbled beneath the wheels, “if the fifolet can be exorcised, we have to subdue it, use the silver cuffs in the glove compartment, and wait for John and Zahira to get back.”
“I have not forgotten your nonsensical rules,” Night replied.
“They aren’t nonsense.” Jesus, why was he bothering to justify himself to Night? “Gray didn’t get it at first, either, but after a while he realized most possessed mortals are…” He remembered the girl who’d summoned the cauchemar, crying on the floor. “Pitiful. And even if they aren’t, there’s enough suffering in the world without us adding to it.”
“Most mortals bring this suffering on themselves. They call the demons to them willingly.”
Night wasn’t wrong. Still. “Yeah, well, people do all kinds of stupid things, especially when they’re desperate. And if their judgment was bad at first, having a crazed demon in their heads just makes it that much worse after. What they used to be gets warped.”
Had John been changed by possession? How long had the bastards at the Center left the demons in? Days, weeks?
No. Whatever had happened to him, John was good, all the way to the bone.
Hopefully, John would finally get some answers today. It wasn’t fair that they couldn’t go with him, but at least he had Zahira and Ryan there. Ryan, who John seemed to have trusted from day one, who was more of a part of John’s search for his past than Caleb and Gray were.
It didn’t matter. They’d be back tomorrow, and hopefully Tiffany would show up with information from the decrypted hard drive. And then…
He didn’t know, after that. One way or another, they’d help John put the pieces back together. Maybe SPECTR could foot the bill for some therapy.
The SUV’s headlights picked out a truck pulled off alongside the road. Caleb slowed. The driver’s door hung open, and the interior light was still on.
Oh no.
Maybe the driver was doing some fishing in the canal. Except if they were, they wouldn’t have just left the door open and risked running down their battery.
Damn it, please let there be some other explanation. Something other than showing up too late to save someone.
He parked behind the truck and stepped out. The scent of the fifolet hung on the air.
“Excellent.” Walsh smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. The sun had gone down, and the only light in the study came from the lamp on his desk. It cast deep shadows across his face, and John had to force down a shudder. “You may ask first.”
“What’s my real name?” John blurted, before he even had time to think about it.
Walsh’s pen poised over his paper, ready to start taking notes. “I don’t know.”
Fucker. “You said—”
“That I would answer honestly.” Walsh shrugged. “You were all known by your file numbers, not your names, both for clarity and to keep the staff from getting too…attached. Oh, I’m sure your name was on some piece of paperwork somewhere. I probably even saw it at one point, but it was irrelevant to the study. Why would I possibly commit it to memory?”
John ground his teeth together. “Fine.”
“Now it’s my turn. You’re an exorcist.” Walsh peered at John, as if he could see into the depths of his mind. “How would you rate your ability in comparison to your peers?”
John didn’t want to answer. But he’d agreed, and Walsh might know more than he let on, and catch John in a lie. “I was one of SPECTR’s top field agents. So it’s pretty good, I’d say.”
“Was one of the top field agents?”
John shook his head. “I answered your first question. You have to wait for your turn to ask another.”
Walsh chuckled, and John realized he’d deliberately tried to catch him off guard. “You can’t blame a man for trying. What else do you want to know?”
Finding out anything about his real identity was off the table, it seemed. “I assume there was some point to abusing a bunch of children. What was it?”
“Ah.” A lively spark appeared in Walsh’s eyes, and he seemed more animated than before. “The purpose of Operation Mephisto was to study the viability of using possession to boost paranormal abilities.”
Operation Mephisto. John repeated the name to himself, even as he struggled against outrage. “Of course possession boosts paranormal abilities. That was already known, it’s been known for centuries!”