Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(108)

Another one ran up close to her—not even slowing down, just flinging itself at her, to knock her flat, I guess—but she wasn’t having it. She clocked it upside the head with the dull end of the axe head as she swung it back around from clipping another one.

The axe snared on a piece of fabric, one of those robes (if they were robes, and yes, I think they were). She yanked it free in time to catch a man’s face, right up under the chin. It shocked me to see such violence, but I don’t know why. I’d seen enough in my time, blood from myself and other people, broken noses and broken bones; and I didn’t know exactly what the Chapelwood men and women were capable of, but I wouldn’t have put anything past them.

They were definitely trying to kill me, one way or another.

They were definitely trying to kill Lizbeth, one way or another.

Neither one of us was having it. I wrenched a leg free and used it to kick somebody hard in the jaw—I’m not even sure how I did it, but I felt the heel of my shoe hit against bone, and the grip on my other leg slipped. I got my feet up underneath me, and even though it hurt—oh God, it hurt where the bastard had hold of my hair—I turned around and swung my leg up to where the fork of somebody’s crotch ought to be. And that’s how I found out they were still a little human, maybe. The creature grunted and let go—thank heaven I’d found the right off switch.

I was free for a second or two, but more creatures were coming—so I ran toward Lizbeth, and I think I was crying the whole time, just from plain old relief. She screamed at me, “Get down!” and I didn’t question it at all, I just dropped like a stone as she came forward and swung that axe over my head. It hit something hard but wet, and one of those things called out in pain.

Lizbeth took my hand and ran back to the lantern, still sitting on the ground. I couldn’t believe nothing had thought to take it and put it out, but these things were pretty single-minded, you might say. They had a goal, and that goal was me. Everything else was just part of the background.

“Where are we going?” I gasped. Until I gasped, I hadn’t realized how tired I was. My scalp was pulsing under my hair, and my legs ached from being pulled or from kicking anything within reach, and the tips of my fingers were starting to ache where I’d squeezed the building so hard.

“First, to the car.”

“There’s a car?”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “Just over there. Simon might be there—he’s supposed to meet us, if he can.”

“Where did he go?”

“Downstairs, without me. To the . . . Holiest of Holies—that’s what the reverend called it.”

My stomach twisted itself up into a ball and I almost stumbled, but caught myself at the last second. I was trying to keep up with Lizbeth, but she was so much faster than she looked. I tripped behind her, recovered, and tripped some more. I was doing more tripping than running.

She was right. There was a car—and I was so thrilled I could’ve thrown up right then and there.

Lizbeth stopped dragging me along behind her. She held the lantern up, looked around, and said the only swearword I ever heard her utter: “Well, goddamn. Where is he?”

She looked at me, then back at Chapelwood. She looked at the courtyard, and saw it littered with lumps of black fabric with snow-white hands and faces, like piles of laundry. How many had she hit with that axe? How many of them were dead? How many were only hurt? I just couldn’t make myself care, not even when I thought about the police, and a trial, and prison for either one of us. To hell with all that. None of that mattered now.

“We could hide, and wait for him.”

“No. We made a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

She gave me a real hard stare, or maybe it only looked hard because of the shadows around her eyes and the pitch-dark night behind her. “A deal to get you safe, above all else. We’re leaving, right now. You and I. He’ll be along behind us, as soon as he’s able. Don’t worry about him. We don’t have time.”

I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling slightly deflated. “Do you know how to drive?”

“No, and Simon has the keys anyway. You and I are going to run for the main road.”

“And then what?”

She didn’t answer right away. She scanned the yard with the lantern, spotted the entry driveway, and shuttered the lantern until we were almost in that perfect dark again. “We have to go now. More are coming—do you hear them?”

“Over that other noise?” My teeth were chattering, and I hated it. “I can’t hardly hear a thing, except for you.”

I barely saw it, but she frowned at me like I wasn’t making any sense. “I don’t hear it anymore,” she confessed. “Not at all.”

I chose not to think too hard about that. I deliberately didn’t think about it all the way to the edge of the woods, where we found the naked patch that ran between the trees, and we started stumbling down it like our lives depended on it—because, well, they surely did.

“More are coming, yes. I can hear them, even if you can’t. We just have to outrun them for a little while—we just have to make it to the road—” She wheezed as she said it, and I got the very bad feeling she was trying to convince us both.

“Why? What’s waiting at the road?”