Coldheart Canyon (46 page)

It was like being woken from a dream. One moment Tammy had been staring into Zeffer’s stricken face, while the men closed in on him from behind, and the sky seethed overhead. The next the door had shut this terrible vision out, and she was back in the little hallway with Todd at her side.

The sight of Zeffer’s execution had momentarily distracted Katya from CC[001-347] 9/10/01 2:26 PM Page 341

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any further mischief. She was simply staring at the door as though she could see through it to the horror on the other side.

Tammy didn’t give her a chance to snap out of the trance. She started up the stairs, pulling Todd after her.

“Christ . . .” Todd muttered to himself. “Christ oh Christ oh Christ . . .”

Five stairs up, Tammy chanced a backward glance, but Katya was still standing in front of the door.

What was she thinking? Tammy wondered.
What have I done?
Did a woman like that ever think
what have I done?
With Zeffer gone, she would be alone in Coldheart Canyon. Alone with the dead. Not a pretty prospect.

Perhaps she was regretting. Just a little.

And while she regretted (if regretting was what she was doing), Tammy continued to haul Todd after her up the stairs.

Six steps now; seven, eight, nine.

Now the escapees were on the half-landing. Through the window off to their left Tammy could see the sight that had held Zeffer’s attention just minutes before: the occupants of Coldheart Canyon pressing against the glass.

Why didn’t they simply break in? she wondered. They weren’t, after all, insubstantial. They had weight, they had force. If they wanted to get in so badly, why didn’t they simply break the glass or splinter the doors?

The question went from her head the next instant, driven out by a wail of demand from below.

“
Todd?
”

It was Katya, of course. She had finally stirred from her fugue state and was coming up the stairs after them. Speaking in her sweetest voice. Her come-hither voice.

“Todd, where
are
you going?”

Tammy felt nauseated. Katya could still do them harm. She still had power over Todd and she knew it. That was why she put on that little-girl questioning voice.

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“Todd?” Katya said again. “
Wait
, darling.”

If she let go of him, Tammy guessed, he would obey Katya’s request.

And then they’d be lost. Katya would never let him go. She’d kill him rather than let him escape her a second time.

There wasn’t much advice Tammy could give to Todd except: “Don’t look back.”

He glanced at her, his expression plaintive. It made her feel as though she were leading a child rather than a grown man.

“We can’t just leave her here,” he said.

“After what she just did!”

“Don’t listen to her,” Katya said, her voice suddenly a siren-song, the little-girl lightness erased in favor of something more velvety. “She just wants you for herself.”

Todd frowned.

“You can’t leave me, Todd.”

And then more softly still: “
I won’t let you leave me
.”

“Just remember what she did down there,” Tammy said to Todd.

“Zeffer was a nuisance,” Katya said. She was getting closer, Tammy knew; her voice had dropped to a sultry murmur. “I never loved him, Todd. You know that. He hung around causing trouble. Listen to me. You don’t want to go with this woman. Look at her, then
look at me
. See what a choice you’re making.”

Tammy half-expected Todd to obey Katya’s instruction. But Todd simply studied the stairs as they climbed, which under the circumstances was a minor triumph. Perhaps he still had the will-power in him to resist Katya, Tammy thought. He wasn’t her object yet.

Even so, the murdering bitch wasn’t ready to give up.

“Todd?” Katya said, now casual, as though none of this were of any great significance. “Will you turn round for a moment? Just for a moment?
Please
. I want to see your face before you go. That’s not asking much, now is it? Just one more time. I can’t bear it.
Please
. Todd . . .
I
. . .

can’t
. . .
bear it
.”

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potent a well-timed flood of tears could be. Her sister had always been very quick to turn on the waterworks when she wanted something; and it had usually done the trick.

“Please, my love . . .”

It was
almost
believable; the words catching in her throat, the soft sob.

“. . . don’t go. I won’t be able to live without you.”

They were still a few strides from the front door. Then, once they were out, they had to get along the pathway and onto the street. Somehow she doubted Katya’s power extended far beyond the limits of the house. The Canyon might have been hers once upon a time, but she’d lost control of it in the decades since her heyday. Now it belonged to the ghosts and the animals, and the bestial offspring of both.

Still coaxing Todd after her, Tammy made her way across the hallway to the front door.

Behind them, Katya kept up her tearful appeals: declarations of love, interspersed with sobs. Then more appeals for him to turn around and look at her.

“You don’t want to go,” she called to Todd, “you know you don’t.

Especially with
her
. Lord, Todd,
look at her
. You really want that?”

Finally, Tammy snapped. “How the hell do you know what he wants,
bitch
?” she said, turning to look round at the woman on their heels.

“Because we’re soul-mates,” Katya said.

Her eyes were swollen and red, Tammy noted with some satisfaction, and there were tears pouring down her face. Her mascara was running down her pale cheeks in two black rivulets. “He knows it’s true,” Katya went on. “We’ve suffered the same way. Haven’t we, Todd? Remember how you said it was like I was reading your mind? And I said it was because we were the
same
, deep down? Remember that?”

“Ignore her,” Tammy said. They were no more than three strides from the front door.

But Katya—realizing she was close to losing—had one last trick up her sleeve. One final power-play. “If you step out of this house,” she said to Todd, “then it’s over between us. Do you understand me? If you stay—
oh
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if you stay, my darling—then I’m yours. I’m yours body and soul—
I mean
it
:
body and soul
. But if you go it’ll be as though you never existed.”

Finally, something she said carried enough weight to stop Todd in his tracks.

“Ignore her,” Tammy said. “Please.”

“You know I can do that,” Katya went on.

Todd turned, and looked back at her, which was exactly what Tammy was praying he wouldn’t do. Katya was standing in the darkness close to the top of the stairs but the shadows did not conceal the fierce brilliance of her stare. Her eyes seemed to flicker in the murk, as though there were flames behind them.

