The Wild Road (6 page)

The neighborhood was quiet, but that was merely a lull-he heard doors banging and car engines roaring, saw tiny children crying and screaming, throwing down their book bags on the concrete sidewalks while their mothers ignored them and leaned on chain link fences, cigarettes dangling from their fingers.

Folks going to work, school. It was only Thursday.

Lannes stood for a moment, watching the woman posed frozen on the sidewalk, her gaze sharp, thoughtful. She was still wearing only socks. He needed to get her some good shoes if they were going to keep on like this. A first-aid kit for her feet, maybe.

They walked down the sidewalk to a small brick house surrounded by a chain-link fence decorated with plastic windmills shaped like birds. Yellow grass and bushy weeds filled the small lawn, which was covered in stone birdbaths and bird feeders that hung from iron poles jammed into the earth, leaning at an angle. The feeders were empty, and there was no water in the baths.

The fence gate stood ajar. Lannes and the woman hesitated, staring over the threshold at dirty windows covered in curtains yellowed with age.

“Think the boogeyman lives in there?” asked the woman. “Or Mister Rogers?”

Lannes grunted, extending his senses into the home. Listening with his mind. Someone was in there…but that was all he could determine.

“Stay behind me,” he said, ignoring the amused surprise that flashed through her eyes-an amusement that faded just as soon as he started walking up the path to the front door, deliberately taking long strides so that he would reach the house before her. The woman hobbled behind him, her presence at the back of his mind sparking with irritation. It made him think of Charlie.

Wait, his brother had said. I’m sending help. Don’t go alone.

Well. He was not alone. And he could not wait. Those instincts in his heart had been pushing and pulling from the moment he had found that note-earlier even, if he considered the woman-and it was now or never. He knew it. Even if he did not understand why.

Fate. Moments passing in time. Moments that will never come again.

And knowing just when to catch them was another kind of magic all of its own.

Lannes knocked on the front door, stepping sideways as the woman neared. His bound wings ached. So did his nerves. He had spent too much time alone to be well equipped for playing hero. Up until now, his only purposes in life had been simple: Mind his own business. Cause no harm. Never be discovered.

He heard a shuffling sound. The door opened. An old man stood on the other side of the screen, wearing a ratty blue bathrobe that gaped at the front revealing a scarred pale torso and a pair of striped pajama bottoms that hung low over wide hips. His face sagged. His nose was red. He had no hair on his head, but plenty on his chest. White and bristly.

Find Orwell Price, the note had said.

“Who the hell are you?” growled the man.

“Mr. Price?” Lannes inquired. “We were hoping to speak with you.”

“I’m not buying, I’m not converting, and everyone under the age of thirty-five deserves to be shot,” the man snapped. “Get off my porch.”

“Hey,” said the woman, stepping close to the screen door. “This is important.”

“I’ve got jock itch more important than you, lady,” he replied, then looked at her. Lannes was certain Orwell had already seen the woman, but perhaps his eyesight was bad. He blinked, reaching up to rub his left eye…and went very still.

The woman’s breath caught. “Do you know me?”

“No,” Orwell whispered, sagging backward. “No. Who did…who did you say you were again?”

“We didn’t,” Lannes said. “But we were told to find you.”

Orwell was still looking at the woman, who shifted uncomfortably, leaning in toward Lannes. She said, “Please, we need to talk.”

“Talk,” echoed the old man, his eyes narrowing. At first Lannes thought he meant for them to continue standing on the porch, but then, haltingly, he unlocked the screen door. He did not open it. He backed away, deeper into the shadows of the house. Lannes and the woman shared a quick look, but it was done, they were here. No turning back.

Lannes entered first. Very reluctantly. It was dark inside. Piles of laundry, dirty or otherwise, were on the floor, along with stacks of magazines that had fallen over and some bags of rank-smelling garbage that needed to be taken out. A television buzzed in the background. Some news program. Talk of a major hotel fire in Chicago. Investigation ongoing.

