We start off, moving as a unit, hesitant at first, and then faster. But not fast enough to look like we’re in a hurry. These things would like nothing better than to chase us.
“There’s another one,” says Thomas, but I keep my eyes on the bleary-eyed dude. “Shit, there’s another.”
“And two more on my side,” Jestine adds. “It’s too fast to track. They just appear, in the corner of my eye.”
As we go, I finally have to look ahead, taking my gaze off of Johnny Milk-Eyes. I hope someone else picks him up, but when I see the other three corpses, two hanging in the trees before us and one resting against a far-off trunk, I know that we just don’t have enough eyes.
“This isn’t going to work,” Jestine says.
“How far is it to the edge of the woods?” Carmel asks. “Could we run?”
“They’d just pick us off, one by one. I don’t want to turn my back on them,” says Thomas.
But turning our backs is inevitable. The question is how to do it. Do I try to cut a path? Or do we all go together? The trio of dead things ahead of us stares at me with black sockets. Their expressionless faces are like a dare. I’ve never seen corpses look so eager, like dogs waiting to be taken off their leashes.
Carmel screams; there’s a sharp whack from the stick she wields and a skeleton hits the ground beside us. The circle breaks as she backpedals. She hits it again, bringing her club down across its spine and cracking it. It isn’t until I see the corpse behind Thomas and feel the spongy grip of a dead hand around my throat that I realize our mistake. We all dropped our guard. We all turned away.
I twist out of the fingers looking to break my windpipe and bring my elbow up blind to knock it back. The athame is in my hand in an instant; the blade drives into the corpse behind me and it sounds like it falls to pieces. When I cleave into the skeleton that Carmel dropped, it liquefies and sinks into the ground.
Two down, twenty-five to go. Looking into the trees, bodies are everywhere. They don’t seem to move, they don’t run up; they just are and every time we look away, they’re closer. Carmel’s doing this constant groaning, growling thing, swinging her club at everything that gets near. I can hear Jestine and Thomas, two chants in different languages, and I have no idea what they’re doing. My knife slides through the black hole of an eye socket and the corpse disintegrates in a cloud of what looks like granular soil.
“There are too many,” Carmel shouts. Fighting them off is a pipe dream.
“Run!” I shout, but Jestine and Thomas don’t budge. Thomas’s voice rattles in my ears. The dialect reminds me of Morfran, of the Obeahman. It’s pure voodoo. Ten feet ahead of him, a half-rotten body draped over a low branch suddenly collapses. In the next second it’s nothing but a pile of writhing maggots.
“Not bad, Thomas,” I say, and when he glances over his shoulder, another corpse is in front of him, too fast to see. It sinks its teeth deep into the meat of his neck and he shrieks.
Jestine growls something in Gaelic and sweeps her arm across her chest; the corpse lets go of Thomas and falls, twitching.
“Run!” she shouts, and this time we do, our legs crashing through fallen leaves and ferns. I stay in the front as much as I can, slicing into anything that shows up in our path. To my left, Carmel is channeling her inner Warrior Princess, using the club to pretty good effect with one arm. The other arm has hold of Thomas. Blood darkens the entire top half of his shirt. He needs help. He can’t keep running. But there’s new light ahead and a break in the trees. We’re almost out.
“Cas! Watch it!”
My head turns at Jestine’s warning, just in time to see the bleary eyes right where I feared they would be. Two inches from my face, and I’m tackled underneath him.
The weight is unexpected. It’s like being steamrolled. And despite the strength in him, his arms are rubbery and soft; my nose is too close to his neck. I can hear his teeth snapping in my ear, and the skin around the knot of the rope is swollen and black, like an overinflated tire. During the roll to the ground, the athame got pinned at a bad angle. I can’t get it up into his gut and I can just barely keep it tilted out of mine. When I push his head away with my other hand he jerks and bites down on my fingers. Mossy teeth grind right down to the bone and on reflex I curl my grip around his jaw. My fingers push through something soft and grainy. His rotting tongue.
“Keep running!” Jestine shouts, and then her foot connects with the corpse’s rib cage. It doesn’t roll him off, but in that split second, I can maneuver the knife. When he settles back down again, the blade slides right up under his sternum, and he dissipates in a cloud of the worst-smelling stuff I’ve ever come across.
