Sacrifices (11 page)

Then she shook herself. She was still thinking like a normal person. Nothing about this place had ever been, or was, normal.

Oh, don’t be silly,
Spirit told herself scornfully.
Of course it is. All you need is magic.

Unfortunately, after that point, the regular papers lost interest in the story, but a Google Search using her new keywords turned up a page dedicated to the “Hellriders Massacre” on a site called Weird Montana.

And “massacre” was apparently the word for it. When the authorities reached the mansion on the morning of August 1st, 1971, they discovered “several” members of the Hellriders dead and the rest missing. There were some grainy black-and-white pictures on the Web page, but they were so blurry Spirit couldn’t even make out where they’d been taken, though it had to be at Oakhurst. According to Weird Montana, the missing Hellriders never turned up. The only survivor was “Wolfman” Wolferman, who never changed his story (such as it was).

Bingo. You were right, Loch.
The authorities hadn’t been able to charge Wolferman with anything more illegal than speeding, and he ended up going to the County Hospital. Weird Montana said he was released in the early 1990s and returned home to Radial to live. She went back to the
Radial Echo
and found a mention of his return in the “Local News And Views” column. He’d apparently moved in with his parents. The story gave the address.

She pulled out a pen and a piece of paper and jotted it down—dangerous, she knew, but she was afraid of forgetting it. She skimmed the next few years of the paper to make sure he hadn’t moved or died. The only thing she found was the announcement of the opening of Oakhurst Academy in September 1973. Doctor Ambrosius—the paper gave his first name as “Vortigern”—was described as “a progressive European educator and philanthropist.” Out of a vague curiosity, Spirit searched the rest of the
Echo
for mentions of either Doctor Ambrosius or Oakhurst Academy, but she didn’t find a single one.

As far as Radial was concerned, Oakhurst Academy had simply ceased to exist.

*   *   *

“I am not cut out for this,” Burke said, sitting up with a groan. The Nissan hit a pothole and bounced; Burke winced as he finished unwedging himself from the footwell in the car’s cramped backseat, then reached down to lift Spirit up from the other side. She breathed a sigh of relief as she unfolded herself, and turned to glance out the back window. They were already off the school grounds; the school looked almost pretty in the dusk.
If you don’t know what’s going on there,
Spirit thought.

“Sweet, isn’t it?” Muirin said, ignoring Burke. “Relax—we’re outside the wards, and I’m the mistress of illusion, remember? Nobody’s going to see anything I don’t want them to see.”

“‘Feel’ is a different matter,” Burke said.

“Which is why I snuck you guys out on the floor,” Muirin said reasonably. “With the town in-bounds, you just know they’re going to start searching cars.” Muirin sounded cheerful.
And why not? No matter what bizarre new rules Oakhurst—and Breakthrough—come up with, it isn’t as if she was going to be affected,
Spirit thought.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Spirit said, trying to keep from sounding (too much) as if she was whining. “First they declare Radial in-bounds. Then they set a campus curfew for dusk.” The newest rule had been announced Saturday morning: after curfew, all students had to be either in the Main Building, or have a security escort to wherever they were going. And that meant pretty much from four o’clock on. “I wish they’d make up their minds.”

Muirin just laughed. “Why should they, when they can drive you guys crazy by changing the rules every other day?”

“Mr. Green said the curfew’s only until they can hunt down that whatever-it-was that attacked you guys on your ride Friday,” Burke said.

“Whatever it is,” Spirit muttered under her breath. You’d have to be an idiot (or not going to Oakhurst) to think it was anything that belonged on this planet.

“Hope they catch it soon—this is cattle country, and something like that could do a lot of damage,” Burke added.

“Burke the Selfless!” Muirin said mockingly. “Honestly—if you want to break the rules like this, why aren’t you at least doing something fun? There’s still time, you know—I could drop you guys at a No Tell Motel for a couple of hours.…”

“No thanks,” Burke said. He looked wildly embarrassed. “This is a research trip. Spirit found someone who was actually there when Mordred got let out of the tree. If we’re lucky, he can give us a lead on where Mordred is now.”

