Travis laughed and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. "See ya, Mom."
He spun around, ran down the sidewalk, and jumped in the car. Johnson put the vehicle in gear and they roared away. Five minutes later they were speeding down the highway.
This was it. The night they would all become immortal.
The green Toyota sped up the highway, sending the digital readout on the state patrol's radar gun to seventy-three mph. It was a fifty-five zone. Officer John Malcolm set the gun aside, flipped on his lights and siren, and peeled out, gravel flying.
He hated radar duty, but he loved this part of the job.
The pursued car didn't slow.
Not that unusual. Sometimes it took drivers a few minutes to realize they were being chased. But as John continued to follow, the car increased its speed. He radioed for backup, giving his location and the direction the car was heading. He shifted in his seat, sitting up straighter, both hands on the wheel. His patrol car had a lot of horsepower—he rapidly closed the distance between them until he was near enough to read the plate. He tapped on his high beams, pulled out his radio, and called in the number to Dispatch.
There were three heads inside the car. All appeared to be male. The person in the backseat turned around. Suddenly John's passenger windshield made a popping sound, then shattered in a sunburst.
John swerved and almost lost control as he whipped the car back to attention, at the same time backing off.
They were shooting at him.
Jesus.
He'd been a cop for five years and nobody had ever fired at him.
This was river country, and the landscape rapidly shifted from gently rolling hills to craggy cliffs and sharp turns. The road surface was black; the night was cloudy and dark. The only thing worse would have been rain.
He slowed for a hairpin curve. A back tire hit loose gravel, and for a second he thought he might roll. Once he was back in control, his heart hammering, breathing rapid, he realized he'd lost visual contact with the car.
He drove two more miles.
Nothing.
They couldn't have gotten away. At least, they couldn't have gotten
that
far ahead of him. He slowed, flipped off his siren and lights, did a quick three-point turn, and headed back in the direction he'd come.
He lowered his window and aimed his search light along the bluffless side of the road, following the guardrail's sharp curve until he came to a missing section.
Idiots.
He pulled over, withdrew his high-powered flashlight, got out, and walked to the section of broken railing. At the bottom of the ravine he spotted the green car lying upside down, one back tire spinning.
There was no sign of activity.
He radioed the dispatcher and gave his location. "We're going to need a couple of ambulances." He was afraid it was too late. A request for a coroner would probably be his next call.
Now what?
Someone could still be alive and in need of immediate medical attention. Yeah, and that person could have a gun.
He waited and listened, trying to come to a decision. Then he thought he heard a faint cry.
Drawing his weapon, he slipped and slid down the steep hill. When he reached the bottom he bent and shined the flashlight into the crushed car. The person behind the wheel looked dead. He circled the vehicle and shined the light in the passenger side. His stomach lurched and he had to look away. The head was crushed.
Definitely dead.
"Help," came a faint cry from several yards away.
He raised the light.
Lying on the ground, one leg bent under him, forehead bleeding profusely, blood running in his eyes, was passenger number three. The guy who'd shot at him.
John crouched beside him. "An ambulance is on the way," he said. "Hang in there." Just a kid. Probably only sixteen or seventeen. "What's your name?"
"Travis."
"Travis, somebody will be here any minute. I need to go back over and check on the others in the car." Make sure the driver was really dead.
"Wait!" Travis didn't want to be left alone. "How are they? Are they okay?"
"They're both in pretty bad shape."
"Are they dead?" Travis's voice rose. "They aren't dead, are they?"
John couldn't see much point in lying. "I'm afraid one of them didn't make it. I'm not sure about the driver."
"No. We can't die. None of us can die."
"Everybody dies."
"Not us. We're the Pale Immortals."
Ah.
John had heard of them. Buncha idiot kids who pretended they were vampires. "You just need to lie there and keep still. Someone will be here any second."
"No! I have to get outta here. I gotta go. We all gotta go."
"Where? Where are you going?"
