A quick check of the beach outside the cave revealed it was momentarily deserted. Clutching the netting and its writhing contents to his chest, he started back down the beach at a rapid walk.
He had almost reached his car when the first demon appeared.
* * *
A young woman and a little girl appeared suddenly in the kitchen doorway, and John Ross went silent. The young woman was thin and worn looking, and she had the look of someone with problems sleep alone could not solve. Her dark eyes fixed boldly on Ross and stayed there, assessing him, reading him, seeing him in some secret way.
Nest, her back to the entry, turned in her chair. "Good morning," she said, smiling at them. "Did you sleep well?"
The young woman nodded, her dark, intense eyes still on Ross. "Did we miss breakfast?"
"No, we were waiting for you." Nest glanced at Ross. "This is John Ross. John, this is Bennett Scott and her daughter, Harper."
Ross nodded. "Nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you," Bennett Scott replied, but looked doubtful about it. "Guess you got in late."
"After midnight sometime."
"Is that your son?" She gestured toward the living room, where the boy who was the gypsy morph kneeled on the sofa and stared into the park.
Ross hesitated, not sure what to say. "Yes."
"What's his name?"
Ross glanced at Nest. "John Junior. We call him Little John."
"Little John," Bennett repeated thoughtfully.
"Kind of corny, I guess." Ross gave her a rueful smile.
"Appo juss," Harper said softly, tugging on her mother's hand.
Nest rose to retrieve the container from the refrigerator and pour some into one of the sealed cups the little girl drank from, leaving Ross to deal with Bennett, who continued to stare boldly at him.
"How old is Little John?" she asked casually, but there was an edge to her voice.
"Four years and two months." Ross held the smile. "We're just visiting for a few days, and then we'll be on our way."
Bennett Scott pursed her lips. "There was a minister here last night looking for you. Findo Cask. Odd name. I told him I didn't know you. But now I kind of think maybe I do."
He shook his head, holding her gaze. "I don't think so."
She brushed at her lank hair, then folded her arms under her breasts. "Nest doesn't seem to think much of this minister. I guess I don't either. He was kind of pushy."
Ross stood up slowly, levering himself to his feet by leaning on the tabletop. "I'm sorry if he caused you any trouble, Miss Scott. I don't know who this man is or what he wants." But I can guess, he thought to himself.
The young woman pointed at him suddenly. "I do know who you are. I remember now. You were here, oh, fifteen years ago or so. I was just a little girl. You came to see Nest's grandparents. You knew her mother, didn't you?"
His throat tightened. "Yes. That was a long time ago."
"Sit down," she urged, concern mirrored in her dark eyes. Her hands gestured, and he did as she asked. "I shouldn't expect you to remember me after all that time. I guess I wasn't sure where…"
She trailed off, looking around quickly for Harper, who was sucking on her juice cup. "Are you hungry, sweetie?"
Harper's eyes were on the boy in the living room. "Boy," she said, not seeming to hear her mother. She trundled past Bennett into the living room and climbed up on the couch next to the gypsy morph. She knelt as he did, drinking her juice and staring out at the park. The morph did not look at her.
"Why don't you get dressed," Nest suggested to Bennett, coming back to the table. "Harper can play with Little John. I'll keep an eye on her. She'll be fine. When you come out, we'll have breakfast."
Bennett considered the matter, then nodded and went down the hallway to her bedroom, closing the door softly behind her. Ross watched her go without comment, wondering why she had been so worried about who he was. It was more than uneasiness she had demonstrated; it was fear. He recognized it now, considering her response to him, to the possibility that their paths had crossed somewhere before. Yet once the mystery of their previous encounter was cleared up, she seemed fine. Perhaps relieved was a better word.
Nest reseated herself at the table. "Little John?" she inquired, arching one eyebrow.
He shrugged. "It was all I could come up with on the spur of the moment. He's only been a boy for four days. I haven't had any reason to think of a name for him before."
