Ian pulled out of the gas station and eased back onto the white road. “The guy said they’re plowing Route 3 and 81, so we should be okay as soon as we get off this street.”
Bob Marley’s voice continued to echo “yes” and “amen” to that being the case.
Eighteen
They’re on the move again.
He travels the treacherous roads as he has all night, the ring’s presence suddenly a blip back on his radar. He has his heading, and he’s getting there at seventy miles per hour.
But something bothers him. It shouldn’t be this hard. Not with the help of his comrades. That the four people managed to survive the night and find another mode of transportation seems absurd, and he wonders again why everything seems so elusive for him. He questions his Company with such thoughts, but their explanations are preserved with silent contempt. Feelings of betrayal and doubt begin to seep into his mind like a cancer, its tentacles reaching, probing, infecting. He must weed them out before they turn into vines that choke the voices from his head forever. He needs the voices. He has always needed the voices. They are still talking, though from far away and no longer from the seat beside him. Perhaps his involuntary distrust, if even only for a moment, has distanced him from their good graces.
“I am the Crest of Dragons,” he repeats to himself. “I will destroy the world.”
As the trees blur past, he can see animals stepping forth from out of the sheltered woods lining the road, curious heads raised high, staring at his approach. Deer, rabbits, moose, even a bear. In the split second that he notices them, he considers their eyes, the expressions they hold. Anxiety. Fear. Disdain. They are able to detect his agenda, his power. They know he is bringing an end to their world, and it is not nature’s groaning anticipation that the Apostle Paul told the church in Rome about so long ago. No, it certainly is not that.
Though he has been awake all night, he is not tired. He has waited too long for this opportunity to let human frailty get in the way. He cannot stop until the ring is secure on his finger and both worlds are bridged…until he has the power again.
But it had been right there in front of him, his for the taking. Why hadn’t he moved, ripped it from the girl’s pants? Why had he just stood there, dumb, immobile? Was it the Lookers? The interference of Elohim’s chosen angels? Were they finally taking action against him?
“I am the Crest of Dragons.” This time, it sounds less like a statement of fact and more like an attempt to convince, and it silences him. Instead, he channels his frustration into thoughts of the Brotherhood, of what he will do to them once they come after him again. They have their own plans for the ring, but they are only silly children ignorant of the father’s true will. There is no doubt in his mind about that. Their plans are not their plans. He knows this because they have told him so, and he has within him a sense of it. The ring back in the hands of the Brotherhood will lay unused, rusting in the dank vault of time while they send their agencies out across the globe in search of its counterpart. But he is unconvinced that that for which they so desperately search will ever be found, and so he will use this ring to accomplish a different work altogether, a much quicker work. The Society may tinker around in politics, precious centuries wasted on manipulating the world stage, but he has no such patience for all of that. He isn’t interested in the Brotherhood’s power, its agenda, its quest to rule the world in some new golden age. He doesn’t want to rule…he wants to destroy. And his acts of destruction will commence with the annihilation of the very Society that offered him an escape from his own meaningless existence, that introduced him to the ring in the first place. He has no remorse, however, for what he must do. They came after him with knife and flame and then had the audacity to ask him for help. They will try to kill him again once he has served their purpose, once he has led them to the ring. That isn’t even a question, and he’s sure they don’t expect him to believe otherwise, knowing that the ring itself will guarantee his participation in their scheme. But it is a gamble they will lose. Nothing will be able to stop him once he takes the signet ring from the four people now driving back toward Watertown, back to the scene of the crime.
Nineteen
The snow was falling gently now, a graceful winter dance that welcomed the travelers back into Watertown (though the voices on the radio were still insisting that the worst was yet to come). In daylight, the town seemed hardly as ominous as it had the night before. But then they passed the diner.
“What the hell?” Ian peered to his left, slowing down.
“Oh my god,” Ashley whispered.
The diner that had offered them refuge for a short while, before the paranormal chased them out of it, now sat surrounded by yellow caution tape, police cars, and ambulances. There were officers walking around in big winter coats, faces blank. A reporter was standing in front of a camera.
Ian turned at the light and drove back into the parking lot that they’d been so eager to escape just a dozen hours earlier.
“What are you doing?” Marcus asked.
“I want to know what happened.”
A police officer held up her hand, signaling him to stop. She walked up to the window, and Ian lowered it.
“You have to turn around. This is a crime scene,” she said, clouds of warm air generated from her words.
“What happened?”
The woman tilted her head, and her keen eyes quickly scanned the other three faces peering out of the vehicle. Her eyebrows knitted together in suspicion. She could tell by the looks coming back at her that the four of them weren’t upset about missing their favorite French toast and gourmet coffee (which the officer had enjoyed herself for years). “A man was murdered,” she said, watching them closely.
“Who?” Marcus leaned toward the open window, and the tone that carried his voice through the air solidified the officer’s curiosity.
“You people from around here?” she asked instead.
