He turned toward Wheeler Dunstan, walked to him, and aimed the gun downward at his head. One shot. Do it now.
His hand was shaking. A cold rage had taken control of him, yet he seemed detached, as though watching himself from a distance. The dark stranger in his soul whispered urgently for him to squeeze the trigger. This was no longer Raven’s father lying on the floor; this was Walen Usher’s bitterest enemy, and because of him Rix had put all his faith in a nonexistent book. He had risked everything to help Dunstan—and now he would be cut off from the Usher fortune without a dime. His finger tightened on the trigger.
Dunstan moaned, and his fist began to open.
In the palm was a silver button. It was one of the buttons from Rix’s sweater, and he realized Dunstan had yanked it off when Rix fought for the gun.
A silver button, Rix thought. He tried to think past the whisper that urged him to kill Raven’s father. A silver button. Where had he seen—
His head pounded fiercely, and the voice within him shrieked DO IT NOW!
His finger convulsed on the trigger, and at the same time Rix heard his own desperate cry.
The Commando fired, gouging wood from the floor six inches from Dunstan’s skull.
Rix turned and, with a shout of anger and revulsion, flung the gun through the broken window.
He picked up the silver button and ran from the house, through the sheets of rain to his car. At the end of the driveway, he saw that the brown van was gone. He sank his foot to the floor, causing the Thunderbird to fishtail dangerously. His hands gripped the wheel hard, and his shame at being so close to murder brought bitter tears to his eyes.
He had almost done something that—for the first time in his life—would have made his father very, very proud.
40
THE DRIVE TO AND from Asheville had been a route through hell. At the wheel of her Maserati, as the rain slashed in gray sheets across the road, Katt’s concentration had narrowed down to a burning candle, a spoonful of bubbling heroin, and a hypodermic syringe.
The windshield wipers didn’t help much. She trembled for need of the junk; her skin felt raw, peeled open. Her nerves sputtered in little panics. Even the palms of her hands in her lambskin driving gloves felt flame-blistered. A flash of lightning startled her, and for the first time in a long while she feared an attack.
Taped beneath her seat was a packet containing a quarter-ounce of heroin, purchased an hour before from an Asheville investment banker that Katt knew as “Mr. Candy Garden.” Margaret had introduced them at a party several years before, and later had confided to Katt that she hoped her daughter found him attractive; after all, he was one of the most eligible bachelors in North Carolina.
She guided the Maserati through Usherland’s gates and swept past the Gatehouse toward the garage. She pressed the button under the dashboard that raised the door to the Maserati’s stall, then drove into the cool darkness.
The garage lights hadn’t come on, Katt noted, and assumed that the storm might have blown a circuit or something. She’d have it looked at. She cut the purring engine, deposited her keys in her purse, and took the precious packet from its hiding place. The anticipation of quiet, restful dreams soothed her. In them she was always a little girl whose main preoccupation was tagging after her older brother, or riding horses along the gentle Usherland trails, or watching the clouds make pictures as they formed and broke over the mountains. Her dreams were always of summer, and in them she wore bright little-girl dresses. Sometimes her father visited her dreams, and he always smiled and said how pretty he thought she was.
Katt got out of the car. Suddenly, with a muted growl of gears and chains, the garage door began to descend.
Startled, she turned to watch the door sink to the concrete floor. There was a master control panel elsewhere in the garage that opened and closed all the stall doors, but it was way over near the limo. The murky gray light was cut to a sliver, then disappeared as the garage door met concrete.
Katt stood in total darkness. The rain beat a maniacal tattoo against the garage roof, and Katt felt as if she were drowning in black water. Her fear of the dark had immobilized her. She had made sure that even her Quiet Room allowed a chink of light; she preferred the pain of light to the horror of the dark.
“Where are the lights?” she said aloud to quell her rising panic. “There should be lights on in here!”
