(Wrath-09)-Spiders From The Shadows (2013) (13 page)

“
Don’t leave Ellie!
” an unseen voice cried in her ears.

Turning, she ran back up the stairs and down the narrow, picture-lined hallway. She reached the first bedroom, the white outline of the door frame barely visible in the tiny hint of light. “Mom, come with me!” she shouted as she burst into the room.

Her mother was standing in confusion beside her bedI want to be like youHMwlyp. The bedroom was dimly lit, the moonlight in the east filtering through the upper windows. Her mother ran toward her. “What is it? Who is it!”

“Go get Ellie. Stay with her!”

“Who is it? Who was shooting?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. Now GO, GO, GO!”

Caelyn ran back into the hallway. Her mother ran behind her, then turned and sprinted down the hall toward Ellie’s bedroom. Caelyn rushed toward the empty stairs.

Halfway down she heard the scream.

She stopped, her blood frozen in her veins. The contents of her stomach rose inside her and she almost threw up on the floor. Cold shots of fear ran through her, spider webs of terror that spread across her back and down her arms.

Ellie cried out from her bedroom once again, then was muffled into silence.

“JOSEPH CALTON, GET UP HERE!” Caelyn screamed toward the porch.

Bono was already on his way, rushing through the door and bounding up the stairs. She recognized the raging glare in his eyes as he ran by.
Not my daughter! Not my child!
the furious look on his face screamed.

He ran up the stairs in wild anger, calling as he ran, “ELLIE! WHERE ARE YOU, ELLIE!”

He hurtled into his daughter’s bedroom, his eyes flashing left and right. Greta lay across the bed, holding onto Ellie, who was crying in her arms. The bedroom window was open, a cold breeze blowing the curtain back. Caelyn rushed into the room behind him. Ellie’s tears were glistening in the moonlight, her fingers clinging at Greta’s clothes. Bono’s eyes darted around the room again, taking in the open window, the blowing curtains, a deserted burlap sack and string of rope left in a heap on the floor. He heard the sound of heavy footsteps across the wooden shingles on the roof. He ran toward his daughter, dropping to his knees beside the bed. “Are you OK, baby?” he whispered to her as he reached out to stroke her head. She buried her face into her grandmother’s shoulder and didn’t answer. Caelyn rushed forward and pulled Ellie into her arms.

Bono looked at Greta. “Is she hurt?” he demanded.

“I don’t think so,” Greta answered. “I got here just in time. Someone had her. They let her go when I came into the room. They ran out,” she nodded toward the window.

Bono stood and leaped toward it, looking out.

The roofline sloped gently toward the south. A huge oak tree at the corner of the house spread its branches over the roof. There was movement across the yard now, but it was too dark to see. He turned back to Ellie, put his hand atop her shoulder, and whispered to Caelyn, “
Is she OK?
” He needed to be assured.

Caelyn didn’t answer. Greta looked across the bed toward him. “She’s OK. I got here in time to stop them.”

Satisfied, Bono turned and crawled through the open window. The women listened as the sound of his footsteps across the wooden shingles quickly faded into the night.

Outside, Bono jumped, swung on a low branch to catch himself, then dropped onto the ground. Reaching for his holstered weapon, he raced into the dark.

Three minutes later, he returned. The women had moved to the other bedroom and were huddled together on the corner of the bed. Caelyn’s father was standing guard, a baseball bat—autographed by his favorite Yankees_ngap—in hand.

Bono moved up the stairs, found them in the bedroom, and knelt in front of Caelyn and Ellie. Reaching out, he pulled his daughter close. “You’re OK, Ellie, you’re OK,” he whispered to her. “It’s going to be all right.”

“Daddy, Daddy,” she started crying.

Handing her to Caelyn, he stood up once again. “You’ll be OK,” he assured his daughter in a hurried voice. His eyes were always moving. His mind was somewhere else.

“Where are you going?” Caelyn asked him, sensing his thoughts.

“I’ll be back. I’ll be OK.”

“Don’t you leave us, honey.”

