Although they had translated the book, it continued to frustrate her. For one thing, some of Crowley’s account of himself conflicted with what she thought they knew. He was supposed to have become the Prince of Sanheim in 1873, when he hosted his notorious ill-fated party. Instead, it seemed clear he had fought and defeated his cennad—which he carefully did not reveal—three years earlier. That raised several questions. Why the deception? Did Horace Camden simply have it wrong, or did Crowley purposely mislead Horace? It was clear now what Crowley’s agenda was—defeating Sanheim—but uncertain what had actually occurred to him.
It also provided no clues as to who they were facing now.
“Still stewing?” Quinn asked, and brought Kate back to the present.
“Yes,” she said. “What I can’t figure out is why the other Prince of Sanheim disappeared tonight. They seemed so intent on drawing us out. And they succeeded.”
Quinn shook his head.
“I have a theory,” he said.
Kate turned to him in the cemetery and waited.
“I don’t think they expected us to save the woman,” he said. “It’s just a hunch but I think they were surprised when I ran off with her.”
“You might be right,” she replied. “The Headless Horseman isn’t exactly known for his mercy.”
“He is now, Kate,” Quinn said. “This wasn’t some guilty banker. Even then, I would have saved him. No one deserves to die that way, alone and afraid. No one.”
Kate knew enough to be silent on that one. She didn’t agree, but they had had this fight too many times already.
“I felt him, Kate,” he continued. “He was going to go after… what was her name? Maggie?”
“Yes.”
“He was going to go after Maggie,” he said. “Do you know why? Bloodlust. Whoever our attacker was started chasing Maggie as a game. But he wanted to finish her off just the same. He would have, too, if I hadn’t gotten her away.”
Kate smiled at him and leaned in for a kiss.
“It’s not that I disagree, honey,” she said. “Maggie was innocent. We may differ on who, exactly, deserves to be scared to death, but she wasn’t one I would pick.”
“You’re missing the point,” Quinn said, and he still sounded angry. Kate couldn’t quite figure out why. “They didn’t expect me to save her. I think they assumed I could care less.”
“If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t have shown up,” Kate said.
“No, no,” he said. “That’s just it. They thought we would show up because this is our turf. It never occurred to them that we might actually care for the people who live here. They are living proof of what I’m talking about.”
“I’m not following you,” Kate said.
“I told you when we first became the Prince of Sanheim, I worried its power was corrupting,” Quinn said. “However long they’ve been the Prince of Sanheim, that corruption has now sunk so deep they don’t even think of it anymore. They thought nothing of killing the banker and nothing of killing someone totally innocent. Worse, they were surprised that I felt differently.”
Kate noticed he said “I” instead of “we” but didn’t mention it.
“I hear you,” she said.
“Do you?” Quinn asked. “We’ve been round and round on this. I like being the Horseman. Hell, I love being him. There is no fear, no doubt, no hesitation. The night belongs to me, to us. But he’s dangerous, too. If we want to beat these people, I’m all about it. But you have to promise me we won’t become them. When the next Prince of Sanheim shows up, we aren’t going to hunt them down and kill them.”
Kate nodded. She hadn’t been thinking that far ahead.
“Let’s just concentrate on surviving this ordeal, okay?” she asked. She put her arm on his. “I’ve told you before: we won’t lose ourselves. You didn’t tonight. You saved a woman, remember? The Headless Horseman was the good guy, at least for once.”
“Good,” he said, “because it’s just the beginning. I know what they’re going to do next.”
“What?” Kate asked, but she saw it in his mind as clear as day. “No, they wouldn’t go that far.”
“I may have saved a woman, but I’ve also shown a tremendous weakness,” Quinn said as if he hadn’t heard her. “I’ve shown them that I care. Not only about the town, but its people. We have to be ready again, every night. Because unless I’m wrong, it’s now open season on the town of Leesburg—hell, on the whole damn area—until they get what they want.”
Chapter 16
October 3, 2007
The waiting was going to kill them both.
Every night, they stood watch. Quinn, as the Horseman, rode from Sterling to Purcellville and back again, searching and watching. Meanwhile, Kate was on her tour of nearly every cemetery in the county. Neither one was getting anywhere.
The other Prince of Sanheim—whoever he and she were—didn’t strike. Indeed, nothing was happening. After the rampant activity of early and mid-September, the end of the month had passed in rare quiet. Yet it wasn’t peaceful.
Maybe it was just her, but Kate felt like everyone was on edge. It could just be because it was the first year after the attacks of Lord Halloween and Summer Mandaville’s articles had sown a few doubts about whether he was really dead.
But Kate didn’t think so. She felt like the rest of the county was waiting too; though for what, the citizens didn’t exactly know. You could feel it. She’d heard Alexis talking in the office the other day about her nightmares. When she stopped into Starbucks the other day, a man practically started a fight with the barista over an insufficient amount of chocolate in his mocha. The tension was inexplicable, yet palpable.