Headlights! she thought. She fumbled for the keys in her purse, then her fingers closed around the furry rabbit’s foot on her keychain. She leaned into the Maserati, slid the key in, and switched on the ignition. When she turned on the headlights—their beams directed at shelves holding cans of oil, transmission fluid, fan belts, and various automotive tools hanging from wall hooks—she almost sobbed with relief. She reached beneath the dashboard to open the stall door again.
A cold, muscular arm slid around her throat from behind, pulling her out of the car. Her scream was canceled as it began by a hand clamped to her mouth.
Katt struggled wildly to break free. She could smell a man’s body odor. His unshaven cheek scratched her ear. “Don’t fight,” he whispered. “There’s no use fighting.”
She continued to thrash, but she was weakening. Don’t fight, the voice repeated in her mind, sapping her willpower. There’s no use fighting. The command kept echoing inside her head, steadily gaining power as if it were being shouted by someone who was coming closer and closer. Hopelessness invaded her, and as her struggling stopped she heard, as if in a nightmare from which she couldn’t awaken, the man’s satisfied grunt.
“I’m going to let you go,” he said. “You’re not going to scream. You don’t have a voice anymore. I’m going to let you go, and you’re going to stand right where you are.”
Not going to scream, she thought. No use fighting. Not going to scream. Stand right where you are.
He released her.
She wanted to scream; her throat vibrated, the muscles straining to pull a scream up through her mouth. Not going to scream. You don’t have a voice anymore. No use fighting.
Her arms and legs were icy. She tried to move them, found she couldn’t even unlock her elbows. Stand right where you are. The more she strained to move and scream, the harder and more hopeless moving and screaming became. No use fighting. Not going to scream.
The man walked in front of her, and in the wash of the Maserati’s headlights, Katt recognized Logan Bodane.
She’d seen him a few times, hanging around the Gatehouse. His face was different now; his eyes glittered dangerously in the slack, gray-tinged flesh. His mouth was twisted in a sick grin. The gray Usher blazer he wore was dusty, but not wet. Neither was his tangled mass of coppery red hair. The part of Katt’s mind that could still form coherent thoughts judged that Logan had been in the garage before the rain started. Waiting for her, for this moment?
Logan’s gaze played slowly over Katt’s body. Then he looked directly into her face, and his eyes seemed to flame like baleful blue lamps.
—smile—
His silent, mental command slid into Katt’s mind like the point of an icepick. It sank deeply, with a prick of pain.
Katt felt her mouth twitch. The corners slowly arched upward in a grotesque rictus, while tears of terror rolled down her cheeks.
“That’s nice,” Logan said aloud. With one quick, violent motion he tore open the front of her pink jumpsuit. She gasped for breath; the smile stayed fixed on her face, and still she was unable to move. In her mind his voice—smile no use fighting smile not going to scream stand right where you are—continued to batter back and forth.
Logan retreated a pace to admire her body. “It’s comin’ for you,” he whispered, his eyes dancing back and forth from Katt’s face to her body. “Yeah, it’s comin’ right now. The executioner, I mean. It’ll be here soon. I’ve seen it.” He grinned, well pleased with himself. “I don’t mean to let you go to waste before it gets here.” He advanced on her.
Katt trembled violently, but c
ould not break loose from whatever hold Logan had on her. As he grasped roughly at her breasts, his mouth on her throat, Katt couldn’t even close her eyes. An inner scream wailed, but she had no voice. She ground her teeth in anguish.
Logan grabbed her hair and forced her head back. “Thought you were better than me, didn’t you?” he asked her, his eyes narrowed into slits. “Well, I’m going to show you how wrong you were, lady.” He kissed her on the mouth, jabbing his tongue in while his hand began to slide down her stomach.
Her teeth, Katt realized. She could still use her teeth.
Logan made a guttural, bestial sound and clutched at her breasts. His tongue probed deeply into her mouth.
And Katt caught it between her teeth.
Before Logan could jerk his head away, Katt bit down with all the fury and strength she could summon.
When Logan screamed, the mental chains that had held Katt fast broke apart. They scattered like dead leaves in a high wind. Feeling rushed back into her limbs with a pins-and-needles tingling. But still she continued to bite down on his tongue, as he screamed and fought to shove her away.
