They lifted him, dragging him by both legs and one arm, stealing their victim away to some thicket until their Master could return and take his head. Jason struggled and kicked, clawed at the earth with his free left hand. He raked up handfuls of mud and snow, throwing it at his tormentors, but to no effect. The woods grew nearer and nearer.
“Help!” Jason cried. “Somebody—”
The burlap thing wrapped his head in plastic again. He couldn’t see or breathe. But he could feel the woods engulfing him. He coughed uncontrollably, choking in the bag.
Help me, somebody! He was blacking out. Oh, please not like this… not like this…
“It’s in your pocket, Honey!”
“Eliza?” he managed to gasp. It had been her voice, clear and distinct, calling from several directions.
“It’s in your pocket!”
“What is?”
His free hand felt in his pocket. It was empty.
“No, Honey. Your other pocket. Hurry. Hurry!”
“I can’t reach my other pocket!”
He felt bushes whipping past. He was losing consciousness. He flailed, snagged a branch, and with a jolt the spirits dropped him. The scarecrow thing instantly fell upon him, wrapped fingers of rope around his neck, closing like a noose. Blood rushed into his face.
But his right hand was now free. He thrust it into his other pocket, felt something hard and metallic, and drew it out. Immediately, the bag whipped from his head, the things above him broke away, releasing him, dropping him hard to the ground.
Jason sat up, and a coughing fit took him. He rolled onto all fours, hacking and spitting. He looked at the thing in his hand. Moonlight glinted off Valerie’s silver owl talisman.
“Eliza?” he croaked. Nothing answered but the distant cries of panicked socialites and the bleating of car alarms. He closed his hand on the coin and shut his eyes. A tear fell. “Thank you,” he whispered.
He staggered to his feet and limped back the way he came.
The tent was on fire. In his panic, the brûlée chef had dropped his butane torch and it had rolled beneath the hanging drape of the open bar. Before anyone had realized what had happened, the flames were licking at the bottles of liquor.
Zef and Jessica half-fell into the tent.
“Get behind us!” shouted Usher.
A knot of ten men and women stood side by side with Usher. He noted with some disappointment that Mather had slipped away. One old woman raised her hand and the nails began to grow, long and sharp and deadly-looking.
“Wait, Estelle,” said Usher, cocking his head towards the door where stragglers were still climbing over each other. “Let’s not curse anyone, shall we?”
She nodded, and her claws withdrew.
“Cover your eyes, Zef,” said Jessica.
“He’ll be fine,” said Usher. “Trust me.”
With the rip of plastic and the clatter of hooves on stone, the Horseman rode into the tent. A few cries rose from the back of the room. Red and the other security men raised their weapons. The ghost held its ground.
“Steady,” said Usher. He stepped forward and set his gun on a table.
“Sir?” said Red.
Usher raised his hands calmly, beckoning to the Horseman. “Hit me,” he growled.
The Horseman raised an arm and the ice sculpture of Usher’s head flew into his palm, bursting into blue flame. The light from the burning liquor threw the Horseman’s silhouette across the walls.
“Do it, you bastard!” shouted Usher. “Hit me!”
The horse spun. Cocktail tables fell aside. The Horseman raised the sculpture and hurled it—but not at Usher. The ball of flaming ice struck the central tent pole, cracked it, and careened across the room, blasting the drummer and his drum set from the stage with a crash of cymbals. In almost the same motion, the Horseman’s other arm came up and threw a jagged shard of its own body at Usher, striking him in the shoulder and embedding itself there. Usher cried out and collapsed.
Zef ran forward. “Paul!”
“Take it down! Take it down!” yelled Red.
The security men fired, raking the Horseman with bullets. The horse took the worst of it. Blood flew from its sides. The plastic sheeting caught great clots of black liquid. The tent pole gave way and the ceiling sagged.
The Horseman charged. With one fierce swing it decapitated Dexter, Usher’s driver. Old Estelle extended her claws and raked the cheek of the staggering horse; with a second swing, the rider hacked her arm away at the shoulder. She fell in a puddle of agony, reaching for her arm as it rolled away.