He tried to smile to reassure her, squeezing her hand. The moment lasted less than half a second. Then he turned and disappeared into the hall and down the stairs.

* * * * * * *

The sun was just coming up when Bono returned to find Caelyn in the kitchen huddled over a propane burner, cooking a batch of pan bread. He stepped into the room. She turned and took a step toward him, then stood still. Her face was almost sick with fear and worry. “Where did you go!” she demanded in a panicked voice.

He slowly shook his head.

Unable to hold back, she ran toward him and grabbed him so tightly he could hardly breathe. Moments passed. He felt her shaking; then she stepped back to look into his face.

“Are you OK?” she asked, looking him over from head to toe.

He was covered with dirt and mud: his clothes, his face, his hands, his arms. Even his eyelids and ears were caked in mud. It took her a moment to realize he had camouflaged himself. “What did you find out? Who was out there?”

He slowly shook his head. “Gangs. Roving bands of thieves and . . . woreme Court, we

NINETEEN

Four Miles West of Chatfield, Twenty-One Miles Southwest of Memphis, Tennessee

“You’re not going to leave me here, baby. No way you’re going to leave me and Ellie here all by ourselves.”

They were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table. Greta was down the hall, in the living room with Ellie. The old man was on the porch, staring at a blank television screen and cursing the fact he couldn’t watch his Yankees, as if anyone was playing baseball anymore. The house was quiet and Bono knew that Greta was listening, so he kept his voice low. There was tension in the air, palpable and edgy. Bono felt as if he were suffocating. He actually had to work to breathe. His expression was crestfallen, confusion clouding his eyes. Caelyn was just as emotional, her face tight, her lips pressed, her hands moving constantly. “You
can’t
leave us here,” she whispered, her eyes unflinching. No more pleading. No more asking. She was demanding, and in this matter she would get what she needed, no matter what the cost. “We can’t take care of ourselves, you can see that. Look at what happened last night. Can you even imagine if it had been just me and Mom? They would have taken Ellie! Someone would have been hurt, maybe one of them, maybe one of us, it doesn’t matter—someone would have been hurt or killed.”

Bono shook his head but didn’t answer, thinking for a long moment. “What do you want me to do, Caelyn? What
can
I do?”

“I want you to stay here. I want you to act like every other father, like every other husband, like every other man!”

The words cut him and he sucked another breath, his heart racing with uncertainty and frustration. Caught in the middle of two impossible choices, two mutually exclusive paths, he felt like he was being cut in two with a jagged knife. He couldn’t desert the Army. For one thing, they would come and find him and arrest him. A run-of-the-mill officer who worked in administration or supply or logistics or something deep within the bowels of the machine might get away with it. Maybe, with all the chaos that was going on. But not a Special Forces soldier, especially a member of the Cherokees. He was a national asset. They would come looking for him. Far more important, he couldn’t tarnish his honor or his brothers. To even think about it cut his heart out, making him feel dirty and ashamed.

Yet he couldn’t desert his family, either. He couldn’t leave them here, not in the situation they were in.

The knife cut. He was being ripped in two, and though his emotions welled inside him, he wasn’t angry at Caelyn. Quite the opposite. He knew that she was right—or at least that she had the right to be demanding. All she was concerned about was the safety of their child, and a mother’s instinct for protection was not to be ignored. No, he didn’t want to argue with her. He
couldn’t
argue with her. There was just nothing for him to say.

Caelyn leaned toward him, resting her arms on the table. Her eyes were softer now, but heI want to be like you ging the reachedr face was just as determined. “This isn’t going to work, babe, not the way things are. You understand me; it isn’t going to work to leave us here all by ourselves. A month ago, a year ago, hey, a
week
ago, you could have left us and we’d have been OK.” Her eyes glanced toward the back door and the darkness. “But not now, not with the way things are going. Mom and Dad will be OK, I think people are going to leave them be, but not us, not me and Ellie.”

She sat back and fell silent, her heart sinking as she considered what her husband had told her about the things he’d seen the night before. And he hadn’t told her everything; that too was very clear. He didn’t want to tell her—and frankly, she didn’t want to hear. All she knew was that he had come back more frightened and discouraged than she’d ever seen him. In her innocent mind, she couldn’t imagine what he might have learned, but the fact that someone had come after Ellie told her everything she needed to know.