And it was more present for Kate and Quinn. They read Crowley’s Sanheim book, re-read it, then read it again, practically memorizing it. It had detail after detail about the history of the Prince of Sanheim, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough.
The absolute worst of it was that she felt stuck, useless. While Quinn searched high and low, she spun her wheels looking for some kind of clue to her own abilities.
Tonight she decided to return to Middleburg Baptist Church’s cemetery, the spot where they had made love nearly a month earlier. While Quinn rode off again, she wandered among the gravestones, marveling at just how much time she had spent in cemeteries lately. She should be sick of the sight of them.
Yet she wasn’t. Although she had been in a different one almost every night, even returning to the one where they had buried the little girl’s bones next to her mother, they all had the same quality to them. They were peaceful, serene.
If there were many ghosts in these graveyards, she wasn’t finding them. Sometimes she thought they were there—she could sense them among the rustling leaves, hear their distant whispers—and then they were gone.
It was killing her. She knew her abilities, her role as the Prince of Sanheim, were tied to the dead. She had understood it clearly when she helped the mourning woman. She had assumed she would find others like her easily. But she looked everywhere and found nothing.
She wandered over to her mother’s grave. This time she had thought to bring flowers. She placed them down by the stone.
“I don’t know what to do, Mom,” she said out loud. “These people—the ones like us—they’re coming for us, I know it. And they could hurt a lot of others if we don’t stop them. And right now Quinn is the only thing in their way. I can see into some people mind’s but… it’s not enough. I won’t be able to help him when the time comes. It will be two on one. Or worse.
“The book keeps talking about moidin. All successful Princes of Sanheim have followers. So they probably do too. And what do we have? We have one-half of the Prince of Sanheim. That’s it. I’m dead weight, Mom.”
All at once it felt like too much. She sunk down to her knees, kneeling on the ground. She saw their future in stark terms. The Prince of Sanheim would find them and kill them both. Everything they had fought for last year w
ould be undone. What had seemed like a blessing had turned into a curse. The despair overwhelmed her and she started to cry.
That’s when the whispering started. She almost didn’t notice it at first, but as she knelt facing the grave it grew louder.
“You are lost,” a voice said.
“You are alone,” said another.
“You are afraid,” a third one said.
She looked around her and saw nothing. For a moment, she was scared.
Quinn, come back to me, she thought.
But there was no answering response. Whatever she faced now, she was on her own.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The whisper came from right next to her and Kate was startled. She fell over and nearly screamed when she saw the figure lurking next to her.
The mourning mother she had seen last month had been translucent and clothed in black, but she had seemed and looked human. This figure, however, did not.
It had no eyes, just dark, hollow sockets from which there was an eerie green glow. Its face was almost entirely skeletal, with barely a trace of flesh. It wore what looked like rags, not clothes, and its hair—white and tangled—stretched all the way to the ground.
Kate backed away on her hands and knees. She looked to the left to see two others nearby.
“You are abandoned,” one said.
“You are defeated,” the other replied.
“You are doomed,” the third said.
Kate moved from being afraid to angry very quickly. She said the first thing that popped into her mind.
“Fuck you.”
She mentally made a note to think of a better comeback next time.
But if she was looking to have an impact, she had one. The three things—the word ‘wraith’ came to mind—looked surprised. They turned to one another.
“Did she talk to us?”
“She did.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, now this is starting to piss me off,” Kate said, looking at the three of them.
“Make her stop,” the first one said.
“She sees us!”
That’s when the third one moved toward her, stretching out an ancient, bony hand. Kate was repulsed by the very sight of it and slapped it away as it got near her.
The third wraith grabbed its hand as if it had been burned.
“She touched us!” it shouted.
Their faces may have been mostly skeletal, but Kate still recognized the emotion she saw reflected on them: fear. These things feared her.
The three backed away as if to run.
“Don’t even think about leaving,” Kate commanded them.
Surprising even her, the three stopped.
“It’s her,” the first said.
“Yes,” the other replied.
“Yes,” the third added.
She wasn’t sure what she expected, but the three shocked her again. As one, they got down on their knees and bowed their heads. Their gesture was entirely reminiscent of the Headless Horseman’s reaction to her last month. He, too, had knelt before her.
My God, Kate thought, what kind of monster am I?
Kate stared at them in horror and wanted to shout at them to get up. But she was afraid if she did, they would obey, and she would lose whatever chance she had of learning more about herself.
“Who am I?” Kate asked.
The three rose their heads as one and stared at her. Kate had to stop herself from staring at the green glow around their face. It gave off a sickish hue that was strangely fascinating.
“She doesn’t know,” the first one said.
“Yes,” the second one replied.
Kate cut off the third before it could agree.
“So help me God, if you say ‘yes,’ I will kick your ass,” Kate said.
The third put a hand to its mouth as if to stop it from saying anything. The gesture was so childlike, Kate wanted to laugh. In the space of a few minutes, she had gone from terrified to amazed. Whatever these things were, they were afraid of her.
“Tell me what you know,” Kate said.
“We have waited,” the first said.