She felt his tongue rip. Blood filled her mouth.
Logan staggered backward, blood streaming from between his lips, and fell to his knees on the floor. He struggled to rise, his mangled roar spewing more blood.
Katt spat flesh out of her mouth. She started to run, but Logan seized her ankle and almost threw her down. She flailed, trying to break free—and then she saw the tire-iron, hanging from one of the wall hooks, within reach. She grasped it, and turned toward Logan as he heaved himself off the floor. His frenzied NO! exploded in her mind, but her arm was already on its descent. The tire-iron crunched down on Logan’s skull.
He fell to his hands and knees, his head lolling. She stood over him and struck him again, across the right shoulder blade. There was a noise like a broomstick cracking. Logan pitched on his side, his eyes blazing wildly in his blood-smeared face.
Behind Katt, the cans and tools on the shelves suddenly came alive. They leaped in all directions, a can of antifreeze hitting Katt in the side, a pair of jumper-cables snapping through her hair, a wrench flashing past her cheek. The Maserati’s windshield shattered. Freezing currents of Logan’s misdirected power smashed back and forth across the garage, breaking more windshields, upsetting more cans and tools. A shockwave struck Katt, throwing her against the hood so hard that she lost her breath. Then she reached into her car and found the garage door switch, pressing it frantically. The garage door began to slide open, letting in gray light and blowing rain.
She ran, ducking under the door and into the storm. The rain almost beat her down, but she kept going, up through the gardens toward the Gatehouse. She slipped on a mossy stone and fell, gashing her knee. Around her the trees were in tumultuous motion, dead leaves whirling past her in miniature tornadoes. She looked back over her shoulder—and panic flared anew.
A massive, dark, and unrecognizable shape was coming after her, leaping the ornamental hedges and drowned flowerbeds.
“Help me!” Katt shouted toward the house, but her voice was shredded by the storm. In the next flash of lightning the Gatehouse was briefly illuminated—and Katt thought she saw a figure standing at a window, looking calmly out at the gardens.
She struggled to her feet and ran again. After another few strides, she felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up, and she knew with a terrible certainty that she would not make the Gatehouse.
As she twisted around, the monster behind her tensed and leaped through the rain like an ebony battering ram. Katt screamed, but the black panther’s jaws closed around her throat and snapped her neck as she was falling backward to the stone path. She had a sensation of breathlessness, a hot crushing pain on her throat—and then she tumbled headlong into the dark.
She was dead a few seconds after her body hit the ground.
The panther gripped her by the neck and quickly dragged her off into the underbrush. Nearby, a marble faun played its silent pipes in the downpour.
Within minutes, the rain had washed away all traces of Kattrina Usher from the garden stones.
41
“IT’S RAINING HARDER,” RAVEN said as New returned from his room in the Briartop cabin. He’d put on a pair of jeans and wore a patched brown corduroy jacket over his flannel shirt. “The roads are going to be flooded.”
“Maybe,” he said distractedly. He glanced at his mother, who sat silently in a chair, with the picture of Bobby in her lap. Rain dripped from a dozen leaks in the ceiling, tinkling and plopping into a variety of bowls, cups, and metal pots. Raven and New had reached the cabin when the storm broke, its thunder shaking the flimsy walls.
“You’re not goin’ down there.” Myra didn’t look at her son; her fingers ran repeatedly over Bobby’s picture. “You’re just a boy. You don’t know your own mind.”
“I’m the man of the house.” New tugged at the sleeves of his jacket. “It’s time I acted like it.”
“How? By gettin’ yourself killed? Or worse?” Her watery, unfocused gaze found Raven, who stood across the room, peering out the window at the storm. Raven’s black hair was soaked, and matted into tight curls. “Miz Dunstan,” Myra said, with heartfelt pleading in her voice, “don’t let my boy go down there alone. Please… I’m beggin’ you.”
“We’re going together,” Raven said, “as soon as the storm lets up.”
