As the shade stood watching, I raised the skull high over my head and brought it crashing back down against the edge of the sarcophagus.
The iron rang with the impact and the aged relic shattered into dust with the force of the blow.
Expecting to see the shade vanish right before my eyes, I watched … only to have it break into another howling bout of laughter.
Not good.
Okay, I guess Eldredge’s physical remains weren’t the fetter after all.
Now I was really in trouble.
52
NOW
As I stood there, listening to that psycho laugh and waiting for the fetch to finish me off, the Magister’s message of days before suddenly came back to me, like a voice speaking inside my head.
“When the living fail you, the dead shall do your bidding.”
It had been such a strange statement that at the time I had brushed it aside, not even telling Denise what he had said.
Now I glanced toward my fallen companions and then back at the face of the shade, realizing as I did just what I had to do.
I snatched the harmonica from my pocket, brought it to my lips, and began to play, letting my passion and need dictate the tune.
Seeing what I was doing, Eldredge stopped toying with me and quickly readied another spell, no doubt intending to blast me into oblivion.
I didn’t think about that, didn’t think about my injured friends, didn’t think about my long-lost daughter, didn’t think about all that had happened to bring us to this place and time. I squeezed my eyes shut to keep out the distractions and simply poured my heart into that song, letting my music do what all of our strength, intelligence, and planning had been unable to do.
One moment I was standing there alone, facing off against an enemy that had the power to wipe me from the face of existence, and the next I had the dead for company.
An army of ghosts stood at my back, called to me by the power of my song.
Scream stood prominently in the front ranks, his eyes ablaze, watching, waiting.
As I turned and met that unearthly gaze I understood at last, one father to another, the destiny that tied us together, and knew it was no accident that we both had been brought here to this place at this time. I had called him my devil incarnate, but in truth Scream was the instrument of my vengeance, the swift, sure hand of justice denied too long, and he waited now for me to command him, to unleash his judgment on the enemy that stood before us.
I was all too happy to oblige.
My song changed, increasing in volume and tempo, minor notes clashing with major ones in a strident wail that would have made me cringe in pain if I’d heard it in other circumstances, but now only made me smile, as the ghosts responded to the call buried deep in their hearts.
As one, they rushed forward toward the shade, screaming out their vengeance, like Valkyries come to claim one of their own.
The song that drove them forward had the opposite effect on the shade. It held him securely in its grip, preventing him from moving, from calling on his magick or finishing the spell that he had been readying to end the confrontation—and us. I watched his eyes widen in horror as he realized that the incorporeal form that had protected him from our prior efforts had now become his prison.
It took less than a handful of seconds for Scream and his allies to cross the length of the solarium and reach the shade. When they did they tore into him, all teeth and nails and claws, unleashing the fury they had been harboring ever since they had met their unjust ends at the hands of the sorcerer or the doppelganger he’d created. Eldredge began shrieking as, unable to move or defend himself, piece after piece of him was torn away and cast aside, his form gradually losing shape and coherence until, with a final, fading cry of rage and anguish, there was nothing left.
Silence fell.
As if on cue, the dead turned to face me.
I continued to play but let the tune morph into something smoother, gentler, a whispering brook rather than a raging whitewater torrent. As I did, one by one the ghosts began to fade, slowly at first and then with greater frequency, until only Scream remained.
Seeing that the music had no effect on him, I faltered to a stop and pulled the harmonica from my lips.
When he was sure I was watching, Scream turned to look at the closed door at the other end of the hall. Then he nodded once, and vanished of his own accord.
53
NOW
With Scream’s departure I could turn my attention from the dead to the living. I could see Denise rising to her feet a short distance away; the shade’s assault had sent her flying, but she’d apparently managed to cushion her fall and didn’t seem too much the worse for it. Nothing time and a little rest wouldn’t heal, at least.
Dmitri was another story. He was still conscious when I reached his side, though he was fading quickly. The fetch had cut a massive gash in the side of his neck, and his blood was pulsing out in rhythm with the beating of his heart. I clamped both hands over the wound, but I could still feel the hot leak of his blood against my skin. He wasn’t going to last beyond a few more minutes.
“Don’t you die on me, Dmitri!” I said through gritted teeth as he flailed vainly beneath my touch. “Don’t you fucking die on me!”
And then Denise was there, her hands covering my own, a brilliant glow spilling from beneath her palms and down toward Dmitri’s neck. I could feel the flesh beneath my hands literally knitting itself back together, the flow of blood slowing and then stopping completely. Dmitri struggled for a few seconds longer, until Denise waved a hand over his face and he fell into a deep sleep.
The glow from her hands died off. “You can let go now,” she said. “He’ll be all right. He’s going to need more extensive work once we’re out of here, but that should hold for the time being.”