It was a small house with a lot of walls. Lannes’ chest tightened. It was hard to breathe. He swallowed hard, trying to focus on the woman, the old man and nothing else. No time for claustrophobia. No time.

“Ignore the mess,” Orwell said gruffly. “I don’t get company.”

“Why did you let us in?” Lannes asked. “Do you know this woman?”

The old man ignored his questions. “You said you were told to find me? Who did that?”

“It was on a note,” replied the woman carefully. “Some…odd things have been happening to me. We hoped you could explain them.”

“Explain odd things?” Orwell laughed, but it was tinged with nervousness. “That’s rich. Did Simon send you? Mr. Simon Says?”

Lannes frowned. “As she explained, your name was on a note left on my doorstep. Who’s Simon?”

“A nobody. Just like me.” The old man shot the woman a thoughtful look. “He wouldn’t have sent a girl. He doesn’t like girls.”

“You recognized me,” she pressed.

“You look like someone,” Price admitted. “But she’s dead.”

The woman tensed, but Orwell turned and shuffled deeper into his living room. He kicked aside some clothes and stooped with a groan to pick up a can of beer on the floor by the sagging couch. Taking a long drink, he gave Lannes and the woman a hard look.

“So,” he said. “Mind if I see the note?”

Lannes very carefully unfolded it from his pocket, but he did not move. This felt wrong. Not just the mess or the tight space, but the air when breathed seemed to enter his heart instead of his lungs, and it was as though he could taste the miasma of darkness that had settled over this house like an illness, or death.

Bad vibes.

The woman also did not move. Her stillness felt the same as that of a fox sniffing out a trap-sharp, smart, hunted. Good instincts. Lannes held up the note like a sign, uncertain the old man’s vision would let him see it but unwilling to go any deeper into the house.

The old man took another drink of beer and squinted at the note. Then he took a step closer, and another. Until he stopped, staring. Calm enough, on the surface. Perfectly calm. So calm he looked like a mannequin, plastic and frozen.

“Where did you get that?” he asked, and Lannes realized something in that moment that made him want to take a slow careful step out of Orwell Price’s house: he could not sense the old man’s mind. Not a hint nor trace of it. It was like standing in the presence of the dead, of something empty and hollow.

Impossible. Lannes was a poor mind reader, but at least he could feel minds. He could sense the weight of thoughts. Orwell Price had none. This confused Lannes at first. And then it frightened him. Normal people did not put walls in their minds. Normal people would never consider it necessary. Normal people would not have the mental strength to do such a thing.

Which meant that the old man was…something else.

I should have listened to Charlie.

Lannes took a risk on the woman. He touched her arm, wrapped his fingers lightly around it, grateful for her thick sweater, and tugged slightly. She glanced at him but did not protest as he made her move toward the door.

“Don’t go yet,” said Orwell, quietly. “I still haven’t heard about that note. Interesting handwriting, don’t you think?”

“It’s just writing,” said the woman, as Lannes stuffed the paper back into his pocket. “Unless you recognize it?”

“I recognize a lot of things,” Price whispered, knuckles white as he crumpled the beer can in his fist. “I recognize the morning, and the shit taste in my mouth when I open my eyes after a bad night’s sleep. I recognize the pain in my gut when I’ve eaten something I know is bad for me, and I recognize, too, that I have no self-control. But sometimes a man needs to eat some shit. No matter what it costs.”

Lannes stepped in front of the woman, his wings straining against the belt. Power gathered in his chest and his skin tingled. Every instinct was pulsing. The walls were closing in. He put one hand behind him and pushed the woman back toward the door.

“The note,” Orwell whispered. “Goddamn that note.”

He threw aside the beer can. It hit the television. In the same swing, he swooped down with surprising speed and jammed his hand past the cushions of the couch. He came back up with a gun. Behind Lannes, the woman made a sound.

