Price of Angels (46 page)

              The driveway was going to be tricky, he realized, when he reached the turn and saw that the gravel tracks through the grass were completely snowed over. Then he came to a halt when he saw that there were fresh tire tracks cutting through the snow. Just one set, and they hadn’t been traveled over more than once. Coming or going, who could tell. Maybe Wynn hadn’t had the fridge stocked and he and Holly had gone shopping.

              That was what he told himself, as he navigated his Dyna down one of the car tracks. It seemed to take forever, and his pulse knocked harder with each beat, as the bike slid and fishtailed against the snow.

              Finally, he reached the clearing where house and barn stood.

              His eyes went straight to the Buick. That now-familiar rustbucket that didn’t belong here, at his home. With Holly.

              They’d found her.

              Michael experienced the most acute, painful panic of his life. It gripped every blood vessel, every nerve, pressed him tight like a vise.

              And then he let the sergeant at arms for the Lean Dogs take over. He let it command every part of him that was a screaming, terrified little boy holding onto Caesar’s collar, and propel him into action. He wasn’t nine anymore. Wasn’t helpless.

              He was going to draw and quarter the bastards.

              He threw his helmet down into the snow and sprinted to the house. Doors locked. Lights on, but no answer to his knock. Delilah came to the door and whined at him through the windows, but Cass wasn’t with her.

He saw the tracks leading away from the house, out the back door, down the steps, toward the trails. Pawprints alongside them. Wynn and Holly had gone walking, and they’d taken the huge stud dog, thank God.

There was no sign of the Jessups, save their bootprints, sized somewhere between Wynn’s massive tread and Holly’s tiny boot marks with their stacked heels. All the tracks led into the woods, down one of the old game trails. Presumably, the Jessups had come to the same conclusion he had, and had followed Wynn and Holly’s prints into the woods.

Michael went to the kennels, ignoring the cacophony of welcoming barks and yips. He needed old, mature, smart trackers, not green pups. He loosed Sammie and Bear, not bothering with leads, snapping his fingers and bringing the two hounds to his heels.

He led them to the head of the trail, pointed out the tracks to them.

“Seek,” he instructed. “Boys, seek.”

They snuffled for long moments, then took off galloping across the snow, headed down the trail.

Michael sprinted after them. He could follow the tracks, yes, but he didn’t want to take chances. He was counting on the baying of the dogs to rattle the Jessups. And he was counting on Cass’s help when he reached them.

Holly rested a hand on the back of Cassius’s thick neck. It quivered as he growled again, a vicious, sinister sound. The sight of the giant dog had halted the men; their eyes flicked toward him nervously.

              A dozen thoughts crowded her mind. How had they found her here? Did Michael know? How much of a deterrent would the dog be for them? Could she make a run for it?

              She edged back a step. Her pulse was a sick pattering in her ears and throat; it throbbed in every inch of her skin, contracted at the roots of her hair.

              All the old fear and helplessness fell over her, a familiar blanket of immobility. It strangled her. It turned her from human to mindless victim. The mantle of the sightless, voiceless receptacle for their abuse.

             
No
, a voice inside her screamed.
No, no, no, NO!

             
Abuse her they might, but she didn’t have to accept it. After all, when had compliance ever spared her?

              She curled her gloved fingers around Cassius’s collar. “How did you know I was here?” Her voice only shook a little.

              “Shaman knows everything about everyone,” Jacob said. He’d always been the more talkative of the two. “He even knows where your little Michael would hide something he wanted to keep to hisself.” He grinned.

              She hated the way he said
Michael
, the mocking slant to his voice.

              She pressed her trembling lips together, lifting her chin, as terror chased through her. “All this time, and you couldn’t find some other girl? Someone prettier and younger than me?” She slipped her right hand into the pocket of the coat, reached into its depths.

              Abraham, with a glance for the dog, took an aggressive step toward her. “You belong back home, Holly.”

              “Where I can’t tell the police what you did to me? I already told them, and they never believed me.”

              He scowled. “You belong with your family,” he restated.

              “My family.” A high, crazed laugh burst out of her. “Because they love me? Well, you’re one member short now,” she said, lips skinning off her teeth, relishing the chance to snarl at them. “Dewey’s dead. Michael killed him and fed him to a whole pen full of hogs.”

              Beside her, Cassius echoed her snarl with one of his own, his immensely more frightening.

              Her father’s face was black with wrath. “Let go of that dog and come over here.”

              “Make me.” She pulled her right hand free of the jacket, clenching the gun Michael had given her. She shot one-handed, and the round went wide, clipping Jacob in the shoulder before it arrowed off into the trees.

              He clutched at the wound, blood spurting between his gapped fingers. His eyes went round. “Goddamn!” he shouted. Then he lunged at her.

              Too late, she realized Abraham was going to reach her first, diving toward her as the shot boomed through the forest like cannon fire.

              Holly swung the gun toward him, and he knocked it out of her hand. It spun away, landing silently in the snow.

              Cassius lunged, the collar ripping from her fingers, and Abraham screamed as the massive jaws clamped onto his arm.

              Holly turned to run –

              And an arm caught her around the waist, lifted her high, her feet kicking and swinging through the air, useless.