“No.” New zipped his jacket up. “We’re not goin’ together.” He looked defiantly at Raven. “I’m goin’ by myself, Miz Dunstan. You’re stayin’ right here. And I’m not waitin’ for the storm to play out, either.”
“I meant what I said at the office. God knows, I wish there was another way, but there isn’t. I’m going with you.”
“The Lodge wants me, not you. I can’t stand here and say I can protect you, ’cause it’d be a lie.”
“I can take care of myself,” Raven said firmly. “I have, for a long time.”
New stared at her, probing for a weak spot. She was a stubborn woman, and he sensed that she wasn’t easily moved, once she’d made up her mind. His ma was water, but Raven Dunstan was mountain rock.
Thunder cracked and boomed. The windows rattled in their frames.
—New—
The summons was stronger now, pulling him urgently toward Usherland and the Lodge.
—come home—
It faded in and out, drifted away in a silken hiss that became the noise of rain on the roof.
“Don’t go.” Myra’s voice cracked. “Oh Lord, don’t go, don’t go, don’t go…”
“I have to find out what happened to Nathan,” he told her. “I won’t sit on this mountain for another harvest season while the Pumpkin Man takes his pick. And I’m gonna face whatever it is in the Lodge, Ma.”
Raven touched New’s shoulder, and as he turned his attention to her, intending to command her to stay in the cabin until the storm had passed, he saw the fierce strength in her eyes, the need to know for herself what lay inside the Lodge’s walls. He remembered the poster of the children’s faces. Maybe she did deserve to find the answer she sought, but he was still afraid for her. How could he protect her against something as strong as the power that called him from Usherland? He almost delivered the command—almost—but then he said, “I’m ready to go now. Are you?”
“I’m ready.”
“Lord God,” Myra breathed, and caught back a sob.
New retrieved the stick from where he’d propped it near the door. “Ma?” he said, and when she looked up at him from the picture, tears spilled down her face. “I’m gonna come back,” he vowed. “But this is somethin’ I have to do. Can you understand that?”
“Your pa wouldn’t have—”
“I’m not him. I’m nobody but me. I love you, Ma, but I’ve got to go down to that house.”
She gazed at him for a long moment, and then she whispered, “God help you, then. The both of you.”
New bent over her and kiss
ed her cheek. Her tears dropped softly to his father’s picture.
“I love you,” she said, as New and Raven started to leave—and the sound of those words gave New a resolve he’d never known before.
The rain thrashed down as New guided the pickup truck away from the cabin. Only the windshield wiper on his side worked, but it kept the glass clear enough to see through. The two plastic bull’s-eye lanterns that Raven had bought at the hardware store sat between them, and Raven wore her camera case around her neck.
“The tape,” Raven said. “What did you use it for?”
“My snare,” he replied, and offered no more.
The summons was in his mind, throbbing through his bones, eagerly calling to him from Usherland. The first narrow road that New followed was blocked by a fallen tree. He backed up and found another. It, too, was obstructed by deep craters of water and thorns. The third was too steep for the truck to negotiate. As New drove the truck down a fourth trail that twisted precariously through the woods, the tires slipped on loose rocks. The trail narrowed, the fenders barely scraping between tree trunks. Raven rolled down her window to help guide him, the rain flailing into her face.
“We can’t make it!” Raven told him. “We’ll have to turn back!”
He didn’t answer. The beckoning voice of the Lodge was stronger, almost joyful with triumph, an eerie merging of the wind, rain, and thunder. Inching along the trail, the truck steadily penetrated deeper into Usherland.
And abruptly, as the truck rounded a sharp curve, the summons stopped.
New put his foot on the brake. The truck slid forward ten feet before the wheels locked.
Directly in front of them, the trail ended at what appeared to be a dense thicket of dark green vegetation. The truck’s head-lights couldn’t penetrate it. On both sides of the trail, black thorns grew in vicious whorls, like barbed wire.
“There’s no way to get through there,” Raven said. “You’d need a damned tank!”
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