What if Kahtar is still at the station? It’s Halloween! He might still be working!
One of the furry beasts dropped off the bottom step.
Do. Not. Run.
Backing away, she tried to shush Dianta while backing as calmly as possible toward the exit tesseract located across the lawn and about impossible to see in the dim light. She would have sworn every monkey head had turned to focus on her slow progress over the slope of yard and out of their line of vision. Beth shivered. Would they follow? She wondered if Wolves was okay.
Feeling with the hand behind her back Beth located the tesseract, a smooth force in the dark, like touching an over-filled water balloon but as easily penetrated as the surface of the pond. With her heels pressed against the big rocks encircling it and her hand safely on the tesseract she felt braver. The more she thought about those monkeys, the more she worried about Wolves. Dianta’s happy bobbing in her arms gave her determination.
“Wolves? Here, puppy!” she shouted, determined to take him with her. It would at least guarantee Kahtar followed. Almost immediately she heard the familiar bark from deep in the woods. She gave Dianta a happy squeeze. “There he is!”
The sharp crack of a branch sounded close by and Dianta twisted in her arms to growl. “Da!”
“Kahtar?” Beth shouted, her heart lifting hopefully at the sound of big feet tramping through brush. “Kahtar? I need you! There are monkeys on the front porch!” Her voice echoed across the pond and she couldn’t help but remember Kahtar’s comments the day she’d seen the Macaw in the yard. He’s going to think I’m nuts now! “I’m not kidding, Kahtar, there really are!”
A shiver rippled up her back and she rubbed her fingers against the surface of the tesseract, glancing toward the watchful creatures in case any of them headed in her direction. The sound of footsteps in the woods got closer and Wolves’ barking sounded again, this time from farther off.
“What do you want to bet Wolves is running the wrong way?” Beth muttered.
Dianta giggled, making a sound that seemed impressively like, “Woofs, woofs,” in her deep man-voice.
Beth breathed a sigh of relief as the footsteps neared. All of a sudden the monkeys were funny, not threatening. Amazing what a difference Kahtar’s presence made. Spotting his shadowy bulk shoving through evergreen trees, she headed across the slope to meet him.
“I brought Dianta!” Beth shifted Dianta in her arms, nervous and excited. Why didn’t I do this sooner? She’d make him listen to facts. She hadn’t told Kahtar her first lie. She was sorry she’d hit him, and especially sorry for the things she’d said. She’d never meant to insult every warrior in the clan or hurt Kahtar so deeply! Nothing was worth being separated from him like this. She loved him, and she wasn’t afraid of him or his over-developed sense of duty, or even of trying to follow or failing to follow the clan’s rules. As long as they were together they’d figure it out. Together they’d figure everything out, including this pregnancy and what to do next.
The footsteps came closer and Beth’s heart lifted in anticipation, reaching for his heart with everything she had. He’s going to listen! I’m going to make him!
“Here comes Daddy,” she mumbled into Dianta’s dark curls. She was rewarded with a slobbery kiss on her chin.
Kahtar kept the path around the pond smooth and clear. Beth knew it well. Confident the monkeys weren’t following, she took a few more steps to meet him. “I’m on the path now,” she said in a normal voice, although she could feel his scan on her.
Kahtar stopped in the brush watching her from the deep shadows of the tree line.
“Oh, don’t be like that, please! I’m so willing to make this right for everybody, but I need you to show me how!”
In her arms Dianta bounced happily. “Da! Da, da, da!”
Without a word Kahtar bent his head and moved past the bald lower branches of a tall pine. The moon illuminated just enough for Beth to see he wore a thin hood. A skeletal twig brushed it and Beth realized she was wrong. It wasn’t a hood. Long strands of dark blond hair scraped over branches and fell against his broad shoulders.
He stepped onto the path in front of her.
It wasn’t Kahtar.
It was his doppelganger. The touch of his heart hit Beth’s open one like a blast of greasy filth from a dirty smokestack. She took a step backward, every muscle in her body tensing to run. The man in front of her lifted his head up, tilting it to study her with Kahtar’s steely eyes. Beth knew she wouldn’t make it two steps. Dianta reached for him, but Beth grabbed her hand and held it against her chest, attempting to fill her daughter’s heart with reassurance, attempting to lie.
