I Don't Want To Kill You by Dan Wells Read Free Book Online Page A

bathroom.
     
    The reporter nodded solemnly. ‘Thank you very much for your time.’
     
    ‘You’re welcome,’ said the Sheriff, looking a bit impatient, and he left to walk back towards the crime scene. The reporter turned back to the camera, which zoomed in until she filled the screen.
     
    ‘We also want to mention that City Hall and the adjoining courthouse will be closed throughout the day while police and other investigators look for evidence,’ she said. ‘Some county employees have been given the day off, others are being questioned, but there are still no solid leads as to the evidence of Clayton County’s newest killer. This is Carrie Walsh, Five Live News.’
     
    ‘City Hall is closed?’ asked Mom. She was standing behind me, curling a new part of her hair. ‘We have a meeting there today.’
     
    ‘Not any more,’ I said.
     
    ‘Then why am I curling my hair?’
     
    ‘Because if you stop halfway through you’ll look like an idiot.’
     
    ‘That was a rhetorical question, John.’ She walked back to the bathroom and shouted: ‘What is wrong with our town?’
     
    ‘We’re being hunted by—’
     
    ‘I know,’ she said, coming back into the room. ‘I know it’s a demon, okay? I know it, and I admit it, and it scares the living hell out of me. But what are we supposed to do? How can we just carry on? How can we stay here and do this job, for the love of . . . I feel like a war profiteer, getting rich while everyone dies.’
     
    ‘We’re not supposed to just carry on,’ I said. ‘We’re supposed to stop it.’
     
    ‘No, we’re not!’ she told me, her voice rising. ‘The police are supposed to stop it, and you are not the police. You’re not trained, you’re not armed – you’re not even old enough to vote!’
     
    ‘Young or old, I am the only one who knows anything about this.’
     
    ‘There has to be someone else,’ she said, rushing forward to grab my arm. ‘If they’re really real, and really out there, there have to be other people that know about them. Maybe we can talk to them.’
     
    ‘What, like some kind of conspiracy freaks off the Internet?’
     
    ‘No,’ she said, staring at the floor and rubbing her mouth with her hand. Her other hand kept a vice-like grip on my arm. ‘Not other civilians, but trained people. Government people. They’ve got to know, right? There’s probably a branch of the government designed just for this, some secret group that nobody knows about.’
     
    ‘And if nobody knows about them,’ I said, ‘how are we ever possibly going to find them? What are we going to say? If we call the police right now and tell them we want to speak with the Special Demon Unit, no one would believe us.’
     
    ‘We don’t have to find them; we just make an official report and they’ll find us .’
     
    ‘We already reported it when Crowley died, remember?’ I said. ‘That put us in touch with the FBI, which put us in touch with Forman, who turned out to be another demon. Last time I trusted the FBI I ended up drinking my own urine in a hole under some guy’s house. We’re on our own for this.’
     
    ‘You can’t say that,’ Mom objected. ‘I will not let you do this.’
     
    ‘So you’re just going to ignore it while everybody dies around you?’
     
    ‘What do you think you’re going to do, John?’ she demanded, putting her hands on her hips. ‘What? Help me understand.’
     
    ‘That’s what I want,’ I said. ‘I want to understand.’
     
    ‘You want to kill them.’
     
    ‘If it comes to that, yes,’ I said, ‘but first we have to understand them. Doesn’t it make you curious at all? Even a little bit? Don’t you want to know who they are and why they’re here and why they’re killing everybody? Why does everyone insist on shutting their eyes to this?’
     
    ‘Life is too short,’ my mom said, folding her arms and leaning against the wall. ‘It’s too precious. We have to live in this world, but we don’t