Snowblind (41 page)

Miri smiled, squeezed Jake’s hand, and had started trudging again when she felt the wind pick up. The chill sliced through her and the gust made a roar in the bare branches of the nearby trees, nearly a howl. She pulled her coat tighter around her throat and glanced at Jake as they struggled through the deep snowfall, thinking how cold he must be without a jacket.

Her teeth chattered and her eyes felt like weighted iron orbs in her skull. Her face had gone numb, as if she wore a mask that covered the muscle and bone beneath.

She heard her dead father’s voice in her ear.

“They’re coming.”

A fresh gust of fear erupted inside her, heart drumming as she spun. Off to her left, Detective Keenan had already realized that time had run out. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him pull his gun, but her focus was on the silhouettes that had just appeared above the farmhouse, a pair of wraiths who flitted back and forth on gusts of wind, watching their progress through the drifts.

Jake tugged on her hand, forcing her to look him in the eye.

“Keep going,” he said. “As fast as you can.”

Then he went back for his mother. Miri saw Allie reaching for his hand and Harley lumbering after them with Isaac in his arms. She felt the burning in her calves and thighs from clambering through the snow and she knew they were never going to make it … knew they were all going to die.

A tiny breath escaped her lips—perhaps it was the last of her hope leaving her—and she turned to look for her father’s ghost. He had vanished once more, still trying to keep out of reach of the ice men so that he would never have to endure the torment of their frozen hell again.

“What are you doing?” Keenan snapped at her. “Move your ass!”

The detective managed to shuffle sideways through the snow so that he could watch the figures gliding through the storm above the house and still have his gun at the ready. It slowed him down, that move, but he seemed ready to fight for Miri and the others. The only thing that kept her moving was the idea that lagging behind would put the man in further danger, and he deserved more than that.

She glanced back at Jake and Allie as she broke a fresh trail across the snow. They’d covered half the distance to the road, but the cars still seemed a thousand miles away in this storm. Fear kept her warm, and a dread that clutched at her insides and made her want to weep for all the days she had not yet lived.

Miri glanced over her shoulder and regretted it, for the ice men had multiplied. There were four of them now, and two had begun to slink through the air currents and the dwindling snow, descending toward them.

No,
Miri thought.
Nononono.

She ran right through her father’s ghost, a shudder going through her at the contact. It startled her so much that she lost her footing and tumbled into the snow, kicking at the white stuff as it slid into her collar and down her back. Her father’s ghost was intangible and yet she had felt a warm frisson of contact as her flesh had passed through him, and when she inhaled sharply she realized that she could smell his cologne. The ghost of a scent she had long forgotten.

It was that—having forgotten that precious, sensory piece of him—that broke her heart afresh.

“Daddy!” she shouted, realizing what he meant to do.

The ghost of Niko Ristani stood between his daughter and the ice men that scythed down through the eddying snow. Detective Keenan fired twice, shots that punched through the ice men, blowing holes in their bodies and driving them back half-a-dozen feet. They’d been staggered.

Miri rose to her knees in the snow. Jake and Allie were on either side of her now, helping her up as she watched the snow rush in to fill the demons’ wounds, restoring them.

“Keep firing!” she called.

Her father’s ghost turned to them all.
“You can’t kill them.”

“I can slow them down!” Keenan said, firing again.

Harley lumbered past them all, never slowing, his grim face set on the singular task of getting Isaac to safety. The boy remained silent in his arms, perhaps knowing how little hope they really had.

A loud metallic bang sounded across the yard, echoing off the house and the snow. Side by side with Jake and Allie, knees pumping and heart thrumming, Miri looked back again to see that one of the bulkhead doors had clanged shut behind one of the ice men, and even now another emerged from the side of the bulkhead that remained open.

She looked ahead. They had perhaps twenty yards to cover before they reached the street, where they would at last be able to really run and where the cars were waiting. They were the longest twenty yards she had ever seen, the most impossible twenty yards imaginable.

The ice men from the bulkhead hurtled toward them across the snow, following the trail they’d broken like bloodhounds. No longer were they teasing or dancing or playing; the time for killing had arrived.

