The Love of the Dead (22 page)

“Miles?”

She shrugged and smiled sadly. “Why do you think he haunts me? Because he loves me so much? No, Coleridge. He haunts me because of what I did. Now I have to pay the price.”

He took her hand. “I’m sure you’re not to blame.”

Beth shook his hand free and laughed. “You don’t know me. You think you do, but you don’t. He hates me because I killed him. He won’t leave me alone. Every day he’s there. My guilt, my conscience, following me from the moment I wake up to the moment I sleep. I drink so I can pass out each night. He’ll never leave me. I’m afraid, but you know what? I’m hoping for peace. I don’t think I deserve it. I think there’s a hell for people like me, but at least I know he won’t be there. I’m tired. You understand? Every day. Without end. My whole life ahead of me, with Miles following me, looking at me. Accusing me. I can never forget. I can never pay it back. I was always too scared to end my life, be done with it. Now the choice has been taken out of my hands. I’m ready, Coleridge. So ready.”

“Oh, Beth.” Coleridge’s face was rock steady. He didn’t turn away from her. He reached across the table instead and took her hand again, holding it tight. “What did you do?”

Tears came unbidden. She didn’t think she could cry for Miles anymore. But she realized that she wasn’t crying for Miles. Even with the end in sight she was still selfish. She cried for herself.

“I went to pick him up from school one day. He’d started walking. He saw me, saw my car. He was only young, you know? Kids that age, they don’t know what they’re doing. He stepped out into the road, excited to see me. Not thinking for a minute. I couldn’t stop in time. I couldn’t stop.”

“Beth, that’s not your fault. An accident. You can’t blame yourself.”

“In my dreams I can’t stop,” she said, ignoring Coleridge. “I relive it over and over. Wake in the night, screaming. I see him next to me in bed, and sometimes I think it was all a dream. But then he turns, and I see his broken ribs, the blood pouring from his mouth, his head shattered. I’m in the car, and the road’s flat and straight. Then I see him. Then there’s a bump, another bump. The wheels running over him, breaking my son.”

Coleridge had a tear in his eye, but he didn’t waver. “Beth, that’s awful. So awful. I’m so sorry.”

“Never as sorry as I’ll be.”

“You’ve got to forgive yourself, Beth. Accidents happen. People get killed on the roads. It’s just something that happens. Something terrible, but people move on. They learn to live with it.”

Beth laughed at him, scornful and bitter. He recoiled but then gathered himself and took her hand again.

“Some things you can’t change, Beth.”

She shook her head. “That’s the truth. I can’t change. I’ve tried. I have. But I’m a drunk now. I was a drunk then. I was falling down drunk when I hit him. Understand now? You’re here because you think I need saving. The big man. But I don’t need saving. I need to pay. I deserve this. I brought it on myself. I can never learn to live with it. I killed my son because I was drunk. You think you need to save me, but I want this. I want to die. I’ve wanted to die since that day. Every day, drunk or sober, it never leaves. It never will. I can’t live with it anymore.”

Coleridge felt cold listening to Beth speak. The depths of her hatred for herself. It came off her in waves, like a blast of winter air. Her heart was so broken she couldn’t see a way through.

But he couldn’t leave her. No matter what she’d done. They all bore guilt. It was the thing that forged you. You lived with it. You paid the price.

So cold he was shivering. Beth was cold, too. Freezing. She squeezed his hand tight.

“I’m sorry, Coleridge. You shouldn’t have come. I don’t deserve it.”

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” he said. He squeezed her hand back. “I’m here for you. We’ll see it through.”

“I’m so sorry. I wish it could be some other way.”

She pushed herself up from the table and stepped away. Stepped back, looking over his shoulder.

The room was so cold Coleridge could see his breath frosting the air. He turned to look where Beth was looking. Felt death in the room.

“Beth...”

“Don’t get in the way,” she said to Coleridge, looking him in the eye, pleading.

“Beth...” he said again, fear making his legs weak.

“You came,” she said, but by then she wasn’t speaking to Coleridge anymore.

Coleridge couldn’t see anyone, but he could feel him, behind him. At his shoulder.

A third chair was pulled out from the table by a hand he couldn’t see.

“I’m ready,” Beth said, and listened to a reply Coleridge couldn’t hear from beside him, from the killer sitting at his left hand.

