Monsters (Ashes Trilogy #3)

mo ns ters thought was in Iraq and not due back for two months. But then you opened the door and there was your dad, and Grandpa’s yelling, Surprise! But you, you’re so stunned that you have to reach to touch your daddy’s cheek—

“To make sure you’re not dreaming. To make sure he’s real.” Her voice was thick. She was crying again, and how stupid was that? Why can’t anything good ever happen? Still weeping and without understanding why, she laid her hand over the star and the tiny bulge of the spell bag just beneath. The body was still, but . . .

No. Blinking, her tears suddenly drying up, she took her hand back and turned it over to inspect her palm like a fortune-teller studying a lifeline. No, that can’t be right.

Well, the little mind-voice said, you could check one of the others. Then compare, right?

“This is dumb.” But her right knee crick-crackled in the hush as she rose and sidestepped to another body in the row just above: Travis, dead—well, put out of his misery, as Hannah liked to say—only a month ago. Ellie feathered her palm over that tent of burlap and the spell bag beneath. The hex star’s purple paint was riddled with thin fissures, like a dried-up creek bed. Travis was still. But Travis was also very, very cold. Cold as the stone, as the snow. As ice. So was Rudy, one body over, and Mrs. Rehymeyer two rows up.

They’re all cold. Returning to the last and freshest body, she eased her hand over the star. They’re ice cubes. But this one is—

“Warm.” A lance of shock stabbed her chest. “You’re warm.” Not blazing hot or feverish, or even normal-warm like her. But the difference between this body and the others . . . This is real. She watched her fingers walk the hills and ridges of ribs, reading the chest like a blind person. Lower down, just below that last rib, she traced the bit of wound wood—a piece of an ash tree prepared in some weird Amish magic way—that Hannah had placed over the rip where that killing spike had driven through. I really feel this.

Her hand drifted back to the star. Now that she was allowing herself to linger, to concentrate, she detected a very light but very distinct flutter, like the flip of a goldfish in a too-large bowl. Hannah said that when you took a pulse, you had to be careful not to mistake your heartbeat for the other person’s. So Ellie pressed her hand just a little more firmly against the body’s chest. The fish-flutter nudged her palm again, but stronger now, as if the spell bag was a heart struggling to fill with blood.

“Oh!” Gasping, Ellie jerked away again and saw that it was . . . the star was . . . “Moving,” she whispered. “You’re really moving.” The words came out sounding too ordinary, but there was no mistake. The hex sign heaved and rolled: not the up-and-down, in-with-thegood, out-with-the-bad of a breath but the slow roll of a wave, like there was something eeling along under there. Animal. She could feel her mind snatch at the idea. A mouse or even a snake, and no, don’t bother her with little details like snakes didn’t come out when it was freezing. There had to be an animal in there. It was the only explanation that made sense.

But the body’s warm, Ellie, the little voice said. It’s not frozen or ice-cold, it’s—

Ellie lost track of what the closet-voice said next.

Because from that burlap shroud came a low moan.

26

It wasn’t Alex. A boy stared up at Tom. Stared through him and beyond, into the red socket of that dying sky. If a look had a sound, this boy’s was silence. The kid’s eyes were vacant, their color as flat and murky as stones in deep water, and so still. Nearly bleached of color, the boy’s face was frozen in a death mask, a bloodless, gaping scream. Or maybe he’d only been choking to death on that ball of ice, jammed in his mouth like an apple in a roast pig, or suffocating because of the snow plugging both nostrils.

“Nooooo,” Tom groaned. A weird palsy shook him to the bone. In a saner moment, he might have been glad it wasn’t Alex. Every second he didn’t find her—entombed in ice, torn apart under the snow, broken to bits among the rocks—was one more moment when she still might be alive. Those Chuckies had had the time. They’d reached her, stolen her from him, spirited her away. But for him, this was the rise all over again, the feeling of the earth swelling and heaving and breaking, and then he was gasping, shuddering, staring down through streaming eyes at that dead boy, the bright flare in his chest exploding in a scream: “God, why? What are you doing, what are you doing, what are you doing?”

His vision purpled. He didn’t remember picking up the rock, which, he saw later, was jagged and long as an ax head, completely right for the job. But time shrieked to a halt, stuttered . . .

And when he came back, it was to sounds, raw and crisp and glassy: the boy’s frozen flesh breaking, the face and skull shattering and splintering to bits. Or maybe that was only Tom’s mind finally blasting apart; the black thing inside cracking him wide, wide open to be birthed on a bellow of agony and grief.