I slumped back on my heels, my heart and head pounding from all the adrenaline coursing through my system. I could feel Denise relaxing beside me as well.
We knelt beside him for several minutes, trying to catch our breath.
At last, I climbed to my feet and wearily turned my attention to the door that Scream had indicated. I needed to see what was in that room.
Crossing the solarium with heavy feet, I pushed gently against the door.
It swung open at my touch.
The room before me was almost an exact duplicate of the room in which Elizabeth had grown up. The walls had been painted the same luminescent pink that she had loved as a child. The bed was in the same place, against the left-hand wall. Opposite the door was her dresser. Someone had even painted a window on the right-hand side of the room in the exact position that the real one occupied.
I felt the hair on my body stand at attention.
My heart beat hollowly in my chest.
I forced my legs into motion and walked stiffly to the dresser. I opened the drawers and found clothes for a young girl there. Clothes I had no doubt that my daughter had worn, despite the thick layer of dust that now coated them.
Elizabeth had lived here. I knew it as surely as I knew my own name. I didn’t know when or for how long, but the realization that she had been less than an hour’s drive away at some point during the last several years was like a blow to the face.
If the ghost of my daughter hadn’t stepped through the wall at precisely that moment, I would have collapsed to the floor.
As it was my heart went into overtime, hammering so hard that it was physically painful, and I fought to catch a breath.
She was a few years older than when I’d last seen her, which told me she’d survived for a long while after she’d been taken. Her hair hung down long and straight, partially obscuring her face, but I knew it was her.
How could I not?
I met her stare with my own and the words just bubbled up from inside me.
“I never stopped looking for you, Elizabeth,” I said softly into the sudden silence that seemed to surround the two of us. “I never gave up, not even once
.”
Tears were dripping down my face, cutting tracks through the dirt and grime that had been left there by the battle.
“I tried, Beth. I tried so hard.”
Elizabeth stepped closer, until she stood directly in front of me. She looked at me for a moment, studying the changes I’d been through, the scars and tattoos mute testimony to all I had done to find her, and then she did the totally unexpected.
She spoke.
“He made me find them, Daddy. I didn’t want to, but he made me.”
The anguish in her voice broke my heart.
I knew she was talking about the doppelganger’s other victims, the Gifted descendants of Eldredge’s original captors. Elizabeth must have been Gifted herself, and the shade and its fetch had made use of that gift against her will; it was the only answer that made sense for their taking her in the first place. It also made my daughter an unwilling participant in the murders of those victims, but I didn’t care about that. All that mattered was taking away her pain.
“It’s okay, sweetie. You did what you had to.”
“But he hurt them, Daddy. He …”
I interrupted her. “Shsssh,” I said gently. “That doesn’t matter now, sweetie. He’s not going to hurt anyone ever again.”
She nodded, in that way kids do when they want to appear all grown up. Then she reached up and placed her hand against the side of my face, just as she’d done so many times in the early years, and while I could only barely feel her phantom touch, I felt a sudden surge of love and caring the likes of which I hadn’t felt in ages.
“I love you,” she said, and my heart broke for the second time in just as many minutes.
“I love you, too, sweetie,” I choked out through my tears.
We stood there together again for the first time in years, and I felt like our positions had been reversed; I had become the child and she the parent. I was sobbing openly now, while she watched with patient eyes, eyes full of wisdom beyond her years, eyes that could truly see.
I wanted to crush her in my arms, to hold her forever, to take away all the fear and pain and despair that she must have felt in the past five years, but that was so far beyond my abilities that it almost didn’t bear thinking about. She must have felt my emotions though, for she smiled a sad little smile and then touched her forehead to mine.
No sooner had she done so than a vision sprang forth deep within my mind, a montage of events that passed as swiftly as a summer breeze, but in that vision I found the answers to the questions I didn’t have the heart to ask. I saw how she’d been cared for, a prisoner, yes, but one with certain material comforts, like the room in which we now stood. I saw the way they’d forced her to use her gift, the physical strain that it had placed on her body, and how her heart had finally given out on her in the midst of one particularly grueling session. I even bore witness as the fetch had done all it could to bring her back, to no avail.
Then she pulled away again and the vision faded as swiftly as it had come.
At long last, I knew what had happened to my daughter.
She took her hand away from my cheek, stood on her tiptoes, and bent her face toward mine. I felt her lips against my cheek like the flutter of a butterfly’s wings and her soft voice in my ear, “I have to go now, Daddy.”
I stared at her, not understanding.
She gestured toward my pocket and mimed my playing my harmonica.
I shook my head.
No.
No way.
I couldn’t do it.
She waited, then repeated her earlier statement, this time with a bit more emphasis.
“I have to go now, Daddy.”
