The landlady whispered as she ushered them down the hall. “Don’t kill ’em here if you don’t have to, understand? Last time I had to throw out my momma’s best quilt.”
She slid a spare key into the lock. It turned with a whisper and she stepped back, out of the killers’ way.
The man in front flung the door open, charged into the room with his machete held high, and staggered to a stop.
The room was empty. On the far side of the twin beds, a night wind gusted in from the open window, making the flowered curtains ruffle in the dark.
“Damn it all to hell,” the landlady sighed. “Get on the horn and sound the alarm.”
* * *
Harmony and Jessie ran across an empty street, corner to corner, putting distance between them and the hunting party. Their hatchback was the first stop. An easy escape, until Harmony saw the crumpled driver’s-side tire. One brisk thrust of a knife had stolen their way out of town.
They weren’t alone in the dark, either. There were figures up ahead, dutifully filing through the wide-open doors of the village church, and lights blazed behind the stained-glass windows.
“Sign said they only had services on Wednesday and Sunday,” Harmony pointed out.
“I’m thinking they lied.” Jessie looked back over her shoulder. “We’re too exposed here. We need to get off the street until we figure out our exit strategy.”
Harmony pointed the way down an alley. The gap between peeling plaster walls wound a jagged path and suddenly veered hard right, as if the village’s layout was intended to steer visitors to the middle of the labyrinth. No escape, with the church squatting at its diseased heart.
“Belly of the beast,” Harmony murmured.
“Then let’s go down there,” Jessie said, “and carve our way out.”
There was singing now, as they neared the back of the church. It drifted out through the open doors and up to the stormy skies, too muffled to make out the words. The congregants’ voices melded into a slow, melodic but mournful drone, like a band playing their final tune as their sinking ship went down. Jessie crouched in front of the storm-cellar doors. She eyed the padlock, assessing it. Instead of reaching for her picks, she took hold of the padlock, pressed her other palm flush against the wood, and pulled.
One by one, rusted screws popped loose from the warped, flimsy wood until the entire hasp tore free, padlock still firmly attached. She tossed it over her shoulder to land in the overgrown weeds, and Harmony hauled one of the doors back on a groaning hinge.
Steps, rough-hewn and dirty, led down to the flagstone floor of a cellar. Harmony listened, cautious, then chanced lighting up her phone. A focused beam caught motes of dust as it strobed off a garage sale’s worth of clutter. An old bicycle with its front tire missing, a vintage lamp, furniture under painters’ tarps moldering away in the dark.
A second staircase, this one newer, made of two-by-fours and iron nails, ran up through a narrow alcove at the other end of the clutter. Jessie took point. She eased up the steps one by one, testing her weight on the wood. The door at the top opened onto shadows and more of the musty, mothball odor that clung to the cellar below.
It looked like a small study for the resident clergy, from the humble desk and the seminary diplomas on the walls, but a coat of dust on every bare surface told them this church hadn’t had a regular minister for a long time. Harmony checked the name and dates on the diplomas and shot a quick text to April. Check missing-persons reports for a minister named Liam Ess, she wrote. Would have been the resident at Graykettle First Presbyterian, possibly starting sometime around 1982.
They heard the grim church-choir drone from beyond the door opposite the desk. If Harmony had the layout right in her head, that door would open onto the back end of the church, just behind and to the right of the altar. The last somber notes faded and died. Then a muffled voice rang out, strident and firm. The thick wooden door stole the meaning of the words, but they recognized the man speaking them.
Judah Cranston had come home to Graykettle. And now he was here to address the congregation.
33.
“From the sea we came,” Cranston proclaimed to his flock, “and to the sea we shall return.”
He lifted his open hands, spreading them to show the webbing of flesh between his fingers, on a fluttery chorus of whispered “amens.” Harmony watched his back as she crouched on one knee, staying low and peering out through a two-inch crack in the doorway. The church was packed. At least a hundred grizzled parishioners squeezed shoulder to shoulder in the weathered wooden pews, all eyes turned to Cranston like he was the second coming of Christ. Cranston’s silent and sullen maid stood with him, a couple of steps back, carrying a heavy-looking satchel of cracked leather on one broad shoulder.
