Wolfsbane (20 page)

They had all talked of running to escape the horror that awaited them, but to a person, had rejected the idea. That evening, at the home of Sheriff Vallot, it came up again.

“What would it accomplish?” Edan asked.

“It might save your life,” Pat replied. “I'm the one who has to do . . . battle with those things. And I guess I've agreed to do just that. I'm here,” he said sourly.

“Save our lives for what?” Sinclair asked. “If this woman—and her master—can reach us in Joyeux, and she obviously can, what would prevent her from reaching us elsewhere?”

“It would buy you some time,” Pat said. “You don't know that Victoria will kill you if you try to leave.”

“Be that as it may”—Sinclair stuck out what passed for his chin—“that creature out of Macbeth is not going to drive me from my home.” He held up his hand for silence. “Be still,” he commanded them all, a ring of authority in his voice.

Ruth looked at him lovingly.

“Yes,” Sinclair said softly. “I'm remembering what my grandmother told me, years ago, when I was just a lad down in Chauvin.”

“And what is that, dear?” Ruth asked. Since the trouble, the mismatched pair had been inseparable.

Sinclair rose to his feet and drew himself up to his full height: five feet, four inches. “ 'Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog.' ”

“Wow!” Ruth clapped her hands. “That's beautiful, Sinclair. Waylon Jennings couldn't do no better.”

Sinclair gave her a look that would have frozen a steel furnace during full production. “Your comparison is profoundly absurd, dear heart, but I do thank you for your efforts at praise.”

“Your grandmother really say all that?” Ruth plunged onward.

“Please, Ruth—no! Bill Shakespeare wrote that.”

“I ain't familiar with him. He the one thing sings so purty on ”Hee Haw”?”

“Dear God in Your majestic firmament.” Sinclair rolled his eyes heavenward. “Enlighten this poor woman—please?”

“What about that line from Macbeth?” Doctor Lormand asked.

“These bags we are all wearing about our necks”—Sinclair touched the leather thong on his neck—“the ones Annie made for us. They contain frog, do they not?”

“Yes,” Stella said.

And dried dog shit, Pat thought.

“My grandmother,” Sinclair said, a smile on his lips as he remembered, “said that roo-garous are afraid of frogs. If that is true, then our only fear is from Victoria Bauterre, not from the creatures she commands.”

You stick with frogs, Pat grimaced. I'll stay with a twelve-gauge, double-ought buckshot.

But he did not remove the gris-gris from around his neck.

Janette said, “You are all aware that my grandmother might be listening to every word we're saying here.”

“ ‘Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under't,' ” Sinclair said, still standing.

“Wonderful!” Ruth applauded. “The Killer oughtta record that.”

“The who?” Sinclair asked.

“Jerry Lee Lewis.”

Sinclair sat down and folded his arms across his chest. “I have said all I am going to say on the matter.”

“If we have nothing to fear,” Edan said. “Then let's go hunt them.”

With a frog? Pat thought. Wonderful idea, Sheriff.

“How many days until the date of Claude Bauterre's death,” Doctor Lormand asked.

“Four.”

Pat stood up and picked up his riot gun.

“Where are you going?” Janette asked, alarm in her voice.

“To see your grandmother.”

“Why, for God's sake, Pat?”

That's part of it, Pat thought. “To make her mad. Burn up her powers. It might work.”

“And if it doesn't?”

Pat looked at her. “Then I probably won't be back,” he said softly.

He walked out of the house and into the night. On the sidewalk, he looked at the Cadillac, then shook his head and walked up the street. He wanted to see just how strong her powers were; how much of a hold she had on the townspeople. He found she had more than enough.

He passed people, speaking to them, but they seemed not to see him. He walked down the main street of the small town, carrying the sawed-off shotgun. No one looked at him. A police car drove slowly by; the cop did not even glance his way.

Edan had told him that at his office, the deputies and office workers took orders from him as usual, were not unfriendly, but seemed distant, as if they were walking around half asleep.

