“Let me see your hands,” said Scott from the other side of the car.
Mason glanced at him, all smiles, then bent his arms at the elbow, lifting his hands to just above waist-height. “No problem, Officer.” He gestured toward his cottage with his chin. “I live right over there. Mason Harper’s the name. Greg can tell you.”
“You live here?” asked Greg.
Mason lifted his hands, palms out, turning his easy smile back to Greg. “Sure. I inherited the place when my Gran died.”
Greg felt Scott’s gaze on the side of his face but didn’t turn. He couldn’t bring himself to let Mason out of his sight.
“What are you doing here, Greg? I never thought I’d see you back here…not after that night in ’86.”
For a nanosecond, a hungry—or perhaps greedy—expression showed on Mason’s face, but then the mask snapped back into place. Greg crossed his arms.
“Well, whatever the reason, Preston Peters has been keeping the place in fine shape. You can move right in if that’s what you want.”
“Who is this guy, Greg?” asked Scott.
“He used to visit his grandmother during the summers. She lived next door.” Greg shrugged. “I haven’t seen him since I was eleven.”
Mason watched the exchange with a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Well, it was nice seeing you again, Greg, but I’m in the middle of something, so we can catch up later.” He tossed a wink at Greg before turning to face Scott. “Okay if I lower my hands now, Officer? Okay if I go on with my business?”
Scott opened his mouth to answer, but before he could speak, the door to Mason’s garage slammed open.
26
Nicole swooped in for a landing in the Town Hall parking lot, then swept through the lobby at a run. She rounded the corner into the Police Department and swept the HK 417 she’d assembled and oiled—the only one ready to go—off her desk. She spun and reversed her course out of the building, ignoring the questions thrown at her by her officers and Sally McBride.
In the parking lot, she turned and ran around the side of the building, where, in relative privacy, she adjusted her visage to that of a sparrow and leaped into the air, heading west at her best speed.
27
Tom Walton tumbled out of the garage, a thin trickle of blood sliding down his neck from behind his ear. “You’ll have to do better than that blackjack, Mason Harper,” wheezed Tom.
Mason whirled toward him, an expression of rage settling on his features like a well-worn glove. He took a single step toward the old man.
“No, you freeze right there!” snapped Scott, drawing his Glock 37. “And get your hands back up!”
Mason stopped and bent his arms at the elbows, lifting his hands out to the side. “Listen, Officer, there’s been a mix-up here. Old Tom slipped and hit his head on his car. I was moving him to my van to run him in to Genosgwa and get him help when you pulled around the curve.”
“That’s a lie!” Tom sagged against the doorframe and touched a spot on the back of his head, wincing in pain as he did so. His fingers came away bloody. “The bastard cold-cocked me.”
“Tom, listen, you know me. I wouldn’t—”
“Save it, Harper!” snapped Tom. “I do know you, and truth be told, I’ve always thought there was something wrong with you. That woman handcuffed in the back of your van told me what that something is.”
“Abaddon,” murmured Scott.
Greg twisted his head to the side, staring at Scott. “What’s that?”
Scott slipped his finger inside the Glock’s guard and rested it on the trigger. “Everyone back off.”
Mason cocked his head and turned to glance at Scott, a lopsided grin on his face. “Officer, I don’t know who you believe me to be, but—”
“You freeze right there!” snapped Scott.
Mason lifted his hands to shoulder height. “Whatever you say.” His expression didn’t change, but his eyes hardened.
“You a cop?” asked Tom.
“Trooper. BCI,” said Scott. “Is he who I think he is?”
“I’d stake my thirty-three years as a cop that he is.”
Mason chuckled, but a thin line appeared between his brows. “I don’t get what you two imagine you know about me, but let me assure you—”
“Shut up,” said Scott. “Down on the ground.”
Mason twisted his face toward Greg. “Tell them I’m harmless, Greggy. Tell your friend to back off.”
But Greg wasn’t looking at him. His attention was on a bird hanging in the air above his lake house.