Zef picked up Dexter’s pistol and began firing.
A man in a blue jacket—one of Usher’s crowd—slipped into a patch of shadow and vanished, reappearing behind the Horseman. He fired his own pistol. The Horseman swung around and decapitated him.
Jessica cried out. Other things had begun to take shape, to manifest, drawing their bodies from Christmas tree needles and ecru linens, from campaign posters and rose petals.
“Retreat,” Usher growled. He pulled the shard of glass from his shoulder and threw it aside. “God damn it, I said retreat!”
Jason broke through the trees and ran through the snow as best he could, arms pumping, limping, even hopping when he had to. The sight of Stone Barns, engulfed in flames, shocked him. Car alarms and gunfire echoed through the night. Party guests were running to their cars, starting their engines, careening into each other. The road off the property was blocked by a flipped truck. Some people had tried to drive across the snow. Car wheels spun in snow and mud, and they abandoned the vehicles, fighting one another and the dead things that pursued. So many of them ran. A half dozen ran past Jason, chased by spirits.
“Not into the woods!” he cried, but they ignored him and disappeared into the trees.
Jason raised the owl talisman and limped on. Ghosts broke to either side, fleeing from him.
I have to stop this, Jason thought. I have to get to Hadewych.
Hadewych had lost the ability to think—or even move.
He stared at the scene dumbly. A trio of ghosts had felled a tree, and a white-haired man lay trapped beneath it. The man’s wife spun in a circle, calling in vain for help. A Cadillac had rolled over the electrical cable, catching fire with a whump of ignited gasoline. The occupant tried desperately to climb from the window but flames consumed him. Hadewych caught sight of Usher, surrounded by a knot of protectors, staggering away from the building.
“Jessica Bridge!”
“Jessica Bridge!”
She was with them. So was Zef.
The Horseman rode after the group. His horse was bleeding out, leaving a trail of red hoofprints as it died. The Horseman abandoned it and resumed his pursuit on foot, decapitating any who came within arm’s reach. Servant ghosts followed behind him, gleaning the harvest. Usher’s men fired. A bullet struck the side of the building and ricocheted. An old man below cried out and clutched his leg.
How can I stop this? Hadewych thought. The Horseman would continue his rampage until Jessica was dead. He was a sword that, once unsheathed, could not be returned to the scabbard until it had claimed its victim. But Zef was protecting his mother. And Usher was protecting her too. The Horseman would have to go through them. The ghost would kill his son and his friend. And all these others. And it was Hadewych’s fault.
He scanned the crowd, looking for an alternate victim. Someone he could throw to the wolves. He spotted Jason among the chaos. No. I still need him. Then his gaze fell upon another candidate. An ideal candidate, actually.
Yee-haw, Hadewych thought. He leaned into the reliquary and whispered, “John McCaffrey.”
Jason saw the Horseman coming before the funeral director did.
“Look out!” he shouted. “McCaffrey, look out!”
McCaffrey heard the call and spun, looking for the danger. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Spirits swarmed him, encircling him. He carouseled slowly, heaving up and down as he gasped for air, unable t
o find an escape route. The spirits closed on him, raising their arms.
“Hey, ya’ll,” he drawled hopefully. “Any of you from Texas?”
The Horseman broke through the circle of ghosts, swung, and caught McCaffrey’s head before the body had even fallen. He raised it as a trophy. Jason looked away.
Across the field, the corpse of Daredevil trembled and rose as if on strings. It galloped to the side of its master. The Horseman climbed onto the dead steed and rocketed towards the woods, still brandishing his trophy. Jason hid behind a parked car as a thunder of hooves passed him by.
With the Horseman departed, his army abandoned the field. They collected the fallen heads, gathered them in spectral arms, and drifted into the woods, leaving the surviving cronies and influence peddlers to bleed out into the snow.
Usher took off his jacket, revealing a nasty patch of blood on his shoulder. Zef covered his face, shaking his head. Jessica rubbed his back and reached for someone’s offered cigarette.
