Whispers (46 page)

Chloe was Zach’s grandmother? Reilly stared at the kid, seeing a resemblance that the youth, the bleached hair, the distance of generations had hidden from him. Zach looked white, but then three generations of his parentage had been the same white man. Why wouldn’t he look it?

“
Follow the light,” he said and pushed Chloe forward. The light had moved to hover over the small crowd. Now it danced and drifted, seemingly without purpose. It dipped down and touched Gracie. Her eyes widened and Reilly sensed that it was more than the brightness she felt.

The storm outside slammed into the house, growing in intensity as they argued within. The rain was more a waterfall than a downpour. It hit the roof in a never-ending sluice. He was afraid it would wash the house right off its moorings, but he didn’t say it. They had enough to worry about.

The light passed through the wall and Zach pressed the gun into Chloe’s frail body and started after it. “You too,” he said waving the gun at the rest of them.

Zach propelled Chloe through the kitchen, pausing as the light went out into the storm. The light hesitated, as if it did, indeed, intend for them to follow it.

Zach kept the gun on Chloe, but looked at Brendan. “Go get me a flashlight. Now.”

Brendan glanced at Analise, his expression speaking of love. He was not willing to leave her and Reilly saw the complete devotion in his eyes. He knew Gracie saw it too. The kid had been willing to take a bullet for her. Whether or not they were too young, he loved her.

“
I’ll kill you first and then her,” Zach said, reading Brendan’s mind. “I’ve got nothing to lose now.”

He meant it and they all knew it. Brendan nodded, gave Analise the briefest of kisses, and went to find the flashlight.

Chloe spoke to Gracie in the tense silence that followed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For years I’ve hated you, I’ve hated Carolina. I’ve let that hate devour me.”

“
Why?” Gracie whispered. “Who are you?”

“
I am the daughter of Misery,” she said. “Bastard child of Aiken Tate.” Her eyes filled with tears. “He thought he owned us. And he took and took and took. Everything we had. He raped his own child—who can know the agony of such betrayal? And then when he came for me.... Our lives have been filled with only hate and now….” She paused, glaring at Zach. “They told us Aiken was dead, but they lied and for all of our lives he tormented and tortured us until this—” She pointed an angry finger at Zach. “This is what we’ve become. He has made us the thing we hated most.”

They heard Brendan searching for the flashlight. Reilly knew it was mounted to the wall by the cellar door, but he didn’t offer the information. He had to think of a way to get Chloe away from Zach and he needed the time.

“
Who told you he was dead?” Gracie asked.

“
He was an evil man and your great-grandmother promised that she’d seen him dead. She said she buried him here, in the springs. I’ll never know why she lied. But my mother cursed her and all her family, and I’ve lived my life by that curse. And now I see it was for nothing. The curse is on us.” Her sad eyes turned to Zach. “This is our destiny.”

“
No,” he said, shoving his gun deeper into her side. “Not mine. There’s money. There’s money here, somewhere.” He looked at Gracie. “Her granddaddy told them he’d hunted the man who owned this place. He said there was money somewhere here. He’d never tell where, but it’s here and she knows where it is.”

Chloe was shaking her head. “If he’d been able, Aiken would have taken the money.”

“
His spirit knows.” Zach’s confidence sounded maniacal. He raised his voice and said, “Hurry up with that flashlight.”

He looked back out at the hovering light. It looked the same as the Dead Lights the people of this town had been following into ravines for over a century. It did seem to be waiting for him.

Brendan reappeared, a flashlight in his hand. He gave it to Zach and then moved back to stand protectively near Analise.

“
No way. You come with us.”

“
No,” Analise cried, but Zach had yanked Brendan forward. He pushed Brendan to the porch while pulling Chloe with them onto the planking that was nearly a foot under fast-flowing water.

Reilly shouted, “You’re crazy. No one can get through that.”

But Zach seemed determined to try. Reilly stared at Gracie and her family and then back at Zach’s flashlight as it bounced in the dark.

“
I can’t let him ...” he said to Gracie. “I can’t.”

Gracie shook her head. “You can’t go out there, Reilly. It’s suicide.”

Analise was sobbing, crying Brendan’s name over and over.

“
I’ve stood by too many times, Gracie. My mom, my dad ... Christ, Matt.” He pulled her into his arms. “I’ll be back,” he told her.

“
You won’t,” she said. “You heard her. We’re cursed. I’m going to lose you if you go.”

“
No. There’s no such thing as curses. You’re not going to lose me. And I’m not giving you up. Not ever again.”

He kissed her hard and quick, hoping what he said was true. And then he went out the door and into the storm.

Chapter Forty

July 1896

Diablo Springs

AIKEN’S bullet had lodged itself somewhere in Chick’s body, but we could not find it to remove it. We were able to staunch the blood and then finally stop it, but her eyes never opened again. Carefully, we took her upstairs and laid her in the bed she’d been so proud to call her own. Athena grew silent and protective and refused our help in cleaning Chick’s frail body. She wrapped Chick in clean cotton strips and took up vigil beside her bed.

As Honey and I left the room, she looked at me. “Death. That all you is. Death. You take all I live for and kill it. I curse you now. No child of yours will walk proud in this world. No child will be blessed with good, only bad. I curse you.”

The words came through tears and pain and hurt so raw it scratched as they left her throat. But the words came and I felt the weight of them settle over my soul.

I wanted to deny the accusation. I wanted to say Chick wasn’t dead, that she might recover, but I knew it was a lie. As if in protest though, the small babe she carried moved in her womb and we saw it skim beneath the surface of her skin like a ripple in water. They both managed to cling to life. Maybe there was hope.

I looked back at Athena. Staring into those angry black eyes, I said the only truth I knew for certain. “Aiken is dead. He’ll torment you no more.”

