Chapter 23
From Mouths of Locusts
Darkness shadowed the sun an hour after it rose, but the two on the bed huddled closer to the oil lamp and forged ahead.
Laurie suddenly straightened, his heart jumping. “I think I’ve got it. Here’s the word ‘return’ and ‘unwind’, and here’s the word for ‘bring back’—Decker, we might be able to reverse everything.” His eyes lit up with promise, stumbling through the page black with writing.
Hope sparked a flame in Decker. This was a step forward after they’d struggled through the nonsensical jabbering of a madman bent on bringing creatures to the light.
Whitton doggedly pursued the knowledge of what made them different from humans and how to make creatures human again. His journals explained the stitched together lines of Nathan’s chest. His old friend never accepted what the bite had made him, and Decker couldn’t blame him for trying to make himself human again. Even if it meant dealing with Whitton.
Wings roared in the distance, rousing them, and Laurie dog-eared his page and tucked it under his arm before they took the steps two at a time together.
Willa peered out the cracks of the boarded windows as a humming droned in the distance, rising and swelling. The locusts blackened the sky, borne on thick, foggy heat.
Sister Inez glanced up from the rosaries in front of her. Her needle was gone, and she wet the end of the cord before meticulously feeding it through the next bead. “Yourdoctorknew Elias.”
Laurie stared at her.
“You’re a miracle worker, Sister Inez,” Decker said. He cracked open the door to the back room. Whitton’s head hung limp on his blood-soaked chest, rising and falling in labored breaths. Deep, ragged pits gaped in his face where his eyes had been.
Whatever the cost.
She shrugged off his praise. “He wasn’t helpful. He said he helped Elias with a problem, didn’t know anything about the plagues until the illness struck, and he knew there would be many bodies to use.”
“He’s lying,” Decker said. “We found proof that the plagues are manufactured. Has to be Whitton.”
“And what about him knowing Elias? Always comes back to him,” Safine muttered as she flipped through a page of the medical journal in front of her. The coffee cups around her told him she hadn’t slept. “These are frommynotes,myresearch through the years. All those times you let Elias come over, gave him a room when the chapel was toodrafty, he was taking my knowledge to the doctor, selling us out.” Safine’s eyes were hollow when he met them. “He used you, and you let him.”
“I couldn’t have known, Safi.”
“What about him?” She jerked her head towards Laurie, and he shrunk behind Decker. “How can we know, for sure, he’s not a part of this?”
“I trust him.”
“You trusted Elias.”
“I made a mistake.”
“Another one is breathing down your neck.” Safine slammed the book shut, her chair screeching behind her as she stood. TheGoosedarkened as the swarm descended on Ender’s Ridge and millions of wings rasped as they landed. The building groaned as tiny claws dug into the roof, and Willa’s knuckles went white around her gun.
Safine’s eyes blazed with green fire. “When will you stand behind your own people, Decker? When you’ve run out of graves for them?”
The last thread of his temper cracked. “Laurie is the only one giving us a chance to get out of this,” he snapped.
“Thisonly started when he showed up.”
“Doesn’t mean a goddamn thing—”
“Decker.” Laurie’s shoulder brushed against his own as he stood next to him, thumb worrying the edge of the journal. “She’s right to question. I think I understand why Elias was here. My aunt acted strange the last few years of her life—only leaving at night, drawing the curtains, and when I begged her to visit, she made poor excuses. I knew she was grieving when he didn’t return, but it was more than that. She—the police say she fell on the fence. Iron through her heart,” Laurie said, wincing at the memory.
The pieces slotted into place like a well-mixed drink. Decker could sympathize—the preacher’s wife falling gravely ill with asickness keeping her from her faith, leading him to a partnership with a doctor who welcomed unsavory practices.
“If he wanted to save his wife, trying to destroy the rest of us is a shit way to go about it,” Safine bit out.
Decker didn’t move from between the two of them. He knew damn well who would win if she jumped at Laurie, and he didn’t want to choose which side to be on.
He couldn’t.
