“And when their time is up?” asked Colt. “They just lie down and let the next in line chop off their heads?”
“Abnegation of personal interest is a qualification for the position,” Stan said calmly.
Colt looked back at Susan, who’d been dead silent for the last few minutes. She didn’t look like she was fully present in the room anymore.
“So this Plague Doctor is the one who killed my mother,” said Colt.
“Yes,” she said hoarsely. “Until recently, I thought he had killed all of you. I wanted to tell you, Colt. You have no idea how many times I tried, but seeing you alive, seeing how much like her you are… I made a promise to Melanie before her death. She made me promise that if anything happened to her, I’d raise you both as my own. I failed her, and I didn’t want to fail you again.”
“That doesn’t explain why you kept it from me,” Colt growled, now feeling the weight of grief as heavily as betrayal.
“You don’t understand,” said Susan. “She made me promise that if anything happened to her, I’d take you boys and I’d run as far away as I could to start over. I’d raise you to believe you were my children, and you would never know anything of her, your father, or the past.”
Colt stared at her, searching for any hint of deception. He wished he could find it. That would be easier than living with even more questions than he’d had when he knew nothing of his past. Not even his mother’s name.
“Why?” he finally asked.
“I don’t know,” said Susan. “It seemed strange at the time, but that was Melanie. She’d be smiling and laughing one moment, then contemplating her own mortality the next. I thought she was just being dramatic, and then when they found the ash… if I’d thought there was any way either of you could have survived, I would have moved heaven and earth to find you.”
“I believe you,” Colt murmured. And whether he wanted to or not, he understood why she’d done what she had. Stan, too. He was nothing if not loyal to his wife, and Colt knew he’d cover anything up if she asked him. Colt owed his life to that fact, after all. “Who was it?”
Stan and Susan both looked confused by the sudden change in subject.
“Who was who, son?” Stan asked.
“The Plague Doctor who killed her.”
They exchanged an uneasy glance, and Stan answered, “No one knows who the Plague Doctors are. They wear masks and robes to keep their identities concealed. It’s not exactly a job that makes you popular.”
“I guess not,” Colt muttered. “But the Council would know, wouldn’t they?”
“I doubt all of them would,” Stan admitted. “From what I understand, they each select one or two Plague Doctors to preside over a different region, and even the others aren’t aware until they’re retired. That’s hearsay, but it sounds about right.”
Colt nodded. He knew one person who had an intimate understanding of the Council’s goings on, but he’d have to deal with her later. “I still don’t understand how I survived. How both of us did.”
“I’ve been asking myself that for the better part of two years now,” said Susan. “In your case, I just chalked it up to a miracle. A final act of love from Melanie, but in your brother’s…”
“Yeah. Not so much a miracle as a curse.” Colt coughed to clear the tightness in his throat, but it wouldn’t budge.
“You’ve seen him, haven’t you?” Susan asked. “What did he look like?”
There was a strange note of hope in her voice. As if she still had some sense of obligation to the monster her beloved friend had unleashed upon the world.
“Like the devil became a child,” Colt answered. He paused. “What was his name?”
Susan swallowed audibly. He already knew what the answer would be, but he needed to hear it from her. “Peter.”
He snorted a laugh. “Of course. And mine? Am I really even Colt, or is that just something the cop who found me came up with on the fly?”
“Your name is Reinholdt,” she said with a faint smile. “But Peter couldn’t pronounce it, and it sounded like he was saying Colt, so that’s what we called you. It was his first word, actually.”
“Reinholdt,” he scoffed, shaking his head. In a way, he was relieved it was close enough. Colt Jager was the first name that had ever felt like his own. “I think I’m going