“He’s just late getting home. Thanks, Patrick.” She walked back down the hallway, out of sight. Her voice faded to vague mumbles and Patrick stepped back into his room.
He shut the door and held his hand against it for a few seconds, his head pointed down, thinking.
That phone call sounded too familiar, Patrick thought. His own mortality was still fresh in his mind, but another more immediate fear clawed at him now. Was there a chance that Owen was simply hanging out with some friends, none of which had access to a phone? Or perhaps he was taking a walk, feeling a new confidence in light of an entire week without attacks. The rest of the town didn’t happen to feel this way, but maybe Owen had stumbled upon some grand bravery that had been lying dormant deep inside him his whole life—this courage and strength suddenly blooming to life like a phoenix rising gloriously from the ashes.
Somehow, Patrick doubted it.
He turned and looked at his window. With the lights on the glass plane was completely black, and suddenly Patrick felt very naked standing in front of it. Even after everything that had happened over the last month, he had still never gotten around to asking his mother for curtains. Being on the hit list of an evil witch with deadly powers, he thought maybe this would at least bring some very small bit of comfort.
He took a step toward the bed and his heart jumped as a spot of grey appeared on the window and began to spread, like that of hot breath against the glass. As the foggy spot grew to cover the window it revealed words—ones that appeared to have been etched into the glass with a finger beforehand. Patrick’s eyes widened, and a fierce chill cascaded down his back like a torrent of ice cold water flowing over his shoulders and to the base of his spine. The fog spilled across the face of the window, and when it stopped there was a single sentence standing black above his bed:
“You may hide in your home, but can you save the small bespectacled one?”
His heart threatened to leap out of his chest. Panic and shock held him still for one brief moment, and then he made a dash for the door.
He took the stairs three at a time on the way down and almost lost his balance on the last step, thumping onto the floor and grabbing his shoes all in the space of a few seconds. The ruckus brought his father into view at the other end of the hallway.
“Patrick? Is something wrong?” His father regarded him curiously as he pulled on his shoes.
“I have to go somewhere, Dad. I’ll be back,” he said with frantic speed. The words seemed unreal as they drifted from his mouth. A blurry haze was forming over his vision, his head flushing with cold blood. He tied his shoes with fumbling hands.
“You’re joking, right?” His father walked down the hall toward him, and his mother brought up the rear. “It’s almost bed time!”
“I’m sorry, but I have to go. I’ll explain later.” The nagging doubt that he would ever return to his home tried to surface, but Patrick pushed it back down. It wasn’t important now. He finished tying one shoe and started on the other.
“Patrick, you can’t just leave the house so late at night! What are you thinking?” His mother was upset. She sounded baffled, on the verge of tears. Patrick had to ignore this, too.
“Stop right now! You’re not going anywhere!” his father shouted. He looked sincerely angry, about to make a move.
Patrick finished, stood up, and looked at each of them in turn, unsure how his face might appear at this moment due to the numbness settling in his skin. He felt the blood pumping through his entire body, and there was a light tingling in his fingers.
“I’m sorry.”
He turned and threw the door open, launching himself down the steps and into the night at a speed of which he hardly knew he was capable. He heard his father shout behind him, but in a few short seconds Patrick was down the driveway and running through shadow on padded feet.
*****
There was no reason to believe that Ramildienne would be located anywhere but in the woods—in the clearing where she had been unearthed and had tried to kill the three of them, most likely—but Patrick’s gut had him believe that the witch was somewhere else. Every bit of logic told him to hang a right at the fencepost and follow the trail into the trees, but whatever mysterious force was driving him now kept him going straight, along the street.
He passed the school and skirted the edge of the woods until he reached a dirt road that split from the main one and wound around to their rear. Patrick had seen this area through the veil of the trees during his searching, but he had never walked around to the other side during the day. Off the street the houses grew thin, and the road eventually led him to a large round lot. The gravel here was loose and scattered, with little tufts of weeds sprouting up here and there. The only building in sight now was what appeared to be an automotive shop, but all the windows were dark and the parked cars unoccupied.
Patrick looked to where the lot met the trees and saw something dark lying on the ground. Thinking that he might go completely insane if it turned out to be a plastic bag filled with beer cans, he ran to it, his ears pricked up for any sound. In the sour yellow light of the streetlamp that observed the scene from beside the little two-car garage there was no mistaking the glasses or the backpack.
Patrick reached Owen’s side and sniffed at him instinctually. His eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving, but his breath was loud and obvious in Patrick’s ears. The sweet smell of blood—that smell with its color unlike any other substance on this earth—was thankfully absent from the air. He didn’t appear to be hurt.
A crow fluttered down from a nearby tree and landed on Owen’s side. Patrick snapped at it with a surge of red anger and it flew away. He turned around.
She was standing about twenty feet away, her hands at her sides, her face blank. The natural beauty of Rachel’s face was completely lost in the shadow cast over her by the streetlamp and by the intruder that stirred behind her eyes. Her face was haggard, her hair a mess, and she stared at him like a statue, only the little strands of gold on her head moving in the slight breeze. That wind brought with it a rich smell—that of moisture and soil.
