Thicker Than Blood - the Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Series

by Blake Crouch

  10/14/03

  Haines Junction, Yukon

  Spent last night at the Raven Hotel. Pricey. Look for something more reasonable this evening. Breakfast at Bill’s Diner. Coffee. Two delicious bearclaws. C$11.56. AT came to the village again in that old CJ-5. (he went to the library) I drove out to his cabin. 5.9 miles down Borealis Road. A one-laner. Rough. Beautiful weather. Cold. Saw his driveway but didn’t turn in. Too nervous. (don’t be such a chickenshit) Think I’ll return on foot tonight and approach through woods under the cover of

  The intercom broke in: "At this time, we would like to begin boarding Flight 6346 with nonstop service to Whitehorse, Yukon."

  The tattered purple notebook closed.

  On its cover, "H. BOONE" had been neatly printed in black magic marker:

  The passenger of seat 14C slipped the notebook into a leather satchel, slung it over his shoulder, and strolled toward the gate.

  His hair is blond and short now, but if you look closely, the roots are still black.

  FOREWORD TO BREAK YOU

  This novella is why I love reading horror.

  Crouch takes you on a 20,000 word race straight into hell, and you'll love every minute of it.

  Break You is a perfect introduction into the twisted, exhilarating world of Blake Crouch.

  His characters are complex. Their motivations are terrifying. And the scenarios he dreams up are among the most creatively depraved since Thomas Harris.

  How much would you hurt the ones you loved in order to save them?

  If that question makes you flinch, DO NOT read this ebook.

  But if you like your thrillers to have some depth to go along with the evil, and you like your villains to be so genuinely creepy you won't be able to forget them, then this was written just for you.

  Fans of Thomas Harris, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon, Brian Keene, and Dean Koontz will find themselves in familiar territory. Crouch's stalwart hero Andrew Z. Thomas (Desert Places, Locked Doors) thinks he's finally left the tragedy and horror of his past behind him. But the past has a way of catching up, and Andrew is pushed to the limits of human endurance to see if he does indeed break.

  The ending is a jaw-dropper. You'll never see it coming.

  J.A. Konrath, author of the Det. Jack Daniels' Series and Flee

  BREAK YOU

  * * *

  Following the events of DESERT PLACES and LOCKED DOORS, Andy Thomas and Violet King are hiding out in the wilds of northern Canada, where Violet has a four-month-old son and a burgeoning romance with Andy. On a cold, rainy night at their cabin in the woods, the promise of an idyllic life that seems just around the corner is shattered when a man from their past, a monster of pure malevolence, returns. What he has in store for them will challenge their understanding of evil and stretch the fibers of their love to the breaking point.

  They say that what you mock

  Will surely overtake you

  And you become a monster

  So the monster will not break you

  — U2, "Peace on Earth"

  Yukon, Canada

  Autumn 2004

  Andy

  EARLY October.

  A cold, midnight rain pattering against the tin roof.

  "We should be drinking whiskey," Violet said. "Something to warm our bones."

  I set another birch log on the fire and crawled back onto the bearskin rug where Vi had sprawled with her wineglass.

  "You’re already cold?" I asked.

  "I’m a southern girl. I’m always freezing."

  "Hate to say it, but that doesn’t bode well for you this winter."

  "How cold does it get here? Worst case scenario."

  "Fifty below. Sixty on a bad day."

  "I won’t even get out of bed."

  I sipped my wine, glanced at the fireshadows flickering in the rafters over the loft—what had once been my office now converted into Violet’s bedroom and her four-month-old Max’s nursery. He slept up there in bliss, the warmest spot in the cabin, where the heat of the fire gathered.

  I studied the firelight flush across Violet’s face.

  I’d shunned it, fought it, tried to ignore it, but I couldn’t deny what I felt in the pit of my stomach. I was falling...hard...for this woman.

  "What is it?" Vi said.

  "Nothing."

  "No...you have this look."

  "I don’t know what you’re talking about."

  She smirked. "Are you crushing on me, Andy?"

  I blushed through to the tips of my ears, wondering if she could see the color in the lowlight.

  "Little bit, I’m sorry."

  "No, it’s completely understandable. I’m adorable."

  I laughed, my eyes closing only for a second, and when they opened again, Violet had leaned in so close I could smell the wine on her breath.

  Her green eyes were flecked with black. This I hadn’t noticed before.

  "Violet—"

  "I want this."

