Monsters (Ashes Trilogy #3)

Her monster always woke up when Wolf was around. So Wolf could be on his way back, and she’d gotten a kind of subliminal whiff of him, one she hadn’t really noticed or paid attention to because she was so used to the Changed. That was possible. She had no idea what the range of her spidey-sense might be, and it was probably dependent on the wind, which was relatively still at the moment. But Wolf might be nearby. One eye on Darth, she slowed and sampled the air, letting it whisk over her tongue. All she got, however, was the copper of her blood, pine, snow, the evanescent coil of the wolfdog. No Wolf.

Okay, scratch that idea. Unless Wolf ’s on his way back and the monster knows this somehow. Yeah, but how would that work? Maybe the same way you got a premonition about someone and then your cell would ring. Which would mean that her monster was syncing up in some funky way with Wolf ?

“Well, honey, I hope that’s not it.” Her breath rose in a tangle of mist that the breeze picked apart. But what did I see? What was that? Turning away from the house, she stared back down the hill at the lake. Just couldn’t put her finger on—

“Wait a minute.” She squinted against the yellow glare bouncing up from unbroken snow over icy water. I saw this. A feeling of unreality swept through her. It’s not the same perspective, but if that was the lake . . . “During the mind-jump, I saw the lake on my left. So that means I was coming from the west.” Her eyes widened. And I saw three kids, way ahead, running away . . .

“No, that’s not quite right. Push-push-push,” she whispered, her eyes watering against the light. “Go-go-go.” What did that mean? “Think it through, Alex, come on.”

First, she and the monster had jumped—no, no, been pulled— into someone, a boy. A Changed, brimming with the single-minded urgency and intensity of a pursuit. He’d been with that red storm, the push-push go-go. There’d been someone else, too, screaming: Let me go-go-go.

But then her perspective had shifted. I jumped ahead and into someone else, another boy. The feeling she’d gotten then was also different: not only the push-push go-go but a sense of being driven and pushed after two . . . no, three other Changed the way old-style cowboys might herd cattle. Two she’d seen pretty clearly: that lanky kid with the wild hair and a shorter, smaller . . .

“Oh my God,” she breathed. Alex, you idiot. That was Marley, which means the smaller kid has to be Ernie. “And that means those other Changed are all chasing—”

The afternoon cracked open with a shot.

68

“Hannah!” Chris beat the window with his fist. Below, on the snow and now much closer to the barn, the Changed were splitting up, five right, five left. Coming at them from both sides. He slammed the thick, double-paned glass again. “Hannah, Hannah!”

Stupid, useless, what are you doing? He had to get out of the room. His fingers fumbled with the window latch, but it wouldn’t budge, and a second later, when he saw the slot for a key, he understood why. “A lock?” Whoever had built this room really didn’t want anyone getting out. So, either break the window and clamber down that trellis, or kick open his door. Neither was great, but the window would be faster.

Scraping up his chair, Chris grabbed the legs, wound up, and swung. He felt the impact in his wrists as the high split-rail back banged glass before bouncing back. The panes were seamed with a sudden silver tracery of cracks, like a psychotic spider’s web. Roaring in frustration, he swung again. This time the panes shattered with a tremendous crash, the chair’s ears and top rail smashing through. Whipping up cloth napkins Hannah had used to cover his food, he wrapped his fists, knocked hanging daggers out of the way, and bellowed: “Hannah! Hannah, look out, look out! Isaac, Isaac!”

Across the snow, he saw that steady, deadly stream of Changed suddenly come to a dead stop. They were too far away for him to make out faces, but he could see when they twisted to look back at the house. Good, good! He’d slowed them down, at least for a second. Cupping his hands, he screamed: “Hannah, Hann—”

The barn’s west door suddenly swung open. A head appeared, a froth of white above broad shoulders. “Isaac!” Chris bawled. “Barricade the doors! There are ten, there are ten!”

The old man’s head jerked back as the barn door snapped shut hard enough for Chris to hear the faint clap and then its echo. Okay. He’d warned them. Now to help them. Crossing to the door, he hesitated, studying the jamb, that lock. God, a dead bolt? Whatever. Just do it. Backing up, he aimed his right shoulder, grabbed his right arm with his left, then charged. He hit the door hard enough to feel the impact in his teeth. His shoulder let out a bark of pain. The door, solid oak and stout, shivered, but there was no splinter or scream of wood. He hammered the door again, and a third time, a grunt jumping past his teeth. By the fourth time, the bark in his shoulder was a roar, and still the door held tight.

