Shadows (18 page)

If anything, he should go faster. Pound the accelerator and get the hell out of there. Those hunters were close, gaining by the second, and they would be on him, so he needed to go, to go, to
gogogo
!

Instead, he eased his foot from the accelerator. His speed dropped, the engine grumbled; ice and snow grabbed the hull. He felt the wind sled slow and stumble. There was a hard
thunk
as the bow skipped over a knee of ice, and then the Spitfire bounced and smacked over a welter of ice floes, their seams stitched with ice that was whisper-thin, no more than two inches thick. Good enough for him. Perfect. He slowed and slowed and watched the darkness gray, then blue, then silver as the churn of the snowmobile grew louder and louder . . .

Now!
He stamped down hard. The engine swelled as the Spitfire screamed to full throttle and plowed over the ice, its hull slapping up and then down like a flat stone skipping across a pond. There was a tremendous
bang
and then—all of a sudden—he was over open water. Cold spray sheeted up all around, but he kept on, straight and true, bracing himself for the sudden lurch he knew would come as soon as the sled regained the ice and snow. He prayed his speed was enough to plane the boat, compensate for the weight of him and his gear and the dog. God, the
dog
. He hoped Raleigh was smart enough to hunker down, or else the impact might throw—

The Spitfire’s bow barreled onto the ice with a jolt and a hop, and then he was past the rift, screaming over the surface. He felt the lake hardening again, the jolts dying. A hard cut to the right, and then he was spilling air, curling around so the bow faced back the way he’d just come.

“Raleigh,
down!
” Cutting the engine, he swept up his rifle, slotting it as he pivoted from the waist, ready to fire—

Just as the snowmobile broke through.

“What the hell do they want?” Ray twisted right and left. “What’s going on?”

No one answered. The Changed had closed round in a circle. Alex and the others were lined up directly across from Daniel, who was still flanked by two ninja-kids. Another held Jack by the scruff of his neck. Spider was beside the boy, loose and limber, corn knife in hand. Jack’s fear-smell—curdled milk and hot urine—was so strong Alex tasted it.

Acne elbowed his way through, followed by Beretta and Leopard. Pain bit into Beretta’s face, but he was steadier on his feet now. His
danger
smell made her pulse skip. Acne clutched two rifles, his own with that gas piston, and another she recognized at once: the Browning X-Bolt that Nathan had given her before that mad dash from Rule.

This close, she also got a good look at the handgun tucked in Leopard’s waistband. She would know a Glock anywhere.

“What do you want from me?” Daniel said. It was costing him to stand. He was hunched into a comma, an arm clamped to his side. “I told you. You can have me. I won’t fight you anymore. Just let Jack go.”

Beretta stared at Daniel for a long second. Acne strode forward, the Browning outstretched.

“What?” Daniel stared at the rifle as if Acne was trying to hand him a python. “I’m not taking that. Give you a chance to shoot me? Fine. You want to kill me, just do it, but—”

“Don’t you get it, kid?” Sharon’s tone was flat. “You get to choose: shoot one of us or little Jackie-boy there gets his throat cut.”

Alex’s mouth dried up. She smelled how on the mark Sharon was. This was tit for tat: give me this, I give you that, and we’ll call it even.

“What?” Ray said. He pushed Ruby behind him. “What the
hell
?”

“Daniel.” Jack’s eyes were buggy with terror. “Daniel, Daniel,
Daniel
. . .”

“I won’t do it,” Daniel gasped. A hard shudder rippled through his body, and one of the ninjas grabbed him before he could fall. Daniel shook him off with a strangled curse. “You can’t make me like you. I’m not a
murderer
.”

“Well, I guess they think you
are
like them,” Sharon ground out. If doom could speak, Alex thought it would have this old woman’s voice. “Whatever you and your friends did, you pissed them off, and now they’re gonna make you pay.”

No, not just pay
. The air was so clogged with the stink of the Changed and the dead and her fellow prisoners—and now with Daniel’s horror and Jack’s terror—that it was as if she was breathing them all in: their histories, their fates. She was certain this was a test. A trial.

A rite.

“Please. You said you’d let Jack go.” Daniel turned to Beretta and Acne. “I’m responsible.
I
organized the attack. Kill me, but leave Jack and these other people out of it,
please
.”

“What happens if he doesn’t choose?” Ray threw a wild look at Sharon as if she might know the answer. “He doesn’t
have
to.”

