Monsters

What am I thinking? I don’t believe in magic or dreams. And yet he’d pulled . . . what? A Lazarus? That was crazy. He’d accept a weird coma before coming back from the Land of the Dead.

“I don’t understand what there is for me to find here, or why you’re so important,” he said. “Yeager’s my grandfather. That’s not news. So, fine, you’re his brother, and you’re either Amish or lead some breakaway sect. But so what?”

“Well, I agree,” Hunter said. “If that were the only story or all there was to discover.”

“What more is there?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On how much you know about Simon Yeager,” Hunter said, “and Penny Ernst.”

Somewhere west of Rule and four days after the ants—two weeks after the avalanche—Wolf led them down a single, unmarked, dead-end rut along an isolated and very large lake nestled in the cup of broad, rolling, forested moraines. From the lack of houses ringing the shore and that rut, Alex thought the lake might be privately owned, a secret getaway. About two miles in, she spotted a boathouse and lone stake dock, with a single slip, perched on the water’s edge down a steep hill to her right. On a high hill to her left and directly across from the lake was a rough-hewn, two-story house, with a large, chalet-style picture window on the left and a partially completed wraparound porch, still on bricks and cinderblock, running off the front door and curling around to the right. The house was surrounded on three sides by tall stands of densely packed evergreens and hardwood—

And the dusky, flayed, and gutted carcasses of four wolves, dangling like totems.

All the blood drained from her head. The last time she’d seen anything like this was just outside the Zone, guarding the way to Wolf ’s feeding grounds and that arena with its grisly pyramids of decaying human skulls. Purple tongue jutting in a stiff apostrophe, one wolf dangled from a thick iron hook punched through its chest. The body hung to the right of the front door, where you might put up a cheery flowered banner: Welcome, Friends! To the extreme left, a second wolf, its eyeless sockets wide with eternal wonder, was suspended thirty feet up a weathered spruce. Alongside, a very large, navy blue Cordura stuff sack hung from a carabiner clipped to red paraline tied off around the trunk of a smaller adjacent tree.

A bear bag. She watched as the fingers of a light westerly breeze snatched the naked wolf and gave it a playful twirl. The paraline let out a soft squee. Her lips were numbing, as was her brain. From the aroma of chilled people-steak, she understood that the sack was where the Changed stored their kills. The idea that she’d come all this way only to be hacked up for storage in the equivalent of a deep freeze . . . Her throat began to clench, and she’d clapped both hands to her mouth, unsure if she would vomit or scream or both.

The front door opened then. A second later, a bull-necked boy lumbered out, trailed by another Changed: honey-blonde, blue-eyed.

The shock of recognition was physical, a splash of icy water. The hair wreathing the girl’s haggard features was what Alex recalled from a picture in yet another lake house. The square jaw, the nose were right. Willowy before, the girl was much thinner now. Well, mostly thin. Alex wasn’t really certain until the girl turned and Alex saw her in profile.

Then everything clicked into place: that green medic’s pack, the lengths to which Wolf had gone to save and protect her, his scent of lilacs and honeysuckle: safe and family. Regardless of how he might feel about her, she now understood why Wolf needed her, too. She finally got what was going on.

Penny Ernst—Peter’s sister—was pregnant.

“. . . correspond with images of the naked, red-eyed, wild-man god known in Vedic mythology as the Red Howler, the Raw-Eyed Beast, or Red Storm. As father of the Hindu storm gods, Rudra was clearly linked to intoxication. With his mad eyes and golden hair, this is a white-skinned god, the divine link to the Land of the Dead . . .”

“Which doesn’t prove anything other than people have been getting high for thousands of years,” he muttered, eyeing the stack of books Isaac had carted up: The Ethnobotanical Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants. Medicinal Plants of the Great Lakes Region. Little Deaths: The Physiology of Coma and Trance States. Not light reading, but they’d kept him isolated in this bedroom for the last two days, and Chris had plenty of time on his hands. Anything was better than stewing over what Isaac had said about Penny Ernst and Peter, Simon, his grandfather—and Jess.

“Tempting as it may be to regard Rudra as the physical manifestation of the Fly Agaric mushroom, I believe there to be a much better candidate for this lost, mysterious, and mystical drink. Close study of Vedic poetry—with its frequent mentions of regenerative ‘death sleeps,’ resurrection, and divine visions—point to the much rarer and more lethal cousin, A. pseudomori. ‘Death sleeps’ clearly suggest comas of varying durations, during which times metabolic demands . . .”

From across the room came a timid knock. “Chris?”

