Give the Devil His Due (The Sanheim Chronicles, Book Three) (17 page)

She could have turned into the Horseman and traveled faster, but she wanted to keep her head clear. Taking a form was liberating, but it was also confusing. It was hard to tell exactly where she ended and the mythical form began.

Even now, in her own body using her own two feet, she wasn’t alone. The ghosts in her head raged back and forth at each other. She had hoped that her experiment in the graveyard would quiet them, but there was no silence for Kate, just a never-ending stream of consciousness from very different personalities.

As she walked, Kate kept repeating a mantra to herself, something that made her feel almost sane.

I am the last
, she kept repeating over and over, trying to embrace it and make it her own.
I can save Quinn
, she added after a while, as she walked over hills and through woods, occasionally crossing someone’s backyard or through a suburban neighborhood.

Despite her human form, she walked very fast. If anyone had seen her — and most of Loudoun was long since quiet at this hour and at this time of year — they might have seen a dark blur of a young woman dressed in mourning clothes.

I am the last
, she repeated again,
and I can save Quinn
.

The voices in her mind shouted.

“You can’t bring back the dead,” said Kyle. “You can attack Hell, but it won’t matter. You can’t save him.”

“Yes, you can,” Quinn replied. “Come and rescue me, Kate. I know you can do it.”

If she let herself stop, Kate would have torn her hair out in a blind fury. Can, can’t. Will, won’t. Each footstep echoed her impotence. Could she trust Kieran? Could she defeat Sanheim, whom Lilith had insisted “rules forever”?

The questions wouldn’t stop circling around her brain, and each answer had an avatar to represent it. They wouldn’t quit and they wouldn’t shut up. Kate knew that if she had any chance of saving Quinn — of setting free the hordes of trapped and unhappy spirits — she would have to end this ceaseless debate.

To do that, she had to fight a battle she desperately didn’t want to fight. She would have rather faced Sanheim himself than return to where she was going.

A part of her wanted to abandon this folly, to return to hunting criminals. But another part knew that was cowardice. Kate Tassel was many things, but she was not a coward. She would not let fear rule her, not anymore.

So she headed to one place she had studiously avoided since leaving the asylum, the one place where she would have to face her most terrible memories.

That was how she found herself, deep in the night, stepping onto the battlefield at Ball’s Bluff.

*****

Ball’s Bluff was the site of hundreds of deaths, but there was only one that mattered to Kate now. She stared at the spot where Quinn had died. She had visited his grave, a memorial where his body lay rotting in the dirt, yet this was where his spirit lay.

She knelt on the ground and touched her head to the dirt, as if she was praying before an altar. But there was no prayer that would bring Quinn back. Kate knew that from bitter experience. She could still see him lying there, dying.

You are the love of my life
, he had told her.

It was true, but also ironic. Kate was no romantic. She’d had a string of boyfriends in high school and college, some more serious than others, but had never felt truly connected to another human being. A therapist she saw during high school — at her father’s insistence — had suggested it was because of the death of her mother. She was afraid to let anyone into her life for fear they would leave her too.

When she met Quinn, she had actively resisted her own attraction to him. Maybe she knew somehow. Madame Zora had insisted she was a psychic, so perhaps on some level, she saw what was coming and tried to fight it. But she had failed miserably. When she finally trusted Quinn, there’d been no holding back.

And the instant they became lovers, everything had changed. She shared his thoughts, his memories. While he was alive, it had been a miracle — the ability to know a person so intimately and completely. After he died, it was nothing but a millstone around her neck. She couldn’t see anything without knowing how Quinn would view it, say anything without knowing if Quinn would agree or disagree. He was lost to her, beyond her ability to touch or hold, and yet always there, so persistently present that she had forgotten who she was.

It had to stop. She had to find some way to master her inner demons if she was going to take on Sanheim by herself.

Kate pulled herself up from the ground and sat cross-legged on the spot where Quinn had died. She closed her eyes and summoned the white room with padded walls, the cell within her own mind.

Inside, there was yet another battle going on, the ceaseless conflict that had become the bane of her existence.

“Even if she tries, she’ll fail,” Kyle said. “Better to live here, find what comfort she can, than go off on this insane quest.”

“Find what comfort she can?” Quinn asked. “What’s that supposed to mean? Find comfort in killing people?”

“Well, what else does she have? Is she supposed to become a nun because you kicked the bucket?” Kyle responded.

In her mind, Kate stood staring at the two of them, so close they could punch each other. Sometimes they did that, coming to physical blows. The Horseman and banshee stood outside their circle, watching and waiting. Kate wasn’t sure, but she thought they knew what was coming.

Kate stepped forward and cleared her throat.

“Kyle, you need to leave,” she said firmly.

He looked at her mockingly.

“Oh yeah, where would I go?” Kyle responded. “I’m here because I infected you. You are what you fear and what you fear is me. You became me, remember? That’s why you killed all those
moidin
here last year. You finally embraced what you are.”

“No,” Kate said. “You were never what I truly feared. That was losing Quinn. And that happened.”

“So you say now,” Kyle said. “But I see the blood on your hands, Kate. You can’t banish me. I am you.”

“You are a figment of my imagination, created by my guilt, my loss and a thirst for vengeance,” she responded. “It’s time for you to die.”

In the room of her own mind, Kate drew a knife. It was a sharp blade with a blood-red handle — the same weapon that had killed Quinn. She knew instinctively it was the weapon she needed, and so it was how she armed herself.

Kyle stood before her and started clapping.

“Bravo, Kate,” he said. “That’s the solution to everything, isn’t it? Violence. You think you can get rid of me that way?”

