Books by Maggie Shayne (159 page)

I buried Hilary Garner in a shallow grave, which I scraped from the earth with my hands. I gathered what stones I could find nearby to build a cairn atop her. And I knew it was enough. Nothing would disturb this grave. I sensed it, knew it with my heart.

And then I rose on wobbly legs, and turned in the direction that would lead me to the road.

Stiles drove while Special Agent Keller—the rookie who’d come running out of the woods looking spooked with the infant in his arms—rode shotgun in the back seat. He sat beside the kid gun drawn, wide eyes skimming the dark woods they passed. He was scared. Stiles knew scared when he saw it, and the rookie had all the symptoms.

Figured he’d get saddled with a spooky recruit on a job this important. It just figured. If he lost the kid again, Whaley would have his hide.

They were almost to the town of Petersville now. Stiles automatically glanced into his rearview mirror to check on his passengers, and then he did a double-take, because he could see the little one very clearly in the mirror. And she was kicking her blankets away from her and smacking on her fist like any normal baby might do.

His stomach clenched a little as his conscience whispered in his brain. What if the kid was…was normal? What if she didn’t turn out to be like those animals who’d spawned her?

He looked at her again, and the tiny fist lowered from her bow-shaped mouth. Her huge, dark eyes seemed to stare straight into his, in the mirror. His throat went dry. He had to look away.

Stiles forcibly tore his gaze from the baby’s, and when he did, he shouted an expletive and jerked the steering wheel. The car went into a skid, sliding sideways, throwing dirt and gravel as it scraped the road’s shoulders, and finally coming to a jerky stop halfway to the ditch.

“What the hell are you doing?” Keller shouted, righting himself and retrieving his gun from the floor. “Trying to get us killed?”

Stiles blinked and stared at the road. “There was something…‘” he muttered. He got out of the car and walked a few steps from it onto the dirt road, and stood there looking left and right.

Keller came up behind him, gun back in his hand. “Did you see something?”

“Yeah,” Stiles whispered. “But…” He gave his head a shake, and turned to Keller. “I don’t suppose you saw it, did you?”

“I didn’t see anything,” Keller said. “What was it? A deer? Or..hey, Stiles, it wasn’t one of them, was it?”

Stiles shook his head slowly. “No. Damn, Keller, you can’t tell anyone about this, okay? Anyone sees us sitting here, we say we had a flat tire. You got that?”

Keller nodded. “Sure. So long as you’re gonna tell me what you saw.”

“What I
thought
I saw,” Stiles corrected him. “Because it wasn’t real.”

“So what did you
think
you saw?” Keller asked, shoving his gun back into his pocket.

Stiles shook his head, looking at his feet. “There was this light. And then we got closer, and it looked like…”

“Looked like what?” Keller prompted.

Stiles sighed. “An angel. White gown and wings and the works. All glowing with this white light, and standing right in the middle of the damned road.” Again, he shook his head, this time with a nervous laugh. “And then it was gone. Stupid, huh? I think I need to get more sleep, maybe take some time off…”

“Or…m-m-maybe not,” Keller said.

Stiles lifted his head and saw the rookie’s ashen face. His wide eyes and trembling forefinger were both aimed at the car, and when Stiles looked, it was to see that same eerie white glow spilling from every window in the vehicle. It glowed brighter than any man-made light could possibly do, just for a moment, and then the light faded away.

He gave his head a shake, as if he could somehow clear it, and then forced himself to move forward. But he had a pretty good idea already what he was going to find when he reached the car.

He leaned over the vehicle, peered inside, and then straightened and looked back at Keller, who was still rooted to the spot where he stood.

“The baby?” Keller asked.

Stiles blinked, feeling dazzled and shell-shocked. And then he just shook his head. Gone. The kid was gone as if she’d never been there.

Keller was breathing hard all of a sudden. “We gotta get out of here,” he muttered, hurrying back to the car. “It might come back here…for us, this time.”

Stiles gripped his shoulder and pulled him up short. “Listen, Keller, and listen good. No one is to hear about what we saw here tonight, got that? We talk about this, we’re gonna get locked up in a rubber room somewhere. Hell, we might even end up subjects for DPI study.”