“Who are you?” she whispered, her voice trembling.
His head tipped the other direction. To look at him anyone else might have thought he was Kahtar but for the long hair. Their faces were identical, down to the faint bristle on his chin. He licked his lips in a gesture painfully familiar to Beth, and shifted his weight. Lightweight cotton robes covered his big frame and the hilt of a single foreign blade gleamed at one hip. Large feet were only half protected by lightweight sandals and even in the dim light Beth saw deep scratches from walking in the woods. Almost as soon as she saw the wounds, light shimmered along the edges and they vanished. Beth took several hasty steps backward until the trunk of a large maple stopped her.
He followed.
In her arms Dianta struggled, grunting in a determined attempt to reach for him. Beth held her hood, pressing Dianta inside her own coat in an effort to hide her. She didn’t want her daughter to look at him, or worse, for him to look at Dianta.
Stopping in front of Beth again, he shifted from foot to foot as he watched her, his head still tilted curiously. Bending forward he brought his face so close that Beth could smell him. He smelled of warm sand, clean sweat, and sage. Wonderful. Like Kahtar might. Beth’s body betrayed her and her mouth watered. She swallowed, turning her eyes from his, clutching Dianta tighter as she tried to keep the touch of her own heart filling Dianta’s so she wouldn’t feel his polluted one.
He leaned so close she felt his briny breath on her face, and he sniffed. Like something out of a horror movie he inhaled deeply and held it. Unable to resist, Beth looked into his face.
He laughed then. Straightening, he threw back his head and laughed a deep belly laugh, clearly amused. Resting one hand on the hilt of his blade he studied her, a huge smile on his face as he kept right on chuckling. Despite the laughter there was nothing welcoming or kind in that face. Something unspeakably dark lived there. His delight showed clearly, and Beth had never felt more threatened in her entire life.
Smiling a horrible reproduction of Kahtar’s smile, he shook his head back and forth and took a single step backward. A tunnel of jet black light hissed to life behind him, shining and whirling, something Beth had never seen before, like a tesseract made of liquid coal. It sucked him inside and he vanished. The tunnel closed on him with a whoosh that pressed painfully against Beth’s ears like a vacuum, but the liquid coal kept whirling. It pulled on her, tugging the edges of her jacket and sucking the ends of her hair into the same black void he’d vanished into. Beth tightened her arms around Dianta.
THE STRENGTH OF the vacuum increased and Beth’s knitted cap slipped off her head and vanished into the hole. The back of Dianta’s coat lifted outward, tugged toward the whirring tunnel. Fighting the pull, Beth turned her face away, clasping Dianta tight as she put her weight against the tree and dug her boots into leafy ground, attempting to find the edges of the pull to escape it. Leaves whirled into the air around her and disappeared into the hole, but to the left and right of her the thick ground cover barely shifted. She tried to determine if falling over would free her of the suction, or if she would be pulled inside the moment she lost her balance.
The sucking sound tugged painfully at the ear facing it, as though it would tear the eardrum from her head. The unicorn horn on the top of Dianta’s hood twisted in the force, pulling se
quins loose and sucking them one by one into the void that seemed to be reaching for them. Beth sensed a dark cloud spiraling from the hole toward them. Dianta’s mouth opened wide, her long lashes fluttering against the wind as the muscles in Beth’s arms strained to hold onto her.
It’s taking her shot through Beth’s mind at the same moment she jumped. No sooner had her feet left the ground than the suction changed. It reversed and instead of pulling, a hurricane force wind shoved through the hole, lifting Beth off her feet and blowing her deeper into the trees, blasting her against brutally cracking branches and tearing Dianta from her arms.
Trees creaked and bent in the gale force wind. Leaves scattered and dirt scooped off the earth created whirling dervishes of blinding darkness and debris. Flat on the ground Beth felt for her baby with her heart, certain the horse-like cries she heard weren’t Dianta’s. She sensed the touch of Dianta’s heart nearby, bellowing against Beth’s with a familiar fury that she thanked God for. This was the fury of a baby who wanted the breast now or out of the crib now, or hold me, Mom, now! That meant she was okay, well-padded by thick undergrowth and her heavy coat.
