Chills (16 page)

Jack tried the knob first, turning it easily and swinging the door inward. The foyer ahead was dark. He stepped inside, closing and locking the door behind him.

“Guess I didn't need these,” he mumbled to himself, putting his keys down on the small wooden table by the door. He dropped his gloves next to them and then made his way through the hall to the kitchen at the back of the house, peering into the empty den and dining room to the left and the even emptier bathroom and sitting room to the right. The kids' overnight backpacks, he noticed, were leaning up against the couch in the den. Odder still, their winter coats and snow boots had been tossed carelessly by the back door. It didn't add up. The house was swathed in empty stillness; he hadn't checked upstairs yet, but his gut told him they weren't there. Still, for all Katie's flaws, she was a good mother, and she never would have let them out in the snow without coats and snow boots.

Jack frowned. Where the hell were they?

He opened his mouth to call out, then closed it. If they were in the house, he'd find them. But if anyone else—or any
thing
—was in the house, he didn't want
it
to find
him
.

Instead, he went back down the hall toward the front door and climbed the stairs. His hand rested on his gun as the steps creaked beneath his weight.

He caught a whiff of Katie's perfume when he reached the second floor. It seemed to be coming from Carly's room, so he looked in there first. Her favorite little stuffed white unicorn sat on the bed. He picked it up, turning it in his hands, looking at the innocent blue eyes, the rainbow yarn hair and tail that he'd learned how to braid just for her, the smudge of blackberry juice that subsequent trips through the washing machine had only reduced to a faint purple patch. He inhaled the smell of his daughter‘s shampoo, the scent of her soap, in the fur of the little guy. Just thinking about her formed a lump in his throat.

He put the unicorn back down on the bed and moved on to his son's room across the hall. Jack Jr.'s PS3 was on. Jack frowned. He picked up the controller. It was warm; if they had left the house, they'd done it very recently.

He shut off the PS3 and the TV and made his way toward Katie's bedroom. It had been his bedroom once, too, but he felt nothing of nostalgia stepping through the doorway. The room, the house, the woman who ran it—they were not his anymore, and that was okay. Very little of it even looked the same, but more than that, it didn't feel the same.

What hadn't changed was how he felt about his kids. He had to find them.

Suddenly seized with desperation, he searched the room in a flurry—under the bed, in the closets, in the adjoining bathroom, calling out to them, monsters be damned.

“Jack! Carly!”

He went back to the kids' room and searched the closets and under their beds, too. He looked in the kids' bathroom tub, on the off chance they thought it might be safer to hide inside it. He ran down the stairs, rechecking behind the couch, in the coat closet, any place he could think of where people could hide.

They were gone.

Jack returned to the back door in the kitchen and looked out at the yard. The aluminum swing set he'd put in for them when Carly was three stood like a pale silver and blue monument to their childhood, their little ghosts haunting the curve of the swing seats and the worn-shiny spots on the slide. Both the swings and slide were piled high with small mountains of snow, weighing them down, and they creaked when the wind blew. He could hear it somehow, even in the house with everything closed up to seal out the cold. It was as if the weight of whatever had happened to the children was an unbearable burden it needed to share with him.

He remembered the message from the woman who'd claimed snowmen had eaten her children and shuddered.

On the back porch, the barren sticks of an old raspberry bush Katie had started that spring poked up through the snow gathered in the clay terracotta pot. A diminutive patio set consisting of a metal-framed pair of chairs and a small alfresco-style table practically blended into the drifts around it. There were no footprints, but he didn't really expect there to be. Whatever drove the faces to form in the snow also swallowed up any trace of humanity that was left out there. It would not be imprinted; it only assimilated. The returning idea of the snow as a sentient, absorbing kind of creature in and of itself made sense, a lot of terrifying sense, and did nothing to soothe his fears for his family.

Where could they have gone? He pulled out his cell again and tried Katie's and cursed as her voicemail picked up for the umpteenth time. He'd done some information gathering on Katie's new boyfriend when he first learned of the guy's existence, which he justified to himself as due diligence on a man who would be spending time with his children; as a result, he had the boyfriend's address, but there was no cell or landline phone number associated with him, so he couldn't call. How a person functioned in this day and age with no way to be reached was beyond him, and seemed unwise given that he may, at some point, have Jack's children at his house. And no criminal record and essentially positive employment performance reviews didn't mean the guy was smart or financially responsible. He'd just have to go over there then, he thought as he turned away from the back door. It was a ten-minute drive to the guy's house, and—

Then Jack saw the note.

