Blood Winter (31 page)

Thor nodded. “Thanks for that. We would’ve wasted a lot more time without it.” He looked at Tris, who flushed again.

“What now?” Geoff asked. He still had his arm around Tris.

“Now we have to get you safe and then get back to finding your kids.”

Doris Lydman made a sniffling sound, then swallowed, and when she spoke, her voice was surprisingly strong and stubborn. “We aren’t going back. We’re going to keep looking until we find them.”

Alexander left the doorway and went to stand beside the couch. “You are not equipped to deal with what you will find,” he told them all flatly. “You are a handicap to us. If we have to worry about you, we will not be able to do all that we could to find your kids.”

“Should listen to him,” said the man in the chair. “Benjamin Sterling is bad news.”

Alexander examined him. He looked to be around fifty years old. A bald spot formed a small island in his shaggy brown hair. He had a thick beard, and his hands were scabbed and scarred. He was well used to using them.

“What do you know about him?” Alexander asked. “And what do we call you?”

“Name’s Powell,” he said, shoving to his feet. He went to stare down at the fire, one hand on the mantel, the other fisting at his side. His throat worked, and after a few moments, he spoke.

“They’re a cult, plain and simple. They showed up about the time the electricity failed. One day they didn’t exist, and the next it seemed they were everywhere. Benjamin Sterling claimed to be the hand of God. He was going around healing people and telling them he was the only way to find salvation. A lot of people believed him. And why not? He didn’t give ’em much of a choice. Follow him, and get food, shelter, clothes, and a key to heaven. Don’t, and he might just kill you or take everything you’ve got.”

“But you didn’t join.”

He laughed without humor. “Not me. I don’t cotton to herd thinking. I figure I’ll find my own way into heaven or hell without any help from some slick preacher. If either one even exists.” He grimaced. “Mind you, my wife had other ideas. She was too scared to stick it out here with me. Couldn’t convince her we could make it, either. She tried taking the kids, but they—”

He broke off, glancing at Bambi, who remained in the doorway. The soldier nodded assurance. The older man turned to look at Alexander.

“My kids had more faith in me. In us. I told Christina she could go, and fine, but if she tried to get them to come back and take us, we’d disappear, and she’d never see us again. She loves us. She’s just scared, like I said. So she left, and them Standers haven’t been back. For now.”

He straightened, turning his back on the fire to continue his story. “I made sure this house was as tight as I could make it. I laid in a supply of wood, and I’ve been out hunting and putting away all the meat I can for winter. I’ve got some canned vegetables and beans and the like, and I’ve been scavenging what I can from houses, but most of them are picked over. I don’t have much, but we should get through winter, and after that, maybe we’ll head somewhere warmer, where we can grow things, and where we won’t have to deal with them Standers.

“I warn you, now, Sterling may call himself the hand of God, but he’s got devil power. He don’t mind killing. If he’s the one that’s got hold of your kids, then I’m sorry for you. I’d put a bullet in my kids before I’d let him take them.”

Doris gasped, staring.

“That’s a hell of a thing to say,” Geoff said.

“It is what it is. I’d call it a mercy killing, and I’d be right. If you didn’t want to know what I thought, you shouldn’t have broke into my house and started asking questions.”

“But you have a plan to get them, don’t you?” Tris asked Alexander. “Don’t you?”

Thor snorted and coughed, turning away. Alexander eyed him acidly before answering.

“Max is going to join the Last Standers,” he said bluntly.

“She’s going to what?”

“She is going to join them,” Alexander repeated, once again wondering at his lack of emotion at the risk she was taking. “She figures it is the best way to find Kyle and the kids. When she does, she will haul them out of there.”

“Nobody escapes from them,” Powell said. “Get yourself a headstone, and forget about her.”

“You don’t know Max,” Thor growled.

He glared at Alexander as if waiting for him to respond to Powell’s casual dismissal, but Alexander just shrugged. Max would live or die, and arguing about it made no difference.

“Do you have some food?” Alexander asked instead. “We could eat.”

Powell nodded. “This way,” he said, guiding them toward the door where Bambi still stood. He stepped back and let them through. Inside was a dining room. Or it had been. Built into the walls were china cabinets and a hutch. The dining table was gone, and in its place was a pair of twin beds. In them were Powell’s children. He stopped by each bed to check the sleepers and pull the quilts higher over their shoulders, then led the way through another swinging door into the kitchen.

He had modified it considerably. Where the oven had been was now a woodstove. He’d cut a hole in the wall to vent it. On it was a big pot of stew. Down at the end of the counter, he’d build a brick oven. Several loaves of bread sat on the counter.

“Don’t have much flour left,” he said. “Had a feeling things weren’t right when the Change started. Went to the grocery store and got everything I could.”

“We might be able to help you out,” Alexander said.

Powell sucked his teeth and grabbed a couple of bowls out of the cupboard. “Whatever you’re selling, I probably can’t afford to buy,” he said flatly.

“Maybe,” Alexander said. “We can talk about it.”

“That’s what them Standers said. But they weren’t interested in talking. Just taking. Can’t say I see much of a difference between you.”

“That’s because you don’t know us yet,” Thor said.

Powell scooped a hearty stew into the bowls. “Stew is what we eat most around here. Kids are getting sick of it.”

Alexander tasted it. “It is good.”

He polished it off in a couple of minutes, as did Thor. Wordlessly, Powell filled the bowls again and then a third time.

“You boys are hungry.”

“We need a lot of calories to do what we do,” Alexander replied.

Powell propped his hip against the cabinet, folding his arms. “And just what is that?”

Thor smiled. It was a dangerous, vicious look. “We kill things. Especially vermin, like the Standers.”

Powell held his ground, but his fingers dug hard into his arms, maybe to keep them from shaking. “Exactly where are you from?”

