Hell Followed with Us(63)

The man with teeth in his neck gurgles, and Benji rears back with a mouthful of flesh, a spray of red following in an arc through the space between them.

This is the easy part. This is what Nick is good at.

CRACK. Clink. Two. The bullet hits a thigh and distracts the soldier just enough for Benji to grab him by the face and smash him into the brick storefront. Nick counts the shells and not the bodies because it’s what the general taught him, saying the number should be the same anyway.

Nick counts Benji’s “shells” too. Three, four. Benji isn’t tall enough to reach any important vein in the next neck, so he tears open a forearm instead, right where the brachial artery splits. The amount of blood is impressive. Five. A bullet to the side of the head. Six. A hand shoved into a mouth and the jaw snapped like a tree limb cracking from the trunk. The Angel screams and chokes, and Benji tears it off the rest of the way. The Angel stumbles once, twice, grasping for his face, before finally falling. He coughs and writhes, and Benji just watches.

Then, after the Angel gasps one last time, blessed quiet.

The world creeps back in, past the lockdown clamping Nick’s senses, the adrenaline easing its grip. The rustle of debris, the flutter of robes, his own breath.

It’s him and Benji now.

Benji isn’t what he used to be. He stares at the bodies on the ground like he’s trying to figure out where the bullet wounds on the corpses came from through the haze of anger. Thin threads of entrails drip from his mouth. The blood on his face catches the starlight.

What is Nick supposed to say? What kind of words work here? Will Benji even understand?

Benji rolls his shoulders, and his body cracks like the wolf is trying to claw its way out. One of the Angels wheezes as his weight forces air out of his dead lungs. It smells like copper, gunpowder, and shit.

Nick starts forward. Farther into the road. Between the cars. Onto the curb.

He holds out a hand and whispers, “Benji.”

When Benji turns to face him, it’s almost lazily. Slowly, showing every single jagged tooth in his open-wound mouth. As if he knew Nick was there the whole time and was just waiting for him to get too close. His tongue—the length of a forearm, longer—snakes out of his mouth, testing the air, jaw unhinging and the glint of the moon traveling up the length of his serrated fangs. He looks like he plunged half his face into acid. When a piece of flesh falls, Nick can’t tell if it was in his mouth or part of it.

Nick says, “It’s me.”

Benji replies with an ear-shattering shriek.

Nick is slammed against the sidewalk and into the wet, heavy bodies of the dead Angels, and Benji is on top of him. His gun arm is pinned, and those teeth are inches from his face, Benji’s tongue dripping with spit, gore stretching between his fangs, fingers digging into Nick’s shoulders hard enough to bruise, to break skin.

Nick does nothing. He does not breathe. He does not blink. If he moves a single muscle, Benji is going to tear out his jugular. Those teeth will go in like knives, and he will bleed out onto the sidewalk before he can think to staunch the wound—unrestricted blood loss from a major vein leads to unconsciousness in seconds and death within minutes. Benji’s weight presses him into the ribs of a corpse, into a squelching mess of shredded insides and robes that reek of bleach, sweat, and gore.

The next noise Benji makes is not a shriek. It’s a whimper. It crawls up from his throat like a dying thing.

Those eyes are still his. Seraph hasn’t touched them. They’re a little red, strained, but they’re his.

Nick is about to do something stupid.

He whispers, “Your hair is in your face.”

Benji does not kill him.

All he does is blink.

Nick lifts his arm and presses it flat against Benji’s chest, just enough pressure to push him back. Benji shuffles away, eyes wide, and Nick manages to sit. Benji’s fingers leave red marks on the concrete. He’s so small. He’s so light. Black liquid trickles from his nose, and Nick can’t imagine Benji has any insides left to lose.

“It’s me,” Nick says. “I’m here now. It’s okay.” It’s not a lie. He makes a mental list of everything they’ll have to do to get Benji into the bank without raising suspicion. Clean the blood off his face. Get him into new clothes and a mask. Soothe the curled-up cramping thing his hands are doing. Cover his arms.

Just make sure he gets home.

One last push, and Benji falls back to the ground. Nick takes the last of the bobby pins from his pocket, selects exactly two, and clips a stubborn clump of Benji’s hair away from his forehead. It’s like trying to fix the Hoover Dam with duct tape, but Benji’s shoulders sag, and another sad little noise crawls up his throat, and his eyes finally focus.

“Nick?” he whispers.

They’ve lost the Vanguard, but Nick hasn’t lost Benji. There is no way in hell Nick could have brought himself to give Benji over. How had he even thought he could? God, what is wrong with him? How could he?

“There you go,” Nick says. “Thought we lost you for a second.” Even though he wants to cry, Thank God, thank God, thank God, and Nick hasn’t thanked God for anything in years.





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