Before I Wake (31 page)

Arden swung her leg, deliberately kicking over the lantern, the glass and bulb shattering, plunging the room into darkness. She sprang from the bed and veered sharply to the right.

Her boots! Her noisy boots!

With eyes wide, she stared into nothing and strained to hear him. From her left came a hiss.

Franny.

Arden crouched on the floor, her fingers feeling for the shattered lantern. Coming in contact with broken glass, she picked up a jagged piece.

Harley let out a roar and charged.

She stayed down.

He shot over her, one foot kicking her in the chest, the other striking her chin, throwing her backward. She scrambled to her feet and turned to face him.

Her eyes weren’t adjusting. The darkness was solid. No shadows. Just sound. Smell. Taste.

She tasted blood.

He moved silently, unhampered by heavy boots or a heavy coat. Suddenly he was on top of her, digging his fingers into her hair. She felt cold steel against her throat. With the broken glass, she jabbed up and behind.

He let out a yelp and released her.

She scrambled for the door.

He grabbed her by the coat, pulled her back.

She slipped away, leaving him holding an empty jacket.

Run.

Down the hall, to the bathroom.

Slam the door.

Hand scrambling for the lock.

The door burst open, throwing her backward, her head smacking the tub.

In the darkness, she squeezed between the tub and the wall.

A hallway ago, she’d been thinking of Franny and Daniel. Of how to get them out of this alive. Now self-preservation kicked in and she was thinking only of herself. Only thinking of life in small increments. Only trying to stay alive for five more minutes.

Daniel heard the sound of a struggle and ran for the stairs, taking them three at a time, flashlight in hand. He paused at his parents’ room, shining the light inside.

And stopped breathing.

Franny.

No.

On the bed.

Blood everywhere.

Her throat sliced.

Oh, my God.

He couldn’t handle this. He couldn’t take this.

He let out a choked sob.

She blinked.

Blinked.

Oh, fuck. Oh, Jesus.

She raised a hand to him. An imploring, bloody hand.

From down the hall came a shout, followed by a crash.

Something roared between Arden’s ears.

She shook her head, but the sound didn’t stop. A sound like the woodstove, only louder.

Fire.

A chimney fire.

How many times had her dad warned them not to let the woodstove get too hot?

You gotta open the flue and let the heat escape; otherwise you’ll catch the chimney on fire
, he’d always told them. And the chimney ran up the wall through the bathroom.

In the dark, she could hear Harley blindly searching for her, knocking things down, coming closer.

In one fluid movement, Arden stood and opened the window above the tub. A brief pause; then she dove out to land in deep snow on the kitchen roof four feet below.

Harley leaned out the bathroom window in time to see Arden land in a deep snowbank. A fraction of a second later, she was bounding away like a deer.

“Arden!” he shouted after her.

She paused and looked up.

Flames from the house illuminated her face.

She was frightened.

Frightened and beautiful.

He loved that combination.

He was on a blood high. This was what he lived for.

The chase.

The smell of blood and terror.

And now, with the fire—it was epic.

A visual of the excitement he felt inside.

This—
this
—was his calling. It was who he was. Not some wimp. Not some sweet guy everybody liked but nobody respected or loved.

Albert French had been knocking. He’d even gotten in a couple of times, like that little episode with the annoying Eli kid, but Harley always made him leave.

Why?

He’d once had a dog that was part wolf. It was the nicest dog, the sweetest dog, except that it loved to kill things. Cats. Dogs. It almost killed a baby once.

It couldn’t help itself. And the more it killed, the more it wanted to kill.

That was Harley.

Harris had put the desire in him, then tried to wash it out. But the instinct was too strong. By then it had taken hold.

For a while, Harley thought he could stop killing. He thought he could block out Albert French’s voice. For Arden. But he’d been fooling himself. He didn’t want to quit.

Love did that to a person. Made you see things in a false way, a pretty, soft way. Made you become the person somebody else wanted you to be, rather than the person you really were. But the real you always came back. Eventually.

Even now, when he knew he was going to kill her, he wanted to please her. He wanted her to know that he’d fought French. That he’d been fighting him for a long time.

You always kill the ones you love.

The old lady had just happened. He’d sneaked out of Cottage 25 and was looking for Arden. He’d come upon the woman instead. But the farmhouse…

Being in the farmhouse had messed with his head. But the biggest turning point had come when he’d opened the computer and witnessed the aftermath of his own previous killings, the ones that had occurred at this very location. Harris had tried to bleach the event from his mind, but the images on the screen had brought everything back as if it had happened yesterday.

And then there had been French’s execution.

Those eyes.

French had looked directly at him, reminding Harley of his calling. Of his duty and obligation to carry on.

Long live Albert French.

Up until that point, everything had been confusing. Everything had seemed skewed and wrong.

But
this
—this was right. This was real. As real as it got.

He had things to finish. A legacy to carry on.

Life was good.

Death was better.

The bathroom window wasn’t very big. Harley put his legs out first, then followed with the rest of his body. He slid down the roof and landed in a pile of snow. He hit the ground and ran toward the building where he’d hidden Daniel’s rifle and the bloody coat and gloves he’d worn when he’d killed Eli.

