Last Safe Place, The (40 page)

“Shhhh. It’s okay. Mama’s here. Mama’s gotcha. Shhhh.”

He wasn’t crying, but he was trembling violently. It seemed to take a long time for him to stop shaking, but she knew it was actually only a minute or two.

“He’s coming, isn’t he?” he finally whispered into her shoulder.

“He won’t find us here.”

“He’s not looking for us. He’s looking for
me.”

Children always thought everything was about them.

“I ran away because I didn’t want him to hurt you and Grandpa Slappy.”

Theo! How could she possibly tell Ty that his grandfather was dead? And … no, she couldn’t think about Pedro now. If she did … With a great effort of will, Gabriella banished the images from her mind.

She eased the boy gently back out of her arms and looked into his face.

“You don’t understand, Ty, Honey. He’s stalking
me
because he’s crazy. He thinks he’s—”

“No, Mom.
You
don’t understand. He’s come to punish me for …” Then he did start to cry. Softly though, not great gulping sobs. More the worn-out tears of a child who has been crying for hours.

“Do you know Grandpa Slappy saw his best friend drown?”

Where did
that
come from?

“No. When?”

“But they didn’t mean to do it. It was an accident. And one of them, the fat kid. He’s felt guilty about it for sixty years.”

She had no idea what he was talking about.

“I don’t want to do that.” He looked up into her eyes. “I don’t want to carry it around for sixty years. I think … it’d kill me if I did.”

“Carry what around?”

He grew quiet then, turned and looked at the tree. There was no denying it now. It was no trick of the light, no optical illusion. The tree really was glowing. Like a firefly, light from within. And tiny golden sparkles floated in the air all around it. There had to be a reasonable explanation, of course. Maybe it was … pollen, and up here so high the altitude made it … glow. Or … well,
something.

Okay, she couldn’t explain it. Or the fact that it was warm in here, had to be twenty degrees warmer than the windswept mountainside on the other side of the rocks.

And she certainly couldn’t understand why the instant she dropped into The Cleft, all fear had left her. Yesheb was still out there, as dangerous as a wounded lion. He was still intent on murdering them both. The storm was dropping lightning bolts on the other side of the mountain like Santa tossing candy to the children along a parade route. She should have been terrified, but she wasn’t. No reason, she just wasn’t.

Ty didn’t seem to be frightened, either. But terribly
burdened.
She didn’t push him, just waited. He’d tell her in his own time. Finally, he let out a long sigh and scooted away from her, looked at the tree, warmed himself on it the way you warm yourself on a campfire.

Still not looking at her, he said. “The bad man is after me because I have to be punished for what I did.” He turned slowly, resolutely from the tree to look at her. His voice was steady, but so terribly, terribly sad. “I did it, Mom. Not Daddy. I burned your face with acid.”

CHAPTER
19

Y
ESHEB STANDS IN FRONT OF THE CHALET TURNING SLOWLY
around, three hundred and sixty degrees. The cold wind drives the water dripping from tree limbs at him, horizontal rain, like tiny pieces of shrapnel from a grenade. He sways, unsteady on his feet. Loss of blood, lack of oxygen, pain and exhaustion are taking their toll. He understands that he can only drive this injured body so far, that even the fuel of his rage will not propel him forward if there is not enough blood in his body for his heart to pump. He steps inside the chalet to get out of the wind and to bind up half a dozen bleeding wounds.

The one on his forearm is the worst, the only one that is life threatening. The dog tore out a chunk of tissue the size of an egg there and the dish towels and napkins he shoved into the wound are soaked. He stares at it for a moment and makes a decision. He sits down on the bench of a battered picnic table and his dagger makes short work of a bloody dish towel, cutting off a foot-long strip that he wraps around his arm above his elbow. He finds a stick on the floor and uses it to make the strip into a tourniquet. Twists it tight. That will stop the flow of blood, keep him from bleeding out. But unless he gets rapid medical attention, he will likely lose his left arm. He doesn’t care. He only needs one arm, one hand to destroy the woman and the boy—to cut and stab and slice them. He can picture it in his head, imagines every wound, every scream. Ah, the delicious screams! He can picture nothing beyond it, though. On the other side of ripping the two of them apart lies absolute, infinite darkness. He will not need his arm there, either.

