The Kingdom tgqs-2

by Amanda Stevens

  “I was in town. I saw you drive through and I followed you.” She glanced around anxiously. “Tilly isn’t here?”

  “I thought your car was broken down.”

  Her gaze darted away. “I…just got it fixed.”

  Her nervous demeanor confirmed what I had suspected all along—that our meeting in town that day hadn’t been coincidental at all. I doubted she’d even had car trouble.

  “Why did you follow me?” I asked sharply.

  “I have to talk to you,” she muttered. “I just hope—”

  “What?”

  “I’m so worried about Tilly.”

  “Why?” When she didn’t answer, I grabbed her arms. “There’s blood in here. Do you know something about that?”

  Her eyes widened. “Blood? Are you sure?”

  “Of course, I’m sure. See for yourself if you don’t believe me. But first, tell me why you’re looking for Tilly.”

  She looked distraught as her gaze flitted around the bathroom like a frightened bird’s. “I never thought it would come to this. You have to believe me.”

  “Come to what? Is Tilly in some kind of trouble?”

  Her brown eyes filled with tears as she nodded. “I’m afraid she might be.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Bad trouble. I think she’s in danger.”

  “From whom?”

  Catrice closed her eyes. “From Freya’s killer.”

  My heart jumped. “Who killed her?”

  “It could have been any one of us,” she whispered. “We were all there that night. And we’d talked about doing it before. Luna said we needed an offering and Freya was so easy to manipulate.”

  “An offering…for what?”

  “It was just talk, a stupid game,” she babbled. “I never thought anyone would go through with it.”

  “But someone did.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who was there?”

  “We three girls, Hugh and Edward. Freya had told Edward earlier that she was pregnant with his baby. He was in shock. We all were, especially considering that she was almost ready to deliver. She kept to herself so much and she had such a small frame that no one suspected. And why would we? Who would ever dream that he would be so careless with someone like…with an outsider? Luna was furious because she’d always planned to have the first Asher grandchild. Hugh wasn’t exactly thrilled, either. And poor Bryn. She was the most devastated of all.”

  “Why?”

  “She was crazy about Edward. She would have done anything to get his attention, and there he was, sleeping around with someone like Freya Pattershaw.”

  “And you?”

  She drew a trembling breath. “Oh, yes. I had my reasons, too. I wanted to fit in just as badly as Freya, so I went along with the game. And all these years…” She glanced down at her hands. Her fingers had curled back as though the joints were afflicted with arthritis. “I should have come forward a long time ago but I didn’t have the courage. I’ve been such a coward.”

  “It’s not too late. You can still make it right. Catrice…who killed her? You must have some idea.”

  “I swear I don’t know,” she said desperately. “Don’t you see? That’s the way we planned it. None of us would know…except the killer. We lured her up there and then we scared her into running off. It was like a game of hide-and-seek. We split up and searched for her. Whoever found her first…” She trailed off. “We would all be complicit, but only one would have blood on their hands.”

  “But what about the fire?”

  “That was just a cover. We all panicked when we realized…when Freya never turned up, so Luna went to Pell. She convinced him that Edward had killed Freya. Naturally, he took care of everything. The fire, the funeral arrangements. Everything.”

  “How did Tilly burn her hands?”

  “Somehow she got word of the blaze. A lot of people had gathered to watch the building burn, but no one tried to do anything to help. When Tilly got there, she tried to get Freya out. That was hard to watch because Freya was never inside. She had already been killed when Pell had the fire set.”

  And Tilly knew that. So why had she rushed into that burning building?

  “Wouldn’t it have made more sense to put Freya’s body in the building?”

  “That would have given the killer away because no one else knew where the body was. And we promised ourselves we’d never tell a living soul. We’d just forget what had been done. Forget about Freya.” She touched a hand to her forehead. “But someone must have seen. They dug up the body and delivered Freya’s baby. It had to be Tilly. No one else could have done it.”

  I pictured that lonely grave in the laurel bald. Freya’s grave. My grave.

