The Unwanted (45 page)

“Yesterday—”

“Things were different yesterday!” Rosemary flared. “Yesterday I wanted to believe her. I didn’t want to believe she could have done all this. But this is today, and Laura’s dead, and … and …” Her voice trailed off, but she refused to give in to the sobbing that threatened to overcome her.

“And you believe Cassie did it. Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

Rosemary shook her head violently, though his words were true. “I don’t know what I’m thinking. I’m trying to be rational, and it isn’t working. I just—Keith, I’m scared! I keep telling myself that none of this is true, that there’s a reasonable explanation for what’s happening. But I can’t. All I can think about is that something’s going to happen to you next. Or to Jennifer.” She looked at him with beseeching eyes. “Why can’t we just go away somewhere, and stay away until it’s all over?”

Keith’s eyes flickered dully around the room. “Just go away,” he repeated, as if the words had no meaning. But
then he shook his head. “I can’t do that, Rosemary. Whatever this is all about, it’s partly my fault. Whatever Cassie is—or isn’t—she’s my daughter. I can’t just walk away from that. I have to stay. I have to.”

Rosemary’s jaw tightened, her lips thinned down to an angry line, and her eyes flashed dangerously. “All right,” she said, her voice grating. “We’ll stay. But for how long? How long do you want us to stay, Keith? Until we’re all dead?”

Keith turned away and went to the window. Looking out into the brightness of the spring morning, everything that had happened seemed unreal. And yet the image of Laura was too deeply burned in his memory to deny.

Had Cassie truly been responsible for that? He didn’t want to believe it. And yet—

“I don’t know,” he said at last, his voice barely audible. “Until I can help her, I guess. Or at least until I can understand.”

Cassie faced Eric across the small table in the center of the cabin, her eyes empty, her mind reeling, her body shivering with an unnatural chill.

It wasn’t warm and comforting here this morning; would never be comforting again.

She knew what had happened now, knew it from the first moment they had come into the cabin and Sumi leaped into her arms, purring softly.

The images had come quickly, and she’d watched the pictures in her mind with growing horror, watched Eric’s mother knot the sheet around her neck, watched her step off the edge of the bed.

Watched as the cat left his telltale marks on her cheeks then slipped back out the window.

She even heard Eric’s voice, crooning to Sumi as the cat slipped back into bed with him.

“Did you do it, Sumi? Did you do what I wanted you to do?”

It hadn’t been her—hadn’t been her at all. From the first moment—the first time they’d been here together—it had been Eric.

It all made sense now.

The day Sumi had attacked Mr. Simms—
Eric
had been holding Sumi that day.

And after Kiska had been shot, Eric had known where to find him.

It wasn’t just to her that Miranda had given her gift. It was to Eric too.

“It was you,” Cassie whispered. “Right from the beginning, it was you.”

Eric nodded, a cold smile playing at the corners of his mouth. His eyes, glittering an icy blue in the morning light that filtered through the scraggly trees outside, were fixed on her with an odd detachment, almost as if he didn’t see her.

All the sympathy she’d seen there—all the understanding—were gone.

“But they were our friends,” she whispered bleakly. “Miranda never wanted us to—”

“Miranda’s dead!” Eric grated, his eyes narrowing to slits. “It doesn’t matter what she wanted anymore! She’s dead!”

As he spoke the words, Sumi squirmed in Cassie’s lap, and another image came into her mind.

Once more she saw Miranda—the quicksand closing around her—a shadowy figure looming over her. But this time she could recognize the face. Eric’s face.

“You killed her,” she breathed. “You killed them all.” Her eyes, glistening with the pain she felt, reached out to Eric, trying to touch him. “Your own mother, Eric. You even killed your own mother.…”

Eric’s smile twisted into a knife slash of scorn. “Sumi killed my mother, and Sumi killed Lisa. And everyone knows that he does everything
you
want him to do.”

Cassie felt numb. He was right—she knew he was right—and already, deep in her heart, she was beginning to understand that there was nothing she could do about it.

“Why?” she asked. “Why did you do it, Eric?”

“They deserved it,” Eric rasped. “They hurt me, and so I killed them.”

Cassie shook her head as if to dispel the nightmare closing around her. “No. Miranda was your friend—she never hurt you. She loved you.”