“You all right?” Jestine asks. I nod as she pulls me to my feet, but after feeling the tongue and smelling that decaying swamp gas, I might throw up. We stagger and run. The trees open up on a clear day and a green meadow, where Carmel is kneeling over a collapsed Thomas. On the other side of the clearing, Gideon stands with two others in front of a long, black car.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It’s like having a nightmare and falling out of bed. We topple out of the Suicide Forest, haggard and bloody and half on our knees. And we wind up on four inches of soft grass, squinting against warm sunlight, staring into calm, condescendingly soothing faces.
The athame is still in my hand; I look back to the trees, expecting to see a row of pale faces in between the trunks, staring after us like prisoners from inside their cage. But it’s just trees, and leaves, and moss. The instant that we left their boundary, they retreated, to return to the place where they hung, or lay in piles.
“It appears you were right, Mr. Palmer,” someone says. “He made it.” I look over toward the car. The man speaking is slightly shorter and younger than Gideon. I can’t tell how much younger exactly. The hair on his head is blond, streaked with gray, so that somehow the whole slick mess winds up looking silver. He’s in a black button-up and dark slacks. At least he isn’t in a brown robe, swinging a censer.
“Don’t worry,” he says, walking toward us. “They won’t cross into the meadow.”
The nonchalant tone irks me, and Carmel grabs my arm just as I’m about to tell this clown where he can shove his meadow.
“He’s still bleeding,” she says. I look down at Thomas. He’s breathing okay, and the blood coming up between Carmel’s pressing fingers is a slow leak, not an arterial spurt. I think most of his exhaustion is from that whammy of a curse he pulled in the woods, rather than the corpse bite, but I wouldn’t in a million years tell that to Carmel right now. She’s ready to breathe fire.
Beside us, the man has his hands on both of Jestine’s shoulders, looking at her fondly. “You did well,” he says, and she lowers her head briefly. “Not a scratch on you.”
“He needs a doctor,” I hiss, and when Mr. Jackass doesn’t respond, Jestine says it again.
“He’s still bleeding. Is Dr. Clements here?”
“He is,” he says, but doesn’t look like he’s in a huge hurry about it. When he smiles, I’m reminded of a snake’s stretch, just before it eats the mouse. “Don’t worry. The compound isn’t far. We’ll tend to your witch friend. And to you.” His eyes drop to my split-open fingers, and I swear I see the corners of his mouth twitch.
“My name is Colin Burke.” He’s got the nerve to hold his hand out to me. Carmel slaps it away, leaving a streak of red across his palm.
“I don’t care what your name is,” she hisses. “And I don’t care who you are. If you don’t get him some help, I will burn your fucking place down.” Go Carmel. Burke doesn’t seem too perturbed, but Gideon finally pipes up, telling her to give Thomas over. He helps him to his feet and supports him on the way to the car, avoiding my eyes while he does it.
“Put something down over the seat,” Burke says, and I’m this close to laying him out. But Thomas needs help, so I shut up and walk to the car.
* * *
The drive is quick, along a road that’s part pav
ed and part dirt path, cutting through the trees on the other side of the meadow, but the guy driving definitely doesn’t hurry. He hasn’t said anything to anyone, and I’d suspect that he’s just a driver if it wasn’t for the feeling that no one here is “just” anything. I glance at Jestine. She’s pulled a cloth out of her backpack for Carmel to press to Thomas’s neck. Concern wrinkles her forehead.
We crest a small hill and start to slow. Tucked into a small, green valley is what must be the Order. It looks like one of those snooty, exclusive, Aspen-type resorts, just a compound of a few red wooden buildings and solar panels, and entire walls made of smoked glass windows. It has to be worth several million dollars, but it’s still less conspicuous than a gray stone fortress or a monastery. Thomas must feel my wonder, because he struggles up from Carmel’s lap to peer out the window. The bleeding has mostly stopped. He’ll be okay, as long as he doesn’t get an infection from dead incisors.
“Welcome,” some dude says to us as he opens the car door when it pulls up to the main building. He’s young and groomed, in a black suit, looking like he fell out of GQ. He and the driver might be twins. It’s sort of disconcerting, like Fembots in reverse. I bet the cook looks like this too.
