Gideon

by Alex Gordon

  Lauren sagged against the wall and slid down to the floor as black spots waxed and waned before her eyes.

  We need bandages—we need—” Waycross took hold of Lauren’s bleeding hand. “Up above your head—hold it up—” She touched Lauren’s cheek. “That’s it. I don’t think you’ve lost all that much blood. Just the sight of it and the stress of the moment, I expect.” She pried open Lauren’s palm, and winced. “That should be sewn up.”

  “Just—wrap it and tie it tight.” Lauren held her hand to her chest, refused to let Waycross touch it until the woman held up her hands in surrender. “I don’t think I could handle stitches right now.”

  Brittany hustled back with an armful of first-aid supplies. Waycross applied a heavy layer of antibiotic ointment to the gash, then wrapped the palm in gauze and tied it snugly. “So why didn’t our binding spell work?”

  “It did. But Blaine was already here, nailed in place by the Mullin curse.” Lauren flexed her injured hand, felt the sting of slashed skin beneath the heavy bandage. “The spell dragged all his creatures here after him.”

  “So I made matters worse.” Waycross rocked back on her heels and sat cross-legged on the floor. “I read the Book of Endor that you brought back. I followed the spell to bind an outsider to the letter. It should have at least slowed him down.”

  Lauren shrugged. “Blaine’s not really an outsider, though, is he? I mean, I’ve seen him. Connie. Lolly and Jerome Hoard probably encountered him as well. He’s known to us.”

  “We could unbind him.”

  “He’d still be on this side of the divide, with all his followers.”

  They both fell quiet, captive to their own thoughts until the sound of approaching footsteps brought them back to the present.

  “Mistress. Miz Reardon.” Zeke bobbed his head, thumbs hooked through cherry-red suspenders. “Brittany’s started calling folks, telling them to stay put, check their wards. She’s keeping track of places that don’t answer.” He straightened the hallway runner with the toe of his boot. “When she called Bill and Lottie’s place, the call cut out in the middle. Could be that those things out there are smart enough to cut phone lines.”

  “Power lines will be next.” Waycross closed her eyes. “Propane tanks.”

  “Yup. They’ll either freeze us to death, burn us out, or blow us up.” Zeke stood in head-cocked silence for a moment, then turned and headed toward the back of the house. “Gonna disconnect the gas, fill up the spare rooms with as much firewood as we can haul in before those things figure out how to climb the back fence.”

  “Strengthen your wards, Zeke,” Waycross called after him.

  “Done that, Mistress. Gonna do it again right now.”

  Lauren gauged her weakness as she sat up straight. So far, so good. “We have to act fast.”

  “And do what, exactly?” Waycross brushed snowmelt from her coat sleeve. “This doesn’t even feel like water. It’s oily—” She held her fingers to her nose and grimaced. “—and it stinks.”

  “I’d like to know what’s going on at the Cateman place.” Lauren’s breath puffed as she spoke, and she hugged herself as the house chill crept through her coat. “Jorie let us go too easily. I expect she tried something after we left that probably didn’t help matters.”

  She dug through her bag for her books. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she did something to the ointment Leaf was being treated with. It made me sick when Doc Hoard used it.”

  “Without Leaf holding Jorie back, Lady only knows what she’ll get up to.” Waycross stood, then jerked her chin toward the books Lauren held. “What are you going to do?”

  Lauren braced against the wall and pushed herself to her feet. “Try to find something to weaken Blaine.” She paced the hall, looking in doorways until she found a sitting room with a desk. “I’ll need your help.”

  “Let me see how the others are getting on. Then I’ll be along.” Waycross turned and headed down the hall, head bowed, step heavy.

  Lauren watched her from the doorway. “Leaf pointed Emma at my dad. It was a team effort—she was bait to lure him in.”

  Waycross stopped. “Then the Judas goat did her job.” She looked back over her shoulder at Lauren. “So what happened to her?”

  “I don’t know.” Lauren waited until Waycross left, then walked into the sitting room. Lace curtains trimmed the windows—she could see the snow drift and swirl, heard it beat against the glass with the tick-tick of tiny claws.

