I Will Come for You (31 page)

She looked up, connected with Graham’s gaze.
Something had changed in his touch. It was no longer charged. She no longer felt drawn to him, but protected by him, like a small child whose hand was swallowed in that of an adult. He recognized the change, too.

“You’re slipping away,” he said.

“I’ve always been that way.”

“Yes.”

“There’s more,” she said. “Alana. She knew, too. She was there with us.” Natalie tried to listen to the sounds behind her tears, behind the boys’ fear: The roll of the ocean, the soft whimpers trailing their footsteps. “She was crying.” And in Natalie’s last conscious moment she’d heard Alana’s scream. It was sharp and anguished and shattered the blue shell of the sky. After that, the darkness was total.

Her words settled into silence. Emotions battled on Graham’s face: sorrow and rage and the slow burn of weariness.

“The father Lance talked about,” Graham finally prompted. “They didn’t say his name? Identify him in anyway?”

Natalie searched back through her memory but came up
empty. “They didn’t say. And I don’t think I ever saw the killer’s face. Maybe I was too afraid to look. But it can only be Doss,” she said. “The only adult they could have been looking for was Doss.”

“Hey.”

Isaac broke into their conversation, his voice a current of urgency. Natalie turned to him and noticed the air around him rippled.

“I’m going to transition,” he announced.

Graham surged to his son’s side and took hold of his arm.

“Fight it,” he said. “Isaac, I want you to fight it this time.”

“Where?” Natalie pressed. “Do you know where you’re going?”

Isaac shook his head
but held Natalie’s gaze. “But you do,” he said. “You’re ready. You’ll know.”

Isaac closed his eyes. His chin lifted so that his head tipped back. He rolled onto his toes, lifting slightly off the ground, and
a stiffness began to seep into his limbs.

Graham pulled on his arm.
“Isaac, no.”

“You can’t keep me here, d
ad, and you can’t come with me.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Monday, 3:30 pm

Isaac arrives at the scene of the murder already inside the house. This has never happened before. He always has time to adjust to his surroundings before he encounters the dying. The cause of death has always transpired before his arrival. This time, he materializes in the living room of a beach cottage. He doesn’t know the house, but he does know the man sitting on the couch, flipping through stations on the TV. Saul Doss.

For a moment, surprise flares in the man’s eyes. Then he shuts the TV off and nods at Isaac.

“I was wondering when this would happen,” he says. “Killed by the monster I created. That’s not uncommon.”

“He isn’t here.” Isaac doesn’t feel the KF
K. The air isn’t heavy, doesn’t leave him breathless.

“Not yet,” Doss agrees.

“Then get out,” Isaac says. He looks around the room, hoping to find a gun, a baseball bat. Anything Doss can use as a weapon.

“This is my destiny,” Doss says. “I set it all in motion
and my time has come.”

“You’re giving up?”

“I’ve waited for this,” Doss corrects. “Sixteen years. And every time he killed I prayed that he would come for me next.”

“There’s time,” Isaac stresses. “You can save yourself.”

“I did that once,” Doss says. “That’s no way to live. He’s coming. I feel him. I’ve always been able to feel him, you know. Like a part of me is still stuck inside his head.”

“You were given ability,” Isaac says.

“And abused it.”

“That’s why I don’t sense light in you.”

“Am I condemned?” Doss wonders.

“People act in fear all the time,” Isaac reasons. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“I set him free,” Doss admits. “I never intended to. More was expected of me.”

“You stopped believing.”

“Sometimes I doubted my motives; sometimes I acted like God.” His voice lowers to a whisper. “So much power in healing, in watching patients who couldn’t feed themselves they were so damaged, get up and walk into new life.”

The light grows dim. Isaac turns and looks into the corners of the room, through the arch and into the kitchen. No shadow. No Death.
Yet.

“How do we stop him?”

“You’ll do it together,” Doss says. “You, your father and Natalie Forrester. She was marked for dead, you know. Now she sees it.” Doss tips his head back, leans into the cushions. “You complement each other. She’ll predict the next victim. You’ll  attend the dying. Your father will speak for us after we’re gone. Together, you’ll get the timing right. But it’s too late for me.”

The air becomes a thick fog in Isaac’s throat. He chokes on it, but moves forward and takes Doss’ hand.

“The two boys, the first victims, were Elysians, too. The first I encountered. They were good boys. I found them like I found you. Searching with my mind.”

“I’ve felt you,” Isaac says. He tries to keep the criticism out of his voice but fails.

“I was hoping, if you let me in, I could get a glimpse of him. See the face you weren’t able to see at Shelley Iverson’s.” Doss admits.

“And kill him,” Isaac says.

“I would have,” Doss agrees.

“Does the killer have the same abilities as you or me?”

“No. He’s drawn to but has an aversion to the light. He can find you the same way I can,” Doss warns, “but he can’t get inside. Not unless you let him.”

“Are there others like me?
On the island?”

“There are others like you all over the planet,” Doss
assures him.

“How do I find them?”

“You don’t.”

“But my uncle Lance and the other boy, Steven Forrester--”

“I brought them together.” Regret fills his voice. “I studied them. They were not as

cautious
as you. Not as strong. They were younger and untouched by tragedy. They let me in.” Doss’ breathing takes on an air of awe. “The incredible pureness of their hearts was like nothing else this side of life.”

Isaac doesn’t feel pure. He’s done things he regrets. He’s thought bad thoughts and thinks he’ll always do that.

“They were boys, too,” Doss assures him. “They did and thought things like you. But they were motivated by a pure heart. The same as you, Isaac.”