“Robert, please alert Dr. Clements,” says Burke. “Tell him he has some stitching to do.” Robert leaves for the doctor and Burke turns to me. “Junior members,” he explains. “They learn the Order through observation, and do their time in service.”
“Makes sense,” I say, and shrug. It’s also completely creepy, but I think he knows that.
As I look around, it feels like I’ve been splashed with cold water. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. I thought … I guess I thought I’d show up to find just more Gideons. Old men in comfy sweaters, clamoring around me like grandfathers. Instead I find Burke, and the instant animosity runs both ways between us in a static current. Gideon, on the other hand, still won’t look at me. He’s ashamed, and he should be. We all got out in one piece, but we didn’t have to.
“Ah, Dr. Clements.” Now there’s what I was expecting. A gray-haired, bearded man in a burgundy sweater and khakis. He walks straight to Thomas and gently pulls up the red-stained cloth, revealing a ragged, crescent-shaped cut. My stomach flips as images of Will and Chase, and imagined images of my dad, flash behind my eyes. Damn bite wounds.
“It’ll need to be washed and stitched,” he says. “With an herb pack it should heal well, with hardly a scar.” He puts the cloth back over the wound, and Thomas holds it down. “Dr. Marvin Clements,” he says, and shakes his hand. When he shakes my hand, he turns it over and scrutinizes my fingers. “Those could do with stitches as well.”
“It’s fine,” I say.
“Wash it at least,” he says. “It’s putrid.” He turns and takes Thomas by the arm to lead him inside. I go too, and Carmel’s right behind. Jestine stays with Burke, and I’m unsurprised.
* * *
After Thomas is treated and my hand is scrubbed out with iodine, we’re shown to a set of rooms arranged around a common area. I grab a nervous shower and rewrap my hand. I don’t trust one inch of this place, and leaving Thomas and Carmel alone for even twenty minutes makes me tense.
The room where they put me is large, decked out with a small fireplace and big bed with expensive-looking blankets. It reminds me of a hunting lodge I saw in a movie once. The only things missing are the stuffed heads on the walls.
“I think if this place had stuffed heads, they’d be human,” Thomas quips. He and Carmel walk in holding hands.
“No lie.” I grin. There are windows cut into the wall, and skylights along the arch of the ceiling. There have to be about a million windows covering the whole compound, but it doesn’t make it feel open, or illuminated. It makes it feel watched.
Gideon knocks on the open door, and Thomas turns too fast; he winces and presses his hand to his fresh bandage.
“Sorry, lad,” Gideon says, and pats his shoulder. “Dr. Clements makes an excellent henbane poultice. The pain will be out of it in an hour.” He nods at Carmel, waiting for an introduction.
“Gideon, Carmel—Carmel, Gideon,” I say.
“So you’re Gideon,” she says, eyes narrowed. “Was it too much trouble to take the car and meet the ferry at Loch whatever the hell it was?” She turns away in disgust without waiting for an answer.
“I can’t believe you sent us there,” I say, and he meets my eyes without flinching. He’s solemn, and maybe regretful, but he’s no longer ashamed, if in fact he ever was.
“I warned you,” he replies. “Make up your mind, Theseus. You’re either a child, or you’re not.”
Damn him and his points.
“I never wanted you to come here. I wanted to keep my promise to your parents, and keep you out of danger. But you are your father’s son. You always put yourself there. Hell-bent on ruin.”
His voice is fond, bordering on sentimental. And he’s right. This was my decision. It all has been, right down to picking up the athame when I was fourteen.
“Colin wants to see you,” he says, and puts his hand on Thomas’s shoulder to indicate that it has to be alone. He’d probably put his other hand on Carmel’s shoulder too if he didn’t mind having it bitten off. Either way, he won’t leave them alone. So I guess I don’t have to worry, for now.
* * *
A woman leads me through the hallways and up the staircase to where Burke waits. She’s the first woman I’ve seen, and it’s sort of a relief to know that there are women, even if this one is slightly creepy. She’s about fifty, with a stylish ash-blond bob. When we met outside the room they gave me, she smiled and nodded with the practiced, disaffected politeness of a society matron. We pass rooms with wide, open double doors, and there’s a burning fireplace in every one. In one of them on my left, there’s a group of people sitting in a circle. As we pass, they all turn their heads to watch. And I mean they all do. Together, like at the same time.