The same with Stella at the lawyer's office where she had worked.

Doctor Lormand had said his patient load had dropped to zero.

All the others had similiar stories.

They were alone in this fight; could expect no help.

Except, Pat thought, from me . . . and that Big Top Sergeant.

When Pat had passed the town proper, and was on the blacktop to Amour House, he sensed Victoria's presence and steeled himself against whatever games she might be in the mood to play this evening.

And she was in a playful mood. In a very macabre sort of way.

Pat's mother and father suddenly appeared before him in the middle of the road. But they were not as Pat remembered them. They had seemingly been snatched from the graves. Their faces were little more than rotting bits of flesh; their clothing—tattered rags—stank of the tomb. Their hands were pale white where the bones showed. They held out their arms, beckoning to him, calling out to Pat to come to them, let them embrace him, kiss him, welcome him.

Pat walked closer to the skeletal remains of his parents, floating in the air just above the road.

He drew nearer, then walked through them.

They vanished.

“You're a low down, no-good whore, Victoria,” Pat said to the night.

Lightning licked across the sky. The wind picked up, holding a sour, almost sulfurlike odor.

“I'm going to finish this very soon, bitch,” Pat told her.

A flash of lightning seared the ground near him, and Pat felt a surge of voltage through the soles of his boots.

Pat knew the next shift would begin at nine o'clock: a fresh team working at harassing Victoria. Annie and Marie's powers against Victoria's hold on the town. He had checked the time just before leaving the house; it would be time for them to start in a few minutes. He did not dare glance at his watch; did not dwell on what he was going to do for fear the old woman would read his thoughts. He would have to guess at the time.

Pat slowed his step, borrowing time as he walked.

“What are you thinking, Strange?” The voice cut into his mind. “What are you doing? I don't trust you.”

Pat began humming a marching song.

“Stop that and think of what you're planning!” she screamed at him.

Pat hummed louder.

An eerie greenish light enveloped him, each corner of the light containing some bloody horror Pat had encountered during his life. Just to see what would happen, Pat began humming “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Victoria screamed her outrage and the greenish cloud began fading.

Pat began singing the church song and he heard profanity roll out of the sky: Victoria was cursing him for his choice of songs.

Pat laughed at her.

The greenish cloud vanished.

A mile from the mansion, Pat felt her presence leave him. He dived for the ditch and ran up the embankment and into the timber. There, he glanced at the luminous hands of his watch. Nine o'clock. Annie and Marie had begun working against Victoria, and several members of the team would be endangering their lives, exposing themselves in the night, harassing the woman from several points around the town.

Pat heard Victoria calling him; but it was a very faint call: she had guessed wrongly and was searching for him on the other side of the road, looking for him in the timber. He had bought a little time.

He made his way slowly and furtively toward the mansion, hoping he would not encounter any of the creatures. The roaring of the shotgun would surely bring Victoria's mental searching straight to his location. He could still hear her calling for him, cursing him, belittling him, but the sound of her voice was growing steadily weaker as she attempted to cover all areas of the town with her mind.

The mansion came almost too quickly into view, looming up ghostly white out of the darkness, an ancient apparition enduring from out of the past. The air had cooled during the last hour, and a mist hung over the bayou, clinging to the land surrounding Amour House. Pat at first sensed more than felt the wind coming toward him. He fell to the cool, damp earth and made himself as small as possible. As he did so, he could not help remembering a buddy of his in Nam who, at the start of a mortar attack, had answered his CO's call to “Get down! Get down.” Pat's buddy had looked at the CO and calmly replied, “I can't get down no further, Captain—my buttons is in the way.”

Pat felt the stinking wind approach him, the searching fingers turning the mist into tentacles, touching the ground all around him, exploring the land. The mist hovered for a few moments, then moved on, toward the bayou running behind Amour House.

Pat jumped to his feet and raced for the house, leaping for the darkness created by the second floor gallery. The searching mist drifted past him.

