Trying to ignore the pain of the Ridden’s tight grip on his left arm, with his right hand he drew his semiautomatic, and pressed the barrel right against the wrist bones of the Ridden’s hand that gripped him.
Patrick fired three shots in rapid succession, ripping through the bones and tendons of the Ridden’s wrist.
The Ridden’s fingers still tried to keep their hold on Patrick’s arm, but with the tendons that connected to those fingers left shredded, it was unable to maintain sufficient pressure, and Patrick was able to wrench his arm free.
Just then, Joyce’s Volkswagen beetle barreled past him, blaring the Sisters of Mercy.
The Ridden lost track of where Patrick was, disoriented and confused, and Patrick took off running after the speeding car.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Izzie’s heartbeat was pounding in her ears as she and Daphne tumbled out of the passenger side door of Joyce’s car.
“Joyce!” Patrick shouted, sprinting around the corner toward them.
From the driver’s side, Joyce waved him away with one hand, the other held to her bruised neck.
“Door . . .” Joyce managed to croak, and then gestured toward the front of his house. “Inside . . .”
Without missing a step, Patrick pivoted and raced up the front steps, hand digging in his pocket for his keys. By the time Izzie and Daphne were helping Joyce up the steps, Patrick was flinging the door open to usher them inside.
Izzie glanced back over her shoulder, but from this vantage point all that she could see were the cars parked up and down Almeria, and the spire of the Church of the Holy Saint Anthony rising up above the roofs of the houses across the street. There were no shambling Ridden in sight.
When they were all through the door, Patrick slammed the door shut behind them, and quickly locked each of the locks. Then he turned to Izzie.
“The rear windows in the bedroom upstairs overlook the alley,” he said in a rush. “I’ll double-check the locks on the backdoor, you run up and see what you can see.”
Izzie was racing up the stairs before Patrick had even finished talking.
She turned the corner at the top of the stair, and skidded down the hallway, narrowing avoiding a teetering stack of moving boxes. She hooked to the right, dancing through a maze of junk and old toys strewn on the floor, and then slammed open the door to the bedroom. Thankfully, this was the same room that she and Daphne had spent some time organizing earlier that evening, and so there was a clear enough path to the window on the far side of the room.
Izzie yanked the cord to raise the velour blinds, which clattered and bent with the force of her pull, and then she peered down through the streaked and grimed window at the darkened alleyway below.
It took a moment to orient herself, and to work out which direction she should be looking. But when she craned her neck she saw the mouth of the alley off to her right, and then swung her head around to lean over and look down the other direction.
She could just barely make out the glint of the light reflecting off the small sections of the salt ring that had not yet been blown away. But of the six Ridden who had attacked them there was no sign, not even the one who had gone down with the silver scalpel in its neck.
Turning away from the window, Izzie realized that her heart was still racing, and she was breathing so fast and heavily that she probably ran the risk of hyperventilating. As she headed back across the room and down the hallway toward the stairs, she tried her best to still her fight-or-flight instinct. She was safe now, she told herself. Assuming that the Ridden hadn’t broken down the back door and were even now attacking Patrick.
But no. As she descended the stairs, she hear Patrick’s footsteps on the hardwood floor as he came back from the rear of the house.
“It’s all locked up and secured,” he told Izzie as she reached the first floor. “See anything from up there?”
Izzie shook her head.
“No, they’re gone,” she answered. “Even the one that I stabbed with Joyce’s scalpel.”
“You think they took the body with them when they left?” Patrick asked, as they went to join the others in the foyer.
“Maybe. Silver didn’t seem to repel them, so maybe they can get close to it? Maybe it’s only when silver enters their bodies that it causes problems for them?”
“Could be,” Patrick answered. “Either way, I think we’re safe for now.”
Then he turned to Joyce, who was standing with her back leaning against the wall, with her fingertips gingerly probing the welts that covered either side of her neck, the marks left by the Ridden’s vice-like grip.