  “If Tilly knew Freya was in that grave, why would she try to get her out of a burning building?”

  “Maybe she was already unhinged. Or maybe…” Catrice had gone very pale. “Maybe she knew that was what we would have expected her to do. Maybe she didn’t want us to know that she’d found the body because she was afraid for you. She burned her hands trying to protect you.”

  I went very still. “You know who I am?” I asked in a strained voice.

  “You have a certain way of turning your head…a certain way you smile. I see Edward in you.”

  “Who else knows?”

  “Luna, Bryn and Hugh. Pell, of course, because he’s the one who brought you here. You’re his last hope of producing an Asher heir. You and Thane.”

  I stared at her in shock. “What do you mean?”

  “He arranged to have you brought here so that Thane could seduce you.”

  “No. That’s not true. He wouldn’t have anything to do with that.”

  She looked at me with pity. “It is true. But Pell selfishly put you in danger because the fact that you’re alive proves Freya didn’t die in that fire.”

  “Thane didn’t know,” I said numbly.

  She put a comforting hand on my arm, but I jerked away from her.

  She searched my face. “Don’t you understand?” she asked softly. “He’d do anything to solidify his position in that family. I think he might cut off his right arm for the chance of giving Pell Asher a grandson.”

  I thought of Tilly’s warning about Thane. He covets what can never be his. And I thought about that night we were together in the cemetery, how the evil had found a way in through his weakness.

  Terror washed over me at what might already have been done. “I’m calling the police.”

  “You can’t,” Catrice said. “Not the local police. Wayne is too afraid of the Ashers to help us, and it’ll take too long for the state police to get here. Or even the county patrol. They’d have to come across on the next ferry because the back roads will be flooded by now. In this weather, it could take hours for them to get here.” Her gaze slowly lifted. “We’re completely isolated.”

  Thirty-Five

  I don’t know why I headed to the laurel bald, to Freya’s grave, but I had a strong sense that Tilly had gone there. Maybe I’d inherited her uncanny intuition, or maybe I could somehow hear her calling out to me. Maybe it was Freya’s ghost that guided me. I only knew that the pull was too powerful to ignore. And I knew of no place else to look for her.

  It was raining again by the time Angus and I reached the cemetery. As I charged through the woods with my mace and a handful of tools—make-do weapons—I’d grabbed from the back of my car, I told myself it was foolish to think that I could save my grandmother single-handedly. Or that I could trust anything that came out of Catrice’s mouth. By her own admission, she had helped plan a murder. And yet…what choice did I have? Freya was lost to me forever. I didn’t want to lose Tilly now that I’d only just found her.

  As Angus and I crested the hill, I tried yet again to call the state police, but I still couldn’t get a signal. I thought about calling Thane, but what if Tilly was right? What if he’d been in league with his grandfather all along?

  The thought o
f his deception cut like a knife, but I didn’t have time for self-pity. Later, I could look back and dissect our every conversation, searching for clues and nuances that might have given him away. But now was not that time. Not with Tilly’s life on the line. She’d brought me into this world, and she’d never once hesitated to protect me. How could I not do the same for her?

  I scrambled down the overhang, and my heart started to pound as I approached the grave. My grave. Angus was acting very strangely. He sniffed the leaves and pawed at the ground, and I thought perhaps he’d picked up my scent. But when I called his name, he whirled with bared teeth and feverish eyes.

  My stomach tensed as I watched him warily. “Angus? What’s wrong, boy?”

  He answered with a low growl, and I drew back on a gasp. What had come over him?

  He crouched and circled as I stood frozen, Papa’s terrible warning thundering in my head: Those closest to you are the most dangerous because it will try to use them to weaken you.

  “Not you, Angus,” I whispered.

  He continued to circle, hair bristled, until I had no choice but to slowly back away. He returned to the grave then, but he kept his agitated gaze on me. He didn’t try to approach or attack. I wondered if he only meant to scare me away.