“The storm is … dying,” Allie said, trying to catch her breath. “They’re in a … hurry, now.”

Keenan fired at the things that chased them over the snow, staggering them, blowing off the left side of the face of the one in the lead. It seemed for a moment ready to drift apart, the lower half of its body turning to swirling snow, and hope sparked in Miri’s heart. Then it shook itself, solidifying, and turned its single remaining eye on Keenan with such frigid malevolence that Miri screamed.

Jake shouted her name and she turned to see the two who’d come off the roof knifing toward her from the sky. Her father’s ghost shot through the air and latched on to one of them, pulling it aside, drawing its attention as he slid off into the trees and the demon followed. The other kept coming, long fingers reaching for her, knives made of ice that she could practically feel cutting her flesh. Something tugged deep within her, as if it had already begun to feed on her spirit before even touching her.

And then Jake plowed into her, knocking her into the snow again, covering her with his body. She saw his eyes go wide and vacant and a bit of frost form instantly on his skin as the demon dug those dagger fingers into his back. Hot blood spilled onto her and Jake grunted, his eyes full more of sorrow than of pain.

Isaac screamed, fighting Harley’s grasp. Tearing loose, he dropped to the snow and started back toward Miri and Jake.

“Kid, don’t do it!” Harley managed, before he swore loudly and pulled out his gun.

With his long stride, Harley covered the distance in no time. Miri watched as the ice man stopped its attack on Jake and turned hungrily to Isaac. Rage flashed in its white-blue eyes, a black spark that went impossibly deep, as if its eyes were bottomless wells falling away into the winter limbo from which the demons hailed.

The demon flew at Isaac, arms outstretched.

Harley knocked the boy aside, set his feet firmly apart, and fired his gun twice at close range, obliterating the ice man’s head. The rest of it blew apart in a spray of ice crystals and wet snow.

Feet crunched in the snow and Miri looked up to see Allie standing above her and Jake.

“My boy,” Allie said, falling to her knees.

Jake groaned and slid off Miri, landing on his back, blood melting the snow around them. Isaac threw himself on top of his brother, whispering things to him that the others were not meant to hear.

Harley shot at another, and Miri saw that there were more of them now, gliding through the air overhead, circling on frigid currents like winter’s carrion birds. Keenan had made his way over and now they made a small cluster, so close to the road but impossibly far.

“Don’t let them…” he managed, turning to Miri, his eyes alight with purpose. “Protect Isaac.”

Miri nodded, turning to Allie. “Stay with them.”

Something moved to her right, at the corner of her eye, and she turned with the hope that her father had come back, only to see an icy wraith darting at them, much withered by the lessening of the storm, eyes hard and soulless as it slashed at Harley’s chest and arms. The huge cop roared in pain and dropped his gun, staggering away.

Miri lunged for the gun, her motion taking her out of the path of an attack that might have torn her head clean off. The wraith that had set its sights upon her slid past her and she felt ice form on her exposed skin and the breath dragged right from her lungs as she landed in the trodden snow and scrambled for the gun.

Her father’s ghost stood beside her, barely there, the sketch of an image in the dark, but his eyes were fierce.

“Keep fighting,”
he said. “
The storm is fading.”

Another dived at her and Niko Ristani’s ghost lunged at it, diverting it upward, the two fragile creatures attacking each other. The demon ripped at the insubstantial nothing of her father’s spirit and Niko—though dead—let out a shout of anguish, pounding at the ice man’s face. He could not touch his daughter, could not kiss her forehead the way he always had when she was a girl, but he could strike these unnatural things. As Miri watched, the ice man began to tear her father’s ghost to ribbons, and she leaned forward, and seemed almost to inhale the essence of him … and then the wind gusted, and the ghost was gone, leaving the demon to flail at thin air.

As she turned, gun in hand, she heard Allie crying out and saw the ice man that had tried to kill her—latch on to Isaac, its dagger fingers digging into his skin as it began to drag him into the air.

“No!” she cried, taking aim but afraid to fire for fearing of hitting Isaac.