“Come on in. Oh, sorry, I forgot. It’s locked.” Yes, it was perverse and a little nasty, but he was starting to go bat-shit stir-crazy. There were only so many sit-ups and push-ups a guy could do. Any longer in solitary and he’d be as beefy as an inmate. Now, the fact that he was feeling so strong after both weeks on the trail and some time in cold storage . . . he didn’t want to think about that.

An uncertain pause on the other side of the door. “Do you want me to go away?”

Don’t be a creep. It’s not her fault. Other than Isaac, the rest were hanging back, spending as little time with him as possible. As pissed as he was, he wasn’t sure he blamed them. “No,” he said, and shoved back from the table. “Come on in, Ellie.”

There was the thunk of a lock being thrown. The door cracked a few inches, revealing the worried eyes of that morning’s guard—a strawberry blond named Eli—and then a flash of golden braids as Ellie pushed past.

“Ellie.” Eli made a grab that Ellie easily dodged. “Jayden said we should wait for the dogs.”

“Mina knows he’s okay.” Ellie gave her dog an affectionate ruffle. “Don’t you, girl?”

“Relax, Eli, I’m still talking,” Chris said as Mina trotted over, gave Chris’s hand a welcoming snuffle, then immediately flopped on her back, tail thumping. Grinning, Chris obliged with a furious belly scratch that set the dog to squirming. “You like that, girl, you like it?” he said as the dog’s back legs pedaled. “That’s a good girl.”

“She’s such a baby.” Dropping to her knees, Ellie brushed aside a corn-tassel curl that had escaped her left braid to coil at her temple. “Like I never pay attention to her.”

“It’s okay,” Chris said as Mina stretched both front legs and let out a blissful moan. “I like it. My dog did this all the time.”

“You miss him?”

“Yup. Jet’s a good dog. I bet you’d like him.” Chris gave Mina’s belly a firm clap, then looked up at the little girl. “Going fishing?” “She’s always going fishing,” Eli put in.

Ellie showed Chris an exaggerated eye-roll. “I was wondering if, maybe . . . in a couple days, if they let you out . . . you want to come with me?”

“Sure,” he said, then couldn’t resist the dig. “But I guess it all depends on whether Isaac and Hannah think I’m going to eat you.”

“God.” Eli’s face darkened. “Don’t be such a jerk.”

The hopeful shine on Ellie’s face dimmed. “They don’t think that, Chris. You know they have to be sure.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Don’t be such a turd. “Sorry. I’m not usually an ass . . . uh, such a creep.”

“It’s all right. You’re just upset.” But her smile was more tentative than before.

“No excuse.” Reaching across the dog, he tucked that corkscrew curl behind her ear and let his hand linger a moment, enjoying the flush of delighted surprise that spread over her face. Cute kid, but he could see the sadness in the slightly dusky hollows under her eyes. “The least I can do is be nice to the girl who saved my life . . . and don’t start.” He held up a finger. “It is so a big deal.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.” Ellie looked pleased enough to burst. “Now that you’re feeling better, is it okay if I ask you a question?”

“Of course.” He said it easily enough, but he felt his stomach suddenly knot with apprehension. “Shoot.”

“Before I came here, I had these friends.” Ellie nibbled at her lower lip. “Alex and Tom. Not my age, but older like you? Actually, I think Tom was even older. He was a soldier, like my dad, only Tom was in Afghanistan, not Iraq, and worked on bombs and stuff. Anyway, we were all together. They . . . they took care of me, but then we got separated. When Tom . . .” Her eyes shimmered, and her mouth twisted exactly the way a little girl’s would if she was trying hard not to cry. “When these adults took me, Tom got shot and . . .”

He listened with growing dismay as she narrated a story he’d heard once before. Ever since that morning on the snow, when he’d swum back in such pain and fear to put two and two together, he knew this moment would come. Until this second, he wondered what he would do—and why that should be a question.

This kid risked her neck for you. The least you can do is man up.

“So, what I was wondering”—Ellie dropped her gaze to her hands as if afraid of finding the answer in his face—“was if Tom and Alex . . . if they got to Rule?” A tear broke against her fingers. Eyes still averted, Ellie knuckled her cheek. “Are they there? Are they okay?”

He was going to hate himself forever.

“I’m sorry, Ellie,” he said. “But I never met them.”

You are such an asshole. Through the windows, Chris watched as Isaac put a hand on the little girl’s head. That loosened something, because Ellie suddenly flung her arms around the old man’s waist and buried her face. Even two stories up and across a half acre, Chris could see the little girl’s shoulders shudder. She’s the only one who cares, and you go and lie. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">