“Our grandfathers, and our grandfathers’ fathers, sang the songs of the old world. They told us of the Ocean Behind the Ocean and the glories of the endless deep. Our home, our birthright, where we swam and danced in saltwater cathedrals. They taught us the truth: how we were exiled, cast out, stripped of our true forms and forced to live upon the land. Forced to wear a human mask and mingle with the primates of this world.”
The murmurs grew. The energy of the room shifted, turning restless, as Cranston took on the fervent tone of an evangelist.
“But we still made our living upon the sea!” He pointed to the stained-glass windows and to the coast beyond. “We prayed the prayers, we made the sacrifices, hoping that the Old Man Below would return and bring us back home. And what happened? Greed. Gluttony. The depredations of man spoiled our fair waters, just as they’re spoiling all the oceans. Humanity is a heretic parasite, hell-bent upon its own destruction.”
Cranston pushed his shoulders back, chin high, and lowered his hands to his sides.
“I say, if the human race is determined to commit suicide, so be it. But they will not take what remains of this world along with them.”
Shouts sounded out from the church doorway, and the jangling of chains.
It was Dominguez. He’d been badly beaten, one eye crusted over with a black bruise, his lip split and chin caked in dried blood, and he was still fighting. Four of the townies hauled him in, manacled, leading him by lengths of chain leashed to his arms.
“Let go of me, you goddamn freaks,” he seethed. They yanked him up the aisle, hunters with a trophy.
“Well, well,” Cranston said. “Isn’t that just what I’m talking about? A man, determined to commit suicide. Bring him up here, gentlemen. Let everybody have a good look.”
They forced him toward the altar and shoved him to his knees at Cranston’s feet. Dominguez turned his face up, glowering, defiant to the end.
“You could have gone anywhere in the world,” Cranston said. “But you followed me here. And for what? A paycheck? A promise of money? What’s money going to be worth at the end of days? Bobby might as well have promised you seashells.”
“I’m your friend,” Dominguez insisted. “I helped you.”
“And I believed that, at first. Then little things didn’t add up. We worked Cooper over for hours, and she still went to her death insisting she didn’t know what you were talking about.”
“Some people don’t break.”
“Everybody breaks,” Cranston said, his lip curling. “Then the women showed up looking for her.”
“More of Bobby’s assassins,” Dominguez said. “I’m the only person on your side!”
That got a low, rolling chuckle from the congregation.
“They checked out,” Cranston said. “I looked into their backgrounds. Ordinary, average Diehl Innovations employees, just like they claimed. Cooper checked out, too. Know who didn’t check out? You. No record with the company, no civilian life I could find any trace of. You’re a ghost with a Special Forces tattoo and a nice fat payment deposited in your bank account one day before you landed on my doorstep. Oh, and a sniper rifle in your hotel room.”
“I can explain all of that—”
> Cranston cut him off with a dismissive wave. “I decided to offer you the benefit of the doubt. Gave you the slip back in Tampa, with that ruse in my lab. Figured if you were smart, you’d take a hint and cut your losses. And yet here you are.”
“I came to help.”
Another man had followed the procession. He carried a scoped rifle in one hand, a heavy mottled-olive backpack in the other, and he stepped up to present them to Cranston. Cranston leaned in, pulling back the open flap of the pack. He took out a bar wrapped in black Mylar, about the size of a stick of butter, and held it up to show the congregation.
“I do believe this is what they call ‘plastic explosive,’” Cranston said. He cast a dark eye down at Dominguez. “You mean you came here to help Bobby Diehl. By stealing my work and killing me and mine. Well. I can be a generous man. If I’m standing at the head of the church, I’d better be the forgiving type, isn’t that right?”
