by Jen Blood
“But it’ll make it even,” Dean said. Claude glanced at Dean and then Bear and Ren, lifting his eyes but not his head. The kind of look you get from a beaten dog too scared to fight anymore.
“They could have found her,” Bear repeated. “Just pick up the damn radio and talk to someone. Whatever happened, you can’t change that. But why make it worse?”
“These people have a job to do,” Dean said. It was like he hadn’t even heard Bear. “They made a promise. I let the feds get away with this before—taking my sisters from me, and I barely put up a fight. They think they can do it again?” He shook his head. “They won’t do it again.”
“Maybe you should lie down,” Wendy said to him. She looked as tired as Dean did, but Bear sensed determination there, strength she’d kept hidden. “Let them go back to their room, and you rest.”
“I can’t sleep now,” Dean said, frantic. “They killed my Melanie—and probably Ariel, too. You think I can just go lie down somewhere, close my eyes, and everything will be better?” The man was unraveling before their eyes, and Bear didn’t want to be at his mercy when that last thread came undone.
Claude’s mumbling got louder, the rocking more violent, but Bear couldn’t make out the words. He looked at Ren. Her eyes were red, watery, but she hadn’t cried. She’d just gone quiet.
“We did not kill your daughter,” she said suddenly. She hadn’t spoken for more than an hour.
“You’re with the—” Dean began.
“We’re not with anyone who had anything to do with it,” Ren cut him off. Her voice was tight, raised now. Bear touched her arm, tried to get her to be quiet, but she shook him off. “We came here to help you, because this is the job we choose to do. We choose to help people. I am sorry about your daughter, but what happened to her is not our fault.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Dean said—his own voice just as tight, something unyielding, dangerous, in his eyes. “It doesn’t matter who you’re with or not, this sends a message. You think after what happened here, they’re going to let any of us get out of here alive? Least I can do is send a message. Maybe next time they’ll think twice before they fuck with another family, steal their children from them in the night.”
His voice rose on that last, his hand curled tighter around the rifle. He took a step toward them, and Bear saw fear flash on Wendy’s face. She stepped in front of him.
“Please, Dean…” she began.
Dean raised a hand to her, backhanding her across the cheek. Claude cried out when Wendy flew back against the wall, but Wendy didn’t say anything. A charged silence fell, those threads turned to knots that seemed to be choking Dean from the inside out. Wendy just stood there, her own hand raised to the rising welt on her cheek, shock in her eyes. Dean looked at her, his forehead furrowed. Tears coursed down his stubbly cheeks, and she went to him. Bear watched as she gently took the gun from her brother, and guided his head to her shoulder.
“Claude, take them back up to their room,” she said, while Dean wept on her shoulder. Claude didn’t respond, didn’t stand, still rocking in the corner. “Claude,” she said again, sharper this time. He looked up. “Take the gun, and bring these two back up to their room. Then come back down, and I’ll make a snack.”
Claude nodded, silent, but didn’t move until Wendy had led Dean up the stairs and turned the corner. The gun was where Wendy had left it, propped against the wall. Bear glanced at Ren. He didn’t need to be psychic to know she was thinking the same thing:
This was their chance.
Still mumbling to himself, Claude’s eyes locked on the gun. Bear took a step toward the man, not even sure what he would do—what he could do, as weak as he was. But he had to do something.
Before he could act on that thought, Wendy returned. Bear saw their one chance of escape—of survival—vanish before his eyes. He froze. Wendy took the situation in at a glance, and lay a hand on Claude’s arm.
“Why don’t you go upstairs and clean your room,” she said, in the same gentling tone Bear used when working with injured animals. “I’ll take care of Bear and Ren.”
“But Dean said—“ the man began.
“Dean told me it’s all right,” she said. “Go on, Claude. I think your coins spilled…”
An almost comical look of horror crossed his face. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I should fix it. Make sure I didn’t lose any.”
He went to the stairs still mumbling to himself. As soon as he was gone, Wendy went to the window. She peered out the edge of the flowery curtains.
