“Finish it, Deacon,” she says. “Kill the monster,” and a fresh gout of blood spills from her lips and flows like syrup down her chin. “Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?”
Deacon pulls the trigger for the seventh time, lucky seven, and overhead the sky rumbles so loud he can’t even hear the shot. The sky pulling itself apart, ripping itself open at the seams with lightning hooks and needles, and Narcissa slumps back into the sand as her body comes apart in a feathery burst of raven wings. A dozen big black birds where her body lay an instant before and they rush past Deacon and are gone.
And he’s standing in the old house at the end of Cullom Street, storm-dim light through the windows so he can see Scarborough’s body lying lifeless at his feet. The body and the circle drawn on the floor in blood and shit and charcoal, the bleached bits of bone laid out inside that stinking wheel. Deacon lets the gun slip from his fingers, and it clatters loudly against the floor, and the sound echoes through the empty house.
By the time he gets back to Morris Avenue, the storm has passed, has dragged itself away north and east across the smarting, shell-shocked sky, leaving the city to glitter wet beneath the street lamps. Driving like a maniac, running stop signs and red lights, and it’s a miracle he doesn’t get pulled over or have a wreck; finally the wheels of Scarborough Pentecost’s long black Cadillac bouncing hard over the cobblestones, bouncing so hard that Deacon bites his tongue, and his mouth fills with the taste of saltwater and old pennies. He’s still a block away when he sees the strobing lights, an epileptic’s nightmare of swirling, flashing blues and whites and reds. Too late, he thinks. Too late and she’s dead, and then there’s a pissed-off-looking cop standing in the road with a whistle frantically waving him towards the curb.
Deacon cuts the wheel sharply to the right and stomps on the brake, but the Cadillac’s tires couldn’t care less what he wants and keep moving over the cobbles, too fast, too wet for traction, and the big car slams over the concrete curb and crashes into one of the cast-iron lampposts. It comes loose from the sidewalk and lands on the hood of the car in a sizzling spray of yellow-orange sparks, denting chrome and puncturing steel, shattering the windshield. Deacon wipes at his forehead, trying to figure out why he’s bleeding, why there’s blood on the steering wheel and his head hurts. When he looks up, the cop has started shouting at him, shouting words that Deacon can’t quite make out, and he pulls the handle to open the Cadillac’s door.
“You just stay right the hell where you are,” the cop yells, reaching for something at his waist, his gun, handcuffs or pepper spray, and Deacon doesn’t think it really makes much difference which. “Are you fucking high or something?”
“No,” Deacon says and starts to get out of the car, but that just makes the cop yell at him again.
“We’ve had enough crazy shit down here tonight without some drunk plowing into a lamppost.”
“I’m not drunk,” Deacon tells him.
“Well, how about you just stay put and let me figure that out for the both of us, okay?”
Deacon shakes his head and looks back up at the blizzard of swirling colored lights, all the cop cars and two ambulances crowded in at the back of their building, a fire truck parked right in the middle of Twenty-third Street. “My wife,” he says. “My wife is in there.”
“Mister, ain’t nobody left in there,” the cop replies and glances warily at the ruined streetlamp half buried in the hood of the black Cadillac, still spitting up a few lazy sparks. “You better just sit still until I can get someone from EMS over here to take a look at you.”
“Look, man, I fucking live there,” Deacon growls, losing patience as his head begins to clear, and he stabs an index finger in the general direction of the building. “My wife is pregnant. She was in 307. I’ve got to find her.”
“Oh, crap,” the cop says, and then starts speaking fast into his walkie-talkie, but there are already other people running across the wet cobblestones towards the Cadillac, their shoes loud in the night—four or five more cops and a fat paramedic, a tall fireman in green rubber boots and Detective Downs bringing up the rear.
Downs whispers something to the cop with the whistle and bends down beside the open car door. “Where the sam hell have you been?” he asks. Deacon doesn’t answer him or take his eyes off the building, off the windows of his and Chance’s apartment.
“Listen to me, Deke, I’m gonna need you to stay real fucking calm, you hear?”
“Where is she? Where’s Chance?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. We just got the power back on a few minutes—”
“What the fuck do you mean?” and then Deacon’s up and out of the Cadillac, shoving his way through the bodies packed in around the car, already halfway across Morris before the fireman and one of the cops can stop him.
“She’s not in there,” Downs says. “Now don’t make me have to put the cuffs on you. You gotta believe me, there’s nothing in there you want to see right now.”
“Oh god,” Deacon whispers. “You were supposed to be here. You were supposed to protect her,” and he starts to take another step, but Downs is there to block him.
“Where were you tonight, Deke? What is it you’re not telling me about all this shit? You knew she needed protection, but you weren’t here to do it.”
Deacon looks away from the apartment windows and stares directly into the detective’s bloodshot eyes; whatever Downs sees there is enough to make him take a cautious step or two backwards.
“Arrest me or turn me the fuck loose,” Deacon says, his voice gone flat and mock calm, spending almost everything he has left just to keep from punching the detective in the face.