"Little John will do. Tell me about the demons before Bennett gets back."
Pushing the empty coffee cup away from him as if to distance himself from his narrative, he did as she asked.
* * *
He hadn't even reached the car before the first demon appeared. Carrying the netting that contained the morph in one hand and gripping his walnut staff with the other, he clambered awkwardly up the sandy trail from the beach to the shoulder of Highway 101 and immediately caught sight of the longhaired young man standing several dozen feet away, occupying the space between himself and the car. He was paying Ross no attention whatsoever, his eyes directed out at the ocean. But Ross felt his instincts prickle, the magic that warded him surfacing in a rush, and he knew what was coming.
He walked up the road as if indifferent to the young man's presence, keeping close to the paving so as to pass behind the other. He saw the young man's posture shift, then watched him step back and shade his eyes as if to get a better look at something on the beach. When Ross came abreast of him, the young man wheeled to attack, but Ross was already moving, bringing his staff around to catch the other squarely across the forehead. Fire lanced from the rune-scrolled wood, and the young man's head exploded in a shower of blood. Revealed for what it was and stripped of its disguise, the demon's ruined shell went backward over the bluff and tumbled from view.
Wiping away the blood with an old rag, Ross climbed hurriedly into the car, backed onto the road, and drove toward Cannon Beach. They would be waiting for him at Mrs. Staples's by now, converging from all directions to intercept him. But he had anticipated this and had no intention of returning to Cannon Beach. He hadn't stayed alive this long by being predictable.
He drove past the turnoff without slowing and caught Highway 26 east toward Portland. In the seat beside him, the morph continued to change shape and emanate light, the magic pulsing like a beacon with each re-forming, leading his enemies right to it. Ross knew that if he was to have any chance at all, he needed to lose himself in a large population. If he remained in Cannon Beach or tried to find sanctuary in any other small town, the demons would find him in a heartbeat. But in a city he could disappear. The number and frequency of the morph's changes would diminish after a time, and while he could not hope to avoid entirely the demons seeking him, he could make it harder for them to determine where he was. When the morph was not changing, it was less identifiable; the Lady had advised him of this. Gradually, Ross would become the focus of their hunt. As one among thousands, he would not be so easy to find.
But he had to get to Portland to have any chance at all, and the demons were already in place. A logging truck ran him off the readjust above the turnoff to Banks. He escaped into the woods, found a dirt road farther in, and caught a ride with an old woman and her daughter to a town so small he didn't even see a sign with a name. He felt bad about Mrs. Staples's car, but there was nothing he could do. He felt bad about the car he stole in the nameless town, too, but there was nothing he could do about that either. He abandoned it outside Portland and caught a metro bus into the city.
In a cavernous train station on the west side, while waiting to board a train south to San Francisco, he was attacked again. Two men came at him in the men's room, armed with iron pipes and buttressed by lives of willful destruction. He took them both out in seconds, but the demon who had dispatched them and was waiting outside surprised him as he tried to sneak out the back. The demon was savage and primal, but intelligent as well. It picked a good spot for an ambush, and if it had been a little luckier
, it might have succeeded in its effort. But his instincts saved John Ross once more, and the demon died in a fiery conflagration of magic.
Ross called Mrs. Staples from the bus station after the cab dropped him off to tell her of the car and apologize for what he had done. He told her he would send her money. She took it very well, considering. Then he picked up his ticket, boarded the bus, waited until it was ready to leave, and got off again. He walked out of the station and down the street to a used-car agency, took a clunker out for a test drive after leaving the salesman the purchase price in cash as security, and kept going. He drove north to Vancouver, abandoned the car, caught another bus south, and was in California the next day.
He continued on like this for more than a week, twisting and turning, dodging and weaving, a boxer under attack. Over and over again he picked up and moved, sometimes not even bothering to unpack. He slept infrequently and for brief periods, and he was tired and edgy all the time, his energy slowly draining away. It did not help that he was forced to defend himself so often that he was spending all of his time in his dreams of the future without protection, a fugitive there as well, constantly on the run, hunted and at risk. That he stayed alive in both worlds was impressive. That he managed to hold on to the gypsy morph was a genuine miracle.
