by Mae Clair
* * * *
Halloween night was a prime time for vandalism, especially with kids and teens high on the excitement of the annual parade. Point Pleasant police held jurisdiction over the town, while Caden had the broader scope of the TNT and Mason County. He still had every intention of visiting the old munitions site when 11:00 PM rolled around, but for now it was enough to vanish for a short time, doing a random patrol in his car. He’d already told Eve not to expect him until after midnight.
The parade had long passed the sheriff’s station and progressed farther down Main. A few streamers littered the sidewalks, pieces of orange crepe paper scattered with black confetti. Several people folded up lawn chairs or lingered in small groups, talking among themselves. Jack-o’-lanterns glowed in the windows of most local businesses, and farther down the road, the sound of music and applause floated on the air.
Caden rounded the corner of the sheriff’s office and headed for the parking lot. He walked briskly, hands in his pockets, head down as he concentrated on the night ahead. After everything Evening had told him, he had a thin chance of connecting with Cold. Even if Lach’s father wasn’t returning for Parker, there was still a connection between the two. Caden owed the kid whatever help he could offer.
He was almost to his patrol car when he heard footsteps behind him.
“Trick or treat.”
Caden pivoted, coming face-to-face with a leering skeletal head—a black mask overlaid with fluorescent white bones. The person who stood before him wore a form-fitting dark top and jeans.
Exhaling, he shook off the surprise. “Hey, the parade’s that way.” He pointed down the street. The moment he glanced aside, a blunt object cracked across his cheek, driving him to his knees. Instinctively, he groped for his revolver. The second blow battered the back of his neck. His gun was half out of the holster when he crumpled to the ground unconscious.
* * * *
The first sensation Caden became aware of was the pull of dried blood on his split cheek, the taste of dirt in his mouth. Someone muttered in the background, a low string of words that ping-ponged inside his skull. Face down, he’d been deposited on bumpy ground, his arms stretched behind his back and bound at the wrists. It took a while for him to process his surroundings. The crude concave walls splattered with graffiti and the rusting containers that had once contained chemicals could only mean his captor had taken him to the TNT.
Lyle?
Whoever it was, the guy had kindled a fire. Shadows leaped and danced on the stone walls, distorted and exaggerated by the bowl-shaped dome of the igloo. The memory of a grinning skeleton mask floated up from the quagmire fogging Caden’s brain. He didn’t have to look to know his gun, cuffs, and radio were gone.
Closing his eyes, he tried to roll onto his back. A sharp sting knifed down his neck, wrenching a groan from his lips.
“Let me help.” A hard kick to his ribs flipped him over and left him gasping for air.
Lyle Mason bent close, the mask gone, his face a maniacal blend of firelight and shadow. “Been waiting for you to wake up. Gotta have a talk with you, Flynn. It’s long overdue.”
Gripping Caden under the arms, he dragged him backward. Caden kicked out, trying to snag his legs, but the movement was sluggish, hampered by his stupor. Mason flung him against the stone wall. His shoulder hit with an audible smack, igniting a burst of pain.
He spat blood from his mouth. “What do you want?”
“You forgot her, didn’t you?”
Caden’s head spun. “Who?”
“Not the right answer!” Lyle cracked him across the face. “I knew you forgot. I knew she meant nothing to you.” Fisting his hands in his hair, he yanked frantically, as if trying to rip the dirty strands from his skull. He paced in a tight circle, bent his head back, then screamed at the ceiling.
Definitely unstable, a prime candidate for West Central.
Had Lyle tossed his gun, or was the revolver somewhere in the igloo? Even with the small fire Lyle had kindled, the interior of the bunker was festooned with shadow. Strewn among the old chemical containers Caden spied a few crumbled packages—crackers, chips, and jerky—along with a raggedy blanket and a six-pack of beer. Lyle must have been living in this place. It wasn’t the same bunker where Caden had conversed with Cold, but there were numerous igloos scattered throughout the warren of the TNT.