  "You’re sure? Because if you have any doubt—"

  She shut me up with a kiss.

  Soft.

  Melting.

  Melding.

  I could’ve lived there.

  We came apart, the corners of my mouth electrified with the taste of her. I ran my hand over the curve of her hip, wondering how far we were going to take this.

  "I haven’t," I said. "Not in a long time."

  "Haven’t what? What are you talking about?"

  "Nothing, I just—"

  "Wait." She recoiled. "You think we’re going to sleep together?"

  "No, I just thought—"

  "I’m kidding, we are."

  "Why do you torture me?"

  "Because it’s so easy?"

  She set her wineglass on the floorboard and pulled me on top of her.

  "Tell the truth," she whispered. "How many times have you imagined this moment?"

  I smiled, feeling her thighs against my ribs.

  "You’ve been through a lot, Vi."

  "We both have."

  "It hasn’t even been a year."

  "It’s been long enough for me to know who you are. Stop trying to talk me out of this."

  So I kissed her, my hands running over her body in some kind of wonder. The fire raged behind us and the rain intensified. I had imagined this moment, many times, since the beginning of summer at least and still it didn’t feel anything like my fantasies. I loved her now, and that made everything better.

  "Do you want to move over to my bed?" I whispered in her ear.

  "Yes, please."

  And still I could barely bring myself to separate from her. Such a sweet and perfect place.

  I got onto my knees and helped her up.

  "God, you’re beautiful."

  I would’ve undressed her right there in the firelight if it hadn’t been so cold. I wished we’d done this in the summertime.

  "I’m just going to run up to the loft for a second," she said. "Go get under the covers and warm it up for us."

  I stood and moved across the cold floorboards toward the nook under the loft where my bed sat in darkness.

  The wine had gone to my head, everything so pleasantly humming.

  Violet climbed the ladder toward the loft.

  My heart pounded under my sweater.

  Reaching the bed, I tugged back the covers, wondering if I should be naked waiting for her, or if maybe there wasn’t something implicitly sleazy about that.

  I crawled under the blankets and opted to play it safe, stay dressed for now.

  I could hear Violet moving around directly above me in the loft, the boards creaking, thinking how many nights had I lain here in the dark listening to her movements, hoping she felt what I did, that she might decide to creep down the ladder in the middle of the night and join me in bed. A part of me still didn’t quite believe it was about to happen.

  It was cold under the blankets, and I was drawing them up to my chin to keep in the heat when Viol
et shrieked.

  I bolted up.

  "Andy!" she screamed.

  I jumped out of bed, rushed over to the ladder.

  "What’s wrong?" I asked, climbing.

  "He’s gone."

  I stepped into the loft.

  Dark up here and nothing to see except where the firelight reflected off surfaces of metal and glass.

  "Who?" I asked, but I understood the moment my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I saw Vi leaning over into the crib, shuffling through the blankets.

  "Max," she said.

  "There’s no way he could have crawled out?"

  "He’s four months, Andy. He can’t even roll over."

  I turned on a lamp and moved toward her.

  "You put him down after supper, right?"

  She nodded, wild-eyed, her pupils dilated, chest billowing.

  "He went down fast. Ten minutes. Then I came down and we were talking by the fire for what? A couple hours?"

  "Yeah."

  Vi shook. "This isn’t right, Andy. This isn’t right."

  I stepped around the crib toward the only possible exit from the loft—a two-by-two square foot window just under the pitch of the roof.

  "Is it open?" she asked.

  I knelt down, studied the hasps. "No. But it isn’t locked."

  "Was it?"

  "I’m ninety percent sure it...fuck."

  "What?"

  Vi hurried over.

  I touched the floorboards.

  "They’re wet." A cold, sinking blast of panic ran through me. "Someone was up here while we were down there."

  She looked at me, her eyes flooding.

  A lump swelling in my throat.

  "He’s here, isn’t he? He found us and took my son."

  I headed for the ladder.

  Immediately, I could tell something was off—a softness in my knees that I realized was numbness.

  "I don’t feel right," I said as I reached the ladder and started down.

  Through her tears, Violet said, "I’ve been getting more and more lightheaded. I thought it was the wine."

  I descended carefully, a tremor in my legs threatening to upend my balance. My mind redlined, the last sixty seconds such a nightmare I wondered if this was really happening. I’d had a dozen dreams in the last year that he’d somehow found us, and every time I’d wake sweating in the night, paralyzed by naked fear until that wash of relief would sweep over me, reality reinstated. I’d go to the kitchen sink, drink a glass of water, and wait for the nerves to recede.

