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"And now he's after us?"

"Yes."

At that last, Pinch sat down hard and put his head between his knees. His face looked pale and clammy by the light of the moon, and he gulped greedily at the cold night air like he was going to be sick.

"You OK?" I asked.

"Fine," he said, raising his head after a moment and climbing unsteadily to his feet. "Just wondering what I've gotten myself into, is all. So what do we do now?"

"We get the hell out of here, for a start. Find someplace crowded. Someplace public."

"Wait a minute — I thought crowded was bad. I mean, this guy is like you, right? He hops from body to body? I mean, he could be anyone."

"Yeah, but he's good at his job — the best, maybe. He knows better than to cause a scene. Besides, if I'm gonna take him on, I'm gonna need some spare bodies. The last thing I need is for him to kill me and send me halfway across the fucking globe."

"Spare bodies? That's encouraging."

"I'm not here to keep your spirits up — I'm here to keep you alive. I should've never gotten you and Anders involved."

"If you hadn't," Pinch said, "she might be dead already."

"Yeah," I said. "That'll be some comfort if I get you killed."

"So this Bishop guy — how are you gonna see him coming?"

"I don't know. What I do know is that he's close."

"You can sense other Collectors?"

"I can sense this one."

20

"Kate? Kate?"

Pinch and I had been walking for half an hour. Navigating the woods was tougher than I'd expected, and somehow we'd managed to miss the picnic shelter altogether, winding up on the wrong end of the park's long, narrow pond. By the time we got back on track, the shelter was empty. I prayed we weren't too late.

"Kate!" I shouted again, my voice hoarse with fear.

"Sam?" The call came from the darkness to our left. "Sam, thank God!" Kate broke free of the treeline and leapt into my arms, Anders trailing just a couple yards behind. As she squeezed my battered ribs, I winced, but still, I held her tight.

"Jesus, Kate, you scared the shit out of me — where the hell did you go?"

"You guys were gone so long," she said. "We started to worry, thought maybe you were in some kind of trouble."

"Damn it, Kate, you know better than that! The last thing we need is for you to go running into harm's way. Besides, Pinch and I had things under control."

Kate saw the scowl on my face, and replied with one of her own. "Sam, what's wrong?"

"Nothing. We have to get moving, is all."

"I'm just glad you two made it back in one piece," Anders said, clapping Pinch on the shoulder. "You and him and a ritual and a knife — who knows what might've gone down?"

"Who, indeed?" Pinch said.

My stomach lurched. I shoved Kate aside, and lunged toward Pinch. Kate squealed in surprise, and Anders looked shocked, but Pinch didn't. He knew he'd fucked up.

After all, when's the last time you heard an eleven year-old say indeed?

I was fast. Pinch was faster. He plunged his blade deep into Anders' side and tossed him into my path. We collided, and tumbled to the ground in a mess of blood and limbs. As Kate stood frozen, a look of horror on her face, Pinch closed the gap between them.

How could I have been so stupid? I knew Bishop was somewhere nearby — I could feel it. I should have seen Pinch's sudden bout of nausea for what it was: Bishop taking over. But I didn't. Didn't see, didn't think. No, instead, I led him right fucking to her.

I struggled to free myself of Anders, but he was dead weight — limp and uncooperative. I didn't have time, though, to worry about him. Right now, my only thought was of Kate.

Pinch/Bishop grabbed a handful of Kate's hair and yanked. She yelped and fell to one knee. His gaze traveled up and down her trembling form, as if seeing her for the first time. "My, but you're a pretty one," he said. "Not my type, of course, but I suppose I could make an exception, just this once."

His hand plunged into her chest. Kate shrieked in pain and fear. Muscles screaming in protest, I rolled Anders off of me — he collapsed to the forest floor beside me, blood pulsing around the blade in his side and oozing black from his mouth. I scrambled toward the figures of Kate and Pinch, locked in their horrible embrace, no thought in my head but that I could not let this happen.

I don't even know where the rock came from. I must've picked it up along the way, but even now, I can't recall. Wherever I got it, I brought it down hard on Bishop's head, again and again, until finally, he released his grip on Kate's soul and collapsed to the ground.

The rock fell slick from my hand, and the night air prickled with a sudden copper tang. Still, it wasn't until Kate scampered backward away from me, tears welling in her eyes, that I realized what I'd done.

"Kate — " I began, but then stopped, unsure of what to say. "Kate, I'm sorry. I couldn't let him take you." I looked down at the body at my feet — an enemy no longer, just the bloodied remains of an innocent child. "I couldn't let him take you."

Kate continued her retreat until a tree trunk barred her way. She pressed tight against it, as if she simply could not bear to be any closer to me than she had to. "Don't talk to me," she said. "You don't get to talk to me ever again, you hear me?"

"Kate, listen to me. He was going to kill you. Worse, even — he was going to take your soul. Do you even understand what that means? An eternity of torment, and not just for you. If he had taken you, he'd have opened the floodgates. We're talking a full-scale war between heaven and hell. You think Pinch would have wanted that?"

"Don't you stand there and tell me what he would have wanted." Tears spilled down her face, a twisted mask of pain and grief. "He was a kid, Sam. He was a kid, and you killed him. You're no better than the rest of them. A monster."

I hung my head, squeezing shut my eyes so that I wouldn't have to see the blood that clung stickily to my hands. "I did what I had to do."

"Yeah, well, you won't have to do it anymore. I don't care what happens to me — we're through. I won't be a party to any more bloodshed. You'll just have to find another life to ruin."

Just then, a low, wet gurgle sounded in the darkness. It was accompanied by a hitching, labored breathing, arrhythmic and faint.

Anders.

I left Kate where she sat, wheeling toward the source of the noise. I didn't have long; in moments, the horrid sound of Anders' labored breathing was replaced by an even more terrible silence.

Anders lay on the ground where I had left him. His eyes were clenched, his pain evident. The blade lay beside him in the grass, slick with blood. One blooddrenched hand lay beside it in the grass, and his sleeve was slick and dark as well. It looked to me like he'd removed the blade himself. I wished to God he hadn't. The blade would have slowed the bleeding, maybe bought us a few minutes, but now that he'd removed it, there was nothing left to stanch the flow. Anders was running out of time.

"Kate!" I called, but she didn't answer. "Kate, I need your help!"

Still nothing.

"Damn it, Kate — you can hate me later. Right now, I need you over here, or Anders is going to die!"

There was a rustling in the darkness, and Kate appeared beside me. She said nothing. She didn't have to. The anger in her eyes said it all. It seemed she'd hate me now, whether she chose to help or not. So long as we didn't lose another life tonight, I figured I could live with that.