The fiery stars over Mary’s head were fading. The dirt road under her feet was turning back to asphalt. The cold air was turning into summer heat again. Not yet, not yet! Sadie moved closer, but as she did, Mary’s form moved away, like chasing a mirage.
“It’s nearly time, girl. Got to move on while there’s still road to walk.”
Sadie pushed tears away with both hands and let her anger rise to burn away the rest. She had no family, no connection to those who came before her, except for a ghost who couldn’t stay still. “I’m all alone,” Sadie said, her voice quiet so only Mary could hear. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Girl,” Mary said as she situated her pack on her back. “None of us do. And yet we keep doing it. Don’t forget that.” Mary looked beyond Sadie, back along the highway toward town. “Trouble’s coming for you. You didn’t ask for it, but it’s coming. Red Valley don’t have much, but it ain’t lacking in trouble. You have what you need to see it through. Trust me on that, girl.”
“Thank you,” Sadie said softly.
“It’s been my pleasure,” Mary said. “I’d say we should chat again soon, but I don’t expect I’ll be walking this way again. This road always goes on, never back.”
The world was almost right again. Sadie hated how normal it looked. She wasn’t ready for normal yet, maybe never again.
“Mary!” Sadie called as the traveler turned to go. “I almost forgot! Charles Hooper sends his greetings.”
“Does he now?” Mary said, her voice a long way off. “So they made it work. Good for them, the crazy fools. Tell them…” But whatever she said was lost across the barrier between this life and the next as it closed with a final gust of frigid air.
A new grief washed over Sadie, for things lost she never knew, for those she might have loved, if time and death had allowed it. And for an image of her mom, walking a gray road shadowed by something like trees, alone. I wish you could have stayed here a while longer, Sadie thought, thinking of both Mary and her mom.
“Not gonna lie,” Graciela said, her voice breaking the thick silence that had fallen over the deserted highway, “that was some crazy shit.”
Beto said nothing. He stared down the road where Mary had been, his face grim. What had he seen when he stared out at that wasteland or heard that foul wailing?
“You get what you need?” Ashleigh asked.
“I think so,” Sadie said. Her mind was still reeling from the horrible visions she’d endured, but it hadn’t been for nothing. She needed a ledger. And some blood. Her own blood.
Spotlights burst over them like unexpected sunlight. Red and blue lights pulsed behind the blinding glare and voices began shouting, shattering the evening calm. The sheriff patrol cars had come up on them without headlights, slipping silently across the asphalt. The deputies appeared a moment later, dark shadows backlit by a blaze of white.
Beto tried to run, but they were ready for him. Three burly men with black batons were on him in an instant, pinning him to the ground. They clubbed at his arms and legs until he stopped fighting then clubbed some more. His face was shoved into the highway until the skin split and blood oozed down his forehead and into his eyes.
Graciela and Ashleigh were forced to their knees, black pistol barrels and barked threats shoved into their faces. Sadie alone was untouched. She stood frozen in a sea of violence, her heart cracking vainly against her ribs.
“I did warn you, young lady,” said a voice from behind the line of cars. A big shape moved in front of the lights, broad shoulders and broad-brimmed hat cutting a sharp silhouette. “I told you that you didn’t want me as an enemy.”
Sadie stared the undersheriff down as his face came into view. “I thought you were interested in stopping people breaking the law, Mr. Hassler. We’re just having a bit of car trouble.”
“I’m interested in stopping the biggest law-breaker of them all,” Undersheriff Hassler said, his voice booming over the road and the dead fields. “And I will stop him. And if I catch a few others along the way, well, then even better.”
Sadie stuck out her chin back up the road. “The King’s back that way. If you want that fight, go have it, and leave us alone.”
The undersheriff stopped in front of her. He blotted out the spotlights, setting the edges of his frame ablaze like a man-shaped solar eclipse. He lowered his voice and smiled a little under his red mustache. “You know it isn’t that simple. I asked you for your assistance in this matter. I thought you might be motivated by civic pride. But now I see I must be more persuasive.”