Another wave of “amens” rippled through the musty hall, but this time carried on low laughter and malicious smiles. At Cranston’s side, the maid reached into her leather satchel. She produced an anesthesiologist’s tool: a clear plastic mask, designed to fit over the nose and mouth, connected to a ribbed bottle.
“I can’t let you take my research back to Bobby,” Cranston said, “but if you’re that desperate to witness the glory of the Clean Slate…I suppose I can part with a single dose.”
Dominguez saw it coming. He shook his head wildly as the maid moved in, and one of the townies grabbed him by the hair to hold him still. He scrunched up his nose and mouth as the mask went on, holding his breath, fighting until his face turned purple. Eventually, biology won; he gasped for air, inhaling, just as the maid squeezed the bottle and gave him a mouthful of bilious green gas.
“Witness!” Cranston commanded the congregation as the maid stepped back. “Witness and rejoice. For in portents and dreams, the Old Man Below has delivered unto me a remedy. A remedy that will save this blighted planet.”
Dominguez’s good eye rolled back in his head. He trembled, muscles going taut. His captors stepped back, jerking his chains tight to pull his arms out at his sides.
Then he started to scream.
His flesh molted. It went loose, sagging as if someone had poured acid on his face and arms, spattering to the floor in soggy handfuls. Beneath, wet red muscle warred with a sudden growth of coppery scales, breaking out like a metallic rash along his cheek and jaw.
Mermaid scales, Harmony thought. She flashed back to the cave, to the fishermen’s killers emerging with their dark harvest. That’s why he had one in a tank in his lab. The secret ingredient in Clean Slate. He’s using their blood.
Dominguez’s bones crackled and snapped. Spines burst from his back, shredding his clothes and spitting blood that hissed and steamed on the aisle floor. More blossomed along his arms like a porcupine’s armor. They erupted from his brow like horns, and as they curved up and outward, they tore away what was left of his human face. It dangled from the protrusions like a rubber mask.
“This is stage one of mutation,” Cranston said to his rapt audience. “With the current formulation of Clean Slate, ninety-six percent of test subjects progress all the way to stage four, the final evolution. Not perfect, but it is the cure for an imperfect world.”
Dominguez’s screams had risen to howls, mixed with apelike animal grunts. His handlers dug their heels in as he thrashed at his chains. His teeth wormed their way out of his gums, one by one, plinking to the sodden church floor as vicious fangs forced themselves from his crackling jaw.
“We stand at the onset of stage two. At this point human consciousness is nearly obliterated, replaced with a primal, insatiable hunger.”
The scraps of Dominguez’s shirt fell loose as fresh eruptions unspooled from his belly and lower back. Slick intestine twisted, shredding itself, becoming filth-coated tentacles that sniffed at the air with wormlike heads. His pants tore and more fleshy growths spilled out between his legs. Dominguez snapped at his handlers, fighting his chains, desperate to get at them. One nearly slipped off his feet, dragged dangerously close to a mouth now overstuffed with curved and jagged teeth.
“We can’t hold him much longer!” one shouted, bracing himself against the edge of a pew and holding the jangling chain tight.
Cranston just nodded to his maid. She produced a .357 pistol from her bag, stepped up behind Dominguez, and shot him in the back of the head.
A gout of black blood splashed along the aisle, sizzling into the red runner and spitting clouds of gray steam. Dominguez sagged in his chains, motionless.
Then he reared up with a roar, jaw snapping hard enough to shatter his own fangs, tentacles whipping the air. She shot him three more times. Each pull of the trigger was a cannon-fire boom that rattled the stained-glass windows. He finally went down. The maid stood over his corpse, watching, waiting.
She shot him in the back one more time, just to be certain.
Cranston waited until the last reverberations of the bullet finished echoing, the sound rising to the church rafters like a solemn prayer.
“The Clean Slate,” Cranston said, “is not what our cure does to its victims. It is what its victims will do for us. As we speak, the mass production is underway. Once the final batches are complete, you, my chosen, my family, my fellow believers, will spread out far and wide. To all the tainted cities, to the empires of pollution and greed, to the enclaves of human waste. And you will deliver our blessing.”
