Dark to Mortal Eyes (69 page)

With an outpouring of strength, he launched the metal object out over the fence, toward the precipice, toward the mist and the waves that crashed far below.

Josee’s voice was useless on her swollen tongue. Flashes … venom … needles and bright lights. All the horrors of childhood came back: the transfusions, abuse, neglect, the search for her birth parents. Now her future was fading before her eyes. Kara was crouched alongside the table, coughing. Marsh was
sprawled over the bench with mouth gaping, eyes unblinking. Spasms arced through his limbs. Tiny drops formed in his tear ducts. Thinning blood.

The elements of survival …

Groggily, Josee plucked at the braided cord around her neck, emptied the red gel capsules from the vial into her hand. Three of them. She was so weak. She set one on her tongue and watched the others drop through her fingers.

Convulsions … in gathering waves. Locked jaws. Wetness at Marsh’s tear ducts. Drops of blood hit the grass before his eyes. Whose blood was it? His own? Kara’s?

No. Gel tablets … Josee’s saving grace … doctor’s orders.

With his last vestige of awareness, he forced one into Kara’s mouth, the other between his own clenched teeth. The medication tasted metallic. Pungent on his tongue.

Midair, the canister reflected moonbeams in somersaulting patches. Trudi’s scream, in Josee’s ears, turned into the hiss of multitudinous serpents. The old Nazi’s hair slithered out into the wind, snakes reaching over the fence in an attempt to snatch back the coveted object. They formed a net that draped beneath the canister, caught it, and bounced it once and again before a huge viper snagged it between pale-lined jaws.

“Ah, you
sssee,
” said Trudi. “I give for no one! I thrive in the night. I drink it in like a tonic. The darkness is on my breath, in my
sss
weat, in the very
sss
pit of my mouth.” Her lips closed over her withdrawing tongue.

“The darkness,” Kara whispered, “cannot extinguish it.”

“What?” Trudi looked down at her in bewilderment. “Extinguish what?”

“ ‘God is light.’ Guess you’ll never understand.”

“Game’s over,” Marsh said.

Despite his ragged tone, Josee recognized it as a declaration of faith. The moment the words left his mouth, a spoke of Heceta Head’s light caught the
viper more than fifty feet off the ground and swung it in a circle. As the incandescent beam panned back along the wooded hillside, it dragged its prey and lifted Trudi on her aging tiptoes. Her hair and the flailing serpents stretched and circled over the sea, then inland, bumping through the trees, over the ground. The serpents spread out in an effort to escape—until alternating spears of light skewered each of them in turn.

For a millisecond that Josee thought she might have only imagined, the golden spokes retracted, leaving the snakes suspended. Then, in a blaze of heavenly rage, the light shot out again, flinging canister and creatures far out into the brooding sea.

As far as the horizon.

As far as the east from the west.

Trudi Ubelhaar, broken and bruised, tried to rise to her feet. On the third attempt, she collapsed on the grass. Most bizarre of all, above her wrinkled brow and blank, reptilian eyes, she was totally bald. Not a strand of hair remained on her head.

Through hazy eyes, Marsh looked from the table and saw Trudi’s cyclical journey in the skewer of light. The wind gusted. The spinning beams of the lighthouse seemed to accelerate, slicing the gloom as with a cognitive purpose. About Trudi’s head, each serpent strand stretched taut to impossible lengths. The old woman’s pale lips opened in a scream as the wind yanked away her sheaf of hair.

She tumbled to the earth. Tried three times to stand. Fell unconscious.

On the tail of the breeze, the lighthouse probed the night and discovered a slowly falling object.

Trudi’s wig …

Captive to the upthrusts of air, the wig tossed and peeled apart, then fell seaward, eventually dipping from view beneath the ocean’s vast blanket of mercy.

Addison Ridge Vineyards, Thanksgiving Day

“I’m so pleased that you could join us.”

“But, of course,” Virginia said. “This is a time for families to come together.”

Kara nodded at her mother-in-law over a platter of sliced turkey. Her community dinner was only an hour away. Her orange fliers had drawn over two hundred responses from individuals and underprivileged families that would be bused from downtown Corvallis to the Addison Ridge warehouse. Directed by John and Kris Van der Bruegge, teams of servers made preparations: filling punchbowls and coffee carafes, placing decorative centerpieces, heaping silver tureens with holiday standards.

Virginia sighed. “Goodness, I don’t know that my heart could’ve handled what you went through a few weeks ago. Glad to have that behind us.”

“Trudi put you through quite a lot as well. We have much to be thankful for.”

“I knew it’d rain,” Marsh grumbled. “Typical Oregon weather.”

“A little rain? Bright side is, those without shelter were even more thankful to be here,” Kara said. “Glad to see Virginia made it. Been a while since your mother turned out for a social event. She’s cornered Esprit on the back deck for his version of the confrontation at the memorial marker. They’re swapping stories from the good ol’ days. They seem to be getting along fabulously, better than ever.”

Good ol’ days?

Marsh frowned. Sure, in the past month his future had brightened—he’d
been cleared of suspicion, he’d found his missing wife and long-lost daughter, he’d nurtured a budding faith—but his view of the past was dimmer than ever. The pillars he’d built his life upon had crumbled. His own father had deployed him and others as pieces in a real-life game. Even Josee’s adoption had been instigated by Chance’s indiscretions.

Kara’s prayer had opened Marsh’s eyes. He knew that as a fact. Thankfully, the apparitions had ceased, but he understood his misdeeds as never before. So many hurtful words over the years, careless actions.

And there would be more. He wasn’t perfect.

He recalled the words of reconciliation he and Kara had exchanged on the beach, and the words of spiritual adoption, of the breaking of cycles. Where, though, was the joy in the process? Hadn’t he extended and received forgiveness?

A thought struck him:
I haven’t forgiven myself
.

The rain was clattering along the portico, pooling in puddles. Cleansing.

“Hon?” Marsh took Kara’s hand. “I know we have a lot of straightening up to do, but why don’t we leave it for a few minutes? I have something else in mind.”

She shot him a glance. “Nowadays I don’t know what to expect from you.”

“How about getting all wet?”

She looked out at the downpour. Smiled. “Oh no, Marshall, not again.”

Addison house rules: no smoking inside. Josee stepped through the front doors, hoping to light up. Dinner had been great, but the mob of people, overwhelming. She was still outfitted in her long gingham dress. A wreath of fresh flowers circled her hair. On a leather necklace she wore her myrtlewood cross.

“Marsh? Kara? What’re you doing?”

Josee hadn’t seen any visions of late, but this was strange enough. The couple was dancing in the white-pebbled drive, drenched with rain and laughing like a pair of fools. And she was supposed to belong to this gene pool? She
grinned. She tossed the unlit cigarette to the ground and dug it in with the toe of her sandal.

“Afraid to get wet?” Marsh gibed. “Can’t handle the cold?”

“This?” Josee gestured at the dimpled puddles and the clouds that crawled over the hills. “This is nothing compared to some of the stuff I’ve been in. Been in even worse with Scooter.” She fell silent. Removed her wreath and poked at it.

“Still no word?” Kara said.

“Nope.”

“Hasn’t come out of it yet, huh? Have you gone to see him?”

Josee held up a finger. “One time.” Since that visit, she’d made a point of avoiding Good Samaritan. Once had been enough, sitting beside Scooter’s comatose form, receiving zero response—as if he’d died and left a breathing corpse. She shook her head and reset the wreath. “Not ready to deal with it just yet. I mean, maybe after I’ve sifted through all that’s happened. A lot to process, you know?”