KIN (40 page)

She headed toward them.

"Wait," said Pete.

She didn't, kept walking until she was at the mouth of one of the sheds, the same one in which she had been tied to a wooden post, raped and tortured, the same one in which she had taken the life of a man, driven by panic and rage and self-preservation. And how shocked would the world be to know that killing that rotten fuck haunted her more than outliving her friends? But it was true. He'd deserved to die, had forced her to take his life, and yet the guilt that haunted her every waking moment was not alleviated by that truth. The realization of what she'd done, when it dawned on her in the days that followed, stunned her, shoved her over the edge of a precipice into a dark place where even the specters of those she'd lost could not reach her.

She stepped inside.

It smelled like dirt, sweat, and human waste.

The moonlight cast her shadow on the floor, a frail twisted thing trapped in an oblong of cold blue light.

She flicked on the flashlight.

Chains hung from the roof like roots in a subterranean cave. They clinked together in the breeze, the rusted hooks clamped to their tails appearing to move toward her, but she was not afraid. There was no further pain to be drawn from her by those hooks or anything else.

A shelf lined one end of the room. Atop it were canisters full of nails, and Mason jars with some kind of amber liquid inside. Next to these was a jelly jar filled with different kinds of feathers. Claire recognized the iridescent plumage of a bluejay, and maybe the tail feathers of a cardinal. The jars were book-ended by an identical pair of small, cheap looking plastic statues depicting Jesus in prayer, His lifeless blue eyes turned upward as if He was in the throes of death, his shadow reaching up from his skull to claw at the ceiling. A speckling of red paint or old blood colored the right cheek of the statue on the left. There were a few old suitcases and a garish-colored leather purse tossed on the dirt floor. Various work tools hung from nails on the wall. Here was an old two-handed saw with some of its teeth missing. Here, hoes of all sizes pinned to the wall by their throats. There, a row of sickles, some of them missing the upper part of the blade. A single sheet of bloodstained plastic was bunched in the corner beneath a three-legged chair that had been propped against the wall.

By her left shoulder was the stake, a rough-cut oaken log that had been wedged between floor and ceiling. The wood was stained in places with all that remained of the dead. Claire shook her head and reached out a hand. Again, she anticipated flashes of memory on contact with the stake, an assault of visions reminding her that once it had been her body pressed against the wood, her blood and sweat permeating its surface, her fear saturating it. But there was nothing, only the feel of rough bark against her fingertips. It was just a hunk of wood. Lifeless.

Behind it, the six-foot high cord of wood, stacked unevenly against the wall, long shards poking out here and there, intended to make the prisoner even more uncomfortable as they prodded into their flesh.

"Claire," Pete said, from outside.

"What?" she muttered, her eyes drawn to the floor where once she had watched a man's lifeblood soak into the dirt. There was nothing there now but old boot prints.

She had asked Pete to bring her here, knowing full well she wouldn't find the Merrill family. They were long gone, and even now Finch and his friend were tracking them. Perhaps they would succeed in exterminating her tormentors, perhaps not. But such a vigil no longer seemed so pressing, or urgent.

They were alone here, tourists at the site of an atrocity, and it evoked little feeling from her.

"Claire," Pete said again, and when she turned to look, the beam of her flashlight showed his brown eyes filled with alarm. "Someone's comin'."

Claire stepped outside and killed the flashlight.

Pete turned, looking toward the road.

She joined him.

A car was meandering its way toward them, flashers blinking red and blue, but soundlessly, shadows dancing in circles around the dark bulk of the vehicle.

A cop.

Claire shook her head.
Goddamn you, Kara
.

She looked from Pete to the brooding house behind him, then began to make her way toward it.

"
Wait
," said Pete. "What are you doin'?"

"Stall him for me," she called back, and broke into a trot. "I need to find something."

The cruiser crested the hill, pinning Pete in its headlights.

Claire disappeared into the house.

*

With a sigh that sounded almost like relief, Finch dropped to his knees. He felt little pain other than the dull burning ache in the center of his chest from the second arrow the man—or rather
boy
, as he saw now—had shot into him.

"Ain't feelin' much yet," said the figure standing before him. He could see that the boy was no more than eighteen or nineteen, but tall, his face in the moonglow possessed of a ferocity that was startling. Rarely, even in war, had Finch been afforded such a glimpse of concentrated malevolence. The boy was breathing hard, the adrenaline making his limbs jerk and twitch, his hands trembling as he held the bow up, an arrow nocked, the string drawn back, waiting to deliver the fatal shot. "Reckon if I let you you'll start feelin' somethin' soon though," the boy continued. "Papa had us put some stuff from the doctor's house on our arrows. Said it makes your mind go funny, numbs you fer a while, makes you no more dangerous than a stunned possum. We even tried it on Luke, and he ain't lifted a finger since."

Finch was dying. He could feel it, the heat in his chest unable to compete with the rapidly encroaching waves of cold. His mouth was dry, his throat raw with the struggle to draw air.

"Maybe I'll just wait and see if it wears off," said the boy. "So maybe you can feel what I do to you next. But you might as well toss that gun now, as you ain't got no more use for it."

Finch lowered his head, icy sweat dripping down his face. He had almost forgotten that the gun was still in his hand. Now he looked at it, moved it so the moonlight glanced off the barrel, and slowly brought it up.

"I'm warnin' you."

"Shut up," Finch hissed, and raised the gun.

We're not doing this your way
, he vowed, as he swiveled the barrel toward the boy even as the third arrow was released and cleaved the air between them.

He pulled the trigger. Light flared. The boy staggered back, darkness blossoming in his shoulder.

