He nodded.
“Why didn’t he tell me at the restaurant? He was there. Why didn’t he tell me?”
“I don’t know.”
“You wouldn’t.” She shook her head. “What about the girl?”
Maurice turned, turned the leather chair and took his time sitting, every bone resisting, every muscle demanding he stand until he dropped. There would be no cellar room tonight; penance would come some other way.
“Bedroom,” he said, crossing his legs. “The child never said a word all the way back.”
“Well, hell, Maurice, do you blame her?” She looked around again, then went over to the sideboard, opened a door, and pulled out a bottle. “Ice?” She made a sound that resembled a laugh in name only. “Never mind. You wouldn’t pollute it.”
He didn’t answer.
She filled three tumblers with bourbon, handed one to him, put the second by the table next to the other chair, and took hers to the couch. Sat. Drank. Leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling.
“Goddamn Charlie.”
He brought his glass to his lips, smelled the liquor and felt his stomach turn over. But he sipped, sighed, and sipped again. It tasted too good; he didn’t deserve it. He put the glass down and watched as the waitress toed off her shoes and curled one leg to the cushion, pushing herself into the corner, tucking her ankle beneath her rump. Her white blouse was open three buttons down, her skirt rode high above her knees, stockings shimmering in the light. The dim glow made her look ten years younger than she was.
She winked at him over the top of her glass. “You like?”
He stiffened. “Babylon is what you are.”
She shook her head angrily. “Don’t start, Maurice, okay? Lay your guilt somewhere else. Don’t start with me.”
“Problems?”
His hand shook when he saw James in the doorway, toweling off his hair, no shirt, his feet bare.
“Hey,” Nola said, patting the cushion beside her.
James ignored her and walked to his chair, picked up his glass, and stood beside the window.
Maurice prayed that just once the man would show some remorse. “We killed four people tonight, James. That’s problem enough.”
James shook his head. “No, we didn’t. We killed jackals, remember?”
“They’re people.”
Nola grunted derisively.
“What do you know?” Maurice demanded, pointing a long finger at her. “What can you possibly know?”
“Oh, give it up,” she said wearily.
He stood. “I’m going outside for a while.” He stared at her pointedly. “To pray.”
She said nothing, only looked away.
“Babylon,” he muttered.
“And you were a pimp in New Orleans before you got saved. Big fucking deal.”
He didn’t respond. It was no use. She wouldn’t listen. She didn’t know.
And as long as James believed too that these creatures weren’t human, he wouldn’t know either what they had done.
Shade pulled, curtains drawn, Rachel sat cross-legged on the bed, hugging herself, rocking.
She didn’t make a sound.
Jim lifted his chin. “You trying to seduce me?”
“Aw, Jesus,” Nola said, grabbing her shin, rubbing it. “Not you, too. It’s hot, okay? and I didn’t have time to change after Peter called me.” She rolled her eyes and drank. “Lord.”
“It was a joke, Nola.”
“Sure. But I ain’t laughing.”
They seldom did after a night like tonight. It didn’t matter how righteous they felt when they started out, all of them or just a couple, and it didn’t matter how many of the others there were, one or a handful—when it was done and the site cleared if it had to be, no one felt like laughing at all.
He didn’t really understand it. There ought to be relief that the tension was over; there ought to be a sense of mission accomplished, something like that; at the very least, there ought to be gratitude that the number of scavengers had been cut down once again, which meant one less prey would be slaughtered.
But there never was.
Not even with Charlie.
And when Maurice got into one of his damn moods, it was almost enough to make them want to slit their wrists.
“You know what rubs me about this?” he said, speaking to the moon.
She didn’t answer.
“Ruby.”
Nola sat up. “That bitch? She was there?”
He nodded.
“Oh, shit, Jimmy.”
He paced to the wall, stretched his neck, turned and paced back. “Charlie said they were down in Birmingham, the Modeens. Pretty much the lot of them, he figured. It’s possible Ruby just wanted to have a little fun.”
“She hated your guts.”
“I don’t think she planned on getting caught, Nola.
She might have wanted to draw me down there.” He dropped into the chair, propped his bare feet on the coffee table. “Or maybe she just wanted to tell me I couldn’t touch her, not with the rest of the pack just a few hours away.”
Nola put her glass down and started to work on her hair, unbraiding it as Maurice returned, Peter Ryman behind him. The younger man went straight to the sideboard to pour himself a drink. When he had, he turned around, leaned against it and sighed. Loudly. Jim didn’t ask if all went well. He never did; it always had.
“So now what?” Peter said.
“Well, I want to know why the Modeens are here,” Nola said, using her fingers to brush her hair straight.
Jim watched Maurice’s face as he said, “Charlie told me there was more. He didn’t get a chance to finish, but I think he meant more than the Modeens.”
The preacher closed his eyes slowly, drew his lips away from his teeth as he hissed his breath in.
Nola drew her other leg up, huddling now. “Damn, so soon.? “
“Been ten, eleven years,” Jim reminded her.
“Not long enough,” she muttered.
He knew what she meant. So did Maurice, who pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket and mopped his face and head; he was sweating badly, his skin gleaming in the faint lamplight. Jim wanted to reach across, touch his arm, but it wouldn’t do any good.