“I wear that on my face,” Isaac says, because he doesn’t feel Doss inside his head now.

“Doubt is easy to read. It’s the most steadfast of human emotions.”

Outside the windows, the sky darkens. Like it went from mid-afternoon to midnight faster than the second hand sweeps the clock once.

“It’s time,” Doss says. “Don’t watch.” His hand tightens on Isaac’s. “Turn you head, close your eyes. Don’t carry this image of dying with you.”

The door in the kitchen opens. Isaac hears the hinges whine
and then the wind and the distant sound of waves washing up on shore enter the house. The killer has arrived. He doesn’t bother to shut the door, but treads the wood planks through the kitchen and into the living room.

The psych report in the case files Isaac accessed from his father’s computer described a killer who moves quietly, undetected. This intrusion is bold. But it feels the same as what Isaac encountered at Ms. Iverson’s and then again at Jeremy Kroeger’s house. It even looks the same.

A black fluid mass levitates above their heads.

The air becomes a force of compression.

Doss’ face opens in surprise then twists into disbelief and then horror.

“I never guessed,” Doss says.

Doss’ face changes, the lines around his eyes growing heavy with sorrow.

“You didn’t want to know.”

“I couldn’t bear it,” Doss agrees.

“You did this to me.”

“Yes,” Doss agrees. “I didn’t mean to. I never would have sacrificed my flesh and blood.”

Laughter erupts from the killer. It’s thin and sharp and feels like a razor blade in Isaac’s ears.

Flesh and blood.

“You were at the hospital that day,” Doss says. “I didn’t
know.”

“You got me the job,
dad
. You wanted me productive. You wanted to keep an eye on me.”

“I wanted to keep you away from your mother,” Doss corrected.

“Too little, too late,” it sneered. “She’s all over me. Always has been. I should have killed her first. But we’re two peas in a pod. And it’s good to have company.”

“You were seventeen.”

“Just a baby,” it says with sarcasm.

“I tried to save you,” Doss said.

“You saved yourself.”

Doss nods. “I did.”

“You let him loose. You should have let him take you.”

“You’re right.”

Isaac hears footsteps approaching through the kitchen and turns his head. His mother. She stops inside the door, her beautiful face open but the features slowly stretching into fear.

What is she doing here?

Run!

His whole body screams the word, but generates no sound. He is here to help the dying let go, not to save them.

Isaac sees a flash of silver. It arcs up over his head and he feels Doss’ hand tighten around his.

Doss shakes his head. “It’s the spirit of evil,” Doss says. “You’re not my son, but what lives in him.”

“I am your son. You created me.”

Isaac looks into Doss’ eyes. The killer is reflected in the pale irises, not the dark shadow of him, but the earthly features. A long forehead, eyes the same non-color as Doss’, fired in rage, the mouth and nose distorted in anger. He watches the knife descend into Doss’ heart.

He hears his mother’s scream. It is short and catches in her throat. It is full of terror and disbelief.

This is not at all the KFK’s MO. But then this is personal.
In your face, debt-collected personal. Isaac remembers his father once said that when it’s family, murder is usually face-to-face.

And then death turns upon him.

Its fluid body whips around, takes the shape of a scythe and tries to curl around Isaac’s throat. It isn’t fast enough.

Isaac doesn’t rely on his own reflexes but on the power that’s at work within him.

You can’t touch me. Isaac thinks the words, careful not to betray himself.

“You’re wrong. You’ll weaken.”

He would have to fear evil, to believe less in the power of good in order to lose it. He thinks maybe that happened to his uncle Lance and Natalie’s brother. Doss said they were younger, not as strong as Isaac. Maybe, in their final moments, fear became all they knew.

The black form shifts, rises as far as the low ceiling of the cottage will
allow, then hovers. Isaac waits. When he was in Jeremy’s house, he feared for the baby. He worried evil would take its life. He believed there was a possibility. That’s when evil got close, when Isaac felt its approach in the air that moved through his hair and pressed against his skin. He knows now that evil has its limits.

A shrieking erupts from the black cloud, and it twists in tornado-like frustration.

Isaac’s mother whimpers. She is caught in her fear, unable to think beyond it. Self-preservation, the fight or flight instinct that keeps man and animal alive, doesn’t kick in. She either can’t or won’t move.

Death knows this too. It begins to take the shape of man. Isaac watches a hand appear, gnarled and twisted around the knife still dripping with Doss’ blood.

“Oh, yes. Yes.” It mutters, like it knows it found the only answer. It floats across the room.

“You’re right,” it says. “Fear is my way in. Tell me, Elysian, do you fear for your mother’s life?”

Isaac tries to block the emotion, but feels it crowding his senses. He becomes aware of his body, the accelerated beat of his heart, the shortness of his breath; it burns the edges of his vision and fills his ears with the rattle of bones.

His realizes that his teeth are chattering, and that he’s losing the battle.

“I’ll let her live,” it offers. “In exchange for you.”

It uses the knife to pluck the top button off his mother’s coat. She jerks back against the wall. Her fingers claw frantically into the plaster.

“Please.” His mother’s voice is thin, sharp, pleading.

Isaac’s heart slams to a stop.

“Elysians are always sweeter. They sustain me.”

Isaac watches the knife glide across his mother’s throat, deep enough blood beads and drips into the soft shallows of her neck.

Isaac’s shirt is already drenched with Doss’ blood, but he feels the slow collection of his mother’s loss ring his neck.

“Stop!
Stop!”