Blood Rites (26 page)

The wound on her chest healed. As the miles rolled by; he reached back and lifted the blanket often, watching her skin grow, wondering how badly she could be hurt and still survive.

Late in the afternoon, Russ stopped in front of a five and dime on a deserted street on the outskirts of Edson. Patrick still slept on the floor, and after covering Alan and warning him about attracting attention, Russ went inside and purchased two toddler jumpsuits in a three-year size, clean shirts for Alan, and some milk and juice for the cooler. Soon after, he pulled into an empty provincial park, ordered the Wells boy out of the car, untied him, and let him rub the circulation back into his hands. Patrick, who woke when the car stopped moving, got out also, dragging the blanket behind him like a cape, one corner over his head, standing always with his back to the sun so his face was in the blanket’s shadow.

“Patrick’s thirsty,” Alan told Russ. These were the first words he’d spoken since the shooting. He managed to look Russ in the eye as he said them, then quickly lowered his focus to somewhere in the middle of Russ’s chest.

“And you’re not?” Russ asked with sinister good humor, rubbing the boy’s shoulder, enjoying his fear. Alan refused to answer, unwilling to ask Russ for anything for himself. Pride kept him silent. Russ had to give the kid credit for that. With a brief odd stab of pity, he opened the trunk and pulled a box of camp supplies from it and handed the canteen on top to Alan. It slipped through Alan’s still numb fingers. Patrick picked it up and gave it back to Russ, laying a hand on Russ’s bare arm as he did so, keeping the hand there long after Russ had grabbed the canteen, opened it, and held it out so Alan could drink.

Patrick’s touch drew Russ’s attention to him, and as he passed the canteen down to the toddler, he again noticed the now obvious differences in the boy’s body. “What do you eat besides milk?” he asked Patrick.

The toddler only stared back, his huge child’s eyes narrowed in frank defiance. He ignored the question even when Russ repeated it. Without warning, Russ swung an open hand. Though Patrick ducked and moved back a step, his expression did not change. “Just milk and water,” Alan answered nervously for him.

“Easy to maintain, huh? Well, Patrick, I have a present for you.” He handed the toddler a carton of milk and the clothes bag. Patrick looked at the suits inside—one green, the other blue, took out the blue one and began to put it on. As he pulled up the legs, he paused to wipe the dried blood off his arm. Russ, who had forgotten the gash Patrick had received last night, cursed himself for not buying bandages. He knelt beside the boy and, intending to examine the cut, reached for his arm. With a snarl, Patrick stepped back.

But he moved too late. Russ had already seen the truth.

Beneath the dried blood, the wound had vanished.

Russ spun the boy around, looking at the other arm, seeing nothing at all. He abruptly let the child go and went back to his sandwich, hiding his curiosity for the moment. Patrick Austra and his mother had become riddles Russ had to unravel. He only wondered how much he would be able to discover before he went too far. As he thought of everything he’d learned in his years with the Carreras, the answer became simple after all.

Russ fingered the folded hunting blade he kept in his pocket as he watched the child carefully holding his cup of water, trying to drink the milk without spilling any onto his clothes. A fine line of liquid dripped down Patrick’s chin and he caught the drop with one long finger, then licked it, looking at Russ all the time as if milk were not the food he wanted.

“It’s too cold,” Alan said when Russ asked Patrick what was wrong with it. “He’s used to being nursed.”

“Well, he’s going to have to learn to live without his mother’s breast soon enough. He can start now,” Russ said, his thoughts still fixed on the wounds that had vanished in hours. A normal woman would not have survived his shots. A normal child would still have a cut on his arm. How far could he go? The question was too serious to be postponed to some more opportune time and he casually pulled out his knife.

The sun had set by the time they’d finished. Russ took the boys to the unlit outhouse, standing with the door open to make sure they left no notes, no trace of their presence behind. Patrick had to strip to use the toilet. As he did, Russ noticed again the odd, beautiful shape of the child’s body, how pale his skin seemed, how huge his eyes became, and how they watched him with a look that wasn’t a child’s look at all.

Hate. And something more.

Hell, that kid knew what he planned to do, knew and gave permission with an emotion Russ could only read as contempt. So be it. The kid would show some fear soon enough.