28
Dan Delo’s gaze grazed across the tableau before him. The old man in the door stared at Brigitta’s pet killer, as did the man pointing a gun at him. One of the men from the car’s back seat had circled around to do something in the trunk, and the woman from the library just stood there, as if she didn’t know what to do. The other man from the front of the Cadillac lifted his gaze from Brigitta’s pet and turned to stare at Dan. The last occupant of the car leaned against the rear, head bowed. There was something familiar about how he stood…
“You!” Dan bellowed.
29
“You!” a voice boomed from the air above them. The cop with the gun twisted his head to look, and the moment he did, Mason dropped his hands and sprinted for the woods.
“He’s getting away!” screeched the woman from the Cadillac.
Mason ran between the two garages, breaking the cop’s line of sight. He kept his head down, not sparing a glance at old Tom Walton. He wanted all the speed he could muster. If I can get to the woods on the other side of Lake Circle, I’m home free, he thought. Tom’s a known quantity. I can always come back for a visit. Despite the circumstances, he giggled.
“No, he’s not,” said a voice to his right.
A voice that was far too close, almost within arm’s reach.
Mason darted a glance to the right, and something thumped into his chest and broke, spilling something wet across his chest. The guy with the beard stood behind the Canton’s garage holding a paintball gun and smiling at Mason. His chest felt hot—like he’d spilled his coffee on his shirt, but he didn’t have time to think about it.
A paintball gun? Mason wondered. What the hell?
He continued to run, drawing deep breaths of air to fuel his muscles. A sudden wooziness overcame him, and his legs turned leaden. He stumbled once and recovered, but the second time he fell and couldn’t get up.
30
Dan Delo darted a glance at Brigitta’s pet and watched him crumple to the ground. LaBouche said to protect this mortal at all costs. Brigitta puts stock in this…this killer of other humans, but why is beyond me. These others…these hunters, are they not a priority, too?
He hesitated, flew toward the fallen human for a few wingbeats, then paused again, looking back at the Cadillac. The man leaning against the car looked around, then up at Dan Delo, an expression of confusion on his face. Dan dropped his visage, letting the man see his real features, and the man smiled.
He smiled!
With an incoherent roar, Dan Delo swooped over the house and down toward the man, feet first, talons extended. Still grinning, the man he’d stomped on up north dove into the back seat of the car, and the other man from the library stepped from behind the car, raising a shotgun.
Dan Delo veered away, but not fast enough.
The shotgun boomed, and burning pain ripped through his left side. Another cannon-like boom sounded behind him as he dove behind the lake house, and something tugged at the tender membrane of his right wing. Pain blossomed from the point of impact, and Dan Delo shrieked in both pain and fury. Why do they always shoot at my wings?
31
Nicole Conrau swept in from the east, skimming across the lake’s wind-ruffled surface, the HK 417 held at port arms. As she neared her destination, a purple-winged demon dove behind the house, accompanied by the sound of gunfire.
Without slowing, Nicole v
eered to the south, staying as low as she could, angling toward the last house in the string of homes dotting the shore.
32
Tom followed Mason Harper’s run with his eyes and watched the bearded man step out and shoot him with a paintball gun. Then the shotgun sounded and out of instinct, Tom ducked back inside the garage, but he moved too fast and almost fell. He leaned against the wall, eyes pressed closed, sucking in long, steady breaths, waiting for the dizziness to pass.
When he opened his eyes, a gorgeous brunette stood in the door. “Are you all right?” she asked.
Tom nodded. “Who are you?”
“You said there was another woman in here?” She glanced at Harper’s van. “In the van?”
“Who are you?” Tom repeated.
“Shannon. Shannon Bertram.”
The name struck Tom as familiar, but he couldn’t place it. “Why do I know that name?”
“Oneka Falls,” she said, walking toward the van.
Tom gasped. “One of the survivors…”
“That’s right. The other two are outside.”
