The Devil's Only Friend by Dan Wells Page B

inside of me, pouring it out in a burst of flame and heat and dancing red—
    No. Stay focused. Push it away.
    I have a job to do.
    I looked at the printout of our reconstructed timeline. Mary didn’t seem to kill on any predictable schedule: sometimes one a month, sometimes more, sometimes less. Two of her kills were less than a week apart. Kelly was convinced this meant there were more we didn’t know about, but I doubted it. If two per week was Mary’s standard schedule, and we just didn’t know about the others, where were they? How could she kill that many people and keep them hidden? Fort Bruce simply wasn’t big enough. The hospital was the most advanced in the region, and people came in from all over hoping to get the best care they could. That created a large enough population for Mary to hide her activities. Obviously it was possible that some of the kills we attributed to her were not, and some of the kills we thought were unrelated were actually hers, but even if we gave her credit for every dead child in the hospital, it didn’t add up to the frequency Kelly suggested.
    But that left us with the original problem: why the erratic schedule? She seemed to kill for health reasons, like Crowley had—rejuvenating themselves every time their bodies got too degraded to function properly—but Crowley had followed a predictable pattern. When his kills got closer together, it was because his degeneration was accelerating. Mary’s pace seemed to speed up and slow down almost at random. There had to be an explanation, and if Kelly’s was wrong, what was right?
    The bedroom door opened abruptly, and Potash dragged Boy Dog in from the hall with a grunt. “He’s staying in your room.”
    “I can’t have him in here,” I said, practically jumping up. “I have rules—”
    Potash growled. “You said yes to him, you deal with him.”
    “I have rules,” I said again, though I knew it would mean nothing to Potash. I stared at Boy Dog, panting placidly on the floor, then looked up at Potash. “We’ll give him back.”
    “She won’t take him back.”
    “Then we’ll…” I hesitated, knowing that anything I said would put the dog in danger. Put him out on the street? Leave him tied to someone else’s door? Send him to a pound? My rule said to avoid animals, but the purpose behind it was to protect them. I couldn’t let myself hurt an animal, even through inaction. I’d hurt too many people that way already.
    “I’ll call the animal shelter,” said Potash, “but you keep him in here until they come.”
    “Wait,” I said. “We have to give him to someone who wants him.”
    For the first time, his facade cracked and he stared at me in a grimace of complete confusion. “Why?”
    “Because I won’t let him get hurt.”
    “The shelter won’t hurt him.”
    “But they won’t help him either,” I said. “I have rules.”
    He stared at the dog a minute. “So what do you want to do?”
    I want to hit this dog with the sharp edge of a shovel until I can’t recognize it anymore. I closed my eyes and breathed. “I want to put an ad in the … I don’t know. No one reads the paper, and I don’t use the Internet. Craigslist? Is that a thing?”
    “Yes, that’s a thing. You don’t have your laptop?”
    “I leave it at work.”
    “That’s not the point of a laptop.”
    “Do you have one?” I asked. “Or a phone?”
    “Not a smartphone.” He stepped backward into the hall. “We’ll post an ad tomorrow. I’m closing this so he can’t get back out.”
    “Okay—” I started, but he shut the door, and I heard his footsteps walk away. I looked at the dog. “Hey.”
    It didn’t respond.
    “I don’t want to hurt you, okay?” I’d had him here before, and he’d been fine. It was only a few hours, though, and this would be all night. I sat back down, watching Boy Dog like I expected him to attack, or turn into a bowl of flowers. He looked back, mouth open, panting softly. “How’d you get