Jessie cursed under her breath. “We thought he was planning one attack. How many people are in there?”
“At least a hundred,” Harmony whispered back.
Cranston clasped his hands before him. He bowed his head and spread his fingers, as if contemplating his webbing.
“Humanity has created an engine of consumption. A system that depends upon, that demands, constant hunger. We will teach them hunger. When the globe erupts in chaos on the day of reckoning, when fourth-stage mutations are running rampant, unstoppable, devouring all in their path—we will show them the end result of their reckless behavior.” He looked up and gave the congregation a sly smile. “Call it…late-stage capitalism.”
Cranston gestured behind him. Pointing to something outside the range of the cracked doorway, but whatever it was, the entire congregation bowed their heads and clasped their hands as one.
“And as the world burns, we will go out to sea. And wait. We will be safe, living off the bounty of the oceans, until the mutations burn themselves out and nothing but dust and bones remains in their wake. The old civilization will be gone and we will return to lead the way, fostering a new age of peaceful enlightenment. We won’t make the same mistakes. We will—”
A trilling, chiming chorus silenced him. Every phone in the church went off at once. They buzzed and sang in a confused melody as parishioners tugged them out and stared at the screens. Cranston did the same.
“It appears,” he said, “we have some wayward tourists in the village. We can’t tolerate any risks, not this close to the day of reckoning. Go. Hunt them, find them, and kill them.”
The congregation was already on their feet, pouring out the door with murder in their eyes.
34.
Cranston watched the mob go. He stood over Dominguez’s mutilated corpse and put his hands on his hips.
“We’ll have this cleaned up. Don’t let anyone eat it. Bad meat.”
The maid’s head bobbed. She stared at him, unblinking, and pointed to the rifle and backpack. “And…that?”
“Take the backpack out to the lighthouse, lock it up tight, and we’ll figure out a long-term solution later. Right now I just don’t want it anywhere near the refinery.”
She gathered up the dead man’s things and headed out into the night.
Cranston stood alone in the empty church, just him and his victim. He turned, facing the thing Harmony couldn’t see through the cracked doorway, and lowered himself to one knee. His head bowed in reverence.
/>
“Thy will be done,” he whispered.
In the darkness, Jessie pulled back her blazer. She flashed her gun at Harmony with a question in her eyes.
It would be easy. One bullet would buy vengeance for Agent Cooper. Harmony saw the thread of if-then-elses in her mind’s eye, combinations of possibilities stretching into the distance. Cranston was a true believer, and he meant to see his insane mission through to the end. What if he had rigged a fail-safe? Some sort of system to ensure his “day of reckoning” happened with or without him?
“We can’t,” Harmony breathed. “Not until we find out where he’s keeping the Clean Slate and if he’s made any backups of the formula.”
Cranston rose, turned, and strolled from the church. They could hear shouts in the darkness outside, the villagers running riot through the streets, searching for them. They waited in the dark, motionless.
Harmony needed to see what had captured Cranston’s reverence. She slowly pushed the door wider and crept out into the light.
An effigy ruled over the congregation. A mummified man nailed to a cross, his preserved skin the texture and color of beef jerky. He had been decapitated. In the place of his head, someone had mounted the head of a sea bass, its flat wide eyes staring out in silent, eternal shock.
In one hand, the mummy clutched a black book, his broken fingers lashed with twine around the leather cover. In the other, the dead man held a trumpet of bone, identical to the one the townies had used to win safe passage into the mermaids’ grotto.
The mermaids were a relatively small threat compared to Cranston’s mad ambitions, but they still had to be dealt with. Especially if only the villagers’ training was keeping them confined to that cove. If they slipped out and started breeding in the ocean…
No choice. Harmony braced herself, slinking closer to the effigy. Ten feet, nine, almost there—
Right to the Kill (Harmony Black Book 5) Page 23