I chose a direction at random, and drove some more. We had a few hours of daylight left. Enough to get far away from where we’d just been.
Finally, after two more hours without a word, I said, “How many?”
“Couldn’t tell.” Cooper sounded hoarse, almost like he’d been shouting instead of sitting in silence. “Maybe three or four. Maybe more. They were piled on top of each other. Under the porch.”
I struggled to keep my eyes open and on the road. “And the cellar?”
“Empty cages. A few stuffed animals.” His voice broke, and I reached out and took his hand.
I waited another hour, but I had to ask. I could still see that small flash of light in the dim attic window. “What about Lily?” I whispered. “Did you shoot her in cold blood, Cooper?”
“In cold blood?” he shouted.
“I just meant—”
“What did you want me to do? Leave her for the police? So the first person unlucky enough to touch her could get fed on, and then she could kill a bunch more?”
“No,” I said. “Of course not. But…”
But what?
But I was repulsed by the image of him simply walking up to her and executing her. I hated the thought, not for her sake, but for his. I hated that she’d made him capable of such a thing.
Really? Entirely for his sake?
She was so hungry.
I gripped the wheel, and willed Lily Blackwood to get out of my head forever.
“Do not talk to me,” Cooper said after a few minutes, “about cold blood. You have no idea. You didn’t see.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
I wasn’t just trying to placate him. I meant it. I was achingly, profoundly sorry for all of it. Sorry for what he’d seen. Sorry that I’d brought up Lily alongside her victims, and used a stupid phrase like cold blood to describe what Cooper had rightly done to her.
Sorry for the children, for their families. Sorry that we’d ever gone to that vineyard at all.
Cages. A few stuffed animals.
I started to cry then, and didn’t stop until I stopped driving, too, at a roadside motel in Pennsylvania.
We stayed through most of the next day, doing nothing. We barely got out of bed, barely ate, barely touched one another.
But we did watch TV. It was already on the news: the bizarre story of a vintner who had apparently preyed on the children of Central New York, before dying himself at the hands of an unknown vigilante. They’d found the bodies of five children at his secluded winery, and one adult woman. The unnamed suspect was also dead, killed by a single bullet to the head.
I wondered, briefly, whether we should be worried. It seemed clear that all the other murders would be attributed to Alex, but that still left his own unsolved, and surely our fingerprints were in that house.
But then, if it was really time to start thinking of ourselves again, we had larger considerations than whether a house that had tenuous ties to reality might contain evidence that would link us to a death that nobody would mourn. By mid-afternoon, I decided to pose one more question to Cooper.
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
To my surprise, he smiled. Only a little, but still, the sight of it—his face, him almost looking like himself—made me want to throw my arms around him. I fought back a fresh wave of tears.
(Cages. A few stuffed animals.)
I forced myself to stay focused on Cooper, who reached into his pocket. Not the front pocket of his jeans, but the one sewn into his boxers, where he’d tucked away a protection spell the morning before. It seemed it held more than that now. He handed me something small and hard.
A chunk of what looked like amber.
And inside that, something that looked a bit like an acorn. Except instead of green, it was an orange-yellow color, so that it blended with the stone around it, its lines difficult to make out.
“Now,” said Cooper, “we go home. We’ve got the East Seed.”
Alex had lied: he’d been carrying the East Seed on his person, after all. Cooper had paused in the attic long enough to search his body and take it, and now that we had it, all we wanted was to get back to the sanctuary of Bristol, and the fortress that the Mount Phearson had become to us.
We only stopped to change cars twice, once in Ohio and once in Kentucky. Two states we didn’t actually need to drive through, to get back home from where we were, but at least they weren’t too far out of the way. We kept the weaving back and forth to a minimum, and headed as steadily in the right direction as we dared.
Despite all that had happened, I felt my mood gradually lift as we crept further south. The idea of our trip finally coming to an end, and of not spending all my time anxiously studying the mirrors of yet another rental car, was heaven.
And while I hadn’t had much chance to worry about being soulsick while we were wrapped up in Alex Blackwood’s far darker secrets, I had plenty of time to think about it on the road home. I dreamed of the Mount Phearson almost every night, with a longing that left me waking with a stomach ache, some days.
I needed to get back. Needed it with an intensity I tried not to even admit to myself, much less dwell on.
We were making our way through Tennessee when I called Lance from what I hoped would be my last disposable phone for a while, so excited about my homecoming I was almost giddy.
“I think you can expect to see us tom—soon,” I said, then bit my lip against my near slip. Lance’s phone was not disposable, and we couldn’t be too cautious, especially now that we were carrying a seed. “Sometime in the next few days. Any more visits from the Glass family and their new friend?”
“None of the Garden Club has been to the hotel, as far as I know,” said Lance. “But Jamie saw a number of them hiking in the woods earlier this week. He said there were eight or nine of them there.”
“Hiking? Near the hotel grounds?”
“I’m not sure how close they were, but you know how all those trails are interconnected. I suppose they might have been approaching us from the back so they wouldn’t be seen.”