  She crept to the window and looked outside, saw the followers milling in the street, pacing the sidewalks. Wards kept them out of the houses for now. But Blaine will figure something out. Then the power would go out. Homes would fill with gas.

  “I dreamed all this.” Lauren spoke to the glass, watched her breath fog and fade. “Hands reaching for me from out of the dark. Snow. We’ve seen those. But we haven’t seen the fire yet.” She traced the Lady’s sign in the air. “Fire’s next.” She pulled the curtains closed, then took off her coat and covered the window so that no one on the outside could see in. Sat at the desk, turned on the small lamp, and set to work.

  WAYCROSS DROPPED BY at intervals, in between warding the property and helping prep the house for a siege. Lauren took breaks from reading to inventory canned goods, the contents of the Pyne deep freezer. But Zeke spent most of his time on the family farm outside Gideon, so supplies at this main house proved sparser than they hoped.

  Lauren sat back, closed her eyes. Drifted, sought a few moments of peace for her troubled mind.

  Then she heard the creak of footsteps, and looked up to find Corey standing over her. He had avoided her to that point, leaving rooms as soon as she entered, not meeting her eye when they met in the hall. Now he regarded her with something akin to pity. Then he walked to the window, peeled away her coat, and looked outside.

  “They’re all running around like we stand a chance.” He drummed his fingers against the glass. “We’re all hands on deck, but we’re taking on water and there’s an iceberg dead ahead.”

  “So what are we supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know.” Corey shook his head. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

  Lauren watched him, tried to uncover the tender ally from the previous night, and gave up. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Where’ve you been for the last few hours?” He turned, leaned against the wall. He looked as wrung out as they all did, dark smudges beneath his eyes, a day’s growth of beard. “We’re dead—you know that, right?”

  Lauren opened her mouth to speak, then closed it.

  “So you know I’m right.” Corey looked down at his hands, then at Lauren. Then he walked to the desk and knelt at her feet. “If we went there—”

  “Where?”

  “To Jorie’s.” Corey leaned close. “They would welcome you with open arms.”

  Lauren stared into soft, sad eyes. Relived the previous evening in a heartbeat. Every word. Every touch. “He knew what you drank. Thad Trace. He brought you scotch, and he never even asked.”

  “I’d been there before—I told you.”

  “You were supposed to know the rules for dinner because you’d eaten there before.”

  “Diplomatic missions for the Mistress. I told you that.” Corey took hold of her injured hand. “Hey, remember me? I saved your life when they tried to stone you.”

  Lauren pulled away as the same tingling jolts that she always felt when they touched radiated along her arm, raked her injured hand as though she’d slashed it anew. “Tom Barton saved my life.” She thought of him now. Had he found shelter from Blaine’s storm, or had it already claimed him?

  Corey stared, eyes pleading, hands hovering close to her but not touching, as though he knew what would happen if he did.

  Lauren held her injured hand close as the last few days replayed. Like the picture of the goblet that turned into two profiles, it was amazing how much sense the most innocent details made when you looked at them differently. “
When you introduced yourself in the diner, you took my hand, and I heard a voice in my head. ‘Your hand is so cold. Well, you know what they say.’ I thought it was you. I thought that I had read your mind and it was you, but when I mentioned it later, you had no idea what I was talking about.”

  “I don’t—”

  “It was him. You carried him with you. He saw everything you did, felt everything you felt.” Lauren shuddered, thinking of the shadowy figure with the unseeable face sharing every kiss, every caress.

  Corey boosted to his feet. “Not everything. And I didn’t volunteer for that. Blaine—” He paced, then sat on the edge of a low table. “He considered that part of our deal. A way to feel until he could experience things himself.”

  “Did you help him reach me in Seattle, too? Did you help him kill Dilys?”

  “Who the hell is Dilys?”

  “What did he promise you? Sentence commuted to time served? An honorable discharge from Gideon’s army?” Lauren wanted to feel hatred, but couldn’t. Anger, yes. And pity, for anyone who could listen to that oily voice and find truth in it. “You think that just because he says you can go that you’re free? Bill paid in full? Blaine will do to the rest of the world what he’s done to Gideon, and when he finds you again, he’ll mow you down with all the others.”

