“She might be a suspect,” he warned. “Would you be willing to pass on what she tells you? If you get yourself mixed up in this, you’ll end up talking to us one way or the other.”
“I’m not against you,” Reese said. “But sir, she’s just a child.”
He shook his head, weary. “But a child in the middle of a community that just killed someone. Suspect, accomplice, whatever. I’m just warning you that whatever you hear might not be able to stop with you.”
Not that they could actually force anything out of her—out of any of them. Reese almost smiled to herself. They didn’t know what they were dealing with, after all. Oneness generally did all they could not to involve local, human authorities in what they did. There were just too many factors they couldn’t see. But Oneness also respected police, at least good ones. They were also, in a sense, servants.
“I’ll help you bring justice any way I can,” Reese said. “I just want to talk to her.”
“Well, I don’t think she’s coming into custody, so there’s no reason you can’t once my fellow officers finish asking questions. At least not yet. Once we’ve had time to process some of the formalities, there’s a good chance these folks will all end up in custody for a while. Personally, I’m more inclined to see most of them as victims. But we don’t know yet.”
“You’re local police,” Richard said. “Have you dealt with these people before? Do you know anything abut them?”
“We’ve been out here once or twice. Occasional complaints from neighbours, but nothing substantiated. Seems most folks just don’t like how isolated these people are. They get an attitude about it. One neighbour called us and reported child abuse, but there was nothing like that going on that we could find. I’ve always been inclined to sympathize with most of them.” He sniffed. “Personally, I don’t like their leader—Jacob. But he’s never been in trouble before.”
He looked back at the truck. “At least, nothing like this.”
“Now, before you go.” He pulled out his pad again. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take your names and numbers. We may want to be in touch again. In case anything comes up about your friends.”
Richard nodded and took the pad and pen. Reese tuned them out, letting her gaze rest on the truck again and her heart cry out for Chris and Tyler as her spirit tried to reach, tried to find them, clawed with frustration at the distance and the gap and what Chris wasn’t . . .
She signed her own name and wrote down the cell house number almost mindlessly.
Jackson led them back out of the barn, and they blinked in the strong summer sunlight. A couple of policemen they hadn’t seen before were standing around the squad cars; one was radioing something. “Find anything?” Jackson called.
“Nothing,” one of them said. “Just that truck.”
Just the truck.
As she headed toward the house again, hoping for the conversation inside to end soon so she could speak with Miranda, Reese let her heart reach out one more time.
* * *
Tyler refused to open his eyes
He could not, would not, put any picture to the things he had heard after the police came.
His whole body was shaking. He could still smell it. Still feel it. But not see it. He had closed his eyes; he had refused to look.
The children’s jingle kept running through his head: Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
See no evil, see no evil, he told himself.
Don’t look into the demon’s eyes.
Don’t look.
Don’t see the blood.
Don’t look at his face.
Don’t think about it.
It was impossible not to think about it.
“Tyler,” Chris’s voice grated.
He ignored it. Just kept singing to himself. See no evil, see no evil, hear no evil . . .
“Tyler!”
He shook his head, shaggy hair plastered against his face from the sweat, surprised that he could move that much. His limbs still felt so heavy. He didn’t know where he was. Were they still in the truck? Still going somewhere? To the hive?
To more demons?
He didn’t know why he had thought everything would be okay. Why he had thought Oneness could win. Why he had thought love was stronger than hate. And killing. Death. Murder. The kind of cruelty that revelled in blood.
And through all his confusion and pain, he could hear Chris calling him, and something else.
Something deeper, and farther away.
Something that didn’t speak to his ears but to his spirit.
And yet it had a voice, and he recognized it.
Reese.
Reese was calling to him.
He opened his eyes.
Chris was sitting across from him. They were both seated, propped up against—truck walls? The inside of a trailer? Yes, he thought. They hadn’t been moved.
The truck itself was not moving.
He stared at Chris, momentarily unable to understand why he could hear Reese when she was not there in front of him.
“Tyler, you have to wake up,” Chris said in a low, urgent voice. There was something wrong with his face—something patterned, speckled.
It was blood. Not his. Someone else’s. There had been blood everywhere . . .
He closed his eyes again.
“Tyler, dang it, listen to me. I can’t fight this . . . whatever it is. This thing. This demon.”
Was Chris’s voice shaking? Yes, it was. He sounded scared. Tyler had never heard him sound scared before.
“Tyler, I can’t fight it, but you can. You have the weapon for it. That sword thing you carry. The ability to sense and see things. You’re Oneness. You have got to wake up and act like it.”
“I’m not enough,” Tyler croaked. “I’m too young. Too . . . I’m not enough.”
“You don’t have to be. You’re not alone. Remember? Never alone. That’s what you said. You people. All of you.”
Tyler opened his eyes again, and Chris locked his gaze. “You can do this, and you have to do it. Not just for us. For Reese. And Mum. And Richard and Mary and April. You’re one of them, and if you don’t do something, they’re all going to get attacked by this thing. Remember? We left the village to track down the hive. Well, we found it. So you can’t quit on me now.”