“You are bound and determined to make this as hard as possible for both of us, aren’t you?”
“Arrest me or get out of my way.”
“Deacon, your wife is missing, and we’ve got this other woman’s corpse splattered all over your parking garage like a piece of modern fucking art, all right? We got another girl they found out in the street there, and she’s gonna be real damn lucky if she makes it through the night. Right now, arresting you is just about the only thing that does make sense, but I don’t want to do it.”
“I know who did this,” Deacon says. “I know exactly who did this, and I know why, and you and all your little bad boys in blue here aren’t ever going to catch her,” and for a few seconds Downs stares silently back at him, then nods his head.
“Right now,” he says, his voice strained thin and brittle, “forensics is in your apartment. When they’re done, I’ll take you up. But, Deacon, in the meantime, you’re gonna sit your ass in the backseat of that cruiser over there, and you’re gonna keep your mouth shut, do you hear me?”
“You don’t know what’s—”
“I asked you if you fuckin’ heard me.”
“Yeah, sure thing,” Deacon mutters, but he can see the relief pooling like thick glycerin tears in Downs’ eyes. “Whatever you say, Detective.”
“I swear to you, we’re doing everything we can.”
“You’re wasting your time,” Deacon says, and he glances at the apartment windows again, at the safe incandescent glow through the glass.
“We’ll find her,” Downs says. “You just gotta keep believing that. You just gotta let us do our job.”
“The girl you found out back, can I talk to her?”
“She isn’t even conscious, Deke. Do you know who she is?”
“Maybe,” he says, “and maybe no one does,” and then he lets one of the other policemen lead him away to a black-and-white parked in the street, catty-corner to the building. The cop asks if he’d like some hot coffee, and when Deacon says no, shuts the door, locking him in. Deacon leans back in the seat and stares up at the clearing sky through the rear windshield—the last purple-gray wisps of the storm clouds sailing by high above the rooftops, a handful of stars and the cold moon, almost full now. In a little while, he closes his eyes,
waiting for Downs to come back for him, for whatever Narcissa Snow’s left upstairs, and Deacon Silvey prays for the first time since he was a child.
PART II
The Hounds of Cain
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
—WILLIAM BLAKE (ca. 1792)
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lullaby
In the soft half-light behind her eyelids, Chance listens to the airplane-propeller hum of the tires on the road, the comforting, consoling thrum that has carried her from one weightless hour to the next. Morning sunshine warm on her face through the windows, bathing her like honey; no time here, and the fear is far away, unimportant, so long as she doesn’t think about it. So long as she keeps the whys and hows at arm’s length, where they belong.
“When I was seven,” the child says to her from the backseat. “Do you remember when I was seven, and I broke my arm?”
“Yes,” Chance replies, even though she doesn’t.
“You told me to be careful, climbing trees.”
“Did I?”
“Of course you did, Mother,” the child replies.
“You should rest now,” she says. “You’ll need your strength.”
“Is it very far, the place we’re going?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember if I know or not,” and the thing behind the steering wheel, the werewolf, the monster with the sun trapped inside its smoldering skull, tells her to shut up.
“Faster!” the child squeals excitedly. “Don’t try to talk!”
“I’m sick of listening to you babble,” the werewolf growls.
“Faster! Faster! I wonder if all the things out there move along with us?”
“I don’t know,” Chance says. “I can’t see them.”
“Well, you could, if you’d open your eyes,” but that’s the last thing she wants to do, better here in the warm honey-light with the constant, soothing thrum of the tires, better if she doesn’t have to see the face of the beast, the waxy mask it wears so other people don’t see the things it’s shown Chance.
“Let me sleep a while,” she says to the child, trying to sound firm, but also trying not to scold, and the werewolf growls again.
“Maybe I’m giving you too much,” it says. “Or maybe I’m not giving you enough. Maybe if I give you just a little more next time, you’ll shut the fuck up for a while.”
“I’m fine,” Chance tells it. “I’ll stop talking.”
She hears the click of the radio knob, static, white noise to get in the way of the wheel sounds, and then a man’s singing a gospel song. That’s not so bad, she thinks, curious to hear how the radio voice slips so easily in between the rays of light, through her skin, between the tires and the asphalt.
“…I once was lost, but now I’m found…” and then the crackle and pop of more static, and Chance almost asks the werewolf to put it back, that she wants to hear all the song, but then decides it’s better if she keeps quiet for a while.
But now I’m found, and No, Chance thinks. I’m not found at all, am I? I’m still very, very lost.
“You can be the White Queen’s Pawn,” the child says unhelpfully. “And you’re in the Second Square to begin with. When you get to the Eighth Square, you’ll be Queen—”
“You should be quiet for a little bit,” Chance says. “We’ll talk more later. Later on, I’ll tell you a story.”
“There’s that same old tree again,” the child says and laughs, a high wind-chime laugh that Chance is glad the werewolf can’t hear. “I think we’ve been under this tree the whole time, Mother.”
“Go to sleep,” she says. “I need to go to sleep.”