“There are probably other ways,” Kate responded. “But I think this is the perfect one to be finished with you."

“Well,” he said. “Two can play that game.”

Kyle reached back and pulled out his own knife. Kate wasn’t surprised at all when she realized it was the same one she held in her hand. It was after all, the knife that had caused her mental breakdown in the first place.

“Shall we play for keeps?” he asked. “If I win, I own you. You’ll give up this mad idea of saving Quinn and go back to hunting for me. Together, you and I will become the ultimate nightmare of Loudoun County. Everyone will be afraid of us.”

Kate nodded.

“And if I win, you’re done once and for all,” Kate said. “No more lies about how I became you, no more whispers about who to kill and why. I will never see or hear you again. You will no longer haunt me.”

“Deal,” Kyle said and smiled. “But your friends here can’t help you. It’s just you and me at dawn on a battlefield. A proper duel.”

*****

The white room fell away and in its place was the real world, the battlefield at Ball’s Bluff.

Kate couldn’t see the sun yet, but she could sense dawn coming. It was all still in her head, but it didn’t matter. The real world and her own mind had finally come together for a showdown.

Kyle might not be real, but the consequences of the fight would be. If she lost… she banished the thought from her mind. She wouldn’t lose. She wouldn’t fail Quinn again.

She moved forward and squared off against Kyle, holding the knife in front of her.

“Good luck, honey,” Quinn said from the sidelines. The Headless Horseman and the banshee watched in silence. This was her battle, the one she supposed she had been fighting since her mother died.

“Your mom tried to fight me too, did you know that?” Kyle said as he took up the position opposite her. “First she tried to scratch my eyes out, then she tried to grab my hair. She fought like a girl, Kate.”

Kate waved her knife menacingly in front of her.

“Wait till you see how I fight,” she said.

She feinted once and then closed in. Kyle jabbed and thrust in a fury, cutting her twice on the face and once on the arm, laughing as he did so.

“You’re my bitch now, Kate,” Kyle said. “You’ll do exactly what I say when I say it.”

He cut her twice more, once on the leg and another time on her side. She knew the cuts weren’t real, but they still hurt.

“You couldn’t have chosen a better weapon for me,” Kyle said. “Do you know how many people I’ve killed with a knife? And this one… it has power.”

Kate ignored his macho talk as Kyle flashed the blade again. She barely dodged it in time. He was playing with her, she knew, confident of his victory.

The two kept circling each other, with Kyle feinting and slicing at her, and Kate waiting for an opening. She ignored the cuts on her face and body and concentrated.

She watched Kyle move and tried to anticipate what he was going to do. It was difficult at first. Kyle struck with a speed and agility she couldn’t hope to match. He was right — the knife was clearly his weapon.

But despite her cuts, Kate’s mind felt sharper than it had in months. In a way, the wounds he inflicted had helped. They forced her to concentrate and she realized that the voices in her head were now silent. The quiet was invigorating. She found that she could almost distance herself from the fight and watch it objectively.

He feinted to the left and then came at her from the right — and she dodged. He switched hands and tried to catch her off guard with a stab to her stomach — and she moved away. Kyle howled at her, coming head-on, and she parried and pushed him back.

“Stop dancing and fight me,” Kyle screamed and he wasn’t laughing now. She could see the frustration in his eyes, his easy victory slipping away. “You can’t stay on defense forever.”

As Kate watched Kyle fight, she finally understood what a part of her had suspected all along. If he was nothing more than a phantom of her own mind, he wasn’t the real Kyle Thompson. She could predict his actions because he was simply her. The real Kyle Thompson was dead; he had never infected her. It was time to banish this mock image to the oblivion where it belonged.

Kyle once again rushed in — making his first, and last, mistake. He feinted left, but Kate was ready for him. As he switched directions and aimed a blow at her right shoulder, she dodged and then made her own feint, pretending to strike to his left. Kyle fell for it, moving his knife to block her where he assumed her blow would land.

It wasn’t until he saw her smiling face that he realized he’d been tricked. Kyle looked down to see a knife in his stomach.

“No, no, that’s not right at all,” he said.

As Kyle stood there stunned, Kate withdrew the weapon and — with all the power and force she could muster — rammed it into his throat before pulling it out again. Kyle staggered back and blood gurgled from his throat.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said in a rasping voice. “You can’t be free of me. I am you. You’re my…”

Kate rushed forward and put the knife directly in his heart.

“I’m nobody’s bitch,” she said.

Kyle stared at her wide-eyed and then slumped to the ground. He tried to smile at her, a last leer that indicated he would be back, but he couldn’t manage it before the life left his eyes. Kyle lay in the dirt, dead.

For a moment, she waited for him to return, her mind reincarnating him. She had tried to banish him many times before, only to face a stronger and more determined foe. But this time felt different. As she looked at his body, it disappeared into dust. Kate looked up at her three companions standing on the sidelines.

“I’m not him,” she said. “I never was. Sanheim is a liar.”

Quinn smiled sweetly and the banshee gave a slight nod of approval.

“I created him as a way to justify my actions,” Kate continued, almost to herself. “He was a way to give into my own fears about myself. But I don’t have to live with him anymore.”

Quinn again nodded approvingly, smiling at her. For the first time in a long time, she was beginning to feel like herself.

But it wasn’t enough, and she knew it. She smiled sadly at Quinn, the knife still in her hand.

“Quinn,” she started.

Quinn stepped forward and broke into a broad grin.

“You don’t need to fight me, Kate,” he said. “All you have to do — all you ever had to do — was ask.”