Keller gasped at that statement. “We had a flat,” he said slowly. “We got out to change the tire, and someone grabbed the kid. We didn’t see a thing.”

Stiles nodded, swallowed hard, and, with frequent nervous glances over his shoulder, made his way back to the car.

It had been a miracle, Susan Jennings thought, over and over again. Only twenty-four hours ago, she’d swerved her car to miss a deer, and lost control. God, in heaven, she’d never forget the fear that had taken hold of her as the wheel had been wrenched from her hands and the car somersaulted down the side of that embankment.

Or the utter horror of pulling herself from the ground and realizing that little Alicia had still been inside.

And then, just like angels, those two strangers had appeared, as if out of nowhere. Just like angels, she thought again, smiling as she pushed the rocker into motion, cradling Alicia in her arms and holding her bottle to her lips. They’d saved her baby’s life. And then vanished in the night before she’d even had a chance to thank them.

Alicia’s gentle sucking slowed, and then stopped as her blue, blue eyes fell closed. Susan got up carefully, and tiptoed across the room to lower the baby into her bed. Then gently tucked the covers around her.

A soft knock sounded at the front door.

Susan turned, frowning hard, and sending a quick glance toward the clock on the wall. Who in the world would be calling at this time of night? She went to the door, opened it a crack and stared out into the kindest brown eyes she’d ever seen.

I raced north on Route 10, driving Jameson’s car, which I had located right where he left it, concealed by a stand of pines off the roadside a few miles beyond the now-abandoned cabin. And I did as he had so wisely done then. Hid it from DPI’s vigilant eyes. I saw the log road that veered to the east, but drove past it, pulling the car into a grove off the roadside, and then turning back on foot.

And when I found the logging trail again, I did not travel upon it, but cloaked in the shadows of the trees that lined its edges. The darkness was my friend tonight, as it had never been before. And as I drew nearer, black clouds skittered across the face of the low-hanging moon, painting it with velvet brush strokes, and deepening the night still more.

I saw a bubble in the ground, like a clear glass dome. And around it, four men stood like sentries guarding some coveted treasure. All of them armed, I knew. I could not hope to take them on all at once. One of them would be bound to shoot me with his deadly little darts.

What should I do?

Lure them away, I thought. One by one, if necessary. But Lord, the sun would not be long in rising. And I saw now why that would spell death for the four who must be trapped beneath that clear bubble.

I gripped the lowest bough of the pine under which I stood, and with a twist of my hand, snapped the branch in two. It made a startling sound in the night, and all four guards went stiff and alert.

“What was that?” one demanded. “Who’s there?” He lifted his weapon.

“Probably just an animal,” said a second.

“I don’t think so.”

“So go check it out.”

The first man shook his head. “Whaley said to do everything in pairs. You know how tricky their kind is.”

“Come on, then. We’ll both go.”

The two men turned toward me, and started forward, moving slowly, weapons aimed. One drew a flashlight into his free hand pointed it my way and clicked a button. I pushed myself off the ground quickly, landing in the safety of the pine tree’s arms before that beam of light fell on me. One at a time had been my plan. Not two at once. No matter. I wouldn’t give up. Couldn’t. Jameson, that vengeful vampire, was trapped like a rat, and when the sun rose…

I shuddered as I thought of the agonizing way in which he would die. Felt a peculiar emptiness growing inside me at the very thought of it, and my stomach tied itself up in knots. And then I stilled myself, and waited. The two did not walk close together as I’d hoped they would. But not far enough apart to suit me either. One of them stopped directly beneath me.

The other stood, perhaps four feet away, his back to me now. I would have to be quick, and smart. Quicker and smarter than the men were. It shouldn’t be hard, I told myself. I was a vampire.

I let myself fall from the tree, landing squarely atop the man who stood there. He emitted a loud grunt before my fists crashed down onto his skull, rendering him unconscious…at least. The other one whirled at the sound and leveled his weapon at me. Using all my speed, I dived to the side, and the dart his gun fired skimmed over my arm, cutting, but not embedding itself in my skin. Its tip sank into the tree beside me. I prayed it hadn’t discharged any of that drug into my flesh. In the split second it took for the man to find me again with his sights, I’d plucked the dart from the tree and hurled it at him.

