Page 11 of Clay White
“What really happened in Redding?” asked Grimes, sharp-eyed. “I’ve heard rumors, but not the truth.”
“I don’t….” Don’t want to talk about it. Or think about it. Don’t want to remember. But if I was going to ask a favor and I couldn’t pay them, didn’t I owe them something? I cleared my throat. “I fucked up.”
“You led a raid on a necromancer.”
“Yes.”
“And during the strike, the necromancer murdered five children he was holding captive.”
“Yes.” I pretended I couldn’t hear the ghosts of their screams, but the all-knowing gazes of Grimes and Tenrael stripped my secrets bare.
“Why did you endanger children?”
“I didn’t know they were there.” Since my audience waited expectantly, I continued. “I’d been told that only the necromancer was there. I didn’t take the time to verify.” Too eager to act, too eager to neutralize the enemy.
“So you had bad intelligence and poor judgment, and people died.”
“Children died,” I whispered.
“And you were drummed out of the Bureau.”
“Yes.”
Despite having their steady gazes trained on me, I didn’t feel unfairly judged. Maybe they were weighing my soul, but not with hostile intent and perhaps not without finding some good there as well. I tried not to squirm, not even when I realized that Grimes wasn’t quite human and I had no idea what he might be.
“I thought I was doing the right thing. But I was stupid, and God, I’m so sorry. It haunts me.” I don’t know why I felt compelled to confess here and now. I hadn’t revealed any of my feelings on the matter to anyone else. It felt good to unburden myself.
Still stroking Tenrael’s feathers, Grimes gave a small nod. “Sometimes our courage exceeds our wisdom. When things turn out all right, they call us heroes. When things turn to grief, they call us villains. Either way, we’re just people with some foolish ideas.”
“I didn’t come here for sympathy or absolution,” I said, although in all honesty his words comforted me somewhat.
He laughed. “Good, because I have no power to absolve anyone. Whydidyou come?”
Simply as that, I told him. As I unspooled the tale, I found myself being more open than I had been with Townsend. I didn’t divulge the precise details of what had transpired with Marek, but I made it clear that our interaction had not been platonic. I’m not sure why I felt drawn to such honesty, but I suspect it was because Grimes—whatever he was—and his demon were so obviously in love.
When I finished, Tenrael spoke. “Do you know why Townsend won’t act?”
“Politics, he says. I don’t know what he means.”
“Could mean anything,” said Grimes with a scowl. “It’s a handy excuse. But the explanation doesn’t matter. If he doesn’t want to do anything, he won’t. Nothing can change that. What I’m more interested in knowing is why you’re pursuing this. It won’t bring back those dead children.”
“I know.”
“It won’t even stop the nightmares. I… I did some things I’m not proud of. A long time ago. And although I like to think I’ve done a lot of good since then, it never balances out. There’s no holy scale to tip.” As he spoke he petted Tenrael’s wing, and Tenrael nodded in agreement.
“You’re the third person to accuse me of seeking penance. I’m not.”
“Then why?”
The answer came to me at once. “Because it’s the right thing to do. Not to benefit me—I’m irrelevant. But those young men, they shouldn’t be murdered. They should be safe.” It wasn’t well articulated, I was aware of that. But it was true.
After exchanging a look with Tenrael, Grimes nodded. “We’ll see what we can do.”
I was going to spend the night in a cheap motel—the rental car being far too small to sleep in—but Grimes unexpectedly offered to host me for the night. Since I was exhausted, I headed into the bookshelf-lined spare bedroom, leaving Grimes and Tenrael talking softly in the living room. The mattress was comfortable and the darkness surrounded me like a warm cloak, yet I had trouble falling asleep. My closed eyes couldn’t stop the images of all my wrong decisions and the people who’d been hurt by them. Not just those children. I’d had a lover once, when I was in college. He was a fellow student, a slightly chubby boy who thought of himself as undesirable, but I’d seen beauty in his quick mind and warm smile. By the time we graduated, he’d begun to speak of the future, of building a life together. But I’d been so certain of my destiny—an agent bound to die young—that I’d abandoned him, breaking his heart in the process. All the years since, I’d refused to speculate on what might have been. Yet tonight, in this little bungalow by the sea, I caught myself wondering.
“No,” I mumbled and turned to face the wall. There was no point in torturing myself. And that long-ago lover? No doubt he’d recovered and found someone kinder, smarter, better. Someone who was happy to daydream about mortgages and gardens and children instead of skulking through nighttime streets in search of monsters.
Monsters. How could I properly identify them, even define them, anymore? Yes, I’d encountered—and often slaughtered—a great many creatures that undoubtedly qualified. Ghouls that stalked graveyards and morgues in search of fresh flesh, relatively speaking. Revenants mindlessly seeking revenge. Shifters that let their animal impulses control them. Demons far more terrifying than the one currently hosting me. All manner of things that went bump in the night. And vampires, of course. Quite a few of them.
