CHAPTER SIX
I had my gun in one hand as I grabbed her arm to pull her to her feet and get her away from the room. I couldn’t see anything in the room but the bed and someone under the sheets. She screamed and batted at me with her hands. I pulled her across the floor by her arm as I said, “Police, I’m police, you’re safe.”
She stopped slapping at me and got to her feet with my hand steadying her. She shook her head too fast and too often. She gasped. “Ray, oh my God, Ray’s . . .”
“What’s wrong with Gonzales?” Paulson said from just behind us. He hadn’t stayed in the room where it was safe, point for him, but he was an ER doctor—they tended to run toward trouble, too.
Her breath came out as a sob as she said, “It tore him apart.”
“What tore him apart?” I asked.
“The patient, but a person couldn’t do that.” She finally looked away from the doorway to stare up at me. “He can’t be human.” Her voice lowered and I watched her try to get control of her expression, so she didn’t look shocked. She did her best, but her eyes held all the horror she was trying to keep off her face. I gave her points for trying and changed my gun to a two-handed grip as I moved toward the room and whatever was inside.
“Mark Cookson is a nineteen-year-old college student, you can’t just shoot him,” Paulson said.
I stared at him. “What name did you say?” I wanted to make sure I’d heard correctly before I got too excited.
“Mark Cookson, do you know him?”
“Not personally, but he’s the person of interest in a rape homicide last night.”
“You just want me to let you shoot him,” Paulson said.
“I’m telling you the truth, and I can’t handcuff or Taser something that can tear a grown man to pieces. I’m out of options.”
“He’s not human,” Prescott said.
“He’s possessed; if we can get the demon out of him, he’ll get a chance to be an ordinary college sophomore. He’ll go back to his family and have a life unless we shoot his body full of holes that I can’t fix,” Paulson said.
“College sophomore is young for being a sorcerer,” I said.
“He’s not a sorcerer,” Paulson said.
I looked at him but kept the door in my peripheral, because I didn’t want any more surprises. “You don’t conjure a demon real enough to tear people apart unless you’re very well versed in the occult arts.”
“He didn’t conjure it, he is it,” Prescott said.
“You mean he shape-changed into another form?” I asked.
She shook her head, her fear fading because she was having to think and explain things to the cop who was asking stupid questions. “No, the demon was inside him. It crawled out of him like he was a Halloween costume.”
I was suddenly more hopeful.
“That is not funny, Detective.”
“Absolutely not,” I said.
“Then why are you smiling?” she asked.
“Sorry, but demons don’t crawl out of people like that except in movies. Physical possession can manipulate the human body but not to that degree.”
“I saw it!”
A deep bass voice called out, “Come see for yourself, Detective.”
I ignored the voice and turned back to the nurse in front of me. “What does the room look like? What does the body look like?”
She looked at me like I was crazy. “Blood, blood everywhere.” She said it angry; her eyes started getting that haunted look again, but that couldn’t be helped.
“On the floor?” I asked.
“Of course, on the floor!” She was just angry now because anger feels so much better than fear.
“Then why isn’t there any blood on your shoes? Why aren’t you leaving bloody footprints down the hallway?” I asked.
“She did not step far enough into the room to be covered in the blood of my victims,” the deep voice said.
“Why would she step into the room at all if she saw her coworker dead?” I asked, and by talking directly to that voice I opened myself up to it, but it was a calculated risk. If it knew intimate details of my life just from talking to me, then we were in serious trouble, but I was hoping it wouldn’t know me, betting it wouldn’t.
“She’s just a stupid bitch.”
I almost said out loud, Was Megan Borowski a stupid bitch, too? Is that why you killed her? But it wouldn’t have helped anything. In fact, it would have just given the demon something to play with, and there was a chance that Mark Cookson had committed rape and murder under demonic influence. Depending on how the demon got hold of him, he might be innocent. We’d have to see.
“I couldn’t see Ray from the door,” Prescott said.
Paulson asked, “Was the body in the bathroom?”
“No, no, it was beside the bed like he’d gone in to check vitals and it killed him.’
“Prescott, you can see the bed from the door. You wouldn’t have had to walk inside to see it,” Paulson said.
She stared up at the doctor and then at me, frowning. “I don’t understand.”
“Come in and play with me, Detective.”
Why was it still in the room? Why hadn’t it attacked us by now? “The nurse activated the wards in the room before she ran,” I said.
“It’s protocol to hit the panel on the way out,” Prescott said beside me.
“Nerves of steel, Nurse Prescott.”
“I couldn’t let it hurt anyone else.” She said it as if anyone would have taken the seconds to touch the panel and activate it before running for their life.
“You come out and let me send you back where you came from,” I said.
“You have no idea where I come from, Detective.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Why, I’m Mark Cookson, they’ve named me several times.”
“What’s your real name?” I asked.
“Now, Detective, that would be far too easy.”
“Was Mark Cookson ever in this hospital?” I asked.
A deep, rumbling bass chuckle spilled out of the doorway; whatever was making that noise sounded bigger than a human being. “Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t.”
“What have you done to my patient?” Paulson asked.
“Your patient? Don’t you give a damn about what I did to your nurse?”
“Prescott says he’s already dead; I trust her judgment, so I’ll move on to someone I can save.”
“Very pragmatic of you, Dr. Paulson.”
Had we said Paulson’s name out loud? Up to that moment the demon had only repeated what he’d heard us say in the hallway, but we hadn’t said the doctor’s last name, so how had he known it? An Infernal that repeated things was small fry; one that knew things it had no way of knowing was a bigger fish and, Heaven knew, more dangerous.
“You can’t get out of the wards, which means you didn’t use a human as a costume. If you had that kind of power, no insta-ward would contain you.”
“I don’t have to come to you, Detective; you’ll come to me to save the lives of the civilians in here with me.”