Hell Fire

Page 45

Don’t run, I told them silently. Yet.
I patted my pocket where I’d stashed my Tri-P. The others caught my movement and did the same. We were protected from bad magick, but not from bullets, stab wounds, or being rent limb from limb. I wouldn’t think about any of those possibilities. Sometimes you just had to gamble.
“Remember the plan,” Jesse breathed. “Chance, you stay with Corine. She’ll need the most protection because they’re gunning for her, and I have a bad arm.”
I acknowledged him with a nod. Chance stepped closer to me, tugging lightly on one of my braids. Smiling at him hurt because I knew what was going to happen after we left the forest.
“Who brought the maps?” I asked brightly. “We’ll divide the territory and split up into teams of two so we can cover more ground.”
After some mumbling, the Kilmer crew worked that out among themselves. Taking care not to touch him, I discussed the division of forest with England. “We’ll take this section over here.” I pointed to his map. “Jesse, Shannon? Would you take this part?”
Yeah, I wanted them close by, preferably within screaming range. But I wasn’t prey like they thought. No, indeed. Instead, I was bait.
“Sounds good,” Saldana said.
“We’ll meet back at the vehicles in three hours,” England said. “If you find something, mark it with one of these stakes.” He handed two DayGlo orange wooden markers to each of us. “Then make sure you map a route to the body, so we can locate it and give that person a proper burial.”
Oh, well played, sir. Makes it seem like you mean business. Makes it seem not your fault.
I tucked them into my backpack. “You ready, Chance?”
“Absolutely.”
We set off, ostensibly to search our quadrant of woods for missing persons. In fact, I wanted to get some distance between us and everyone else. Instead of searching, they’d be stalking us. There was no telling what would happen now.
The wind kicked up, whistling through the skeletal branches. I recognized the feeling from the attic; it meant Shannon had done her part. The restless dead had arrived, searching for those responsible for their wretchedness. She’d called them to her and whispered how they could confront their tormentors at last. I didn’t know if they could inflict physical harm, but mental damage and hallucinations might be enough.
A shiver rolled through me. In the distance, I heard the staccato report of gunfire; then screaming. Yeah, it had begun.
It seemed much later than midafternoon. Within the shadow of the trees, the wan sunlight struggled to penetrate the tangle of wintry limbs. As we walked, I lost all sense of direction. I couldn’t tell how far away the noises were.
And then I heard the unmistakable sound of a weapon being cocked. I froze, surprised I didn’t feel a bullet tearing into me right away. Beside me, Chance spun in a slow circle, looking frantic.
Of all the hunters in the woods, I felt mildly astonished to see Agnes Pettigrew step from the trees. Her hands trembled visibly on the grip. Unsteady as she was, she had as good a chance of hitting the man beside me or a squirrel in a distant tree. Her moon face was tinged green, pallor so profound I thought she might be in shock.
Chance measured the distance between us with his gaze. I could see him weighing the risk she might get a shot off before he took her down. Then I saw him decide not to risk it. He couldn’t be sure how effective Shannon’s charm was; if it was even slightly off-kilter, in this scenario, if anyone got shot, it would be me. He knew that—his luck would see to it. So he stood still and quiet. I sensed how difficult that was for him and spared him a smile. I knew he hated being powerless.
Would it do any good to bluff?
“What’s wrong, Ms. Pettigrew?” I ventured. “Is everything all right?”
When she spoke, her voice sounded shrill. “Nothing will ever be all right. Not until you’re dead.”
“Do you really think that will fix it?” I asked, trying to keep my tone steady and gentle. “You’ve always known there was something wrong here. You couldn’t have approved of going to people’s houses in the middle of the night, doing what you did there.”
Pure anguish flashed in her wild, glittering eyes. “It doesn’t matter what I think. I’m a legacy.”
“What does that mean?” Chance asked softly.
“My father participated in the initial summoning. Our family has been part of this since the beginning—and I don’t have a choice.” Agnes shook even as she raised the gun. “Once I . . . take care of you, things will return to normal. We’ll have our sweet, quiet little town back again.”
“You’ll have to live with killing me,” I whispered, watching her finger tighten on the trigger. “Not just standing by while someone else does the dirty work.”
The wind whipped up, cold as ice as it wailed in the trees. To me, it sounded like a storm was coming, but by the way Ms. Pettigrew’s eyes widened, she’d heard something else entirely. She stared past me. I didn’t dare turn, but from Chance’s puzzlement, he didn’t see anything else.
“No!” she screamed. “You’re dead. We killed you!”
As she raised her hands to cover her ears, her gun dropped to the forest floor and she turned to flee. I still didn’t see anything, but I thought she might do something stupid, and to my surprise, I no longer wanted anything awful to happen to her. She seemed to have suffered enough. I snagged her weapon as I went by, thinking I might need it.