  The rain was still coming down, and I could hear the steady drip on the leaves. And something else. Something familiar and instantly alarming. A splintering sound…

  I couldn’t identify the noise, but I knew—somehow I knew—that the killer was just beyond the overhang, just beyond my line of sight.

  I remembered something Catrice had told me once. The three of them—she, Bryn and Luna—were like blood sisters, and they knew these hills like their own backyard.

  And what of Hugh? Could he be out there searching for me, too?

  Like Freya before me, I had been drawn into their dastardly game, but I couldn’t let myself think about my birth mother’s gruesome end or the horrifying way I’d come into this world. I couldn’t think about Thane’s duplicity or Angus’s betrayal. I had to keep a clear head—

  A silhouette appeared at the top of the overhang—black-clad with ax in hand—and I turned with a gasp, plunging recklessly through the bald. I almost expected Angus to lunge after me, but he stayed at the grave, watching over something that I couldn’t see.

  Limbs whiplashed my face and yanked at my hair as I ran blindly, driven by pure terror and the memory of Freya’s ghost. I kept up the pace until the mountain laurel thickened, the branches becoming so tightly entwined I could barely claw my way through. Any light that might have shimmered through the rain clouds was completely obliterated by the low-hanging canopy, and I was soon hopelessly lost.

  Emerging into a tiny clearing, I bent to rest, hands on knees, as I tried to catch my breath and corral my racing heart.

  Lifting my head, I listened for sounds of pursuit, but all I could hear was the relentless patter of rain and the buzz of mosquitoes around my face. No, that wasn’t quite true. If I listened closely, I could hear the waterfall in the distance. I tried to orient myself to the sound, but I’d strayed too far into laurel hell, and now I’d lost all sense of direction. A more effective trap, I could hardly imagine.

  I hunkered in that little clearing, wet and trembling and petrified of what waited for me somewhere in that maze. If the sameness of the landscape befuddled under the best of circumstances, navigating that solid wall in a full-blown panic appeared hopeless. I found myself turning in a slow circle, searching for some clue that would lead me to Tilly. To safety. All around me, the skeletal forms pressed in on me, the grasping branches like disembodied ghost arms reaching for me from the mist.

  Then over the rain, I again heard a cracking sound, rhythmic and steady, and now I knew what it was. The killer was using the ax to hack a path through the tangle of limbs, and the noise was getting louder as the hunter closed in on the prey. There was no need for stealth. I was already cornered.

  Hand to heart, I strained to pinpoint the direction. It was coming from my right, I thought. No, to the left. No…right… .

  As if tugged by a string, my head moved back and forth. Thoroughly disoriented by that treacherous labyrinth, I found myself momentarily paralyzed, terrified of fleeing straight into danger.

  Curling my hand around a knotty branch, I clung as if to a lifeline. I heard nothing now. No chopping, no footfalls, no ragged breaths other than my own. In that bated silence, my fingers tightened convulsively around the brittle limb as I imagined the killer’s hand gripping the ax.

  And at that precise moment, when I could have used every advantage, every scrap of cover, the rain stopped. New sounds came to me suddenly—the distant trill of a loon, the muted rush of the waterfall.

  I could hear breathing now, too, a sharp inhale-exhale as if my scent had been caught. The killer was right there. Right behind me.

  Dropping to my knees, I scrambled up under the branches. The rhododendron—a dense, stunted nightmare—was now my ally.

  My lip had been split, and I pressed the back of my hand to the pain, trying to relieve the throbbing pressure. I tasted blood and thought again of Freya. I didn’t want to meet the same end. She had been young, pregnant and desperate—easy prey. At least I had the advantage of knowing the game.

  Huddling beneath the branches, I pictured the killer in the clearing, patiently waiting for the quarry to take flight. I didn’t move even to tuck back the hair from my eyes. I hardly dared to breathe. I was concealed for the moment by the screen of leaves and limbs. All I had to do was keep still. The killer would have no way of knowing which way I’d gone. After that initial mad flight, I’d learned a valuable lesson. The trail of broken twigs had led straight to me. From now on, I wouldn’t make it so easy.