“What?” Peter asked.
Jim cupped a hand over his chin, pulled it hard down over his throat. “If Charlie was right, the packs may be gathering.”
The younger man blinked his confusion, staring into his glass, lips moving soundlessly, trying to work it out himself.
Jim smiled to himself. The boy, who wasn’t really a boy, had a bad case of the stubborns when it came to things he didn’t know and felt he ought to. He’d sooner run head first into a brick wall than take anyone’s word that the wall was ten feet thick. He didn’t like looking stupid, even if he ended up looking more stupid than before.
“If they’re gathering,” Jim said, hoping he sounded as if he were thinking aloud, “that means the old bitch’s dead. Must be getting old, I can’t remember her name.” He grunted a sour laugh. “I had a feeling Ruby wanted to take her place.”
“No feeling about it,” Nola told him sourly. “You could see it. If she’d been a little stronger, she’d’ve done it herself.”
He agreed. Ruby Modeen had ruled her family as if she were practicing to ascend a throne. She could be sweet-talking, foul-mouthed, cold, hot, whatever it took. They listened. All the Modeens listened. And since they were the largest pack in the South, it was pretty much taken for granted that what Ruby said was Law, no matter who was nominally in charge of the greater Pack.
He had no idea, not really, how many pack families there were across the continent, how many greater Packs; although they all kept pretty much to themselves, marking their territories, keeping out of each other’s hair most of the time, when they gathered, it was as though they were long-lost kin, hatchets buried, feuds shunted aside.
But when the Princess died, they were like a boat without an oar.
>
Ruby wanted it.
She wasn’t going to get it.
“Jim?”
He looked over at Peter, who was still frowning and used his glass to point. “They’re gonna be mad, ain’t they, Jim? I mean, with Ruby dead and all, they’re gonna know, and they’re gonna be pissed.” He looked at his hand; it was shaking badly enough to slop liquor over the lip. “Oh shit.” He put the drink down and backed away from it a step. “Oh damn, Jim, oh damn.”
Jim didn’t move.
Without looking, Maurice reached around his chair and batted at the air until he caught Peter’s arm and tugged at him gently to bring him to his side. Another tug, and Peter reluctantly sank to his knees, sat back on his heels.
“Jonelle’s home,” he said. “She wanted to come, I made her stay.” His eyes closed. Opened. “Oh, man, Jim, this is bad.”
Maurice cupped his hand around the back of the young man’s head, patted it once, sternly, and patted it again before letting the hand fall away. “You remember that time, spring or two ago, you and me went to Knoxville, that heathen bar near the airport, all that neon inside? You remember that boy with the long neck, carrot-top?”
Peter took a moment before nodding.
“As I recall, that boy had about fifty, sixty friends, right?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say—”
“They was all kind of mad, I recall further, because you took a shine to that boy’s little lady. Black hair, right? Fancy boots? T-shirt cut off to show her tummy?”
Suddenly Peter grinned. “Yeah. Damn, how’d you-”
Maurice leaned his head back. “Seems to me I recall that lady wasn’t entirely desirous of your affections, either. The boy surely wasn’t, no indeed. I remember I prayed hard for your soul that night, young Peter, but you went and took on the whole place yourself.”
“He hit me first.”
“After you stole a kiss from the lady.”
“Broke my damn arm.”
Maurice laughed, delighted. “Broke your arm, couple of beauts around the eyes, smacked your left knee good, as I recall. It took my angels three days to put you back together, three days more to get you out of my house.”
“Well, hell, Maurice, you had a bottle in each hand and damn near killed half of them. “
Maurice kept smiling. “Right.”
Peter grinned again, looking at the others. “Some bastard dumped beer on his new suit. I think that’s about the time he stopped praying.”
Jim winked at him; Nola gave him her stupid men look, softened with a brief smile.
He nodded quickly, brushed a hand over his nape. “But there weren’t fifty or sixty of them, Maurice.”
“Don’t matter,” the preacher said.
“And Charlie—”
“Was alone,” Jim reminded him. “He was alone. We’re not.”
There was no response, just the sound of his jeans and boots creaking as he rocked forward, rocked back, keeping his gaze from the window.
From the last of the moon.
Then he stood abruptly, dusting his palms nervously against his legs. “Well, guess I’d better get on back. Jonelle’ll be having fits. She’ll think … she’ll be having fits, you know how she is.”
The others stood as well, and Jim trailed them onto the porch, hands in his pockets, shivering slightly against the touch of the night. Maurice accepted a ride from Peter and left without speaking. Nola slid her arm around his waist and nuzzled his shoulder. “You going to be all right?”
He didn’t look at her, but he smiled. “Fine. Just fine.”
“What’re you going to do about—” She jerked her head toward the door.
“Send her home, I guess. This sure isn’t any place for her now.”
She slapped his spine and moved away. “You can’t. You know that. They know she’s here. They know she knows.”
“They’re dead, Nola. Ruby and hers are dead.”
She held up one hand. “Four, Jimmy. There were four in that car.”
“So ?”