“What the—?” It was a small white envelope whose bottom corner was frozen in a jagged line of ice that ran along the counter. He would have sworn it hadn't been there before, but there it was, with his name written in Katie's graceful, looping handwriting. A fine fuzz of frost ran the length of the flap.

With a little finagling, he managed to wriggle the envelope out of the ice. The whole thing was cool to the touch and it made him uncomfortable. It was as if something perpetually arctic had held it, had wrapped its fingers or tendrils or whatever around it and imparted its unceasing frigidity into the fibers of the paper itself. He had this semi-irrational thought that maybe the cold would pass into his fingers, through his hands, and leave some part of him permanently frostbitten.

He opened the envelope and took out a piece of white paper the size of a note card. On it, four words were printed in a block-letter handwriting he vaguely recognized but, frustratingly, couldn't call to mind. Not Katie's, and not the boyfriend's, but . . . dammit, he couldn't place it. Still, the words most certainly had a freezing effect on his heart:

His stomach bottomed out, and for a moment, he thought he might get sick right there on the kitchen floor. He had to pull it together, though. He had to find his kids.

He took several deep breaths, forcing down the upheaval inside him, blinking the world back into focus. He slipped the envelope and note into a paper bag. His fingerprints were on the note, but he hoped forensics could find other prints as well.

Kathy had mentioned once that the identities of Hand of the Black Stars members were a very closely guarded secret. Well, fuck that—he'd get names, addresses, their fucking pants sizes. He would find his family, and the cultists who took them. They had to be alive, just had to be, because the need to find them would be one of the surest ways to manipulate Jack and his team. So be it, if it got him closer to them. He
would
find them, one way or another.

And if those crazy sons of bitches got between him and his family, he'd kill them.

“S
o,” Teagan said as he finished off the last of the vodka in his glass. “There's been something I've been meaning to ask you.”

“Okay . . . shoot, I guess,” Kathy replied.

“How in hell did you manage to survive driving your car off a bridge into freezing water with a monster speared through the back of your trunk?”

Kathy turned around, flustered. “What? How did . . . how—?”

“Magic Irish intuition.” Teagan smiled, looking at the empty bottom of his glass a moment before meeting her surprised eyes. “That, and dispatch picked up a report about your car frozen halfway in the river just outside of town, front end smashed to hell, with a big, silver spike rammed through the roof. Bridge's railing was busted. Weird thing is, ice is unbroken right up to the paint job on your car. I know the river's not that deep, but . . . m'girl, you beat some savage odds.”

Kathy smiled uncomfortably. “Okay, yeah. I drove my car off the bridge. I calculated the odds of survival considering my seat belt, air bag, the shallowness of the river, the ice barrier on top of it, the monster that was tearing into my roof... and I took the chance.”

“Incredibly dangerous, that.”

“Yeah.”

“So then what happened?”

“Well . . . a lot of the finer details are a blur. We bounced around a lot going over the edge. I hit my head. I think the impact with the ice knocked us both out. I remember sort of waking up, though I can't quite reconcile how much time I was out. It couldn't have been long, because only the front end of the car had sunk, and I think it struck the bottom, or maybe a big rock . . . I know it took a few minutes to really bring awareness back into my body and remember what happened. By all accounts, I should have been killed, but I wasn't. A freak stroke of good luck. I don't know if it was the seat belt or air bag or the angle or what, but there I was. Anyway, I remember the dark went away a little, and when I looked out the windshield, that thing was on its back on the ice. The ice . . . it was weird, but it looked like the ice was . . . holding on to the thing. Like it had sort of climbed up all around the creature, or it had sunk and the water beneath had splashed up somehow and frozen . . . I don't know. My head hurt and I couldn't see so well. But I thought I saw the thing struggling to pull free of it. It was still alive, and the ice was trying to swallow it up. . . .

“Anyway, like I said, I couldn't see so well, and I couldn't feel the cold. In fact, I couldn't feel much of anything; my legs felt like a dead weight and it scared me. I wasn't sure if I was paralyzed.” She shook her head and sighed. “But I could hear creaking—the back end of my car balancing on the ice, I think. I was afraid to move, to even breathe, for fear of the whole thing just sinking flat under the ice. I wasn't even sure I could move, but I did, very slowly at first. I don't know what even got me moving. Maybe it was the way the ice was all over that scorpion thing, like the snow was cannibalizing something of its own, eating its child. Or maybe it was the creaking. But my body knew before my brain that it wasn't just going to lie there and die.