Chapter Sixty-Five

In the back of the ambulance, Peter’s heart stopped. The paramedic tried to resuscitate him manually for sixty seconds, counting as he pumped his clenched fists down into Peter’s ribs. Dimly, in some distant part of his mind, Peter was still aware of the pain.

The paramedic pulled Peter’s shirt aside and placed the paddles of the portable defibrillator on his chest. Peter’s body bucked as the electrical charge passed through him.

He sat up and cried out, pushing the defibrillator from the paramedic’s hands.

“What the fuck?”

Peter ignored him. It suddenly came crashing back down on him. Beth, in danger.

He could feel it, just a few miles north. A black hole surrounding Beth. Death, coming for her.

There was no time. He pulled aside the straps holding him to the gurney and barrelled into the doors. The ambulance was moving fast, but he fell out into the road at a tight corner as the ambulance slowed. He tumbled, rolled, sat up. There was no pain. His terror, the urgency he felt, lending him strength and driving him on. North.

He started running, his feet pounding hard on the road. He didn’t feel the impact through his shoes or the wind rushing through his hair. He wasn’t aware of the moon rising overhead, or the chill, or the wind rustling through the reeds.

He ran, not out of breath, not tiring. He felt stronger than he ever had, fitter. He increased his pace, his feet flying and kicking up dust. He clenched his teeth and pushed as hard as he could, through the chill night, onward, ever onward. He knew the roads well. He knew how far it was. Miles passed beneath his feet. The sea on his right now, moonlight reflected on the gentle surf like a silver road leading over the horizon.

But no matter how fast he ran, it could never be fast enough. He could feel her life slipping away from his with each mile he covered, each yard he ran.

He imagined her screaming, blood pouring, but he shut that down. It would only drain his strength, and he had to run.

Run. Run faster. He urged himself on, willing his legs, his lungs, his heart to hold on.

He’d lost Miles. He couldn’t lose Beth too. She was all he had left.

Tireless, so close now, but always too late.

Chapter Sixty-Six

Sawyer had changed. When she’d seen him in his trophy room he’d been a withered husk, more bone than flesh. When he’d taken his black blade to her son he’d been powerful, with unnatural strength running through him. But he was neither of those men anymore. His shoulders were covered in feathers, but not a cloak like he’d worn when he murdered Mary and Stan. The feathers sprouted from what would soon be wings, growing out of his back. At the moment they were nubs, fledgling wings. Soon he would be like a dark angel, one of the fallen, like the Devil himself.

The Devil didn’t have cloven hooves or a forked tongue. He didn’t have red skin or curved horns growing from his forehead. As far as Beth could tell, he didn’t have a tail.

But he was dark. A black soul. Sawyer’s soul was turning his skin black, but not in any natural hue. His skin looked like slate, a hint of gray, and hard. There would be no feeling in that skin. No feelings in Sawyer at all. If his name was really Sawyer.

Beth didn’t think it was. It was something ancient, maybe biblical, maybe before, a Sumerian name, Babylonian, before names, before humanity itself.

He smiled at her and pulled out a chair. He glanced at Coleridge. Dismissed him, for now. Beth liked it that way. She didn’t want Coleridge to be harmed. Maybe she could bargain for him. Trade her life for his. In death, perhaps she could save something instead of only destroying.

“You came,” she said.

“Of course. Did you ever think I wouldn’t?”

“I’m ready,” she said.

But he didn’t come for her. The black blade was nowhere to be seen.

She’d expected murderous rage, terrible anger that would sweep her away in agony.

But he took out a pack of cards. She recognized the design on the front. Different from her cards. The Thoth deck.

The first Tarot was supposedly from ancient Egypt. Maybe that was where he came from. Maybe not. She’d never know, and she found that, apart from natural curiosity, she didn’t really care.

He pushed out her chair with his foot.

“Sit.”

Calm.

She sat. She was his to command. Whatever he wanted, she would do. She was ready to die, but Coleridge’s life hung in the balance.

“Drink if you want, Elizabeth.”

Her name was Beth. But being a pedant when you’re faced with the angel of death wasn’t wise. She’d never been stupid.

The smell of scotch hit the room once more as she poured, and the vapors floated through the freezing air. When she poured, she noticed the scotch was thicker.