“You need to shut the hell up for five minutes,” the monster growls and snaps its jaws. Now there’s rock music blaring from the radio, nothing Chance recognizes or wants to recognize, and she tries to hear the tire hum through the writhing maze of electric guitars and drums.
“You can sleep when you’re dead, girl,” the child says, just like Deacon, and it surprises her so much that Chance opens her eyes partway and squints painfully at the brilliant day, the sun and the hills rolling past outside the car.
“I need to pee,” she says, trying not to mumble or slur the words. “I’m thirsty, and I need to pee.”
“There’s no place to stop here,” the werewolf tells her. “You’ll just have to wait. You shouldn’t drink so damn much.”
“I’m pregnant,” Chance replies impatiently. “Pregnant women drink a lot of water, and then they pee a lot. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”
“You drew a trilobite on my cast,” the child chimes in from the backseat. “And a red Tyrannosaurus.”
“No one ever told me they talk so goddamn much,” the werewolf growls and turns up the radio. “I ought to cut out your goddamn tongue. It’s not like you’re going to need it.”
“It’s not me talking. It’s the needles,” Chance says, though she meant to say “It’s the shit in the needles,” but part of it got lost in all the racket coming from the radio. “I really do have to pee,” she whispers, and the child with Deacon’s strange eyes laughs, but she doesn’t turn around to see why. She stares out the window, much too much trouble to close her eyelids again, now that they’re open, watching the steep wooded hills, autumn-colored hardwoods and grass that’s still mostly green, wondering where they are, how far they’ve driven, how many nights and days since the werewolf came slinking out of the storm to take her away.
“Where are we?” she asks, and “We’re under the tree,” the child answers. “I fell and we’re waiting for Daddy.”
“No, I mean where are we at, not where are we when.”
“What difference does it make?” the werewolf growls.
“Maybe it’s someplace I’ve never been before. Maybe I’d just like to know.”
The car passes between gray-white limestone walls, a small slice of the world taken away long ago to let the road come through. “See, I think those rocks are Mississippian,” Chance tells the werewolf. “But they might be Ordovician. If I knew where we were, I could tell you which.”
“Why the hell do you think I care?”
“I care,” Chance says. “The Ordovician’s not so interesting, but the Mississippian—”
“We’re in Virginia. We’ve been in fucking Virginia forever. Now will you zip it?”
“Virginia,” Chance says, repeating the word because it takes her a second to remember exactly what it means. “Then they probably are Mississippian, after all.”
“I’ve got a scalpel and clamps in my bag in the trunk—”
“But I might bleed to death,” Chance whispers, sly whisper that makes the child in the backseat laugh out loud again. “We can’t have that, can we?”
“I’m a real whiz with a needle and thread,” the werewolf barks back. “Trust me, you wouldn’t bleed to death.”
“Anyway,” Chance says. “I’m going to pee on your seat and the floorboard, and then I guess you’ll have to steal another car.”
“She does that later, after the fire,” the child says.
“Oh,” Chance replies, and the car passes through another road cut, higher walls than the last one, and for a moment the sun is eclipsed by the exposed rocks. A moment of chill air, and Chance shivers and starts talking again so she doesn’t have to think about cold, dark places.
“Are we in the Valley and Ridge Province?” she asks, but doesn’t wait for the werewolf to answer before she continues. “If we are, then it probably is only Ordovician. Shallow water carbonate deposition predominated, up until the Taconic Orogeny began, anyway. There’s the Conococheague Formation. Isn’t that a wonderful name? And the whole Beek
mantown Group—”
“What’s an orogeny?” the child asks.
“When mountains get made,” Chance replies, and then they’re out in the sun again, and she’d already forgotten how good it felt on her face.
“I see,” the child says thoughtfully. “Are there dinosaurs in those rocks?”
“No. There won’t be dinosaurs for a long time yet, not for hundreds of millions of years. But there were lots of trilobites and brachiopods, and bryozoans. Remember me telling you about bryo—?”
“Jesus fucking Christ!” the werewolf snarls, and it cuts the steering wheel like it’s decided it’s a better idea to try driving straight through the pastures and trees. The car bounces off the blacktop and onto the narrow shoulder, slinging gravel, plowing up red mud and tall brown stalks of ragweed and yellow goldenrod. It rolls to a stop beside a listing wooden billboard that reads repent siners for the end is near; sun-faded crimson paint on peeling white, letters taller than Chance.
“That’s not how you spell ‘sinners,’” Chance says, pointing at the sign. “I don’t think that’s even a real word.”
“Just get out of the damn car,” the werewolf growls at her and snaps its ivory teeth at the sizzling Naugahyde air. “Get out and take your fucking piss, and then shut the fuck up.”
“But someone might drive by and see me.”
“Then go behind the sign,” and Chance looks up at the billboard again, stares at it a second or two, trying to remember if she’s right about the proper spelling of “sinners,” and then she nods her head.
“Okay. Sure. That’ll do. But I need toilet paper.”
The werewolf curses and grabs a wad of paper napkins from the dash, leftovers from someplace they stopped for hamburgers last night, and she shoves them into Chance’s hand.
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