Beth’s heart responded with genuine comfort. I’m coming!
As she marine crawled in the direction of that blessedly demanding heart, the cold wind stopped like a door had been slammed on it, sudden and done. Beth’s ears popped.
“Devil damn!” a man’s gravelly voice shouted. “What the blazes was that?”
Beth froze. Through brush and bramble she saw two men and the outline of what appeared to be a swayback old horse. Strangers. Inside the veil. Although too far away to feel their hearts, Beth already knew. They weren’t Covenant Keepers.
HOW CAN THEY not be Covenant Keepers?
The impossibility of that frightened Beth almost more than Kahtar’s double had. This is not possible. Nobody could enter a veil uninvited, and Kahtar said without the heart of a Covenant Keeper no veil would open even invited. It was why they couldn’t invite her dad over.
Yet these men were very real and they were inside the veil. They came through the hole the doppelganger left!
In the faint moonlight a tall, rail thin boy ran his hands over a horse. “Dunno what it was, Pap, but it took the harness off Hector, and pulled out some o’ his hair!”
The shorter, broader man said, “It sucked Grane out from under me, bent him clean in half poor beast. Do you have your rifle, William? Mine’s gone with my horse.”
Beth tried to sink further into the earth, praying for Dianta to be quiet. Whoever they were, they didn’t belong.
“Old Guard,” Beth breathed, her heart thundering against the ground. Would they come? Surely for this they would! To Beth’s left Dianta growled with frustration.
“Did you hear that?” said William, and Beth heard the metallic clack of a rifle.
“Old Guard?” Beth whispered a bit louder, trying to reassure Dianta with touches of her heart.
“Who’s there?” shouted Pap into the trees.
Beth shoved her face directly into the earth, fighting not to answer. The urge to do so whipped out of her mouth like vomit, but she controlled it by answering a low, “Beth Constantine” against closed lips with her face shoved into mucky leaves. Dianta grunted again.
“I can hear ya!” said Pap. Beth heard the rifle cock.
“Don’t shoot!” She lifted her head. “I’m pregnant!”
“What in tarnation,” said Pap under his breath. “Stand up where I can see you!”
“Old Guard!” Beth whispered again, trying to push a mental summons in second voice at the same time. “Help me! If not me, help Dianta! Help my unborn babe! Old Guard! Please!”
Not even the faintest sparkle of light responded. She pushed to her hands and knees. In the dim moonlight filtering through the trees she could see the shorter square-shaped man named Pap. On the path beside him William, tall and gangly, stood next to a long-eared mule, with the shotgun in his hands pointed directly at her. “I’m getting up,” said Beth, trying to exaggerate the size of her belly by pushing it forward. In her corduroy coat she barely looked pregnant. “Please, don’t shoot me!”
Pap pushed the barrel of William’s gun to the ground. “Who are you and why are you out here?” He sounded incredulous.
Mentally Beth cursed her gifting while her mouth answered. “My name is Beth—Costas.” As if the alias mattered to anyone showing up under the veil, but these men weren’t Covenant Keepers and that clan rule had become second nature. “I was looking for my husband.”
Spinning in a quick circle, William pointed his rifle into the trees as though he’d shoot a husband. Beth brushed debris from her clothes, wondering if they’d shoot her if she screamed for Old Guard.
“Costas? Your man with the railroad?” asked Pap.
What? “No.” Beth took a few tentative steps toward them. William drew up and rested his weapon against his shoulder, gaping at her as though he’d never seen a woman before.
“Huh,” William said, in an aside to Pap. “She’s a big one!”
Pap looked her up and down, seemingly confused by a tall woman too. “Ma’am, are you out here alone?” His eyes flickered to her bare legs sticking out beneath the bottom of her short coat. William’s eyes seemed to be glued to them.
“No,” she said. If it weren’t for the gun, Beth might have thought the men were Amish. Their clothing looked homemade and old-fashioned. They didn’t smell like they’d ever bathed in their lives, or used deodorant.
“Where’s her skirts?” asked William, and Pap smacked a hand against his shoulder.