“I think they got other ideas,” Sharon said.

“I can’t do this.” Daniel’s gaze skipped from one to the other. When his eyes landed on Alex, they grabbed and held. “They can’t ask me to
do
this.”

They could. And they were. She wanted to say something,
anything
. In a movie or a book, this was where the heroine volunteered. Stepped up, did the right thing. It should be her. She did not want to die, but the monster lived inside her head. It had yellow eyes and needle-teeth. It was growing a face. It was a cancer, and she was going to die anyway. Tom would’ve done it. Chris, too. That little kid deserved a chance.

None of the others will.
She could smell it. A bone-cold finger dragged down her spine a knob at a time.
Just do it, do it now before you chicken—

At the corner of her left eye, something blurred, moving fast—

“Ray!” she shouted.
“No!”

The change was sudden and immediate. One moment, the snowmobile was growling over the ice; the next, the light swept heavenward as the heavier treads at the rear plunged into open water. The engine’s hornet-scream cut out. Beyond the headlight, he made out the men, dark as seals. One was already in the water. The guy in front was scrambling over the windscreen onto the fairing. The snowmobile slewed left, and then he heard a ferocious splashing sound and screams: “I’M CAUGHT I’M CAUGHT IT’S PULLING ME UNDER IT’S PUL—”

The sled listed again and the voice cut out. A second later, the light slid from view.

Tom lowered the rifle. His breath came hard and fast. His pulse thundered. Behind, he felt the sled shift as the dog pushed to its feet.

The other man was still railing, his voice reedy with shock:
“Please!”
The guy sounded old, too. “
Please,
I know you’re out there! Help me, please, help me, please! Please, you can’t just let me
die
!”

Oh, but I can.
These men had killed Jed and Grace. The cabin was gone. This was the enemy.

“Please.”
More splashing. “I can’t . . . I can’t feel my legs and—”

Tom clambered out of the sled. “Stay,” he said to the dog, and then he was loping across the ice. The break was a good fifty yards away, so he didn’t go far—maybe fifty, sixty feet. Shucking his parka, he dropped and spread himself over the snow and ice, taking the rest in a low crawl. It occurred to him, only belatedly, that the hunter might have a pistol, but he figured the old guy probably wasn’t suicidal. Pop Tom and he would still drown.

“I’m coming. Keep talking.” He felt the ice change under his body, listened for telltale pops and cracks. He squirmed forward as fast as he could. “Talk to me.”

“Oh, th-thank Ch-Chr-Christ. H-h-here.” The old guy was winded, out of breath; his voice stuttered with cold and fright. “C-ca-can’t g-get ou-out of m-my c-coat . . . duh-duh-dragging m-me . . .”

“I’m almost there.” Tom heard the slop of water over ice, and then his right hand was suddenly wet. Close enough. Four inches would hold a person’s weight. Three might. Two would not. With no light from that sickly green moon and not even the glow from the blazing cabin to light his way, the night was pitch-black. He had no idea if the guy was even on his side of the break. “Move toward my voice. Can you move?”

Splashes, and then the old guy said, “Y-yuh.”

Coming from his left, and very close. “Hold on,” Tom said—

And then he made his first mistake.

Digging in with the toes of his boots, he twisted, using his belly as a pivot point, but he wasn’t paying attention, hadn’t thought through how his body was now parallel to the rift—on a thin lip of rotten ice.

“I’m going to toss you my coat,” he said. “As soon as you feel it, grab on and—”

Two things happened at the same time.

Tom let out a surprised grunt as the old guy’s hand swam out of the dark and clamped down on his right wrist. Before he could pull away, he felt the drag on his arm as the old hunter tried scrambling out of the water, using Tom the way someone might climb a rope ladder.

“Hey, no,
stop
!” Tom shouted. He tried yanking back, but the guy’s fingers dug into him like talons, and Tom had no leverage. He felt himself slipping sideways, and then there was water around his legs, and he was still sliding—

That was when he made his second mistake—the precisely wrong move at precisely the wrong moment—because he was scared.

As soon as the icy water swirled around his legs, Tom let out a yell and tried rearing up onto his knees. His center of gravity shifted.

The ice let out a high, animal-like squeal. There was a
pop
as crisp as a gunshot, followed by a groan and—

CRACK!

And then Tom was in the water, too.

“
No
, Ray!” Ruby shrilled.
“Stop!”