Jason knelt at McCaffrey’s side. The funeral director’s bolo tie had come loose and lay in the mud nearby. Jason laid it on the man’s chest. When he looked up again, he saw Hadewych staring down from the window of the grain silo. Their eyes locked.
Jason leapt to his feet and ran.
I’m coming to get you, you son of a bitch.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Aftermath”
Jason’s feet splashed the snow as he sprinted for the door between the silos. He ignored the pain in his ankle. He limped into the foyer, panting, and covered his eyes at the sight of the coat-check girl dead on the floor, strangled by a red cashmere scarf that was still twitching. He lurched leftward and ran into the other silo.
“Hadewych!” he called, shouting into the hollow space above. “It’s over!”
He was answered by a flash of motion past the distant windows. He found the rungs of the ladder and climbed, eyes fixed upward. He ascended the stone shaft, swallowed by gloom, finding the next step by touch. He didn’t care if he fell. He would catch Hadewych in the act. He would end this now. He saw a male figure descending. Hadewych moved slowly on the ladder. He’d come back down about to the roofline of the main building. He held the rungs one-handed. Something big was tucked under his arm.
“You’ve got nowhere to go,” said Jason.
But Jason had forgotten about the grille halfway up. Hadewych threw the grille aside and dove through it. Jason scrambled upward and caught an ankle but Hadewych kicked his hand away and disappeared. Jason lost his footing and dangled by one arm, pedaling the air. He caught the grille with his free hand and his toes found the ladder again. He didn’t feel any relief, though. He let out a cry of anger that reverberated against the stone.
The grille opened onto storage space. Cables hung from above like a fringe of snakes. Jason pushed these aside and half-ran, half-crawled through blackness, past rolls of canvas and stacked tools. He moved swiftly, silently, his ear cocked to follow Hadewych’s shuffling steps.
A door opened ahead. Hadewych stumbled onto the catwalk that overlooked the main dining hall. Rows of dark spotlights—affixed to the railing—pointed down into the space below. Hadewych made for a stairwell. Jason sprung forward, fueled by rage. He caught up and snagged the back of the man’s jacket. Hadewych snarled, found a cable and pulled. A spotlight spun ’round and clipped Jason in the back of the head. He fell and lost his grip.
Hadewych turned, ran on and disappeared into the stairwell. Jason sped forward but was too late. The door slammed in his face. He rattled the handle. Locked, or else Hadewych had found something to brace it with. He swore and struck the metal with both fists. Jason turned a circle, looking for options, something to batter the door maybe—
He hung over the railing, peering into the space below. He could make out the tables from dinner, bare plywood circles now, stripped of linen. He swung a leg over the rail. Should he jump? It wasn’t that far. What was the point? Hadewych was probably miles away, out some back entrance, down some docking ramp, or—
Hadewych stumbled into the dining room just below Jason’s perch.
To hell with it.
Jason jumped, landing on Hadewych, knocking him into a table, flipping it. As they tumbled, Jason tore the bundle from Hadewych’s arms. They struggled for possession of it. The burlap bag ripped, and something fell from inside. A golden lantern. A cold light shone through its smoky glass. Something inside stank of putrefaction. Jason caught the lantern as it fell.
His bare palms closed on the Horseman’s Treasure.
“Rise Headless and Ride!”
Jason stood in a room of red and grey stone. A room with an altar. Candles burned. Animal skulls grinned. A Satanic place. Ancient and toothless Agathe raised a slashed wrist and poured her own blood into the lantern. She—
“Rise Headless and Ride!”
Hadewych appeared to his right. In a bathroom. His hand bled rivulets down his forearm and tears dripped from his eyelashes. He pulled a toothbrush from between his teeth.
“Rise Headless and Ride!”
Agathe appeared again. Agathe and Dylan. In the attic of Gory Brook. Dylan wore a red satin waistcoat and white cravat stained with three drops of blood. They hovered over the Treasure with wide, hungry eyes. The lantern glowed with white fire.
“Rise Headless and Ride!”
“Rise Headless and Ride!”
“Rise Headless and Ride!”