“No, God, no, no, no!” On his knees, rearing up, his arms hurtling down, the rock-hatchet cleaving air with a whistle, as he smashed and hit and hit and destroyed: “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!”

Why did he stop? Hell if he knew. But that burst of manic energy suddenly drained away; all his muscles went wobbly and weak, and he couldn’t hold on anymore. The rock tumbled from his fingers, and then he was falling back, his lungs working, the sweat running in rivers down his face and neck and over his chest. God, he was burning up. Pawing at his parka, he finally managed to drag down the zipper and flop his way free of that tangled embrace.

Of course it wasn’t Alex. You knew it was a boy’s boot; look at the ankle, look at the size, you idiot—how could you miss that? “Because,” he choked, pulling in icy air that slashed his lungs, “you want it to be her, Tom; you don’t want it to be her, but you want it, you need it, you need her, and oh God, oh God . . .”

His maddened eyes skated over the rest; saw now the hips that were much too narrow. And the hands, look at the hands, the hands! He’d skimmed right over the large knuckles. Snugged on the right hip, just below where the parka had ridden up, was a holster with a real cannon he’d recognize anywhere: Desert Eagle .50AE, a huge weapon for a Chucky with big hands.

“I am losing my mind.” Groaning, he rolled to his belly and grabbed the snow, the white blushing to pink as he dragged himself from the wreck he’d made of that boy’s head. When he just couldn’t keep on, he stopped, let himself sink. His head was pulsing, the pressure pushing at the limits of his skull. Clamping his bruised, bloodied fingers to his temples, he squeezed. Under his belly, he could feel the

mo ns ters earth opening, as welcoming as a grave; the snow melting, bleeding to water, stealing his heat. Above, the fickle wind streamed down from the lake, licking sweat from his neck, his shoulder blades, and wicking the wet from his hair and scalp so that he shivered. His breath came in sobs, and the taste of snow on his tongue was bitter, like gunmetal.

Just lie here and let go. Lie here long enough so you fall asleep, pass out, freeze to death. Or take the damn shot, you coward. One shot, and then you can just let go of all this. Not with the Bravo, though; it wouldn’t be right to use Jed’s weapon for that. The dead Chucky had that Eagle, though—a real monster. Yes, but the gun had been buried under snow. Mechanism’s probably frozen. With my luck, it’ll explode in my hand.

So, not the Eagle either—and not here. Someone from camp would eventually wonder and come looking, sooner rather than later. Cindi, most likely, and she’d bring Luke. Even with the crows and other scavengers, it would take time to pick him down to bone. He couldn’t do that to any kid. It wouldn’t be right. Moaning, he craned up from the snow as the wind sighed past his right cheek. He was turned halfway around and was now facing northwest, the dead Chucky at his two o’clock, the blighted woods at nine. Bolts of light, laser-bright, burned tears, and he winced, instinctively raising a hand. I don’t even know what living feels like any—

He blinked.

Maybe it was the angle and the fact that he was low on the snow and facing a different direction. Or maybe he’d been so focused on that ski pole and then the boot, and seen only what he wanted instead of what had been in front of his nose all along.

Another gun.

No. He didn’t believe it. Can’t be. It’s a trick. I’m seeing things. He armed his streaming eyes. That portion of the snowfield was incredibly chewed up, pocked with stones and potholes. When he really stopped to consider, the snow was also piled very strangely in a few places, as if someone had dug down into the snow. As if someone had been searching for something.

But the shape remained, crisp and unmistakable. What his vision sharpened on was a gun, jammed bore-first into the snow.

That was surprise enough. But he got the shock of his life after staggering over, his boots stubbing on hidden rocks and debris that kept trying to trip him up. Enough of the weapon was visible for him to know the make well before he dropped to his knees and parsed out the words Austria and 19 stenciled on the barrel.

It was a Glock.

27

Ellie didn’t stop to think. When she looked back at it later, she didn’t remember how the knife even got into her hand. But in the next second there was a wink of steel, the snick as the Leek’s blade socked home, and then she’d grabbed burlap and begun working the point of the knife through the tight weave, sawing as fast as she could. Careful, careful. She made a hole just big enough for her hands, then put aside the knife, hooked her fingers on either side, and pulled. There was a loud riiip as the burlap tore in two.

Spiced air spilled out. Seated over the chest, the red spell bag, no bigger than her fist, quivered like a heart trying to remember how to beat. The body was completely cocooned in that white sheet . . . except the material wasn’t strictly white anymore. Tiny ruby spiders were spreading their legs over the fabric swathing the thighs and chest, that right side.

Fresh blood. Bleeding . . . She stared, spellbound, her horror slipping into a kind of awe. How can there be bleeding?