'Well, it hurts, just in case you didn't know that. Getting shot. It hurts like hell.'
DeMarco accepted the hand up, still visibly wary 'Sorry. And, actually, I do know it hurts. From experience. But what choice did I have? You were too damn close to miss, and there was no way you could make it to any kind of cover in time to avoid getting shot by one of us. I had about a second to act, and the best option for both of us seemed to be to put you down, fast and hard. Don't try to tell me you wouldn't have made exactly the same choice if the situation had been reversed.'
'Yeah, yeah. Point taken. But it wasunpleasant. And that river was damn cold too.' The grumble was obviously more automatic than anything else.
Sawyer looked at Tessa and asked, 'Am I supposed to be following any of this?'
'I wouldn't expect so. I'm not.'
Quentin grinned at both of them. 'Agent Galen was inside the Compound a week or so ago in the predawn hours and ran afoul of DeMarco and two armed church members.'
'Afoul?' DeMarco stared at him, brows rising. 'Seriously?'
'You want to explain this?'
'Not really.'
'Then don't criticize my choice of words.'
'Armed?' Sawyer said.
'Just handguns,' DeMarco told him. 'Nothing heavy.'
Galen said, 'You mean aside from that silver cannon you carry?'
'It fits my hand.'
'It's more firepower than any handgun needs. It's going to leave a marktwo marks, as a matter of factand not much does.'
DeMarco rubbed his jaw again and dryly said, 'Uh-huh.'
'Oh, don't even compare bullets with a punch.'
'I may not bruise easily, Galen, but I do bruise. How am I supposed to explain this?'
'Tell Samuel you ran into a door.'
'Funny.'
'Nobody up there is licensed,' Sawyer said, his voice a bit louder than before.
To Tessa, Hollis said, 'I feel like I'm at a tennis match. With a few extra players on the court.'
'I know what you mean.'
Another player came into the room just then, drawing Sawyer's still somewhat indignant attention. Yet another tall, wide-shouldered and athletic man, this one moved with an easy, curiously feline grace, someone totally comfortable inside his own skin. He had jet-black hair with a rather dramatic widow's peak as well as a streak of pure white at the left temple, very pale and extremely sharp silvery-gray eyes, and a faint jagged scar down his left cheek that kept him from being quite as good-looking as DeMarco was but helped him look twice as dangerous.
Which was saying something, Sawyer thought, as those metallic eyes fixed immediately on him.
'Chief. I'm Special Agent Noah Bishop.' The newcomer's voice was cool and calm.
'You're in charge?'
'Technically, you're in charge. Your jurisdiction.'
Sawyer wondered how many times Bishop had made that little speech.
DeMarco said to Bishop, 'You might have warned me Galen was on the warpath.'
'I might have,' Bishop agreed.
'Shit, Bishop.'
'Hey, he was going to take his shot. I figured it'd be easier on you if you didn't know it was coming.'
'Thanks a bunch.'
'Anytime.'
Galen said to DeMarco, 'Want an ice bag for that jaw?'
'Don't gloat. It's unbecoming. Especially when you blind-side a man.' DeMarco gave his jaw a final rub, then squared his shoulders, clearly throwing off the subject. 'Look, I'm on a tight timetable here, so unless everybody wants to find themselves some wheels or walk back down the mountain, I suggest we get to it.'
Bishop said, 'Samuel believes you're out alone, patrolling the perimeter of the Compound?'
'He calls it prowling. It is my long-standing habit to do so at irregular intervals, something he's accustomed to. I left word that's what I'd be doing for the next hour or so.'
Clearly hearing or sensing something more, Bishop lifted a questioning brow.
'There are a couple of other people who've been paying unusually close attention to my movements recently, so I'm more than a little uneasy about being outside the Compound,' DeMarco explained. 'I'd really rather not give them any reason to be suspicious of me, not at this late stage.'
'Sounds like they already are,' Quentin pointed out.
'Maybe. Or maybe Samuel's growing paranoia is fueling it in others.'
Bishop frowned, then gestured toward the oval conference table, and most everyone moved to take seats. Sawyer was interested to see that Bishop took the head of the table and DeMarco took the footboth instinctive power positionswhile Galen chose to lean a shoulder against the side of a bookcase, apart from the group, where he could watch everyone at the table as well as keep an eye on the doorway.
Someone on guard, Sawyer thought. Probably at all times.
'
'I'm no profiler. But it doesn't take an expert to see that he's walking a very fine line right now.'
'Between?' Sawyer asked.
'Between sanity and madness, Chief. The thing is, he's come down on the mad side too many times already. I don't even know how he can be sane at all, at any time, given the things he's done. Though I suppose monsters can always find justification.'
'What's his?'
'That he's doing God's work, of course. The world is overrun with sinners, and he's helped cull a few. That's how he looks at it. Just a warm-up for the big show.'
'What show?' There were so many questions tumbling through Sawyer's brain that he had to start asking, and keep asking, even though he knew Tessa had only one concern right now and was impatient to steer the discussion to Ruby.
'Armageddon. An apocalypse. Whatever you want to call it. The End Times. The end of the world, Chief.' The very lack of emotion in DeMarco's voice made his words all the more chilling. 'Samuel believes he was given a Prophecy by God. And given the power, by God, to trigger the final destruction. To control it. And to survive it.'
'He's also,' Bishop said flatly, 'a serial killer.'
'Which you know,' Sawyer reminded him, 'but can't prove. Right?'
'Unfortunately.'
DeMarco said, 'There's been no confession. Not even something remotely resembling one. He might talk of culling sinners but not of killing them. What he did last summer in Bostonhe did it partly just to see if he could, I think. If he could control the beast. If he could hunt and not get caught. But then the monster hunters got too close, and he set out to discover just how good they really were. He set out to explore and test the strengths and weaknesses of the only enemy he was truly afraid of.' He nodded toward Bishop.
'You?' Sawyer asked Bishop. 'He's afraid of you specifically?'
'The SCU. But, yes, me specifically. I was, thanks to the media, the public face of the task force and the SCU during the Boston investigation. So he saw me as a threat. Enough of a threat that it drove him to ground for a while. Until, as Reese said, he decided to test his limits and ours. In Venture, Georgia, this past October. And too many women died in both places before we managed to find and cage the monster.'
'One of the monsters,' DeMarco noted. 'Unfortunately for everyone involved, when Samuel pushed himselfapparently in a series of attempts to steal from others psychic abilities he wanted to possess, needed to possess for this ultimate battle he believes is comingthe experiences changed him. And not for the better.'
Bishop said to Sawyer, 'It wasn't until near the end of the hunt that we realized what he might be capable of. And by then we could only react defensively try to protect ourselves and our abilities. Dani Justice, a Haven