His words were brave, big. Far more full of courage than his eyes. But he had recited all their names like a litany, like a charge. Because for Chris, nothing mattered so much as those he wanted to protect. And he hoped it would stir up the same determination in Tyler.
So they could . . . something. Fight?
Martyr themselves?
But there was Reese . . .
He concentrated on the sense, deep inside, that she was calling him. He closed his eyes and tried to focus in on it, to hear it, to embrace the voice. And he found that he could. It wasn’t an illusion. Reese, closer than a sister or a mother, as much a part of him as breathing, was calling him and had somehow found him here, in the darkness, in his fear. He wasn’t alone.
He really wasn’t.
So he didn’t have to be enough.
“Reese is calling me,” he said again.
“What? Right now?”
“Yes.”
“You can hear her?”
“And . . . feel her.”
There was pain in Chris’s eyes. Pain Tyler didn’t have to guess at.
Love hurt sometimes, even when you weren’t quite ready to admit it existed, or how deeply it mattered to you.
Outside, they both heard footsteps and voices.
In a moment they wouldn’t be alone anymore.
“Tyler, you have to fight,” Chris said.
And Tyler nodded. And said, “I know.”
* * *
Reese found Miranda minutes after the police had pulled away, with Jacob and his wife and a few others in custody, and pulled her aside. “I’m Reese,” she said. “You called me. I’m here.”
“You came so
fast,” Miranda said. Her eyes were watery, and she was pale and trembling. Reese couldn’t imagine what she was going through.
“I came as soon as I could. I would have found you earlier, but I had to wait until the police left.”
Miranda nodded. She was probably fourteen or fifteen, but at the moment she looked like a little girl. Lost, terrified. Growing up by the second and not at all ready for it.
“They asked so many questions,” Miranda whispered.
“Did you answer them?”
“I let the grownups talk.”
“Did they ask you?”
“Some things.”
“And you told them what they asked?”
“Some things.”
Reese sighed and looked around, spotting a swing under a wide oak tree in the yard. “Will you sit with me? In the shade over there? Would that be okay?”
Miranda nodded. She was clasping and unclasping her hands, and Reese wished she had a doll or something she could give her—something she could clutch and keep her nerves steady.
As they walked, just as they were about to seat themselves, Reese said, “So how did you meet Chris?”
“They were here,” Miranda whispered. The whispers seemed so unnecessary in the sun. They should be sipping lemonade and talking about nothing. Enjoying a beautiful summer day.
Not potentially ripping each other’s worlds apart.
Silently, Reese vowed that no matter how much destruction came on this girl’s world in connection with her, she would help her put it back together again. As much as was possible.
“Did you tell the police that?”
“No, they didn’t ask.”
“Okay.” She paused. “When were they here?”
“They left today, late in the morning. We weren’t supposed to know. They had to meet with Jacob, and he packed them in a truck and sent them away with . . .”
Her voice dropped even lower, so low and so indistinct Reese almost couldn’t hear her. “Him.”
“Why were they here?” Reese asked, holding her own voice as steady as she could.
“They were in an accident,” Miranda said. “They both got banged up pretty bad. Chris broke his arm. Like Rick . . . Rick broke his leg. We brought them all here, away from the highway, because Lorrie found them when she was out driving and she called Jacob and said they were hurt. We brought them here to take care of them.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “We were just giving them medicine to take away their pain. He wasn’t supposed to die. I don’t . . . I don’t think . . .”
“It’s okay,” Reese said, laying a hand on the girl’s hand. “I know you didn’t want to kill anyone.”
“I didn’t give it to him that time,” Miranda said. “Usually I did. I was helping Lorrie with the medicines and the food and things. Learning to take care of sick people. I want to be a nurse. Or a midwife. To help people.”
Her eyes grew wider, and her hands shook. “Now I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“Shh,” Reese said, taking the girl in her arms. “It’s going to be okay. I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but this . . . this will pass. And you’ll learn to do all you wanted to do. I know you will.”
“They said we poisoned him,” Miranda said, dissolving into sobs. Her shoulders shook, but she hardly made a sound. “They made it sound like we did it on purpose.”
“They’re just trying to learn what really happened,” Reese said.
“But if they find out! I don’t want them to take her away.”
“Who?”
“My mother. She . . . she gave him the medicine. Last night. And he didn’t wake up this morning. We didn’t know until after Tyler and Chris went . . .”
“Shh,” Reese said. She didn’t want the child to stop talking—but to stop hurting, yes, to stop shaking and feeling the terror of having her universe ripped apart and threatened from within. “It’s going to be okay,” she said again.
She had heard somewhere, a long time ago, that if you encountered someone in a traumatic situation—in a natural disaster or a terrorist attack, for example—that you shouldn’t say “It’s going to be okay.” Because you just couldn’t promise that.
