Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(147)

“You are not a wolf,” the woman says again. “You are not a wolf, no?”



Beyond the farmhouse, behind the barn, next to a grain bin, on a spread of pasture, there is a chapel of bones. The walls are made of skulls stacked one on top of the other, mortared together with cement, some of their jaws propped open in mute snarls. Femurs have been fitted into benches, heavily lacquered to a slick yellow color. Eyeteeth and molars and finger bones braid the pillars and crossbeams. In the corners stand candelabras made from tibias and fibulas. There is a pulpit made entirely of vertebrae, fitted together like some morbid puzzle. On it sits a communion basket built from a rib cage.

Claire has been told to wait here. Not asked. Told.

She tried to tell them she must be going. She tried to move toward her bike and pedal off before they could stop her. But their smiles dropped from their faces and their hands gripped their revolvers and they said no. She could not. She had to speak to Tío.

They have her backpack, all her weapons except a knife tucked into her boot. She should have left the girl on top of the crypt. She should have known better than to do good, to believe that any sort of moral code applied to a world turned upside down. Now she waits in a cage of bones and tries not to imagine herself ripped apart and cleaned and made into a chair.

She hears Tío long before she sees him.

At first she believes the noise belongs to another fighter jet, a sharp tearing, like a blade slicing the fabric of the sky. Then it grows closer and she can distinguish it as belonging to the earth—stones biting, soil grating—what turns out to be a dragged pitchfork, the tines scraping the ground. He appears in the doorway, blotting out the rectangle of sunlight. His head is shaved, his brow a swollen shelf beneath which two black eyes regard her. He steps inside and the pitchfork emits a sound that makes her skin tighten all over.

She stands in the middle of the aisle. He walks the perimeter of the chapel, circling the pews that surround her. He wears boots, jeans, but is shirtless and sweating, with pieces of hay stuck to his skin. He is thick, not muscled. Hairless except for a stripe running up his belly. A tattoo of a splintery cross reaches across his back. The tissue along his shoulder is raised, a lighter color, a scar in the shape of a mouth. She searches for more injuries and finds them: claw marks ribbing his belly. She can barely hear his voice over the pitchfork’s screech when he says, “I am grateful to you.”

“Funny way of showing it.”

“You’re not dead. Yet.” The grating continues until he reaches the pulpit and pauses there to lean against the pitchfork. “For that you should be grateful too.”

“Why would you kill me?”

“Because you’re one of them.”

She nods at the scar gumming his shoulder. “So are you.”

He fingers the scar as if he wishes he could peel it away. “Not long and not by choice. I’m just sick. That’s what I am.”

“Plenty of us who don’t believe in what Balor believes. Even here in the Ghostlands. Not everybody lets the dog off the leash.”

“Then why not leave?”

“Same reason as you. I’m trapped in this pen.”

He starts toward her, not in any sort of hurry. There is enough room in the aisle for him to circle her, and the tines sketch a shape like a noose around her. She can smell him, the musk of his sweat. She imagines him swinging the pitchfork, skewering her. She has wished for death, but she always imagined it coming swiftly, her neck wrenched by a rope, her body vaporized by a missile. She won’t die here—not like this.

“I’m going to kill Balor,” she says, almost at a yell. Saying it aloud makes it feel real for the first time and not an idle fantasy.

Tío is behind her now. She can feel his breath gusting from his mouth, across her neck, when he leans toward her. “Do you know where he is?”

“Not exactly.”

“I know where he is.”

“Then you’ll help me.”

Again he circles her, his eyes crawling across her body, and then bullies up against her. His belly sticks to her arm. He pinches a lock of hair between his fingers and sniffs it. He whispers in her ear, “Who are you, telling me my business?”

“I’m the one who saved your niece, *.”

She hears the damp crackle of his mouth opening and then the click of his teeth closing around her hair. He sucks on it a moment, tasting her, before stepping back, lifting the pitchfork, and stabbing it into the dirt floor. It shivers between them.

“Do you know what I noticed the other day?” he says. “That I do not pay attention to the things I used to pay attention to. When I used to walk down a street, you know what I would see? I would see houses or cars. I would think, man, look at that place. With that wraparound porch and that leaded glass and all those gables and shit. I would love to live there. I would think, look at that sweet ride, look at those rims, listen to those six cylinders thundering. I want one of those.” He reaches a finger into his belly button as if feeding it. “You know what I look for now? Movement. My eyes are always hunting for movement. For animal life. All those things I used to care about no longer matter. What matters is hunger. Appetite. In this way I have become what I behold. Don’t call me human. Call me animal. I no longer live in a world where people sit around the television like some cold fire that conjures images of what I supposedly need. What I need is food. What I need are claws to tear my food and teeth to gnash it.”