Heather pressed against her shoulder restraint and whispered in Ian’s ear, “You should tell her.”
Ian ignored her. “No, we were in the mountains for a few days. Supposed to leave yesterday, but the storm set us back. Someone at the hotel told us about this place, said they had good breakfast.”
She stood silent for a moment, not buying the story but unable to come up with a reason why they’d lie to her. Ian tried not to shift beneath her gaze.
“Yeah, well,” she started, “the owner is pinned to the ceiling at the moment.” She was still looking for something that would help explain their true interest in the place.
“What do you mean?” Marcus’ eyes widened.
“Never seen anything like it. Must’ve been a group of people come in here last night during the storm and fastened him to the ceiling. Chopped him up pretty good.” She got a reaction all right, though not one of guilt. One of the girls in the back swore in horror.
Staring past the officer and to the diner, Ian said, “Guess we’ll be going somewhere else for breakfast.” He put the vehicle in reverse, and the cop stepped back.
“You have anything you want to tell me?” she asked.
“What?”
“Just a question.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
She chewed the inside of her lip. “Okay then. Drive safe.”
“Will do.” He rolled the window up and backed the Rover far enough away from her so that she wouldn’t be able to make out the license plate when he turned around. He didn’t dare look back as he left her there staring after them.
“Why didn’t you tell her?” Heather asked as he continued on toward Interstate 81.
“I thought you wanted to get home as soon as possible.”
“I do, but—”
“If we told her what happened, there’s no way we’d be home for Christmas.”
“We’d be suspects,” Marcus agreed.
“Suspects?”
Ashley nodded to her sister, but then said, “We’re going to be
suspects anyway. It would’ve just been better to tell her. Now it’s gonna look like we were hiding something.”
“What do you mean we’re going to be suspects anyway?” Heather was getting upset.
Marcus explained. “When they find the Taurus, they’ll trace it back to us. They’ll search the woods and find Charles, and then they’ll be looking for his missing Rover, which a bunch of suspicious people just happened to drive up to a crime scene in Watertown. If the cop puts in her two cents, they’ll wonder why we had his car and why we lied about what we were doing there. And if the kids in the diner are found and made to give a statement…” He turned and looked out the window. “Not to mention what’ll happen if they find my phone, or Ian’s prints on the gun that killed Charles.”
“That’s all true,” Ian said, applying more pressure to the gas pedal. “But really…I just wanna get the hell away from these mountains.”
They sat in silence, each one forced to agree in the privacy of their own minds.
Marcus unfolded the map from the gas station and began following their route with his finger. “81 south. South.”
“Got it.” Then he asked Ashley if she wanted to try calling Joyce again.
“Sure.” She got out her phone, and her face clouded. “It’s dead.”
“Your phone?”
“Yeah. But it had like forty-five percent left…”
“Guess that means you have the only working phone,” Marcus said to Ian.
They merged onto 81 south and were thankful that the roads had been salted and plowed.
“We’re on here for almost seventy miles,” Marcus said. “It’ll take us all the way to Syracuse. Maybe an hour and a half.”
Ashley leaned her head back. “Please be home, Joyce.”
They all echoed her sentiment.
****
It took two hours to find Joyce’s home. It sat like a Christmas ornament against the crest of a wooded park; candy cane poles, reindeer, elves, nutcrackers, and miles of dormant Christmas lights covered the property.
“Is that her car?” Ian asked, pulling up behind a black Saab parked in the driveway.
Ashley shrugged. “She drove a beat-up Volkswagen in college.”
Ian put the Rover in park, and even as the girls jumped from the car, he and Marcus sat, taking in the house as if it might be harboring a terrible secret.
“What do you think?” Marcus asked him.
It was a question loaded with all kinds of implications, none of which Ian felt like sorting out right now. “I think I want a hot shower.”
Marcus couldn’t argue with that prospect, and they joined the girls in following the snow-covered path that led to the brick house—electric candles glowing in the windows, a wreath on the door.
Ashley was just about to knock, her hand held poised in the air, when the door opened.
A young woman in dark jeans, designer boots, a puffy brown coat, and a scarf wrapped around her neck swore loudly, her hand going to her heart. She stood in the doorway trying to catch her breath and then started to laugh. “Ash?” She looked back and forth between the four people standing on her doorstep. “What the hell are you doing here?” She bent over and picked up the keys she’d dropped. “You scared the dickens out of me!” She stepped over the threshold and threw her arms around her old roommate.
“Sorry about that,” Ashley said, squeezing back.
Joyce stepped back and looked at them again, her face beaming with playful curiosity. “So what’s going on? You just show up out of the blue like—”
“You didn’t get my message?”
“No.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked it. “No messages.”
Ashley bit her lip. “Oh.”
“Come on, what the hell is going on? Who are these people?”
Ashley turned and looked at Heather. “This is Heather, my older sister.”
