Give the Devil His Due (The Sanheim Chronicles, Book Three) (22 page)

Kieran looked at her, clearly impressed.

“What happened to you?” he asked. “When you left, you were all... well, I don’t want to say batshit crazy, but... actually, I do want to say batshit crazy. And now?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kate said. “The point is, I know what I want to do now. I just need you to tell me how to do it.”

They talked for a few more minutes before eventually Kieran bowed out, insisting he needed a shower.

Kate and Tim watched him go. When he shut the door, she turned to Tim and spoke quietly.

“I still don’t trust him,” she said.

“You think he’s working for Sanheim?” Tim asked.

“I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “Kieran seems to always work for himself. But he’s playing an angle, I can sense it.”

“You’re probably right,” Tim nodded. “I’m just not sure what his game plan could be. Surely it’s not in Sanheim’s interest to encourage you to open the gateway to the underworld and march on through?”

“I wouldn’t think so, but...”

“If it helps, I’ll keep a close eye on him,” Tim said.

Kate looked surprised.

“I thought this would be the moment when we parted ways,” she said. “I want to thank you for your help. Without you, I would’ve killed him. And I’m more convinced now that would have been a mistake.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I want to keep helping,” Tim said.

“Don’t you have a paper to run?” she asked.

“I left Rebecca in charge,” he said. “By the time I get back from my extended vacation, the staff will have extra appreciation for me.”

Kate gave him a searching look.

“Why?” she asked finally. “Why help me? Or is this about helping Quinn?”

“There are a lot of reasons,” Tim asked. “Some of it is guilt about Lord Halloween...”

Kate waved her hand to protest, but Tim continued.

“But most of it is simpler than that. I’m a reporter. I follow the story. And this is the best, most important story I will ever cover, even if no one believes a word of it.”

*****

Kieran listened to them from the bathroom. They talked in low voices, but he was practiced at the art of eavesdropping.

Not that he really needed to know what they were saying. Of course they didn’t trust him. He wasn’t hurt by that in the least. They were right to suspect him.

When he was satisfied they were no longer discussing him, he turned on the shower and stepped into the hot spray.

The tough part about making risky plans wasn’t the fear of failure. He’d come to expect failure. His problem was always when things started going well. He had gone into this venture almost sure that Kate would kill him on sight.

But she hadn’t, and the next part of the plan had been to make her sane again, which he viewed as likely impossible. When Grace died, he’d talked to her constantly for at least three years, a habit Sawyer eventually demanded he stop on pain of death.

But now here was Kate, apparently cured — and Kieran hadn’t lifted a finger. She had already even embraced the next part of the plan.

Things were going so well that Kieran started to worry that he would actually have to follow through on his own mad idea.

Kate was right of course — Kieran had his own angle to play. And everything depended on it.

Chapter 18

Quinn had been walking for three days and he still found the world here impossible to understand.

It was given to abrupt and confusing shifts, like when he’d run through the mountain door and emerged at the entrance to the abandoned amusement park. When he was inside one part of it, like the cornfield, it was all encompassing. The five of them had walked for half a day under a bright blue sky through rows and rows of corn until they finally emerged.

Suddenly they stood at the edge of a wide open, strangely colored valley buffeted by fierce winds.

“Welcome to Ireland,” Carol said behind him as he looked over the alien landscape. “Or at least Sanheim’s version of it.”

Quinn never liked the cornfield, finding it creepy even after Kyle died. But now he would have preferred walking the whole way to their destination in the corn. At least it felt familiar.

The new landscape was almost pretty. They walked in tall grass that was often over their knees, followed gurgling hillside streams and saw a huge snow-capped mountain in the distance. It was a world devoid of civilization. There were no roads, signs, houses or strip malls to mar the landscape, just a picturesque land of hills and valleys.

Except what made the landscape alien was also alarming.

The tall grass was red and sharp. Quinn scratched his hands more than once when he dropped them to his sides. The streams were brown and muddy, and Quinn could swear he heard whispers coming from them.

As they walked, they sometimes heard shrieks and other scary and unfamiliar noises. They never saw anything, but it was a constant reminder that, as Janus said repeatedly, “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”

They found a house on the second day, a small cottage that might have seemed cute if its walls weren’t blood-stained. Its attic gave off an odor so sickening that none of them dared to investigate. On day three, Buzz stumbled across a body that was half-decayed, its eyes eaten out of its sockets. There was no sign of what had killed it.

Instead of a stark but beautiful landscape, the world around them seemed to hum with violence and malice. The dark purple sky above them reinforced this notion. Quinn felt like it was just biding its time before springing a deadly assault on them.

Just the five of them were traveling: Quinn, Buzz, Carol, Janus and Elyssa. Buzz had wanted to take more scarecrows with them, but Quinn had decided that a large host of traveling straw men was likely to bring them too much attention.

While it was possible Sanheim knew everything that happened in this world, Quinn doubted it. Sanheim clearly was informed that Kyle was dead, but beyond that, he probably didn’t know where Quinn was headed next. Or at least Quinn hoped so. It was best to try to keep a low profile, one that didn’t include marching with a small army of scarecrows.

Reluctantly, Buzz had left them behind, after putting one in charge he deemed “trustworthy,” a process that took several hours and included multiple interrogations to ensure the scarecrows would not flee or turn on them after they left. But their religion, it seemed, had morphed into worshiping the Prince of Sanheim, something that made Quinn uncomfortable but pleased Buzz.

“There’s no better way to ensure loyalty,” he said decisively.

“Just like they were loyal to Kyle?” Quinn asked sarcastically.