Orwell shot him. No hesitation, not even a blink as he pulled the trigger. The bullet slammed into Lannes’ chest just below his heart, shattering ribs. Lannes staggered, almost blind with pain, but his adrenaline kicked in and his vision cleared in moments. He was certain there must be a hole in his torso the size of his fist, but when he glanced down, he saw no wound. Just the illusion of clothing. He looked up and found Orwell staring in disbelief.

Lannes charged. Orwell managed to get off another shot that hit him in the shoulder, smashing bone and spraying blood-which spattered through the illusion and hit the wall. He staggered but had just enough momentum to slam seven feet of hard muscle into an old man who was soft and weak limbed. Both of them went down. Lannes heard ominous crunching sounds beneath him. Orwell howled.

Lannes wanted to scream, too, but he kept his mouth shut. This was not going to kill him. No gunshot had ever taken out a gargoyle; it took a grenade to do that. Blow him to bits and he’d never regenerate. Cut off his head, burn him to ash-these things would kill him for good. His wounds would be fine in hours.

The problem was the woman. Orwell Price. Witnesses. They had seen him shot point-blank. He hoped neither noticed the fine mist of blood on the wall.

The woman fell on her knees beside them. Her concern rolled through Lannes’ mind like a warm bath, until it was all he could do to focus on disarming the man beneath him. He had never felt anything like her heart. Her compassion could have been a drug. He would have been happy enough to lie still and savor the heat of her mind, like a monstrous Rip van Winkle, lost for years in a dream. Her presence, for one brief moment, drowned the pain.

And then that pain hit him again, and he swallowed a groan. Orwell Price did no such thing. He squealed like a stuck pig, screaming obscenities. Lannes had his gun hand pinned. The old man loosed another round, which hit the wall, and then the woman leaned backward, scrabbling toward the television, and returned with a ten-pound dumbbell that she raised above her head. Orwell’s eyes widened. He tried to move. The woman brought the weight down hard on his wrist.

Another crunch, another scream. The old man released the gun. The woman grabbed it.

And then something odd happened. Lannes felt her mind change.

Her emotions were so deeply embedded inside him that he sensed the shift immediately. As though something…suddenly joined her. A completely different vibration. She was not alone in her mind. It felt the same as two brains stuffed in a jar, but only one of them was in control.

Lannes grabbed her wrist, trying to see deeper. All he found was another wall. A wall like the one keeping him out of Orwell’s thoughts. And a presence that was cold and old and alien. An intruder.

He had no time for horror. The psychic intruder twisted the woman’s mouth into a hideous forced grimace, which might have been a smile but looked more like she was about to sink her teeth into the old man’s throat. Her eyes darkened. Her skin drained of color and her lips turned white.

“Murderer,” she whispered to Orwell, and the fear that rolled off the old man was so thick, so repulsive, Lannes wanted to gag.

“It is you,” Orwell breathed.

“Yes,” the woman murmured, and raised the dumbbell above his head one-handed, aiming like she was going to punch his face into pulp. Lannes let go of the old man and grabbed both her wrists, dragging her close. He tried to force himself into her mind, clawing at the psychic wall.

For one moment, across their link, he felt the woman- the woman he knew-doing the same on the other side. She was fighting desperately. Trying to regain control over herself. Like dragging her nails down the inside of a coffin. No yield, no freedom. Just death.

He tried to close the gap between them, but the wall pressed forward, shutting him out of her mind. Pain flashed through his eyes. He heard a voice inside his head, soft and sibilant, but the words made no sense. He tried to hold onto both her mind and body, but the woman-the intruder inside the woman-was too strong.

You cannot stop me, whispered the voice. You, monster.

An immense force slammed into his chest. A wave of hard air. He lost his grip on the woman’s wrists and tumbled backward, landing painfully on his bound wings. Invisible fingers tore at the wounds in his chest hard enough to make him scream. Orwell also cried out. The old man began scuttling across the carpet toward the kitchen. The woman leapt over his fat body and pinned his wrinkled neck with her knee.