The Myth Hunters (The Veil #1)

When the demon reached for him again Oliver shouted the filthiest obscenities he could think of as a kind of battle cry and threw himself backward, simultaneously tearing his hand away from the bark that had grown over his fingers. His skin burned. Pain drove up his arm and for a moment it took his focus, so that he barely felt himself dropping through the lower branches of the tree, branches and leaves and cherries whipping past him as he fell. He struck a thick branch and his weight and momentum broke it, the parka helping to blunt the pain of the impact.

He crashed to the island on his back, grunting in pain as he landed on the shotgun case that he still carried. The wind was knocked out of him and he struggled to breathe, face flush with pain and panic, his shoulder and spine aching as though he’d been struck with a baseball bat. Above him he heard Kitsune begin to bark, and somewhere in the midst of his agony and terror felt a small spark of relief that she was alive. Twined in those branches, she could not transform or the constriction might be the death of her. But for the moment, the cherry tree had not killed her.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Bascombe. If it is a game you desire, I will play.” Aerico clambered down through the branches toward him.

Oliver stared up at the demon as it descended. His fingers were scraped raw, a hundred pinpricks of pain. He took in long, ragged gasps of air, steadying himself. The ache in his back was so brutal he thought there was a chance it might be broken, and that he would then lie here like carrion awaiting the vulture’s arrival.

Except for the times he had played one on stage— and perhaps that was why he enjoyed acting— Oliver Bascombe had never been a hero. Not even the hero of his own life. In his own mind. He had studiously avoided conflict. But he was more terrified of dying than he was of fighting.

He rolled over and staggered to his feet, muscles in his back protesting. Unsteadily he backed away, staring up at the cherry tree, and swung the shotgun case around so that it hung in front of him. Aerico laughed softly in that sticky voice and dropped to the lowest limbs of the cherry tree. Oliver shot back the zipper and reached in, hauling out the gun. There was more ammunition in the case, but the shells already loaded would be all the chance the demon would give him. He let the case fall to the ground and swung the shotgun barrel up.

Aerico leaped out of the tree. Oliver tracked him with the gun and fired. The blast resounded across the island, bouncing off the masonry of the bridge and echoing out over the river. Leaves flew and cherries exploded and a branch cracked and hung toward the ground. But the demon had not been lunging at Oliver at all. The branches of the next tree swayed and Oliver’s stomach twisted as he realized Aerico had made the leap from one to the next like some flying squirrel.

“Shit,” he whispered, backing away from both cherry trees.

The demon did not like direct sunlight. Oliver had one shell remaining in the shotgun. He swept the barrel from side to side, trying to sight Aerico in the trees and knowing that he had little chance. The demon’s natural camouflage, the texture and color of his skin, meant only the motion of branches could give him away . . . and every time he saw branches moving and tried to get a closer look, the demon was already gone.

Oliver fled.

But Aerico was correct. There was really nowhere to run.

He darted beneath a pair of apple trees, past dangling pears and ripe nectarines whose sweet fragrance would normally have pleased him and now sickened him. His head turned in a frenzy as he sought to make certain the demon did not surprise him or get behind him.

He nearly fell into the river. Erupting from between two pear trees he turned, watching the trees, backed up, and accidentally shot one foot off the island’s shore and into the water. The current tore at him, trying to unbalance him. His arms pinwheeled and he managed to regain his balance, still holding the shotgun with one hand.

Spinning, certain Aerico would use the moment to drop down upon him, Oliver gripped the shotgun firmly again. His scraped left hand sang with pain and he bumped it with the gun. Oliver gritted his teeth and cursed at his own stupidity.

His right hand trembled with the urge to pull the trigger, to have the satisfaction of blowing a hole in the cherry-tree demon.

The sunlight shone on his back. The river rushed past. There was no sign of the army up on the stone bridge. Somewhere in that small orchard he heard Kitsune begin to cry out in pain in the voice of a fox. Images flashed through his mind of the winter man, speared through with cherry-tree branches, cherries blossoming through his body.

Off to his right, up in the trees in the shadow of the bridge, branches swayed and leaves rustled.

