Shepherd's Warning

by Cailyn Lloyd

  “Let go, you bastard!”

  She didn’t want to die; not now, not like this. If she could hold out a little longer, help would surely come.

  Without warning, she dropped to the floor and lashed out at Lucas’s leg with a hard-heeled boot, striking his kneecap hard but off-center.

  “Ohhhh shit!” Lucas staggered, lost his balance, and fell. She rolled and vaulted to her feet, managing a single step before Lucas snagged her ankle and yanked her into a fall.

  He grabbed her ponytail, pulled her back, and quickly swung his arm around, under her chin, then jerked upward with the crook of his elbow.

  Bright lights flashed, the room spun, the taste of bile filled her throat. Her body was numb except for her neck, which throbbed as though broken. Her knees buckled. Weak, consciousness fading, passing out—she was going to die. Dana would be five minutes too late. Laura realized she should’ve run with them into the relative security of the storm. Nothing of her life flashed before her. Nothing but a fading picture of Leah and the grim certainty that her own stupidity had been her undoing. She fought hopelessness and tears but cried anyway.

  Lucas jerked Laura to her feet, pulled her spine tight against his chest, turning so she faced the hole in the wall.

  The tomb of Anna Flecher.

  Her neck aching, her head woozy, Laura still saw everything with intense clarity. The jagged brick maw gaped at her like a predator, and she understood. The realization frightened her to the edge of insanity.

  All this had been preordained. He and the house knew she would come. Knew the mistakes she would make: the fight with Murphy, sending the cab away, trying to flee in the Honda—the thought of it drove her to despair. That was the reason he had taken Leah—to make her come back to the house.

  Lucas pushed her toward the hole.

  “No! Lucas! No!” Her screams were hoarse, her damaged throat raw.

  The room blurred with her tears. Lucas’s animalistic odor, the choking smell of sweat and stale beer, mingled with the scent of her fear.

  Why did he hate her so?

  “I’ve got the bricks and mortar downstairs.” He whispered into her ear, “Buried alive.”

  Threatened with that awful death, desperate to escape, the fight within surged back. If she could stall, buy time, get lucky, anything. She squirmed fiercely, seeking any weakness in his grip.

  Off balance, Lucas stumbled. His arm slipped up, near her mouth.

  Laura bit as hard as she could, shaking her head like a rabid dog, the taste of blood mingling with the taste of sweat, barely aware she was growling from deep within her throat.

  Lucas cried out in pain. “Oh fuck fuck fuck!”

  He yanked his arm free from her frenzied bite and lost his grip on her hair. As she pivoted away, he shoved her shoulder, knocked her off balance and, as she swiveled around, punched her in the face.

  “Fucking bitch!”

  His fist slammed into her cheekbone in a supernova explosion of pain. The blow knocked her sprawling back onto the floor against the wall beneath the hole. The room whirled and she felt consciousness slipping away, a sickening feeling that threatened to suck her back into the fog beneath the floor. Fog that beckoned sweetly, promising an end to her pain and fear. Laura drifted away.

  Reason and desperation pulled her back.

  Wake up Laura! Wake up!

  She fought and struggled to open her eyes against the immense weight dragging her toward oblivion. Had to stay lucid, stall, time an escape, run, hope for a break.

  Lucas was standing three feet away, wiping blood from his arm. Face soaked with perspiration, he had foam at the corners of his lips. The man looked sick and rabid.

  She made a sudden move, rolling toward the archway.

  “No fucking way!” He hissed.

  Laura glanced over her shoulder, trying to anticipate him, as she clambered to an unsteady crouch. He pounced, grabbed her and dragged her to her feet, pushing her toward the gaping hole in the wall.

  She struggled, but locked in a bear hug, his grip was too strong to break.

  Twisting her, he seized her hair and forced her head into the brick opening.

  “Take a good look. It’s the last place you’ll ever see.”

  His voice exuded evil. Deep and primal—a tone as frightening as her imminent death. He pressed harder against her, and Laura could feel his erection swelling against her.

