Before she could come after him, he walked down the sidewalk in the direction of the house.
Behind him the car was thrown into gear, the gas pedal tromped to the floor.
He could feel her anger radiating from the confinement of the car. She was pissed that he hadn't begged.
He looked.
He couldn't stop himself.
A slow turn of the head; then he was watching the ancient Oldsmobile chug away from the curb, watching it lumber down the street. Red brake lights appeared as the car squealed around the corner and disappeared from view.
Graham listened until the sound faded.
Would she come back?
She always came back.
Run! Hide!
He looked at the house again.
Now that he was closer, now that his eyes had adjusted, he could see that it sat low and kind of spread out. He didn't know shit about houses, but this was nothing like the houses in Arizona. This one was rough stucco and dark wood beams, two small windows up above in what looked like an attic.
Run! Run away! What happened to your plan? Remember your plan?
Where would he go? He didn't have any money. He was hungry. He'd hardly slept in forty-eight hours. He was cold.
It was his fault. He'd broken the rules. He'd stayed out all night drinking and smoking pot. He deserved to be punished.
Not like this.
He was finally old enough to understand that no kid deserved this.
All his life he'd been accused of exaggeration, even lying. But he always told it like he saw it. If that was lying, then he was a liar.
He approached the house. He walked up the bowed wooden steps, his footfalls echoing. The air was thick, like breathing water. He was aware of the smells again: damp earth and green plants.
He raised his hand, then paused, his finger an inch from the button, his heart pounding in his chest and head. Hell had doors. He knew that. And if you left one hell, what was to stop you from stepping into another?
What else could he do? He was a thousand miles from anybody who might help him.
His brain wasn't working. He couldn't think. Couldn't decide what to do. He was past the point of tears and drama. All he wanted was a bed.
Get some sleep. Get some food. See what happens here first. See if it's as bad as she always said it would be; then decide.
An image of the car wreck popped into his head again. There had been terror in the man's eyes. The guy had seen the other side.
Graham rang the bell. When nobody answered, he knocked. Softly at first, then harder. Two minutes later he walked to a window, cupped his hands to the glass, and tried to see inside.
The narrow redbrick streets were shiny with dew as Evan Stroud made his way home, hands clenched deep in the pockets of his coat, collar flipped up to deflect the damp wind. Above him the sky was black, without a single star or sliver of moon.
He was used to taking long strolls in the middle of the night. Night was the only time he came close to feeling normal.
He checked his watch and was surprised to find that morning would be arriving soon. This had happened before, his inability to account for a large block of time. Were the occurrences getting more frequent?
Evan continued his climb up the steep sidewalk out of the river valley.
The town of Tuonela was perched on a hillside, the tall Victorian homes clinging to rocks and outcroppings as if afraid to commit to a deeper foundation.
He'd been reluctant to leave his house ever since the break-in, but in the end he'd refused to give up these few hours of freedom just because someone was morbidly curious about him.
Sometimes he thought he should move from Tuonela. But where would he go? Here everybody was used to him. He didn't have to explain anything, and for the most part people accepted him. He might be a freak, but he was
their
freak.
At first he hadn't noticed anything missing after the burglary. Then, little by little, he realized some odd items were not simply misplaced, but
gone.
He couldn't locate his hairbrush. His favorite black T-shirt was nowhere to be found. The coffee mug he used every day? Gone too.
They were stealing pieces of
him.
The intruder or intruders hadn't been caught, and no suspicious fingerprints had been found.
He'd lived in Tuonela his whole life, but suddenly everyone seemed to have the same idea:
Let's stalk
Evan Stroud.
The publication of his books usually brought about a small flurry of interest that quickly whimpered and died. But the last one, a collection of history, tales, and speculation about Old Tuonela, seemed to have stirred up an extra helping of crazies.