  “What the hell do you know?” Corey’s face reddened. He put his hands in his pockets, pulled them out. “You should come with me.” For a bare moment, he looked as he did during those few times when they had been alone. Kind. Gentle. “We liked each other, when we had the chance. We would have that chance again.” When Lauren didn’t answer, he snorted a laugh. “He’s going to get you sooner or later. Why not make it easier on yourself.”

  “Get out.” Lauren stood. “Tell him that you tried but I turned you down. I’m sure he’ll be very understanding.”

  Corey flinched. Then he pointed toward the back of the house, where the others still labored. “He could give you everything. Everything you ever wanted, in exchange for the lives of a bunch of relics who are too stupid to get out of their own way.” He lowered his voice. “He wants you. He’ll have you. Give yourself a break. Go to him.”

  “What part of ‘get out’ do you not understand?” Lauren heard a soft throat-clearing, turned to find Waycross standing in the doorway.

  “Well, well.” Waycross ran a hand over the woodwork, never once looking at Corey. “You had better go, Dylan.”

  “Fine. Yeah.” Corey stared at the floor. His former boss’s presence seemed to shake him more than Lauren’s anger. “I need my stuff. It’s upstairs.”

  “Stay right there, where we can see you.” Waycross called down the hallway. “Phil? Go upstairs and get Dylan’s things.”

  “Yes, Mistress.” Phil looked into the room and stared down Corey before going upstairs. If looks could have killed, Dylan Corey would have been struck down in an instant.

  Then Brittany stepped out of the hallway shadows. “Dylan?” She clutched a dish towel like a rag doll. “You helped them do this to us? You helped that bitch Jorie do this to us?” She pointed toward the kitchen. “Zeke and Rocky helped dig out Mistress’s truck when you went off the road last winter and hit that sign, and Lolly fixed it and no one said anything when the sheriff came around asking, and all that time you were working with her?” She twisted the towel harder and harder, then worked it into a knot and held it out in front of her.

  Waycross remained fixed on the doorway woodwork. “Brittany Watt, you mind yourself.”

  “Ain’t I allowed to be mad, Mistress?”

  “I didn’t give you back your powers so you could waste them on the likes of him, girl.” Waycross gave the jamb a final pat. “We need your strength here.” She stood back as Phil descended the stairs and tossed Corey’s backpack on the hall floor. “Go on, Dylan.”

  Corey looked over at Lauren and started to speak, then stopped. Shook his head and walked out of the sitting room, retrieved his backpack and headed for the door.

  Lauren followed. She sheltered in the doorway next to Waycross, leaned against the jamb for support.

  “May you find something waiting for you, Dylan Corey.” Waycross’s voice, soft as a prayer. “Something cold that knows your name.”

  Corey stilled, his hand on the door handle. Then he jerked the door open, stepped outside, pulled it closed after him.

  Lauren walked to the window next to the door, twitched the curtain aside. Saw Corey, poised on the step, looking out at the followers that milled in the street and crowded the front gate. “Think he’ll make it?”

  “Think I care?” Waycross rubbed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose. Looked up at the ceiling for respite that would never come.

  Phil stood, rocking from one foot to the other, hands bunched into fists. “What could he have done? Could he have weakened anything? Destroyed anything?”

  Waycross shook her head. “We will redo all the wards here. And check the propane tanks. Look it all over, in case Mr. Corey took it into his damn-fool head to add sabotage to his list of accomplishments.” She hesitated, then walked over to Lauren, touched her hand. “He fooled me, too.”

  Lauren nodded. Let the curtain fall back into place. Stood by the window until she heard Corey’s footsteps recede. Until she heard nothing.

  DYLAN COREY STOOD on the sidewalk and watched the demons, ghosts—whatever the hell they were—mill about. Mindless, from the look of them. Like a clip from every bad zombie movie he had ever seen.

  Then one of them spotted him, and a beat later, the rest stopped and turned as one toward him. Still, alert, like predators catching the scent of prey in the air.