Izzie continued trying to slow her breathing, her pulse still pounding in her veins. She bent over with her hands on her knees, trying to regain her composure.
“You okay?” Daphne came over and put her hand on Izzie’s shoulder.
Izzie looked up to meet Daphne’s gaze.
“I think so,” she said, with less certainty than she had intended. Then she straightened up, took a slow, deep breath, and nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay. You?”
Daphne rubbed the left side of her jaw.
“You clocked me in the face with your kneecap,” she said in mock offense, and then smiled slightly. “But yeah, I think I’ll live.”
Izzie turned, and saw that Patrick and Joyce were heading into the living room.
“Maybe just a glass of water?” Joyce was saying, as she sank down onto the couch.
Patrick hurried into the kitchen, and seconds later Izzie could hear the sound of the tap running.
“Quick thinking back there,” Izzie said as she crossed the floor and sat down in a chair facing Joyce. “That salt ring trick of mine wasn’t going to keep them off us for much longer.”
“Yeah, well . . .” Joyce shrugged her shoulders fractionally, and then winced as the motion pulled at the bruised muscles of her neck. “I’m just glad that I had that scalpel in my pocket.”
Izzie sat back in the chair, legs stretched out in front of her.
“If nothing else, we know that silver does work against the Ridden,” she said, leaning her head back against the top of the chair. “Salt, too, obviously, but only if there’s not a strong enough breeze.”
“Well, we’ve learned what doesn’t work, as well,” Patrick said, coming through the door to the kitchen carrying a glass of water. After he’d handed the glass to Joyce, he rubbed his forehead, face screwed up in a grimace. “If it had been a snake it would have bit me. I can’t believe I didn’t think about what would happen if any of the marks were covered up.”
“But they have been keeping Ink users out of the neighborhood, right?” Daphne sat down in the chair beside Izzie. She looked around, uneasily. “Are we going to be okay in here? If those spiral things aren’t keeping the Ridden away, what’s to stop them crashing in here after us?”
Patrick pulled his hand down his face, blinking hard, like someone trying to shake off fatigue.
“Well, they didn’t seem to be able to approach the back of this house, or any of the other ones with unobstructed markings on them,” he said. “So Uncle Alf’s markings are keeping them at bay, but they only seem to work over short distances. We should be safe enough in here tonight, but we obviously can’t make any assumptions that the rest of the neighborhood is safe.” He shook his head in frustration. “What I can’t figure out is, how did they end up in the alley in the first place?”
“Maybe now that they’re motivated to come after us,” Izzie suggested, “they started probing the neighborhood’s defenses for weak spots. Looking for places that they could tolerate passing through, threading their way through the gaps until they reached that spot.”
Patrick stood in the center of the room, arms crossed over his chest, his brow knit.
“If anything had happened to any of you—” his gaze darted over to Joyce “—it would have been my fault. All of the things my great-uncle taught me, and I forgot the one thing that might have mattered the most.”
Patrick slowly loosened his arms, letting them fall to his sides, his expression softening.
“Joyce, I just . . .”
She managed an abbreviated shake of her head.
“It could have been much worse,” she said. “We’re all still here to talk about it. So there’s no point in wasting any more time with self-recrimination. We need to figure out what to do next.”
Izzie pulled out her phone, and after powering it up swiped through the photos that she had taken in the alley before the attack.
“We need to make more of these, for one thing,” she said, holding the phone up to show the others the images of markings on the screen. Then she gestured to the supplies piled on the coffee table. “Might as well get started.”
“What about the marks out there that are covered up?” Daphne asked.
“I can clear off the ones in the alley tomorrow,” Patrick answered, and went to sit on the couch beside Joyce. “And after that . . . ? I don’t know, maybe I can get some of the students I teach at Powell Middle School to take care of the rest. Call it a ‘cultural enrichment activity’ or something like that, give them some extra credit.”
“What, you aren’t going to pay them?” Izzie said, unable to resist a sly smile. “Too cheap to kick in a quarter a piece?”
