The Devil's Only Friend Read Online Free PDF Page A

spent his life actually doing it. I hated him passionately.
    I raised my key to the lock, but he stopped me with a sudden gesture, listening to something I couldn’t hear. After a moment he looked back at me again, rolling his hand to signal me to hurry. I unlocked the door in a rush, pushing it open as soon as the bolt scraped free of the frame, and stepped inside. Potash moved in behind me, silent as a ghost, pulling the machete from its black vinyl sheath so quickly I didn’t even see him do it—it was covered one second and gleaming faintly in the dim light the next.
    The front room was dark, the windows covered with blankets, and I could hear the noise now: a muffled grunting, like someone was struggling to speak. The layout of the apartment was essentially the same as mine: a small living room with an attached kitchen, which is where we stood now; a short hallway that led to two closed doors, with a bathroom on the left and bedroom on the right. I pointed to the bedroom door, and Potash stepped forward silently. He rested his hand on the doorknob, paused a moment, then quietly pushed it open.
    The room beyond wasn’t a den of horrors. No bodies hung from the ceiling, no eyes peered out from cracks in the wall. There was a simple wooden bed with a thin mattress, and Cody asleep facedown in the middle. Nearby, on the floor, bound and gagged and tied to the bedpost, was a teenage girl. I estimated her to be about fifteen years old, fully clothed, eyes haggard, but wide awake and terrified.
    “Listen to me,” said Potash firmly, crouching down beside her. “I can’t untie you yet, but I need to know what’s happened here. Did this man bring you in?”
    The girl squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head violently.
    Potash glanced at me. “Is she saying no or is she already crazy?”
    “He gave her his supernatural awareness,” I whispered. “She could hear us outside before we even unlocked the door; it probably sounds like you’re screaming in her ear.” I lowered my voice to the barest breath. “We’re here to help you. Did this man bring you here?”
    She calmed and, after a moment, she nodded.
    “Did he drug you?”
    She stared at me, probably trying to decide how much trouble she’d get into for answering. She apparently decided it was worth it, and nodded.
    “We good to go?” asked Potash.
    “She’s moved the bed almost eight inches,” I said, pointing at the depressions the bed legs had left in the carpet. “If her struggling hasn’t woken him up, nothing we do is going to.”
    “This feels too easy,” he said, but I didn’t answer. If you do it right, it’s always easy. This was the great and dreadful end of everything I did, the paradox that made my life one long, successful hell. Months to find a weakness, more months to exploit it, endless nights of planning and practice, building up and building up until that one, perfectly executed strike that I don’t even get to make. Potash walked to the bed, aimed his machete, and cut off Cody’s head. The demon’s eyes snapped open, his mouth gaping in a caricature of speech, but it was too late. The bright red blood pumping from his neck turned to black, greasy ash, and his body crumbled to nothing. The girl screamed, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. There was no danger, no thrill, no visceral thunk as the machete vibrated in my hands.
    Months of built-up tension and nothing to release it.
    “It’s done,” said Potash in his radio, breaking the silence now that the job was done. He wiped his blade on the blanket and looked at the girl, passed out by his feet. “The runaway fainted, so I guess she isn’t stuck with Withered senses forever.”
    “Get her out here,” said Kelly. “I’ll take her to a hospital while you and John go through the house.”
    Standard procedure: we go through the house, looking for anything we can find that might give us a hint about other Withered. Finish one hunt and get started on the next one,