Mortal Kiss (26 page)

“Jimmy?” she asked finally. “What is it? What’s the matter? I mean, aside from all the weird werewolves and end-of-the-world stuff …”

He smiled at her, and Liz couldn’t help but smile back. She was doing that a lot around him lately. She couldn’t believe how quickly her feelings toward him had changed. It was as if this whole crazy thing had opened her eyes. And boy, was she glad it had.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to—it’s not that I’m not listening to you, Liz,” Jimmy said, sitting a little closer. “I was just thinking about my parents.”

“They know where you are, right?”

Jimmy shook his head. “No. Joe and the bikers didn’t know how the bite was going to affect me. They didn’t know whether I was going to survive it or …” He shrugged. “If I’d gone home, Mom and Dad would have insisted I go to a hospital, and that wouldn’t have helped at all. So Joe said I should wait. Until I was better.” Jimmy shrugged. “And I trust him. I trust all the bikers.”

Liz nodded. “Your parents must be worried sick, though. I mean, where do they think you are?”

“I know.” Jimmy looked down, scrubbing a fingernail against the cold ground. “Joe’s been teaching me how to ride a motorbike.”

“Wow. Really?”

“Yeah, it’s amazing. I mean, I can only do basic stuff right now, what with my leg and everything. But being on the bike—it’s really incredible, Liz. I just forget everything else.”

Liz nodded, not sure what this had to do with Jimmy’s poor mom and dad.

“Anyway,” Jimmy went on nervously, “I was thinking about taking one of the bikes and going to see them.”

“Your parents?”

Jimmy nodded. “Yeah. I’m getting better all the time. Joe says all it’s going to need is time and rest.”

“It’s a good idea to see them, Jimmy,” Liz told him, touching her hand to his for reassurance. “They’ll be so much happier once they know for sure you’re all right.”

He smiled, turning his hand over and curling his fingers through hers. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. So I wondered … I wondered …”

Liz put her head on one side, watching as he struggled to ask her something.

“What is it?”

“I wondered if you’d come with me. To see them. On the bike,” Jimmy said in a rush. “It’s fine if you don’t want to. I’ll understand. I just don’t really want to go on my own, that’s all. But it’s OK. I’m sure you—”

“Jimmy,” said Liz, cutting off his nervous babble. “Of course I’ll come.”

He grinned and stood up, looking the best she’d seen him look since the attack in the forest. “Oh, that’s wonderful! Thank you. Come on, I’ll ask one of the pack to lend me his bike.”

“You want to go now?” Liz asked, surprised. “Are you sure you’re well enough?”

Jimmy was still holding on to her hand. He pulled her up. “I’m fine,” he told her, still smiling. “With you around, I’m always fine.”

Liz stared up at him.

The bike ride was uneventful but intense. Liz had never been on a motorbike before. One of the bikers gave her a leather jacket to wear against the cold—it was huge, but warm.

“Hold on to me,” Jimmy told her as they got on. “Whatever happens, don’t let go.”

She reached around him, feeling his hand clasp the two of hers over his stomach, holding them together. Liz was tall enough that her chin rested on his shoulder, his hair tickling her nose as they moved off. Jimmy didn’t gun the bike; he seemed to be taking it easy for her benefit, perhaps worried about her safety. He kept turning his head to look at her, checking to see if she was OK. Every time he did, his cheek would brush her forehead, and a little pulse of delight would flood through her belly. It felt as if every nerve in her body were sparking at his touch. She shut her eyes, enjoying the feeling of safety that being so close to him gave her. She felt one of his hands trace over her joined ones again, and opened her eyes.

“You OK?” Jimmy yelled over the wind.

“Perfect,” she yelled back.

There was a light burning outside the house as they pulled up, a little lantern that lit the snowy pathway. Jimmy pulled the bike over and jumped off before helping Liz down. He slid his arm around her waist and lifted her as if she weighed nothing. Liz was surprised—she’d had no idea he was so strong. He put her down but didn’t let her go. She placed her hands against his chest as he held her firmly. His eyes were troubled, but he smiled anyway.

“Thanks for being here.”

“Anytime. Do you want me to wait with the bike?”

Jimmy pulled her closer. “No. Come with me to the door. Please?”

She nodded and he let her go, taking her hand as they walked up the path. Jimmy hesitated for a second before ringing the bell.

“I lost my keys and phone in the chase,” he explained. “Anyway, I can’t just walk straight in. I don’t want to give them both heart attacks.”