The visions came furiously. A glowing skull. The swing of a hatchet. Blood. So much blood. And a harsh voice, shouting. “Jason Crane! Jason Crane! Jason Crane!”
Hadewych tore the Treasure from Jason’s hands. Jason fell to the floor, immobile, as Hadewych shoved the Treasure back into the bag.
“This was not my fault!” Hadewych shouted, and ran out.
Jason twisted, rose onto his knees, and began to retch. Nothing came up but a thread of saliva. He began coughing violently. His face felt hot. His arms trembled. He could still smell the thing. He could still see the blood. The severed head. The head of the Horseman. Of course. He could still see Agathe’s watery eyes, the way she cut herself, over and over and—
The overhead lights snapped on. He shut his eyes against the sudden glare.
“Mr. Crane? Are you all right?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Here. Give me your hand.”
Jason allowed the newcomer to help him up. He stood and pressed his left hand to the tabletop for support. His eyes adjusted and he found himself face to face and palm to palm…
…with Mather.
The man’s eyes shifted color from purple to cornflower blue. A strange déjà vu-like wave of vertigo swept over Jason. The sensation passed, and the eyes became purple again. Paul Usher’s Gift-catcher released his grip and patted Jason on the shoulder.
“That’s got you,” he said.
Mather smiled triumphantly and strolled away.
In the greenhouse, Jessica lit another cigarette and massaged her poor frozen feet.
“Thank God those car alarms have stopped.”
Her stockings had split across the soles and up her calf. She tore at them, feeling like a reptile trying to gouge away a layer of skin. She discarded the disgusting muddy scraps and hid them wadded beneath a flowerpot.
Usher and Red had laid bodies side by side on the floor. Jessica counted seven. Five men and two women. There were other dead inside, she knew, but these were the beheaded corpses, the ones that would be more difficult to explain. Best to get them out of the way before the local police arrived. Usher’s Washington team could take over in the morning. They were already on their way.
“Have you seen my son?” she asked Usher.
“He’s looking for Hadewych.” Usher pulled a length of black tarpaper over the bodies, hiding all but a row of severed necks. Usher rose and nudged the hem of a dead woman’s dress with his toe, pushing it under the tarp. “Why don’t you go inside?”
Jessica took a drag and blew it ou
t, watching the puff curiously, unsure of how much of her exhalation was smoke and how much was fog. “Because I am not looking for Hadewych. Besides, I can’t be seen like this.” She brushed at her coat. Long stains of mud ran up the emerald wool. She dreaded the first mirror she would have to pass. “Do we know if he’s even alive?”
“Wouldn’t you know?” Usher raised an eyebrow. “I thought you Pyncheons always know when your loved ones are in danger.”
“That’s true. But, believe me. Hadewych could be hit by an asteroid and I wouldn’t feel the slightest psychic twinge. What about you? Didn’t you see this coming, O prophet?”
Usher scowled. “No. No, I didn’t.”
Jessica could tell by his tone that she shouldn’t press him further. Usher never had liked to admit he was fallible.
Usher and Red bent to hide the row of neck-stumps with a second piece of tarp. Red took a shovel and scattered some soil on top. Soon, with an artful placement of tools and black plastic seed planters, the bodies were almost undetectable. This camouflage wouldn’t hide anything from a real investigation, of course, but there would never be a real investigation of tonight’s events. Not with Usher involved. Not with so many of the Appointed in positions of political power.
Usher massaged his lower back. “What’s the tally, Red?”
“These seven. Another four inside.”
“How many of us, and how many normals?”
“Mostly normals. We lost Estelle and Governor Coy.”
“Damn. I needed Coy at the Fed. Still, I won’t miss the son of a bitch. He’s been nagging me to take his nephew as my campaign co-chair. Dodged that bullet. The kid’s an idiot.”
Jessica shook her head. “Poor Estelle. I remember her from the old days.”
“Tough old bird.” Usher waved at the cigarette smoke. “Ahem. You know I can’t take smoke.” He produced a handkerchief.
Sleepy Hollow: Bridge of Bones Page 27