“So I turned around, and you know, I think that might have been the hardest part because I had to turn my back on the thing out there. That, and I had to make my legs move. That took a while. It was probably only a few seconds of me sitting there thinking they were shattered, that I must be broken to pieces from the thighs down and paralyzed for life, but it felt like hours. Hours of my brain screaming at my muscles and nerves to move,
move, dammit.
But I did it. I got them moving, and I climbed into the back seat as carefully as I could, with the car rocking and creaking all around me. I moved that stinger aside and climbed out the hole in the roof onto the trunk, then down onto the pond. Then I managed to make it across the ice to the shore. I skidded and slipped a lot, but I made it without falling. Then I limped to the road and flagged down Morris, of all people.”

“Jaysus, that's something else, Kat. Almost like something was looking out for you. Protecting you.” He swirled the ice around in his glass.

Kathy looked away for a moment before answering. “Maybe. I'm inclined to believe that the balance of worlds means that there are good forces out there as well as bad. And if there is a God or gods, a force of good . . . it doesn't seem willing to let me die, despite my best efforts.”

“I'd guess it's wise that way,” Teagan said, winking at her. “This world needs you.”

Kathy's mouth formed that lopsided smile again. “Thanks, Reece. You know, it's funny. Most of our law enforcement colleagues—Jack and Morris included—perpetuate these funny ideas about me. That I'm, you know, reckless. A liability to other officers because of an . . . indifference to danger or death. But they never seem to remark that despite my many run-ins with both, I'm still here. I don't know. Maybe I am a liability to others, but no matter what happens, I come limping or crawling back from that brink.”

“Aye, you do. I never got the impression you had a suicidal streak, for what it's worth. If anything, and I'm hoping you'll not take offense, Kat, I always thought of you as more, well, evenly matched with death. That you and the Reaper see eye to eye, have an understanding. You dance together, but you don't leave together, if that makes sense.”

Kathy gave him a look that indicated she was both moved and surprised. “Yes, it does. Very much so. And . . . I appreciate that you see something they don't. Now, enough about me. Let's get back to work. I—oh! I think I found something.”

“Really? Is it the spell?” Teagan finished off the vodka in his glass and set it down. He had been poring through some of the printouts Kathy had given him, but it was like reading a secret code. Even when the passages were in English, they still made little sense to him—references to names of places and beings he had never heard of and couldn't pronounce. Still, he had diligently searched each page for one or a combination of symbols Kathy had sketched for him that would indicate reversal spells. So far, he'd found nothing.

“It's . . . no, nothing.” She grunted, turning from the screen with her vodka. “I'm starting to think Morris is right. We're just fucked. Us, Colby, the whole human race.”

“Maybe,” Teagan said noncommittally. “Some days I believe that. I look at this fucked-up bloody world and see we don't be needing the likes of monster-gods with unpronounceable names to come and do the job for us. We do just fine screwing ourselves, don't we? It makes me wonder just what, exactly, we were put here for. Like, what are we supposed to prove? What are we looking to accomplish? We're so many tiny anecdotes, linked together in a chain that tells a story of... what? It seems like so much fuss and trouble for such a small, small element of the universe to make such a big deal of being a part of it. Or, even more laughably, of trying to master it. But those are usually whiskey thoughts, and usually I think right then, ‘Ah, but whiskey is a beautiful little thing.' A little thing, like we are. I've many moments I can recall where I've had me whiskey and sat looking at stars and felt comforted by being held in the palm of something bigger. Maybe we're just here to listen to a babe giggle, or feel a woman's kiss, or understand in an exchanged look everything words never could express. And so I figure that we aren't here to conquer the universe, but to experience all the facets of it, one moment at a time—good, bad, indifferent, amazing. It's not petty and insignificant to count the accumulated little things any more than it is insignificant to count wealth dollar by dollar. What else do we have in this life, if not all the little things that make us stand out, or stand out to us? All the little moments—and when it comes down to it, the most important are usually such fleeting wisps of moments—are not only the things that remind us of what we were and where we are, but why it matters to look forward. And I tell you, love, despite what others seem to think is your suicidal streak, no one fights so hard for the rights of others to experience every moment due them than you. And you make me want to fight for them, too.”

Kathy was quiet for a bit, and then asked, “Is this one of those moments you mean?”

He grinned. “Aye, love. I think it is.”

* * *

Ms. Harper returned with Jilly in tow. Between them, they were carrying three bottles of nail polish remover and armloads of rags—torn T-shirts, old dress shirts, frayed washcloths and towels.

“Perfect,” Morris said as he took the items from the girls and put them on a nearby side table. “Now, would you happen to have some glass bottles we can use, as well? And maybe some wine corks?”