“Pretty sure the rates have gone up since I was a kid.” The corners of Patrick’s mouth tugged slightly upwards in a weary grin. “But I’ll break open the piggy bank if I have to.”
“Would probably be handy to have some more weaponized silver,” Daphne said. “I mean, did you see the way that guy reacted to that scalpel?”
Joyce was taking a long sip of water, and seemed to be recovering somewhat from the ordeal. She lowered the glass, holding in her lap.
“The blots on the face began to diminish immediately after Izzie inserted the blade.” Joyce paused, and then turned to Izzie. “Was that roughly the same rate of change that you saw with Martin Price the other day?”
Izzie couldn’t help shivering at the memory of it. The dead man, skin all but completely covered in ink-black blots, advancing on her even after taking multiple bullets to the chest and a shotgun blast to the knee, not to mention the fall from the third story window onto pavement. Only when she had bashed his neck with a battering ram repeatedly until his head was severed from his body had he finally stopped moving, and the blots had vanished in a matter of eyeblinks.
“Yeah,” Izzie answered, nodding. “Petty much exactly.”
“Then it must be just like we theorized this morning.” Joyce sat forward, an expression of intense concentration on her face. “The Ink, or loa, or whatever you want to call it . . . when the host is rendered unusable, in this case due to the introduction of silver, it pulls back out of the body and into the higher dimension.” She glanced in Izzie’s direction. “From ana to kata, or from in to out, or however you want to describe it.”
She was thoughtful for a moment, and then deflated slightly.
“Damn, I really loved that scalpel, though,” Joyce added. “First the boots, now this? This is really not turning out to be my week, you guys.”
Izzie chewed at her lower lip, mulling over what she was about to suggest, thinking over the ramifications. When Joyce had first produced the scalpel, it had occurred to Izzie that there was another silver blade that they might make use of, but she couldn’t help feeling like even the idea of it was too morbid to consider.
“Why silver, though?” Daphne asked, before Izzie had worked up the nerve to say what she was thinking. “That’s werewolf rules again, right? But what’s so special about silver that it causes them to react like that?”
“Mmm.” Joyce pulled out her phone and, after bringing up a browser window, began typing with her thumbs. “Let me see . . .” she said in a low voice, and then sank deep into an online search.
Patrick stood up from the couch and walked over to Izzie’s chair.
“Can I see that?” he asked, indicating the phone in her lap.
She thumbed the power button and handed it over.
“Okay,” Patrick said after studying the images of the spiraling marks for a moment. “Let’s see what we can do with this.”
Then he turned and knelt down beside the coffee table, and began to pick through the bits of metal and wood that Izzie and Daphne had brought.
“Here’s something,” Joyce said, eyes still on the screen of her own phone. “Silver has the highest electrical and thermal conductivity of all metals, and the lowest contact resistance.” She looked up and glanced around the room at the others. “Perhaps that’s a factor?”’
Izzie and Daphne exchanged a glance, and then shared a shrug. It seemed as good an answer as any.
“Speaking of electrical,” Patrick said, picking up a round wooden disc about the size of his palm, “I wish I’d thought to take the Taser out there with us tonight. Would have been a good opportunity to see what kind of effect it has on those bastards.”
“Well, the next time one of them is choking your girlfriend,” Izzie said with a lopsided grin, “I’ll be sure to remind you to test out your Taser theory before we try anything else.”
Patrick shot her a wounded look, but Izzie couldn’t help noticing that Joyce was hiding a smile while she pretended to take a sip of water.
“Come on,” Daphne said, getting up from her chair and nudging Izzie’s shoulder. “Let’s help out with the arts and crafts, already. This was your idea, after all.”
Izzie slid off of the chair and sat on the floor between Daphne and Patrick. It felt like a faintly ridiculous way to end such a stressful evening, but if carrying portable versions of the markings could help make the days to come a little less stressful, it was worth it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Patrick’s sleep that night was fitful and full of unsettling dreams. When he woke, squinting in the glare of the morning sun slanting in through the bedroom window, all that he retained of the nightmares was a confusing jumble of imagery—menacing figures formed from living shadow, rooms engulfed in flames hidden deep beneath the earth, and the sense of being pursued by unseen eyes everywhere he went.
