He wasn’t wrong.
“I almost hurt the people I love most,” he told Zane. “My daughter. Her mother. I wasn’t in control. I was a passenger in my own body, watching myself become a monster.”
The room had gone very still.
“You didn’t choose this,” Eric continued. “You didn’t have a choice in what he did to you, or what he made you carry, or what he turned you into while you’re too young and too desperate and too goddamn trusting to know any better. The only thing you get to choose is what you do next.”
Allie moved then, stepping forward to stand near Zane. She didn’t touch him, didn’t offer comfort exactly, but she was there. Present.
“I get it too,” she said quietly. “I know what it’s like to carry something inside you that scares you. To wonder if you’re dangerous. To have people look at you and see a threat instead of a person.” She glanced at Eric, then back at Zane. “The onlydifference between us is that I had people who told me the truth. Who helped me understand what I was dealing with. You had a demon whispering lies.”
Zane stared at her like she’d thrown him a lifeline he didn’t deserve.
And I felt it all.
Disgust, hot and thick in my throat—because this boy had marked one of my students for death, had helped thatthingin my basement claim a child’s life, and no amount of “I didn’t know” would ever bring Trevor back.
Understanding, bitter as it was—because I’d seen what Eric had gone through, too.
Pride, strange and unexpected, because it took courage to stand in front of us and confess. To hand us a loaded weapon and wait to see if we’d use it. Most people ran from their sins. This kid was running toward accountability.
Pride in my daughter, too. For seeing past her own fear to recognize a kindred spirit.
And sadness. God, the sadness. Because there was no fixing this. No time machine, no way to unsay the words that had damned Trevor or undo the mark that had killed him. The past was written in blood, and all any of us could do was carry the weight of it forward.
Eric took a step closer to Zane, waiting until the boy’s sobs had quieted to ragged breathing. Until the hands dropped, and the blotchy, tear-streaked face was visible.
“Look at me,” Eric said.
Zane looked. He was expecting condemnation—I could see it in the set of his jaw, the way he braced himself.
“I spent my childhood as a lab rat,” Eric said, his voice low and steady. “A priest named Donnelly thought he could create the perfect Demon Hunter. He experimented on me, even before my birth. Injected me with things. Put something insideme I didn’t know about until years later—demonic essence that I carried without understanding, and which I passed to my daughter without meaning to. Which was exactly Donnelly’s end game.”
Zane stared at him.
“You don’t get to choose your father,” Eric continued. “You don’t get to choose what he does to you, or what he makes you carry, or what he turns you into while you’re too young and too desperate and too goddamn trusting to know any better. The only thing you get to choose is what you do next.”
“But Trevor?—”
“Is dead.” The words were gentle despite their brutality. “And that’s a weight you’ll carry for the rest of your life. Every day. Every night when you can’t sleep. Every time you see a kid who reminds you of him.” Eric’s voice dropped. “I know. Believe me, I know. But carrying the weight doesn’t mean you have to drown in it. It doesn’t mean you don’t get to keep fighting.”
Something passed between them—this man who’d spent decades wrestling with the things that had been done to him and the boy who was just beginning to understand the shape of his own cage.
“Why tell us?” I asked. “Why now?”
Zane turned to me, and I saw the answer in his face before he spoke.
“Because I never thought I could tellanyone.Who was going to believe me? The cops? They’d think I was insane. A priest? They might burn me at the stake. My friends?” He laughed, hollow and exhausted. “What friends?”
He spread his hands helplessly.
“But you people get it, and a lot deeper than I thought, too. You actually know that demons are real, that my father is a monster, that the marks I made weren’t just creepy requests from a weird dad. For the first time in my life, telling the truthdoesn’t make me sound crazy. It just makes me sound like what I am.”
“Which is?” I asked.
“A weapon,” he said quietly, reminding me that Allie had once called herself that. “But they pointed me at the wrong target.” He straightened slightly. Not much—he was still hollowed out, wrecked, barely holding together—but enough. Enough to meet my eyes without flinching.
“I’m done being his puppet. Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. Lock me up. Use me as bait. Kill me if you think that’s safer.” His voice steadied. “I don’t care. I just want to help stop him. I want Trevor’s death to mean something.”