“Who’s shooting? And at what?”
Shannon shook her head. “That’s hard to explain. Let’s get this woman out of here.”
Tom shook his head. “Van’s locked up tight. I expect Mason Harper has the keys.”
An expression of intense concentration flitted across Shannon’s face. “Okay. They’ll be here in a second.”
“What do you—”
The bearded man stepped in front of the door and tossed a key fob at Shannon’s back.
“Look out—” Tom began, but the woman spun before he finished and snatched the key fob out of the air as if performing a well-rehearsed carnival trick.
The van’s horn blipped, and the locks thunked open. “You said you were a cop,” said Shannon. “Do you have handcuff keys?”
“What?” asked Tom, staring at her as though she had an extra set of arms.
“Do you have a key for her handcuffs?”
Absently, Tom patted his front pockets.
33
Toby sprinted to the side of the yellow and white cabin, and Scott moved to cover the area between the two garages. “Get down, Greg!”
Greg stood in the middle of the road, staring at the roofline of his lake house, mouth hanging open. Mike slid to the other side of the car and stuck his head out. “Come on, Greg. Back here with me.”
Greg turned as though in a dream and plodded back to the rear door of the car. He shook his head but dropped into the back seat.
Toby nodded to himself and ran the width of the lake house in a running crouch, his eyes bouncing between the roofline and the corner of the house. He had five more rounds in the shotgun and however many he’d shoved into his front pocket. The big purple bastard from the other night had found them somehow—again—and the paintballs had no effect against him. I wish we’d thought to send Greg for the tranquilizer rifle before we left Rochester! He grimaced. And if wishes were fishes…
He slowed as he approached the corner, twitching the barrel of the shotgun back and forth between the house and the trees in the yard, between the house and the lakeshore. The sun winked off something down the shoreline to the south, but Toby didn’t catch what made the reflection.
A large stump stood about fifteen feet from the side of the house, and it would offer a hiding place that had a good angle on the backyard, but getting there would mean exposing himself. He stole a glance back at the car, hoping to see Greg looking his direction. Maybe the man would point out the big purple bastard’s hiding place, but Greg stared straight ahead.
Shock, thought Toby. Can’t blame him, I guess.
34
Nicole reached the last house in the line and flew into the woods that looped around its southern side. She flew at the level of the treetops, flitting and swerving between them as if she were born to it.
She stretched her senses, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, but the shotgun blasts stopped after the first two, and that big purple idiot stopped his screaming. An unnatural silence choked the woods—everything within hiding out and waiting for the next shoe to drop.
Why is Dan Delo here? Did Brigitta send him as backup? If so, how did he get here before me?
She slowed as she approached the area opposite the cottage Brigitta had sent her to find. The cottage where Brigitta’s pet killer lived. She didn’t descend to the ground, however. Instead, she hugged close to the boughs of a giant ash tree and peered east.
35
Mason Harper lay in the grass just beyond the two garages, Benny standing over him with a paintball gun. Scott hadn’t seen him break away from the car, but after a moment, he realized Shannon had hidden Benny’s movements—from Mason and from everyone else, so no one gave him away by glancing at him as he moved. Benny looked at him and bobbed his head.
Scott nodded back, content to let Benny keep the man under with the chloroform pellets, and turned toward the lake. A concrete path led from the gravel road between the houses.
He sneaked down the path, eyes dancing, trying to see everywhere at the same time. Scott held his pistol in a two-handed grip, covering the space between the houses.
He’d made it half the length of the house when someone leaped on him from the roof. The man looked like a rail-thin nerd from the IT department, but he had the strength of a powerlifter.
Scott lost his hold on his pistol, and the Glock went skidding down the concrete path toward the lake. A fist cracked into his cheek, and a red blossom of pain blinded him. Hands grabbed him by the shoulders and jerked him to the side. Scott swung blind but hit nothing.
When his vision cleared, he hung ten feet off the ground, ascending toward the thick green treetop. The “hands” that gripped his shoulder were large purple feet equipped with long black talons that pierced Scott’s skin below his collarbones.