“Do me a favor and call Wendy Thaggard,” I said. “Ask if she might be willing to take a walk around the perimeter with some burning sage, do a few protective spells.”
“Will do.”
I hung up and told Cooper about the Garden Club’s little field trip.
“Well, they are the Garden Club,” Cooper pointed out. “Maybe they were actually looking for plant specimens or something.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
He sighed. “Yeah, me too. You should take your own walk around the perimeter when we get back. I’ll go with you.”
“Good idea.”
One person we didn’t call, nor contact via any other means: Dalton Blackwood.
There was good reason to suppose that Alex was the mole we’d been worrying about. After all, we’d found him with a Wick—feeding a Wick. And it would be a big coincidence, if after decades and centuries of undivided and unadulterated clan loyalty, the Blackwoods had two traitors turn up in their midst now.
Yet I couldn’t quite make the story of Alex spying for the Wicks fit. Why would he tell them things about the carriers, even help them find (and kill) Crawford and take the South Seed, but not give them the East?
Regardless of what the truth about Alex was—and I had to concede we might never know it—I thought it was a bad idea to tell anyone, and especially Dalton, that we were in possession of the East Seed until it was safely in the vault at the Mount Phearson.
Dalton might have seen the news about the vineyard murders, of course, and made some educated guesses. But that didn’t mean we had to give him confirmations or specifics, not yet. Once we secured the East, then we could deliver our mission report, and demand that he turn over the North as promised.
To my great surprise, Cooper agreed with me.
“Don’t tell me you’re finally letting go of some of that blind Blackwood loyalty,” I
said.
“You’re exaggerating. I am not blind. I just trust my clan to perform the sacred duty they’ve been successfully performing for centuries a little more than you do.”
He didn’t even try to hide the irritation in his voice, which told me that he wasn’t letting go of it quite so much, after all. That, and we were getting increasingly short-tempered with one another, thanks to being stuck together in such close quarters for so long. Not to mention all we’d been through. We hadn’t talked any more about Lily, or Cooper’s one-man trial and execution.
(cages, a few stuffed animals)
Nor about the dead children that single gunshot had avenged.
At long last, on a rainy, dull autumn morning, we started climbing the mountain road toward Bristol.
Phearson Road was narrow and full of switchbacks, as mountain roads tend to be. It didn’t lend itself well to turning around or maneuvering. As I kept my eyes, always and reflexively now, on the mirrors, I reflected that this made it a poor choice for a high speed chase. Surely nobody was going to try to run us down here. They would be risking their own lives as much as ours.
I was right about that: it was a bad place for a chase.
But it was a good place for an ambush.
I knew, as soon as I saw the police car on the shoulder, lights flashing, who the officer leaning against it was. I didn’t need to wait to get close enough to see the smugness in his posture, or closer still to see that perfect jawline, the white-toothed smile.
“Cooper, that’s Asher.”
Cooper slowed down and glanced at the mirrors. There was a box truck behind us, its brightly-colored sides announcing it was full of toaster pastries, which it was no doubt delivering to some destination in Bristol (maybe even the vending machines at the Mount Phearson).
We were coming up on a blind corner, and trying to make a three-point turn to reverse direction would be dangerous. Not to mention that it would make our identities obvious to Asher, if he hadn’t seen us already.
I could see a vein in Cooper’s jaw throbbing as he tried to decide whether it was worth it.
“Could just drive past him,” I said.
“This is bad terrain for trying to outrun somebody,” said Cooper, echoing my own thoughts from a moment before. “Especially when people are required by law to get out of his car’s way.”
Too late, I realized I should have ducked down, so Asher couldn’t see me in the passenger seat. Maybe he wouldn’t identify Cooper so easily. But we were almost level with him now.
“We only have to make it as far as the town line,” I said. “He can’t hurt us once we cross it. Let him pull us over in Bristol and give us a ticket. I’d actually enjoy that, I think.”
Cooper sped up. I watched over my shoulder as Asher got into his cruiser. He was talking on his phone. As we started around the bend, I saw the police car pull out behind the box truck.
But there was no blare of a siren, no flash of lights. Asher simply stayed back, following us. I soon found out why.
We came through a tunnel to be greeted by two SUVs parked crosswise across the road, forming a road block. Cooper slowed down and checked the mirror again, clearly prepared to turn around this time, but Asher pulled across the road behind us, also crosswise. We were boxed in.
Having no choice, Cooper stopped the car. The box truck stopped behind us.
I wondered whether there were really any toaster pastries in that truck.
Asher was already out of his car and walking toward ours. His gun wasn’t drawn, at least not yet. Nobody got out of the SUVs.
“What do we do?” I whispered.
“Well,” said Cooper, pulling his Glock from the glove compartment. “Depends on how many people get out of these other cars. If it’s enough to shoot, we take cover here in the car and do our best.”
“You want to have a shootout right here on the mountain road? Against a cop?”
He gave me an exasperated look. “What do you suggest? They’re not going to let us walk away.”
But we were so close to home.