It drove itself deeply into my attacker’s throat. His gun clattered to the ground, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Then he fell forward, and did not move again.

But I had not been as quiet at I would have liked. The two remaining at the dome were aware of the commotion, and one lifted a radio to his mouth. I snatched the gun from the ground, pointed it and pulled the trigger. But only a muted “click” came in reply. The gun hadn’t been reloaded. “Something’s going down,” a guard shouted at his radio. And I threw the empty weapon at him with all my strength. “Get us some back—unnnnnhhhh—” The metal dart gun hit him squarely in the face, and he was flung backward so hard he crashed through the glass dome behind him. I heard him hit the bottom, far below, and then I heard no more.

I stood, without shelter, my eyes holding those of the one remaining man. He held his hands toward me, shaking his head from side to side. “Please…just take them, okay? Just—”

I must have been quite a frightening sight to this poor mortal. My hair in tangles, and no doubt littered with pine needles and stray leaves. My hands scraped raw and dirty from digging a grave for Hilary. My dress torn from my mad race through the forest, and my arms and chest spattered and smeared with Hilary’s blood as well as my own.

Perhaps she’d been right. Perhaps God was directing my steps. Somehow.

I nodded to the gun in the remaining guard’s hand, and he dropped it to the ground. I lifted a hand and pointed to the radio attached to his belt, and he tossed that aside as well. And then I moved toward him. The fear in his eyes reached me, and I almost felt sorry for him. He began to back away, but I didn’t want him falling through the shattered dome and dying, so I pushed off with a burst of speed, and before he could have seen me move, I had him by the front of his shirt.

“D-d-don’t kill me,” he whispered. “P-please…”

I put my arms firmly around him, and jumped through the break in the glass bubble. He howled aloud as we plummeted, but I held him tight when we hit, not falling on my backside as I was so prone to do.

Around me I sensed the stunned expressions on the faces of the others. But I only glanced away from my captive long enough to assure myself they were all there, and all alive. My eyes locked with Jameson’s for a long moment. He pulled uselessly against the chains that bound his wrists to the wall, and I felt anger such as I had never known at those who had put him here, left him here to die. But I pulled my gaze free, forcibly so.

“Where is my child?” I demanded, giving the guard a shake.

“I…I don’t know…I’s-swear—” His wide eyes danced around the room, fear-filled as he saw the fury of each captive vampire, and then horrified still more as he saw the prone form of the other guard, the one who’d fallen through the glass dome. The man’s body lay broken in the center of the floor.

I shook him again, snapping his head back and forth with the force of it. “Pay attention to me, you little liar,” I said to him. “Where is she? Where is my baby?”

“They were taking her back…to headquarters,” he stammered. “B-but they had a flat. Th-they got out to change the tire and—and—and—‘”

“And what, mortal!”

“The kid was gone!” he blurted, sobbing now. His nose was running and tears pooled in his eyes. “Just g-gone. S-someone took her right outta the c-car. A radio alert went out—w-we thought it was you!”

I believe the man was telling me the truth, or as much of the truth as he knew. Of course, what he said could not have been what had truly happened. The only ones who could have rescued my baby were here, with me. Except for Hilary, of course, but sweet Hilary was dead. I’d buried her among the pine needles, beneath the pungent, sentrylike trees in the forest.

“But I thought…I thought Hilary had the child,” Tamara’s soft voice asked, filling this dark pit with warmth.

I turned to face her, meeting her wounded eyes. “I’m sorry, Tamara. They…they killed Hilary.”

She cried out when I said it, then let her head fall until her chin touched her chest, and her tears fell in silence.

“I found her in the forest. Dying. And she told me where you all were being held, that you’d be dead by dawn unless I found a way to help you.”

“Thank God for her,” Tamara whispered.

“I have,” I replied. “I buried her there in the forest. It’s a beautiful place, Tamara. She’s at peace there.” She nodded, thanking me with her eyes, if not with her lips.

“And now DPI has my daughter again.”

“They don’t,” the guard piped up. “I told you—”

“No doubt they’ve told you this as a ruse,” I said. “A ploy, in case I came here and forced you to talk.” I looked at the others, the chains that bound them to the walls, and then glanced above me at the sky. Paling, already. Paling. I gave him another shake. “The keys.”