"What are you doing?" Bron asked.
"They can't be allowed to remember that we were here," the priest said. "I have to clean their skulls out, sanitize them."
"Of everything?" Bron asked.
"By tomorrow," the priest said, "this man won't know his name, his phone number, or how to put on his socks."
"You'd do that?" Bron asked.
"They're lucky," the priest said. "I could make their hearts forget how to beat."
Olivia returned, making a final visual inspection. "I count fourteen dead police officers, and one dead civilian." Her voice was ragged with shock, regret.
The priest went from Blair back to the girl.
Olivia erased the third boy, then finished up with Riley. He was lying asleep at Bron's feet. Suddenly his eyes flew open.
Olivia suggested, "Go to your car, sit inside, and wait for us." Riley stared at the ceiling blankly for a moment, got up, and ambled out the door, as if he were a zombie.
Olivia did the same with the girl, and soon all of the Draghouls had wandered from the room.
"What are you going to do with them?" Bron asked. He could think of nothing worse than finding your mind wiped—having no memories, being unable to speak, to dress. "Kill them?"
The priest looked to Olivia, as if to ask, "Is he really that stupid?"
Olivia said, "No, Bron, we won't kill them, if we can avoid it. We'll convert them."
"Convert them to Christianity?" Bron asked.
The priest gave Bron an odd look. "You could say that, I suppose. I'll empty them of memories, and then insert my own. I'll turn them into copies of me."
"We'll 'possess' them," Olivia explained. "Think of your memories, your consciousness, as software. We'll just pull out all of the old programming, all of the faulty stuff, and replace it with something better. When we're done, the possessed are called poppets."
"I can't believe that you'd do that," Bron said. "It sounds so ... vile."
"It's not so bad," the priest said. "You'd be surprised at how quickly the poppets begin to differentiate, develop their own personalities."
"Bron," Olivia said. "What do you think they planned to do to you? At the very least, they were going to take all of your memories. They could turn you into a child, make you forget how to open a door. They could put you in a room and make you forget that there's a world beyond it. Keeping you captive would be nothing. They could keep you dumber than a cocker spaniel. Or, if they wanted, they could wipe out your mind completely, and fill it with one of their minds, one of their personalities. Their Shadow Lord would have done that, made you two people with one mind, one heart, one goal. Just one night with the enemy, and you could become the enemy."
Bron's face must have been a study in shock. The priest smiled. "It doesn't hurt them, Bron," he said. "I should know. I was one of them, once. I was one of the Draghouls, a Dread Knight. I served the Shadow Lord for three hundred years."
Chapter 22
Do Overs
"For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been.'"
Olivia sent Bron to her car to wait while she cleaned up. Bron sat nervously watching the parking lot. A few minutes later, the priest came from the police station, jumped in a car with the four prisoners, and drove away.
Draghouls, the priest had called them. Bron's head was spinning. He'd met a guy who fought like a Kung Fu master. He'd met a man who claimed to be more than three hundred years old. The strangest part was, Bron believed him.
Two minutes later, Olivia rushed out to the car. "The police will be here soon, I think. Let's get out of here." She started the ignition. The car lunged as she sped away.
"What now?" Bron asked. "What do we do next?" He imagined fleeing, driving as far away from here as they could, as fast as they could.
"Go home," Olivia said. "Get to bed, and act like none of this ever happened."
"What do you mean?" Bron said. "How could we act like none of this ever happened?"
"Simple," Olivia said. "You go to school and take your classes. I go and teach."
"But the priest said that there were some cops who knew our names, who might piece things together."
"And there are more hunters in town. The priest knows where they're hiding. He saw them in the enemies' minds. He'll go after them, first."
Bron sat in the car as she drove out of the city, peered out at the desert beneath a waxing moon. The cliffs were the color of dark blood as it pools.
Olivia shook her head. Bron could tell that she was still nervous, nearly unhinged.
"What are you thinking?" Bron asked.
"Those people scare me."
"Tell me more about Father Leery?" Bron asked.
"Not yet," Olivia said. "There aren't many of us. The enemy has made sure of that. Hiding is our best defense."
"But you know him?" Bron asked. "You know how to get hold of him?"
"Yes," she admitted.
"Is he really three hundred years old?"
"Yes," Olivia said. "The Draghouls have more than one way to... extend their lives."
"Do all masaaks live that long?"
"No," Olivia said. "Not normally. Eighty, ninety years."
Bron considered. Up ahead, a fox was crossing the road. Its eyes glowed yellow-white in the headlights, and then it leapt into the mesquite and was swallowed by the desert. "You should tell me about them," Bron said. "I should know everything."
"I'm not sure of you, yet," Olivia said, "and for good reason."
"What reason? Why wouldn't you trust me?"
"There's a coldness to you."
"I'm not that cold."
Olivia sighed, and asked, "What's your favorite quote?"
"From a famous person?" Bron asked. Nothing came to mind, but he seized on one: "That which does not kill us, makes us stronger."
Olivia grinned. "Nietzsche. I knew you'd choose that one." Bron realized that she really had known. She'd been inside his mind, and maybe she knew him better than he knew himself, in some ways. "He's a little grim," she confessed, "more quotable than wise. Sometimes bad things happen to you, and they leave scars—a car wreck, a shocking revelation about a friend. There's another German philosopher I like, Martin Buber. He said: 'It is possible to silence the conflict in the soul, but it is not possible to uproot it."
Bron considered that. It sounded like she was saying that you could never really escape the past. Even the most peaceful men bear scars: Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King.
Each of them was great, yet Bron had to wonder: were they great despite their scars, or did they become great because they were forced to endure the unendurable?
Or was she hinting at something even deeper?
He stopped, struck by a realization. "You've got something you want to tell me, but you're afraid of how I'll take it. You think I'm too scarred."
Olivia peered deep into his eyes, and just when he thought she would speak, she said, "There's no hurry."
"No hurry?" he asked. "We just about got possessed!"
"And now our enemies will be our poppets," she said. "It only seems just. Tell me, what do you think the Draghouls will do when they find out that they've lost a bunch of their own? Will they flood the area with more agents, or back off and reconsider?"
"I... can't even guess."
She smiled weakly. "Anyone who was sane would run away from this city forever. That's what the Draghouls will expect us to do. They'll probably search again, make a cursory sweep, but they'll move on quickly. So we're going to have to keep a low profile for awhile."