“ Damn it.” Cold air gushed through the shattered window. His puffing breaths plumed as he planted his fists on his hips and tried thinking past the ache in his shoulder. Maybe have to climb out the window after all. That was when he noticed what he should have seen at the very beginning. This door locked from the outside but swung in.

“Hinges.” He spun back to the table. Hannah hadn’t given him a knife or fork, but . . . “There is no spoon,” he said, giddily, sweeping that up along with one of Hannah’s books. The spoon was heavy stainless steel and would break before it would bend. Wedging the handle under the hinge pin’s flattop, he beat it with the book’s spine. To his surprise, the pin let out a metallic screak after only a few blows and jumped a half inch from the knuckle. “Come on,” he grunted, beating the spoon. The pin hitched another half inch. “Come on, come—”

The unmistakable crackle of gunfire came through the broken window. He froze, heart thumping. Another shot. The distant bawl

il sa j . bick of cattle and bray of horses. Shit. “Got to get out,” he said, using his fingers to pry the pin the rest of the way. The hinge uncoupled, and now he could see a gap between the top rail and frame. One more, then I can just tear it down. Dropping to a crouch, he braced his shoulder against the jamb, rocked the now nicked handle beneath the head of the middle pin. This time, there was more resistance from the weight of the door. His left hand ached from his death grip around the spoon; his right wrist was throbbing. The spoon had punched and then cut a crescent moon through the book’s clothbound cover and a quarter inch of pages. Thank God it wasn’t a paperback−and then he wondered if he wasn’t getting just a little hysterical. More spackles and muted pops of gunfire, and now he was talking to the pin: “Let go, let go, let—”

Shooting straight up from the middle hinge, the pin popped free to clatter to the floor. Shoving the spoon into a back pocket, Chris flung the book aside, then wrapped his hands around the edge of the door and put his weight into it. The butt hinge cried in a long, high squall before giving way all at once. Raking the door aside, he bulled into the hall.

His room was at one end. Two doors on his right, one on his left, and, a little beyond that, a short banister marking the head of the stairs. Wheeling around the newel post, he pounded downstairs. Through pebbled glass sidelights on either side of the front door, he could see a huge porch he hadn’t known was there because his room was at the back of the house. To his left was an enormous front room with several long benches that looked like some kind of meeting room. He spotted a swinging door at the far end. Jess’s house had a door just like that, between the kitchen and parlor.

Grab a knife. Sprinting across the front room, he straight-armed the push plate, banging the door aside. Maybe a poker from the woodstove.

The kitchen was on the southeast corner of the house, same as Chris’s room, and already going thick with shadows. Directly ahead were eight chairs ranged around the long oval of a butcher block pedestal table, draped with a light blue tablecloth and set for a meal, probably a late dinner for Jayden and Connor. An ornate, old-fashioned kerosene wick lantern with a frosted shade and green glass base stood in the center. To the right was a black cast-iron cookstove on a square of raised red block, with a box of oak splits, a pail for ash, a brush, and shovel. On the stove, a saucepan steamed. Three iron pots and two large skillets dangled from a potrack. Beyond the kitchen table were oak cupboards; a butcher block bristled with knives. The way out was a door with floral chintz to the left of an old-fashioned refrigerator.

Then he registered what he hadn’t a split second before. The room wasn’t toasty warm and it wasn’t freezing. But there was a lingering raft of cold air, as if someone had just gone out—

Or come in.

That also was when he noticed how the flowery curtains over that kitchen door . . . still swayed. Not a lot, but enough.

It dawned on him then. The kitchen was right below his room. Whenever Hannah worked in here, he heard her. So when he’d shouted his warning, he’d shown the Changed exactly where, in which corner of the house, they should start looking.

A small shuffle.

Right behind him.

69

Rifle. Alex knew from that distinctive whipcrack. Close, coming from the west. Before the first echoes had died, she was pelting up the hill. “Penny, get in the house, get in the house!”

The smell was rolling from the woods, too: not only that familiar scent of cool shadows but a rancid fug of desperation. It’s Wolf, close enough to smell now. Wolf was in trouble, maybe hurt. She felt herself reaching out to him before she even realized what she was doing—and deep in her brain, the monster again shuddered to life, her thoughts slipping sideways. In an instant, she was both in her body and elsewhere, seeing through Wolf ’s eyes: tangy fear in her mouth, sour sweat on her chest. Ahead, the house was coming together out of the trees, light winking off windows like beacons. Something heavy, the sack, tried to slip off her shoulder—

Only it’s not me. Her head was huge. Yet everything that was her felt very far away, like Alice shooting up after nibbling that Eat Me cake. Alex was in here and out there, with Wolf.