Devil's Advocate (The X-Files: Origins #2)(73)

Dana stood there, panting, running with sweat, eyes wide and mouth opening and closing like a beached trout. She saw a cracked tree branch hanging low from the willow a dozen feet away, so she hurried over, jumped and caught it, and tore the branch free. It was still green and must have broken during one of the recent storms. Dana stripped off the dying leaves and hefted the stick. It was about twenty inches long and as thick and tapered as a pool cue. The broken end was jagged, but the green wood wasn’t sharp enough to use as a knife. Even so, she was sure that if Angelo came after her, knife or not, she was going to do some damage. She’d used wooden swords and staffs in jujutsu, and having a weapon made her feel safer.

Only about 10 percent safer, but if that was all the day was offering, she’d take it.

Clutching her weapon, she began edging toward her street. The sun was dipping behind the trees now, and shadows rolled like a dark tide toward her. Home was still a few blocks away. Dana stopped on the corner and faced back the way she’d come.

“Don’t,” she said aloud.

Maybe Angelo would hear it. Maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, saying it gave her some strength. A little, and she’d take that, too.

She turned and ran down the middle of the street toward her house.





CHAPTER 67





313 Sandpiper Lane


6:01 P.M.

The night was not done with her, though.

Dana was still two blocks from home when she saw a girl walk across the street fifty yards ahead. The girl looked familiar. She was black, pretty, and slender. Her hoop earrings bounced as she walked, and the glow from the streetlamp gleamed on the metal of a pendant hung on a silver chain. The girl wore a school team jacket but not in FSK’s blue and white colors. It took Dana a moment to recognize the jacket, and in doing so she realized who this girl was.

“No…,” breathed Dana as she jolted to a stop. “No … that’s impossible.”

The colors on that jacket were the green and yellow of a school right over the county line. Oak Valley High. The girl wearing it was Connie Lucas.

Dana was sure of it, even though the only time she had ever seen Connie’s face was on a stack of photographs taken at the place where she died.

Fear rooted Dana to the spot, but the name rose to her lips as a question.

“Connie…?”

The girl paused, glanced over at Dana, and smiled. It was such a small, sad, knowing smile that it broke Dana’s heart.

Then, without saying a word, Connie Lucas walked across the street, onto the pavement, and up the short run of flagstones that led to a wooden front porch of a house where no lights shone. Was it her house? No, it couldn’t be. If Connie lived here in Craiger, she’d have gone to FSK. She had to live on the other side of the county line. So whose house was this? Dana had no idea, but Connie walked right in without hesitation, and it was then that Dana noticed the door had been standing open. She quickened her pace and stopped in the street, the stick still clutched in her fist. The door stood open, and inside there was only a black nothing.

“Connie?” she called again.

Silence.

Dana stood there, trying to remember if she had gone home to bed and if this could possibly be a dream. Or was she still hallucinating back in the Chrysalis Room? What was real? Was anything at all real, or had her mind simply broken into so many pieces that none of them would ever fit together again?

And … how could she be sure of any answer she might come up with? Now or ever? It was terrifying. It was being lost at sea so long that land itself was becoming more of a fantasy than a memory.

Dana took a few uncertain steps toward the yard but was still unable to see inside. The house remained dark. Had that actually been Connie Lucas? If not, why hadn’t the girl who lived here turned on the lights?

Turn around and get out of here, said a voice in her head. Her logical self. This is wrong. Stay out of it.

Dana moved halfway up the flagstone path. “Connie, is everything okay?”

Run. Angelo could be in there.

Dana shook her head as if arguing with her better judgment. Angelo couldn’t have gotten this far ahead of her. No way. Besides, she had her stick, and it wasn’t like she was going to actually go in there.

That was what she told herself as she lifted a foot to step onto the bottom riser of the porch.

You didn’t even know this girl.

She hadn’t known Maisie, either, but she had dreamed about her and then spoken to her. Dana went up the three steps very slowly.

“Connie? What’s going on? Are you trying to tell me something?”

She was on the porch now. At the open door.

There was a breeze from inside. Cold and humid, like the rush of air from a meat locker. It smelled, too. Like meat. Not living flesh, but something older, lifeless. Preserved.

Those thoughts banged around inside her head, breaking furniture, tearing at her courage.

Run before he sees you.

The inner voice was begging now, and Dana heard it as clearly as if a twin stood beside her and whispered in her ear. She knew that she absolutely should turn and go. There was no sense to what she was doing. None. No logic, no plan, no advantage. It was wrong from every direction. She was totally aware of that. And yet her traitor feet kept moving her forward. It was like the way she felt when she was walking inside a dream. There was the logic of the dreaming mind witnessing and recording the actions, but the body moved of its own will or as if according to some preset choreography learned way down on the subconscious level.