  My feet touched the floorboards at the base of the ladder.

  Violet still cried hysterically in the loft and the numbness in my legs still grew, and I was still in this horrifying moment, either unable to wake, or worse, there was no nightmare to wake from.

  My knees hit the floor beside my bed, and I reached underneath it.

  Pulled out the shotgun, but it was too light, too small, and it wasn’t black metal but orange and green plastic.

  I stared at the Nerf toy in my hands and said, "What the fuck is happening?"

  My voice sounded strange, as if it had been relegated to some alcove in the back of my head. I turned and the room moved slower than the swivel of my head, the firelight leaving trails across my field of vision.

  Violet stood at the bottom of the ladder, swaying on her feet.

  "He drugged us," I said, and she responded but I couldn’t interpret her words, which dissolved in a swarm of echoes.

  I staggered to the front door and pulled it open.

  Rain fell through the sphere of illumination cast by the porchlight.

  Unflinching darkness beyond.

  My breath steamed in the cold, and I could feel the chill on my face, but there was distance from it—a chemical apathy getting stronger by the minute.

  I stumbled down the steps into a puddle, the freezing water seeping through my socks, realized I still held fast to the Nerf shotgun. I threw it down in the mud.

  My CJ-5 stood just beyond the light’s reach, and I moved toward it on rubber legs.

  I kept a loaded hunting rifle in the back, had been hoping to shoot an elk that would feed us through the winter.

  I collided into the door of the Jeep, fumbling for the handle.

  It swung open and I climbed in, reaching back between the seats as the rain hammered the hard-top.

  The Remington was gone.

  He’d taken it, too.

  I stepped back down into the mud and stared at the porchlight thirty feet away, blinding me through the rain.

  My head felt heavy, fingers too, like they were trying to pull me down into the mud.

  I could hear Violet sobbing in the cabin. It occurred to me that a loss of consciousness was imminent, and despite the effect of the drug, this recognition terrified me.

  I wondered how long he’d been watching us, how long he’d been planning this night. He’d spent time inside the cabin—known how to take Max, the location of my shotgun, the rifle, and God knows what else.

  I started back toward Violet, but after four steps, my face hit the frigid mud, and I stared sideways at the open door of the cabin, the interior walls awash in firelight.

  Violet had gone quiet, now crawling toward the door.

  I tried to call out to her but couldn’t muster my voice.

  She slumped down across the threshold and didn’t move.

  My eyes had begun to close of their own will, the porchlight dimming away until it was nothing but a distant star.

  Now the white noise of the rain faded, and with it the cold, and as I slipped under, I held onto a final, horrifying thought—this wasn’t the end of anything, certainly not my life. This was possibly the last moment of peace I would ever know, because when consciousness returned, I’d be waking up in hell.

  Violet

  SHE opened her eyes and instantly shut them again.

  The light was breathtaking, piercing.

  Disorientation ruled her every sense.

  She buried her face between her arms, but still the light crept in to scorch her retinas.

  She thought, I’ve been in darkness a long, long time.

  And then: Max.

  She wept, and the quality of her voice suggested that she was outside.

  The ground beneath her was hard and ungiving—pavement perhaps.

  There was no sound. Certainly not the everpresent whoosh of wind moving through spruce trees to which she’d grown accustomed during the last year. She couldn’t recover her last waking memory, only the emotions associated with it—fear and loss.

  Violet rolled onto her back and forced her eyes to open.

  Thirty seconds of punishing brilliance, and then the world darkened and she saw that she was staring into a low, gray cloud deck.

  She sat up.

  Found herself in a neighborhood in the middle of a street.

  Houses on either side.

  She struggled onto her feet. Weak. Like she hadn’t stood in months.

  So thirsty her head pounded.

  She limped across the pavement toward the closest residence, then into the yard, through the tall grass, and up the creaking steps.

  Banged on the front door.

  "Hello? I need help please. Hello?"

  Her voice sounded strange. Unused. She stepped back and waited. No footsteps forthcoming on the other side. No sound anywhere except the hollow scrape of an empty beer can rolling across the road behind her.

  Maybe it was the fogginess in her head, but she’d completely missed it—the front windows held no glass. She approached the one right of the door and stared through the cobwebs into darkness.

  Disintegrating furniture.

  The smell of mold and must.

  Decaying wood.