Chance and I gave chase, following her through the underbrush. Ms. Pettigrew fled in a blind panic, disregarding the branches that tore at her clothes and slashed at her face. I called out to her, breathless, as we ran, but she ignored us. Maybe she thought we were part of her horrific hallucination; maybe our pursuit was only frightening her further.
I heard her sobbing as she ran, but she never called out to God, never asked for aid or deliverance. I heard a crack and a thump, as if she were rolling. And then all sound cut off. We burst from the trees to a small clearing and teetered on the edge of the gully. Chance grabbed my arm and pulled me back. My heart pounded in my ears.
Halfway down the steep incline, I spotted Ms. Pettigrew’s body. She’d fallen at an odd angle, twisted so it was obvious she’d broken her neck.
And she wore a positively beatific smile.
No Fear
My teeth chattered. Chance wrapped his arms around me and rubbed his hands across my back, murmuring comforting words. I clung to him, hating myself for the weakness that would make him believe in possibilities between us.
“I don’t want this anymore,” I muttered into his shirt.
“I don’t think there’s any stopping it,” he said gently. “There are forces unleashed here that we don’t control.”
Yeah, it came back to being careful what you wished for because you might get it. Somehow this revenge didn’t taste as sweet as I’d expected. And I didn’t entirely understand. Agnes Pettigrew had been a middle-aged spinster with lovely penmanship; she had suffered from unrequited love for her boss and wore her skirts a little too tight. She hadn’t been vicious or evil that I could tell, so it made no sense that she’d been part of the group that showed up the night my mother died.
I didn’t understand any of this.
“You’re right.” At this point, we could only ride it out and try not to get caught in the cross fire.
That cold wind rolled over us again, carrying with it an actual physical darkness. The small clearing grew smoky, a tiny pocket hell, where I’d led twelve souls to be tormented. A man burst past us, screaming with raw horror. Before I could move or speak, he too plummeted over the edge, crashing down the slope to find his eternal rest just a few feet from Agnes Pettigrew.
“We shouldn’t stay here,” Chance said then. “You don’t really want to see . . . ?”
No, I didn’t. Nausea and horror warred within me. I’d wanted justice, but I’d never foreseen the horror-laced madness that led them along the same path like lemmings. Demon darkness and the wailing of the wretched dead drove them along, scared almost to death even before they fell.
With some effort, I asked, “You have your little tablet?” In answer, Chance pulled it from his jacket pocket. “Yeah. Shannon’s sharp as a tack, isn’t she?”
“You feel like testing her invention?”
He arched a brow. “What’d you have in mind?”
“I thought maybe we could really find some lost souls.”
Maybe if we did some good out here, it would outweigh the rest. I didn’t put too much faith in that, of course, but I wanted to feel like more than an agent for destruction. In this way, I could give comfort and closure.
Thanks to his luck, we found two bodies in the first hour. They both lay in varying positions along the bottom of that gully. They’d run from the demon, fleeing it in terror, and plunged to their deaths.
I tried to ignore the screaming as others broke down, forgetting everything but the need to flee that devouring darkness, further agitated by angry spirits whipping through the trees. It couldn’t be easy, knowing they were the reason such evil surrounded the town. But they hadn’t realized when they set out to hunt me here that the demon wanted their deaths more than anything else. I hadn’t been sure of that, but I did know monsters didn’t like being bound, cheated, and forgotten. And I’d been willing to bet it wouldn’t hurt me.
I knelt to mark the second corpse, which had rolled beneath a scrubby little bush, and said, “I think this is Glen Farley.”
Chance didn’t answer. I stilled, scenting danger like a living thing all around us. Scarcely moving a muscle, I glanced up to find Sandra Cheney, filthy and bloody faced on the rise above. The wind whipped at her clothing and lifted her platinum hair in a way that made her look utterly mad—and terrifying. She held no weapon, but she didn’t look as though she had mind enough left to remember why she’d come out here in the first place.
Her hands curled into claws as she screamed for her daughter. “Shannon! Shannon!” She threw back her head, wailing in wordless grief.
I heard the crunch of approaching footsteps, and then I saw Jesse and Shannon approaching from the southwest. Sandra hadn’t noticed them yet, keening like a bereaved woman from ancient times. The gale amplified her pain, and all around her, the shadows gathered. From my angle, they looked hungry, swollen with sharp anticipation.
I didn’t know if the deaths of those responsible would be enough to give the phantoms rest or if they’d passed beyond the human afterlife—and were now feeding on pain, terror, and grief. They had been paler wisps, facsimiles of those they’d known in life, but we’d turned them into something else, and I didn’t know what exactly they could do.
Shannon had called them. Perhaps she could send them away too.
“I’m here, Mother.” The girl stepped forward, but not close enough for Sandra to sweep her over the edge, and Jesse stood within a safe distance.
“I did it for you,” Sandra moaned above the rising wind. “I didn’t want them to know you were Gifted. If only you’d listened to me—”