“We have to move fast,” she said. Bear and Ren both stared at her, uncomprehending. “I don’t know how long Dean will stay down. The police can’t be far after everything that happened—they should be just outside, out by the trees.”
“Have you talked to them?” Bear asked.
“They found Ariel,” she continued. It was like she hadn’t even heard him. “She’s alive—that’s what they said. I need to get to her. The police said they would take me to her, if I let you go.”
She glanced up the stairs, completely spooked. There was a welt on her cheek where Dean had hit her.
“You’re letting us go?” Bear asked. He couldn’t make the words make sense.
“She is,” Ren said.
He didn’t ask any more questions. Bear felt like he’d been run over by an ox, but he forced himself to move.
Wendy grabbed her raincoat from a hook by the entry, opened the front door, looked around, and nodded them forward. Bear hesitated. What if it was a trick? Or they got shot by the cops, if Wendy hadn’t made it clear what she was doing? Ren squeezed his hand.
“We have to trust her,” she said, half under her breath.
She was right, he knew. He took a deep breath, ignoring the pain in his shoulder—the pain in his whole body, for that matter. They stepped outside. Rain poured down, the world dark and soaked through. Wendy had her jacket, but Bear and Ren were still in the clothes they’d been taken in. Bear wasted no time thinking about the water. He and Ren made their shaky way down the front steps, following Wendy. Bear half expected Dean to come charging out the front door after them, but it stayed closed.
There was no one in sight.
Ahead of them by fifty yards or less, an old truck was parked on the side of the road. Bear knew there were other people living in this settlement, but where were they? Did they even know what had happened? Were they even still here? He thought of movies he’d seen about alien invasions, mass abductions. Whole towns that vanished. That was what this felt like. He searched the horizon, but he didn’t see a soul. Even the dead were gone.
Wendy paused as they approached the truck. She looked around, in much the same way Bear had. “They told me to take this truck,” she said. She spoke quietly, like she was afraid of being overheard. “They just want me to get away from the house, so no one else gets hurt.”
“Okay,” Bear said. Instead of getting in, though, she just stood there for a second—frozen, about to take a flying leap into nothing. Bear could practically see her weighing the arguments in her head. Finally, she took a deep breath and nodded toward the truck.
“Get in,” she said.
Ren helped Bear into the cab, then pulled herself in. Wendy got behind the wheel. She still had her dress on beneath the raincoat, the welt on her cheek ugly and red from where Dean had hit her. The woman sat there for another second. She looked back at the house, swallowed hard, and turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life.
Behind them, Bear saw Dean emerge from the house, his rifle in hand. The old man shouted after them, his words lost in the rain and the wind. Wendy put the truck in gear. The gearshift grated for a second before it took hold. Her knuckles were white on the wheel, her whole body rigid. Go, go, go Bear chanted in his head, willing the vehicle forward. The engine caught; the tires spun in the mud, found solid ground, and they lurched forward. A gunshot sounded behind them. The rear window exploded. Wendy gave a small, terrified yelp,
glass shards flying in all directions. She kept driving. Another couple of gunshots followed, the impact enough to make the truck shimmy on the road. They didn’t stop.
Ren clutched the dashboard with both hands, bracing her body as they bounced over ruts, rocks, and debris. There was glass in her hair from the exploded window, a cut in her neck seeping blood from a stray shard.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” Wendy said, half to herself. “None of this was supposed to turn out this way.”
She barreled over the rough terrain, every bounce tearing through Bear like he was being shot all over again. Ren glanced at him, the fear in her eyes clear. “Just hang on,” she said. “It’s not much longer—just hold on. You can make it.”
His vision blurred at the edges, darkness closing in. He fought to stay conscious. If he closed his eyes, he was terrified that he might not open them again.
Wendy glanced at him, her hands still tight on the wheel. “Your friend is right,” she said. “I’ll get you out of this.”
“I’m all right,” he said. Or tried to say. He wasn’t sure the words ever actually made it past his lips.