“Lyle, stop and listen.” Caden wet his lips, his mouth dry. He tried to ignore the incessant pounding in his head, splinters of pain taking root behind his eyes. “You’re confused. There was a man. Lach Evening—”
“No.” Whirling, Lyle stabbed a finger in his direction. His eyes blazed with fury. “I have nothing to say about him. Only her.”
Caden hedged, fearful of setting off another explosion of anger by questioning who “she” was.
Lyle bent forward, hands locked on his knees. Behind him, the fire crackled and hissed, spitting embers into the air. He sucked on his lips, then blew out like a fish. “I want you to say her name.”
“She…” Caden racked his memory. Someone from the past. Someone from high school who’d mattered in a way no other girl had.
“You’re not answering me.” Lyle’s fingers twitched.
Shit.
The name struck Caden in the same instant he met Lyle’s demented gaze head-on. “Lottie.” He should have realized sooner.
Lyle blinked, the fall and rise of his eyelids mimicking the slow wink-stare of an owl. He recoiled as if slapped. For a split second, the deranged fire dimmed in his gaze. “You do remember.” Rubbing his palms against his jeans, he squatted on his haunches, a grotesque hobgoblin backlit by firelight. “She loved you.” His face hardened, carved by hate. “She died because of you.”
Caden swallowed. Behind his back, he flexed his hands, trying to force circulation through his bound wrists. Needles pinged up his arms. “Lyle, I never did anything to Lottie.”
“That’s the problem. You ignored her.” Tugging on his shirt, he squeezed the soiled fabric repeatedly, a nervous tick. “Except once. You gave her a ride home from school.”
Caden clenched his jaw, struggling to remember. He’d barely spoken to Lottie. She was backward and shy, a plump girl shunned by the more popular kids in school. His crowd. If he’d given her a ride, it would have been in kindness, not to take advantage of her.
“Yeah. I remember now.” He forced himself straighter, drawing his knees to his chest. He scraped his wrists against the rock behind him. With enough friction he might be able to fray the binding. Lyle didn’t seem to notice the effort, focused somewhere in the past.
Damn Evening. The guy had really fucked up Mason’s head.
“There were some girls giving her a hard time after school.” The memory was spotty, but piecemeal enough to stitch together. “Three or four of them, surrounding her. She looked scared.”
Lyle bobbed his head.
“I was driving by and stopped.” If he could get Lyle close enough, he might be able to scissor his legs around Mason’s neck. Render him unconscious. He kept his gaze pinned on Lyle’s face as he scraped his wrists against the rough stone. A trickle of blood sluiced into his palm. “I asked Lottie if she wanted a ride, then drove her to your house.” An innocent offer, an innocent ride. How could Lyle possibly connect that to his sister’s death?
“That was all it took.” Lyle sat on his heels and dragged his fingers across his cheek. In the limited light, his nails looked green, packed with dirt beneath the tips. “You rescued her, and from that moment on, all she did was talk about how she wanted to be with you. I told her you were out of her league, that you’d never be interested in a girl like her. I tried my best to make her see reason, but she’d come out of her shell. It took weeks to work up her nerve, and what did she do?”
Caden’s gut plummeted. Oh, fuck. “She asked me to the spring dance.”
Lyle’s lip curled in a snarl. “And you turned her down.”
&nb
sp; “I already had a date.”
“It didn’t matter!” Lyle bellowed the accusation, spittle flying from his mouth. “You wouldn’t have taken my sister, anyway. You crushed her.” He scrambled to his feet, his chest rising with the whistling hiss of his breath. “I found her at home…on the flat roof outside her bedroom. It’s where we’d go to talk. She was sobbing, crying her eyes out. You made her feel ugly, like a fool. Silly Lottie thinking Caden Flynn would want to be seen with her.”
“Lyle, I never—”
“Shut your fucking mouth!” Lyle balled his hands into fists and screamed at the top of his lungs. Whirling, he spun in a circle and clutched his hair again. “I tried to talk to her, but she shut me out. I was angry. She’d made a fool of herself rather than listen to me. We argued, and I pushed her. Oh, God! Oh, God!” He buckled to his knees. “I pushed her and she fell.” Curling in on himself, he locked both arms over his head. Deep sobs ripped from his throat, punishing his body with convulsions.