Oliver swung the barrel of the rifle and his trigger finger twitched. He was certain he saw the demon crouching in the tree, but he forced himself not to fire. He had one more chance. Only one.

Now the sound of Kitsune’s pain became even greater and he faltered. He had never intended to leave his friends to die, only to survive himself and find some way to help them if he managed to destroy the demon. But he could not hear that sound, could not endure her pain, without attempting to aid her.

Back to the water, gun aimed at the branches above, he began to circle the small island as swiftly as he could manage. He stumbled over roots and stepped into the water several times, for the trees grew nearly right up to the shore. Oliver had worked his way perhaps a third of the way around the circumference of the island and Kitsune’s cries continued, yet he had not seen any further trace of Aerico in the orchard.

What if he went back to them? He could be killing them, even now. Or Kitsune. Frost is probably already . . .

He didn’t finish the thought. Instead he stood, breathing heavily, pain still there but receded, overridden by adrenaline. He could jump into the water and let the current carry him, try to make his way to shore downriver. Or work his way around the outside of the island to the bridge and try to climb up to the stone rail before the demon could get to him. But either way, he would be alone beyond the Veil, hunted by the army and every citizen with a taste for whatever reward would be given for the head of an Intruder. Without his companions— his friends— he was as good as dead.

There were more noble reasons why he could not abandon Frost and Kitsune, but survival demanded only one course of action.

He surveyed the branches of every tree in sight, peaches and apples and pears, but nothing moved there. Above the island, far above the bridge, birds flew in formation above the sky. There was no sign of Aerico.

Oliver hesitated not a moment more. He gripped the shotgun and ran into the trees, ducking under branches and working his way around the largest apple trees, making a direct course for the trio of cherry trees he knew were on the other side, just beside the bridge. The skin of his left hand stung. It was bright red where it had been scraped raw by bark. His right wrist was covered in blisters from the demon’s touch. But his hands were steady now and he watched the branches above him as he ran, gaze sweeping the orchard.

There was a small clearing ahead. A spot of sunlight. Beyond that, through the screen of the branches of a pear tree, he saw those gigantic cherry trees. His own heartbeat filled his head. He could barely take a breath, and when he swallowed it hurt his throat. The man he had always been would not have recognized this guy running through the trees. A voice he recognized as his own, as the professional voice of Oliver Bascombe, lawyer, screamed at him to stop this foolishness, to run and pray for a miracle. But the voice of his heart and now his head as well, the voice of the man he was onstage, projecting to the back of the audience, shouted it down. There was no room for sheepish, unassertive Oliver here. He had to be the man he always wished but never believed he could be . . .

Or he would die.

Leaves rustled and a branch cracked above and to his right. He swung the shotgun that way even as he backed away to the left, darting around a copse of apple trees, pushing through the dense tangle of branches between them. He turned to continue toward the cherry trees and his friends.

A figure loomed in front of him, up in the branches of an apple tree. There was no time for thought or hesitation.

Oliver fired the shotgun and it blew a massive hole in the chest of the creature up in that apple tree.

But the thing did not move. The tree swayed, but it remained where it was. Branches were wrapped around its arms and legs, strangling its throat, plunging into its eyes and mouth. And now, even as Oliver stared, more of them rushed in to slide into the gaping wound the shotgun blast had just made, and apple blossoms began to flower there.

It was a dead man, a brown leather pouch slung over his shoulder. He was taller than any man Oliver had ever seen, but a man nevertheless. In death, one of his hands had been closed into a fist, and now with the jerking of the branches invading his flesh, the fingers loosened and the hand opened slightly.

Spilling out apple seeds.

Aerico had mentioned him before. Appleseed.

Johnny Appleseed.

He had not been caught by the Myth Hunters, but murdered by the demon of the cherry tree, perhaps trying to appease them.

Oliver staggered backward. A familiar, sticky laughter chuffed in the tree just behind him. He spun, but too late.

The demon was upon him.