I had no idea what to do. The very thought of using my talent to send her away after searching for her for so long was heartbreaking, but the idea that I was holding her against her will was even worse. She deserved to rest, to move on to whatever came next.
I could not keep that from her.
I wiped at my face, trying to brush away the tears that seemed as if they never wanted to stop, and reluctantly nodded my head.
She needed my help. What kind of parent would I be if I denied her that?
I took the harmonica back out of my pocket, keeping my eyes fixed firmly on its worn and battered silver surface, afraid if I looked at Elizabeth again I would lose my nerve.
Slowly I brought that harmonica to my lips.
“Good-bye,” I whispered and then began to play.
It was a sweet melody, a joyful happy tune, something I’d played for her as a child at bedtime when she had difficulty falling asleep.
I kept it up for several minutes, my eyes closed and tears streaming down my face, then wound slowly to a stop.
In the doorway, Denise said, “She’s gone, Hunt.”
I didn’t need to open my eyes to know that.
In those last few moments I had felt her go.
And with her went the weight on my shoulders, the sense of failure and shame that I had carried with me every second of every minute of every day for the past five years.
For the first time in a long while, I could breathe easy.
“Are you okay?” Denise asked.
I nodded and then said it aloud, “Yeah. I’m okay.”
I was, too.
With that out of the way, the first order of business was to get out of there. I knew Stanton wouldn’t have come after me without some sort of backup; I just didn’t know how long it would take for them to get here. Unless we intended to wait around and surrender to the police for crimes we didn’t commit, it was time to get the hell out of there.
Denise agreed.
She knew that Dmitri kept a small safe house a half hour or so outside the city, a bolt-hole to run to if he needed to lie low for a while, for she’d made use of the place herself once when certain events had required it. She even thought she remembered how to get there.
That was good enough for me. It would give us a place to rest and nurse Dmitri back to health while we figured out our next move.
By sliding our shoulders under Dmitri’s arms, we were able to get him up on his feet and support him between us. Then we slowly made our way across the room toward the now-shattered French doors.
As we shuffled along I thought I heard something rustle back in the direction of Stanton’s corpse, but when I told Denise about it and she took a moment to look around, she didn’t see anything. I wrote it off as my imagination and we kept going.
It was going to be a long haul back to the car.
54
NOW
It was only a few hours before Special Agent Dale Robertson arrived at the scene. By that time a cordon had been placed around the entire building and another around the solarium itself. Crime scene techs were swarming all over the place, putting up little flags to mark the evidence and making notations of this and that in their notebooks, recording it all so the entire scene could be reconstructed at a later date, should the need arise.
A lieutenant from the Danvers PD led him over to the body they’d discovered and subsequently identified as the missing Detective Stanton. There was a good deal of blood on the floor nearby, but Stanton’s was the only body left behind.
Robertson stood over him, silently taking it all in.
Stanton’s stomach had been torn open, and he’d died either from the wound or from blood loss shortly thereafter. Either way, it wasn’t an easy way to go.
“You poor dumb bastard,” Robertson said beneath his breath. Rather than sharing what he knew with the other members of the task force, Stanton had tried to cowboy it on his own and had ended up paying the final price. When he’d found out about it, Robertson had been furious, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel some measure of sorrow at the death of one of his own. Even if the person in question had acted like an idiot in the process.
The special agent raised his head and looked around, watching his men swarm around the place like worker ants in the hive. By the time they were done, Robertso
n would know everything there was to know about what had happened here. All of that information would be tied into the rest of the data they’d collected and ultimately it would provided a better picture of the man they had been chasing for the last six months.
A man whose name they hadn’t known until recently.
But those days were behind them.
Now they knew who they were chasing.
Now they knew the Reaper’s identity.
“I’m coming for you, Jeremiah Hunt,” the FBI special agent told the air around him, pronouncing Hunt’s name slowly and distinctly, as if taking great pleasure in the fact of knowing it.
“I’m coming for you.”
55
NOW
Dmitiri’s bolt-hole turned out to be a small, two-bedroom colonial in Norton, a little country town about forty-five minutes south of Boston. It had an attached garage without windows, so we were able to drive the Charger inside and close it up again behind us. Denise and I managed to manhandle him onto the couch in the living room, where she immediately went to work changing his bandages and checking on the state of his wounds.
Given the thick scent of blood that filled the air during the process, I was thankful I couldn’t see anything.
I was sitting in the kitchen, nursing a cup of instant coffee I’d managed to put together from what I could find in the cabinets, when she joined me.
“How is he?” I asked, speaking softly so he couldn’t overhear us from the other room.
Denise took the coffee cup out of my hand, took a long swig, and then sat down beside me. “He’s going to have a nasty old scar, but he’ll make it.”
When I heard that, a massive weight that I hadn’t even realized was there dropped off my shoulders.
Eyes to See Page 27