“Beth...” said Coleridge.

“Shut up now, Coleridge,” she told him, not taking her eyes from Sawyer. She couldn’t take her eyes from him. His gaze bore into her, laid her bare. He knew her guilt, her every shameful secret. And still he wanted her.

She drank a little.

“Smoke if you want. You’ll not die of cancer, Elizabeth. I love your name. You have a beautiful face, too. One I’d be proud to own. You’ll never grow old. Your looks will never fade. I come to give you eternity in my service.”

Her hands shook. His manner was polite, reserved, but there was a terrible light burning in his eyes. When he spoke some inner-fire showed through, like the gates of Hell burning within, the legions waiting to break through. He was their vanguard. An emissary.

She lit a cigarette because she wanted one. Getting the light to the tip took a couple of tries, until she got it burning straight. The smoke seemed to settle her in a way that the drink hadn’t.

“Are you the Devil?”

He laughed. Beside him, Coleridge’s teeth chattered. Cold radiated out from Sawyer, freezing the room. Beth was warm though. The cold couldn’t touch her anymore.

“I’m more than that. I’m real. The Devil, if he exists, is so far removed from your petty lives that he’s...irrelevant. I’m here. I can touch you here. I straddle both worlds now. The Devil’s nothing. A nobody.”

Such confidence, such hubris. His pride was towering and frightening because he entertained no doubts as to his supremacy. And who could prove him wrong? It was just a statement of fact.

“Why?”

He seemed to think about it earnestly. While he sat between Beth and Coleridge, she noticed that his wings had grown. What had been nubs were now around two feet long. His feathers, his plumage, shone blackly, just like a raven in the sunlight.

Coleridge took Beth’s cue and put a cigarette between his lips. He shook, too, but she loved him a little then, because he couldn’t see death sitting beside him, and he didn’t cry. He didn’t beg. He watched her, and she took strength from him. Sawyer drained her. Coleridge bolstered her.

Between the two of them, maybe she could face her death with her head held high. She didn’t want to cry. She deserved death.

“Once, many years ago, before you people had crawled from the mud, I walked on two feet. Before you people found words I had named the stars.”

His wings shook and he grew distant. Remembering. Looking back.

“When you came I hunted you. Always above you, always alone. I lived among you while you covered the earth, living out your pointless, filthy lives. I killed, I ate. I grew strong. But I’m so hungry, Elizabeth. People can’t fill the hole in my belly. In my soul. I’m empty. But I found something that tasted good to me.”

He stretched as he spoke. His black skin cracked as he flexed his back, and his wings grew longer still.

“The flesh of those with talents,” he said. “No. Not talents, maybe, but something...some kind of strength. I fed on those who died in battle. Their flesh was sweet. I took the name Valravn, for a time. The Norsemen feared me, even as they slaughtered and fed me. They built up legends around me. Valravn, Elizabeth. As good a name as any. But is that what I am?”

He shrugged his wings and Beth’s hair blew back as wind filled the room.

“I don’t know. I took my fill of the dead. They made me stronger, like placentae, feeding me. Then I found the flesh of those with magic, the path to the ancient powers. People like you. I ate your kind, and I grew stronger.”

He grinned and black teeth showed, but no humor. “I’m born, now. This is me. This is what’s been waiting inside me. My true form. I’ve been caged so long, Elizabeth. Now I’m free.”

“You’re a monster,” she said, without thinking, but he took no offence. She didn’t care anymore if he did. He was beginning to make her angry. His arrogance was stunning. He thought he was some kind of divine creature, but he was just a murderer. No better than her, no worse. Just another bastard.

“I’m more than a monster. I’m unique. Something that will never come again. All I know is millennia have passed and I have always been set above mortals. Valravn, Sidthe, Anubis, Bhaal...what’s in a name? None of these is me, nor my kind. I heard tales of a witch called Morrigan. Maybe she was my sister. Who knows? I have never met anyone like me. Now I transcend flesh. I’m more than immortal. I’m nothing, everything.”

His wings were bigger, still. Four feet, five, growing. Stretching. His skin, harder, shining now. Polished stone.

He was terrifying, but she no longer cared.

“You’re something else, all right. You have pride, but no knowledge. Even I know what I am. What are you?”