  “But not before I fuck you one more time,” he said roughly. He lifted her, spun her around, and grabbed her breast. His face, hard, red, and angry, was almost touching hers. “You fucked everyone else in town, you bitch.”

  Laura spit in his face.

  Momentarily shocked, Lucas clenched his teeth and slapped her. Forced her against the wall, trapping her there. Reached down and ripped at her jeans, pulling them open and forcing his hand down into her panties between her legs. The pain was intense, the humiliation complete, a helpless, degrading feeling that sent her shuddering toward tears again.

  Lucas was livid, insane in his rage. “It was the priest, wasn’t it? I saw you—you were fucking the goddamn priest, weren’t you!”

  In this frenzy, he loosened his grip just little—just enough.

  Laura dropped like a rock, wrenching her arms free and pushing him as she slid down the wall to the floor. As Lucas came back at her, Laura coiled her right leg and kicked upward and outward as hard as she could with deadly and practiced aim. The move was focused, with little conscious thought, drilled into her by a Taekwondo instructor months before. Lucas doubled over as the leather-soled heel slammed into his groin.

  “Ohhhh Jeeesus Christ!” His face, at first surprised, buckled in agony as he swiveled and dropped to the floor, rocking back and forth unevenly, clutching himself. He retched in pain.

  Enraged beyond reason by his assault, his murderous intent, his attempt at rape, Laura lunged for the end table, grabbing the decorative glass ashtray filled with potpourri and lifted it high in the air before swinging down sharply, slamming the ashtray onto his head as leaves and petals rained down.

  He jerked and was still.

  Laura knelt over him, panting in loud and ragged gasps, ready to bash his head again.

  He didn’t move.

  She remained crouched there, suspended in time as her maniacal thumping heart and labored breathing eased. For a while, she had no thoughts at all. Laura then realized she was crying, tears running silently down her cheeks. She wanted to find Dana and Leah, leave, and never look back.

  Was he dead?

  She sat hard, felt hollow like a character in a vivid nightmare. Unmoving, Lucas didn’t seem to be breathing. Laura didn’t know how she’d feel if he was dead.

  She set the ashtray down and reached to touch the carotid artery on the side of his neck, feeling for a pulse.

  His eyes snapped open. He twisted and grabbed her by the throat, eyes wild and insane, teeth clenched in a feral grimace.

  She screamed, sharp and wounded, as he threw her to the ground and clawed at her, ripping at her shirt and jeans, tearing her panties. It happened so quickly she felt momentarily paralyzed by panic and terror. He struggled to open his pants as he forced his way between her legs.

  What had once been so beautiful between them was now ugly, repulsive, and violent. She dreaded the thought of him raping her, panting and thrusting into her, and fought it with all her will.

  Concentrated, focused on her training.

  When the muscles in her hips and thighs could resist no longer, her legs cleaved open.

  As he dropped on top of her, Laura jerked a hand free and stabbed two fingers—locked rigid like a spear—into his eye.

  Lucas fell away screaming.

  Laura grabbed the ashtray and slammed it down on his head.

  Raised her arm and hit him again.

  And again.

  Sixty-Six

  Shepherd drove north into the worsening storm. With ample horsepower, four-wheel drive, and winter radials, the weather posed
no threat to his plans. The luxury of this vehicle—the heat, the cushioned ride, the leather seats and concert level sound system—was unimaginable centuries ago when walking was the only mode of travel.

  These days, he met people daily who complained off all manner of unbearable torments. Heavy traffic, flight delays, dropped calls, bad weather. People were soft with no sense of history. These minor problems were frivolous and yet, the catalysts of so much anger. People shortened their lives stressing over the trivial.

  The plan to destroy Anna Flecher wasn’t rigid, the situation only modestly amenable to planning. He had a mental list of strategies; most had worked in the past. How to implement, when to implement was trickier. He would improvise, or as the Americans so colourfully put it, shoot from the hip. His improvisational skill had been phenomenal once, but he hadn’t faced an opponent this dangerous in a hundred years.

  Still, he hadn’t lived all this time on simple luck either.