  “Hello, Dylan.” Deena Trace weaved through the crowd, stopped when she came to the front gate. “Come out to play?” A scoop-neck sweater and jeans that once strained at the seams hung on her bony frame. Smooth, pink skin that had begged any and every touch had faded to blue-mottled hide. “Toby’s here. And Brian. We could have a party, just like the old days.” A stink drifted around her, thick and eye-watering, like a sewer on a summer day.

  Dylan scrabbled through his pockets until he found the charm that Jorie had made for him when he first agreed to spy on the Mistress for her. An Eye of the Lady, fashioned from herb-infused putty and baked hard as stone. “I have safe passage.” He held it up so that they all could see it. “If any of you so much as lay a finger on me, you know what will happen.” He took his time walking down the sidewalk, held his head high. Tried to hide his fear of the shadows of those he once called friends.

  He held the charm above his head as he trotted across the street to the Cateman house. Through the gate and up the walk. He knocked on the door, waited, knocked again as the minutes passed and Deena shouted that she had learned some new and interesting ways to pass the time if Jorie proved too busy.

  He felt his face redden, wondered if Lauren heard. He had liked her. If things had been different, they might have had some fun. But he had a goal, a plan. He had to be free.

  New York first. Then London. Paris. Cities only. No small towns, ever, ever again.

  He knocked one last time. Wondered where in hell Amanda and the other women had gone. The events of the night shouldn’t have touched them. Jorie had told him they were safe.

  He finally gave up, trudged through the snow to the back of the house. Jorie didn’t like him entering that way—the women all saw him, and they did like to talk. But he didn’t care. The night had been hell, and the time for secrets had long passed.

  Something cold that knows your name.

  Corey shivered as Mistress Waycross’s words rattled through his head. Mounted the steps to the back door, and knocked.

  May you find something waiting for you . . .

  Corey heard noise from behind. The open and close of a door. Jorie. She had been pissed as hell when Lauren stumbled over the body in the cellar below the shed. No one but Leaf was supposed to see it.

  Corey trotted down the steps. “Hey, Jor—” But the
woman was nowhere to be seen. “Jorie?” He walked out to the middle of the yard, through the weird, stinking snow.

  Heard a noise behind him, the whisper of air. Dropped to his knees when something hit him, hard. Felt warmth run down his face. Tasted blood.

  Slumped to the ground. Saw the battered boots, so close to his head. Looked up, and saw the glint of the shovel blade as it came down—

  Master Cateman?

  Leaf opened his eyes, blinked away the haze that had grown heavier with each passing hour. They had visited him more than once—he remembered Thad Trace’s irritated mutterings, his dear wife’s false wishes for his recovery. Amanda’s prayers and silent weeping. Her salty tears, falling on what remained of his skin.

  Occasionally, sounds filtered in from outside. Screams. Gunshots. Then silence, which somehow seemed worse.

  And now this. He had finally realized it, after the disaster of Jorie’s spell casting. Feared it, as he lay in the dark and felt his life ebb. Hoped he had made a mistake, even as the understanding settled that the time for hope had long since passed. “Blaine.”

  Ah, he opens his eyes. Nicholas Blaine sat in the chair beside his bed. Dark-suited, face a swirl of shadow, hands resting on the head of a walking stick. I thought perhaps I was too late.

  “She saw you. She told me.” Leaf forced words through lips gone raw, tasted the blood as it flowed down the back of his throat. “I didn’t believe her.”

  Who? Blaine cocked his head. Ah, the excellent Mistress Mullin. Of course you didn’t believe her—that wouldn’t have suited your purpose.

  “I only wanted—what was best—”

  That’s what Catemans always say. Blaine sat back, rested his stick across his lap. I have been to this dance before, you know. Since a Cateman first took charge of Gideon, I followed the trail. Planted seeds, waited until they bore fruit. He paused. You’re all the same. Ambitious, vain, venal. Only your women change.

  Cateman tried to speak, but the ability had left him. Too weak. End of his days at hand, and no son to take the reins, see things to completion.