Wendy nodded, about to say something. Her focus was on him instead of the road, so Bear saw it before she did. Another pickup—this one red, and headed straight toward them.
“Look out!” Ren shouted. Bear caught sight of the other Redfield brother—Barrett—in the driver’s seat. Wendy twisted the wheel a split second before they hit his vehicle, their own truck going up on two wheels as they careened to the side.
Bear looked behind them. Dean’s battered SUV wasn’t far behind, and closing in fast. The road was narrow, and Barrett’s truck stood solidly in the middle, barring the way. Bear expected the man to close the gap and box them in, but at the last second he seemed to catch Wendy’s eye, and Bear saw understanding there. The man nodded, fast, and Wendy slid past. With Barrett now in their wake, Bear turned and saw the man turn the truck until it was perpendicular to the road—cutting Dean off completely, making it impossible for him to follow.
They barreled on.
* * *
Chapter 27
“IS SHE BREATHING?” Jack asked me as I crouched next to Ariel. Phantom hovered beside me, and I was reminded of her treatment of the fawn a couple of days before. I slid my fingers over Ariel’s neck, pausing at the chain that hung loose around it. A silver purity ring shone on her left hand.
A second passed, perhaps two, before I found her carotid artery. A weak pulse fluttered beneath my fingers.
“She’s alive, but I don’t know what kind of condition she’s in. We need something to cut the trap off,” I said.
He shone his flashlight around like a pair of bolt cutters might magically appear in a corner, and his sudden intake of breath caught my attention once more.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Get hold of Phantom,” he said, his voice tight. The dog was right beside me, but I grabbed her collar regardless.
“What?” I asked again.
He shone his flashlight just a foot or two deeper into the tunnel, and I cringed.
“Oh my God,” I said, barely able to find my voice. I straightened, and stared at the same spot where Jack had trained the light. There were at least a dozen animal traps of varying sizes. Some had already been triggered, and my stomach turned at sight of the whitened bones caught in those traps. Others still hadn’t been sprung.
“We have to get out of here,” Jack said. “This isn’t good. This feels very, very…” He paused, still staring at the traps. “Not good.”
I focused my own light on the trap Ariel was caught in. Two bolts at either end of the chain had been solidly driven into the rock floor beneath us. One look at it and I knew there was no way in hell it was coming free without intervention.
“You need to go get bolt cutters,” I said. “It’s the only way.” Jack looked back down the tunnels, weighing his next move. “Jack,” I began.
“I know,” he said with a nod. “I just don’t want to leave you here—“
“I’ve got Phantom,” I said. “You’re wasting time. Go!”
He hesitated another second, then removed his sidearm and handed it to me.
“I don’t want that,” I said.
“I don’t care. I’m not leaving you here unarmed.” He left the gun on the ground beside me. “You know how to use it?”
I nodded briefly. He looked conflicted for a second more before he finally went, jogging back the way we’d come. When he was gone, I stroked the hair back from Ariel’s forehead, cataloging her injuries. It looked like she had a fractured cheekbone. Bruises and cuts on her face. Her right arm hung awkwardly, and I expected her shoulder was out of joint. She was naked, her feet badly cut and bleeding. Bruises, scrapes, a couple of deep cuts in her thigh that looked like they’d been carved by a knife of some kind. The same that had cut Melanie, I assumed. I took my jacket off and draped it around her.
She was smaller than I’d expected, and I remembered that she was only sixteen. She had the muscle tone of someone naturally athletic who obviously took pride in that fact. Except that now, she was broken.
Phantom whimpered and lay down beside the girl, licking her cheek with great care.
“We’ve got you, Ariel,” I said. “No one’s going to hurt you again.”
In the distance, the screams I’d heard before began again—far away at first and then, suddenly, moving forward as though on a wave. They barreled closer still, until they were almost upon us. Phantom lifted her head and stared into the darkness, her ears pricked forward.
Ariel didn’t move.