“You going to arrest us? What for?”
“Illegally impeding a thoroughfare,” he said. “Reckless mischief.” His eyes moved away from Sadie and lingered on Beto, still trapped under 400 pounds of deputy. “Violation of parole.”
“He did nothing illegal.”
Hassler coughed a laugh. “Oh, we saw your little performance. Even in Red Valley, use of magic is a privilege, not a right, and your little friend there gave up his rights to the State of California.” He shook his head. “Always sad to see such wanton recidivism. Never surprising, but always sad.”
“Go to Hell,” Graciela yelled before she was shoved to the ground and handcuffed.
When Beto saw this, he pushed against his captors and shouted in Spanish. The deputies were caught off balance and one even fell over on his butt, but that just made the others bear down harder. Sadie winced as the batons came down again and again.
“You need to understand,” Hassler said. “I’ll send that vato back to prison until he’s an old man, and my men will break his legs before he gets there. Your girlfriends here won’t be in jail long, but long enough to lose their jobs and good name. I will ruin them. And you need to know that this is just the start. It gets much worse from here. I’ll impound this car and sell it for scrap. I’ll take your house as a civil forfeiture. Listen here, girl: I will burn down your life.”
Sadie stopped looking at Hassler. Instead she forced herself to look at Beto’s blood on the road and at Graciela and Ashleigh, handcuffed in the dirt, faces smeared and terrified.
“I don’t know anything,” Sadie said, her lips shaking.
“I don’t believe that,” Hassler said. “After our last little chat, I think you couldn’t help yourself. I think you read through your momma’s books and found what I was looking for. It’s only human nature, can’t blame you. But that means that you can end this right now. You tell me what I need, and I’ll forget about what we saw here tonight. You get on the right side of this war, and there will be mercy.”
She felt no true loyalty to the King, whatever he was protecting them from. But she had no interest in helping the undersheriff take him down. What would that even mean? She didn’t know what the King was, but doubted they had a cell big or strong enough in the county jail to hold him.
But she did know a secret. A weakness. Something the King wanted to stay well hidden. He may have even given Mary Bell the Liar’s power just to hide this very thing away. And they’d kept it hidden all that time. Until this moment.
“You can’t beat the King,” Sadie said.
“You let me worry about that,” Hassler said. “Tonight, you should be focusing on the fact that I can beat you. And everyone you care about.” His eyes—flashing red and blue, red and blue—stayed on Sadie but he turned his head toward his men. “I think that suspect is resisting arrest, boys.”
Beto shouted in pain. He tried to cuss out his assailants but got a boot in his face instead. Blows rained down on him: fists, batons, boots. Beto didn’t even bother fighting back, but that didn’t stop them. Nothing would. Nothing could.
Except Sadie.
“Fine!” More tears, more grief. “Fine. I’ll tell you. Just leave them be.”
The deputies stopped, hands hovering, ready to continue if necessary. Undersheriff Hassler waved them off. “I’m glad you decided to see reason. Like I said before, everyone has their weakness. So tell me. What does he not want us
to know?”
“I shouldn’t…” Sadie said. Anger and sorrow boiled up inside her, stealing her words. “I shouldn’t say it out loud. The whispers—”
“Don’t give me that horseshit,” Hassler said. “Tell me, or that boy will never walk again.”
Sadie looked at Beto. His head was down, his face hidden. She thought about how he’d looked when he told her that he was going to be a father. She thought about the Lie he wanted her to tell, the new future he hoped for.
“The King is dying,” Sadie said.
There was a tickle across the back of her neck. Words swished around her, like leaves caught in a breeze, but the air was still. The King… the King, the words said, soft and low. The King is dying. Dying.