“Yeah,” Muirin said, detouring around another pothole. “You guys did a pretty good job of finding him. You didn’t even have to leave the campus.” Her tone was suspicious, and Spirit winced.

“I got lucky,” Spirit said, hoping she sounded more convincing than she felt. She knew Burke thought it was suspicious, too—she wished she could tell him at least that she had a way through the school firewall, but right now none of her friends seemed any more reliable than Muirin. Burke was acting like Beckett Green was his new BFF, Addie was well and truly pissed off and might do anything out of spite, and Loch … well, Loch was convinced he was about to die and might want to use the information to make a grand fatal gesture.

Or make a deal for a get-out-of-jail-free card, and it wouldn’t matter if he was including all of them in the deal. It would still be a disaster.

“You remember the other time, right?” she asked, hoping she could turn her previous mistake to her advantage. “Well, I was poking around to see if there was anything on the school intraweb, and the firewall was down again. You know Breakthrough’s been putting in a lot of new security. It was a lucky glitch.”

“‘Lucky,’” Muirin said dubiously.

“What else could it be?” Spirit said, mentally holding her breath. She had to get Muirin off the subject somehow. “But without you to help, it wouldn’t matter what I found.”

“Yeah, I
am
pretty fabulous,” Muirin said mockingly. “But I still think you could’ve shared the love.”

“Oh, like you have to worry about being stuck behind a firewall these days,” Spirit said.

“True,” Murin agreed smugly. “Hey, you sure you don’t want me to drop you any closer than this?”

Spirit blinked. They were here already. She looked around as Muirin stopped in the town library parking lot—by unspoken agreement, she and Burke had been rather vague about Wolferman’s address. It was Sunday evening, so the library was closed, and there weren’t a lot of lights around.

“This is Radial, Murr-cat—how far away can anything be?” Burke said, making a joke of it. He pushed the passenger seat forward and clambered out of the backseat, reaching back a hand to pull Spirit after him. “We won’t be long. Meet you at the pizza place?”

“I’ll even buy,” Muirin said. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” She reached out and pulled the door shut, then gunned the engine and pulled out in a scatter of gravel.

“What is that, exactly?” Burke said softly, looking after her.

“I wish I knew.” Spirit sighed.

Burke smiled and took her arm. “C’mon,” he said.

“I still think I should’ve come by myself,” she said. This far off Main Street there weren’t any sidewalks; the two of them walked down the center of the narrow road. The sky was brilliant with stars. Back the way they’d come, the security lighting around The Fortress made a bright column of light shining up into the sky, but the only other lights she could see were the distant floodlights of the DOT equipment shed. In the distance, Spirit could see the lights of a few other houses, but if Radial were big enough to have a bad part of town, this would be it. Burke took out a flashlight and played the beam over the ground ahead of them. There was a full moon, but the light was deceptive—you were sure you could see better than you could, until you fell over something.

“And do me out of a chance to take you for a walk in the country?” Burke asked, smiling down at her. He put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her close, and for just an instant Spirit wanted
this
to be the reason they were here. A date. An ordinary thing two people did who weren’t being stalked by evil wizards.

“Besides,” Burke went on, “the guy’s an ex-outlaw-biker. I think you’re better off bringing a big scary jock with you. Because what if he’s crazy? Or evil?”

“Or both,” Spirit said helpfully.

“Right,” Burke agreed. “I mean … I know he was in a mental hospital, but that doesn’t prove anything. Not if he’d seen, well …
magic
.”

Spirit didn’t quite wince. On her first day at Oakhurst, Dr. Ambrosius had turned her into a mouse and himself into an owl. Whether that had actually happened or not, she’d experienced it. If she’d been trying to explain what had happened to the local Sheriff’s Department, they’d have said she was crazy too.

She wondered if it was worse to be locked up and told you were crazy when you weren’t, or to be believed when you described things that you knew were impossible.
Tough choice.
After a few minutes’ walk, they stopped at the only mailbox they’d seen. Burke shined his flashlight on it.
1642 PARK AVENUE ROAD
was painted on the side in messy black letters.

“This is it,” Spirit said unnecessarily.

