I let myself in with my key, went down the hall. Stopped dead in the doorway of her living room.
Cassie was up, and fully dressed. A black top and gray jeans this time. She had her gun belt on. And was standing in the middle of the room, stock still, with her head bowed.
She was clutching another of her shotguns in both hands, a Winchester. Maybe she was cleaning it.
But that was when I noticed a shock of curly red hair on the floor beyond the couch. Bella … what on earth was she doing down there?
I got my answer when Cass’s face lifted – totally deadpan, no expression at all in her dark, wide eyes.
And then she raised the gun at me, and squeezed the trigger.
TWENTY-SIX
I didn’t even think about it. There are times when conscious thought just isn’t fast enough.
I threw myself off to the side and backward. The charge of heavy shot – she wasn’t using the saboted slugs this time – passed so close to my face that I could feel the rush of heat off it. But none of it, so far as I could tell, even managed to graze me.
I hit the carpet of the hallway so hard that it knocked all of the breath out of me. Then another shot came slamming out, blasting the photographs on the wall above me, sending glass and chunks of wood frame spilling down. These were photos of her own children she was hitting. And the Cass I knew would turn her weapon on herself before she did anything like that.
I took a quick glance at her, as I rolled out of her line of fire. Her face looked odd and strained, as if caught between two separate emotions, fury and bewilderment. It was like she didn’t want to do this, but she couldn’t help herself. I couldn’t see that that made too much sense.
She was out of sight again, as soon as I pushed myself away. But her shadow began moving in my direction. She began to speak, her tone far colder and more gravelly than it usually was.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said, Mr. Devries. And you are right. Why not just finish you? You’re not the only game in this town – not by a long chalk.”
But it wasn’t Saruak’s voice this time. Hardened it might be, but it was definitely Cassie’s. This wasn’t the Manitou taking on her shape. I remembered what else I’d read about them.
An entity like Saruak could adopt any form he wanted. I’d already seen that demonstrated, in the worst imaginable of ways. But he also had enormous power over people’s minds.
There’d been nothing different that I had seen about her eyes. It really had been her that I’d been looking at, when I’d walked in. And so … he’d taken control of her. She had been possessed by him.
And the conflicted expression that I’d caught a glimpse of. Did it mean that Cassie was still in there and trying to fight back?
She was getting very quickly closer. I was still on my hands and knees. And trying to scrabble toward the front door didn’t seem to be a clever move. It was too far away. Where else?
I pushed myself up to my feet and ran.
To my left, coming up fast, was another door. And I believed it opened onto one of her kid’s bedrooms. I’d never been in there before. I heard the clatter of the shotgun pump, behind me. Kicked it open and lurched through it as another shot went past my neck.
She might be trying to fight against this, but was apparently not succeeding. She’d nearly taken my head off, that time. Damn.
I slammed the door and bolted it, for all the good that that would do. Backed away swiftly, my breath fouling up in my throat. One hand had gone to the gun in my pocket. But could I even contemplate that? This wasn’t an illusion. This was actually Cass.
I stared round quickly. This had to be the eldest boy’s room. Kevin, six years old. It looked to me like he had wanted to be a pilot. There were plastic model airplanes and posters of jet fighters everywhere you looked. One for the movie ‘Top Gun’ too. Perhaps he had dreamed of joining the Marine Air Corps. At that age, you’re far too young to understand how straightforward realities can limit you.
Off past his narrow bed was a small window. It looked out onto the back alleyway. I went across and tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. The wood had swollen in the frame.
To my left, there was another wall. I thought quickly and remembered that –beyond it – was the rear end of the diner. If I could only get through there.
I heard Cass stop outside the door. She tried the knob briefly, then grunted.
“That won’t stop me, Ross. Good Lord, you’re being such an infant.”
The voice might be hers. But the derisive tone was entirely Saruak’s. I didn’t even want to kill him anymore. Just jamming a cork in his mouth would be sufficient.
The air filled with splinters as the lock blew out.
I’d been in this house often enough to know the walls weren’t exactly industrial strength. You could hear a bluebottle in the next room, if it flapped its wings hard enough. So I took a step back, covering my face with my arms. Then flung myself at the barrier in front of me.
It turned out to be merely a single sheet of board with a thin veneer of plaster on it, and I went straight through. I’m not going to say it didn’t hurt. But compared with remaining where I was …
I slammed into the back end of the diner’s counter. The rest of the air was knocked out of my lungs, and my ribs felt like they would be aching till Thanksgiving. But I’d made it. For the moment, at least.
Chairs and tables lay around me in half shadow. They were all covered with dust. Fluorescent strips were suspended above me, lightless, speckled with dead flies. Unlike out back, all the crockery was stacked in piles, although not neat ones. The faint smell of rancid grease was coming from the fryer to my right.
This had once been a friendly, welcoming place. I could still remember Cassie with her hair down almost to her waist, gossiping with her female customers and joking with the male ones. I’d spent some happy times in here, back when happiness had not come at a premium.