“Ruby had four sons, two daughters, aside from Willum.”
He didn’t answer.
“Where are they?”
He didn’t answer.
“You can’t send her back. Gathering or not, you put her on a plane, she’ll be dead before she gets home.”
She left then, spitting dust and dirt as she backed onto the road, leaving a trail of black tire smoke as she sped toward Potar Junction.
Not a touch, a kiss, a word of goodbye.
He waited until there was nothing left but the dark, a few stars, what was left of the moon; he turned, sighing loudly at his shortsightedness, his stupidity.
She stood in the doorway.
She had something in her hand.
There was something about her eyes.
Nola drove angrily, recklessly, swearing at the night that wouldn’t leave her alone. Bad enough Charlie was dead, the idiot hanging around like that when he should have moved on, but she had seen, or thought she had seen, the stir in Jimmy’s face when Peter told him he’d left his sister home. She’d seen that look before. It hadn’t been for her.
Damn fool.
“Damn fool,” she spat, coming out of the tree-tunnel and sneering at Lion’s mansion.
If he wasn’t careful, that kid would get him killed.
She strangled the steering wheel, snapped at herself for feeling sorry for herself, and wished to hell someone had thought to call her when the hunt went on tonight. The problem was, and she knew it, she wasn’t really one of them. A friend. A good lay now and then. Common sense when they needed it. But she’d never been on a hunt, never wanted to go on one, but just once, Jesus Christ, just once she wished they would at least think to ask.
She jammed into the parking lot, kicking gravel to the road, swung around the building and parked at the rear. The heat that stiffened her cheeks and brow settled in her chest after a few minutes’ slow breathing.
And finally, a smile.
“What the hell,” she whispered as she slid out of her seat and headed for the back entrance. It was, all in all, better than growing old alone. .
She pushed through the deserted kitchen and into the bar. Cider Dunn, paunch emphasized by aT-shirt much too small, arms bulging even when he didn’t flex, looked up from his broom. The place was empty.
“You okay?”
“Hell, no, I’m not okay. Good friend of mine got himself killed tonight.”
Dunn rested the broom against a table. “Sorry.”
She waved the sympathy off “It’s okay.”
He headed for the front door, began switching off the lights. “You …”
She smiled as he pulled an earlobe, stroked his chin, patted at the few strands left of what he used to call his better’n Elvis hair. He was a cheap bastard, no question about it, and the fact that he looked fat was a plus when a drunk decided he was stronger than God. None of the Junction boys fooled with him. Too many busted heads.
There was only the neon Miller sign left.
“You want company?” he asked from the safety of the dark.
“Sure,” she answered. “What the hell. Sure.”
Jonelle sat cross-legged on her bed, the bed and the room all ruffles and flowers. In her left hand she held a whetting stone, in her right a long-blade knife. The only light drifted in from the open doorway, the only sound Peter banging around in the kitchen, drinking beer and getting drunk and muttering to himself.
She drew the blade across the stone.
“Jonelle!” he shouted. “Jonelle, I’m hungry!”
She didn’t answer.
“Hungry. “
She drew the blade across the stone.
She listened to him stumble out of the kitchen and up the stairs, not moving her head until he stood in the doorway, swaying a little, hands at his sides as if ready to draw a six-gun.
“I’m hungry,” he said sullenly.
A flutter of dark hair fell over her face as she t
urned her head slowly. “Go to bed.”
“Hungry.”
“Go to bed.”
He took a step forward, and she looked away, catching ghosts of him at the edge of her vision as he tried to decide what to do next. Finally he muttered, “Hell with it,” and lurched away, bounced off the wall and cursed, tripped over something and cursed louder as he staggered into his own room.
She heard him say, “They’re gonna know, the bastards, they’re gonna know.”
A harsh creak then as he fell onto his bed, followed almost instantly by irregular soft snoring.
Then she looked down at her hands and drew the blade across the stone.
Maurice’s angels hadn’t left.
He prayed in his chapel for nearly two hours, then stripped as he made his way upstairs.
His bedroom was vast, the four-poster immense, and as he fell onto his back, he whispered, “Heaven, children, take me to heaven.”
Jim lifted, a hand and beckoned her to the porch.
She didn’t move until he beckoned again, then padded barefoot over the threshold and propped herself into the comer by the steps, arms folded over her stomach as if she were chilly.
She still had his revolver; after tonight, he didn’t blame her.
“Heard a lot?”
A shoulder rose and fell. “Some.”
“What Nola said?”
She nodded, staring blindly at the house.
“What do you think?”
Several seconds passed before she looked straight at him and said, “I think Momma’s pissed you killed her tonight.”
Chapter Thirteen
A soft breeze drifted down from the hills, stiffening quickly, hissing across the field, hissing through the trees. Dust lifted from the blacktop, scattered, and lifted again. A twig in the gutter rattled until it popped loose and twisted away into the dark; the screen door slammed shut; a piece of paper in the hallway was chased to the back.
Rachel watched him with faint amusement, his white hair pushed hard over his eyes, his right hand trying to push it away, giving up and reaching out to grip the railing lightly. The porch light shimmered.
He wanted to ask her what the hell are you talking about?
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