Some people actually knocked on his door asking to come in and visit. Or would he sign their book? Could they take a photo with him? But others snooped, and some even took digital images that they later posted online with ridiculous captions like,
Stroud shopping in a dark grocery store. Stroud in his backyard at three a.m.!
The backyard shot had been a blur, with some unrecognizable person stepping forward and looking behind him with the famous Bigfoot stride and pose. Evan supposed it could have been him, but it was impossible to tell, so why bother? Just some blob taking a stroll. But the very ambiguity seemed to give it credibility.
The photos were bad enough, until some of his uninvited guests, like the ones from the other night, broke in. They wanted proof that he was what some said he was. A vampire.
Evan rounded the turn that would take him to his front door. The soles of his shoes rang hollowly. With his house in sight he stepped from the sidewalk to the grassy area near the curb. What a concept: having to sneak up on your own damn house. But often thieves returned. He wanted to catch them in the act.
He heard a sound. Someone was on the porch, bent at the waist, tampering with a window.
Evan unbuttoned his long coat and reached inside, his fingers coming in contact with the butt of the handgun he'd taken to carrying since the break-in. At first he'd thought the weapon was an overre-action, but now he was glad he had it.
The lights on his street were different from the lights on the other streets in Tuonela. These lights were incandescent blue, and didn't contain harmful UV rays. In the glow of those blue lights Evan saw a kid, a teenager with gold, wildly curly hair straightening away from the window, turning to look at Evan with dismay.
The kid put up his hand as if to deflect a blow. Or a bullet.
Evan remembered the gun and sighed. He returned the Smith & Wesson to the shoulder holster, but didn't close the snap.
A vampire wannabe.
"Are you back for more?" Evan demanded.
This was a violation of his sanctuary, the only place he felt safe. But what could he do? Put up a twelve-foot razor-wire fence? He felt alienated enough from the world as it was. "Are you the idiot who broke in here the other night? Did you forget something?"
The kid didn't answer Or maybe Evan didn't give him a chance Later, when Evan replayed the incident in his head, he would wonder.
"Not very good at this, are you?" Evan demanded. "You should have come during the day When I was asleep in my coffin Don't you know anything about vampires?"
The kid pivoted, ducked, and leaped off the porch. Three strides took him through a stand of shrubs and beyond the scope of the streetlights.
Evan wasn't letting him off that easy He switched from visual to audio, listening to the kid crashing through shrubbery and underbrush, following the sound of movement through the darkness.
Evan had the advantage; he knew the terrain And he could see pretty damn well at night, proof that people could adapt and make up for other physical limitations. He would at least have the satisfaction of scaring the hell out of the asshole.
Evan catapulted himself over the low fence, coat-tails flying. He paused for a direction check. From the right came the sound of someone moving through dead leaves in the wooded area to the east of his house. Evan sprinted after him.
It had been raining off and on for days. The ground was soggy, and tried to suck the boots off his feet. In the distance he heard a splash.
Evan could just make out the kid struggling from the stream He slipped and slid, finally dashing up an embankment to disappear from view. A second later Evan heard him let out a cry of alarm, followed by the sound of a body falling and tumbling, accented by snapping twigs and rustling brush.
Evan waded through the water, then climbed the steep terrain.
The kid was shoving himself to his feet. Before he could get fully upright, Evan quickly covered the short distance and tackled him. Breathing hard, Evan pressed the kid to the ground, a knee to his back, one of the kid's hands twisted between his shoulder blades.
"I could kill you right now," Evan said. "Is that what you want? I could drain every drop of blood from you."
And grind your bones to make my bread
No answer.
Evan pressed harder. "Are you a member of the Pale Immortals? Did they send you? Is this some kind of initiation?"
The Pale Immortals were a gang of kids whose name paid homage to a previous resident named Richard Manchester, aka the Pale Immortal, who'd terrorized the town and slaughtered its residents. Some claimed Manchester had killed as many as a hundred victims, drinking and bathing in their blood. In the panic of the time, in the mass exodus from what was now called Old Tuonela, records had been lost, so no one really knew the death tally.