Ms. Harper gestured toward the kitchen. Her voice shook a little when she spoke. “I keep some beer in the fridge for guests. Lord knows I certainly don't like the stuff. We can dump it out in the sink and use those bottles. Now, I do have wine, and I keep the corks in a little basket. Would that work?”

“That would work just fine,” Morris said, offering what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

Ms. Harper nodded and led Jilly into the kitchen. He could hear the clinking of bottles as they were retrieved from the fridge, and the smell of hops wafted into the front hall. Morris kept an even gaze on the things on the front porch. The creatures outside flickered as they paced like caged animals, making their strange wind-noises and snarling at each other.

One of them shouldered its way to the door, shoving a second out of the way. The latter lashed out at the one that had displaced it, slicing a deep blue wound on the thing's shoulder. The wounded creature bellowed in pain and rage, wheeling around to confront its attacker. It swiped at the other creature's throat, opening a slash that spilled thick blue iciness onto the porch. Where it puddled on the wooden boards, they crystalized and cracked.

The creature with the throat wound, meanwhile, staggered backward, nearly slipping down the front steps, swayed on unsteady legs, then fell over at the edge of the porch. Immediately, the other two descended on it, tearing it open and shoving tattered chunks of it into their mouths. Three more flickering shapes grew solid, and they, too, joined in the frenzy. His instinctive unease about the things on the porch was catapulted into nauseated loathing, but he couldn't turn away until the lump of shreds that was left finally flickered and melted, blending with the disturbed snow on the steps.

Finally, Ms. Harper and Jilly returned with the rinsed-out, dried beer bottles, a small basket of wine corks with their ends tinged pink, and a kitchen pilot lighter. Morris thanked them and took the bottles, pouring nail polish remover into each one. He counted out seven of them. That was good; there were five of those things out there, which would give him two extra Molotov cocktails in case . . . well, just in case.

He dug into the pile of rags and found a T-shirt, which he tore into strips, dipping one end of each into the bottles. He shoved the corks into the bottle necks, leaving enough of each strip to serve as a fuse.

“Ms. Harper, I think it would be best if you and Jill got away from here—maybe went upstairs? This stuff is deadly, and I don't want you two breathing in the fumes. Take the shotgun . . . you know, just in case.”

“No problem, Detective. Jilly, come on.” Ms. Harper grabbed the shotgun and led Jilly toward the stairs. At the first step, Jilly turned back to Morris.

“Detective Morris?”

“Yes, hon?”

“Will you kill them? All of them? My family . . .” Tears formed in her eyes. “Please kill the monsters that took my family.”

Morris felt a twinge in his chest. “Sweetheart, I'm going to do my level best. Now you go on and get someplace safe, okay?”

The girl nodded, and she and Mrs. Harper climbed the stairs.

Once they were out of sight, Morris peered out the window again. The trees across the cul-de-sac were blowing back, away from the street. That meant the fumes would be blowing away from the house. He had to get moving before the wind direction changed.

As quietly as he could, he opened the storm pane of the window and eased up the screen. The snorting and snarling stopped, and the things on the porch froze for a moment. Morris had already touched the lighter flame to the rag of the first bottle, and he swiped and tossed it practically in one fluid move. It flew a little wide of the mark, skidding past one creature's leg and shattering on the porch. Immediately, that area of the porch burst into flame. The acrid smell of the polish remover burned his nose, but thankfully, the wind was carrying it away from the house. Still, he held up a sleeve to his face before slamming down the window pane.

He could hear the creatures screaming outside, skittering away from the flames, and quickly, he lit another. He unlocked the front door and pulled it open just enough to aim at a creature distracted by the fire. He hurled it with all the strength in his arm and it hit the creature head-on, shattering bright yellow-white fire all over the wailing monstrosity. He slammed the door closed.

Cheering came from upstairs, and it made Morris smile to imagine Ms. Harper and Jilly watching his progress.

Morris checked the window again and saw the creature on fire vigorously shaking its massive head. Its jaws gaped as it bellowed, loping around the porch. Morris repeated a silent mantra to himself that those things would remain too stupid to try to put the flames out with snow.

The burning one, at least, hadn't caught on; it dropped in a shuddering heap that even the others wouldn't try to devour. One of those others roared, swinging an overlarge paw at a corner of the dead thing that wasn't in flames, sending it sailing off the porch and into the snow. The flames sputtered, mostly going out, but a fringe of blue and orange still spilled across the exposed parts of the creature's body.