              “No!” she screamed. “Let me go, let me go!” Tears blurred her vision. She kicked wildly, clipping at Jacob’s shins, and he cursed her.

              “Shut up, little bitch.” He threw her down into the snow.

              She rolled over –

              But he was on her already, as if he had more than two hands, trapping her wrists easily and forcing them down to the ground. His face was a twisted mask of rage. Her uncle, who’d raped her at the kitchen sink. The first time a man had come inside her body. Her blood relative.

              “
Get off
,” she shrieked, bucking beneath him, struggling to get her boots in his ribs. She could already feel herself tiring, the awful pull of frightened exhaustion.

              Abraham was screaming as the dog savaged him.

              Tears spilled down her cheeks. She drew in huge lungfuls of air, fighting for all she was worth, not knowing whether he meant to rape her or kill her, or bind her up with rope.

              “No!”

              Jacob put her hands together over her head, pinning them together in one hand. Blood seeped all down the outside of his sleeve as he reached into his jacket pocket. The knife glimmered dully, reflecting the silver sky along its wicked length as he withdrew it.

              He was going to slice her up. The blood would stain the snow.

              Holly gathered herself for one final resistance, and then she heard it: the eerie, yodeling howl of a wolf.

              Jacob lifted his head, looking down the trail.

              Cassius let out one gruff bark.

              No, not a wolf. A Bluetick hound.

              Help. Help was coming! Someone had found them!

              Holly rolled her head, the snow bleeding its moisture through her hair, freezing her scalp. Racing toward them were two hounds, baying for all they were worth, crying again and again. And behind them…

              “Michael!” she screamed when she saw him. “Michael!”

              And then the pain.

              Cold, so very cold, like ice spearing through her abdomen. Her breath caught, and her heart stuttered, as the awful sharp thrust of cold bit into her belly.

              And then the great spill of warmth, heat rushing inside and outside of her, pouring down her belly beneath her clothes, flooding her insides with hot liquid.

              The blood.

              He’d stabbed her.

              “Michael,” she said, as his face became clear. He was running toward them, his knife in his hand.

              “I love you,” she whispered.
Oh, love, you almost made it in time. Almost.

It was his mother’s coat. The long, plaid wool number with the nipped-in waist and the big pleats in back. His mother had always looked like a movie star in that coat. And it was his mother’s dark hair spilling across the snow. And it was Holly’s pale, green-eyed face, her lips forming his name.

              He saw the knife go in, through the layers of coat and clothes, saw the way her face blanked as the pain registered.

              The man on top of her stood, pulling the knife from her, its tip dark and dripping with her blood.

              Drip-drip-drip onto the snow.

              Michael came to a staggering halt. He’d reached them. And she was already dead.

              The hounds circled, baying in a frenzy, tails beating in the air.

              Cassius lifted his bloody muzzle in greeting. Abraham Jessup clutched at his ruined throat, his savaged belly, his clothes shredded.

              “Sammie, Bear,” Michael said, snapping his fingers, and the hounds came, sitting down beside him. Their job was done and they knew it. They were bay dogs.

              Cass was the catch dog.

              Michael aimed the tip of his own knife at Jacob Jessup, at the man’s sweaty red face. “I’m going to gut you.”

              Jessup was scared. Michael could smell the stink of fear on him. But he said, “Why? She isn’t gonna make it.”

              “Because it’ll be fun.”

              Abraham was groaning, trying to push up on his hands.

              “Cass.” The Dane came to him, head tilted at an alert angle, jaws steaming with wet blood. Michael pointed to Jacob. “Hold,” he commanded.

              Jacob tried to run, but Cass locked onto his arm, dragged him back. When Jacob tried to stab at him, Cass dodged, released and changed his grip, clamping his teeth onto the hand that held the knife. Jacob screamed and the knife fell into the snow. Blood followed, a trickling stream, steaming when it hit the snow, as Cass’s fangs punctured his flesh.

              Michael was prepared for a fight. He was prepared for the wild punch thrown from Jacob’s free hand, and he caught the man’s fist, crushed it tight in his fingers. He was prepared also for the startled, terrified rush of understanding in Jessup’s eyes. The look of a man who knows he’s about to die.

              Michael drove his knife into Jacob’s belly, in to the hilt.

              Gasp. Hiss of breath.

              Then he withdrew it, and ran it through the man’s windpipe.

              “Cass, release,” he said, and Jacob fell backward, twitching like a landed fish after he hit the snow.

              Abraham whimpered when the huge dog’s jaws closed on his shoulder. Michael knelt beside him, leaned in so he could smell the fear-sweat, so he could whisper in his ear.

              “
St. Michael the archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the malice and snares of the devil
.”

              He drove the knife down through the back of Abraham’s neck.

              A fountain of blood sprayed down on the snow.

              A gurgling, choking sound.

              Then he collapsed.

              Michael stood. Steam rose from the blood on the knife, the blood on the snow, the sweat evaporating off the bodies as they cooled.

              Holly.

              Michael reached her in four long strides, struggling through the snow. He dropped to his knees beside her, gathered her up against his legs.

              “Holly. Holly!”

              Her eyes were closed, her lips parted, her skin waxed.

              He touched the rend in her coat, felt the sticky drying blood. He lowered his ear to her mouth, felt only the faintest rustle of breath.