Chapter 49: Solomon's Raid

Damien found Adrian on the roof.

The motel was low, flat, the kind of place where you could see the highway for miles. The rain had stopped. The clouds were breaking. The first stars were coming out, thin and cold.

Adrian was sitting on the edge, his legs hanging over the side, his hands in his lap. He didn't turn when Damien came up.

"You're going to fall," Damien said.

"I'm not going to fall."

"You don't know that."

Adrian was quiet for a moment. Then he laughed. It was a strange sound, thin and hollow, like something that had been empty for a long time.

"I don't know anything anymore," he said. "I don't know what I am. I don't know what's happening to me. I don't know if I'm going to wake up tomorrow and still be me."

Damien sat beside him. Not close. Close enough.

"You want to know what I see?" he said.

Adrian looked at him.

Damien pointed at Adrian's hands. At the veins moving under the skin. At the thing that wasn't his.

"I see a man who opened a door that should have stayed closed. Who touched something that wasn't meant to be touched. Who's been running ever since, trying to pretend it didn't happen." He looked at Adrian. "I've seen it before. In prison. In the fighting rings. In men who thought they could control the thing inside them. They couldn't. Neither can you."

Adrian's face was still. "You think I should stop fighting it."

Damien shrugged. "I think fighting it is killing you. I think running is killing you. I think you've been dying since you walked through those doors, and the only thing keeping you alive is the thing you're trying to kill."

Adrian looked at his hands. The veins were still moving. Still shifting. Still reaching.

"What is it?" he asked. "What am I becoming?"

Damien was quiet for a long time. The stars were coming out. The highway was dark.

"I don't know," he said. "But I know what you're not."

Adrian waited.

"You're not a monster. Monsters don't care. They don't fight. They don't run back into burning buildings to save people they barely know." He looked at Adrian. "You're not a monster. You're a man who touched something he shouldn't have. And now you're trying to figure out how to live with it."

Adrian closed his eyes. The thing in his chest was quiet. Waiting.

"How do I live with it?" he asked.

Damien stood. He looked at the highway, at the dark, at the stars coming out.

"You stop running," he said. "You stop fighting. You let it be part of you. And you use it. For the people who need you."

He walked toward the door, toward the stairs, toward the light.

Adrian sat on the edge of the roof, his legs hanging over the side, his hands in his lap.

He looked at his hands. The veins were still. The thing was still.

He closed his eyes. He stopped running.