Laws of Nature -2 (19 page)

But the fear, that was real. And that made it all real, no matter how eerily false the world around him appeared.

Those black silhouettes that made up the woods could have hidden anything. Their depth seemed endless. Jack almost wanted to close his eyes, but he dared not. A branch scratched his right cheek and he felt a thin line of blood drip from the cut. The smell of pine needles and of wild things was strong.

Several times they passed places where the stink of animals was almost overpowering, and Jack wondered if the Prowlers had marked those spots.

They had been moving through the trees for at least ten minutes when Molly tapped his arm. Jack flinched then, and he let out a long breath when he glanced at her inquisitively.

"I don't hear anything," she whispered.

A cold shroud blanketed him suddenly, heavy and cloying. He knew she was right. There had been no audible sign of the Prowlers for over a minute. Either they had lost the monsters, or the girl was already dead.

"Damn it," he cursed, voice so low the warm breeze seemed to steal it away.

Jack let out a frustrated sigh and turned to peer into the forest ahead of them.

The monster stood between two trees, almost as though it had been there all along and he had only now noticed it. It was the large Prowler with reddish fur who had carried the girl over his shoulder. The one who had scented them, marked them with a glare.

"Don't lose faith now," the monster said. "You've almost got us."

Without even raising the weapon, Jack fired the shotgun. The Prowler bolted to one side behind a thick maple and the blast peppered the tree bark. The creature darted around in the woods just out of the edges of their vision. It was fast, despite its size.

It was playing with them.

"You two are just determined to get killed, aren't you?" the monster asked, voice guttural and cold.

Jack shivered. He pumped another round into the shotgun's chamber and backed two steps toward Molly. A quick glance at her was all the communication they needed. She turned her back to him and they began to make their way forward, back to back, watching every tree, every pocket of blackness left unilluminated by the moon.

"Just give us the girl and we'll leave you alone," Jack said aloud, relieved to find that his voice did not reveal his fear.

The Prowler laughed. It was a sickening sound, like bones snapping. "Truly amazing. Who do you think you are?"

"We're the ones with the shotguns."

Molly bumped against him slightly. "We're the ones who killed Owen Tanzer."

Silence in the trees. Jack smiled to himself.
Way to go, Molly.
That had unnerved the monster, he was sure of it.

"We'll just be going, now," Jack said. "Up, I mean. There's a girl up there we're going to take away from you."

"You can't go up there," said a voice from the trees. "It's sacred ground." Jack tried to get a fix on him, but the voice seemed to roll across the ground like mist.

"Sacred?" Molly asked. "What do Prowlers hold
sacred?"

"Sanctuary," it replied. "This place has been a haven for all our kind for ages. Once before we were driven out, and now your kind threaten its purity again. You steal our past, our legacy."

"We stole nothing," Jack said grimly, tensed and expecting the monster to attack at any second. "Just give us the girl."

"Stole . . ." Molly muttered. "Jack, he means the book."

The red-furred beast snarled. "What do you know of the book?"

Something swept between two trees ahead of him, and Jack's finger twitched on the trigger, but he did not fire. No waste. Not now. Not when their lives could depend on it.

"Jack!" Molly cried.

With a sudden rush of fur and gleaming teeth, a pair of Prowlers hurtled at them from either side. Jack swung the shotgun toward the monster lunging in from his left. The trigger was tight, and when he pulled it the kick of the shotgun drove him back a step and he stumbled, nearly fell. It was little more than sheer luck that the blast tore a chunk out of the creature's chest, spattering fur and blood and flesh on a fat tree trunk.

Two echoes resounded through the trees, and he knew that Molly had fired as well. Jack pumped another round into the chamber and spun to see that the second Prowler was slumped against a tree as though he were drunk. He swayed there, holding on to a branch, and his head rolling on his thick shoulders, eyes turning toward them.

One eye, at least. The other, along with part of his face, had been erased by the shotgun blast. He stumbled away from them, and Jack and Molly were both in such shock at its appearance that neither of them even attempted to shoot it again. Instead, they stood back to back, shotgun barrels scything the darkness as they searched for some sign of the one with red fur.