The house was an old white farmhouse—or at least, it had been painted white at some point. Now it was mostly raw gray wood. There was just enough light to show the rusted-out junker half buried in snow in the front yard, the windows covered with ragged plastic sheets. The snow was deep and untouched; it had drifted up over the front porch and covered half the door. There were no lights anywhere to be seen.

I knew it was too easy.

Her shoulders slumped in disappointment. The place was obviously deserted, and she had no idea where else to look for Stephen Wolferman. “There’s no one here,” she said, but when she turned to Burke, he was smiling.

“You might have lived out back of Beyond, but I guess you didn’t have much to do with farm folks,” he said. “Let’s try around back.”

Their boots crunched through the snow as they walked up the driveway. The driveway hadn’t been shoveled all winter, and Spirit couldn’t see how Burke could possibly imagine anyone was living here. But when they reached the back of the house, she saw light gleaming through the cracks in the aluminum foil that covered the inside of the windows. There was someone here after all, but the sight of the aluminum foil made her hesitate—it didn’t look very encouraging.

Burke ignored her hesitation and walked right up to the back door. He knocked firmly.

“Maybe he isn’t home,” Spirit whispered, when no one came to answer it.

“In Radial on a Sunday night?” Burke asked, and knocked again.

Eventually the door opened just wide enough for the house’s occupant to look out. He regarded them silently.

“Mr. Wolferman?” Spirit said uncertainly. “Could we talk to you? I’m Spirit and this is Burke. We need your help.”

“I can’t help anybody,” Wolfman said, sounding scared. He started to close the door.

“We brought you some presents,” Burke said quickly.

Spirit glanced at Burke in puzzlement, but Wolfman opened the door, and for the first time, she actually got a good look at him. He was unshaven and potbellied and his long hair was nearly white. His appearance was a shock, and she realized she’d been expecting him to look the way he did in the photos from the old stories. But the “Hellriders Massacre” had taken place nearly forty years ago. Wolfman was in his sixties.

When they followed him into the kitchen, Spirit was suddenly very glad Burke was with her. The only light came from scores of big white jar candles clustered on every surface.

And the walls were covered with handmade wooden crosses.

Dozens of them.

What have I gotten us into?
she thought.

“You said you had presents,” Wolfman prompted.

“Sure did,” Burke said. He began digging through the pockets of his jacket and emptying their contents onto the kitchen table: a dozen of the big-size Hershey bars and a pint of whiskey.
Muirin,
he mouthed at Spirit.

“Sit down, sit down,” Wolfman said. “Kitchen company’s the best kind, right?”

Spirit sat down at the table. Burke took the chair beside her. She’d expected the table to be dirty, but it was so clean it squeaked. It was hard to be sure in the flickering candlelight, but the whole kitchen looked as if it had been scrubbed so hard and so long that the finish had been worn off of everything, including the faded linoleum. Everything she could see was shabby and ancient, as if she’d walked into some kind of weird time capsule of the 1950s.

“Would you like something to drink? I have water. It’s good. From the well,” Wolfman said. He seemed anxious to please them—and weirdly childlike.

“That would be great,” Burke answered.

Spirit had assumed he’d been sent to the mental hospital because the story he’d told was unbelievable. Now she wasn’t so sure. She looked around, trying not to seem as if she was, while Wolfman opened the cabinet and took down two glasses. He filled them at the sink, rinsing them carefully, then brought them to the table. Then he sat down, picked up the whiskey, and poured some into the coffee cup already there.

“What are you doing out so late at night?” Wolfman asked. It wasn’t even six o’clock, but Spirit supposed if you lived by candlelight, you’d go to bed early.

“We wanted to talk to you about the Hellriders,” Spirit said cautiously.

“You know the ’riders?” Wolfman asked eagerly.

“We want to know about them—about you,” Spirit said.

“Aww, we were the best. The guys, they were really great guys—” Wolfman smiled and nodded happily.

It didn’t take much to get him talking. A lot of what he said didn’t make any sense to Spirit, and she didn’t want to confuse him by asking too many questions. She got the impression that he and someone named Kenny had been in the Army together back in the 1960s and had decided to bike cross-country when they got out. They hadn’t gotten further east than Radial. Somewhere along the way they’d become the Hellriders.