"Old Tuonela. We have to get to Old Tuonela right away."
John was sick of all the Old Tuonela, new Tuonela garbage.
Whenever he went to a law enforcement conference and people there found out where he was from, they teased the hell out of him and he was no longer taken seriously. He'd been thinking about getting a job somewhere else, in another state, but whenever he brought up the subject his wife got upset, saying she didn't want to leave her friends. But John figured it was better to get out now, before they had kids.
"There's nothing in Old Tuonela," he said. "Nothing but a bunch of decaying buildings."
"You're wrong. That's where we were heading."
"Were you going to a party?"
Underage kids liked to party there, but most teenagers were too afraid to go to OT during the day, let alone at night.
The injured kid reached blindly for him, and he gave him his hand to squeeze. John kept looking at his bent leg, wanting to straighten it, but knowing that would be a bad idea. It was probably a compound fracture. Straightening it could slice an artery.
John's ears picked up the faint wail of a siren. "There'll be other beer parties to go to," he told the kid.
"No, not a party. Not
that
kind of party," the kid said in protest. "First we ... we were gonna bathe in the blood of a virgin. After that, we were going to eat the heart of a vampire."
John let go of the kid's hand and stood up. He could see the flashing lights now. Oh yeah, he definitely needed to look into relocating.
Sitting in the passenger seat of the police car, Rachel leaned forward and strained to see through the windshield, watching for the narrow lane that led to Old Tuonela. The night was humid, and the wipers were on high. Wisps of fog hovered in ditches and clung to vegetation along the side of the highway.
Seymour had radioed the dispatcher to check on the availability of backup, only to find that all units were occupied—some at Isobel's, the rest at a fatal crash site.
"There it is," Rachel said. "Turn here."
Seymour guided the car down the lane that had once been a road. Over the years the gravel had been swallowed by mud until the only things remaining were parallel ruts with center vegetation that caught and scraped on the undercarriage. The headlights didn't penetrate very deeply. The beam reflected off birch and cottonwood trunks, illuminating the car's interior in uneasy flashes of light.
Seymour made a left, shot up a steep hill, and pulled to a stop not far from the main house.
"I heard the Pale Immortal was born here," Rachel said as they walked up the curved path of uneven bricks and weeds, her father training his flashlight in front of them.
"I heard the man who killed the Pale Immortal lived here," he said.
That's how it was. So many conflicting stories. The very stories Evan had hoped to sort out. But instead he had become part of the lore.
They climbed the steps to a sprawling porch surrounded by a wall of the same gray stone with supporting pillars that narrowed from a broad base.
Phillip Alba answered their knock, his face in shadow, his body backlit by a ceiling light. He wore black pants, black shoes, and a gray wool vest over a white dress shirt.
Seymour apologized for their late visit. Alba opened the screen door wide and they stepped inside.
The house had been beautiful once, with dark wood and high ceilings. Now piles of crumbled plaster littered the floor, and in some places water-stained floral wallpaper and bare one-inch wooden slats showed through. A massive staircase led to a landing with a boarded-up window, a turn, and another flight of stairs.
Even though the house had endured a few halfhearted renovations, it felt dead. Not a good place for anybody to live. Especially someone with a recent history of tragedy.
"We're looking for Evan Stroud. We have reason to believe he headed this direction."
"I heard he's suspected of killing Chelsea Ger-ber." Alba shook his head.
Very sad,
he seemed to say.
Alba had probably known her. Maybe she'd been one of his students.
"Have you seen him?" Seymour asked.
"No."
"Have you noticed any suspicious activity or people around here lately?"
Alba frowned in concentration. "The weather's getting warm. On weekends I sometimes have to run kids off."
"Would you mind if we look around? In Old Tuonela?" Seymour asked. "Just a quick peek."
"It's not safe to walk there at night." Alba stuffed his hands into the pockets of his vest. "It's hard to get through now. All the paths are overgrown."
"I was there not long ago," Rachel pointed out.