“Are you all right?” asked Pap, his eyes returning only briefly to her legs as his bushy brows drew together in a frown. “Did somebody hurt you, Ma’am? Harm you in some way?”
“No, I’m okay,” said Beth, trying to tug her jacket down a bit. She could hear Dianta’s whispery grunting, a sound she made when eating, and had a bad feeling she was happily stuffing something she’d found on the ground into her mouth. “That wind knocked me down.”
“Your knees are bleeding,” said Pap. “Why don’t you take a seat and we’ll see to you until your man returns. I’m Thomas Waterhouse and this is my son, William. We’re from up Sandusky way, down here to see about work with the Kalamazoo Railway, but that tornadey took most of our supplies.” His voice trailed off and he paused as though expecting her own lengthy introduction. Since he didn’t ask, Beth withheld it and after a brief silence he glanced at his boy. “Start a fire and make some bandages.”
“Oh no,” said Beth. “You don’t need to bother. I’m fine. You can go.” She hoped they wouldn’t head toward the cabin because she had a feeling it would shock them more than she apparently had. “Kah-Kent will be back soon.” At the man’s steady gaze she flushed slightly and added, “Kent Costas. My husband is Kent Costas and I’m Beth Costas. Kent’s the Chief of Police in Willowyth.” She hoped that would be enough to make them leave, but knew in her heart it wasn’t.
The two men glanced at each other and the boy said, “Thought one of the Maloney’s was Sheriff.”
Thomas shook his head slightly. “Mrs. Costas—ma’am—we can’t just go off and leave you out here alone. My boy and I were gonna make camp about here any—”
Behind her, Dianta bellowed a scream of fury in her deep-man, sick-of-waiting-for-mom voice. The barrel of Will’s rifle moved to point in that direction and Beth spun toward Dianta, thinking only of protecting her daughter as she plowed through brush and bramble.
“It’s a baby! Pull your fool gun up!” Thomas shouted at William.
Beth crashed toward Dianta half-buried inside autumn dried berry bushes. Before she could reach her, Thomas was there and scooped the baby up.
“Give her to me!” Beth said and to her relief the man tucked Dianta into her outstretched arms. He stomped on brambles to help Beth extricate herself from the chest deep bushes. Relieved to finally clutch her furious baby to her breast, she didn’t mind the scratch and sting agai
nst her legs as they fought their way back toward the path. Thomas stopped and pushed her down to sit on a stump, then dropped to a knee to try and see her screaming baby.
“Is he hurt?” Thomas shouted over Dianta’s anger.
“She,” Beth corrected. “No. The wind blew her into those bushes. I don’t think she has a scratch on her.” She held Dianta tightly. “You’re not going to hurt her?”
Thomas’ lined dirty face reflected horror, reassuring her. “Mrs. Costas, I assure you my son and I do not harm women and children.”
From his place over by his mule, William’s voice quavered as he called, “Pap.”
Thomas ignored him, gently feeling along Dianta’s tiny limbs for injury and even sliding his big fingers under her hood to dig through her springy hair and examine her scalp.
“I see you’ve got yerself a nigra baby, but you can’t possibly think you’re safe hiding out here in the woods what with winter coming.”
“Pap,” said William again, a bit louder.
Thomas moved his gaze from Dianta to the bump of Beth’s belly. “Is that one a nigra baby too?”
Beth fought the urge to bust his nose apart, but of course she had to answer him. “My children have the same father. My husband. If you say that word again I’ll shove your teeth down your throat.”
Thomas blinked. “What word?”
“Pap,” said William, his voice taking on an urgent tone.
“Nigger,” said Beth and she clenched her teeth together, hating her gifting.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am. If she’s not, she’s mighty dark like one. What is she?”
“Pap!” hissed William.
“A baby,” hissed Beth in turn, but her anger changed to fear as a now familiar dark heart touched hers and she knew why William sounded afraid.
Kahtar’s doppelganger had returned.
Maybe Thomas sensed something because he rose slowly from his knee and turned. The horrible Kahtar-looking man stood on the far side of the path, his robe and hood a white outline in the dim light. Thomas moved slightly as though to block the man from seeing her and Dianta.
FOREVER The Constantines' Secret: A Covenant Keeper Novel Page 15