Yesheb traces the three entwined G’s carved into the tabletop with his finger as he counts slowly to three hundred again. To rest, to regain his strength and to be certain the tourniquet holds.

When he hits three hundred he looks at the wound. It is no longer bleeding, nor are the puncture wounds below it on his hand. He stands and
imagines he feels strength he didn’t have before. Renewed passion for the tasks ahead. For the screams. Then he steps out into the howling wind and his eyes peel away the gathering gloom. He can see like an owl, details in the trees and the rocks and he can smell the faint scent of fear clinging to the ground where she passed, the way a bloodhound can smell one scent among a thousand on a busy sidewalk. He inhales deeply, fills his lungs with it, and follows where it leads him.

P
EDRO REACHED THE
rocks that formed the back wall of the valley on the right side below the bristlecone pine forest. It would be quite a climb to the top of them and he was losing light, hard to see in the gray shadows. Did she really come here? Did the stalker follow—?

There on the side of a rock at his feet where the rain had not washed it away. Something dark. He wiped it onto his finger and brought it up to his nose. It was blood. Someone passed here who was bleeding. He felt his gut yank into a knot.

Ty? Gabriella? Did the stalker shoot them? No way to tell. The bloody kitchen made only one thing clear. At least one of the combatants in that blood bath was P.D. Paw prints in the blood, scratches on the floor. So it made sense that it was the stalker who was bleeding. But still … He started up the incline and saw other drips of blood in rock crevices or diluted in puddles. Someone was badly injured. Pedro had no doubt that he would come upon whoever it was, or their dead body, soon. If it was the stalker, the man would be as dangerous as a wounded bear. Pedro would not hesitate to shoot him on sight.

“W
HAT DID YOU
say?”

“It was me. I did it.” Ty grabbed her hand, looked into her eyes with such anguish. “But it was an
accident.
I swear, I didn’t mean to.”

Gabriella’s head began to spin.

“What are you talking about?”

Ty took a deep, trembling breath.

“I was there. The night when you were fighting. I was on the bottom step of the stairs watching.”

Gabriella couldn’t stifle a gasp. What a horrible thing for a seven-yearold to see!

“I was so scared for you, Mom. Daddy was so much bigger than you are and he was drunk, yelling so loud I put my hands up over my ears so I couldn’t hear but I still could.” Ty paused. “Then he …
hit
you.”

The scene was blurred in Gabriella’s memory. The doctor said that was normal with people who’d had concussions. She’d been unconscious for two days, which as it turned out was a good thing, since she was spared at least some of the agony of her burns, the part where doctors cleaned the acid out of the wound and removed the destroyed tissue.

“And I couldn’t let him do that, hurt you like that. I jumped up and ran at him. Slammed into him … like to tackle him, I guess. I don’t know. I just threw myself at him.”

He paused. Drew a breath.

“I didn’t know what he was holding in his hand.” Ty began to cry then, sob. His words were strangled, but Gabriella heard them. Understood them. And understood a world of other things that happened later, things that made no sense at the time. “When I hit him from behind, it knocked him off balance, and the jar in his hand … he dropped it on the floor. You were lying there and what was in the jar, the acid, it splashed in your face.”

Gabriella started to cry, too. “Oh, Ty. You poor baby.”

“Daddy was so drunk, he didn’t even know. He stumbled and fell down on one knee, got some of the acid on his hand and he started yelling, hollering. It scared me to death. I thought he was mad at me, that he was going to kill me. I turned around and ran as hard as I could back to my room and hid under the bed.”

Smokey had actually managed to dial 911—for the burns on his hand, not for Gabriella. When the EMTs arrived, they found her on the floor. After Smokey sobered up, he couldn’t remember a thing, had been in a total blackout, pleaded guilty to assault and went to prison. He was killed there, knifed by another inmate in a fight over a package of cigarettes on Christmas Eve.

Ty stopped crying, but tears still streamed down his cheeks. “I didn’t tell because I
wanted
Daddy to go to prison—for being so mean and for hitting you. And because I was afraid I’d get in trouble. And I was afraid … that you’d hate me.”