Now she had succeeded in making him look at her again, she softened her tone. She certainly had quite a repertoire, Tammy thought. First demands; then pleas and siren-songs; then tears and threats. Now what?

“I know what you’re thinking . . .” she said.

Ah,
mind reading
.

“. . . you’re thinking that you’ve got a life out there. And it’s calling you back.”

Tammy was puzzled. This sounded like a self-defeating argument.

“You’re thinking you want to be back in the spotlight, where you belong . . .”

While Katya talked, Tammy made a momentous decision. She let go of Todd’s hand. She’d done all that she could. If after all this Todd decided that he wanted to turn back and give himself to the wretched woman, then there was nothing more Tammy could do about it. He was a lost cause.

She crossed swiftly to the front door, and opened it. The first tug was a little difficult. Then the door swung open easily, majestically. There were no ghosts on the threshold, only the refreshing night air, sweetened by the scent of night-blooming jasmine.

Behind her, in the house, Katya was finishing her argument. “The fact is,” she said, “there’s nothing out there for you now. Do you understand me, Todd? There’s nothing.”

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Tammy stepped out onto the front steps. She looked back at Todd, in time to catch a look of pitiful confusion on his face. He literally didn’t know which way to turn.

“Don’t look at me,” Tammy said to him. “It’s your choice.”

His expression became still more pained. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“Look, you’re a grown man,” Tammy said. “If you want to stay with her, knowing what she’s capable of, then you stay. I hope you’ll be very happy together.”

“Todd . . .” Katya murmured.

She stepped out of the shadows now, choosing her moment, as ever, beautifully. The demonic Katya, the woman who’d thrashed Zeffer, then thrown him to Goga, had vanished completely. In her place was a sad, gentle woman—or the appearance of such—who opened her arms to Todd like a loving mother.

“Come back to me,” she said.

He made the tiniest nod of his head and Tammy’s heart sank.

He started to turn his back on the door, but as he did so there was a sudden and furious eruption of noise from the depths of the house. Somebody in the Devil’s Country was beating on the door: a furious tattoo.

It came at the perfect moment. At the sound from below Todd seemed to snap out of his mesmerized state and instead of heading for Katya’s open arms he began to retreat toward the door.

“You know what?” he said to Katya. “I can’t take this place any longer.

I’m sorry. I’ve got to get out.”

Katya flew at him, her arms outstretched, her eyes wide. “
No!
” she cried. “
I want you here!
”

It was more than Todd could take. He backed away from her and stumbled out over the step.

“Finally,” Tammy said.

He grabbed hold of her hand. “Get me the fuck out of here,” he said.

This time there was no hesitation in his voice, no turning back. They ran to the gate and out into the street, not stopping for a moment.

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Tammy slammed the gate loudly, not so much because she felt it would keep the bitch from following, but because it made the point to the entire Canyon that they were indeed out of the house and away.

“My car’s up the road,” she told Todd, though of course it was now three days since she’d left it, and there was no guarantee it would still be sitting there. And the keys; what about the keys? Had she left them in the ignition? She thought she had; but she was by no means certain. So much had happened to her in the intervening time; she had no clear memory of what she’d done with the keys.

“I’m assuming you’re going to come with me?” she said to Todd.

He looked at her blankly.

“To the car,” she said, for emphasis.

“Yes.”

“It’s up the street.”

“Yes. I heard you.”

“Well, shall we go then?”

He nodded, but he didn’t move. His gaze had drifted back to the house.

Leaving him to stare, Tammy set off up the road to where she’d left the car. There was neither moon nor stars in the sky; just a blanket of amber-tinted cloud. She soon lost sight of Todd as she headed up the benighted road. Memories of her night-journey through the place, with all its attendant miseries and hallucinations, rose up before her, but she told herself to put them out of her head. She was going to be out of this damn Canyon in a few minutes, long before it got back into her mind again, and started its tricks.

The car, when she reached it, was unlocked. She opened the door and slipped into the driver’s seat, fumbling for the ignition. Yes! The keys were there. “Thank you, God,” she said, with a late show of piety.

She turned on the engine, and switched on the headlights. They lit up the whole street ahead. She put the car into gear and brought it roaring around the corner. Todd had wandered out into the middle of the road, and she could have plowed into him (which would have made an igno-minious end to the night’s adventures) had he not stepped out of her way.

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But at least the distracted look had gone from his face. When he got into the car there was a new and welcome urgency about his manner.

“We’re out of here,” he said.

“I thought for a moment that you were planning to stay.”

“No . . . I was just thinking . . . about what a fool I’d been.”

“Well, stop thinking for a while,” Tammy said. “It’ll slow us down.”

She put her foot down and they sped off down the winding street.

About halfway down the Canyon he said: “Do you think she’s going to come after us?”

“No,” Tammy said. “I don’t think her pride would let her.”

She had no sooner spoken than something sprang into the glare of the headlights. Todd let out a yelp of surprise, but Tammy knew in a heartbeat what it was: one of the hybrids she’d encountered on the slopes. It was ugly, even by the standards of its malformed breed: a loping, pasty thing with the flesh missing from the lower half of its face, exposing a sickly rictus.

Tammy made no attempt to avoid striking the beast. Instead she drove straight into it. The moment before it was struck the thing opened its lipless mouth horribly wide, as though it thought it might scare the vehicle off. Then the front of the car struck it, and its body rolled up onto the hood, momentarily sprawling over the windshield. For a few seconds, Tammy was driving blind, with the face of the beast grotesquely plastered against the glass. Then one of her more suicidal swerves threw the thing off, leaving just a smudge of its pale yellow fluids on the glass.