The men grappled, locked together in a struggle. At first neither seemed to have the advantage.
But then Manchester picked up Evan and threw him. Evan slammed into the wall and crashed to the floor.
Rachel put the baby down on the bed and inched her way to the side of the mattress. She grabbed the nearest weapon—a lamp—and tugged the plug from the receptacle. Manchester reached for Evan.
She charged with the lamp.
Manchester swiveled. His hand shot up and he deflected the blow. He ripped the weapon from her and swung it—hitting her in the side of the head. She staggered and dropped to her knees, dazed.
“Go.” Evan gasped. “Get out of here.”
She pushed herself to her feet. Evan did the same so that now Manchester stood between them.
“He wants you,” Evan said. “He wants the baby.”
And still she hesitated.
“He has the strength of ten men,” Evan said.
Manchester smiled, and the pit of his mouth was as dark and as black as his eyes. “You speak as if I’m not even here.” In one swift movement, he grasped Rachel from behind, one of her arms twisted so high she feared it would break. He wrapped his other arm around her waist and pulled her close, whispering in her ear, “I want the infant.”
His breath was as cold and damp as a bog. “I will take what matters most to you. That’s what you did to me.”
“What will you do with the baby?” Rachel asked.
He pressed his lips to her ear and whispered, “What do you think?”
She had the sensation of tumbling headlong into a pit of decay and depravity. Of evil unimaginable.
He broke his hold, grabbed her anew, and tossed her against the wall. Pain receptors fired red. She was aware of a struggle; then darkness came and she slid to the floor.
When she regained consciousness, she was lying on her back. Evan stood against the wall, holding one arm as if it were broken.
“I came for something else,” Manchester said. “Not just the baby. Not just my house. Can you guess?”
“The heart,” Evan said, panting. “It’s gone. I don’t have it.”
“Part of it is in you. I can sense it. You are me.”
“I’ll never be you.”
“All men are capable of darkness.”
“But all men don’t welcome it.”
“You’re wearing my scarf. That tells me so much.”
“Maybe I’m cold.”
Manchester laughed. “You mean to tell me you never wanted to kill somebody?” A shift. “The heart. Where is it? I know it’s here. I know it’s close.”
“Evan, don’t give it to him.”
Evan ignored her, reached in the dresser drawer, and pulled out the tin.
Rachel closed her eyes and let the disbelief and pain roll over her. When she opened them again, Evan had removed the lid. He shook the tin, peer- ing inside. “I always wondered how much of this I’d consumed. Half, I’d guess.”
Manchester held out his hand. “Give it to me.” His voice shook. The first emotion he’d shown.
Breathing shallowly, Rachel backed to the bed and picked up the infant. Then, half crawling, she began moving toward the door.
“Will it make you whole?” Evan asked. “Make you just like you used to be? Will it give you a pair of fucking eyes?”
“Give it to me.”
“Will it make you stronger than you are now?” Evan taunted.
“The heart.”
“I’m not sure I like the idea of a stronger you,” Evan said.
Rachel reached the open door.
They weren’t paying attention to her.
“If it will make you stronger, it only stands to reason that it would do the same for me.”
Evan reached into the tin and pulled out something shriveled and brown that looked like a dried mushroom.
While Rachel looked on in horror, he stuffed it in his mouth, and Manchester let out a cry of alarm. He flew at Evan, tackled him, knocking him to the floor. Manchester grabbed him around the throat and began squeezing. “Give it to me!”
Two madmen.
She must have made a sound, a note of despair.
Manchester swiveled.
The distraction was enough for Evan to lock a heel to the floor and shove himself backward, out of reach.
He swallowed and broke into a sweat.
As Rachel watched, he changed before her eyes. He took on the characteristics of Manchester. A strange sensuality, a boldness. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he lost consciousness.
She scrambled to her feet and ran.
Chapter Fifty-one
Graham was frozen.
He couldn’t feel his toes or fingers. His face was numb.