Caden used his heels to brace himself against the wall. Awkwardly, he manipulated his shoulders to scramble upright, all the while sawing the rope across the stone. It wouldn’t take Mason long to become completely unhinged after his meltdown.
“It was an accident, Lyle.”
“No. No.” The sobs were tortuous, gut-wrenching. A primal weeping that bore little resemblance to anything human. “Someone has to pay for her death.” He looked up, his face streaked by dirt and tears, spittle clinging to his cracked lips. “I’m sorry, Caden.” He reached behind his back and pulled a black object from his waistband.
The rope snapped on Caden’s wrists. He dove to the side as the crack of a bullet struck the wall behind him.
* * * *
The parade had ended and Main Street was quiet. His shift over, Ryan walked to the parking lot, debating the wisdom of heading to the TNT. In a little over an hour, Jerome would be camped out near his house waiting for Indrid Cold to appear, like Linus anticipating the arrival of the Great Pumpkin. He could play Sally Brown and stake out the pumpkin patch too, but the whole thing was probably a waste of time. Even after everything Caden had told him about Lach Evening, Ryan still believed the coded message was a fool’s errand. Without a precise location—
He came to an abrupt stop, noticing Caden’s patrol car in its usual spot.
Odd.
His brother had left while the parade was winding down. He would have been on duty, so it would have been unusual for him to leave in his own car, but not out of the question. Especially since he planned to visit the TNT later that night. Ryan sprinted to the back of the building where the sight of Caden’s red Capri clamped a fist around his gut.
His mind kicked into overdrive. Maybe Caden had returned and Ryan hadn’t noticed.
No, he would have picked up on that.
Scrubbing a hand over his jaw, he crushed a stab of alarm. Could be Caden had left, come back, then headed down the street to the hotel or the café. That made the most sense.
Spurred into motion, he jogged toward the road. Halfway there, he drew up short, spying a smattering of dark circles on the asphalt near Caden’s patrol car. He’d seen enough dried blood to recognize the stains. His sense of foreboding grew as he squatted and brushed his fingertips over the dime-sized splotches.
Ryan spun, a single hasty step bringing him smack up against Lach Evening. “Oof!” He expelled a grunt of air. “What the hell? Get out of my way. I’ve got to alert the station Caden is missing.” He ducked to the side, but Evening snagged his forearm, his grip surprisingly strong. Not a muscle of effort twitched on Evening’s face, but his grasp formed an unbreakable iron band.
“It would be better if we went alone.”
“Went?” Ryan spat the word.
“To find your brother.” Evening released him. “I noticed the same thing you did. Blood near Caden’s patrol car. It stands to reason Lyle has abducted him.”
It stands to reason…Ryan wanted to smack the lilting accent and overly proper words from his mouth. “All the more reason to sound the alarm.”
“All the more reason to proceed with as little commotion as possible.” Evening took a step backward, putting space between them. He wore black again, but his button-down shirt and tailored jacket had been replaced with a turtleneck and long leather coat. His slacks and shoes were equally dark in color. But for his white-blond hair, he would have blended into the shadows. “Mr. Mason is my problem. I can’t have others apprehending him. I’m sure your brother told you of my background and my true nature.”
“Yeah.” A sour admission. If the guy really was some kind of alien, then he’d want Lyle handled as quietly as possible. Buried in that ugly dilemma was an ethical question of whether or not Mason should be handed over to someone like Evening. At the moment, Ryan didn’t give a rat’s ass about the morality one way or another. “I need to find my brother. I’m going to do whatever’s best for him.”
Evening raised a single eyebrow. “Would it not be safe to say I am your best resource for accomplishing that goal?”
“Hell, Evening, you can’t even find Lyle.”
“We don’t need Mr. Mason. All we have to do is locate your brother.”
“No shit. And how are we going to do that?”
Evening overlooked the vulgarity. “Your brother shares a bond with a creature who can manage it for us.”
Ryan hesitated as the logic sank in. “The Mothman.”
“Precisely.”
