Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) (57 page)

“No. I’m not going.”

“Goddamn it, I don’t have time to argue with you, Dennis!”

“Lori can take my car. I’m staying with Paul!”

“I’m just about to beat your ass, boy, so help me!”

“You and who else?” Dennis snapped back. “I know Justin. You don’t.”

“Wait! Both of you!”

Paul needed to get away from Johnny and he didn’t think he could, short of just casting out in front of him. Johnny was in for the count, he would stick like a leech. Dennis would be easier to handle. And if push came to shove, he’d much rather cast out in front of Dennis than Johnny. Dennis had already seen the unbelievable. He’d watched Cain rise.

“Well, what?”

“You take Lori home, Johnny. I need Dennis.”

“What the hell you think he can do?”

“He does know Justin. A lot better than we do. And he knows where he’d most likely be. He just has to think about it.”

“You got any idea how many crack houses and sleaze joints there are in this town?”

“That’s not where he is. Not if he’s got Ria. And besides, you know people, you know who to talk to. I don’t. Probably lose my temper and piss somebody off.”

Dennis kept quiet. Paul was trying to get rid of Johnny. Dennis didn’t know why, but there had to be a reason. And there was something else, too. The look on Paul’s face when he’d listened to the story of the skeleton clothing itself in new flesh. Paul knew something he didn’t want to tell Johnny or the police.

“We’re wasting time,” Paul said impatiently.

Johnny reached in his pocket for his keys and patted his cell phone to make certain he had it.

“Okay, I’ll take Lori home and I’ll make some calls. Dennis, give me your number so I can get y’all.”

Dennis crossed to Ria’s desk and scribbled hastily on a note pad, tearing it off and handing it to Johnny while Paul paced impatiently.

“C’mon, Dennis. Let’s cruise.”

* * *

“You’re dead!” Ria whispered hoarsely. “You’re dead!”

“I be hard to kill, pretty white lady,” the shadow said as it approached. “Mighty hard.”

The blackness loomed over her. A steel vise clasped over her arm when he hauled her to her feet. He dragged her across the floor toward the door and threw her into the center of the big room. The walls and furniture wavered in and out of focus, lit only by the flicker of the fire dancing in the big stone fireplace. Another figure rose from the shadows of the couch.

“You said she was mine,” the voice whined. “You said I could have her.”

“Justin!”

Ria stared up at the boy as he came closer. His face was pallid in the firelight, his eyes wide and staring. His lips had thinned into nothing and his cheekbones jutted strongly forward under his skin.

She’d seen that look before, many times, as she walked hurriedly down the halls of the LEC. It had looked back at her across a table as she interviewed appointed cases charged with possession. The look worn by an addict in the advanced stages of addiction.

“Yeah, it’s me. You fucked up, bitch. Bad.”

She turned and stared up at the dead man who proclaimed himself Cain. A giant of a man, six foot six, at least. It hadn’t been a trick of the shadows. His massive shoulders really had filled the doorframe. His shaved head gleamed in the firelight.

He stretched his arm out and pointed a finger at Justin. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled back to his forearms and she saw white scars marring the black velvet of his skin. Scars such as left by burns. Burns sustained when Paul threw him furiously around the cleared circle on the banks of the
Ocmulgee
River
on a hot August night in 1888, without regard for the seven fires burning in their circles of stone.

“You have her when I say you have her, boy!” He dropped his arm and laughed. “Knows my name does you, white lady?”

Ria nodded. A shaking hand pushed the hair back out of her eyes.

“Fancy white doctor you keepin’ time wid, I reckon he done tol’ you
all
‘bout me, ain’t he?”

Ria didn’t answer. His ham-like hand shot out and caught her on the side of the jaw. Her teeth clicked together sharply and she felt the grit of a broken back filling disintegrating under the impact.

“I say, ain’t he?”

“Yes,” she spat, gritty residue grating sickeningly between her teeth. “He told me.”

“He tell you whut he done to me?”

Pure and righteous fury boiled up in welcome replacement of the numbing terror.

“What he did to
you
? You’re
insane!
”

Her head snapped back as he struck. For the moment, she felt nothing. Her jaw was broken.

Cain crossed to the wooden crate standing by the hearth holding tinder for the fireplace. He selected a long, slender piece of kindling and thrust it into the flames. He turned back to her.

“Had my druthers,” he said, grinning as he approached her, “I’d heap rather him be here to see dis. But since I ‘spect were he to show up in de next few minutes, I ain’t goan be able to finish dis right, I believe I’s jest better let him see you when I through.”

He bent forward and grabbed the material of her blouse below the shoulder seam. He ripped downward. The material sagged down her arm as the seam parted. He brandished his flaming torch and smiled.

The screams poured out of the cabin, down to the shoreline of the huge lake stretching in front of the house. They bounced across the surface of the water like a stone skimming across the waves. Other vacation lake houses stood nearby, but in this winter season, they were empty. There was no one within a five mile radius to hear.

* * *

Paul tore out the front door and around to the back.

“Where you goin’, man, my car’s in front!”

“I have to check something first,” he called back from the garage, and sniffed the air. The familiar rushing sensation overwhelmed him, as it always did whenever he opened his perceptions to this degree. He struggled to eliminate the known scents from the unknown.

He paced the concrete floor. Ria’s scent. Light, delicate, unmistakable. Johnny’s scent. Heavier than Ria’s, as all masculine scents seemed heavier than feminine scents.

And here. He stopped and stood in the corner where Justin had crouched waiting. An ugly, secretive scent, carrying hints of madness and desperation. He sniffed lightly, imprinting the smell in his brain, and staggered suddenly. Echoes of a high-pitched, pain-filled scream exploded in his brain.