The morph continued to change rapidly for the first seven days before finally slowing down. It stayed in the netting all this time, never even trying to venture forth, going through its multitude of transformations. It was animal, vegetable, insect, bird, reptile, and a whole slew of other things that Ross was unable or unwilling to identify. At one point it seemed to disappear entirely, but when he peeked inside, he found it was a slug. Another time, it was a bee. A third time it was some sort of mold. Ross quit looking after that and, until it took the shape of something possessing bulk, just assumed it was in the net. It never made a sound and never seemed in need of food or drink. Somehow it had the capacity to sustain itself during this early period, so he didn't need to be concerned for its well-being beyond keeping it safe and alive.
By the time of the incident in Salt Lake City in mid-December, it was changing on the average of only once a day. For two days during that period, it was a cat. For a day and a half, it was a chimp. Once, for a matter of only a few hours, it was a wolf with a tiger-striped face, an uncanny reminder of Wraith.
Shortly after that, it changed into the little boy it was now and spoke a single word—Nest. When it said her name twice more in the space of a single day, Ross decided to take a chance and come back to Hopewell.
"Because he said 'Nest' and you thought he was talking about me," she said quietly.
"Because I thought he might be talking about you, yes." She watched his face grow intense and troubled. "Because I had just watched him turn into a miniature Wraith, and it made me wonder. But mostly because I was at my wits' end— am at my wits' end still, for that matter—and I had to try something."
He leaned back in his chair. "I am exhausted and almost out of time, and I haven't gotten anywhere. I've been with him for twenty-two days, and I don't have a clue how to reach him. I thought I would learn something in that time, thought I would tip to some secret about his magic. But all I've managed to do is to keep the two of us alive and running. There's been no communication, no exchange of information, no discovery of any sort at all. Your name was the first breakthrough. That, and the fact that he's stayed a little boy for four days now. Maybe it means something."
She nodded, then rose to pour them both a fresh cup of coffee and reseated herself. Outside, the day was bright and clear and cold, the early morning frost still visible in the shadowed spaces and on the tree trunks in crystalline patches. Ross could hear the oil furnace thrum as it pumped out heat to ward against the freeze.
"He doesn't seem especially interested in me now that he's here," she observed carefully.
He sipped at the coffee. "I know. He hasn't spoken your name either. Hasn't said a single word. So maybe I was wrong."
"How much time is left?"
"Before he disappears altogether?" Ross shook his head. "Several days, I guess. They give a morph on the average of thirty days of life, and that leaves this one down to eight."
"Interesting," she said, "that he's become a little boy."
"Interesting," he agreed.
They talked a bit longer about the propensities of gypsy morphs, but since morphs came without blueprints and tended to be wholly inconsistent in their development, there was really little to conclude about the intentions of this one. Nest would have liked to understand more about the strange creatures, but the fact remained that she understood little enough even about Pick, whom she had known for most of her life. Creatures of the forest and magic tended to be as foreign to humans as plankton, even to those as attuned to them as she was.
Bennett reappeared wearing jeans and an old sweatshirt she'd pulled from Nest's closet and a pair of her walking shoes, so they set about making breakfast. It was served and consumed at the larger dining room table, with everyone eating except the morph, who picked at his food and said nothing.
"Lo, boy," Harper said to him midway through the meal.
The gypsy morph studied her solemnly.
"Is he always this quiet?" Bennett asked Ross, frowning.
He nodded. "He understands everything, but he doesn't speak." He hesitated. "The fact is, we're on our way to Chicago after the holidays to see a specialist on the matter."
"Better have his appetite checked at the same time," she advised pointedly. "He hasn't eaten a thing."
"He ate some cereal earlier," Nest said.
"Mommy?" Harper asked, looking up, big eyes curious. "Boy talk?"