“It’ll be fine,” she whispered. “They’re just going to be happy to see you, that’s all.”

Jimmy sighed. “Yeah. Then they’ll probably ground me for, like, ten years.”

He rang the bell. There was a couple of minutes’ silence, and then the sound of shuffling inside as someone came to the door. It opened into gloom—there were no lights on inside the house.

“Mom?” Jimmy asked into the silence.

The figure inside the door moved forward, into the meager light cast by the fixture at the end of the hallway. Liz recognized the woman as Mrs. Paulson, but only just. There was a strange faraway look in her eyes, and her forehead was creased in a frown. Liz shivered. Jimmy’s mom looked just like everyone in town.

“Jimmy,” Liz whispered, “we have to go.…”

She looked at Jimmy and saw his stricken face. “Mom,” he said again. “It’s me, Jimmy.”

Liz reached out, putting one hand on Jimmy’s arm while keeping a wary eye on his mom. “Jimmy,” she said again, more urgently. “I’m sorry, but—”

“Mom, it’s me.” Jimmy pulled away from Liz. “Jimmy, your son. Mom?”

Mrs. Paulson retreated into the shadows, still staring blankly ahead. “Please go away now,” she said woodenly. “We don’t want to buy anything. Go away.”

“Mom!” Jimmy shouted as she shut the door. “Mom, wait—”

Liz, shaken, grabbed his arm. “Jimmy, stop.”

“But—”

“Jimmy,” she said again, softly. “Mercy has gotten to them. I’m sorry. We’ve got to go.”

She led him back down the path to the bike, but Jimmy couldn’t ride. They stood silently, side by side. Liz didn’t know what to do or how to help him, but her eyes filled with tears at the expression of pain on his face. He looked as if he was trying to say something, but finally he reached out to pull Liz to him, clutching her tightly as he cried.

#

Faye pushed open the door to the bookstore. Aunt Pam appeared from the back room almost immediately.

“Faye!” she exclaimed, rushing over. “Where have you been? I’d have called the police if I’d thought it would do any good. This town.” She shivered. “I’m truly scared, Faye.”

Faye pulled her aunt into a fierce hug. “I’m sorry.”

“I’ve been worried sick. The town is snowed in, and I seem to be the only person who isn’t wandering around like a lost soul. It’s terrifying.”

“I know what’s happening, Aunt Pam,” Faye told her. “Look—this is going to be a lot to take in, but we need your help.”

“Who does?” asked Aunt Pam, confused. “Faye, what’s going on?”

“I can explain everything. But first I need you to meet some people, OK?”

Aunt Pam was very still. She was looking over Faye’s head, out of the store’s front window. Faye turned to see Joe and Lucas, watching them.

“That’s the leader of the Black Dogs, isn’t it?” Aunt Pam asked. “And that’s the Morrow woman’s son. Oh, Faye, what have you gotten yourself into?”

Before Faye could answer, Joe had pushed his way into the shop, ducking to avoid the wolf amulet that still spun gently on its little thread. He offered Aunt Pam a friendly smile, pointing at it.

“Nice totem you have there, ma’am.”

Aunt Pam smiled back, polite but guarded. “Thank you. In fact, it was a gift from one of your men.”

Joe smiled knowingly. “I thought it might have been. Finn, was it?” Joe stepped farther into the store as Lucas quietly closed the door behind them.

“That’s right. He’s very talented.”

Joe nodded. “That he is. He’s also my son. Did you know that?”

Faye watched as the suspicious look on Aunt Pam’s face softened. “I did not. But I have always felt that goodness in the child reflects goodness in the parent. And if that is the case with you, then you are welcome here.”

The biker nodded, still looking at the wolf amulet. “Thank you. Do you know why Finn gave it to you?”

Aunt Pam looked at him seriously. “No, I don’t. But I chose to hang it because it felt right to at the time.”

Joe smiled again, holding out his hand to shake Aunt Pam’s gently. “My son says you are a smart woman. It looks to me like he was right.”

“Well, Finn’s a good young man.”

Joe nodded. “Ms. McCarron, Finn is almost two hundred years old.”

Aunt Pam stared at Joe for a moment and then nodded calmly. “I see.”

Faye was shocked to note that her aunt seemed to be taking all this in stride. Faye had always known that Aunt Pam was strong, but right now, she saw that perhaps there was even more to her aunt than she had realized.