Russ waited until he had Alan tied and sitting in the front seat of the car before reaching for Patrick. This time the child did not move away and Russ carried him to the picnic table and put one of his hands palm down on the top, mechanically spreading the fingers. Moving so his body was between the boy and Alan’s line of vision, he brought his knife down hard with the force of both hands, slicing through Patrick’s little finger just below the first joint. The child screamed not with pain or fright but with absolute fury and attacked, a small whirling mass of anger that Russ could not subdue. He did manage to keep the boy at arm’s length, though, until Patrick swung with his mangled hand, ripping against the side of Russ’s face, tearing at his mouth while he sank his long rear teeth into Russ’s arm.

“Damn you!” Russ swore and bit back.

The child’s blood, flowing from his severed finger, filled Russ’s mouth. Instinctively Russ swallowed, then swallowed again. Patrick, his rage vanishing as quickly as it had come, relaxed and let Russ wrap a handkerchief around his finger and place him next to his mother in the back seat. Russ wasn’t sure but it seemed that the woman had changed position. Perhaps her son’s pain had called her back to consciousness.

“Come to me, Helen Wells,” he said as he started the car. “Come soon or I’ll use his agony to wake you.”

Though Russ guessed that Patrick had understood at least part of what he’d said, the toddler slid forward, resting his unbandaged hand on Russ’s bare shoulder, rubbing his face against the back of Russ’s neck.

This wasn’t permission, Russ thought. The boy admired him, one predator to another. If he had a kid, he’d want one like Patrick, a future wolf in a world of waiting sheep.

Russ glanced over his shoulder and saw Patrick smiling, his face still pressed against Russ’s neck, a hand on his mother’s forehead.

Russ drove through the night, the headlights and the dancing ghostly aurora their only light. Eventually, the towns became larger and closer together and Russ, who relied on ignorance as well as fear to keep captives in line, moved the boxes into the car and ordered both boys into the trunk.

Though Alan immediately obeyed—rushed to obey, Russ noted with satisfaction—Patrick hung back.

“I’ll hold him,” Alan said.

“The hell you will. The kid has to listen to me.”

When Russ reached down to grab him, the boy ripped at Russ with his fingers and stuck his teeth into Russ’s arm, holding on with all the tenacity of a pit bull puppy on a very large rat. “What the fuck,” Russ bellowed and, ignoring Alan’s cry of protest, swung the boy sideways against the fender of the car. Patrick, with the breath knocked out of him, loosened his grip. Nonetheless, he screeched as Russ threw him in the trunk beside Alan and kept on screeching after the lid had been slammed shut.

Russ had acted on instinct when he’d included the toddler in his kidnapping. He still wasn’t sure how valuable the kid was but he could be the Lindbergh baby and still not be worth the attention his noise would attract. Russ decided to give the kid one more minute, and if he hadn’t shut up by then, Russ would kill him.

Silence. Immediate. Revealing.

Russ had reached a decision. The boy had responded. Russ hadn’t even tried to tell him; the kid had just known. He recalled the hours by the campfire when Donna had shown him everything the boy could do. He’d grudgingly believed then. Belief was stronger now.

Valuable? Hell, Patrick Austra and his mother might be real treasures if Russ could just figure out how to use them.

Inside the truck, Patrick gripped Alan painfully, pressing his long, thin body against the older boy, displaying a quaking, open fear for the first time since they’d been taken.

“What is it?” Alan asked. Instead of replying, the boy showed him how the floor and the ceiling and the walls pressed down on him, smothering him. “Don’t,” Alan gasped, fighting for breath. “Close your eyes and pretend you’re outside and it’s night.”

“No,” Patrick responded, linked minds with the older boy, and broke them free of the trunk, to hover in the sunshine and look down at Russ stubbing out his cigarette, getting back into the car.

Patrick licked his lips, tasting Russ’s blood. This made him feel better in some mysterious way he did not yet understand. He broke the bond with Alan and relaxed as the car began to roll.

Lulled by its swaying, the soft warmth of the sleeping bag beneath him, and the relief of being out of Russ’s reach for a little while, Alan finally slept. Patrick stayed awake longer, looking up at the small circles of light coming through the airholes, thinking about Russ, submersing himself in his instincts, sustained by his hate.

