Master of the Moors (33 page)

He wasn't shooting at
me
, Kate realized with a twinge of relief
that was a mere scratch of light in the painted-over window of her
panic. Grady's shot had missed her by inches, but it hadn't missed
whatever he'd been aiming at. As she'd dropped to a defensive
crouch, she'd heard the bullet thud into flesh, followed by the
agonized roar of something as it thrashed in the darkness. She'd
been afraid to look, paralyzed by fear, as the night became a wild,
unbridled thing that smelled of blood and smoke.

But now she had to look,
because the roar had faded to a pitiful keening sound that called
to every ounce of sympathy in her. And so she did, and when her
eyes fell upon the dying thing lying on the grass only a few feet
away, she saw that it was not the ravening beast her mind had
imagined it would be. It was a man, and half his head was
gone.

She stood, the lantern
forgotten at her feet, the pistol in danger of slipping from her
rain and sweat-moistened grip.

The footsteps grew louder.
Loud enough that she knew if she raised the lantern she would see
who was making them, but found she was unable to move. She looked
over her shoulder at Grady, who looked as if someone had crept up
behind him and stolen his spine. He was hunched over, and wheezing,
his gaze dark but defeated, and staring straight ahead. He held his
lantern by his side, illuminating little but adding thick ugly
shadows to the valleys in his face. Following the rain, the wind
had died too, and now the night was still, stars appearing through
the clouds like the glint in the eyes of cold angels. Smoke still
leaked from the barrel of the rifle.

Kate looked down at the
man in the grass. He was naked she saw, his skin wrinkled and
loose, but any shame she might have felt at seeing him in such a
state was overruled by the shuddering that passed through
him.
Death throes
.
She suddenly felt ill. The man groaned and Kate found her feet. She
went to Grady, her eyes still searching for the source of the
crunching sound. Whoever was out there, they were close enough to
touch. For a brief moment, Kate imagined they were men from the
village, summoned by Mrs. Fletcher perhaps, to come assist them in
their search. But if that were true, she realized, then Grady had
just killed one of them.
Just like he
almost killed me
.

But somehow she knew these
people weren't villagers.

They were the embodiment
of Grady's fears---the reason he'd suddenly faltered and let his
terror overcome him, the reason he now looked a hundred years old,
a tired old man with a rifle for a cane.

"Tell me," said a voice
directly in front of her and Kate jolted with the fright, "Do you
always kill friends of yours with nary a cry of warning? What if
that had been Neil? Wouldn't you now feel a little silly, a trifle
inadequate, if it was he who was lying there with the life draining
out of him?"

Grady straightened, but
despite it, he still looked defeated, and tired, incapable of
defending himself against anything that required effort to conquer
it. He looked as though all he wanted was to sleep, for however
long. As a result, Kate suddenly felt alone, completely abandoned,
and surrounded. She quickly thumbed back the hammer on the old
pistol, praying it would work if it became necessary to use
it.

***

Grady cocked his head at
the sound of the grinding click, but his face remained
impassive.

The men stepped into the
light.

"Jesus Christ," he
breathed, and heard Kate gasp.

Grady shook his head,
denying the truth about what he was seeing before his very eyes. It
had to be witchery, some diabolical hoax.

There were five of them,
including the man he'd shot, and the bandaged man, who was wearing
Grady's cap. The significance of this mockery was not lost on him.
It meant the man had been there, with the creatures, when the wind
had whipped it over the fence and onto the moors. The thought of
him standing there, hidden by the dark and the thicket, watching,
as Grady fussed over the spilled pumpkins, made a shiver dance up
his spine.

The last of them stepped into the
feeble light and Kate stiffened.

It was Neil.

"Oh my God, you're all
right," she said, her voice wavering, uncertain. She made to go to
him but Grady held her back, drawing a look from her that could
have razed the moors. He shook his head and gave her shoulder a
reassuring squeeze. "Wait," he said softly. She didn't respond, but
her resistance waned.

Other than his nakedness,
there was something wrong with the boy, something the groundskeeper
couldn't quite place.

Grady swallowed and licked
his lips. The cold had infected him and it took every ounce of
restraint to keep from collapsing in a heap. Only the thought of
leaving Kate out here alone with ghosts and monsters kept him
standing. But he didn't think he'd be able to do much more than
that. The strength and the will to fight had flown from him like
the cap he'd lost to them earlier.

We're going to die out
here
, he thought with glum certainty,
reinforced now by the ragged semicircle of friends and former
acquaintances who glared at him with undisguised malevolence.
Doctor Campbell was there, his face stark white, his eyes
jet-black, like the carapaces of beetles. His hair was tousled, as
always, but in the gloom it seemed stuck together by dark clots of
something. He was naked, as were they all, except for the bandaged
man. None of them, however, seemed affected by the bitter cold.
Next to him stood Fowler, and Grady felt a wave of sorrow that his
old friend hadn't made it out of the village before the bandaged
man recruited him. Or rather,
infected
him, for no amount of
conditioning could force a man as generally benign as Greg Fowler
to turn against his friend so completely.

The man on the grass was
faceless thanks to Grady's bullet. Which left only Neil,
incongruous among the death squad because his smile was the only
one that appeared to hold no malice. But Grady was bothered by his
expression all the same, for while the boy didn't share the wicked
look the rest of them wore, neither did he look concerned by the
situation in which he had found himself.

Beneath his grip, Kate was
like a coiled spring, waiting to be released. He understood her
impatience, but didn't yet want to let go. It was clear this
monstrous gathering had plans for them and he intended to keep her
close until he knew what it was.

"The man you've killed is
Arnold Williams," said their leader, reaching up, with deliberately
exaggerated movements, to unravel his bandages. "You remember him,
don't you?"