Patrick bared his teeth and growled.
“Do you see what happens when you try to avoid your fate?” she asked with a voice that was soft but clear in the quiet neighborhood. “Those who surely don’t deserve it begin to get hurt.”
“What have you done to him?” Patrick snarled into her mind. There was no question of whether or not she would hear him.
She still didn’t move—only looked at him blankly.
“Not a thing, my dear child…” She paused. “Yet.”
A cloud of black spewed from the shadows of the trees and suddenly the world was filled with the roar of thousands of fluttering wings and harsh cackling caws. The stars were blotted out and the sky turned from darkest blue to pure black, the lamplight failing under the thrumming, thrashing creature that was descending upon the world. Patrick stood over Owen’s collapsed body, bracing for the cloud to descend.
Instead, a cylinder of swirling crows emerged from the middle of the storm and began to lower itself toward them, like a cyclone slowly touching down. It shifted and distorted as it reached out for them, the caws growing louder and more murderous, and Patrick stared up into it with defiance.
“Give up, boy,” her voice came through the din with impossible clarity. It was somehow calm.
“You don’t scare me!” he shot back at her, and he lifted his head and howled.
The call went up through the black cloud like a blast of wind, and for a moment it began to break apart… but after a few seconds the crows swirled together again and reformed the whirling funnel, reaching for them once more with one enormous feathery tentacle.
Patrick’s heart jumped up into his throat.
Loose crows began to swirl around them, aiming flying pecks at Patrick’s head and brushing him with their sinister wings. A few landed on Owen and began to peck h
im, but Patrick bit at them savagely. One was too slow, and Patrick snapped his jaws shut around its brittle body. He felt hollow bones snap and feathers tear from paper-thin flesh, a sensation which only fueled his desire to kill each foul creature that came within his reach. He growled and bit at every bird that dared to enter his bubble of protection, somehow feeling both helpless and powerful.
“He need not be harmed,” her voice floated through the air. “If you give yourself to me, he will be spared. Do not let your pride hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it. Give up.”
And for a horrible moment, Patrick considered it. His teeth were sunk into a feathery wing and he was flinging the animal to the ground with a sharp twist of his neck, and thinking how it may only be fair. Here was Owen—someone who was not involved in this mess whatsoever—and his life was in danger due to Patrick’s refusal to give in to Ramildienne’s wishes. He didn’t think he deserved to die any more than the boy lying on the ground underneath him, but it wouldn’t be right to make someone pay for something they had no part in, right? What if the witch truly was unstoppable, and after killing Owen she would only continue to take the lives of innocent townsfolk until Patrick finally laid his life before her? What if next she moved on to his family? For one terrible instant he thought that it might be better for everyone if he just gave in.
But it would be more than just three lives, wouldn’t it? After Patrick and Dean and Mr. Vincent were dead, what of Rachel? What about every single person the witch had sent to their graves so that she could live? What about all the horrible things she would surely do after this was over? It wasn’t just his life on the line. It wasn’t just Owen’s.
Looking up into the black tempest that swallowed the night sky, Patrick knew that Ramildienne was a monster. One that had to be stopped.
It is simply something that must be done, he thought with an empowering malice.
Patrick raised his head and howled again, this time the call nearly breaking the cloud completely. The swarm of birds flew around in confusion, revealing a few stars before regrouping once more.
“I won’t give in,” Patrick thought to her. “I’ll fight until one of us is dead.”
Dozens, if not hundreds of the crows flew around randomly and independently of the cloud, occupying every cubic foot of the air like some sort of gas, and through them Patrick could see Rachel standing against the dark night. The awful yellow light drenched the left half of her face, leaving the other a twisted and menacing parody of the girl he once knew.
“That’s a shame,” she said. “Now you will both die.”
“But we won’t, because you can’t kill us,” Patrick said, his eyes locked on her small figure.
“Oh, and why is that?” He could just barely see her mouth moving amidst the fluttering wings. There was a very small touch of amusement in her voice.
“Because I don’t think you have the power. At least not to kill him.” The words left him as though from nowhere. Vague ideas formed in his head as he spoke them, coming one by one until he felt as though someone else were planting them there. Whether some dawning of divine understanding or madness in the throes of death, he couldn’t tell.
“You knocked him out, but you didn’t bring him into the woods. Why wouldn’t you? That’s where it all started, so wouldn’t that be where you wanted it to end? But you only brought him to this lot. And why don’t you just send your birds to end it now? What’s stopping you? I think you have less power than you say. I think the one in control here is me!”
As Patrick spoke, he could see the faintest shadow moving across the parking lot. At first it looked like a trick to the eye, an illusion amidst the swirling black wings; but soon it was very clear that it was lurking toward the witch, slowly and steadily.
“You speak utter madness,” Rachel’s voice cut through the caws, clear and ghostly. “I gave you that power and I can just as easily remove the life from you.”
“You said yourself that you only showed me ‘a gift from the Earth’. If you have the power, go on! Take me!”
The black funnel that was slowly reaching for them stopped. For a moment it seemed that the din of wings and caws grew oddly quiet. Patrick could see her standing on the gravel, not moving an inch, not saying a word.