It was gone.

"We should be dead," Jack whispered.

"Speak for yourself," Molly replied breathlessly.

But Jack knew that was just talk, that she understood as well as he did that if Red had stayed to back up the other two, they would be just two more ghosts in these mountains. Twice in a handful of seconds Jack had gotten lucky with his life on the line. He took a long breath, realizing that he could not count on any more luck tonight, that he might well have used up his entire share for the year.

Things whispered in the trees, maybe bats or owls or other night birds. Maybe chipmunks, skittering off at the sound of the weapons thundering. Maybe just the wind.

Every sound, every tiny noise made Jack twitch. His chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath. His eyes darted toward Molly every second or two, and he wondered if she felt the same way he did, if she could read his mind.

Stupid. It was stupid to come up here.
They had no place here, a couple of city kids trying to play hero, save a girl's life. They should have let it go.

Then he snarled silently and cursed himself for even allowing the thought into his head. No way could they have turned around and gone home after they had heard that girl screaming.

The barrel of the shotgun wavered in front of him as he turned around, nervous that the huge, red-furred beast who had spoken to them might appear again at any moment.

"Let's go," he told Molly, no longer whispering. No longer worrying about the attention they would draw. The shotgun blasts would have pinpointed their location for anyone who cared to listen.

Ignoring the things that seemed to flit about at the edges of his peripheral vision, Jack pushed his way uphill through the trees. Uphill. That was the way the Prowlers did not want them to go. Of course that was the way they had to go. Molly followed him at a quick pace.

"Keep your eyes open," she said. "He's not gone."

Jack knew it, too. He could almost sense Red somewhere nearby, breathing hard, hating them. Could almost smell the creature.

Branches scratched at his arms but he forged ahead, steadily moving uphill. Something was different about the landscape up there. Jack narrowed his eyes and realized that there was a clearing coming up. Thrusting up from the ground, he could see a dark, straight silhouette against the sky. A moment later he realized it was a crumbling chimney.

Jack stiffened.
A chimney. The ruins the ghosts talked about.

"Come on," he said, voice falling into a whisper again. "I think we've found what we've been looking for."

Then a figure appeared out of the trees, just at the edge of the clearing.

On instinct, Jack pulled the trigger. The figure slapped his hands to his gut and stumbled backward, and Jack felt a frigid tendril of fear wrap around his insides as he realized it was a human being.

"What are you shooting at?" Molly hissed quietly behind him.

Jack blinked.

The figure he had shot was still standing. And through it, he could still see the crumbling chimney. Jack rushed forward to find the ghost of Artie Carroll glaring at him angrily.

"Why the hell'd you have to shoot me, man? That was totally not cool," Artie instructed him.

"You're already dead," Jack whispered.

He glanced awkwardly at Molly, who had run into the clearing after him and was swinging the barrel of her shotgun around anxiously. The last thing he wanted to do was have a long conversation with Artie right now.

Artie shook his shoulder-length blond hair out and lifted his chin petulantly. "Yeah, no kidding, Mr. Sensitive. But it's still freaky getting shot at."

"Sorry," Jack said. "But, y'know, maybe now's not the - "

"Yeah, yeah. I know."

The phantom turned to look at Molly, who was still on alert, scanning the clearing, ready to fire. Molly shot a questioning glance at Jack.

"If there are ghosts here," she whispered, "can they tell us if we're alone?"

In Artie's endlessly black eyes, Jack saw that the ghost still loved her. No matter what he said, he probably always would.

"I wish you hadn't brought her up here," Artie said.

"Wasn't up to me," Jack replied, a bit miffed.

Artie smiled. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess you can't really tell her what to do, can you?" Then the smile faltered and the ghost stared at Jack. "Word got to me that you were in trouble."

"Could use some help," Jack admitted.

With a nod, Artie pointed up, above Jack's head, into the trees. "Might want to start by shooting that big bastard up there."

Startled, Jack turned and swung the barrel upward. Red was crouched on a thick branch that jutted out into the clearing, staring down at them. When Jack noticed him, the Prowler roared and leaped out into empty space.