But Ray was past the point of no return. He bulled in with so much speed and force that none of the Changed had time to react. Wrapping one hand around the Browning, Ray planted the other on Acne’s chest and shoved. Acne’s arms windmilled as his boots tangled, dumping him on his ass with a heavy thump.

There was a sound of shotguns being racked and bolts being thrown and handguns being drawn, and then Ray was standing there, dead center in a bristle of weapons, as perfect a bull’s-eye as ever existed. Except he’d jammed the Browning against Beretta’s forehead, and he was screaming, spit flying: “I’ll shoot him, I’ll shoot him,
I’ll fucking shoot him!
”

“Ray!”
Ruby keened, and she started forward, her hand outstretched. “
R—
”

There was an orange flicker, like a bright coal. Ruby stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes growing so huge they were nothing but white with dark motes at their centers. The air ballooned with the stink of wet metal. Something thick and liquid splashed snow.

And then Ruby was screeching, wailing,
screaming
:
“Aaaaahhhhh, aaahhhhhh, aaaahhhhhh!”

Tom yelped in surprise, then choked as cold water gushed down his throat. His airway closed and knotted. A wild, animal panic flooded his veins. He began to thrash, not thinking now at all, terror sheeting a red blaze over his mind. He needed air—where was it? His mouth worked, opening and closing in convulsive, silent gasps as the muscles of his throat fought him, trying to keep his windpipe safe because the lizard part of his brain thought he was drowning. Then, grudgingly, his throat relaxed and he inhaled in a great shriek. He pulled in another breath and then another— and that was all he had time for.

The old hunter leapt onto his back, trying to clamber out of the water. “S-stop!” Tom spluttered, but the old guy was freaked. A split second later, Tom went completely under. The water burned. It was inky; no light at all. Above, on his shoulders, he could feel the old guy’s boots churning, struggling to gain a foothold. He kicked Tom in the forehead. Maybe, in air, Tom would’ve blacked out completely, but the water slowed the boot down. Still, the blow landed, solid enough to hurt. He clawed at the water, grabbing for the old guy’s legs, enough so he realized where the surface was.

His head shattered into thin air. The old guy was at him again, monkeying onto his back, his fingers spidering over Tom’s shoulders, knotting in his hair. His stringy arms latched around Tom’s neck in a stranglehold, and then he was dragging Tom down again. Tom couldn’t reach him, couldn’t break his hold, didn’t have the leverage. It was all Tom could do just to catch a breath as the weight of the old man crushed his throat. Not much time left. The more he fought, the less energy he had to keep afloat. His pulse pounded. Only one thing left to do, but he could feel his mind jabbering:
Are you nuts, are you crazy, are you insane?

Against all reason and instinct, he let himself drop, straight down, slipping beneath the ice.

And pulled them both under.

“Aaaaahhhhhh!”
Ruby screeched.
“Aaahhhhhhh, aaaahhhh, aaahhhh!”

On the snow, Ruby’s left hand lay with the fingers curled like a dead tarantula. Still shrieking, her right hand starred in a bony claw, Ruby stared down at the empty space where her left hand had been only seconds before as her blood jetted from severed arteries.

“Jesus!” Sharon leapt onto Ruby, wrapping her up, bringing the still-screaming woman down to the snow. Clamping both huge hands around Ruby’s wrist, Sharon squeezed. “You sons of bitches, you sons of
bitches
!”

“Ruuubeeeeee!”
Ray bawled. He made one abortive step toward his wife, and then checked himself, swinging the Browning back to Beretta. “Get up, you son of a bitch,
get up
! We’re walking out of here, and if one of you twitches, if one of you
moves—
”

No one twitched or moved, but Beretta did not get up either. The air was electric, fizzy with scents and meanings. There were so many that Alex only had time to think how strange it was that with all these weapons, no one had fired. The only one who’d acted at all was the ninja-kid from Leopard’s crew who’d hacked Ruby’s hand. Another ninja could’ve taken off Ray’s head with the same speed. With all these weapons, all they had to do was take Ray down. Although the Browning’s pull was medium—only five pounds of pressure—the chances that Ray’s finger would exert that much as the bullets chewed through his clothes and into his body were small. Not zero, but so infinitesimal as to make no difference. For that matter, Acne was right there and could take Ray’s feet out from under him with a single powerful kick. Any of them could do
anything.
Ruby was an afterthought, a display and show of power—and Ray should already be dead.