“Uh, what are they doing?” I ask.
“Praying.” She smiles. I want to ask to what, but I’m scared that she’d say they were praying to the athame. It’s hard to think of Jestine being raised by these people. Every one of them is creepy. Even Dr. Clements, when he washed and wrapped my hand, he looked at the blood like it was the Holy Grail. He’ll probably burn the bandages in a brazier of sage or something.
“Here we are,” says my escort. Then she just stands there, beside the door, even though I make gestures to imply that she can leave. Freaks.
When I go into the room, Colin Burke is standing near yet another fireplace. He’s got his fingers pressed together at the tips in that most dishonest of gestures, and the flames flicker red-orange across his cheekbones. All at once I think of Faust.
“So, you’re Theseus Lowood,” he says, and smiles.
“So, you’re Colin Burke,” I say. Then I shrug. “Actually, I’ve never heard of you.”
“Well.” He walks away from the fire to stand beside a tall leather chair. “Some people keep their secrets better than others.”
Oh. So that’s how it is.
I put my thumb and forefinger to my chin thoughtfully. “I’ve heard that name before. Burke. An English serial killer, wasn’t he?” I turn my palm up. “Any relation?”
Behind the mild smile, he’s gnashing his teeth. Good. And yet, in the back of my head I’m thinking that I shouldn’t make an enemy of this guy. That I came here for his help. Then again, the front of my head is telling me that nothing I could do could make him more of an enemy.
Burke spreads his hands and smiles. It’s a disconcertingly disarming gesture. Warm, and just this close to genuine.
“We’re very pleased to have you here, Theseus Cassio Lowood,” he says. “We have desired your return for a long time.” He smiles again, even warmer. “The warrior returns home.”
All this faux flattery. It’s not enough to make me forget he’s a dick. Admittedly, though, he’s sort of a charismatic dick.
&
nbsp; “Pleased?” I ask. “Then you must not know why I’m here.”
Burke looks down, almost regretfully, and his eyes flicker up, as gray as his hair. “You’ve had a hard day of travel. We can talk about that later. Over dinner perhaps. I’ve arranged a welcome meal, to give the other members a chance to meet you. They’re all curious.”
“Listen,” I say, “That’s—that’s really nice of you and everything. But I don’t have time—”
“I know why you’re here,” he says sharply. “Take my advice. Come to dinner. And let the others try to convince you not to die.”
There’s a whole lot of smart-ass piled up on my tongue. But I manage to keep it down.
“Whatever you say,” I smile. “You’re the host.”
* * *
Walking with Thomas, Carmel, and Gideon to the dining room, I keep my eyes on the walls. There really are heads on the walls, elk and bear and some kind of goat. They make me think of Gideon’s joke back at his place, about the eyes moving in the pictures around my house.
“Why are we doing this?” Carmel asks, staring at the goat head. “I don’t trust this place. And all these slaughtered animals are threatening to turn me vegan.”
Gideon smiles at that. “We’re doing this so that Colin can play the part of reasonable leader. He wants to kill you, Theseus.” The casual way he says it makes me sort of twitch. “He wants to kill you and reclaim the athame for Jestine. Melt it down and reforge it with her blood. In his mind, it’ll be purified.”
“Then shouldn’t we be running away?” Carmel asks. “And why is he feeding him then?”
“Not everyone in the Order is convinced. They respect the old ways, and that includes the original warrior bloodline. They’ll stand with you, if you swear to uphold the old tradition.”
“And if I won’t?”
Gideon says nothing. We’ve reached the dining room, which isn’t really any bigger than the other rooms. There is, of course, a fireplace in it, and a chandelier glints below the high ceiling, reflecting the yellow flame. There are at least a dozen people sitting at a table, being waited on by some more of the Fembot-like junior members. Jestine is nowhere to be seen. She’s probably hidden away under guard, like a treasure. When we walk in, everyone stands. Burke is among them and manages to look like he’s seated at the head, even though the table is round.