“Until you came,” Eric spat. “She was mine, but you
took her away from me.” His eyes were now glimmering with the rage and hatred inside him: “She was just like all the rest of them. She didn’t love me—she didn’t want me. So I killed her. Just like I’m going to kill my father!”

Cassie gasped. “No! Eric, you can’t!”

Eric’s eyes glowed with fury. “Why not? No one’s going to blame me. No one’s even going to know I did it. They’re going to blame you, Cassie. They’re going to blame you for all of it.”

“No!” Cassie shouted. “I won’t let you! I’ll tell them the truth! I’ll tell all of them!”

“Tell them what?” Eric demanded. “You’re crazy, remember? No one’s going to believe you. You’re like Miranda! You’re nuts! The little kids all think you’re a witch!” An ugly cackle of brittle laughter welled up in his throat. “Didn’t Miranda tell you what it was like, having them point at you, and whisper about you, and run away from you? That’s what they’re going to do to you, too, Cassie. And you won’t do anything about it. You’ll just let them hurt you.” His voice dropped to a bitter whisper. “But not me. I’m done letting people hurt me. I’ll kill them all, and they’ll all think it was you.” His cold smile came back. “And there’s nothing you can do about it, Cassie. You’re like Kiska and Sumi. You’ll do whatever I want you to do. You always have, and you always will.”

Sumi stirred restlessly in Cassie’s lap, then his whole body stiffened.

Images began to flicker in Cassie’s mind.

Images of herself, her face bleeding as Sumi’s claws dug deep into her flesh.

Eric.

He was reaching out to the cat with his mind, telling him what to do.

She tried to fight it, tried to calm the cat, but it did no good. He was stronger than she was—too strong.

And then she knew what she had to do.

Her hands closed around Sumi’s neck and she began to squeeze her fingers tight.

The cat started to struggle, lashing out with his feet, his claws bared as he tried to twist free of her grip.

She reached out with her mind, tried to soothe the
furious animal, tried to overpower the hatred flowing out of Eric’s mind and into the body of the cat.

Sumi’s mouth opened and he spat at her, his fangs dripping with saliva.

Cassie could feel herself losing the struggle with Eric now, feel his mind overpowering hers. She squeezed harder, her hands pressing tighter on the cat’s larynx. Once more he tried to twist away, but then, slowly, his struggling eased. A minute later Sumi lay still in her lap.

Cassie closed her eyes for a moment, fighting against the tears that threatened to overwhelm her. Then, very gently, she placed the cat in the center of the table and forced herself to look into Eric’s cold eyes.

“He’s dead,” she said. “He’s dead, and he’ll never hurt anyone again.”

But Eric only smiled once more. “I still have Kiska.” He rose to his feet, went to the door, then raised his arm and pointed to the sky.

Instantly the pale white form of the hawk rose off the cabin’s roof and spiraled upward into the sky. As it started out toward the sea, Eric turned back to Cassie.

“He’s going,” he said. “He’s going to kill my father.”

Cassie felt the blood drain from her face, and tried to reach out to the bird.

But once again Eric’s power overwhelmed her own, and the great hawk flew on.

There was nothing more she could do. Eric was stronger than she.

She felt her mind slipping, felt a strange gray fog begin to close around her.

Sounds seemed to retreat into the distance, and her eyes began to play tricks on her.

She tried to look at Eric, but he seemed to be a long way away from her now, and as she watched, his image faded away entirely.

She was alone now, and would always be alone.

But it didn’t matter; not really. She’d always been alone, except for those few short hours with Miranda.

Now she would live alone, wanting nothing, needing nothing, sitting by herself in the soft gray fog.

In the fog, where nothing—and no one—could ever hurt her again.

Gentle swells rolled under the bow of the
Big Ed
, causing a barely perceptible pitch in the forty-foot trawler. The sky had cleared, and a bright sun warmed the cabin. Ed lounged in the pilot’s seat, using his left foot to keep the boat on course while he watched the shore of the cape move by at a steady seven knots. Another hour and he’d be back in False Harbor.

The flat sea and steady throbbing of the diesel engine under the floorboards lulled him, and his mind began to drift. The fog of the hangover was beginning to pass now, and he’d taken a couple of aspirin against the stabbing pain of his headache.

So Laura was gone.