The shotgun pumped again. I vaulted across the counter, barely making it in time. The next shot came right on my heels. Most of the laminated wood behind me flew into small pieces. And I was running out of places to go. I slid under one of the tables.
For God’s sake! My hand went to my gun again. I didn’t want to hurt her – this was not her fault. But what else could I do?
“Cassie, fight him!” I yelled out.
The tabletop above me broke apart with a resounding blast. I scrambled for the next one, getting closer to the front. But the door was padlocked, I already knew. So where exactly was I going?
I caught a glimpse of her, as she came striding along the aisle. And by now, there was no conflict left in her expression. It was blank and stiff. I got the weirdest feeling that this wasn’t even Cassie I was looking at, merely an empty shell. Was there any part of her that I could even reach?
I didn’t get the chance to find out. She spotted me and aimed. I was forced to flatten out again. The next shot did hit something, though. There was a brittle crash behind me, telling me the charge had hit the window. A whole section of plate-glass came thundering down.
I was back on my feet the instant that happened, hurrying across the broken shards, then jumping out onto the street beyond them. A couple of locals had stopped on the far sidewalk, wondering what the commotion was about. They made themselves scarce quickly enough. Because Cass was stepping out across the glass as well.
And I couldn’t see where there was left to retreat to. There was no cover here except for a few lampposts. Cassie kept advancing and I slowly backed away from her, stepping off the curb, my arms held out in front of me, till I finally came to a halt on the broken white line down the middle of the pavement.
“Cass!” I bellowed. “You don’t have to do this!”
Her only response was an ugly grin which contorted her deadpan features.
“I can only imagine how it must feel,” she remarked in that tight-sounding voice. “Dying at the hands of somebody you’re close to and you care about.”<
br />
She was only being used as a mouthpiece, I knew. Was Saruak even here at all, or controlling her from a distance? He could still be in that tree branch out beyond the edge of town, I understood.
Cassie’s hands pulled at the Winchester again. Except that this time …
No slug pumped into the chamber. It was empty.
When her face contorted this time, it was with astonishment. Saruak had got lost in the moment, I could see. Become so intent on finishing me off that he’d forgotten the mechanics of it. He hadn’t remembered to reload.
If Cassie had been herself, she wouldn’t even have paused. She’d have let go of the Winchester and gone immediately for the side arms on her belt. But with the spirit in control, she seemed to be trying to figure out what she ought to do next.
It was the only chance I’d had so far. I took it, and began running at her.
When she saw what I was doing, her whole frame jerked with alarm. And then, finally, her right hand started dropping. This was going to be very close. It was still her body, her reflexes, and I knew how fast a draw she was.
Her hand closed around the butt of the Glock. She tugged the pistol into view, her arm straightening as it lifted.
It was almost in my face, only a foot away. I shoved my left palm into her wrist, deflecting the shot.
And then I slammed her on the jaw with my right, felling her like a log.
By the time she came around, I had divested her of all the weapons that I knew of. Not only the shotgun and the pistols. There was the stiletto taped between her shoulder blades, the straight razor in her back pocket, and the serrated knife in her right boot.
They were all in a neat pile behind me, where she couldn’t get to them.
Oh, and I had made a pillow for her with my coat, and was crouching over her attentively. This was the second time that she’d been hurt in twenty-four hours, and it filled me with unease, not to mention guilt. A few of her neighbors had come over rather nervously, offering to help, but I’d politely sent them all away.
None of this had really been her doing. She’d probably feel terrible about it when she came around. Relief washed through me when her eyelids fluttered, and her gaze came slowly open. She squinted, trying to figure out where she was.
All the same, I took my gun out, for precaution’s sake. Her eyes focused on that. She leant up on one elbow, blinking fiercely.
“What …?” Her voice was back to normal, although groggy sounding and extremely surprised. “What am I doing here?”
“You okay?” I asked her.
“Think so.”
She rubbed at her chin and winced, then peered at my weapon for a second time.
“You’re going to shoot me, just for lying in the street?”
So she was definitely back in control, Saruak long gone. I put the gun away, then carefully explained to her everything that she had done. She listened closely, trying not to look as troubled as she had to feel.
“It was weird,” she told me, sitting the rest of the way up. “At first, I could see what was happening. But like, from a tremendous distance. There was nothing I could do about it.”
Her jaw quivered.
“Then it all went black. Completely. Like I wasn’t there at all, anymore.”
There was something else worrying me, and she could see it on my face. Cass sucked in a tense breath.
“If he can do that to me? He can probably do it to anyone in the whole town.”
And what a problem that might be, if it proved to be true.
She touched her chin again. There was a bruise appearing there by this time.
“I don’t believe it. Ow! You actually hit me?”
“I’m afraid so. Sorry about that.”
She thought about it, and then favored me with a tight smirk.
