Devil's Advocate (The X-Files: Origins #2)(93)

“Of course I do. She saved your life, Dana.”

“She lied about everything.”

Melissa shook her head. “She told the truth every time.”

“She lied about Angelo.”

“She’s human,” snapped Melissa. “Anyone can make a mistake. Besides, it was Sunlight blocking her from seeing the whole truth.”

“So what is it?” demanded Dana. “Did she make a mistake or was it Sunlight?”

“Both. Corinda is doing everything she can to help you, to help everyone in this town. If it wasn’t for her, you’d be dead, and the killings would never stop. Did you ever think about that?”

Dana stared at her. “I … I don’t even know how to respond to that.”

“That’s because you know I’m right.”

Dana turned away and stared at the wall. “No, that’s not what I know.”

Melissa said nothing. When Dana glanced over a few minutes later, her sister was gone. She hadn’t heard her slip away.

She felt it, though.

*

The family moved through the crisis like people recovering from a hurricane or a tornado. They found their way back to routines. Dad spent a lot of time at work. Mom and Charlie drifted back into their quiet inner lives. Gran was Gran.

Melissa was there, but there was something different about her. Or maybe it was about how they were together. Melissa still believed in Corinda, in her powers, in her insights. Dana did not.

What she believed was that Sunlight was a madman. Corinda was a liar.

And Dana could feel her heart change. It did not actually break, but it went cold. She felt that happen. The world went colder, too. It shrank from the larger world into something that made more sense, even if it was an uglier thing.

She thought a lot about God and the devil. About good and evil. All of her life Dana had accepted “evil” as a part of the world without stopping to consider what it actually was. Or what it meant. Now she had no choice but to look at it as more than a Sunday school concept, as something alive in the world. In her world.

She had seen evil. She’d looked into its eyes.

She did not, however, understand it. Was evil something the devil put into the hearts and minds of human beings? That would be the easy answer.

It wasn’t answer enough, though. Not for her. Not anymore.

Dana wondered if evil was something humans had invented. That was horrible, but it also seemed to make more logical sense to her. It meant that people, good and bad, had to be responsible for who they were and for what they did.

Sunlight was evil. She was sure about that.

Why, though? Was he sick? Was he damaged from some kind of abuse? That was what the newspapers were saying. The reporters went on and on about it, talking about “nature” and “nurture.” About what his own biology was responsible for and about what the influences in his life did to shape him. If that was true, then did that make him evil or sick?

But … what if it wasn’t true? There were plenty of people who suffered abuse. Only a tiny fraction of them ever hurt someone else. It wasn’t an excuse that made sense to Dana. It wasn’t logical.

Nature? Nurture?

That wasn’t a definition of evil. And as she thought about it deep into one lonely night, she realized that for any of this to make sense, for Sunlight to make sense, there must be a third option.

Nature.

Nurture.

And choice.

That, she thought, was what evil was.

It made sense. It fit logic, it squared with science. But it also scared her so badly she stayed awake all night. Dana knew that, like all truths, now that she knew it, she could not un-know it.

For some people, evil was a choice.





EPILOGUE

?1?

County Road 63

Near the Craiger City Line

April 10, 11:11 P.M.

The deputy driving the patrol car killed the siren as soon as he crossed the city limits but left the blue-and-red flashing lights on as he drove into the country. He and his partner sat in tense silence.

The night was immense, with mountains of clouds revealed in flashes of lightning from the coming storm. Wind shear tore and shaped the clouds, so the front wall of the storm looked like towering cliffs that rose thousands of feet above Craiger. Lightning inside the clouds revealed cracks and veins, as if the whole sky could split apart and collapse onto the town.

There was no traffic this far out. The driver clicked on the high beams as he searched for the unpaved side road that led to a quarry that had been abandoned in the sixties.

Up ahead, a pair of headlights clicked on and off, on and off.

The deputy pulled to a stop thirty feet away, tires crunching on old gravel and twists of dead vine. The cars sat there for half a minute with nothing moving except the flashers. Then the doors of the black sedan opened. The gleaming, highly polished paint job of the car was as intensely black as the suits of the two men who got out. The men walked slowly over to the sheriff’s department car. One of the men twirled his finger to indicate that they should lower a window. The driver did.

“Let’s do this,” said the shorter of the two men in black suits. His red hair looked almost black in the wash of red-blue lights.

The deputies exchanged a look but did not move. Agent Gerlach reached into his inner pocket and withdrew an envelope. He pretended to give it to the driver, pulled it back, chuckled, and then handed it over.