“Yes,” the second one said.
Kate stopped the third.
“Okay, from here on out, I just need one of you to speak,” she said. “This isn’t Macbeth.”
“We have waited,” the first one said again.
“For whom?”
“You.”
“All right, we are going to be here all night if you can’t give me better answers than that,” Kate said.
“We can’t…” the first one started and stopped.
“Speaking is difficult for us,” the second one added. “It’s been a long time.”
“You were people?” Kate asked.
“Yes,” the third one said. “Long ago.”
“What were your names?”
The three stared at her mutely for a minute.
“We don’t remember,” the second one said.
“Why did you come to me? What were you doing here?” Kate asked.
“We thought…”
“You were in pain,” the second one said.
“You were afraid, alone, abandoned,” the third one said.
“And you came to help me?” she asked, but she knew right away that wasn’t right. “No, you came to make it worse.”
“To be near the living, we must feel what they feel,” the first one said.
“To feel the dead, you must feel what we feel,” the second one added.
“So I could only sense your presence because I was feeling what you…”
The realization hit her like a lightning bolt. Last month, when she had driven past the cemetery, she had been feeling sad, depressed even. And then she had seen the woman in the graveyard—who was also sad and depressed, mourning the loss of her daughter even though decades had passed.
Today, she had been feeling alone and afraid—in despair. It had drawn these things to her. To feel them, she had to feel what they were feeling, and vice versa. The sad dead woman called to the sad living one. These wraiths, so lost in despair they had forgotten their own names, were drawn to the only emotion they experienced. As awful as it sounded, they were feeding off it.
The only difference between her and others who visited this graveyard was that Kate had seen the wraiths, and been able to touch them.
She understood now why she was unable to find other spirits in the other graveyards. She had been looking for ghosts, but not feeling anything in particular. But these phantoms existed on a purely emotional level. Without that, there was nothing for them to respond to.
She looked at the three creatures before her.
“What am I?”
“You are her,” the first one said again, as if this explained everything.
“Her, who?” Kate asked.
“The one who was foretold,” the second one said.
“We waited for you,” the third one said. “We’ve waited so long.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Kate asked, her frustration mounting. “Who am I?”
“You,” the first wraith said, “are going to set us free.”
“All of us,” the second one said.
“You are the last,” the third one agreed.
*****
Kieran was tired of waiting too.
The strange thing was that it benefited him. He had been desperate to stop Sawyer from finding his new counterpart too early. When they had attacked the woman in Leesburg, Kieran assumed the game was nearly over. Sawyer had finally drawn the new Prince of Sanheim into the open.
But instead of striking, Sawyer and Elyssa had done nothing. It didn’t make sense. It was true they didn’t know their identities—and Kieran sure as hell wasn’t going to tell them—but Sawyer at least knew what form Quinn’s cennad was.
Since that night in Leesburg, Sawyer had devoured everything he could about the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. Apparently unaware of the story initia
lly, Kieran had given him a copy of Washington Irving’s original story. Then—at Elyssa’s request—he’d dug up the original German folk legends that had inspired Irving. Kieran had even bought a TV and DVD player and showed them every movie version he could find.
Personally, Kieran thought none of them did the original story justice. The Tim Burton film Sleepy Hollow was too gothic for his taste—but maybe that was because he had enough gothic in real life. Then he found a version of the story with Jeff Goldblum as Ichabod Crane—which Kieran liked—and former Chicago Bear Dick Butkus as Brom Bones—of which Kieran did not approve. Not that it had any effect on Sawyer or Elyssa. They didn’t know what the Chicago Bears were. Kieran had started to explain before realizing he would also have to tell them about American football, and that was a bridge too far. Elyssa could raid the mind of a moidin if she really wanted to know. Kieran personally never had any taste for football.
Ultimately, Kieran thought that the Disney cartoon captured the spirit of the book best. Yes, it had singing and dancing, but of all the versions, it best represented the sheer malevolence of the Headless Horseman.
Yet after studying all those versions, Sawyer had taken no action. Kieran thought they would set another trap in Leesburg, but Sawyer made no move to do anything. Kieran was dying to ask why, except he didn’t want to push Sawyer inadvertently into moving. The delay—whatever Sawyer’s reasons—was only assisting him.
Kieran stood on the back terrace and looked at the forest behind the house.
They were out there somewhere. He only hoped they were preparing for what lay ahead. He still worried they weren’t up to the task, but his boss—his real boss, not Sawyer—was more confident.
His thoughts were disturbed by a noise behind him. Elyssa walked out onto the patio. She was toned down today, wearing just jeans and a pink t-shirt. It didn’t matter that it was now distinctly colder outside. He wasn’t sure she felt cold anymore.
“Sawyer is looking for you,” she said.
“Is he?” Kieran asked, surprised. That meant something was afoot.
“He’s finally made a decision,” she said, and she looked past Kieran into the trees. “He’s chosen how he wants to confront our rivals.”
Band of Demons (The Sanheim Chronicles Book 2) Page 15