“I’m sorry about trying to shoot you too, seeing as we’re handing out apologies.”
Then she twisted round, and gazed at the damage that had been done to her place.
“Hey, who did that?”
“You,” I told her, glad I didn’t have to make any more confessions.
She took in the wrecked tabletops and the mounds of shattered glass. Then stared beyond them
“And I made that hole in my wall?”
“Er, no. That was me.”
Cass let out a long, slow breath. “Great. Just what I’ve always needed. Extra ventilation.”
And that was when Bella stumbled out through it, clutching at the back of her head.
“Holy Christ!”
TWENTY-SEVEN
We got her sat down, got an ice pack for her, tried to help her understand what had been happening. Then we finally took her home. She only lived a block away.
“Just what friends are for,” she kept on mumbling.
Cassie’s eyes were still bright with dampness, as we walked back to her place.
Her arsenal was still there, in a small pile in the middle of the street. No one had dared touch it. She stooped down and picked it up, replacing it in the appropriate pockets, holsters, hidden nooks. Then we headed back in.
I could ask Frank Benson to fix this up?” I suggested, glancing around at the wreckage.
But she only shrugged again, and thrust her lip out. “Nah. I’ll do it myself.”
She was so capable at everything she turned her hand to that I didn’t doubt she would.
As usual, she was trying to take adversity in her stride, smiling wryly and making little jokes while she inspected the damage. But her expression dropped – I’d thought it would – when she saw the hole in Kevin’s bedroom door. And when she stepped into the hallway, and the shattered photos came in sight?
I’d been trying to prepare myself for this. But all I could do, in the end, was stand there.
All of her composure dissolved in an instant. She was lunging forward, going down on her hands and knees and trying to scoop up the fragments, careless of the broken glass. And she was murmuring under her breath.
“My babies! Oh no!”
My gut filled up with emptiness. It felt like she had gone a hundred miles away. Her face suddenly looked a decade older than it had before. Her eyes were glossy, covering the windows to her soul. She was rocking slightly back and forth.
I finally crouched next to her and put an arm around her. I could feel her trembling.
“It’s not your fault,” I kept on whispering. “You weren’t in control.”
She found something and picked it up, holding it in her open palm. A torn fragment of Little Cassie’s face. She stroked it gently with her index finger, like she was trying to make it better.
Whispered, “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
Then she put it in her pocket, wiped away a tear.
“I’m being stupid, right? They’re only pictures.”
Which was to avoid the point. Her children hadn’t simply been the focus of her life. They’d been, for parts of it, her only genuine happiness. And without that, what was she? I felt sure that there were times she didn’t even know.
It took her a while to pull herself together, but she finally managed it. Then she started to clear up, refusing to let me help. She gathered all the bits of photo up into a dustpan. Separated them as best she could from the pieces of frame and glass. Then emptied out a drawer in her bedroom cabinet, and tipped them – very reverently – into it. Murmured to them for a couple of minutes, recounting things – I guess – she needed to say. And at last, she slid the drawer closed.
A small, quiet funeral ceremony, then, for all those images of what her life had been. I watched her from the doorway.
She had calmed down completely, by the time that she was done. However hard she gets hit, Cassie always seems to bounce right back.
She got some sodas from her fridge. And we were now sitting out back of her place, the town coming alive around us. A garbage truck was making its way down the far end of her street, we could hear the trash cans clattering. Cleveland had shown up again and was huddled ne
ar her feet.
“If he wanted to kill you, why not simply take your mind over?” she asked me. “Make you stick your gun into your own mouth and blow yourself away? Why this fandango?”
Which wasn’t the most delicate way of putting it, but I ignored that. It was a good question. Either Saruak was simply messing with us for his own amusement, reveling in the spectacle of us at each other’s throats. Or there was something else, something deeper, going on here.
The same thing had been bothering me for quite a while.
“More to the point, why does he keep coming at me specifically?”
Cassie peered at me, her dark eyes barely blinking.
“There’s something special about you when it comes to all this hocus-pocus. Surely you must realize that?”
I wasn’t quite sure what she meant. She had never told me anything like this before.
I frowned. “And what might that be?”
Her mouth twisted awkwardly. As though she felt embarrassed, saying it out loud.
“A … purity,” she told me. “That’s the best word I can think of. You’ve never used magic yourself, or even tried, not once. Do you know how unusual, how rare, that is for anyone over fifteen, here in the Landing? Even I …”
She trailed off, her eyes going slightly distant. She’d never mentioned that before. This was turning out to be a morning of big revelations.
“Really?” I inquired.
“Sure. In my teens, I mean. All that power at your hands? All those boys, and fun to be had? What’s a girl to do?”
Her nose screwed up. She looked away a moment.
“But you,” she went on, “you’re like a lifelong teetotaler in a room full of alcoholics. And that gives you a special … what? A power of your own.”
She leaned a little closer to me.
“Do you understand how much you’ve changed since – you know – Jason Goad?”
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