He’d gotten lost, but now he was on track, because he’d finally found the lane. Walking was easier within the protection of the trees, and the wind wasn’t as bad, but the damage had already been done.
He wasn’t dressed for cold weather, and he began to think that maybe Kristin had been right. He slowed, alternated between high steps to clear the depth of the snow, and dragging his feet to plow right through. Why not run? Not some flat-out gallop, but a jog to get the circulation going and get him there faster.
It worked.
He began to warm up. By the time he spotted the house, his fingers and toes were warm.
Something in the driveway. A vehicle. He swiped a hand down the side. CORONER.
He frowned. Rachel?
He circled around to the back.
Chapter Fifty-two
With the baby in the crook of her arm, one hand on the railing, Rachel ran down the steps.
Black radiated inward from the edges of her visual field.
Don’t faint.
On the first floor she walked rapidly to the kitchen.
Have to hurry. Before they come downstairs.
Before she passed out.
Snow blew in the shattered window. She pulled the quilt over the baby’s head and frantically searched drawers, looking for anything to use as a weapon.
She found a butcher knife.
The kitchen door banged open and a dark form appeared in the opening. She lifted the knife high.
“Rachel!”
She hesitated—an almost physical stammer. “Graham?”
“Holy shit!” Graham’s eyes took in her bloody clothes, her bare legs and feet, the knife. “What the hell?”
The baby let out a whimper, and Graham’s eyes got bigger.
Rachel put down the knife and thrust the bundle into Graham’s arms. “Go. You have to get out of here. Take the baby and go.”
He didn’t move, and she turned him and shoved. “Go! Now!”
Graham vanished into the night, and she slammed the door, leaning her forehead against it.
She’d just sent her premature infant into a raging blizzard. But freezing would be better than death at the hands of the Pale Immortal.
With numb feet, she shuffled back to the table and picked up the butcher knife.
Those men upstairs. She would kill them both.
She laughed a little at the ridiculousness of the thought. As if she could kill two men, one who was already dead and one who was halfway there.
She collapsed on the floor.
Graham cradled the infant in his arms, unsure what end was what, unsure whether the baby was even alive. He hunched his body and leaned into the driving wind, trying to protect the child as best he could.
Evan must have gone completely insane. Graham hated to leave Rachel, but the baby . . . Had to protect the baby . . .
The snow was a foot deep, deeper where it had drifted, and progress was slow, his steps long, high, and awkward. The snow itself created an uneven surface, and he repeatedly slipped, only to catch himself at the last moment.
It was easy to stay between the trees that lined the lane. He didn’t even try to figure out what was going on or what had happened back there. He had one focus, and that was to get the baby to the car.
He finally spotted the misshapen outline of the snow-covered vehicle. The headlights were off; the engine wasn’t running. He staggered toward it with an awkward, step-plunge gait.
Locked.
The door was locked.
He wedged the flashlight under his armpit and brushed snow from the driver ’s window. “Kristin!”
Nothing.
He pounded a fist on the hood. “Kristin!”
The locks clicked. He opened the door; the dome light illuminated the interior. Kristin was huddled in the corner of the passenger seat, knees to her chest. “Graham?”
“You expecting somebody else?”
“Yes.” She dropped her knees. “What’s that?”
He passed the bundle to her. “A baby.”
Alastair’s phone rang. An officer calling from the museum.
It was late, but Alastair was still up. He was too worried about Graham and the storm to go to bed.
“I think you’d better come down to the museum,” the officer told him.
“I’ll stop by in the morning, once the storm’s over. This guy’s cried wolf too many times.”
“Is it crying wolf if we have a dead body and a missing mummy?”
Graham cranked up the engine and turned on the heat.
The bundle squirmed and began to cry. Kristin gingerly pulled the blanket aside enough to reveal the face. “It has dried blood on it. Oh, my God, Graham. It’s just been born.”
“I’m going to walk back to Tuonela and get help. Or at least get closer so my cell phone will work.”
“No. It was bad enough to walk to your dad’s, but Tuonela is five miles.”