A split-second before the arrow found him, Finch saw another shadow detach itself from the trees behind the boy. He might have cheered, might have cried to realize that it was his friend come to save him. But the chance for salvation for men of their kind was long gone, and would never be found here, or anywhere else.

*

Stunned, Aaron fell backward, his momentum halted by what he assumed was a tree until it moved, large hands grabbing fistfuls of his hair and jerking him off his feet. He fell, the gunshot wound burning in his shoulder.

"You son of a
bitch
," his assailant cursed, and then was upon him like a ravenous animal, punching him in the face, ramming his meaty knuckles into the flesh, cracking bone. Aaron did not struggle. He simply lay there, enduring the battering, one hand silently and slowly straying to his belt and the knife nestled there, the handle hard against his exposed belly.

"Where are the rest of them?" the man asked and abruptly rose, dragging Aaron to his feet. The boy let the strength leave him so that the man was burdened with his weight and would have to struggle to keep his own balance. "I said where the fuck
are
they?" Spittle flew from his lips and Aaron had to restrain a cry as it found his eyes.
He's poisoned me
, he thought desperately.
His venom's in me. Oh Jesus...

Driven by fear of a kind previously unknown to him, he grabbed the knife and swung it up and out in a short arc. His attacker moved away, but not quickly enough. The blade slashed his chest, and he grunted in pain. Aaron did not wait for him to recover. He moved in low and fast, dodging the man's fists, and jammed the blade up to the hilt in his belly and kept it there even as those large hands found the sides of his face like a lover about to impart a secret, and squeezed.

Aaron moaned.

"Fucker," the man said, and began to turn Aaron's face away from him. The boy tried to jerk the knife upward but his hand no longer felt under his command, refusing to obey his instructions to keep traveling up until the coyote was split wide open. Agony seared his throat as his neck muscles began to protest the angle at which his head was being forced to turn. His vision wobbled, dimmed.

"Stop," he whimpered, his voice sounding muffled and very far away.

The man merely grunted, his trembling hands clamped like a vice against the sides of the boy's head.

"
Stop
," Aaron said once more as his muscles became ropes of fire, bones cracked and split, and he was suddenly facing in the opposite direction, all feeling gone but for a momentary incredible starburst of pain that buzzed through his brain before the lights went out.

*

On the bank of a sluggishly moving river almost a half-mile to the north of Krall's cabin, Papa-In-Gray knelt down in the reeds, joined his hands and prayed. Beside him, thrumming with anxiety, stood Isaac, who had come to deliver the word that Aaron and Joshua had fallen to the Men of the World, but not, he'd said with obvious pride, without taking their attackers with them.

When Papa was done with his requests that his boys be sainted, and fairly recognized in the Kingdom of Heaven, he rose with a grimace of pain and put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "We move on," he said. "No place they've touched can be used again. They'll have turned this place to poison, and it will spread." He shook his head in sadness. "Your brothers were brave," he said, gazing down into Isaac's eyes, in which he saw no grief, only anger and impatience. "As were you. But we must take our mission elsewhere." He sighed, and crossed his arms. "Where is Luke?"

Isaac shrugged.

"Did they take him?"

The boy shook his head.

"If he's alive, he'll find us. Your Uncle Krall knows where we'll be, assuming that fool has come to his senses and ain't so much raw meat scattered by the coyotes."

Together they walked the bank, following the moon, until they found a spot where the river was shallow and hardly moving at all, a tangle of broken branches and other detritus forming a natural dam, so that the water was only a few feet deep. As quietly as they could, they waded across the freezing water, both of them keeping a vigilant watch on the trees ahead, as well as those behind. Isaac had said two men had fallen, but there might yet be more of them, and if they let themselves relax without being sure, it could be the end of them. Every shadow was a coyote in hiding, every snap of a twig a footfall, every rustle one of them shifting their weight in preparation for ambush.

They reached the riverbank on the opposite side, and gingerly ascended through the reeds and cattails. Isaac's breath was a low steady hiss, and Papa knew he was eager to have his taste of war with the Men of the World, that he envied the glorious deaths of his brothers. They had fought the fight of angels, felling the demons that had come to corrupt their hearts and souls, and it must have been a magnificent sight to behold. But he would get his chance sooner or later, because on the heels of the coyotes would come others seeking vengeance, seeking an end to Papa and his kind.

Papa was tired. As he paused a moment to catch his breath, his knee aching, he looked up at the stars above, their glow lessened by the great light of the moon, and felt a pang of sadness at all he had lost. Matthew, Joshua and Aaron were gone, murdered by the Men of the World, and Mama-In-Bed too, killed by her fear of them, and from the heartbreak at seeing Luke contaminated. Luke's own allegiances remained to be seen, though Papa had faith. He had no choice. Alone he was defenseless against the awesome forces which existed to oppose him, and Isaac was young, an efficient killer but naïve, and not strong enough to be of much use if their nemeses came again. He needed Luke now to stand with him.

Isaac radiated impatience, his dark eyes twinkling in the gloom, and Papa nodded, waved a hand for him to proceed into the dark woods ahead. He watched as the young boy, limbs rigid with tension, hurried into the trees. After a moment, he followed, stowing that sadness, for it was not an emotion that could be used. It was a weakness, and for as long as he'd walked the earth, it had been a flaw easily exploited. He had encouraged his boys to shun it and they had learned to do so. That it should come back now, after all this time, unsettled him, tempted him to question the wisdom of proceeding any further.

No
, he decided, angry at himself.
We must.

He had doubted before and God had punished him.

He would not doubt again.

Teeth clenched, he ignored the nagging pain in his leg and willed himself forward into the woods.

-37-