Pat found an unlocked window and stepped into the darkness of the mansion.

The stench hit him a hammer blow, violating his nostrils with a sickening odor.

It was the odor of death: an open, stinking grave filled with rotting bodies. He fought back waves of nausea as he gripped the riot gun.

“Thought you fooled me, eh, Strange?” Her voice rolled to him across the carpet.

Pat froze, the darkness of his clothing blending in with the dark, heavy drapes. He watched as a thin finger of mist crept in through an open door across the room. Pat wondered if the game were over? Wondered if he'd been caught—trapped? The finger of mist paused, its blunt head poised as a snake, then turned and moved across the room, toward another open door.

Pat smiled realizing then that Victoria had only guessed he was in the house and was attempting a sucker play. Pat remained as still as the live oaks in the yard; as stationary as the trunks.

“Damn him!” her voice whispered from another part of the home. She was thinking aloud. “Where is he? What is he doing?”

Pat's breathing was shallow and silent. He kept his mind as clear as possible, considering the circumstances. He kept his eyes and his mind concentrating on a dark spot on a far wall.

The mist swept through the house and traveled out a window, rejoining the shapeless gray that clung to the bayou. A small black dog leaped from the mist to stand on the bank, looking all around, its eyes a dark glow in the filmy haze.

Pat shifted his eyes from the animal and once more concentrated on the dark spot on the wall. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the animal run toward the road, disappearing from view.

He had no idea how long Victoria would be gone; five minutes minimum, ten minutes maximum. But, he cautioned his mind, I have Sylvia to deal with. He eased the shotgun off safety. Pat had taken an immediate dislike to that bitch from the moment he had met her.

Pat slipped from room to room, hugging the walls, stopping every few seconds to listen. Then, in the huge downstairs hall that opened off the small foyer, he saw Sylvia. She stood by the entrance to the kitchen, her arms folded across her skinny chest.

On guard, Pat thought, guarding the door to the basement. That's where the beasts hide.

“Sylvia!” Victoria's voice cut through the house. “Careful, Strange is in the house.”

Pat froze. The voice had come from behind and to the left of Sylvia. Victoria had doubled back, coming up from the rear of the mansion. No chance to get to the basement now.

Pat threw up the riot gun and pumped it three times, the roaring enormous in the quiet house. The double-ought buckshot splattered Sylvia all over the wall.

The shot had taken her in the belly and chest, and her intestines dangled from the gaping hole in her belly; blood, thick and stinking, clung in globs to the wall. Still she came at Pat, her arms extended in front of her, her filthy breath fouling the room.

Pat jerked the shotgun to his shoulder.

“Nooo!” Victoria's screaming jarred him and he spun just as Sylvia's hands touched his shoulders.

Pat shoved the muzzle of the shotgun hard into the woman's stomach and pulled the trigger. The force of the magnum load lifted her off her feet and flung her backward. Still she would not die.

She grinned at him, and her eyes burned like the coals of hell. She sprang at him and Pat fired again, knocking one leg out from under her. She rolled on the floor, amid her own stinking gore and leaking, flapping intestines.

Pat spun again. This time he came face to face with Jeff Bethencourt. Or what used to be the man.

He seemed to have grown larger in death—or in his state of living dead. His skull, from the top of his head to just under his left eye socket—which was empty—had been split. Pat could see the shine of the brain. His one eye was burning with the same glow that Sylvia's eyes contained.

“Mine!” Bethencourt said, and lunged at Pat.

Pat sidestepped as Victoria's wild laughter ripped through the house. He brought the muzzle of the shotgun up and shot Bethencourt in the hip, slamming the man . . . thing . . . to the floor. Bethencourt screamed his outrage and struggled to his feet, howling insanely. He seemed oblivious to the wound in his leg and hip.

Pat leaped for the window and hit the ground running. He raced across the yard, toward the narrow spit of land between the road and the bayou.