You don’t tell your secrets out loud in Red Valley. The whispers are always listening, and when they hear something secret, they take it and spread it to the last place in the world you would want it told. It was easy to believe that parents made this up to teach kids to be careful and not to gossip; it would be a good lesson in a town like this, even if it were just a fable. But what is easy to believe is rarely true, especially in Red Valley, and the whispers were very real.
If Undersheriff Hassler heard the whispers, he didn’t show it. Instead he tipped the brim of his hat to Sadie and said, “Dying, huh. Well, that is something. Thank you. Sorry we had to do this the hard way, but glad we could come to a reasonable resolution.”
“Fuck you,” Sadie said, her voice distant.
Hassler ignored her. “This will be good for Red Valley. Very good. The King’s been pretending to be almighty for too long. Now I know he’s full of shit. Thanks again. Have a safe drive back to town.” He motioned for his men to return to their cars. They unlocked the handcuffs and gave Beto one last half-hearted kick before disappearing behind the blinding lights.
Oh, God, Sadie thought. What have I done?
Chapter Eleven
No one could say why the whispers did it, what they gained, what they truly wanted. No one was even sure what they were: ghosts, echoes, spirits, or something else. But two things were certain, deadly certain: They were always listening. And they hated the King.
The King is dying.
The King is dying.
The King is dying.
They had put many a petty secret in many an interested ear, over the years. Sometimes they lingered to watch the ensuing chaos for reasons all their own. And sometimes the telling was enough. But this secret was not like the others. This was the secret they had been waiting for. Yearning for. And they knew exactly where to take it. Which ears would be most interested.
Some of the King’s enemies were close. They crouched in darkness outside the King’s Peace, bitter, baleful eyes watching the River’s far shore. Some pondered how to fight the King in his own lair; others simply waited—patience was a virtue among their kind. The whispers reached them first and breathed into them seductive truths.
The King is dying. His strength is a Lie and his Liar is gone. The time for vengeance grows near.
Fanged smiles grew. Talons tore the earth. And dark faces turned to the Red Valley bridge.
The King had amassed many foes across the ages, and these were of the lesser sort. Dangerous to the weak and unprotected, but the King was neither. They might hate the King, but they were no match for him, and they knew it. But the whispers also knew the old hatreds, remembered stories of blood and battle long forgotten by the mortal world.
Dying or not, the King was not going to be defeated by a lesser foe.
But there were others.
Police tape flapped in the wind as exhausted officers held back the surge of neighbors and reporters. Behind them, the flames reached high in the night sky, devouring the building and casting the world in red.
“Let them do their jobs,” the police told the crowd, speaking of the firefighters slowly losing the fight.
A family of five had been in the house. No one had come out.
One face in the crowd watched with a different gaze than the others. For him, the fire was not tragic; it was art. It was perfection. He only wished he could get closer, to feel the heat on his skin. He never felt more alive than watching the little hairs on his arms singe and wither under the force of the flame. He craved it, loved it, needed it.
He hadn’t known the people in the house, but that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t personal, never personal. He would watch anything burn, but a fire that consumed a life, well, that burned all the brighter for it. In such a fire, he sometimes thought he could see flickering faces cheering him on, calling him home.
The firefighters’ hoses could do nothing. The crowd let out a gasp when the roof collapsed. They were afraid, all of them. This was the third arson fire in San Bernardino in the last two months, and with the state so dry, who knew how big it could get, how far it could spread?
One face in the crowd smiled. He shouldn’t have but he couldn’t help it. Not when watching something so beautiful, dancing just for him.
The whispers moved among the people, searching.
They were not searching for the arsonist. He was a monster, but a frail one. A human one. They were searching for something much older, something in the fire. Flickering faces, smiles in flame.
The King of Red Valley is dying, the whispers said to those who waited behind the flames. All he took from you can be retaken. All he owes can be paid.
Those who waited behind the flames could speak no words, but they could hear. And they could act.