And we were; I could actually feel Bristol, now. Feel power. As useless as I tended to be in a fight, I was sure that if I could only get home—not even all the way to the hotel, but if I could just cross that town line—I would be whole again. And once I was renewed and recharged, I could somehow pull off something grand and impressive.
So close. If only…
But there was no time for if only. I swallowed and tried to pretend we were characters in a story, that this wasn’t really a matter of life and death.
Asher was standing at the driver’s side window of the pastry truck now, speaking to whoever was behind the wheel.
“And what if there are too many to shoot?” I asked.
“We improvise.”
That’s just about enough whining and wishful thinking from you, Verity Thane. Snap to it. Focus.
I looked around outside, trying to assess what I might be able to do with magic. There were plenty of trees, at least. And the protection of the story spells we kept on us at all times would serve us to some degree. But like Cooper’s gun, their effectiveness would depend on how many people—how much ill will—they had to hold up against.
We were about to find out. All around us, doors began slamming as people exited the vehicles: three men between the two SUVs, and a man and a woman from the box truck. They were all dressed in dark suits. It gave them the look of Federal agents. Or mobsters.
I only recognized one of them. Talon Wick must have been in that accident we caused in Vermont, because he had a cast on one arm, and his nose seemed a lot more crooked than I remembered. A pity he wasn’t dead, after all, but at least our recent encounters had left him a bit worse for the wear.
Rather than the usual Wick pallor I’d come to expect, his cheeks had a bit of color in them that I found unsettling.
“Well, there you go,” said Cooper. “Only six of them, and one of them has lost the use of his right arm. Those aren’t the worst odds in the world, against a witch and a guy who can heal himself.”
A useless witch, who can’t do anything but write stories and move a few leaves around.
I didn’t say it out loud, feeling it was a bad time to dwell on my shortcomings.
In any case, it seemed a shootout was not what Talon Wick had in mind. He didn’t even have a gun, at least not one I could see. He took a few steps forward, toward the driver’s side of our car, although he stopped well back from it.
His companions hung back. I did not like the smile on Asher’s face.
Cooper put his finger on the button that would roll down the window, and made ready to fire.
Talon raised his one free hand, palm out, like he was telling us to stop. Then he jerked his wrist and twisted it.
I didn’t see what he did after that, because our car was rolling over.
Luckily, it didn’t fall off the side of the mountain. It only flipped once. I hung upside down, still strapped in by my seatbelt, but Cooper had already taken his off. He was sprawled on the ceiling of the car, bleeding from a couple of wounds that I knew would pose no difficulties for him.
He aimed his gun out the now broken window.
But the boom I heard next wasn’t a gunshot. It came from under the hood. In the next second, we were surrounded by flames.
Even someone who can heal himself isn’t about to hang around in a burning car that might blow up at any second. Cooper and I scrambled out of the wreckage—and straight into the hands of our enemies.
Cooper came out shooting. There was nowhere to go for cover; Talon’s men had our car surrounded, and stood between us and all the other vehicles. So he simply rushed them, oblivious to the rain of return gunfire, despite the fact that any one of those shots, if it found its mark properly, could have killed even him.
Bullets flew, bones cracked, men screamed. I could make out few details in the chaos.
For my own part, I tried to get down and run at the same time—an
awkward combination when you’re not terribly graceful to begin with—knowing my best bet was to lure my enemies close enough to the trees to use the latter against the former.
Six opponents might have been workable for Cooper, if he hadn’t had me to worry about. And if it hadn’t been for Talon, who had obviously just fed on someone powerful. Or several someones, maybe.
I was caught first, and I’m sorry to say, without much difficulty. I stopped struggling against Asher Glass’s grip when he pressed his gun to my temple.
“How’ve you been, sweetheart?” he whispered in my ear. Then licked it. I silently vowed that one day, I would hurt that man badly.
A few feet away from us, I saw Talon flick his wrist again. Our car went flying across the road, directly at Cooper, who ducked and rolled.
One of Talon’s men quickly got into position, waiting behind Cooper as the latter rose. The lackey set the barrel of his gun against the base of Cooper’s skull.
Cooper gave up his Glock. Asher handcuffed us both.
“Get them into the truck,” Asher said, eyeing an approaching minivan coming down the mountain.
The minivan stopped at the roadblock. What with all the people and vehicles and our burning rental car, I knew the occupants wouldn’t be able to see much, apart from a confusion of fire and metal. They would believe whatever story Officer Glass told them, I was sure.
The driver rolled down his window. “Looks like a bad accident,” he called. “Anything we can do?”
I was tempted to scream for help, but Talon was beside me at that point, and he was fairly crackling with power. Whoever he’d fed on, he still had plenty of vitality left, despite what he’d already done (twice) to our car. There was a woman in the passenger seat of the minivan, and I had no idea how many people might be in the back—or how young they might be. Involving this family would only get them hurt.
So while Asher went to talk to the newcomers, Cooper and I stayed quiet and compliant, and allowed our captors to march us around to the back of the pastry truck. One of Talon’s minions—who judging by his pointed chin and sickly complexion, was a Wick himself—opened the sliding back door.
Gathering Black (Devilborn Book 2) Page 10