The End of Never (31 page)

Calmly, Joseph spoke. “Rise. I care not to know if you are an angel or demon, but you will help her. The witch has brought her here, certain you would follow. And she only knows of you because I stumbled upon you and dared to rave of your rarefied existence carelessly in a journal. I now regret doing both, but I am no more than the walking dead until my bones return to the ground.”

Nodding his head, Kraven crouched to his knees. The eerie glow of the stern apparition faded into the current like the dissipation of sooty smoke from a snuffed candle into the air.

Bursting in anticipation, the tendons of his kneeling bones erupted upward toward the surface. A missile seeking his target, he swam furiously, breaching in seconds the distance to the moonlit, lolling waves. Kraven heaved as his head broke above the water and the warm sea breeze stung his aching lungs.

Sopping and tangled, his raven mane blinded his eyes until he flung his face toward the shore. With his legs treading the current to keep afloat, he heard the chant over the cries of a seagull circling his head. “Hush, stupid bird,” he said, spitting a gulp of salty ocean water from his tongue.

On the lonely shore, a round woman with wrinkled skin and a shock of white hair on her head danced slowly in a circle, her hips gyrating to the beat of her palms against her thighs. Her simple dress had been woven from tired rags. Around her neck draped a deerskin pouch. Inside the pouch was a fine powder that she scattered beneath the ragged hem of her dress.

“Jasmine!” A voice shouted her name as if it were a curse.

Jasmine silenced her chant and peered to the top of a close sand dune. Alexandra stood as a boulder waiting to tumble.

“Girl,” Jasmine laughed. “Ya done come.”

Swallowing her fear, Alexandra leapt forward, her legs and arms a tornado barreling down upon the witch. Cackling at the moon, Jasmine threw back her head.

“Leave us alone,” Alexandra shouted as she ran.

In the center of a circle of fine, sprinkled powder, Jasmine grinned. “What be da matta?” she asked when Alexandra stumbled at her feet. Raising her palms to her face, she puckered her lips. A chalky mist blew from her upturned hands toward Alexandra's anxious face.

On her knees, the girl recoiled as the grains grazed her skin. With her fists flying to her neck, she gasped for air, words unable to escape her choking throat. With her screams trapped, she lunged at Jasmine's bare feet, her nails scratching at the witch's cracked skin.

Scattering the coarse powder on top of the girl's head, Jasmine bent to her knees to gaze into the gasping face of Alexandra. “Dis,” she said, rubbing her thumbs against the tips of her fingers, “are da bones of da dead Uncle Joey,” she said, laughing as she upturned the leather pouch upon Alexandra's auburn tangles.

“Die!” Alexandra shouted as her flesh tingled. Her cramping muscles betrayed her and withered. The glint of a steel blade in the moonlight turned her green eyes to the sky.

“No girl,” Jasmine sang as she raised a knife above Alexandra's head. “Ya gonna do da dying.”

A wave burst on the shore, carrying Kraven. He flew at the witch. Muffling her cries with his palms, he tore the blade from her hands.

“Demon,” Jasmine commanded softly, “You will work for me.”

He snatched a handful of her dress in his fists and whirled her head around to face him. His grasp tightened.

Shaking her head, she sighed and collapsed beneath his grip, her heart swelling inside her chest. Closing her eyes, she released her last breath as her heart stopped beating.

Easing her body to the sand, Kraven clutched the knife blade in his palms.

“Kraven,” Alexandra sputtered, the word catching in her dry throat.

His knife poised above the dead heart of the witch.

“No,” she pleaded and stretched her arms for the blade. “She is already dead.”

Scooping her into his arms, Kraven cradled Alexandra against his chest.

“I'm fine,” she panted. “My father! Hurry!” Alexandra pleaded as Kraven jumped toward the dunes.

On the driveway, the blood streaming from her father's neck warmed his cooling skin. Behind his head, blood soaked his scalp.

“Alexandra,” he whispered.

She bent helplessly over her father. “Daddy!” she cried, a tear falling from her cheek to his closed eyelid.