“He abused, tortured and killed them,” Buzz responded. “You can hardly blame them for not mourning his loss.”

Quinn didn’t give it much thought. He was far more concerned with where they were going — and whether they could even get there — than he was with what happened afterward.

His worst fear was probably the most practical and mundane: what happened if they got lost? With no roads or signs, it was impossible to know if they were going in the right direction. The stars in the sky were unfamiliar, and for all Quinn knew, the purple sun rose in a different spot every day.

Quinn might have been more concerned if not for Janus’ presence. After Carol outlined where they were headed, Janus had inexplicably and confidently taken the lead. Quinn had no way of ascertaining if he was right, and when he questioned his friend, he received monosyllabic answers. Yet he remembered how in the cornfield maze Janus had led the way. At every crossroads, he always chose correctly. And since Quinn had no alternative, he had to trust that Janus was right.

Quinn dropped back, ruminating about the dangers around them. Buzz had found the body only a couple of hours ago and it still bothered him. He noticed Elyssa had drifted off from the others, while Buzz stayed behind them all, “watching our backs,” he said.

“So what lives here exactly?” Quinn asked Carol.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Well, there’s a lot more than just people here,” Quinn said. “I’ve seen some strange stuff, not including the walking scarecrows. There were the… what did Janus call them? The sluagh? The creatures that flew like birds?”

“The spirits of dead sinners,” Carol said. “Never seen any, but I’ve heard of them.”

“There was a giant white Wyrm when I first got here too,” he added. “And I keep hearing animal sounds. Where do these monsters come from? Are all of these things created by Sanheim?”

“I don’t really know, but I have some guesses,” Carol responded.

“You know more about this stuff than I do. I’d take any theory you have.”

“Well, I think they’re all people,” she said.

“The sluagh definitely weren’t people,” Quinn said. “Or not anymore.”

“That’s my point,” Carol said. “From what I can tell, when we arrive here, we’re all human. But then I think eventually we get pulled off into different areas of control.”

“Areas?”

“Like Halloweenland,” she said. “Places under the direct control of a person given power by Sanheim. Kyle was nothing on his own. Sanheim clearly acquired him for the express purpose of eliminating you and, eventually, Kate. He gave him power and, by proxy, Kyle exerted some control over others.”

“That’s why his followers turned into scarecrows like him,” Quinn said.

“Exactly,” Carol said. “But I don’t think Kyle is the only one. I haven’t been here that long, but I’ve already seen enough creatures to give the people of Leesburg nightmares for years. I bet Sanheim would say they’re real monsters. But my guess is they were once people too, and have fallen under the sway of one of Sanheim’s lieutenants.”

“Lieutenants?” Quinn asked. “Is that Buzz’s military influence on you?”

“Probably,” she smiled and looked in Buzz’s direction. “But it fits in a way. As far as I know, no one here has power except for what Sanheim gives them. So he parcels it out to a few people he finds interesting, and they form a cult around themselves. The sluagh, for example. I’d wager Sanheim turned someone into the first one, who then recruited others.”

“I saw a whole pack,” Quinn said.

“There’s a constant supply of new people,” she said. “How many people die each day in the mortal world? Again, not all of them come here. If they did, I think poor Ireland would be rapidly overpopulated. But there are still plenty of new arrivals all the time. They show up as human and either fall in with a group that turns them into something else, like sluagh or scarecrows, or…”

“They die,” Quinn said. “So that corpse back there?”

“It could be someone who arrived and was unlucky,” she said. “Or maybe it was someone thrown out of the group? I don’t know.”

Quinn walked on for several more yards lost in thought.

“I’m not sure you’re right, though,” he said, finally. “You said no one has power except for what Sanheim gives out. But I don’t think that’s true. Look at Janus. He’s up there leading the way and I have no clue how he’s doing that. When we were in the haunted house, he opened a door that Elyssa and I couldn’t. In the maze, he knew where to go. How do you explain that? It doesn’t make sense that Sanheim would give him any power.”

Carol walked in silence as she considered what was said.

“You have a point,” she said. “But I can’t explain it.”

“Even me,” Quinn went on. “When I rescued Elyssa, I picked up a stone and threw it. But I could have sworn it wasn’t there a moment before. It was like it was there because I needed it to be.”

“We talked about this the other day. If that’s true, then why haven’t you conjured an ATV or something to get to Crowley faster? Or at least a horse?”

Quinn shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t explain it. But I stand by my original point. I don’t think Sanheim is the only power here.”

“You may be right, honey,” Carol said and shrugged. “But you’d do well to remember he has considerably more power than the ability to summon a stone when he needs it.”

“I know — I saw him,” Quinn said. “I can’t remember it all but… he was pretty damn ugly. And he seemed powerful.”

Carol sighed.

“I’ve been weighing whether to tell you this next part,” she said. “I’m just worried how you’ll take it.”

“You have to tell me now,” Quinn said and smiled. “I’m a reporter. If you don’t, I’ll just pester you until you do.”

“You’ve seen Lilith’s letter by now, yes?” Carol asked. “’Lord Sanheim rules forever.’”

“Yes, Kieran gave it to us,” Quinn said.

“That little shit,” she said. “I was the one who translated that book for him, did he tell you that? In those days I would have done anything for him. I practically worshipped the ground he walked on.”

“That’s hard to imagine.”

“I was a stupid, vain teenager,” she said, still looking exactly like one. “I told Kate this, but I had never been really accepted where I grew up in West Virginia. After high school, I scraped together enough money to make my way to London and one day…”

“You met Kieran,” Quinn finished.