It was something he’d never thought about, really, never planned for. Even when she’d threatened to leave him, he’d never taken her seriously. If she was going to do that, she’d have done it long ago. But she never had, and over the years Ed had come to a dim certainty that she never would. Thai was the thing about Laura: she didn’t have the guts to fight back, and she didn’t have the guts to leave. In fact, the way he treated her had been her fault, really. After all, if she let him beat up on her, why shouldn’t he?

But now she was gone.

Dead.

Of all the stupid things she could have done—

He checked himself. No point getting mad at her now. And besides, what the hell did it really matter, anyway? Whatever had happened, had happened. He shouldn’t even think about it, not yet. When he got home and found out all the details, then he’d think about it.

A flickering movement on the bow caught his eye, and he swung his head idly around to look through the salt-fogged windshield as a snow-white bird hovered in the air for a moment, then settled onto the railing around the foredeck. Ed’s lips curled into a cynical smile. “Nothin’ today,” he said out loud, though he knew that even if the gull could hear him over the roar of the engine, his words would mean nothing to it. “No nets, no fish, not even any bait. You wasted your time.”

He half expected the bird to take off then, leaping into the air with a mad fluttering of its wings before it caught the breeze, but it didn’t. Instead it stayed where it was, one of its reddish eyes staring at him.

Staring at him almost as if it was accusing him of something.

But that was dumb. He hadn’t done anything, and even if he had, what the fuck could a stupid bird know about it?

But as the bird continued to sit on the bow rail, its eyes fixed on him, Ed began to feel nervous.

Why didn’t it go away?

Finally, frowning, he opened the window and flung a scrap of the doughnut—which had been too dry for him to force down his throat this morning—at the bird.

The piece of pastry struck the bird on the right wing then fell to the deck.

The bird made no move to go after it—didn’t even look at it. Instead its gaze as it stared through the windshield at Ed seemed to intensify.

Ed’s frown deepened.

He flipped on the autopilot and adjusted its course, then picked up a wrench and went out on deck. He started forward, the wrench held loosely in his right hand.

He froze as he realized that the bird wasn’t a gull at all.

It was the ghostly white hawk that had perched on Miranda Sikes’s rooftop for all the years that he could remember.

But it was dead. Gene Templeton had shot it.

And yet there it was, perched calmly on the rail of his boat.

The hawk watched him, cocking its head slightly. Ed tightened his grip on the wrench. He slowed his pace, moving more carefully now, wanting to be sure he was close enough to the bird to hit it with the first swing.

Before he came within range of the hawk, it leaped into the air, its wings beating furiously. But instead of flying away from the boat to hover mockingly just out of reach, it came straight toward Ed.

Its beak opened and a shrill screech burst from its throat, stabbing at Ed’s aching head as if someone had jammed an ice pick into his ear. As Ed swung the wrench wildly, the bird’s claws slashed at his face, tearing open his right cheek.
Screaming in pain and fury, Ed hurled the wrench at the bird, but with a quick flick of its wings it rose out of the wrench’s trajectory and the heavy metal tool fell harmlessly into the sea.

The bird hovered then, and a strange cackling sound, almost like laughter, rattled in its throat.

Suddenly, beneath Ed’s feet, the boat pitched violently.

Ed almost lost his balance, then grabbed for the railing to steady himself.

The hawk dove, slashing at him again, and he felt a hot jab of pain in his left cheek, then tasted blood on his lips. Shielding himself with his left arm and hanging on to the railing with his right hand, he started back toward the cabin. The bird attacked once more, its talons ripping across the back of his neck as he ducked inside and slammed the door shut behind him. By the time he got back to the pilot’s seat, the bird was once more perched on the bow pulpit, eyeing him malevolently.

Though the sky was still clear, the wind had picked up, and around him the swells were building, their crests topped by frothing whitecaps. But there seemed to be no specific direction from which the sudden squall was coming, and now the boat began to roll in a sickening counterpoint to its pitching. A faint queasiness began to twist at Ed’s guts.

As the boat swung wildly off course, Ed grabbed the wheel with both hands and kicked the autopilot off. Now, as the rudder seemed to fight him and he had to struggle to bring the boat around, he forgot the pain from the lacerations on his body. Spray was coming over the bow, and he let go of the wheel with his right hand to reach out and flick the windshield wiper on.