“What the hell are you doing?” Dennis frowned as he looked in the door.

“I’m through. Let’s go.”

Paul pushed past him and strained to catch the lingering vibrations of that psychic scream. He couldn’t do it. It was too far away.

“You want to drive?” Dennis asked, unlocking the passenger door.

“Hell, no.”

“Okay,” Dennis said, coming around and jerking his own door open. “Then you better buckle up. I think I know where to go.”

“You do?” Paul asked, and gripped the armrest as another scream ricocheted around his brain, and another, and another. God, what were they doing to her? The screams were over to the right, but so far away.

“Yeah. And I had an idea you didn’t want Johnny to know. So I didn’t say anything.”

“Dennis, you have the makings of a good man. Though I guess your phone’s going to ring every five minutes.”

“No, it won’t. I told you, I knew you wanted to get rid of him. I reversed the last two numbers I gave him. I mean, if I just turned my phone off, he’d know it was on purpose. This just looks like I fucked up.”

“A real good man. Where are we goin’?”

Dennis headed down the short stretch of
Orange
onto Walnut. He paused briefly at the red light on College before the right turn onto
Riverside
.

“My folks and Justin’s folks have a cabin they own together up at
Lake
Sinclair
. You did want to get rid of Johnny, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Nothing personal.” Paul’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the armrest. The psychic voice kept screaming. “Now where are we going?”

“
Lake
Sinclair
. It’s a huge, manmade lake up by the power plant near Milledgeville. I mean it’s a big sucker. Miles and miles of shoreline and lots and lots and lots of summer cabins. Some of it’s real developed and lots of folks live there all year. But our folks got together and bought ten acres up at one of the real remote parts. Built a cabin in the middle of it and the only house even sort of close is Dr. Knight’s. He owns five acres on the other side. Nobody’ll be there. I’ve been up in the winter before and it’s dead up there in December, man. Really, really dead.”

“How far?”

“Forty-five point seven miles. I checked once. But the last seven are over dirt roads that’ll shake your kidneys out.”

Paul sat and considered. Thank God Dennis knew where to go. He knew they were headed in the right direction. But if he asked Dennis for specific directions, they’d be in terms of road. Useless for his purposes.

Paul didn’t understand the mechanics of the casting out process but he knew he had to visualize a specific spot if he wanted to arrive at a specific destination. Miles and miles of shoreline. He could cast out and hit in the general area, he had the scents. And the woods would be full of other smells, wood scents of game animals big and small, their scents overwhelmingly stronger than the scent of man. He could search all night, casting out over and over, and never get a direct hit. Dennis was his best bet.

“You can’t go any faster?”

“I will when I get out on
Gray Highway
. Don’t have time to get pulled over for speeding.”

Dennis risked a glance at his companion. He liked Paul, he’d liked him instantly. Not just because Ria was obviously head-over-heels in love with him. Paul was a laidback dude. Most of the time. Dennis almost didn’t recognize him now. His mouth was set in a thin, hard line, his chin jutted forward in determination.

“Why me?” Dennis asked.

“Pardon?”

“You didn’t want Johnny. Why didn’t you mind taking me?”

“I do mind taking you. But you’re the lesser of two evils and when we get there, you’re goin’ to park back. Far back. And you won’t get out of this car. Understood?”

“You going in by yourself? And what are you, an action hero’s stuntman or something? A ninja in drag?”

Paul didn’t answer. Dear God, the screams had stopped. Was she unconscious? Worse? Was she dead?

“You know something. I know you do.”

Dennis left the lights of the parking lot of the Super WalMart, last stronghold of
Macon
proper, behind in his tail lights and stepped on the gas. He zoomed down the highway toward the neighboring small town of
Gray
, toward Highway 129 to Eatonton and the cutoff to the first of the backwoods dirt roads.

They ran through a cavern of shadows.

“Paul, tell me!
What is it?!
”

“Dennis, I hope to hell you never know,” Paul said. He stared fixedly forward into the darkness.

* * *

Cain paced the big central room of the lake cabin impatiently, glancing now and then at the battered, bleeding lump of flesh he’d tossed casually into the corner by the fireplace. The arms lay in an unnatural angle, the broken bones giving the figure the appearance of a rag doll whose floppy extremities had been braced by sticks. The skin of the arms was raw and blistered and bleeding, the face swollen and distorted. She lay mercifully unconscious.

Cain held himself back by a supreme effort of will. Every action he’d taken since slaking his first thirst of rebirth had been calculated toward finding the white man and having found him, to exacting revenge. He knew his prey well. Devlin would rush in foolishly, with no thought of protection, intent on retrieving his new woman.

And the new acolyte who’d served Cain, in the main, fairly well, would attack from the rear, driving the thick, carefully sharpened stake through the doctor’s back, puncturing the heart. But not piercing it, no, just impaling him like a bug on a pin. He’d be helpless. But he’d see her agony, see the havoc Cain wrecked by Cain. And he’d live long enough to watch Cain feast on her blood.

He’d almost ruined it. The scent of the girl’s blood, pumping furiously through her veins, the rate of its flow accelerated by the adrenaline of agony—he’d actually placed his mouth over her jugular vein. He had to drink. Just a little. And then just a little more. He felt the first rush of an orgasm he’d never known with any woman. And he knew. He knew if he began to drink, he’d guzzle. No way to stop. And the doctor wasn’t here to watch yet.

But shit. The night was young. First things first. The white man had to get here, in Cain’s own stronghold. And when he got here, when the white man’d learned his lesson, he’d drain the girl dry. And she’d rise. His. His ready-made consort. The first of his new congregation. Time to speed things up a little.