  He hoped he wasn’t underestimating Anna Flecher. This was neither a tea party nor a Sunday social. Her presence, her spirit, had persevered for five hundred years. Powerful and deep-rooted, she wouldn’t be sent packing willingly or easily. She must know he was coming. Anticipating his moves as he tried to anticipate hers.

  Fingers of anxiety ran up and down his spine. Good. Complacency would be fatal.

  Lightning ripped across the sky in vivid spectacle.

  An omen?

  Hardly. Thundersnow.

  Breathtaking but not supernatural. The storm was intensifying in scientifically measurable ways, no magic involved. He liked the symbolism though.

  This world he was about to enter existed in dimensions that modern technology could neither detect nor examine. Harkening back to a bygone era, special skills and training—or a gift of extrasensory perception—were the only gateways to this realm. Otherwise, these places were invisible to ordinary people, to science, to discovery. Though he had no proof, he felt certain Laura was one of them. Just a hunch. He’d love to meet her but talking would have to wait. Better she was gone. The house needed to be empty and, despite the weather, Shepherd felt certain Lucas and his primal urges would be drawn to the tavern and his mistress like iron to a magnet.

  He continued north on US 45, wary of fools flying by in the storm, armed with the delusion their SUVs were invincible. Shepherd had slowed to forty-five in deference to the strengthening wind, could feel the Range Rover occasionally slip and break traction. The highway narrowed to two lanes and traffic dwindled to a few hardy stragglers until it was just him and the storm. With a dozen miles to go, snow blew across his headlights in waves, hiding the pavement beneath a white blur. Perversely, he enjoyed the drive. In the Range Rover, he was equal to the storm, no longer a lone figure bent against the wind, harried by snow and cold.

  He turned right toward Lost Arrow and the road narrowed further. No one had attempted to plow here. A few vague tracks faded by falling snow led the way.

  A powerful wave emanating from the MacKenzie house struck Shepherd, shocking him to attention. Alert and in the present, he sensed violence and chaos afoot, preparing to visit the MacKenzies.

  Why? The house was empty, wasn’t it?

  That was his intention. The house empty, Lucas in the tavern and Laura safe and secure elsewhere. Still, he realized the final chapter was already underway, wreaking havoc just five miles ahead, rushing to a conclusion without him.

  Shepherd clutched the talisman in his pocket.

  He had waited too long.

  Sixty-Seven

  Dana ran, fearing for their lives, following an imaginary line in the snow that would take them far away from the house. The voice called to her, but she tuned it out, no longer trusting her senses. Cold and frightened, Leah cried loudly in her ear. Enveloped by the storm, Dana imagined creatures materializing at any moment out of the snow and darkness, sent by Anna Flecher to kill them. She tried to reason them away, but then worried they were doomed to wander in circles until they froze to death.

  Panic fueled her terror while hopelessness and exhaustion weighed her down. Maybe if she rested for a few minutes, just laid down and rested. She then noticed a small sign in the ditch at the edge of the road:

  LOST ARROW

  Lost Arrow Snowmobile Club

  Beneath the lettering, an arrow pointed left into the woods. Afraid the road formed an unending circle, Dana prayed it was a shortcut to town. She took a chance and plunged into the gully and onto the trail but lost some resolve at the tree line. She gazed at the forbidding landscape of gnarled trunks, swaying branches, and swirling snow with primitive fear. Lightning flashed overhead. A bird was calling somewhere within the woods in a frantic screech, barely audible over the whistling wind in the trees. Sinister or not, her fear of the house was greater. Dana ran into the woods.

  The trail was easier to follow than the road. Blue reflectors on aluminum poles marked the way. At first she jogged but soon slowed to a walk, no longer able to push her body to run. She felt safer surrounded by trees. Protected.

  As she relaxed, fatigue overwhelmed her and with night falling, the woods became an eerie and frightening place. The knurled boles of the trees donned hideous faces, the branches above like giant arms, waiting to grab and squeeze them to death. Small evergreens and snow-covered bushes became crouched animals, rodent-like creatures watching from beneath white lairs. The forest, of which there seemed no end, was masked in horrid costumes. Snow swirled around her, as the wind howled through the naked branches. Lightning flickered like the strobe in a haunted house.