She knew she couldn’t promise it this time either. For all she knew, Miranda’s mother was a murderer, and nothing would ever be okay again.
But she didn’t say that. She just kept saying what she hoped, wanted, to be true. And projected it out as far as she could so that it touched her world too, and Tyler and Chris, and the hive, and whatever was wrong with the Oneness that it could produce men like David and Jacob and invite demons into its midst.
She wouldn’t allow herself to think about the horrible murders on the highway, the ones no one had said a word about since they got here. They weren’t sure the police who had been called to look into the community even knew about them, and they weren’t going to say. No sense in complicating the situation on the ground anymore than it already was.
But she knew it wasn’t unconnected.
Reese held the girl close and let her cry on her shoulder for a few minutes. Then slowly, carefully, she asked, “Why did Chris give you my number?”
“Because I was scared,” Miranda said. And now there was a new tone in her voice. Guilt.
“Do you want to explain that?”
“I was supposed to be watching them all at night,” Miranda said. “Making sure they didn’t need anything. I was supposed to call Jacob if they woke up or needed something because we aren’t supposed to be with men alone. Especially not at night. But Tyler woke up and came out, and I had gone . . . gone downstairs, when I wasn’t supposed to, and when I came back up he was up, and I knew . . . I thought Jacob wouldn’t like it. So I didn’t tell him. But I was scared. And I tried to go to sleep in the hallway but then I was having dreams, and they were all bad, and Chris got up and came out too, and I knew I was going to be in so much trouble if Jacob found out I was just talking to them and not telling anyone. But Chris is so nice, and he knew I was scared, and he said if I ever needed anything or got in trouble, I should call you. And he gave me your number.”
While she was still wondering about that, a look of even stronger guilt came over Miranda’s face.
“What?” Reese asked.
“I drugged him extra hard,” Miranda said. ‘So he would sleep long in the morning and maybe forget to tell anyone about talking to me.”
Alarm came over Reese. “You did what? Don’t you know that could have been dangerous?”
“I knew what I was doing,” Miranda said, defensive, but then the reality of their situation came back over her and she dissolved into tears again. “I don’t know how it could have happened! Mama is smart, and she knows better than to . . .”
She trailed off.
“Miranda,” Reese said, pushing back a little and looking the girl in the face, “I need you to tell me everything you know. Everything. When you called me, you said they killed someone. And you called the police. Why?”
“Because he was dead.”
Reese recalled the girl’s tone on the phone and decided to push. “And you don’t really believe it was an accident.”
Her features hardened, and her mouth made a straight line.
Reese sighed. “Okay. I won’t push. But tell me what happened to Tyler and Chris. You want to help them, don’t you?”
She was still more hesitant, more close-lipped than before but the appeal obviously had some effect. “I told you . . . they got in trouble with Jacob, and he sent them away.”
“You said with ‘him.’ Who were you talking about?”
And Miranda did something totally unexpected.
She shuddered.
Reese sat up a little straighter. “Miranda,” she said firmly, “you need to tell me everything you know.”
“He comes to talk to Jacob,” Miranda said. “I used to think he was handsome. But now he just scares me so much.”
“Who?”
“Clint. His
name is Clint.”
“Does he have a last name?”
“I don’t know.”
The girl from the phone call who didn’t know her own address was back. Reese tried to keep down her frustration and be patient, but it took every ounce of effort. “What do you know about him?”
“He . . . he scares me. I wanted to marry him. Jacob said he was a fine young man. He comes to meet with him and they talk forever and ever and ever. Some of the other men have been meeting with him too. They talk about spiritual things, Jacob says. But sometimes they come away and they’re all . . . something’s not right with them. Their eyes.”
“Miranda, tell me what you know.”
“I saw once.” Her eyes were big as saucers. “I wasn’t supposed to. The meeting was just for the men. We girls are supposed to stay out. Even the ladies are supposed to stay out. But I wanted to know . . . and I thought Clint was so handsome, and they were talking about marrying me to him, so I went and snuck into the loft once when they were meeting in the barn and watched and listened.” She shuddered again, and her eyes filled with tears. “It was so horrible.”
Reese rubbed the girl’s back between her shoulders and waited. She could be patient. She silently sent up prayer, connecting, drawing strength from the Spirit and willing it to transfer to this child somehow. “They said they were just going to pray, but it wasn’t like Jacob used to teach us all how to pray. They sat in a circle with candles and there was blood.”
“What do you mean there was blood?”
“Clint brought it with him. In a bottle. And he put it on all the men’s foreheads. It stunk, and it scared me. And then he started chanting and it got so dark. It was already nighttime, and the lamps were lit . . . I don’t know how it got dark like that. And then it was like something else was there.”
Reese asked carefully, “Did anyone seem different after that?”
“Yeah. All the men. Their eyes went all strange, and they’ve been . . . they scare me. I don’t like to be around them anymore.”
“All the men?” Reese asked. “Were they all in on it?”
“No, just some,” Miranda amended. “Just three, and Jacob.”
Hive Page 16