"Things grow fast here. I guess it's the soil." He shrugged. "But if you really want to go ..." He shook his head, implying that he thought they were nuts.
"We'll manage," Seymour said. "I have a couple of strong flashlights."
Alba stood there a moment longer. "I'd better come with you. At least I can show you where the paths are. Wait; I'll be right back."
He vanished through the dining room. A light appeared in the kitchen; then Alba returned wearing a brown coat with deep pockets and carrying a lantern. He'd exchanged his shoes for brown leather boots.
All three of them left the house and headed in the direction of the woodland that stood like a thick wall on the edge of the clearing.
"Looks like you've had a lot of traffic this way," Seymour noted as they strode down a well-worn path that led away from the house.
"Raccoons." Alba lifted his lantern higher. Up in a tree, two pairs of eyes reflected from the branch. "The place is overrun with them."
He removed a padlock from a gate and swung it open, stepping out of the way to allow Seymour and Rachel to pass.
Rachel and her father walked side by side, their flashlights trained to the ground as they swept them back and forth.
Tire tracks.
If it was so hard to reach Old Tuonela on foot, why were there tire tracks? "Who's been driving here?" Rachel asked.
Alba paused to stare at the ruts. "I don't know.... I keep the gate locked."
Seymour crouched down. "They're fairly recent."
"Today?" Rachel asked.
"Not sure."
Father and daughter resumed their walk, ending up in the graveyard with the rotten oak tree.
The ground had been disturbed.
An unmarked grave had been dug up and left exposed. Rotten, splintered pieces of wood littered the area.
"So he
was
buried here," Seymour said in a hushed tone.
Rachel put a hand on her dad's arm in silent com- munication. Who had known about the oak tree and the possibility of a secret grave? Her father. Alba. Dan.
Evan.
Evan could be nearby right now, with the girl. Seymour must have been thinking the same thing. He unsnapped his holster and drew his gun.
And the world exploded.
A deafening roar came from a few feet away. Her father jerked. His flashlight hit the ground and went out. There was a gasp of pain and the sound of exhaled air moving through clenched teeth.
Rachel struggled to comprehend the event.
Another gunshot.
Another grunt of pain from her father.
She felt his hand on her arm, his fingers like claws. She thought he was clinging to her to keep from falling, but suddenly he shoved her. Hard. More gunshots exploded and the ground dropped out from under her.
She tumbled down a sharp incline, smacking her flashlight against a rock, breaking it. Trying to stop herself, she reached blindly, slamming into a tree halfway down the steep slope, the wind knocked from her.
Within seconds she was on her feet. In the dark she struggled to maneuver, to find a foothold. She skidded until she hit level ground, loose soil and small rocks pattering around her.
"Rachel!" came a shout from above.
Alba.
His flashlight beam bounced off tree trunks.
Rachel ducked her head and curled her body, pressing herself against a washed-out hollow beneath the base of a tree.
Like a searchlight, the beam moved back and forth. "Rachel! Are you okay?"
She held her breath.
Far above, leaves rustled.
It took all of her willpower to remain where she was. She heard a scuttling sound—and realized he was standing at the top of the precipice.
There had been several gunshots. Had they all been from Alba? Or had her father fired his own gun?
Alba came sliding down the hill. His crash to the bottom was followed by silence. A moment later she heard him wading through leaves, heading in her direction.
She didn't move.
He walked past her. And kept going, the flashlight beam vanishing around a bend, the sound of his footsteps fading.
Rachel unfolded herself and quickly made her way up the hill, feeling in the dark, grabbing small tree trunks to pull herself out of the ravine.
She reached the top and dug into her pocket, retrieved her keys, and squeezed the light attached to the chain.
"Dad?" she whispered, casting the orange light around, trying to get her bearings.
She spotted her father sprawled on the ground. Beneath his head lay a pool of blood. Tendrils of red escaped the pool, crawling and searching out deep cracks in the earth.