Goose bumps pricked my skin when a figure appeared in the distance.
The girl in the red sweater.
She limped toward me, her eyes serious, her mouth set in a grim line. She seemed to move with the screams, propelled forward on that wave of anguished cries.
“He trapped us down here,” she said.
“I know,” I said. I couldn’t get a full breath. This had happened how many times for Bear? The dead had come to him from the time he was small; shared their realities, their individual truths. It was all new to me, though. I had no idea how to handle it. What to say.
“Do you know how long?” she asked. She limped closer. My attention was riveted to the empty space below her knee. I shook my head, not clear what she was asking. “What year is it?” she pressed. “How long have we been here?”
“You’re Mary?” I asked. “Mary Wieland?” She nodded wordlessly. I told her how many years had passed since she’d vanished without a trace from Bennington College. She stopped moving. The screams faded as she stared at me.
“In my dream, you said something had woken,” I told her. “Something bad. Do you mean because this girl was in the tunnels?” I nodded toward Ariel. Phantom remained where she was, her eyes fixed on the girl in the red sweater. Neither the dog nor the spirit seemed particularly disturbed.
“I think so,” she said with a nod. “We were here alone for a long time. At first, he ruled the tunnels. He brought us here. Set us loose. Waited for us to get caught in his traps, and then he added us to his collection. He loves the blood—lives for it.”
“His collection?” I asked. I wondered where Jack was. How long it would take before he returned. Whether or not Bear was all right. Whether I’d gone insane, and he would find me blank-eyed and mad, mumbling to the walls.
“That’s what we called it,” Mary said. “His collection. That was what we were to him… Just things, designed to amuse him. He brought us here. Hurt us. Took…everything.” She shivered.
“This was a man,” I clarified.
“He was a man,” she agreed. “Now, he’s more than that. More powerful—and so happy to have new flesh here.”
Was he a ghost now too, then? And if so, what kind of danger did that mean for us? I thought of the match I’d smelled; the rock that had trapped Jack and me. Fear crawled through me, gathering tight in my sternum. Phantom sat u
p. Her gaze shifted from the girl to a cloud of darkness beyond. Mary froze. Terror shone in her eyes.
“It tried to trap me yesterday,” I said.
She nodded silently, still unmoving. The fur stood up along Phantom’s spine. The dog got to her feet. The screams stopped—didn’t fade, didn’t merely quiet. They stopped, and silence fell. I’d never heard anything more disturbing, including the screams themselves.
Beneath that blanket of deep wet stillness, Phantom growled. I reached for the gun Jack had left me, though I had no idea what good it would do.
The cloud of darkness moved closer.
* * *
Chapter 28
WENDY TORE DOWN the mountain like the devil himself was chasing them. Bear blacked out twice, the pain excruciating, but each time Ren brought him back. He didn’t want to die—he knew all about what he could expect, that plane of nonexistence that awaited him. But, God, he wasn’t sure he could hang on much longer.
They could have been driving ten minutes or an hour before Bear spotted a car up ahead. Totally at odds with the surroundings, it was a silver Ford Focus with government license plates. It was stopped at the side of the dirt road. Wendy slowed the pickup, and Bear scanned the trees for some sign of the driver.
They were just a few feet away when the lady agent—Rita Paulsen, Bear reminded himself—stepped out of the trees. Wendy slowed further as Agent Paulsen flagged them down.
“It’s one of the agents,” Bear said, just in case Wendy went nuts and decided to run her down. It was the sort of reaction he wouldn’t put past her brothers, though so far she’d appeared more reasonable than that.
“I know who it is,” Wendy said grimly.
She stopped the truck.
Agent Paulsen drew her gun, her eyes seeming to take in Wendy, Bear, and Ren in a single sweeping glance. She wore no raingear, and was soaked to the skin.
Wendy stepped out of the pickup, her hands raised. “I brought the kids, Rita,” she said. “You know me—when you and Gordon were together, we were sisters. You know I mean no harm. I’m just trying to fix this.”
