Hellraisers by Alexander Gordon Smith Page B

even though she’d shared a Wendy’s breakfast sandwich with him that very morning. Not a man, not a human, just a corpse. It’s all he ever was. And better to think of it that way, better to stay cold than to burn in the fire of regret and guilt and shame.
    Forrest, though. He was different. Not a driver, not a bodyguard like Herc. He’d been an Engineer, the same as her. She could still see him being dragged into the molten ground, screaming even though his head had been obliterated. She could still hear him. She would hear him for the rest of her life—him and all the others. Just one more name in the Book of Dead Engineers.
    â€œSorry,” she said, then regretted it. It wasn’t her fault. He’d known what the risks were when he’d made the deal. He’d known the price he would have to pay. If she took responsibility for him, then she’d have to take responsibility for the rest of them, and then she’d be buried by guilt, her soul as tormented as theirs.
    Ostheim should never have let them get so close to the end of the contract, though. This was his fault.
    Behind her she heard shuffling, a grunt, a pathetic wheeze, and she didn’t have to look back to know what was going on. She did anyway, if only to scowl at Herc as he lifted a hunk of plastic between his fingers, inserted it into the kid’s mouth. An inhaler. He pressed it a few times, massaging the boy’s chest. Then he hefted the unconscious body over one shoulder. He fired a look right back at her, one that said, What you gonna do about it?
    He was right. They needed Engineers. They needed them all the time, the way a butcher needs a yard full of chickens. The kid, he’d appeared out of nowhere, had maybe— maybe —distracted one of the demons long enough to let her ruined flesh knit itself back together. But he was still just a boy, and a dying one at that, if his pitiful breathing was anything to go by.
    But that was always Herc’s problem, his big, stupid, bleeding heart.
    Pan reached the door, pushed through into a concrete stairwell, a haze of smoke making her eyes water. There was a choice of down or up, but the thought of heading even deeper beneath the earth after what she’d just felt made her stomach want to explode out her mouth. She headed up, running for a couple of steps before her battered heart slowed her to a walk.
    â€œPlace should be big enough to make us invisible,” growled Herc behind her. “Cops’ll be setting up a perimeter outside, but we should pass as civvies.” He coughed. “You might wanna lose the crossbow, though.”
    â€œYeah?” She doubled around the bend, snatching in breaths as she continued up. “I lose the bow, you lose some teeth.”
    â€œJust saying,” he replied. “Nothing quite says crazy like a big-ass seventeenth-century weapon hanging off your back.”
    She ignored him, reaching the door to the ground level. There was an alarm going off, she realized, and she could hear footsteps and screams from the other side. A stampede. Perfect. She opened the door a crack, peeking past to see a corridor, people flowing out of wards, bare feet slapping on the floor. A few orderlies and security guards were doing their best to herd them toward the back of the hospital. Herc was right, the bow was a little conspicuous. But there weren’t more than a dozen of these things in existence, and Ostheim only owned three.
    She grabbed the collar of her tattered Kevlar shirt and pulled, the Velcro tearing. Shrugging it off, she wrapped it tightly around the bow, leaning on it like it was a walking stick, standing there in nothing but her bra.
    â€œWell, that’ll take their minds off the crossbow if nothing else,” said Herc, his eyes scrolling over every inch of the stairwell except her. Even past the blood and dirt she could see him blush.
    â€œPerv,” she said, pushing through the door into the