  She heard a voice again, yelling, “Dana! Dana!”

  The voice seemed to surround them. A trick, she was sure.

  No one knew they were here. She ran again, renewed in her panic. Someone—or something—was after her. She heard or imagined footsteps on the trail behind her.

  She ran faster; the sound drew nearer.

  Terror seized her, but she had tapped her reserves. Her stride slowed no matter how hard she pushed. She stumbled and almost dropped Leah. She stood, took two steps, and tripped again. She refused to quit but felt the sharp sickle of death swinging inexorably towards them.

  Dana stumbled and fell. Stayed down, clutching Leah, panting, crying, unable to go farther. A silhouette materialized out of the snow. Dana edged away from the figure, which looked spectral and eerie in the surreal light of the woods. The apparition moved slowly toward her and resolved into the last person Dana expected to see here.

  Ashley.

  “Dana, it’s me, Ashley.”

  Dana stared in disbelief, then grew suspicious. In the past hour she’d come to mistrust everything—her sight, her hearing, her father. “How’d you find us?”

  “I followed your tracks.” Ashley huddled close for warmth and to comfort them. Dana didn’t pull away. It was Ashley. “Looks like I got here just in time. You look terrible.”

  “I feel terrible. You wouldn’t believe—” Dana grabbed Ashley’s arm. “Have you been to the house?”

  “Yeah. Everything’s okay.”

  “What?”

  “Laura’s holding Lucas at gunpoint. She just called the cops. They had one hell of a fight.”

  Ashley stood and brushed snow from her clothes. Dana did the same, too cold and exhausted to feel anything but vague relief. They shuffled down the trail and, a few minutes later, walked onto the road toward the house, heads bent, buffeted by the blizzard. Dana grew nervous again. Worried the police would never arrive in the storm. More worried the weather was a manifestation of some evil emanating from the house.

  Most of all afraid that once there, they would never be able to leave again.

  Sixty-Eight

  The ashtray broke into two bloodied fragments as Laura struck the final blow. She dropped the jagged piece from her hand, aware of nothing but the sight of Lucas’s battered head. Only dimly aware she was spattered with blood, a powerful wave of nausea rolled through her. She leaned over and heaved a thin stream of bile, th
en coughed in misery.

  Laura sat up and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. In shock, exhausted and oblivious to her surroundings, she vaguely expected Lucas to roll and pounce again, but the side of his head was beaten to a bloody pulp. No, Lucas wasn’t getting up again. Not ever. Her anger spent, she slid fast and deep into despair. The cold realization of what she’d done struck with blunt force, as clear as a brilliant faceted crystal.

  She had killed Lucas.

  Her hands were streaked with his blood. Disgusted, bile rose again in her throat. She couldn’t erase the last few moments from her memory, the ashtray pounding on his head in primitive violence.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Once or twice would have been enough. She shivered, feeling cold and vacant, her mind in a daze.

  Laura could scarcely form a coherent thought, yet she knew of no rationalization that would absolve her. It had been self-defense. The crazed man she’d fought with intended to kill her, but that knowledge did little to relieve the anguish she felt. Laura couldn’t comprehend why Lucas had attacked her and now, she would never know. Lucas was dead.

  Random memories came to her. Their first date, his expression of awe when Jacob was born, their last trip to Aruba. It was all gone, lost, destroyed forever. How could she live again? The most precious part of her life was gone. As shock and fatigue took hold, Laura, overwhelmed by visions of the past and a future stolen, leaned on his shoulder and wept bitterly. Something of her still loved him, despite all he’d done. Now he was gone.

  Laura remembered Dana and Leah. She prayed they were safe, but they could still be wandering, lost in the storm. Laura stood unsteadily, pulled up and buttoned her jeans, tearing up again, trying to suppress the humiliation and helplessness she’d felt as Lucas attempted to rape her. She buttoned and tucked in her tattered shirt. As she stuck her hand into Lucas’s pocket for the truck keys, the front door flew open and stomping footsteps sounded on the plank flooring.

  Dana called out, “Mom? Mom? Where are you?”