I grabbed her hand and pressed it tight to the wound in Anders' side. Kate recoiled slightly from my touch, but when I let her go, her hand stayed. "I need you to put pressure on the wound — more than you think you need, OK?"
"He's not breathing."
"I had noticed," I said. What I was going to do about that, though, I had no idea. I hovered over Anders' still form, unsure. I mean, I'd seen it done before — in a movie or two — but the whole CPR thing was a little after my time. Honestly, I'm usually more concerned with halting breath than with restoring it.
"Switch with me," Kate said.
"What?" I looked at her, confused.
"Oh, for God's sake, switch with me!" She released the wound and grabbed my hands, shoving them in place. "You always gotta be the hero, don't you?" She pressed her mouth to Anders' and exhaled twice. Then she placed her palms against his breastbone and pressed downward in a steady rhythm. I just watched in amazement.
"I took a babysitting course, a few years back," she said, and then once more blew breath into Anders' mouth. "CPR was a requirement. Of course, that doesn't mean I know what I'm doing."
"You're doing fine," I said. In truth, I had no damn idea, but I hoped to God that I was right.
Again Kate pressed her lips to his. This time, when she released him, Anders sputtered and coughed, blood spraying red across his teeth and lips. The breathing was a good sign. The blood was not. Kate might have bought us a little time, but this kid was gonna need a doctor if he was gonna live.
"That… wasn't…Pinch," Anders said, his voice a brittle whisper, his eyes clenched shut against the pain.
"No," I said, "it wasn't."
"Then who?" he asked, between panting, labored breaths.
"A Collector, like me. They call him Bishop."
"I saw… I mean, I knew that something was different… that he'd changed somehow. I just figured it was the… the ritual. I should have said something. I should have tried to stop him…"
I took his hand in mine. "You did fine, kid. Now, though, I need you to save your strength — we're gonna get you some help. Just relax, and try not to speak."
"But Kate… is she OK?"
I looked her in the eye. Truth was, she looked anything but. "Yeah, kid — Kate's OK."
"Good," Anders said, and then promptly lost consciousness.
Kate checked his neck for a pulse. "Still beating, she said, "for now, at least. You think he's going to make it?"
"No," I said, "but if he's gonna have a shot, we have to move now."
"So," Kate said, the brittle, frost-laden grass crunching beneath her feet, "you knew that guy?"
We'd only been walking a few minutes, headed south through the park toward what I hoped was the nearest street. With Anders' limp and blood-slick form cradled in my arms, it felt like we'd been walking for hours. For maybe the fifth time now, I hitched him upward, trying to re-establish my grip. But the kid was heavier than he looked, and the sheen of sweat and blood that graced his arms, his neck, his back, made it tough to hold on. The going was slow, and the makeshift bandage I'd juryrigged from the Flynn meat-suit's uniform shirt wasn't going to hold for long. We were running out of time.
"Yeah," I said, "I know him a bit."
"So what — you guys stand around the water cooler, chat about the souls you've snatched, that sort of thing?"
"Not exactly. Bishop is the one who collected me."
We trudged in silence for a moment. Finally, Kate broke it.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know."
"How could you have?"
"I don't know. I just — it's terrible, isn't it? Being taken, I mean."
This time, it was my turn to pause. "Yes. Yes, it is."
"I swear I can still feel him. Clawing. Tearing. Struggling to rip free my soul."
"Listen to that feeling," I said. "For the collected, it never really goes away. If you're lucky, you came close enough, and it'll stick with you, too."
"If I'm lucky?"
"Damn right if you're lucky. Bishop's not done with you yet, Kate. If you can hold on to that feeling, you might be able to sense him coming. It could give you the edge you need to escape him."
"So you can feel it, too? You can tell when he's nearby?"
"Yes," I said.
"Then how — I mean, with Pinch…"
"I didn't listen to my instincts. I got too close to the job. To Pinch. To all of you. I got too close, and you can see where it's landed us all. You can be sure I won't make that mistake again."
"So if he's done it once before, what's to stop him from doing it again? I mean, how do we know that Anders is Anders?"
"What's your gut tell you?"
Kate frowned in concentration. "I–I don't know. I'm still a little rattled, but it's fading. I mean, he seems like Anders. Still, that's not a lot to go on."
"It's enough," I said. "No way would Bishop have hitched a ride with Anders. The kid is badly hurt, and he might not make it. If he'd entered Anders, he might not find the strength to leave before it's curtains, and then he's fucked. Folks like me, we're happy enough with the living or the dead, but the dying, they're a whole 'nother matter. See, in death, the body expels any invading soul. And since a Collector can't exist without a body, that means when one of us dies, we end up reseeded somewhere else at random. Could be a freshly buried corpse half a world away. It could be a baby down the street, too weak to lift its own head, let alone give us the boost we need to jump away. So you keep listening to that gut — it's done fine by you so far."
Kate shuffled along quietly for a moment, her face set in a thoughtful scowl. "Sam?" she said, finally.
"Yeah?"
"If he'd succeeded in taking me, would I be a Collector, too?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know. It's not for me to say."
"Better than the alternative, I suppose. You know, a lake of fire or whatever."
I looked at the crumpled, dying figure I held cradled in my arms. "No," I replied, "it really isn't."
21
As we approached the edge of the park, headlights shone through the trees — beacons of hope sweeping past us in the darkness. It was late, and the traffic was slight, but I was confident we'd find what we needed. But the slog through the park took longer than I'd expected, and the kid was fading fast. I only hoped it wasn't too late to make a difference.
With Anders' bloody, wheezing frame cradled tight to my chest, I broke from the cover of the trees, staggering out into the street. Behind me, Kate screamed, but I paid her no mind. The screech of tires pierced the night, and the air hung thick with burnt rubber. It drifted blue-black across the roadway, stinging my eyes. I blinked back tears, and squinted against the sudden glare of headlights.
Looked like I found my mark.
It was a Volvo station wagon, blue as sky beneath the streetlights, and it rocked to an awkward, diagonal halt just inches from where I stood. The driver, a woman in her fifties, was fumbling with a cell phone, her eyes wide with fright. I hoisted Anders over my shoulder, Flynn's well-muscled frame protesting under the strain, and broke for the driver's side door, yanking it open with my free hand and clawing for her phone. She was too stunned to resist. I snatched the phone from her hand, and tossed it in a lazy arc toward the woods. Her eyes flitted back and forth between the patch of woods in which it landed and me — filthy and bloodied in an undershirt and navy trousers, my only hope of passing as a cop in her eyes the uniform shirt currently pressed tight to Anders' wound — her face twisted into a rictus of terror.
"T-t-take the car," she said.
"I don't want the car," I said.
"I… I have money." She twisted in her seat, fumbling around in the back for her purse. I grabbed her wrist, and she turned, her gaze meeting mine.
"I don't want your money, either. This boy — he's hurt. What I need is a ride."