He looked away, nausea swirling in his guts from the shock and the sight of those talons punched through his skin. Toby crouched at the other corner of the house, the Remington at his shoulder, aimed at the purple demon carrying Scott to the top of the tree.
36
“Drive faster, idiot!” Chaz roared from the back seat.
Ricky Fast, the demon driving the Oneka Falls Police car that had, until recently, belonged to Mike Richards, grunted and glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “This car sucks.”
Chaz rolled his eyes. “If Brigitta is unhappy with our tardiness, you can bet she will know who is to blame.”
“Whoever set the police department budget over the past decade is to blame,” said Ricky, but he pushed the car harder, nonetheless.
“Fine, fine. The next budget will include new vehicles…if there is another budget.” Chaz leaned forward. “Follow what I did there, Ricky?”
Ricky grinned with half his mouth and flicked on the lights and siren, pushing the wheezing ’94 Chevy Caprice up to one hundred miles an hour. “Hope the tires don’t blow,” he muttered.
37
Benny paced back and forth between Mason Harper’s unconscious form and the door to his garage. He kept shifting the paintball gun from hand to hand, position to position, as though he weren’t sure what to do with it now that Mason was out. Every few minutes, he sent a paintball into the dirt next to Harper’s face to keep him unconscious.
Shannon was busy with Harper’s intended victim, and the old police chief was helping her. Toby had gone around the side of the house, and Mike and Greg were hunched down in the back of the Cadillac. Benny nodded when Scott looked his way, and Scott returned the nod before heading toward the lake on the narrow concrete path.
Benny watched him for a moment, then turned to scan the woods again. Something felt…off…but he couldn’t put his finger on what. A vague tickle lurked in the back of his mind, something he should recognize, but the memory eluded him. He turned back toward Scott just as the man who looked like an insane IT geek leaped at him from the roof. “Scott! Look o
ut!” Benny yelled, but Scott didn’t react, and then it was too late to do anything.
Benny ran three steps toward him, but something went buzzing by his head. The sense of wrongness in the woods doubled, and time seemed to slow. The gravel at the far edge of the road exploded upward, and Benny stopped dead in his tracks, looking at the divot, captivated by deja vu. He cocked his head to the side, and a burning pain lanced across his cheek, followed by another explosion of gravel and another divot.
“Benny!” shouted Greg from the Cadillac.
Benny glanced his way as he ducked to the side. Greg pointed at the woods behind Benny. He turned, and the memory came rushing back—the day Mike, Paul, and he had played commando in the woods behind his Oneka Falls home, the day Owen Gray had taken a shot at him from up in a tree. The memory rippled with the same sense of wrongness, the same vague sense of danger. His gaze zipped upward, to the boughs of the trees lining the edge of the woods.
He saw her just in time—a sable-haired woman dressed in a black leather miniskirt, a red silk top, and red stiletto pumps—impossible clothing for climbing trees. Benny threw himself to the ground, tucking and rolling as he hit. He kept moving until the Canton garage separated him from the woods. He heard two more bullets go buzzing past him as he rolled.
Shannon! I need you! he sent.
She appeared in the door of Harper’s garage a moment later and made as if to come to him.
No! Stay under cover!
What is it?
He hooked his thumb toward the woods. Woman up in a tree wearing stilettos and a leather miniskirt.
Understanding washed over Shannon’s features, followed by an expression of intense concentration. Okay, she sent after a moment. You are invisible. Let’s see how she likes a dose of her own medicine.
Can you keep it going?
Shannon nodded but made no other response.
Benny got up and walked to the other side of the garage. He squatted and ducked around the corner, duck-walking toward the back of the garage. He paused, listening with all he had and scanning the trees where he’d seen the woman. She was still there, still focused on the area between the two garages, her eye pressed to the optics atop a wicked-looking assault rifle.
The Hag Page 40
