Nocturnal: A Novel

Bryan Clauser was like Savior, that he was actually one of Marie’s Children.

If so, he was a traitor.

“Pierre, make me proud,” Rex said. “Get down there and finish him. Then bring Savior back Home.”

Pierre smiled his happy-dog smile. His long tongue fell from his mouth and dangled on the right side of his skewed jaw.

“Yeth, my king.”

Rex followed Sly out of the room.

Get up, get up, get up.

Bryan pushed himself to his knees. He was on grass. A little clearing in a wooded area. He heard sporadic traffic on the other side of a head-high brick wall not too far away. His left arm wouldn’t respond. Every motion he made ripped a stabbing sensation through the top of his chest. Broken collarbone. Had to be.

What had happened? Pierre had happened. Bryan ignored the pain as he struggled to his feet. He looked up at the mental health building. He remembered the gunfight, remembered how hard the brown-furred creature had hit him.

Motion from above. From out of the broken third-story window, Pierre sailed into the night air, a long blanket trailing behind him, a stockless shotgun with a drum magazine held in one huge hand.

Bryan looked to where Pierre would fall — fifteen feet away lay the bent and twisted hospital bed, and a few feet from that an unconscious Jebediah Erickson barely covered by a rumpled blue hospital gown.

Pierre landed with far more grace than Bryan had. The dog-faced man stepped toward Savior.

Gunfire opened up on Bryan’s left and his right. On his left, the cane-gun, fired by the wobbly old Alder Jessup. On his right, Adam, ripping off short bursts from an Uzi. Pierre covered his face with an arm and turned away. Bullets tore through his blanket, shredding the fabric and spraying blood onto the grass.

“Bryan!” Alder screamed. “Get the creature, we’ll rescue Savior. Go!”

Bryan quick-glanced for his gun, but the flat-black weapon was nowhere to be seen on the dark grass. He didn’t think, he just ran, sprinting straight for the ducking Pierre.

The Uzi fire stopped — Adam’s weapon was empty.

Pierre turned and reached for Erickson. Before the big hands could grab the old man, Bryan closed in at full speed — his new full speed — and put his right shoulder into Pierre’s ribs.

The creature sailed backward and smashed against a tree.

Bryan had hit with his right shoulder, but his left suffered greatly from the impact. Something ground away inside his arm, his chest and his shoulder, liquid fire coursing all up and down his side and neck.

Pierre rolled to his knees. He smiled a dog smile, his pink tongue dangling down off the left side of his skewed lower jaw — he raised his shotgun.

Bryan turned away as the bah-bah-bah roar of the automatic weapon tore at the night air. Hammer blasts hit his right shoulder, his back, driving him to the ground.

Then the stuttering crack of the Uzi sounded once again.

Bryan fought through the pain and pushed himself to his knees. When he turned toward the threat, he saw the swirl of a dark blanket, a bit of blue hospital gown, and the pink of an old man’s naked ass disappearing over the head-high brick wall that bordered Potrero Avenue — Pierre, with an unconscious Erickson over his shoulder.

Just like that, they were gone from sight.

Bryan heard sirens approaching. How far away was the rest of the SWAT team? Would they have the same orders as Ellis? Would they try to arrest Bryan, or would shoot to kill be Zou’s new order?

A hand on his good shoulder, grabbing, pulling. “Cop, get up,” Adam said. “He got Erickson!”

Bryan leaned on Adam as he struggled to his feet. “I gotta go after him.”

“No!” Alder’s voice. The old man limped over, reloading his cane by taking a bullet from his pocket, putting it into a hidden slot, then twisting the silver wolf’s head handle with a click. “Bryan, you have to heal. There could be more of them.”

“But they’ll kill him!”

Alder shook his head. “He’s already dead.” His eyes showed he was resigned to an inescapable truth. “Jebediah is gone. The only variable is whether we have one dead Savior, or two.”

Bryan started to argue, but the railroad-spike pain driving through his neck and into his lung cut off his words. He couldn’t even give chase, let alone fight.

“Okay, shit.” Bryan let Adam help him toward the wall. “Where’s Pookie?”

Adam stopped.

Alder pointed his cane up to the broken third-floor window. “Your partner? Was he with you? Up there?”

Bryan looked up. Some of the safety glass hung loosely like a thick, stiff piece of cracked crystal cloth. “He didn’t come down?”

Alder shook his head. “Not yet. Bryan, move, we have to get out of here.”

Bryan stared, waiting to see Pookie’s face pop into view, waiting to hear him shout down some kind of obscenity. Pookie’s face didn’t show. He had to be in the stairwell, on his way out, or maybe he was already at the car.

“Adam, in my pants pocket, my phone.”

For once Adam didn’t make a smart-ass answer. He pulled the phone out of Bryan’s pocket. Bryan took it. With his right hand, he pressed the two-way button.

Bee-boop: “Pookie! You there?”

There was a pause, then an answer.

Boo-beep: “Hello?”

A boy’s voice.

Bryan’s body vibrated with instant, overwhelming emotions of rage and fear and hate and loss — he had to do something but he knew there was nothing he could do.

“Is this Rex?”

“Uh-huh.”

Bryan closed his eyes. He felt like he was there and not there all at the same time. “Is my partner alive?”

“Sure,” the boy said. “Don’t you also want to know if Savior is alive?”

“I don’t give a shit about Savior,” Bryan said, not the least bit surprised by his automatic honesty. If it came down to a brother by blood or a brother by actions, there was no question. “Keep Savior. Just let Pookie go.”

“No,” Rex said. “Mister Chang has to pay for his crimes.”

Bryan knew that smell on Rex was supposed to make him want to follow the boy, help the boy. He knew that at a base level, but all the scent in the world couldn’t change his urge to find Rex, to wrap his hands around the boy’s little neck, to squeeze the life out of him and make him beg.

“Let Pookie go,” Bryan said. “If you don’t, I’m going to find you, Rex. I’m going to kill you. But before you die, I’ll make you hurt.”

“You won’t find me,” Rex said. “But we’ll find you soon enough. You’re a murderer, Mister Clauser. You killed Sucka. We’ll put you on trial just like the others. Good-bye.”

Rex hung up.

Bryan closed his eyes. His best friend was gone.

Pookie had stood by him through everything. Pookie and Robin.

Robin.

His eyes snapped open. “Adam, get me to Shotwell and Twenty-First, right now.”

As the three men shuffled toward the Magnum, Bryan texted the one person he hoped he could still trust. He needed backup, and he wasn’t about to be picky.

They hobbled to the Jessups’ station wagon and climbed in just as the first police cruiser pulled into the hospital parking lot. Bryan and Alder got in the back of the Magnum, Adam hopped into the driver’s seat. Bryan saw that Alder had handcuffed Aggie to the inside door handle of the front passenger seat. The bum looked at Bryan, his