  The killer was moving around in the clearing now. I could hear the scrape of branches and the shallow, rapid breaths that came from excitement. I peered through the snarled branches until a form took shape.

  I made no sound. I was sure of that. But all of a sudden the ax slashed down through the twisted limbs right above me. I didn’t scream. I barely even gasped. Something more than fear drove me now. Instinct for survival, yes, but also anger. Anger at what had been done to my young mother. Anger at being hunted like an animal. I wouldn’t succumb to fear or panic. I bit down hard on my sore lip, and the pain gave me a spurt of adrenaline.

  On hands and knees, I crawled through the endless tunnels of tree trunks as the ax chopped at the branches above me. I felt the blade graze my shoulder, and I went flat, propelling myself forward on my stomach until I was safely out of reach. I could move faster underneath the canopy, and I almost expected the killer to ditch the ax and come in after me. But miraculously, the sound moved away from me, and I realized I hadn’t been spotted, after all. The killer fanned out around the clearing, trying to flush me out.

  Now that the rain had stopped, sound carried surprisingly well, and I heard the thrash of another body moving through the bald. The killer heard it, too, and reversed course making a beeline toward it. I wanted to call out, not just for help but as a warning. But what if someone had come to help the killer? If I gave away my position, I would be a sitting duck beneath that canopy.

  I waited until the sound of the chopping faded, and even then I didn’t ease back into the clearing. Instead, I stayed on all fours and began a long, miserable crawl through that thicket. The feeling of isolation and impending doom sapped my energy and destroyed my will, but I forced myself to go on. I had no choice. The canopy had tightened, and the only way in or out was on hands and knees.

  At some point, I thought I heard the hack of the killer’s ax coming closer, but it may well have been my imagination. It was dark beneath those branches, and with no sense of direction the mind began to play tricks. I heard my name called, softly, furtively, and I had to catch myself from responding, so great was my need for human contact.

  What if I never got out? What if I died in here, all alone without seeing my mother or my aunt
or my papa ever again? Without finding Tilly—

  I cut off those insidious thoughts. I couldn’t lose control. I had to stay focused. There must be a path somewhere, an animal trail that would lead me to the edge of the thicket.

  On and on I crawled. My knees were raw and bleeding, and I was in torment from a thousand scratches. After a while I began to hallucinate. I could see glowing eyes deep within the laurel tunnels, and the ground beneath me trembled, as if in the aftermath of an earthquake. Worst of all, I heard the whisper of my name, and I thought that it was Thane. His voice was so real to me that I once again started to call out. But reason interjected, and I realized that it was only my imagination or some terrible trick. Even if he was there, he might be in league with the killer. He might even be the killer.

  Amelia…can you hear me? Amelia…answer me… .

  “Thane?” I said his name aloud into the wind, but he didn’t respond because he wasn’t really there. No one was. Not even the killer.

  I was all alone in my own private hell.

  * * *

  I lost all sense of time as well as direction. I had no idea how long I’d been crawling through that maze, but it must have been hours. The canopy was so solid, I couldn’t see the sky to gauge the time of day. There was no way to follow moon, stars or even the mountain peaks. It really was a damnable web, and for all I knew, I’d been crawling around in a circle.

  Energy flagged and I stopped to rest. Drawing my bloody knees up to my chest, I wrapped my arms around my legs and sat there wet and trembling and demoralized. I don’t think I was even frightened of the killer at that point. I might even have welcomed the sound of the ax hacking a path toward me because at that moment, anything would have been preferable to that utter seclusion.

  I knew that I would have to somehow rally and keep moving, but for a moment, I allowed myself to flounder in hopelessness and self-pity. I probed at the scrapes on my knees and wiped blood and rain from my face. The scratches from the laurel bark were far more painful than the surface cut left by the ax, but the idea of that blade slashing down through leaf and stem drew a very deep shudder.