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Frozen
ignored the flutter of panic rising in his chest as those few, dreadful minutes
in the woods taunted him.
 Please, baby, tell me what he did.
Maybe it was the  baby, an endearment Roman had never used before,
but it broke Lee s shamed silence.  He snuck up on me, hit me, Lee replied,
the words like acid on his tongue. His eyes stung.  He said it was my fault you
were gay. He put the gun to my head and told me to blow him.
Roman sucked in a harsh, desperate breath.
 I didn t have to, Lee went on, needing Roman to understand.  You came
out and distracted him. So I hit him and ran, but I wasn t fast enough.
 Goddamnit. Roman tugged him into his arms, hugging him tight, and
Lee held on. He needed the anchor so he didn t fall into his own misery.  Son
of a bitch, I should have just killed the bastard.
Lee concentrated on the rapid beat of Roman s heart, his ragged intake
of breath, and somehow those things calmed him. Cleared away the shock of
everything that Mr. Carmichael had done, leaving only the mystery of what
Roman had done in retaliation. He struggled for the strange words Roman had
spoken, and only one came clearly.  Roe, who is Sarloth?
Roman went rigid.  What?
 You were talking to someone after I got shot, when I was dying. It wasn t
your dad.
 No, it wasn t.
 Who was it?
Roman pulled back, his hands gripping Lee s forearms, his gaze drilling
into Lee s.  Sarloth saved your life that night. He came because I called him.
 But why?
 Because we had a blood pact, and those words activated the pact. Sarloth
is a demon, Lee, and I summoned him to protect me from my father.
Blood roared in Lee s ears, and his vision tunneled briefly, zeroing in on
the bizarre blue of Roman s eyes and nothing else. And then he snapped back,
and he was shaking his head at Roman.  No, that s not& they don t& shit.
 They re real, as real as you and me. Roman spoke so calmly, so rationally.
 Sarloth is a vengeance demon. He s drawn to people who are wronged and
abused, and he ll help them for a price.
Lee couldn t possibly accept any of this was true, but he still asked,  How
did you know to summon him?
69
A. M. Arthur
 Mr. Porter.
 Huh? The town grocer had done this?
 You remember the story about the Polish immigrants who killed Mr.
Porter s uncle? Mr. Porter told me that when he was a teenager, one of them
came back to town. He was an old man, but he saw how the vengeance his
people asked for had destroyed the Porters. Mr. Porter s father was an abusive
drunk, and his mother had killed herself from grief, and Mr. Porter took the
brunt of the abuse to protect his siblings.
 The Polish man told him about Sarloth, told him how to do the summon-
ing and make an acceptable sacrifice to ensure Sarloth s cooperation. Mr. Porter
never had to use the summoning, because his father drank himself to death a
few months later, but he always remembered. I think he saw a lot of himself
in me back then, with everything I was going through. About a week before
our trip, he told me how to summon Sarloth.
Roman s mouth twitched in a sad, secretive smile.  I didn t believe him. I
thought he was just a crazy old man, but then after that Friday, when my dad
kicked me and I thought he was going to kill me? I figured what the hell, you
know? I went into the woods between your house and the trailer, and I did
everything Mr. Porter said. Sarloth agreed that if my father ever tried to physi-
cally harm me again, Sarloth would stop him.
Lee nodded, even though he was more confused than ever. As explanations
went, it made perfect sense. It was also the dumbest thing he d ever heard  if
he could ignore the facts. Like the fact that Lee remembered being shot, remem-
bered the pain and fear, the sense of dying, and then he was found floating in
the creek without a single bullet wound. Or the fact that Mr. Carmichael dis-
appeared after firing that third shot, and he couldn t remember a thing about
that night when police questioned him.
But a demon? He didn t think he could accept that.
 So when your dad shot at you, Sarloth stepped in, Lee said.
 Yes. Sarloth carried him off, scared the living hell out of him, then depos-
ited him in the woods. At the time, I didn t want Sarloth to kill him, just stop
him, but if I d known what Dad tried to make you do  
 It s okay.
 No, it isn t. Hate burned in Roman s eyes, directed at a man long dead.
 I knew he was capable of hurting me, because he d done it for years. I never [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]