The shotgun cracked, echoing all through the clearing.

Red flailed and then hit the ground face-first, hard. After a moment, the huge Prowler twitched and started to rise. Molly waited until he began to snarl and climb to his feet before blowing out his spine.

"That's my girl," Artie's ghost said admiringly. Then he turned to Jack. "They left this one and a couple of others behind to kill you. Didn't want to, either. There's a lot of death here. It's a special place for them, I think."

"Yeah. So we heard." Jack gazed around the clearing. The foundations of an old estate jutted up from over-grown grass and scrub brush. What remained of a road ran off away from the spot where they now stood. The chimney looked like a strong wind would knock it over.

"Look familiar, Molly?" he asked.

She nodded. "Like you described. Where the cluster of deaths was on the map."

"Not much of a lair," Jack said. "But a meeting place, maybe."

"Sacred," Molly replied. "That's what the thing said. It's sacred."

Artie had begun to drift across the clearing, the mist where his legs ought to have been shimmering as though blown by some invisible, otherworldly wind. Jack wanted to ask him why it was that sometimes his legs seemed fully visible, and other times they were just wisps, but now was not the time.

"We should go, Jack. This girl . . . I don't think we're going to find her. I think they're gone."

Jack glanced over at Artie - who stood in the ruins of the old homestead with his head bowed, looking down sadly at something Jack knew he did not want to see - and he knew.

"They're gone," Jack agreed. "You're right about that. But the girl . . . they didn't bring her."

The light went out of Molly's eyes then. She closed them, took a few tiny breaths, and then shook her head. "How are we going to stop them?" she asked, as though pleading for an answer.

"I don't know," he said softly, and hated himself for not having a better response.

He walked over to where the specter of her boyfriend stood over the dead girl. Jack glanced up and was startled to see almost a mirror image by that chimney.

He and Molly stood side by side. Before him, he saw Artie standing next to the ghost of the murdered girl. He whispered comforting words to her, but Jack could not hear what they said, nor make out the words from the movements of their lips. And he thought that was probably for the best. Maybe it was not his place to know what words would comfort the soul of a dead teenage girl.

The two phantoms moved away from the chimney. Moonlight passed through them both, and the shadows of the trees and the chimney and the swaying brush fell through them.
More insubstantial than the shadows and the moonlight,
Jack thought. How this girl, now dead, would deal with it, he had no idea.

Phantom tears streamed down her ghostly face.

And yet Jack did not feel the horror of her death, the tragedy of it, the loss, until he heard Molly's tiny gasp and glanced down to see the ravaged corpse at their feet. The girl's body was torn up, bones snapped and exposed, stomach ripped open and organs strewn about. Teeth had savaged much of her body, parts of the organs were missing.

"Oh, God," Jack whispered.

But it was Molly who really began to pray, whispering in earnest, for the poor girl's soul to pass on without memory of the torture she had endured. Jack glanced away from the dead girl to see that there were tears on Molly's face as well.

"Monsters." She turned her gaze upon Jack. "They really are monsters, aren't they? All along, I've been thinking they're just animals. We hunt them down like we would dangerous bears or wolves, but they're not just some ancient species we never knew about. They're monsters. They're evil."

Jack nodded again as he slung his shotgun over his shoulder. "We - people, I mean - can be evil, but not like this. They know what they're doing, and they love it. It's what they live for."

Molly turned away from the dead girl. "Why didn't they kill us? Why did they just leave us here? The odds were in their favor."

"Maybe they didn't want to lose any others," Jack suggested. "Keep the pack intact, y'know? Maybe they'll just wait for . . ."

"A time when we're not armed. Not ready," Molly finished for him.

Artie appeared suddenly beside him, and Jack started, swearing out loud. "Don't do that!"

"Do what?" Molly asked.

"Sorry," Jack told her quickly. "Just . . . just got spooked, that's all."

He made no attempt to hide the fact that there was still a ghost with them. But he edited his words and actions, almost unconsciously, the way he always did when that ghost was Artie.