The newspapers the following morning would go with the headline: Deadly Fire Extinguished in Unexplained Manner. Below the picture of the ruined house, they would quote the fire chief: We don’t know why the fire went out like that. Sometimes these fires have a mind of their own. We’re just glad we were able to contain it to the single structure and no more homes were damaged.
The whispers moved on. And the ashes, flying high in hot summer air, moved north.
The hunter in the darkness stalked the great open spaces between the cities of man. It was not afraid of men or their cities; it was afraid of nothing. But it was never truly dark in a city, and it preferred to hunt in the dark. It crouched on the old dead tree overlooking the freeway far below. Cars sped along at eighty miles an hour, tiny smudges of ugly light in an otherwise unblemished night. It wished it could kill them all, drive them away, but it had given up that dream long ago. They bred too quickly, these men, and were too easily replaced.
It flexed its wings. Their leathery expanse blotted out the sky. Oh, it felt good to hunt again.
There were others out here, hiding in the cracks of civilization, but it ignored them. They were nothing and they knew it. When its shadow crossed over the moonlit hills and arroyos, they cowered, and this was right and good. It had haunted the dark skies since before man crawled upon this earth and deserved to be feared. To be honored by their fear. Harut, the hunter had been called. Baphomet. Chemosh. Azazyel. And Death.
Claws tensed and mouth open, it was about to take to the air when it heard the voices. They sang to it—only to it—a song it had longed to hear for many an age.
The King of Red Valley is dying, the whispered song said. He is weak. He is unprotected. He will fall.
It considered these words. There was one thing that it honored with its fear: the King. It felt no shame in this; all wise things feared the King. Even if the King were dying, it would not wish to face the King in battle. Not again.
And yet.
It could continue to hunt among the cactus and juniper. It could snuff out one light at a time, knowing it could never stop them all. It could be the most feared shadow in the dark and face no challenge, no risk. But it would always know there was something worse out there. Something hiding in Red Valley.
Something that it could hunt, if the whispers could be trusted.
And what was a hunt without a challenge? Unworthy.
It pumped its wings and rose into the night. The old tree shuddered as it went
.
Few alive knew of this place, and those who did, knew to avoid it. There are things better left undisturbed. There are bones that are meant to stay buried.
The whispers knew of this place. How they learned of it was a secret they never told. This, and only one other: why they truly hated the King. And it was that hatred that made them go where nothing—no creature or spirit—ought to go.
They found in this shadowed place a skeleton of a creature unlike any other who walked the earth. These were old bones, ancient when the world was new. Weathered by sand and the passing of ages. Forgotten. But the whispers did not come for the dead. They came for the presence that lingered there, the one for whom there is no name that can be spoken, not by men or gods. The old enemy. The speaker of lies and truths unknowable. The gathering darkness. The one who—in another time, a lost age—nearly killed the King.
The King is dying.
Nothing moved. The ground was as still as a grave.
Louder then, the whispers repeated their secret. The King is dying.
There was a rustle among the bones.
He is weak. He is—
Something moved and the whispers were gone, fear outstripping boldness.
There was a sound then, in that ancient place. A rushing. A breath of wind. A sigh.
Not far away, a woman walked a dusty trail with her dog, as they did every day. The dog—a brown-black German shepherd—trotted alongside his master with a casual, graceful stride. The woman moved carefully on the uneven terrain, though her thoughts were elsewhere, consumed by a tyranny of small worries.
Something moved around them, like a breeze in a night without wind.
The dog stopped. Its fur stood on end. Its teeth shone. A low rumble grew in its chest.
The woman stopped, too, the insignificant concerns in her mind suddenly gone.
The dog lunged. There was no hesitation. Ten years he had lived with his master and never once considered doing her harm. Now he went for her throat.
But this was not his master, not anymore. She had been wholly burned away, replaced by something else, something for which there was no name, not among beasts or men. And the dog, driven to violence by baser instincts than he had ever known, knew in his soul it had to be destroyed.
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