“My name is Joe Crowley,” Joe went on, “and I’m here to stop what’s going on in this town.” Joe nodded at Lucas. “Lucas here told me about an incident in this shop, with his mother, Mercy. Apparently your pet dog objected to her?”

“So Mercy Morrow has something to do with this, does she?” Aunt Pam nodded gravely. “I think you’d better tell me everything, Joe Crowley.”

Aunt Pam pulled down the blinds on the shop windows, and Faye brought out chairs. They sat in a circle as Joe told his story, Faye filling in the parts that she had been personally involved in, with Lucas explaining the little that he knew himself. Aunt Pam listened quietly, nodding occasionally but asking no questions. Several times, Faye found her mind wandering to Finn, wondering where he was and what he was doing. Joe had said it was best to let him find his own way back, and that his son needed to figure out his anger alone. But Faye was still worried. If there was evil abroad, she wanted Finn to be safe.

“Well,” Aunt Pam said when they had finally finished. “What a thing to come to our sleepy little town.”

“I wish it hadn’t,” Joe told her, his voice sincere. “But it has, and now we need your help. I’m told you’re a history and culture expert.”

Aunt Pam smiled. “I know some useful bits and pieces. I used to teach folklore at Miskatonic. And what I don’t know, I can usually find out,” she said, indicating the books stacked high around them. “What do you need?”

“I need to translate this,” Joe told her, pulling out the scroll and handing it over. “You probably won’t recognize the language.”

Aunt Pam unfurled the scroll and examined the text for a moment before looking up. “It looks like a form of ancient Cyrillic script,” she said. “Though the language seems to be a variation of something non-Slavic that I’ve never seen before. Moldovan, perhaps? Or the Bashkir tongue? It bears enough resemblance to both of those be translatable, though, I think.”

Faye watched Joe, who was evidently impressed, and felt another swell of pride in her aunt. “I can read some of it, but not all,” he said. “That region has so many dialects.”

Aunt Pam nodded, still looking at the scroll. “Well then, together we should be able to make sense of most of it.” She stood up, crossing to the bookshelf that held old volumes of illustrated poetry. “First, though, I want to show you this.”

They got up and crowded around her as she pulled out a large leather-bound volume and cleared a space on her desk. Thumbing through the delicate pages, she laid the book flat for all of them to see.

“La Belle Dame sans Merci,”
Faye read.

“The Beautiful Lady Without Pity,” said Aunt Pam, translating from the French. “It’s a ballad by the English poet John Keats, about a good and pure knight who finds himself enchanted and bound by a beautiful woman he stops to help. In a glamoured dream, he sees the stranded bodies of other men who have been similarly taken in by her cruel beauty.” Aunt Pam looked at Joe. “Sound familiar?”

Joe bent closer. “How old is this?”

“Keats wrote two versions, the first in 1819,” Aunt Pam told them. “But the title of his ballad is far older than that—he took it from a piece by Alain Chartier, who wrote his poem sometime between 1392 and 1430.”

Faye stared at the words on the page, transfixed. “Can it really be Mercy Morrow?” she asked, looking at Lucas. “Has she really been doing this for so long?”

Lucas shrugged and shook his head. “Don’t ask me,” he said, clearly upset. “I don’t think I have any idea who that woman is anymore, but I’ll never call her my mother again.”

Joe straightened up. “This is Mercy,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, Lucas. But this is truly your mother.”

Outside, the silence of the street was shattered by the growl of a motorcycle engine. It pulled to a stop beside the shop’s door, and a second later someone banged on the glass. Faye answered it to find Finn standing on the step. He was breathing hard, his eyes wild.

#

Mitch Wilson strode out of the mansion and into the deep snow. It had fallen so heavily in the past few hours that it seemed as if the drifts would soon touch the sky, enclosing the earth in never-ending ice
.

The large set of keys Mercy had entrusted to his care jangled against his belt. He walked toward the decrepit outbuildings that stood apart from the house. Like the rest of the estate, they had been abandoned for years until Mercy arrived. But they had not survived as well as the mansion. The roofs bore holes where missing slates had tumbled to the ground, and the wooden doors were warped, their bolts rusted
.

Mitch entered the stable and, reaching the door of the farthest stall, slid one of the keys into the large silver lock. It was new, added only when Mercy had arrived, and it unlocked smoothly. Mitch wrenched the old door open and stepped inside
.

The smell of hay and dirt was strong. A sort of moaning chatter echoed up around him, from beyond the inner pen that had been built to secure cattle and horses. Mitch ignored it, even when it grew louder, begging
.