Page 68 of Gray
“What I want right now is for you to talk to me. What’s goin’ on in that head of yours?”
“Nothing good.” He deeply inhaled. “I see your friend Konnar and think he’s another monster to be taken out.”
“Look. I understand what you’re going through.” When I stepped up beside him, he didn’t meet my eyes. He just stared at the sea.
“How’s that?”
“For the first eight years of my life, it was drilled into my head that angels were the bad guys. The first time I saw Lazarus, I was so scared I nearly pissed myself. I thought my dad was the good guy. When I learned differently, it took me a while to process it. I fought it a lot in the beginning, refusing to accept it. Being told one thing for so long makes it hard to believe anything else.”
Finally, he looked at me. “How did you deal with it?”
“I rebelled a lot. And cried. Mostly cried.” I took a deep breath, letting the cool air fill my lungs. “Then one day, Lazarus showed me a village my dad’s army attacked. I walked through the dead bodies and charred earth in a haze. My dad was killing humans. Men, women, children… whoever got in his way. And then I saw him for who he truly was. Well, who he is. Because he’s still hurting people.”
Silence stretched between us. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “Something happened a few years ago. Before then, all of this shit was just fiction.”
“You learned about monsters the hard way,” I said, repeating what he’d told me at the diner the morning I crashed his breakfast.
“Yeah.” He swallowed hard and tore his gaze from mine, shifting it back to the water. The sea was calm that night—or early morning, depending on how you looked at it. Maybe it helped calm him too. “We were in a village in Afghanistan when insurgents attacked. Bodies piled up, both ours and theirs. I guess the scent of the dead lured them to us.”
“Them?”
“Ghouls.” Mason’s voice shook. “I didn’t know what they were at the time, but I’d never seen anything more terrifying. Their unnaturally long limbs and their sickly pale skin. Their smell.”
“Like a rotting corpse mixed with dirt,” I said with a nod. Ghouls were a type of shapeshifting demon usually found in deserts or graveyards. “They’re nasty SOBs. We’ve hunted them before.”
Even in the dark I could see the haunted look in Mason’s eyes. “I watched one of them take a chunk out of my friend Jones, who was already dead. But then it started to change.”
An ache pierced my chest. The ghoul had shapeshifted into his dead friend. There were no words to describe that level of heartbreak or the trauma it left behind. “What happened next?”
“More showed up. A lot more. They started tearing apart the dead bodies, eating them right in front of us. I killed a few of them, but others were harder to take down. ‘Just blow the fuckers up,’ my friend Kinkaid said before tossing a grenade. It wasn’t enough to kill them all though. Fuck.” He exhaled and put both hands behind his neck, head bent toward the grass. “This is hard to talk about.”
“You don’t have to say any more.” I wanted to hug him but fought the urge. I was still too upset for that.
I felt a shift between us. Things would be different after this conversation. For better or worse, that was yet to be determined.
“No, I need to.” Mason turned to me, a desperate gleam in his eyes. “It’s the only way for you to understand why I’m like this.”
I stood as still as possible and waited. As seconds ticked by, I shifted my weight to my other foot, then back to the other. He didn’t move at all. We were polar opposites in every way.
“Ghouls don’t just feed on the dead,” Mason finally said. “They eat the living too. My men were ripped apart and eaten while still alive. Others were dragged away screaming, only to be found days later with their bodies unrecognizable.” His body trembled as he then added, “My best friend died in my arms that night.”
I shoved aside my hurt feelings and latched on to his waist. My insides twisted, as if I could feel every bit of his pain.
“What kills me?” Mason returned my embrace and pushed his face into my hair. His voice cracked as he said, “Before the thing bit him, I saw it behind him. But I hesitated. I just fucking froze. Kinkaid died because of me, Gray.”
“You can’t blame yourself.”
“Why not? It’s my fault. I should’ve protected him.” His body quaked. “I should’ve protected all of them. Instead, only me and one other guy were left alive. Why? I ask myself that every goddamn day. Jones had a wife and kid. Why couldn’t he have lived?”
Survivor’s guilt. I hugged him tighter, wishing I could take all of his hurt away. I couldn’t, of course, but I wanted to more than anything.
“What happened after that?”
“Me and Carson, the other guy left alive, were in shock. I questioned my sanity. Because that shit couldn’t have been real, right? I knew they’d send my ass packing if I opened my mouth and started spouting off shit about monsters though.”
“And Carson?”
“He freaked the fuck out. He told our commanding officer about the attack, and I didn’t see him again. I heard later they had him under psych observation. He was discharged after that. A severe psychotic break, they said.” When Mason laughed, it lacked any actual humor. “Guess when a guy claims he saw monsters eating his men, it makes him unfit for combat. But that’s exactly what happened. And instead of backing up his story, I didn’t say shit. I just let them think he was crazy like a damn coward. A year later, he ate a bullet. I blame myself for that too.”