II

Finally, Russ drove into a warehouse smelling of diesel oil and decayed fish. He locked the doors behind him before opening the trunk. Huge hooks holding mildewed nets lined the walls. There were pulleys hanging from the ceiling and a number of trapdoors in the floor. As Russ herded the boys to an empty storage room near the back, Alan coughed. He thought he’d heard an echo but the sound was muffled, absorbed by the dampness of the walls.

After Russ locked the doors behind them, Alan’s first thought was escape but it seemed impossible. Though there were a pair of windows, they were high in the walls and barred to keep out intruders. Their main purpose seemed to be to shed a dirty grey light on the floor, making the room seem even dingier than it was. As he looked up at it, he saw a grey shape running across one of the support beams throwing down a thin line of dust with its feet. Patrick watched it with interest until it disappeared into a crack in the wall close to the ceiling, then sat beside Alan in the cleanest corner of the room, one where the beams did not cross above them.

Alan didn’t know if it was the dampness or the nighttime chill he’d gotten on the trip but he started coughing again. Though he tried to hold Patrick, the toddler slipped from his arms, scurrying on all fours across the room. Sitting with his back to the wall, he eyed Alan warily as if, in his illness, Alan had become the enemy.

“Can you discover where we are?” Alan asked him, not certain the toddler would even answer.

Though Patrick didn’t reply, his brow furrowed with concentration, his lips pressed together. The noise of so many machines and the thoughts of all the people on the distant streets confused him. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t focus on any of them. He retreated into his body and, with remarkable maturity, sadly shook his head.

“Then take me outside with you.”

The boy shook his head more emphatically. Alan understood. The warehouse was safety, shelter, food. Outside, they faced a different kind of danger—the very real threat of discovery.

“Listen, Patrick,” Alan said. “We won’t call to anybody. We’ll just look for clues about where we are. Then, when your mother wakes up, you can tell her. She’ll be really proud of you.”

With no real effort, Alan found himself outside, looking down at the warehouse, the empty buildings, the gravel lots. In the distance he could see new piers, boats coming and going in a narrow channel. A gravel road climbed to join a wide paved one where an occasional car drove by. Alan thought
up
and Patrick, anxious to please, obeyed.

Ontario license plates. Windsor Auto Body. Bob’s Windsor Diner.

Windsor.

—Now show me Russ and your mother— Alan requested. And he wished he hadn’t been so eager to tell her what they knew, wished the success hadn’t given him the courage to try to discover what kind of a man had taken them.

Russ had pulled Helen and propped her up against the rear bumper. He knelt beside her on the dirty floor, dipping his fingers in water to wet her mouth and tongue. Though it seemed like a humane gesture, Alan noticed the knife he held in one hand, its tip against Helen’s shoulder. He had already made a short deep cut. Now he moved the knife up and down. The cut grew deeper. The blood flowed. Helen never stirred.

Patrick retreated with a whimper.

“It’s all right,” Alan told the toddler, relying on his age to convey an optimism he no longer felt. “My father will come. So will yours. They’ll rescue all of us.”

“Mother,” Patrick said with such surety that Alan almost believed him. Nonetheless, when Alan held out his arms, Patrick rushed into them, trembling. They held each other until they slept.

When they woke later in the day, Alan felt hot. He’d developed a deep cough and his breathing had become labored. Patrick rested his hand on the side of Alan’s face, looking at him with such misery that Alan wondered if the boy sensed some new disaster about to strike. “What is it?” he asked.

“You will go away like Hillary. I do not want to be alone.”

“No I won’t,” Alan told him. “We’re in a town. Thereare doctors and medicine. Russ needs us too much to . . . let me get too sick.”

He hoped. But he was hungry and thirsty and shivering with fever and no one had checked on them to make sure they were both all right.

At dusk, Alan sensed Patrick merging with him, trying to contact his unconscious mother. And they tried, tried harder than they ever had until they touched her. For a moment only the bond was wonderful, peace and comfort and shared strength. Then Russ got tangled into the vision and it turned into a nightmare of pain and blood and the boys fell out of it, clutching each other, shaking with fright.

Russ stayed. For him this was no nightmare, quite the contrary. Not since the actual event had he ever felt so aroused.