“Place called Horngate,” Alexander said, pointing his spoon in the general direction. “Up in the mountains about twenty or thirty miles from here.”

“That organic farm with the greenhouses?”

“Yes, we do that, too.”

Powell scratched his beard. His fingers were thick and heavy, as if he worked with his hands for a living. “So let me see if I understand this. You’re organic farmers and vermin killers. Do you own the place?”

Alexander shook his head. “Giselle owns it. She is a witch.”

Thor coughed hard, setting his bowl down with a clatter. Finally, he straightened, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You going to live?” Alexander asked.

“No thanks to you,” Thor said. “You’re just going to announce she’s a witch to everyone you meet now?”

“Not a lot of point in hiding it anymore,” Alexander said, scraping at his bowl. “The compounders already know. Word is going to spread one way or another.”

During this exchange, Powell had been swiveling his head back and forth at them, his mouth open. He finally closed it and paced away to the back door, which had three dead bolts and a steel-covered window. He marched back.

“What the hell do you mean, a witch? Like pointy hat and flies on a broom?”

“Giselle does not fly,” Alexander said. “Not on a broom or anything else. I have never seen her even wear a hat. Have you, Thor?”

“Nope,” the other man said. “Heard she has a pair of ruby slippers somewhere, though. And some do call her the Wicked Witch of the West. Though not where she can hear them, of course.”

“Not entirely true,” came a gravelly voice from the doorway leading back to the foyer. It was Liam. “Max introduced her to me as the Wicked Witch.”

“Did she, now?” Alexander said, his gaze running over the other man.

“Is Max really going to join the Last Standers?” Liam asked.

Alexander nodded, and Liam frowned. Just then, Bambi pushed in from the other room.

“If you are Liam,” Alexander said to the copper-haired man, “then you must be Bambi,” he said to the black-haired soldier.

The other man looked startled and shook his head ruefully. “Tell me that is not going to stick forever.”

“Probably not,” Thor drawled. “Most of us don’t live forever.”

“That’s very comforting,” said Bambi. “The name is Radnor. Jack Radnor, if it matters.”

Thor shook his head. “Can’t see that it does, Bambi.”

“So what happens now?” Liam asked. “And how can we help?”

“First we need to find Giselle,” Alexander said. “And we had better hurry. Max is walking into hell, and she will not last long.” Even as the words left his mouth, he wondered at the chill around his heart. She could very well die.

Inwardly, he laughed. As if that was the first time or the second time or even the third. She was always walking the razor edge of life and death. She had nearly died three times in the last twelve hours alone. Maybe he had simply gotten used to it.

Or something was very, very wrong with him.

He needed to find Giselle.

M
AX DIDN’T BOTHER GOING IN SEARCH OF A
new shirt. It would just waste time and strength, and she had to conserve all she had of both. Before going to eat, she’d tied the Amengohr amulet around her waist with a leather cord and tucked it inside her pants pocket. She wasn’t sure if her red visitor had noticed it or not, but there was no point in advertising it. The creature knew what she was, so it might be all that stood between her and a sunlit death.

The creature’s words slithered through her mind, poisonous and festering:
When I am done, you and every spirit you care for will be destroyed. Their souls will be torn to shreds and scattered across worlds and time.

She was sure the creature had Kyle and the kids. But what about Tris and Giselle? What about Tyler and Alexander and Thor? There were so many she cared about. She could not let this creature beat her. But it had all the power. More than Giselle. More than Max could hope to defeat.

There had to be a way.

In the end, there was only one place for Max to go next.

She stepped through the abyss and landed on a hardwood floor inside a broad space. She fell awkwardly and rolled up into a crouch, sliding her gun from her waistband and swinging it back and forth.

“You ruined my spell,” Giselle said, sitting cross-legged in the middle of a chalk ward circle. As Max turned to face her, she leaped to her feet. “What happened to you?”

Without waiting for an answer, she bent and released the circle before coming to stand in front of Max.

“What’s that on your chest and stomach?” She reached out her hand but didn’t touch, for which Max was grateful. The cuts on her stomach ached like they’d been carved with acid.

“Benjamin Sterling isn’t working alone. He’s got himself a demon of some kind, or it’s got him. It said this mark was its seal and that it wanted me to come visit it.” Max glanced around again. “Where are we? Where is everybody?”

“I sent them scouting. We’re going to use this place as a base until we find them. We can make a light-safe room in the basement. Oz is going to bring the Sunspears when it’s light. Come on. Let me get a better look at that,” Giselle said, pulling Max nearer to the candles. “Lie down.”

Max did as ordered, feeling drained. Giselle picked up a candle and held it close. As usual, her hair was pulled back from her face. Shadows hollowed at her eyes and cheeks, giving her an austere look.

Giselle frowned, her eyes becoming unfocused. She murmured some words and touched one of the designs with her finger. Fire flared up, scorching Max’s stomach. Giselle dropped the candle and skittered back on her hands and heels as the fire rose in a scarlet column nearly to the ceiling.

The flames roared for nearly half a minute before they died away. Max couldn’t move, couldn’t roll over to try to douse them. Her body was paralyzed. All she could do was feel. In her mind, she thought she heard a triumphant chuckle.

When the impromptu fire died and she could move again, Max sat up gingerly, looking down at herself. Her skin remained white and bloody. The flames had been illusion. Painful illusion.

“Let’s not do that again soon,” she said to Giselle, breathing deeply.

“I want to hear everything,” the witch said, standing up. “I’ll be right back.”

She left through a door at the end of the empty hall. It was like a banquet hall or something, minus chairs, tables, or much of anything else besides air and floor. There was a fireplace at either end, one of which had a fire burning in it.

A few minutes later, Giselle returned with a black men’s polo shirt and some jars of canned peaches.