She grabbed him and crushed him to her chest. “I don’t hate you. I could never hate you. I love you!”

“I burned your face, Mommy.” He hadn’t called her Mommy in years. “I got Daddy killed!”

“No you didn’t!” She held him out away from her so she could look directly down into his tear-slathered face. “Now you listen to me, Tyrone Griffith Carmichael. What happened was an accident. You were only seven years old.”

Pedro’s words rang in her mind then.

“… you’d forgive him and you’d want him to forgive himself.”

“But … the bad man. He’s—”

“Don’t you worry about the bad man. He can’t hurt us here. We’re safe.”

“Actually, that’s not entirely true,
Gabriella.
”

The voice came from above them. A voice as cold as a polar ocean. It seemed to take a long time for Gabriella to lift her head and look, but, she already knew what she would see, who she would see. Knew he’d have a gun in his hand, pointed at her. Even knew he’d be smiling that ugly, crooked smile.

Y
ESHEB STANDS TRIUMPHANT
. The storm in this world has passed over the peak, the sky is clearing, the rising moon lights the shadowed mountainside brighter than the setting sun. The storm in the other realm is over, too. He feels no pain. He is complete, whole again. The force of his own will has healed his injuries! No longer is his life blood pouring out of him from a dozen gory wounds inflicted by vicious teeth and savage claws. His whole body is flawless, without blemish. Even his severed ear has grown back.

But far more important than the healing of his body is the healing of his mind. The scales have dropped away, the gauzy curtain raised. He sees with absolute clarity now, understands that this—all of this—has been a gauntlet he had to run to cleanse his body, mind and soul. It has been a test—that he is about to pass!

When The Voice spoke in his head as he ran—staggered—through the ugly forest of stubby, mangled trees, he had dropped to his knees in terror, surprise and wonder.

It is almost over.

The hole inside him was filled again with the presence of The Voice. And with its power. He felt it surge through him like an electric current as the other voices spoke to him. They were all there—the sultry woman’s voice urged him to get up, to go on. Voices in Italian and Arabic directed him down the path. The child’s voice from his boyhood revealed where his prey was hiding.

And they all speak in harmony now as he stands triumphant. They chant in concert, “Kill them! Kill them!”

That was the plan all along, the will of The Voice! She is a false prophetess; the words in her book are heresy designed to deceive and subvert the powers of darkness. She is an agent from the light. He saw it clearly when he passed through the ugly trees into the clearing—a golden radiance shown out like a beacon from the pile of boulders, led him to where she cowers in terror in a hole like a cornered rabbit. She must be eliminated and he has been chosen for the task.

But he also knows what The Voice does
not
know. Once he has completed the task, he will
become
The Voice. It was foretold before the laying of the foundation of the world. When he tastes the blood of the false prophetess, Yesheb Al Tobbanoft will become more than The Beast of Babylon. He will become the most powerful force in the universe.

He looks down into their faces, throws his head back and laughs out loud, a full, roaring, glorious laugh that echoes the maelstrom of the storm rumbling on the other side of the mountain peak.

“You will die in agony. Slowly. I will make you
scream.”
He tosses his gun aside and withdraws the dagger from its sheath. “You will beg me for death.”

He crouches to leap into the branches of the tree to break his fall. It is perfect. His prey will have nowhere to run.

G
ABRIELLA STARED AT
the apparition above her, a character out of a slasher horror movie. Yesheb was drenched in his own blood. His clothes were torn, his left arm dangled useless at his side, most of his right ear had been ripped off. But the maniacal twisting of his perfect features into a mask of hatred and evil was the most horrifying sight of all—one last, apocalyptic celebration of madness.

He lifted his dagger and cried out that he would make her beg for death.

“I’m not afraid of you anymore, Yesheb,” she said and only became aware of the truth of the words as she spoke them. “You can’t hurt me here.”

She suddenly understood that he had been feeding off her fear like a maggot off rotting meat. He
needed
her to be afraid.

“You’re not The Beast of Babylon. You’re a pathetic psychopath with delusions of grandeur. Now, get off this mountain and leave me and my family alone!”