If she had accepted the invitation, she would have felt like an intruder. Or an impostor.
Cars growled past on the street behind her, splashing through puddles, but there were no other pedestrians. Only Meryam with her umbrella, watching through the gate as the mourners emerged and began to make their way back to their cars. From this distance she could not tell which of those dark figures might be Mr. Holzer and Sylvia.
She wished that she could cry.
In a moment, she would walk away. She didn’t want them to see her, to know that she had come all this way but had been unwilling to join them inside.
Not unwilling, she told herself. Unable.
Even if she’d wanted to, she wouldn’t have been able to walk through those gates. Not any more than she’d been able to enter the synagogue where the funeral had taken place. If she wanted to mourn Adam, she had no choice but to stand in the rain, though she didn’t worry about pneumonia. Meryam didn’t worry about illness at all now.
The first cars began to move slowly along the road toward the gates and she forced herself to turn and walk back along the sidewalk toward her car. As she did, she slipped her hand into her pocket—just the way she had that night when Hakan had carried her down off the mountain—and just as she had that night, she felt the sharp edges and smooth surface of a bitumen shard.
Meryam had no idea who had slipped it into her pocket. The demon could have compelled any of them to do it, possessing someone for a moment and sliding the charm inside her jacket with her none the wiser. A safeguard, to give it one last opportunity to find its way off the mountain … find its way into the new world. It had chosen her because it had something to offer her.
Life.
For as long as she complied with its wishes, it would make her well again. Make her whole. It had eradicated the cancer that had been killing her, and taken its place. A different sort of cancer.
A painful grin split her features but she fought against it, forced it away. The demon might not let her cry, but she refused to allow it to make her smile. Not today.
Had it been just for herself, Meryam would never have taken the demon’s bargain. Death would have been so much better than this.
But she hadn’t done it for herself.
Numb, she put a hand over her belly and felt the roundness there, four months along and a little bigger every day. If her baby was a boy, she would name him Adam, and pray that he took after his father.
Sometimes, though …
Sometimes she let herself consider the possibility that the thing growing inside her might not be a baby at all. And then she would scream, just for a moment or two until it became irritated and seized control from within, silencing her. It didn’t like her to scream like that.
Bad for the baby, the demon would whisper inside her mind. And the baby needs to be strong.
Meryam wondered how much it would hurt to give birth to something with horns.
Also by Christopher Golden
Dead Ringers
Sons of Anarchy: BRATVA
Snowblind
Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire (with Mike Mignola)
Joe Golem and the Drowning City (with Mike Mignola)
Father Gaetano’s Puppet Catechism (with Mike Mignola)
The Boys are Back in Town
Wildwood Road
The Ferryman
Strangewood
Straight on ’til Morning
The Myth Hunters: Book One of The Veil
The Borderkind: Book Two of The Veil
The Lost Ones: Book Three of The Veil
The Ocean Dark (as Jack Rogan)
The Shadow Saga
Of Saints and Shadows
Angel Souls and Devil Hearts
Of Masques and Martyrs
The Gathering Dark
Walking Nightmares
The Graves of Saints
King of Hell
About the Author
Christopher Golden is the New York Times bestselling author of Snowblind, Dead Ringers, Tin Men, and Of Saints and Shadows, among many other novels. With Mike Mignola, he is the cocreator of two cult favorite comic book series, Baltimore andJoe Golem: Occult Detective. Golden is also the editor of such anthologies as Seize the Night, The New Dead, and Dark Cities, and the co-host of the popular podcast Three Guys with Beards. He lives in Massachusetts. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Also by Christopher Golden
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ARARAT. Copyright © 2017 by Christopher Golden. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover photographs: mountains © Tigran Hayrapetyan/Getty Images; skiers © Olga Danylenko/Shutterstock.com; sky © LilKar/Shutterstock.com
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-11705-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-11706-9 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781250117069
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
First Edition: April 2017
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