If Kitteridge was Norman Rockwell’s wet dream, the kind of New England town that bespoke another era, a purer piece of Americana, then Cottingsley was the source of Rockwell’s passions. It was that other era, that purer Americana. Kitteridge was quaint, but it was a twenty-first-century town, complete with Starbucks and an Internet café. Driving into Cottingsley was a journey back in time.

Twelve days before Christmas and with a blanket of crisp, white snow upon every roof and tree and lawn, the town dredged up whispers of old memories in Ted Halliwell. The detective nurtured his grumpy exterior, but inside somewhere was still a boy who had grown up in a town very much like this one. There were wreaths on every street lamp and lights on every house. Kids threw snowballs at one another in the yard of a red brick schoolhouse as he drove past. Passing through the center of town, with the old train station and the skating rink in the park, he saw a couple strolling along the sidewalk, laden with the bags and boxes from their Christmas shopping, the man wearing an old-fashioned dress hat of the sort his uncle Bud had always favored.

It was, he thought, much like living inside a snow globe.

If he had come here in summertime he was certain he would have seen kids in simple, neat clothes having a catch on the town common or playing baseball in the schoolyard. There would be horns and strings played every Saturday night on the bandstand in the park, with crowds and balloons and ice cream, perhaps even fireworks. Driving into Cottingsley unsettled Halliwell, touching a part of him that he’d long forgotten. Though the experience was bittersweet, he found himself pleased to be there. Such feelings had not been roused the last time he had visited Cottingsley, but he had been a younger man then, and had still had his wife and daughter in his life. He had not been alone.

How strange it was that in this place, frozen in times past, where he knew no one at all, he found himself feeling less lonely than he had in years.

Then he saw the blue glass ball on the post in front of the police station up ahead and the sense of well-being that Cottingsley had bestowed upon him evaporated. This place had been tainted by violence, just like every other town in the world. If it had ever really been the pure dream of another age that it seemed on the surface, surely those days had passed long ago. Whatever remnant of innocence the town had managed to retain would have been destroyed by the hideous public murder of Alice St. John.

Halliwell pulled into the lot behind the police station and slid his Wessex County sheriff’s department I.D. plate onto the dashboard. When he stepped out of the warmth of the car he shuddered and zipped his coat. It was less than two hours farther north from his usual stomping grounds, but it felt colder up here.

Or maybe you’re just getting older, Ted. Older by the hour.

A cute little redheaded girl was sitting behind the reception desk inside the station. She looked up from a hardcover book when he came in and smiled politely. Halliwell figured she had to be eighteen to have the job— out of high school— but she didn’t look quite that old.

“Can I help you, sir?”

He hitched his belt, self-conscious as he caught himself doing it, and pulled his I.D. wallet out, flipping it open. “Afternoon. I’m Detective Halliwell. I have an appointment with Detective Unger.”

There was that smile again, warm and heartbreaking. Halliwell imagined boys promising eternal devotion to God to have those eyes twinkle for them just once. A curmudgeon he might be, and old enough to be her father, but he couldn’t imagine any man immune to that smile. The receptionist thumbed a button on an intercom on her desk.

“Daddy,” she said, “Detective Halliwell’s here from the Wessex County sheriff’s.”

“Thank you, Sarah,” came the crackling reply. “Send him back, would you? Actually, on second thought, I’ll be out.”

Halliwell raised an eyebrow. “The detective’s your father?”

Sarah Unger gave him an uncertain look, as though wary of disapproval. “Yes?” she asked, the What of it? clear but unspoken.

“Must be nice for him, having you around.” Halliwell said it without thinking, just voicing his gut reaction, but the words echoed in him and he slid his hands into his coat pockets and let out a long breath as though he were deflating. He tried not to calculate the number of days since he had last seen his own daughter. His Sara. That this girl shared the name sent regret stabbing through him.

The girl’s brows knitted— she sensed something had upset him— but she said nothing and a moment later a man appeared from the door behind her, which was set into a broad wall of smoked glass. It looked more like a lawyer’s office than a police station. The man was tall and thin with a narrow, hooked nose and piercing eyes. He wore a thin white mustache and his hair was little more than wisps of salt and pepper.