Something shifted on the bed beside him, pulling the bedsheets taut, and it took a few startled seconds before Patrick remembered that Joyce had insisted that he share the bed with her when they had finally turned in, deep into the small hours of the morning. They had been too tired to do much more than collapse on the mattress and hold each other until they fell asleep moments later, but Patrick had felt an unfamiliar sense of security and contentment in that warm, drowsy embrace.
Joyce snored loudly, almost a honking sound, and rolled over in her sleep.
Patrick smiled as he slipped out from under the covers, careful not to wake her. She probably needed the sleep. They all did, for that matter. But having been roused from slumber himself—quite possibly by her snoring, he realized—he knew that there was little chance that he’d be able to fall back asleep himself.
Dressing as quietly as he could manage, carrying his boots in one hand, he padded across the hardwood and into the hallway in socks, closing the bedroom door behind him. There was no sign of movement from upstairs, no sound of footsteps in the guest room or running water in the upstairs bath, so it seemed likely that Izzie and Daphne were still asleep as well.
Patrick considered making breakfast again. He had purchased supplies at the grocery store the day before in anticipation of doing so. Standing in the doorway to the kitchen with his boots in his hand, though, he couldn’t shake a creeping sense of claustrophobia. Staying holed up inside for the sake of protection was one thing, but with the coming of day it would be safe to go back outside, and at the moment the idea of getting out and stretching his legs a bit was too appealing to ignore.
And so, after brushing his teeth and splashing some water in his face, Patrick stomped
into his boots, pulled on his quilted jacket, and prepared to go for a walk. But before leaving he made sure that he had the Ziploc bag of sea salt in one pocket and the wooden disc engraved with a copy of one of his great-uncle’s markings in the other, with his holstered semiautomatic clipped to his belt. He wasn’t anticipating any trouble by daylight, but preferred to be prepared.
At the last moment he realized that Joyce and the others might wonder where he’d gone if they woke up before he returned, and, considering the heightened stress that they had all been under lately, it would probably be a good idea not to let them worry needlessly. Ducking quickly back into the kitchen, he penned a hasty note and left it in plain view on the counter, then headed back to the front door.
Patrick had lived alone his entire adult life, never sharing a place with a roommate, and it had been some time since a date had ended up staying the night. It was an unfamiliar sensation, having to take someone else in his living space into consideration. An unfamiliar sensation, he thought as he stepped outside and closed the door behind him as quietly as possible, but not an unpleasant one.
Patrick’s first instinct was that donuts were in order, island-style donuts, to be precise, and for a hot minute considered going to get them at his favorite donut shop in town. But that was in City Center, all the way across town on the other side of Ross Village, too far to walk if he wanted to get back home any time before lunch. And he wasn’t much in the mood for driving, either, which limited his options to the offerings in this corner of Oceanview. But there was a bakery owned by another Te’Maroan family about a half-dozen blocks south on Mission that also served island-style donuts, and while they were not his absolute favorites, they would do in a pinch.
Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Saint Anthony was still in full swing, and as Patrick walked up the sidewalk past the building he could faintly hear the sound of the old pipe organ playing in the sanctuary, and the faint hum of voices raised in song. He was sure that most of his surviving aunts were probably in their usual pews, as they had done since he was a little boy. Like most Te’Maroan families, the Tevakes were nominally Catholic, while still adhering to the traditional island beliefs, and didn’t see any contradiction between worshipping one god in the church while honoring others in the home. It hadn’t been until after the death of his great-uncle that Patrick had begun to question any of it, but soon there were nothing but questions left in his mind, and by the time he felt like he had the answers he had turned his back on all of it. He had been done with the whole mess, and neither the Roman church nor the Te’Maroan rituals had held any attraction for him.
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