Daniel reached the bathroom just in time to see Harley disappear through the open window. The sky beyond the bathroom was light. Was morning coming? And that sound—what was that sound?

He smelled smoke. A second later, he realized the house was on fire.

“Arden!” He cast the beam around the room, then moved to the tiny bedroom that had once been his.

Empty.

Past that, to Arden’s room.

Had she jumped? Was she gone?

His lungs burned. In the beam of the flashlight, things were getting murky and smoke curled.

He backtracked to the master bedroom. Was Franny still alive?

He wrapped the blankets around her and picked her up. He wanted to be more careful, but there was no time. He could hear crackling and popping. It was getting hard to breathe.

He carried her down the stairs. The air wasn’t as bad on the first floor, away from the chimney.

Franny didn’t move or make a sound.

Dead, probably.

He opened the front door, staggered from the house and across the yard with Franny in his arms. He stepped in a dip and sank to his waist in snow. Never losing his grip on Franny, he burrowed out, fell to his knees, then struggled to straighten, the light from the burning house casting long shadows.

At the bottom of the hill, he turned toward a corrugated-metal culvert that ran under the road.

Once inside the protection of the culvert, he put Franny down. He took off his jacket and covered her with it as best he could, tucking the blankets around and under her feet.

She was probably dead. He was probably tucking in a dead girl. And if she wasn’t dead yet, she would be.

He retrieved a flashlight from his jacket. With his back to the culvert opening, he sheltered the flashlight from the outside and clicked it on.

Her lips were blue.

She was staring at him with terror-filled eyes.

His heart thumped. He swallowed.

The bleeding seemed to have slowed. Or was she just running out of blood?

No, she wouldn’t be conscious if she were drained.

She lifted a hand toward him in an imploring gesture.

Don’t leave me here.

That’s what she was saying, what she was trying to tell him. He grabbed her hand—it was like ice. He tucked it under the jacket.

“I’ll be back,” he whispered. “I’ll be back.”

She blinked. But it wasn’t an
okay
blink. It was a blink that said,
I’m going to die. And you’re going to die. And if you leave, we’ll both die alone
.

He shut off the light and straightened.

He had to agree with Franny’s unspoken words.

They were all going to die.

They were all already dead.

Nathan Fury plodded along. One foot in front of the other. That was the only way to go about this business. Just keep moving. He glanced up and saw that the sky was beginning to lighten.

The sun was coming up.

He’d started to think the night would never end.

He went fifty more yards, then stopped. Flames were shooting from the farmhouse.

His legs started moving before his brain gave them the command. At the house, he held a glove to his mouth and nose and kicked open the front door.

Smoke and flames poured out. He staggered back, the heat singeing his face and eyebrows.

He spun around, jumped from the porch, and hurried to the back of the house, where he shoved open the kitchen door and ran inside.

“Arden!”

The heat was intense, the smoke suffocating.

Within seconds, he was back out the door, collapsing in the snow, choking and gasping, trying to pull air into his smoke-filled, oxygen-deprived lungs.

A movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. He looked up to see Harley standing several yards away, silently watching him.

“Where’s Arden?” Fury gasped.

“I don’t know.”

“Did she make it out?”

“Yeah.”

“And Daniel. Where’s Daniel? And Franny? Did they get out?”

“I don’t know.”

The fire illuminated half of Harley’s body; the other half was in shadow. The half in shadow began to shift and change. A hand was raised… and suddenly a rifle was pointing directly at Fury.

Fury’s brain did a reset.

Harley?

How?

Had Harley killed Eli?

Had Harley killed Arden’s parents?

Fury struggled with the new information, his logical mind wanting to immediately discard it. How was it possible? Harley hadn’t even been there that day.

Or had he?

Christ.

Harley
could
have been there.

It was possible. Of course, it was possible.

Fury went for his Glock, diving and rolling at the same time.

Harley opened fire.

Fury kept rolling.

The deep snow hindered him, trapped him.

A rapid succession of sounds rang in his ears. The deep blast of the rifle. Its echo off nearby buildings. The
pffttt
of bullets lodging in the ground, lodging in Fury’s body, some ripping through him to come out the other side.

Daniel heard gunshots.

He ran and crested the hill. The glow from the burning house lit up the sky, reflecting off the snow that still fell like a thick blanket.

He felt a thump. Similar to getting shocked by an electric fence. The kind of weird sensation that came when the brain and body weren’t working together. When you couldn’t make sense out of what had just happened.

He felt a warmth.

For a minute he thought he’d wet his pants. He reached down and touched his leg, his thigh…

Sticky.

Blood.

He pulled his hand away and stared at it in the flickering light.

A lot of blood.

He hadn’t been hit in the heat of battle. He hadn’t even been a target. How fucking lame was that?

He knew a guy who’d shot himself in the leg. He’d been hunting, driving through a pasture, the truck bouncing, and his gun had discharged. The guy had felt pretty stupid about it.

No shit.

Daniel collapsed. Just kind of folded up.

Struck down by a stray bullet. Probably a bullet from his own damn gun.

It pissed him off.

Did anything ever happen the way it was supposed to?

Not much time
, he told himself.

He was bleeding like a son of a bitch. Lying on his back, snow falling in his face, he undid his belt buckle. Somehow he managed to tug it from his pants in one long motion.