Joyce grinned. “I’ve heard a lot about you, girl!”
Heather forced a smile.
“And this is her fiancé, Ian,” Ashley continued.
“Hi, Ian. Joyce.”
“Nice to meet you, Joyce,” he answered.
“And this is my boyfriend, Marcus.”
“Really…” She said it mischievously, as if a secret wink would’ve followed if she knew no one else would notice.
“We were skiing up in Quebec, but on the way back, our plane had to make an emergency stop at a small regional airport in the Adirondacks. We’ve been driving for a while and were wondering, with another storm coming tonight, if you wouldn’t mind us staying over. I—”
“Of course!” Joyce interrupted. “Make yourself at home! Food, shower, whatever! My house is your house.” She beamed. “This is great! Wow!” She stood back and shook her head, unable to bring herself to believe that her old roommate was actually at her front door.
Ashley crossed her arms. “Are you sure?”
“Am I sure? Of course I’m sure! It’s so good to see you again!”
“You, too.”
“Were you going somewhere?” Ian asked, observing the amount of makeup that colored her face. “I mean, we don’t want to impose…”
“Oh, yeah, I have this little family Christmas thing at my aunt’s house. Hey, you’re welcome to come.” She seemed genuinely amused by the unscheduled visit.
“We’d love to,” Ashley said, looking around to the others, “but we’re exhausted.”
Joyce put a hand on Ashley’s shoulder. “I understand, honey. No, go right on in and make yourselves at home. I mean it, please.”
“Thank you so much. You have no idea what this means to us.”
She waved the gratitude away. “I’m not sure what time I’ll be back, hopefully before more of that snow comes in. Are you in a hurry to leave tomorrow? Can I make you all breakfast?”
“You surely can,” Marcus said.
“Okay then.” She jumped up and down, clapping her hands together, her hair bouncing in the cold. “I can’t believe you’re here!” Then her gaze settled on their attire.
“Don’t ask,” Ashley said, following her eyes to the clothes George—God rest his soul—had so generously given them.
“What? I didn’t say anything.” She leaned forward, planted a sticky kiss on Ashley’s cheek, then moved in and delivered hugs to the rest of them. “Go on, get inside. I’ll see you tonight.” She giggled. “I can’t believe you’re here! I wish I didn’t have to go, but I’m gonna be late as it is…”
“Don’t worry about us,” Ashley told her. “Enjoy yourself. Tell your mother I said hi.”
“Oh, she’s gonna want to see you…” She stopped herself. “Tomorrow maybe. You go in and rest. You guys look tired.” She hopped once and clapped her hands together again. “I can’t wait to hear all about it! Okay, I’ll see you later! You have my cell, and I’ll just call the house if I need to get in touch with you, okay?” Then she gave Ashley another hug and skipped through the snow to the Saab. She waved as she backed around the Rover, honked, and disappeared past some trees.
The four of them stood there for a second, processing what had just happened.
“Wow.” Ian ran a hand through his disheveled hair.
“She hasn’t changed at all.” Ashley led them inside.
The house was cozy and smelled like Christmas candles. The living room had a Christmas tree that touched the ceiling, its green needles hidden beneath a tremendous amount of ornaments, tinsel, and blinking lights. Boxes of wrapped presents were stacked around its base.
Ashley walked through the room, looking intently at the pictures hanging from the wall. There were wedding photos, and she wondered where her old friend’s husband was. She didn’t see any pictures of children, though a quick tour through the rest of the house would no doubt satisfy that curiosity.
“Place is nice,” Marcus said, coming up behind her. “Fridge is full.”
Ashley smiled. “Go easy, okay.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He wrapped his arm
s around her and rested his chin on her shoulder, looking at the pictures with her.
“You girls close?”
“We were. She transferred my last semester, and we kind of lost track of each other.”
He kissed her neck.
She leaned back into him. “Where’s Heather and Ian?”
Christmas music started playing from somewhere else in the house.
“Guess they’re putting some music on.”
The steady beat of the “Drummer Boy’s” bass drum floated through the house.
Ashley closed her eyes, relaxing for the first time in a long time. She could feel her nerves begin to unwind and her body loosen, all that had led them here evaporating into some past dream.
“Do you want anything to drink?” he asked. “There’s eggnog.”
“Sounds wonderful.”
“There’s a fireplace, too.”
“Mmm… I’ll meet you there.”
He kissed her again and left the room, leaving her to study the pictures in private. A large portrait enclosed by a dark wooden frame hung beside the tree. Joyce was standing beside a bare-chested guy, both of them covered in mud. There was a football nestled in the crook of his arm, and their faces were frozen in mock toughness. Ashley smiled. She missed her friend. She wondered why she hadn’t heard anything about a marriage. There was a time, she was sure, that she would’ve been in the wedding. But life tended to change things like that pretty quickly, college life fading into some irrelevant past as everyone grew up, became responsible, and were forced to make new friends in new places.
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