With a cry of pain, Jake reached up and grabbed hold of Isaac’s ankles. Fresh rivulets of blood trickled down his back and pain radiated from his wounds, but the pain was good—it kept him awake. Gritting his teeth, he held on to his brother and felt himself rising to his feet. Jake stared up into Isaac’s terrified eyes, knowing that he couldn’t let go and knowing that if he didn’t, he might break his little brother’s bones. Above Isaac, the ice man sneered down at them, baring rows of long, sharp, icicle teeth and staring with those bottomless, nightmare eyes.

Jake shouted for help and his mother was there beside him, grabbing Isaac by the belt and then by the hand, giving Jake time to get a better grip, wrapping one arm around Isaac’s leg and battering at the demon’s grip with the other. One of its arms cracked and Jake let out a roar of triumph.

“Don’t let go!” Isaac yelled, meeting his brother’s gaze. “Don’t let them take me again!”

“We won’t!” their mother shouted.

Jake mustered strength from deep inside himself, pushing away the pain and the smell of his own blood and the sight of the desperate tears sliding down his mother’s face. This was a time of second chances. He felt that so keenly. A night when time might be turned back, when they might all wake from nightmares that had haunted them for a dozen years, if not the same then at least with a chance at something new and good. Pain seared his back—something had torn in the muscle tissue there—but he would not let go as long as he still lived … not of Isaac and not of Miri, now that she’d come home.

It was a night when so many mistakes might be undone.

“Leave him!” he screamed, glaring at the demon that held his brother, looking into eyes that seemed full of centuries of malice. “Leave us alone!”

Jake heard his mother scream and turned to see another ice man clutching at her hair and wrapping one arm around her belly, pulling her into the sky. The demon had thinned to almost nothing but still had the strength to carry her along on the wind. As Jake watched, it paused, glanced at the sky with a frozen grimace that looked almost like fear, and then plunged itself
into
her. Its arms seemed to merge with his mother’s flesh, passing through her the same way Niko’s ghost moved through solid objects. Ice showered down from the place where his mother and the demon met, as if the thing were crumbling with the contact, and in a moment of recognition that made Jake roar in panicked fury, he realized that the demon was entering her, trying to possess her the same way Isaac had possessed the dying body of Zachary Stroud.

“No!” he screamed, but he could do nothing for her from the ground, and that knowledge made him scream all the louder.

A gunshot cracked the sky and the bullet shattered the ice man’s head, just as it had begun to dip toward his mother’s chest—to submerge itself within her, seeking an anchor to keep it in this world. The wraith shattered into ice shards that turned into a spray of crystals before they hit the ground and Allie fell perhaps a dozen feet to land with a whispered thump in the snow. Instantly she was up and moving, scrambling to be sure none of them tried to grab her again.

Jake spun to see Joe Keenan staring at the place where she’d hung in the air above, wide-eyed with breathless horror at the hideous violation he had just prevented. In the sky, an opening had appeared in the clouds and a white veil of mist was all that separated the earth from the stars in that one place. The storm was passing. The ice men looked ever thinner, growing almost as insubstantial as Niko’s ghost … and they were furious.

They attacked as one, riding the wind with spindly fingers outstretched. Another took hold of Isaac and Jake shouted, knowing he could not win this battle. Keenan kept firing, destroying two more, but Jake felt his feet leave the ground and wrapped both hands around his brother’s waist. A demon slashed at his arms and then another grabbed him by the back of his shirt and now they were both being dragged upward.

Gunshots came from the other direction, only one bullet striking home, blowing the arm off an ice man a dozen feet above them. Jake twisted to see that it was Miri who’d been firing, but now she tossed the gun aside and ran to him, jumping to wrap her arms around his legs. The storm had thinned dramatically and Jake heard ice cracking and felt something snap above him. For just a moment he feared that it had been Isaac’s neck, but then they were falling, he and Isaac and Miri, and they hit the snow in a tumble of limbs.

Miri held Isaac, looking for injuries. Jake gritted his teeth against the pain in his wounded back, enjoying the freezing snow beneath him. He let his head loll to the left and saw Harley shuffling toward them, bloody and cradling one arm.