Kraven could see that the wound was too deep, and that there was only one way.

The intimate crowd around the body kept silent. Bowing his head, Callahan nudged June from the side of her son. As his hand slipped from her palm, Callahan and Brad flanked her shoulders, each with a gentle grip upon her trembling arms. Nestling at Jonathan's feet, Jack rested his head atop his folded paws and waited patiently. Taylor leaned into Benjamin and squeezed his hand.

From the waistband of her cut-off jean shorts, Alexandra withdrew Jasmine's dagger.

“There,” Kraven told her, pointing to the veins pulsing in his upturned wrist. With a steady grip upon the wooden handle of the knife, Alexandra sliced his flesh, ripping the skin asunder.

The searing blood dripped downward into his palm. The scent of smoke smoldered in Alexandra's flaring nostrils. Kraven met her eyes, allowing her a last chance to change her mind. Gripping her medallion in her palm, she nodded her head.

“Falling into forever,” she whispered over her raw, bitten lips.

Kraven smeared his blood into the gaping bite wound in Jonathan's neck. A cold sweat erupted from his flesh as Jonathan swayed upon the ground. With his body locked in the grasp of a spasm of aftershocks, the blood mended the jagged tears in his flesh.

With his voice weak and no more than a rattling echo in his throat, Jonathan patted the auburn tresses spilled about his chest. “Alexandra,” he said, brushing a tear from his daughter's cheek.

“Thank you,” Alexandra whispered to Kraven. She took his bloodstained palm into her own.

On the shore, the rising tide claimed the body of Jasmine and swallowed her whole. As the current carried her body to sea, the first rays of a red dawn broke upon the horizon. Scuttling across the heavens, a low-hanging bank of soggy, grey clouds swept toward Peyton Manor.

A siren bellowed through the trees from Black Hall Trail, just as a burst of rain dropped on the anxious souls staring into the sky.

Raising her soaked face to the clouds, Alexandra shouted. “It's over!” she cried. “Now and forever.”

Forever
. The word pounded in Kraven's mind.

Alexandra sealed her grip upon the medallion dangling around her neck.
Forever
, she answered his plea silently, a shy grin etched into her freckled cheeks.

32
Homecoming

Jack sniffed at a bleached pile of rooster bones heaped under a moss-draped oak tree. The dog yelped at the sour, rotten stench of the slain birds. Snarling, he barked at the fragile skeletons, his paws scratching at the dirt.

“Here boy,” Benjamin called and patted his thigh.

Mocking the yelp of the frightened dog, Callahan whined as he sifted through the soot-stained, rain-soaked heap of scorched wood that had been a shanty shack in the woods. “Nothing,” Callahan sighed. “The fire destroyed anything and everything that was here, which was not much from what I can tell,” he said, kicking over a rusted pail.

“I hope they've both been shark breakfast by now,” Benjamin said, wiping at bits of bloody brown fur clinging to his t-shirt. He and Callahan had fed the body of the beast to the ocean at dawn.

“Do you hear that?” Callahan asked as a pile of moss trembled next to his foot.

A shy whimper beckoned Jack closer, his paws clawing at the soggy lump.

“Look at that,” Benjamin said.

The piercing blue eyes of a snow-white wolf pup emerged from the sloppy mess.

“A souvenir after all,” Callahan exclaimed, lifting the pup in his arms, a pink tongue lapping at his chin.

“This place is creepy,” Benjamin said, clutching at his growling gut. “Let's get back to the house.”

“The pup is hungry, too,” Callahan said, as the pup nibbled shyly at the fingers clenched around his chest. “Ouch,” he cried, a drop of blood swelling beneath a shallow puncture on his thumb.

Batting his blue eyes at the humorless face glaring down at him, the wolf pup sighed, his wagging tail brushing away ash from Callahan's rolled shirt sleeve.

“I'll follow you,” Benjamin said.

Callahan found the trampled trail through the woods to the driveway. “And good riddance,” he said, shaking his head as he threw a last glance at the smoldering heap of embers.