Grady did. Williams had
once been the local priest, unfortunately given to evening walks
upon the moors. He'd vanished eight months ago. Memories of the
benevolent octogenarian's cheerful and often witty toasts at
wedding receptions and Sunday picnics tried to push themselves to
the fore, but Grady willed them away. What he had killed was
not
the priest the
community had known and loved. But the thoughts brought in to
replace those unwanted memories were just as disturbing.
They're going to kill us We need to get away I've
got to save Kate They'll run us down before we get two steps Think
of something How can this be happenin' What did they do to Neil
Think of somethin' damn you!

He looked from Neil, who
did not react, to their leader, who was still busy tearing
mildewed-looking strips of bandage from his face.

"Some of these men died,"
he said, in a voice barely above a whisper.

"Not quite," the man
replied. "They were dying, yes, but it only takes a scratch, or a
bite, or the ingestion of a fleck of saliva to halt it. Then they
get a second chance at life."

"A better life," Campbell
added jovially.

"Reverend Williams might
beg to differ," Grady said.

The man chuckled.
"Williams, for all his theological wisdom, was not nearly as
spiritually pure as you like to think. He was a failure in both
lives, and we can do without the contamination he'd introduce to
our breed."

"Why are you doin' this?"
Grady asked him.

"Because I want to," the
man replied simply. "And because it's what I know. We're the
dominant species, Grady, and our reign begins here, in this
desolate wasteland. It will be our lair, the nest from which we'll
spread our tendrils and convert the masses."

"Into what?"

"Into superior beings,
just like we are. I don't expect you to understand. I didn't, in
the beginning. It's like trying to tell someone the sky is actually
black, not blue, the sun silver, not gold. Unless you're there
beneath the skin, you can't possibly begin to imagine what this
world has to offer. My companions," he said, gesturing at the men
flanking him, "resisted at first, until they saw this life through
their own eyes. Now they can't imagine anything else. The change
means power. There are none of the pitiful worries, frailties and
concerns that corrupt the life of humans. For our kind, the waters
are never tainted. We rule; we dominate. Everything else is
prey."

Grady felt Kate's muscles
contract and knew she was ready to fight, despite the overwhelming
odds. A small mote of admiration at her courage drifted down
through the seething dark within him, searching for sunlight. He
reminded himself of his duty: to protect her, to make sure she and
Neil made it home to safety, and yet the thought of resisting these
creatures, ghosts, demons, whatever they were, exhausted him. He
was so godawful tired he just wanted to lie down and be done with
the whole damn mess. But he couldn't, and Kate's resistance added a
spark to the dwindling fire of his resolve.

We can't give
up
, he thought.
I
won't let them kill her
.

And then:
Not without a fight
.
He had, after all, let Neil out of
sight long enough for the bandaged man to take him, and had then
allowed his own secret fear govern his decision in bringing Kate
along to find him. He owed it to them both to at least try to save
them. And if it cost him his life in the process, then so be it.
He'd lived about as much as he was going to.

He raised the gun, broke
it and produced a shell from his raincoat pocket, and loaded the
weapon. None of the men moved. Grady found it disconcerting that
despite the damage a bullet had done to Williams, they were making
no attempt to stop him from reloading.

And then he realized why.

The rifle only held one
bullet at a time, and one bullet would not stop all of them if they
rushed him. He'd be dead before he had a chance to reload. It
astounded him that they hadn't already charged. But then he came to
the conclusion that they were merely toying with him, as a cat will
toy with a mouse before ending its misery.

The man tore the last of
the bandages from his face with a grunt and let them fall in a heap
to the ground. The exposed flesh was a dark color, the skin ridged
and knotted, as if the man's face had been melted, stirred, and
allowed to set again.

"Who are you?" Kate asked,
and the man smiled.

"Stephen Callow. My
brother led your friend Grady and his chums on a hunt many years
ago. A hunt that cost Edgar, and my beloved, their
lives."

Callow's
brother
. Grady had to struggle to absorb
this new information, to try to see if it could be used to his
advantage, but came up empty. There was nothing natural about the
man, or any of his new 'friends'---they emanated threat, and there
would be no reasoning with them. But if there was one thing Stephen
had in common with his brother, it was that they were both utterly
mad.

"Yer brother cost us the
lives of our friends," Grady argued. "We did nothin' to him, and he
led us out here to die."

"Your master was sleeping
with his
wife
,"
Stephen said. "It was hard enough to bear the thought of my own
brother touching the woman I loved without having to learn that
your pious bastard of a master was violating her too. They both got
what they deserved. You just be thankful that I spared him, that
even now he's repaying his debt to me by tearing your fat old cow
of a charwoman to shreds."

Mrs.
Fletcher
. A debilitating wave of sorrow
washed over Grady at the thought of her lying bleeding on the
flagstone floor of the kitchen.
Her
kitchen, the scene of countless exchanges between
them, the trading of well-intentioned barbs and affectionate
smiles. A woman he could have loved, and perhaps, for it was high
time he was honest with himself, a woman he
had
loved.

Kate was looking at him
now, but he couldn't meet her eyes, couldn't bear to see the demand
for answers in them. There were things she was better off not
knowing, and in realizing that, he realized also that he had been
too hard on himself for a long time. That he had forever been
punishing himself for failings he could not have prevented. He
could not have stopped his wife from dying, nor his son from
turning against him. He could not have influenced Mansfield's
decision to have an affair, no more than he could have voluntarily
ruined the children's lives by telling them something their young
minds might not have understood. Had he forced Kate to stay at home
tonight, or forbidden Neil to attend the dance, it was clear now
that this man, this wicked inhuman being, would have gotten to them
anyway. Maybe not tonight, but some other night, as sure as a fox
will wait with the patience of the devil for the coop to go
unguarded.