"What're you talking about, you weird-ass?"
The kid was shaking with fear. But he'd called him a weird-ass. Had to give him credit for guts. Or stupidity.
Evan relaxed his grip.
Was that a sob? Was the kid
crying?
He released the boy's wrist and removed his knee from his spine. "Come on. You're okay."
"Fuck you."
The teenager looked up, his face splattered with mud, his eyes haunted while he tried his best to sound defiant. Even though the boy had run like hell and put up a strong fight, he looked fragile.
Now Evan felt bad. As if he was the one who'd done something wrong.
Here the kid had been prowling around his house, getting ready to break in—probably for the second time—and Evan was the one who suddenly felt like shit.
"Come back to the house. We'll find you some dry clothes and get this sorted out. Call your parents. Have them come and get you." If the boy didn't cause any more trouble, Evan wouldn't contact the cops.
In one swift motion the kid lunged and pushed Evan backward, then just as quickly jumped away.
It took Evan a second to realize the boy had his gun. And that he was raising it.
To his own temple.
Evan saw the bleak determination in the kid's eyes; he had every intention of pulling the trigger.
Time slowed.
Tick, tick, tick.
Evan may have shouted; he wasn't sure. He kicked, hooking his foot around the kid's ankle. The teenager was flung backward and crumpled to the ground at the same moment the gun discharged. The echo of the gunshot ricocheted from hillside to hillside.
Evan dropped to his knees. He checked the boy for signs of an entrance wound, but couldn't find any. Had the bullet missed? Had he hit his head? Or passed out?
Evan pressed two fingers to the boy's neck. Even though his face was as pale as a corpse, his pulse was steady. The scene replayed in Evan's mind as he tried to grasp what had just happened.
The boy stirred. His eyes opened, and Evan let out a relieved breath. "Jesus Christ, kid. What the hell?"
The teenager didn't seem surprised to find that he wasn't dead. Live, die—it was all the same to him; that was obvious. "Are you Evan Stroud?" he finally asked.
"Yes."
"I have a message for you."
If it was anything like the one he'd just tried to give him, Evan didn't want it.
"I'm Graham."
"Graham?"
"Are you going to pretend you've never heard of me?"
Choose your words with care.
Evan had no idea who he was, but he didn't want to set him off again. The kid was staring at him with a directness Evan couldn't recall seeing in many adults. He also noticed that the night was fading.
The kid spoke again. "Your son," he spit out, as if the words left a rotten taste in his mouth. "I'm your son."
Evan fell back on his heels.
Punctuating that announcement, sirens began to wail from somewhere in the distance. As Evan listened they drew closer, then trailed off, heading toward downtown Tuonela, from the direction Evan had recently come.
The siren shut off with one final squawk.
Damp wind blew down the collar of coroner Rachel Burton's jacket as she stood on the edge of the Tuonela town square. Hands in her pockets, she regarded the nude body of a female victim lying in a shallow ditch parallel to the road, a few feet from the base of a maple tree. If memory served Rachel correctly, it was one of those varieties of maples that turned a glorious shade of electric red in the fall. Right now it was leafing out, even though it was only early April. But enough of that. Enough of trying to distract herself from the horror in front of her.
The victim had been tossed like so much garbage. The scene reminded Rachel that no matter how the people of Tuonela tried, they couldn't ignore their history any more than London could ignore Jack the Ripper.
The headlights of two squad cars were aimed at the body, along with the beams of three flashlights. No one spoke. The only sound was the steady
clang, clang, clang
of a metal toggle against a flagpole in the center of the square. Nobody seemed to know what to do. Rachel sensed they were all waiting for her. She'd seen a lot of death, so it was only natural that they'd look to her for guidance.
"Who found the body?" she asked.
"We were on patrol," said a young male officer. "We circled the square twice before I saw it."