“I’ve always wondered. She had help, didn’t she?”
Colt’s silence must have been enough of an answer.
“Of course,” Vaughn said in an understanding tone. “In any case, I had suspicions from the beginning, but there was nothing I could do to prove it, and I was admittedly not eager to try.”
“And you expect me to believe that?” Colt asked.
“I expect nothing. It is simply the truth,” said Vaughn.
Colt paused. “How did you find us?”
Vaughn looked up at the slits of sky visible through the slats in the porch’s roof. “I had a vision. One of the clearest in my many years on this earth.”
Colt frowned. “A vision of what?”
Vaughn didn’t answer immediately. When he did, his voice was quiet and solemn. “Destruction. Death. Carnage. It took me some time to make sense of the visions. The landmarks were subtle, but eventually, I traced the killings to this region, and from there, it wasn’t that difficult to remember you.”
“I made that much of an impression as a little kid?”
“Your mother did,” he answered. “She smelled of fear, which is not at all uncommon for a new mother in the Kinship, but there was something about her. Something about your eyes that seemed familiar.”
“A little less cryptic, please,” said Colt.
Andrew gave him a look. Plague Doctor or not, Vaughn seemed to be in a patient mood.
“It’s difficult to explain. You are a lupine, are you not?” asked Vaughn.
“Yeah,” Colt answered, unsure of what that had to do with anything.
“Powerful variants,” Vaughn mused. “Powerful, but rooted hopelessly in the material world. You see nothing without your eyes and hear nothing without your ears. There are things in this world beyond such rational senses.”
“So you’re what, psychic?” asked Andrew. He was taking it all in stride for someone who hadn’t even believed in the supernatural a year ago.
“Something like that. Though my prescience is not nearly as powerful as that of a changeling,” Vaughn remarked. “This one in particular.”
“I don’t understand,” said Colt. “What does Peter want with you?”
“Is it really that hard to understand?” Vaughn challenged. “The same hatred that burned so deeply within you must also be within him.”
“I think I’m pretty well within my rights to hate the fucker who killed my mother,” said Colt. “Somehow, I doubt Peter is that sentimental.”
“Perhaps,” said Vaughn. “In any case, as the one who allowed him to survive, every innocent drop of blood he’s shed is on my hands.”
“So, what?” Colt asked. “You’re saying you want to help me put it right?”
“My time in this world is close to an end,” said Vaughn. “I can hardly expect mercy in whatever comes next if I do not make an attempt to rectify my greatest mistake. That, and I owe you a debt.”
“How do you figure that?”
“You killed Christopher.”
Colt stared at him. “He’s your handler. Isn’t he the one who protects you?”
“He was,” Vaughn admitted. “But he is also the one who brought me into this world so long ago. The one who sealed my fate and damned my soul.”
“I take it he didn’t give you the full job description,” said Colt.
The darkness in the other ghoul’s gaze made him look like what he was for a split second, but it was gone just as quickly. “When I became a Plague Doctor, when I took this power from my predecessor, I believed I was entering a sacred calling. And in a sense, that was true. Even the devil holds things sacred--and, having lived more than one long lifetime haunted not only by the souls of my victims but those who came before me as well, I have no doubt that I am one of his agents.”
Colt fell silent, processing his words. “I want to buy the whole ‘reformed monster’ routine, I really do. And trust me, if anyone can relate, it’s me, but the only reason I don’t want you dead right now is because Peter has someone I love. Someone I will trade for your life in a second.”
Andrew looked at him like he was insane, but Vaughn didn’t even blink. Colt was telling him nothing he didn’t already know. Hell, if he really was psychic, Vaughn probably knew more about Colt’s own thoughts than he did.
“Death is not something I fear. It is, however, a natural consequence that I will pass my power on to another,” said Vaughn. “I’ve been searching for some time, for one who would see the task with as much spite as it deserves. One who knows intimately the pain it