"Maybe later, sweetie," Bennett said, and went back to her breakfast.
Afterward, she bundled up Harper and told Nest they were going for a walk in the park. She asked Ross if Little John wanted to come with them, but Ross said he hadn't seemed well and should probably stay in. Her intentions were good, but he couldn't take a chance on letting the gypsy morph out of his sight.
Bennett and Harper went out the back door, across the lawn, and into the frozen expanse of the park. It was still not even noon. From his position on the couch, the gypsy morph watched them go, staring out the window anew. Ross stood beside him for a time, speaking hi low tones, eliciting no response at all.
Finally he walked back into the kitchen and picked up a towel to help dry the dishes Nest was washing.
"You have a dishwasher," he pointed out, indicating the machine in front of her.
"I like doing it by hand. I like how it makes me feel."
They worked in silence for a while, falling into a comfortable rhythm. Then Ross said, "They'll come looking for me, you know."
She nodded. "They already have. One of them, at least. Findo Gask, minister of the faith."
"There will be more. It will be dangerous if I stay."
She looked at him. "No duh, as Robert would say."
He didn't know who Robert was, but he got the message. "So maybe I should go after tonight."
"Maybe you should. But maybe coming here was the right thing to do. Let's give it some time and see." She handed him a juice glass. "Let's get one thing straight, John. I'm not asking you to leave. We crossed that bridge last night."
He finished drying all the glasses, stacking them on a towel spread out atop the counter. "It means a lot. I don't know when I've been this tired."
She smiled. "It's funny, but I thought I was going to end up spending Christmas all alone this year. Now I have a house full of people. It changes everything."
"Life has a way of doing that." He smiled ruefully. "It keeps us from becoming too complacent."
They had just finished putting away the dishes when a knock sounded at the front door. Nest exchanged a quick glance with Ross, then walked down the hall to answer it. He stayed in the kitchen for a few minutes listening to the slow drift of conversation that ensued, then walked to the kitchen window and looked
out.
A county sheriff's car was parked in the drive.
Chapter 10
Bennett Scott walked out of Nest Freemark's backyard and into Sinnissippi Park, head lowered, wincing against the brightness of the sun. A crystalline coating of frost lingered in shadowed patches of brittle grass and crunched beneath her boots when she walked on it. She watched Harper skip ahead of her, singing softly to herself, lost in that private child's world where adults aren't allowed. She recalled it from her own childhood, a not-so-distant past tucked carefully away in her memory. It was a world she had gone into all the time when growing up, often when she was seeking escape from Big Momma and the unpleasantness of her real life. She supposed Harper did the same, and it made her want to weep.
"Mommy, birdies!" the little girl called out, pointing at a pair of dark shadows winging through the trees.
"Robins," Bennett guessed, smiling at her daughter.
"Obbins," Harper parroted, and skipped ahead once more, watching the fluid movement of her shadow as it stretched out beside her.
Bennett tossed back her dark hair and lifted her face bravely against the sunlight. It would be better here, she thought. Better than it had been on the streets, when she was using all the time. Better than in the shelters, where she always kept her switchblade in one hand and Harper's wrist in the other. Better, even, than in the rehab units where she always felt used up and hopeless, where she went through the litany of recovery and still craved a fix all the time. She had tried to shield Harper, but the truth was, everything originated with her. There was no protection without separation, and she couldn't bear that.
But it had happened a few times, just because it was necessary if she was to survive. That was behind her now, so she could bear to think of it again, if only just. But she had left Harper in places rats called home and with people she wouldn't trust a dog with if she were thinking straight, and it was something of a miracle that nothing bad had happened to her baby. Coming back to Hopewell and to Nest was an attempt to set all that straight, to prevent any more incidents, to stop exposing Harper to the risks her mother had chosen to embrace. The men, the sex, the sickness, the drugs, the life— all rolled up into one big ball of evil that would drag her down and bury her if she gave it enough space in her life.
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