Then a shape launched itself toward her and in an instant she was swallowed up in darkness, the cloud breaking and the crows scattering into the sky. An enormous wolf landed on the ground where she had stood only a second before, flinging a dying crow from his mouth and barking with fury. Patrick looked up and saw that the cloud had reformed, closer to the trees. Standing on top of the churning black mass was Rachel’s small body. She stood in the center of the cyclone now, as still as though she were only atop a ladder. The storm whirled about her, whipping her hair around wildly.
“Perhaps you were right,” her voice floated down to them. “Let us end this where it began.” The cloud drifted toward the trees and Patrick began to lose sight of her in the shadows of the branches. “I will not run this time, and neither will you. It will end now.” Rachel and the storm melted into the trees and every trace of the tumult was gone in an instant. The night was suddenly quiet.
Patrick heard a snarl and turned his head. Dean took off toward the woods at full speed, not sparing him or the unconscious boy a glance. There were no coherent words passing through his head at all, but Patrick felt an overwhelming sense of emotion coming from the wolf, and it appeared to him in a color that only his wolf-mind could perceive, so much like a smell.
He saw an anger so savage that it bordered on insanity. The color was that of incredible hate, and above everything else the primal desire to kill. Dean’s mind was nothing but pure, blood red.
He made to take off after the wolf, then looked down at Owen. He hadn’t moved a muscle since Patrick arrived. His glasses lay askew on his face and his hair was tousled as though he were asleep soundly in his own bed and might wake up at any moment, groggy and stretching.
Patrick couldn’t just leave him here. Was he even okay, or did Ramildienne do something horrible to his mind? Patrick grabbed a loose pant leg and started to yank, in his panic not sure whether he was pulling him to safety or just jostling him awake. While trying to get a better grip Patrick accidentally bit Owen’s shin, and the second his teeth pinched the concealed flesh there was a stir and a moan from the small teenager lumped onto the ground. Owen pulled his leg away and sat up slowly, rubbing his face and straightening his glasses. Patrick stared at him in shock, immensely relieved that he was alright, forgetting in that moment that he was seeing the boy through the eyes of a wolf.
Owen turned toward him and for a few seconds his eyes couldn’t seem to focus properly. Then a dawning terror washed over his face and he began to crawl backwards away from Patrick.
“Guh—get away!” he shouted, his voice cracking. As he stood up shakily he fumbled blindly for rocks and began chucking them wildly.
Still fighting shock, Patrick broke his gaze and headed for the woods, rocks falling around him and one striking him in the thigh. As he ran he could hear Owen stumbling off up the road.
When the gravel gave way to earth and the trees loomed over him, Patrick stopped. He hadn’t meant to—he had meant to simply dive in as he normally did—but something held him back.
There wasn’t just darkness in these trees, he thought. So many times he had treaded through these woods knowing beyond a doubt that there was nothing to fear. Now he knew with great clarity what was waiting for him in the belly of this great beast, with its teeth of bows and bubbling saliva of shrubs and moss…
It was death.
Just as the witch had died here hundreds of years ago, tonight would see the end of one or more lives. Whether or not his own was included was simply a roll of the dice, the flip of a coin, and here on the edge of this accursed place of murder and spiritual bonds he found himself wishing above all things that it were daytime a
nd he was in his house, with his family, with Rachel, laughing and enjoying his life. Instead he faced this impassable wall, in the dark, in this strange town and in this foreign body. He could smell clouds in the sky above and the moisture on the wind sharpened every scent wafting about him. The trees, the soil, the dust, the very air itself all painted the most dazzling picture he could ever imagine, and he breathed deeply, wondering if the breath would be one of his last.
Every voice inside him that had ever told him he wasn’t good enough, or strong enough, or important enough rose in a mighty choir. Every fear he had felt over the last month snowballed into a gargantuan knot in his stomach and the sheer black of the trees—so much darker tonight than ever before—pierced his mind and sang him a wicked song of death, of the end, of failure. Every pebble, every leaf, every speck of dust pushed at him, told him to turn back, told him that there was no way he could win this fight. The wall he stood before was nothing but a void. If he entered, it would all be over.
He wasn’t good enough.
(Dean’s teeth sinking into his neck.)
He wasn’t strong enough.
(Crows, crows stabbing at his back and screeching into his brain.)
He wasn’t important.
(The crack of gunfire, the sting of death coming at any second.)
He couldn’t win.
(His father shouting, his mother crying.)
Death was waiting for him.
(The screech of bats, a rush of confusing sensations, utter and complete fear washing over him.)
This was the end.
(The pretty girl at the front of the room turning toward him. A big, sincere smile.)
It is the end, he thought.
Defying a thousand opposing forces and breaking through a wall of pure shadow, Patrick stepped into the woods and didn’t look back.
Chapter 25
The darkness pressed in on Patrick as he ran through the pitch black woods, his heart hammering and his blood feeling impossibly chill. He pumped his legs with all his strength, following the smell of fur and feather dust that hung in the air. After several moments he came to a clearing, and before he saw anything he caught that unearthly, ancient scent.