Easier said than done. “And how do you plan on summoning a creature that has eluded hunters for decades?”
Evening smiled thinly. “I’m afraid you’ll have to trust me.”
* * * *
Caden dove to his knees as the bullet ricocheted off the wall. His teeth clacked together and he lunged forward, plowing into Lyle. Matched in height, Mason still outweighed him by a good twenty pounds. The heavy man fell backward, arms cartwheeling. He barely missed the fire as they struck the ground together. Grasping his wrist, Caden slammed his arm against the hard-packed soil to break his hold on the gun. Lyle grunted, but clung to the weapon.
“No, no no!” Stretching his free arm toward the fire, he fumbled to clasp one of the blazing sticks.
Caden caught the movement from the corner of his eye a second before the burning rod crashed into his shoulder. Heat and pain exploded in his arm. He released Lyle on reflex and rolled to the side. With effort, he got his feet under him.
Mason snarled something unintelligible and jerked the gun into motion. Caden bolted for the doorway and ducked through the opening as the crack of the .38 reverberated through the bunker. The bullet sliced open his arm, the graze sharp enough to double him over. A messy splatter of blood soaked his sleeve. Clamping a hand over the tear, he ran unsteadily for the trees.
“You can’t hide.” Lyle’s voice bounced among the tangled nest of birch and pine. Heavy footfalls, snapping twigs, and a rustle of trampled leaves followed.
Caden ducked behind an oak, fighting to hold his breathing in check. He’d trained for situations like this. Lyle might know the TNT, even how to track an animal in the woods, but he wasn’t thinking rationally and his quarry was a skilled law-enforcement officer who’d also served in Vietnam.
Mason had shot two rounds. Four remained. Caden pressed his back to the tree and listened to his pursuer stumble around in the dark.
Several yards away, a flashlight burst to life. The narrow beam swept back and forth, cutting a path through the shadows. Lyle moved in the opposite direction.
Caden waited until he couldn’t see the bobbing flashlight any longer, then shoved from the trunk and lurched into the darkness.
Chapter 17
Ryan eyed the small clearing. There was no trace of the dead dogs he’d found over a week ago, or the silvery globs of “star shit.”
“Why here?” He turned to face Evening, who stood in the center of the exposed area. They’d left Ryan’s patrol car tuck
ed into a weedy strip of grass off Potters Creek Road, then hiked the rest of the distance. Even with the aid of a flashlight, Ryan had blundered his way. By contrast, Evening had walked unassisted, never once floundering. He’d stepped easily, almost soundlessly, among knots of briars and matted overgrowth.
“Why not here? As you can see it is open.” Evening extended a hand to indicate the unusual baldness of the terrain. “An ideal spot to summon the winged cryptid we seek.”
The cryptid.
Ryan had never actually seen the Mothman. Up until last summer he’d considered the thing more fantasy than fact, a local legend to be told around campfires and debated over beers at the River Café. He wasn’t entirely sure what to expect.
“Fine. Just get busy with whatever tricks you’ve got up your sleeve.” Shifting restlessly, he angled the beam of his flashlight onto his watch. “It’s after eleven-thirty. Caden’s been missing for hours. Who knows what Lyle could have done?”
“I understand your impatience, but I require silence while I concentrate. Whatever comes of my efforts, do not interfere.”
Ryan exhaled, his only reply a curt nod. On the drive to the TNT, Evening had explained how he intended to summon the Mothman using a form of telepathy shared among his people. Ryan might have placed more confidence in the idea if Caden hadn’t told him there was little of the original “person” remaining in the Mothman. That entity had become a mutation, a thing as far removed from his original race as Ryan was from Evening.
Clenching his jaw, he narrowed his gaze on the blond-haired man.
Freaking alien.
The guy was supposed to be some kind of ultra psychic with advanced cognitive and extrasensory powers. Or so Evening had told him in his lightly accented voice. No boasting or ego stroking in the straightforward revelation, but a blunt statement of fact. If anyone had the power to breach the chaos of the creature’s mind, Evening was the best candidate. Not even his father, Cold, could claim his particular skills.