“I have to.”
She let out a sob. “No.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Lock the door.”
“There’s no reason to do that. Not in this storm.”
“Lock it.”
He did.
The baby started crying. “You can’t go. Somebody’s out there.”
“Kristin—”
“I saw somebody.”
“People see things around here. Things that aren’t really there.”
“He was here.” She jiggled the baby and made hushing sounds, but it kept crying. “The Pale Immortal was here.”
He recalled the terror in Rachel’s face. Was it true? Was the Pale Immortal loose?
“Lock this when I get out. And shut the engine off as soon as you’re warm. No telling how long you might have to wait.”
She put a hand on his arm, made a sound as if to argue, then stopped. “Be careful.”
He knew she was thinking how hopeless her words were, but she had to offer them. Leaning across the seat, he found her face in the dark and turned it to him. He gave her an awkward, blind kiss, then left.
Chapter Fifty-three
Evan felt the darkness curl over him. It grabbed at his ankles and pulled him under. It seeped into his pores, and when he opened his mouth to breathe, he pulled the inky blackness deep into his lungs. His tongue was coated with a layer of evil.
It tasted good.
He felt an overwhelming loss of self—the loss of the man being pushed out and dominated by this presence. He hadn’t expected it to be so powerful. He hadn’t expected it to be so seductive. His hope had been to make himself strong enough to stand up to Manchester, to defeat him.
Instead he’d ingested a parasite.
Parasites were strong. They invaded the host, changed the thinking of the host. Mice attacked by cat parasites began acting more like cats than mice. So why had Evan expected this to be any different?
Manchester was watching him. Evan sensed a connection that hadn’t been there before. He understood Manchester’s hunger and his lust and his anger.
With no words, he felt his amusement at the turn of events.
Manchester spoke. Or was it thought?
“That would have been my second choice.”
Downstairs a door slammed.
Manchester tipped his head toward the sound. Curious, but calm. This was his moment. He’d waited a hundred years and he planned to savor it.
Yes, their minds were communicating.
Manchester was more evolved, yet had been unable to make the leap.
A link had been missing.
The baby is the link. The baby is the secret.
A result of a union between a partial revenant and the great-great-granddaughter of a vampire. The lineage hadn’t been strong enough, and the offspring had appeared fully human. Rachel was an unaffected carrier. But now, with revenant carriers on both sides . . . The infant would span two worlds, the living and the dead. A super being.
Had Evan really even loved Rachel? Or had this been some preordained journey he’d been on since birth?
“Yes,” the man with no eyes said.
Evan refused to believe it. “I love her.”
“An illusion.”
But what wasn’t an illusion of some form? Life fil -tered through personal pasts and perceptions. Did that make embracing it any less important? Did that give someone like Manchester the right to destroy and torture and murder?
They were talking to him. One collective mind.
He could see it all. It wasn’t linear, but rather a lake of information, with no beginning and no end.
A form of evolutionary life, a creature who could live forever under the right circumstances, grazing and feasting on the living, especially children, with no purpose other than to satisfy his hunger. Humans were nothing more than livestock to Manchester.
Until Florence had come along. She’d sparked something in him, nurtured by her own trickery. Her own hatred and lust for revenge was stronger than her desire to live. She would do what she must in order to achieve her goal: his death. She would sleep with him. She would have his child.
She’d meant to kill the infant once it was born. Drown it in a bucket of water like some stray cat. But when she’d looked into her baby’s eyes, a mother’s love had surfaced and she was unable to carry out her plan.
And now another infant had been born. Downstairs, just below them . . .
But Manchester hadn’t figured on Evan’s humanity. It hadn’t even been a part of the equation, because someone devoid of humanity wouldn’t consider it.
Would it be enough?
Manchester heard his thoughts; he smiled a black smile and exhaled on a laugh. “You can’t fight it.”
“I don’t want to.”
A gust of evil floated across the room and touched Evan’s shoulder. It took him by the arm and pulled him toward the door, toward Rachel and the infant.