Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(110)

She saw them, and spoke a little too fast. “Then I’ll tell you the truth. Or more of the truth, if you prefer.”

“Always. I’ve never sought anything else.”

“I’m not here for Chapelwood, or for Ruth Gussman,” she told him. “Not for her father, either, or for the priest he murdered. I don’t care about your cult, and I don’t care about your God—I don’t even care if He, or It, or whatever we’re speaking of . . . I honestly don’t care if you bring about the end of the world.”

“Then, pray tell, what did bring you here?”

“A woman, missing for thirty years, and the prospect of answers, if not hope. I was looking for a resolution, even if that resolution was something abhorrent. I only wanted to know.”

“And do you? Did you find what you were looking for?”

She let out a shaky sigh, the first sign of weakness she’d offered up yet. “I’ve learned only that I’ve lost her to some in-between space, where the dead and the living both might linger. Whether I can ever reach her or not . . . there is no answer, and likely there will never be one. But I can live with that now,” she added fast, since it looked like he was about to interrupt her with another question. “Because I couldn’t save her, my Nance. In the end, I failed her. I’m the reason she’s gone, or changed, or vanished—whatever eventually became of her, she’s beyond help now, and that’s on my head. All I can do to redeem myself, to make Nance’s loss mean something . . . is save Ruth.”

“Who is this Nance?”

“The gray lady,” she said. “I believe you know of her.”

He shook his head. “I believe I don’t. But you present this as if it were a trade of some kind—like you wish to trade one life for another?”

Her eyes narrowed. Maybe it was only the light of the truck bearing down on her, or maybe she was as steely and angry as she looked. “You say you don’t know her?”

“I assure you, I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

She struggled with this for a moment. Then: “It doesn’t matter now. She’s gone—and yes, I’ll trade all of our lives for Ruth’s. Mine, yours, theirs. None of it’s a fair trade, but it’s all I’ve got to offer.”

Whether he believed her or not, he’d gotten his reply. He stepped down off the truck’s running board, and then climbed right onto the hood and stood up straight. The engine wiggled beneath his feet, making it look like he was shaking really softly. Holding still but not holding still. Human but not human.

More human than the rest of them, though.

I knew it for sure when something off to Lizbeth’s left snarled, then leaped.

It moved like a dog under a blanket, low to the ground and billowing—its robe and hood dangling low and moving in swift waves. It went for her at thigh level—but that was a bad choice. Lizbeth swung without hardly looking at the thing, and caught it up against the head, hard enough to send it falling away—and fast enough to raise the axe again when the next one swooped into the light to take its chances.

I couldn’t look away as Lizbeth knocked them back one at a time, then two together—and another one from behind her, caught nearly by accident on the backswing as she brought the axe around again for another pass.

And when the last one (I dearly hoped it was the last one) went down in a pile at her feet, Nathaniel Barrett growled, crouched, and leaped off the hood of that truck . . . I couldn’t watch it. Not anymore.

I turned and ran, just like she’d told me. I made a lot of noise, but I was fast. Once I found the road again, I stayed at its edge, ready to dive back into the trees, thinking about that straight line I’d drawn with my brain. I held it in my head, and concentrated as I continued running.

My ankle went a little weak when I hit a hole, and I thought it was going to twist up in pain, but it went cold instead. I tried to keep running, but the cold got a grip on the other foot, too.

I was scared as hell—here I was, having a spell right in the middle of running for my life.

Except this time, the spell didn’t hit me all the way. It tangled around my feet, but it didn’t rise; it might be better to say that it kept me from falling again. I had to pay attention to my footfalls, and where the road was pitted, gouged, and uneven.

And in the back of my head, the spell spoke in Father Coyle’s voice. I didn’t see him, but I heard that old familiar whisper filtered through a million miles, on the other side of heaven.

Veer to the right. Go around this tree, don’t worry. Stay calm. Only a little farther.

“Easy for you to say,” I grumbled at him.

But he continued. The chief is almost here, and you’ll meet him almost at the crossroad, but not quite. Here, look. Here’s the highway.

I drew up to a sudden, none too graceful halt at the edge of a road paved properly. “To the . . . to the right? Are you sure?”

He didn’t answer. The cold melted away from my ankles, and when it did, I almost folded up like a chair. I hadn’t realized how it’d been holding me up; I only thought it’d slowed me down. My ankle hurt like the devil now, and I guessed I’d sprained it after all, but the father had kept it from bothering me so I could get away.

I started to cry, just a little. I missed him. Without him, I sometimes forgot it. Without him, would I have ever made it back to the road?