She watched her husband, thought a moment, then looked away. Sitting there, she realized something about herself she hadn’t considered before.

Ever since the afternoon out in the straw field, she hadn’t been quite the same. She thought differently. She felt different. She was different in almost every way.

She didn’t trust the world. Skittish and withdrawn now, she never felt relaxed. Worst of all, she lived in mortal fear for Ellie, crushed by the burden of trying to protect her from all the evil and blackness in the world. She was a mother and her defensive instincts had kicked into very high gear. But in order to protect her daughter, she had to take care of herself, which was nearly impossible right now.

She shook her head in frustration. She needed her husband’s help.

A cup of warm water sat on the table, and she pressed it to her lips to hide the grim tightness of her mouth.

It was demoralizing and insulting to think about, but the truth was that they had slipped back to her great-great-grandmother’s world, back to a time when it was virtually impossible for a woman alone to take care of herself.

From the beginning of recorded time, from the very first caveman all the way to the frontier of the American West, a woman wasn’t anything without a man. She wasn’t listened to, she wasn’t considered, she wasn’t a person, not in any real sense. In a world where food, shelter, safety and protection were the only concerns, where the luxury of a full stomach and a safe place to sleep were never taken for granted, where there was always some army or king or thick-necked thief threatening to take it all away, a woman always found herself in need of the protective custody of a man. The more beautiful the woman, the more this was true. And as much as she hated the feeling of dependence, she knew that it was as true now as it had ever been. She needed her husband’s muscles and defensive skills. She needed his ability to navigate through a brutal world.

She sat there, angry and confused, her emotions boiling over in a way she couldn’t understand.

But why was she so angry? She really didn’t know.

Why was all her fury directed at the only man she’d ever loved?

Again, she didn’t know.

* * * * * * *

Although she couldn’t understand what she was feeling, the dark angel who stood beside her understood it very well. His powerful whisperings@e gap were the source of her anger and he was concentrating on her spirit with all of his dark and forceful might.

This was the last best chance he had to get her and take her down.

What he was doing wasn’t original—he was a faithful servant but not creative or original—and the things he whispered to her now had been taught to him long before.

Incite her rage and anger. Confuse her. Convince her she is alone. Get her to blame the one who loves her, the one who would sacrifice his very life to save her. Get her to turn her anger on him and her soul will rebel, pushing her further from her loved ones. Then she’ll feel forgotten and abandoned, and the cycle will start again.

These were the emotions that could kill the love between them. And if the adversary could destroy the trust between them, it would leave them with nothing else.

So far, with these young mortals, it had proven difficult. But the dark angel was persistent, for he truly loved the evil plan.

* * * * * * *

Caelyn looked at her husband intently, fighting the inexplicable emotions that were boiling inside her. “I understand your position, honey, but you’ve got to think about your family now,” she said. “Me and Ellie,” her eyes wandered to the hall, “it’s impossible for us now and it’s only going to get worse. And think about this, baby. I’m the las of thugs hav

TWENTY

Offutt Air Force Base, Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command, Eight Miles South of Omaha, Nebraska

The day and night passed slowly. The family was told to remain in the small office, able to leave only for showers in the gym and to eat. After some begging and some fairly believable threats, Sam convinced the old tech sergeant who had been assigned to look after them to let him use the gym. He spent the next three hours running, boxing on the shadow bag, and lifting weights. Sweating and completely exhausted, he showered and fell asleep.

The next morning he was as agitated as he’d ever been. This time, he wasn’t alone. Sara paced as well. Luke and Ammon watched them as they leaned against the far wall. Azadeh sat on the rolled-out sleeping bags, working on her English by reading.

“Unbelievable,” Ammon muttered as he watched his brother pace.

Sam shook his head, thinking on the broadcast they’d watched the previous day. “How do you describe it?” Sam asked in an incredulous voice. “Swearing him in and then impeaching him, all in the same day!”