“Do you smell bacon?” Callahan asked, cradling his souvenir as Benjamin followed close upon his heels.

“Yes,” Benjamin said, his stomach gurgling louder.

Ian was yawning enthusiastically as he shuffled through the screen door from the kitchen to the porch. He assumed a perch on the wooden swing beside Taylor.

“Good morning one and all,” he said, tipping his white head to the ladies and gentlemen gathered on the porch.

“Sleep well?” June asked sheepishly from a chair at the patio table.

“Like a baby,” Ian offered, swiping at his eyes with a handkerchief. “What a mess I am,” he said, patting the lapel of his seersucker jacket.

“No worries, Rumpelstiltskin,” Taylor said, braiding her hair over the side of her shoulder.

“When did you get here, my dear?” Ian asked. “June, how long was I asleep?”

“Long enough,” June said, standing up from her chair. “Alex is here as well. And Jonathan,” she said, winking.

Leaning back in the swing, Ian crossed his arms over his chest.

Patting his shoulder, Taylor leaned into his ear. “The crazies in the woods are gone,” she explained, slicing her neck with an invisible dagger.

On the cement patio below the porch steps, the flames of a charcoal grill licked a frying pan resting on top.

“Patrick,” June called down to her cook. “Is it working?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Patrick assured her, wiping beads of sweat from his crinkled brow with the tail of his grease-splattered apron. “We don't need a stove for a proper breakfast.”

“Maybe the power company will finally have us back to normal today,” June said wistfully, retreating to the screen door.

“Back to normal?” Taylor asked from the swing.

“Perhaps,” June said, winking, before the screen door clapped closed behind her.

Poking at the fatty strips of bacon sizzling in the pan, Patrick reminded himself not to ask too many questions. June explained there had been a fire in the woods. She told him some trespassers had been warned to leave. She beamed when she said Jonathan had finally come home. Patrick decided that way too much had happened while he was gone, and that he would stick around during the next storm.

Swaying gently on the porch swing, Ian admired that the cast had not slowed down Taylor. “Does it hurt?” Ian asked, concerned when he noticed dried splotches of mud splattered across the cast.

“No,” Taylor sighed, glancing at a new name and phone number printed in black marker on the plaster cast. “Call me! —Brad,” she read, giggling as a familiar voice echoed from inside the kitchen.

“Good morning one and all,” Callahan greeted them with the wolf pup in his arms.

Behind him, Benjamin re-read an e-mail on the screen of his cell phone. “Taylor!” he shouted. “No school again today.”

“Woo-hoo!” she shouted. “I can't wait to tell Alexandra.”

“Another victory for Miss Peyton,” Callahan said, shifting the shy pup into Benjamin's arms.

At the top of the staircase on the second-floor balcony, June rapped her knuckles softly on the bedroom door before she entered. Perched upon the end of the bed, Alexandra studied the peaceful face of her resting father and nodded her head up and down, her cell phone clamped to her ear by her shoulder.

“Yes, Mom,” she said. “I got the e-mail, too. No school again today. The headmaster never cancels classes, but I'm sure not going to complain about another day off.”

Pacing the floor, Kraven waited patiently for her to end the call. June settled into a rocking chair at the bedside of her son.

Alexandra listened closely to the phone, her eyes on her bare toes. “Sounds like you might be in Miami for a while if you don't find any clues soon about what's making those people sick,” she said. “I'm glad you saw Mr. Woodward. I'll tell Taylor to call him. He has no phone? What happened to his phone?”

Jonathan stirred slowly awake. “Alexandra,” he said, opening his eyes.

“Miss you, Mom,” Alexandra said swiftly, before her father could speak again. “I'll call you later. Taylor is going to spend the night, by the way. Love you. Bye,” she spilled before ending the call.

With his lids flickering open, Jonathan rubbed his eyes with the butt of his palms. “Good morning,” he said, unsure of the time.

Scooting closer, Alexandra bent over his chest and clasped his neck for a hug. “Don't ever go away again,” she said in his ear.