"I don't know." His voice sounded sort of hollow. Shock.
"You did good back there."
"I thought I was going to run over him. I thought I was going to kill him with the car."
"He thought so, too, or he wouldn't have moved," I said.
He looked at me. "What if he hadn't moved?"
"He did move."
"But what if he hadn't?"
"Then we would have gone over him, and we'd still be on the highway, safe."
"You would have let me run him down, wouldn't you?"
"Survival is the name of the game, Larry. If you can't deal with that, find another business to be in."
"Animators don't get shot at."
"Those were members of Humans First, a right-wing fanatic group that hates anything to do with the supernatural." So I was leaving out about the personal visit from Jeremy Ruebens. What the kid didn't know might not hurt him.
I stared at his pale face. He looked hollow-eyed. He'd met the dragon, a little dragon as dragons go, but once you've seen violence, you're never the same again. The first time you have to decide, live or die, us or them, it changes you forever. No going back. I stared at Larry's shocked face and wished it could have been different. I wished I could have kept him shining, new, and hopeful. But as my Grandmother Blake used to say, "If wishes were horses, we'd all ride."
Larry had had his first taste of my world. The only question was, would he want a second dose, or would he run? Run or go, stay or fight, age-old questions. I wasn't sure which way I wanted Larry to choose. He might live longer if he got the hell away from me, but then again maybe he wouldn't. Heads they win, tails you lose.
Chapter 21
"What about my car?" Larry asked.
I shrugged. "You've got insurance, right?"
"Yes, but..."
"Since they couldn't trash us, they may decide to trash your car."
He looked at me as if he wasn't sure whether I was kidding. I wasn't.
There was a bicycle in front of us suddenly, out of the dark. A child's pale face flashed in the headlights. "Watch out!"
Larry's eyes flicked back to the road in time to see the kid's wide, startled eyes. The brakes squealed, and the child vanished from the narrow arch of lights. There was a crunch and a bump before the car skidded to a stop. Larry was breathing heavy; I wasn't breathing at all.
The cemetery was just on our right. We were too close to stop, but... but, shit, it was a kid.
I stared out the back window. The bicycle was a crumpled mess. The child lay in a very still heap. God, please don't let him be dead.
I didn't think Humans First had enough imagination to have a child in reserve as bait. If it was a trap, it was a good one, because I couldn't leave the tiny figure crumpled by the road.
Larry was gripping the steering wheel so hard his arms shook. If I thought he'd been pale before, I'd been wrong. He looked like a sick ghost.
"Is he... hurt?" His voice squeezed out deep and rough with something like tears. It wasn't hurt he'd wanted to say. He just couldn't bring himself to use the big "D" word. Not yet, not if he could help it.
"Stay in the car," I said.
Larry didn't answer. He just sat there staring at his hands. He wouldn't look at me. But, dammit, this wasn't my fault. The fact that he'd lost his cherry tonight was not my fault. So why did it feel like it was?
I got out of the car, Browning ready in case the crazies decided to chase us onto the road. They could have gotten the .45 and be coming to shoot us.