Honey and I left her alone with Chick and went downstairs to take care of business. It was barely nine in the morning and we had two bodies outside our kitchen door. Had this been another town, someone would have come to investigate. But guns were shot at random all through the day and night in Diablo Springs.

We didn’t speak as we heaved Jake Smith up and over his saddle. Nor did we talk as we did the same with Aiken. We led the horses out to the hot springs, taking them around to the far edge where the deepest end of the pool was. In the shelter of the jutting rock to the west, we bound their feet, stuffed stones in their clothing, and threw them in.

Perhaps it was guilt, perhaps it was the hurt of all that had happened. The shock that had kept me numb wore off now that the last deed was done. But whatever the reason, as I stood watching Aiken Tate sink, I imagined his eyes opened.

I clapped my hand over my mouth, but even before I could scream, he’d vanished into the murky depths below.

***

I waited for Sawyer for a month before I let myself even consider that he might not return. During that time I could do little but berate myself. I’d driven him away. Nothing I could do would ever change that. Still I waited for him.

The town of Diablo Springs surged up around us and business continued against all sense and reasoning. I tended bar because I thought it was what Sawyer would want of me. We hired a man to work the tables and throw out the rowdies when necessary. We made money hand over fist, but there was no glory in it. No feeling of building something better. We broke into the storage room and found the place where Sawyer had stashed his money. It was empty now.

Upstairs Chick held on to life with Athena tending to her like a newborn. And two months after we killed Aiken and Jake Smith, Chick’s baby was born. The delivery was long and hard, but Chick never seemed aware of it. The daughter she gave birth to was tiny and frail, but otherwise perfect in every way ... except her resemblance to the animal who’d fathered her. Within hours after she was born, Chick quietly passed on to heaven.

Athena named the baby Misery and as soon as she was able, she packed the squalling newborn up and left us. I gave her all the money I had saved and she threw it back in my face, spat at my feet, and left on foot. I never saw her again.

We found Meaira dead one morning, her wrists cut open and an empty vial of laudanum on the floor beside her. She’d left no note behind, but she didn’t need one. We knew. Instinctively, I understood that I would lose Honey, too, though not by death. She could at last return to her family, and I wished her the best.

It was not long after we buried Meaira in Digger Young’s cemetery that I realized I was with child. I wept for nearly a day afterward, tears of both grief and happiness. There was a part of Sawyer growing inside me and if I hadn’t driven him away, I believed he might have rejoiced with me. Despite Athena’s curse, I hoped the baby to be a sign that life went on and perhaps Sawyer would come back to me. But though I waited until my dying day, he never did.

Chapter Forty-One

THE wind tried to pry Reilly from the boardwalk. The rain and floodwaters tried to wash him away. But Reilly would not give in. He could still see Zach’s flashlight bobbing up ahead and the Dead Lights leading him to a place near the overhang of rock. Though he knew Zach would be pushing her, they could only move as quickly as Chloe’s feeble body would allow. Reilly was gaining on them.

The thunder boomed at increasing intervals until it felt like the earth was shaking from a quake. The lightning hissed in the sky above, branching into a thousand tributaries as it lit up the night. If Reilly didn’t drown first, the lightning would get him. Not a comforting thought, but then again, nothing about the past forty-eight hours had been comforting.

Reilly held on to the dilapidated railing with one hand and the flashlight with the other until he reached the bend that looped beneath the rock wall. There the stone hillside offered a small bit of shelter. He could see Zach’s light, still now and the Dead Light hanging over the swirling black pool of the springs. There were no longer ravines and chasms. The water had turned it all into a solid, churning surface. Brendan sat on the ground nearby. Zach made sure he knew the gun was still on him.

“
Ask it,” Zach was screaming. “
Ask it!
”

Reilly came up behind him, silent in the deafening squall. Chloe was sobbing, shaking her head as she stared at the light. Reilly didn’t have time to decipher her expression. He crouched low, nearly blinded by the pelting rain, and crept closer.

“
It’s not Aiken,” he heard Chloe wail.

He launched himself at Zach, knocking the gun from his hand as they rolled to the edge of the embankment. The gun clattered across the rock and plunged into the water. Reilly was bigger than Zach, but Zach was younger and fierce in his rage. He managed to pin Reilly beneath him. The blows came fast about his head and face until stars joined the spider lightning behind his eyes. Reilly struggled to get his arms free, using his legs to try to unseat the younger man. It wasn’t working.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Brendan moving in, saw him pick up a rock and bring it down on Zach’s head. For a moment, it dazed Zach and that was all the moment Reilly needed. He shifted and bucked and Zach flew off of him. He scrambled to his feet, watching Zach do the same. He stood in a foot of water, the Dead Lights right behind him.

Chloe lay crumbled on the ground. She looked up, past Zach, and made a sound that pulled their attention to the light.

It was taking shape again, this time quick and solid. It darkened and became a man, then solidified into someone recognizable. Reilly’s mouth fell open. It was the other man in the picture. The one who looked like Reilly.

“
Where is it?” Zach screamed at the apparition.

If he lived through this, Reilly thought, he’d never be able to describe it.

The form leaned forward, looking right at Zach. Reilly felt as if the storm itself had begun to throb in time with the glow that surrounded the hovering man. Whatever Zach saw in the shape, it compelled him. He took a step forward, reaching out. Reilly saw greed on his face. Greed and satisfaction. Was this thing communicating with him?

Suddenly, the form seemed to close in on itself. One moment it was there. The next it was a thin line of light aimed down at the lake beneath it. And then it rushed into the dark waters, splitting them with its brilliance. Zach screamed something and dove in after it.

Reilly’s step forward to stop him came too late. In an instant Zach had vanished and so had the Dead Lights.