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  All the hall doors were open.

  She wasn’t in his room, nor was she in the bathroom. It only took a glance; neither room was very large.

  The engine, louder.

  He drifted toward the right-hand wall, one hand skimming the surface, while he let the kitchen move step by step into view. The counters top and bottom, the floor, the back window, the corner of the table, before he stopped, lifted his head and tried to take a decent breath in the miserable too-hot air. The only good thing, he decided, was that it made her slower as well, although he couldn’t begin to imagine if that would be slow enough.

  One more step would put him in the doorway.

  He glanced back at the living room, thinking maybe he should have picked something from the pile she’d left in the corner; anything, it didn’t matter. But his finger flexed, and he changed his mind, and before he could change it again, he stepped quickly into the room, ready to move, ready to duck.

  It was empty.

  Shit, he thought, and whirled, thinking she’d ducked into the spare room, standing there now with the gun aimed at his back.

  “Shit,” he said aloud.

  That room was empty too.

  Then he realized that the back door wasn’t closed all the way, just enough to prevent it from swinging open and alert him. Immediately he shoved himself against the wall, realizing how big a target he was, standing there like an idiot while she was out there somewhere, waiting for him to make up his mind what the hell he’d do now. And almost as quickly as he’d moved, he let himself relax. She wouldn’t do anything. Not with the gun. He knew her better than she thought he did.

  A shake of his head, both to clear it and in scolding, and he hurried up the hall, flicking on the air conditioner as he swung into the living room, averting his eyes from Nola’s body. He pawed through the junk Rachel had brought in from the kitchen and bedroom until he found a small cleaver with indentations in the handle. Then he plugged the phone back in and dialed Maurice’s number.

  No one answered.

  He started to dial Peter’s when he heard the engine again, recognized it, and ran to the window.

  Jonelle’s bike flew over the crest of the hill, wobbling, slowing sharply, its rear tire slamming into the fence post as she tried to avoid Nola’s car parked aslant behind his own. She clipped the rear fender. He was at the door when she pinwheeled onto the lawn, on the porch when she sat up and backed away groggily on her rump from the fallen silent machine.

  When she realized he was there, she looked up, and he saw the blood, the scratches the rips and holes in her jeans and T-shirt. Still holding the cleaver, he vaulted the railing and ran over, just as she tried to stand and failed. This wasn’t from the spill just taken; he’d seen her take worse and walk away with little more than a couple of bruises and severely dented pride.

  Something …

  “Damn,” she spat, angry tears smudging the grime spread across her cheeks. “Jim, they’ve—”

  She saw the cleaver.

  She stared at him, at the house.

  His free hand took hen and pulled her carefully to her feet, “I know.”

  She grimaced, pulled her lips back, closed her eyes. “Took the Snake wrong,” she explained wearily, limping to the stairs beside him, letting him help her up, freezing when she saw the white figure sitting motionless near the door. “Oh,” was all she said.

  “Rachel,” he told her, no inflection at all.

  “Who, that woman? The one you—”

  “She’s one of them.”

  Once inside, she knelt beside Nola, holding a lifeless hand. She looked up. “They got Peter.”

  Maurice did his best not to commend the officious state trooper to a lifetime of living night-duty Hell, but nothing he had said or done, truth or lie, had convinced the man not to write him the ticket, not to make him get out of the car while the cop searched it, nor to give him a condescending lecture along the lines of “You’re a preacher, you ought to be setting a better example.”

  What was worse, the cruiser had followed him, clocking him, keeping him to the legal 65, while half the damn state and dl the tourists blasted past him on the two-lane highway. At one point he almost pulled over again, ready to teach the boy a lesson in respect and Christian charity, but when he checked the rearview mirror. the sneaky son of a birch had gone.

  That galled him, but it didn’t prevent him from swinging the old boat up to 75 again, nor slowing until he was within spitting distance of the off-ramp leading to the overpass and Potar Road. On this side there was nothing but low hills and fields dotted with grazing cattle, the road winding off to nowhere; Ryman’s station was on the other, and he stopped after he’d reached the top, and stared across the road.

  No movement.

  None at all.

  He watched as a minivan took the ramp on the other side, came to a rolling halt at the stop sign, then angled across Potar Road toward the station’s entrance. It swerved suddenly, stopped in the middle of the road for a few seconds, then returned to the highway on the short service road. It took a bit of squinting and shading his eyes, but Maurice finally saw the sagging chain pulled across the entrance, one end tied around the sign’s post, the other looped around a rusty barrel.

  He sat back.

  He licked his lips and tasted salt.

  He put the engine in gear and drove slowly over the bridge, wishing hard his Lincoln wasn’t so damn big. So damn there.

  As he drifted by the station, he didn’t turn his head, but saw enough—the “Closed” sign and the chain—to know Peter and Jonelle were in serious trouble. The boy may be a little on the scattered side, too sinfully attracted to the sinfully attractive ladies, but as long as Maurice had known him, he had never wasted a second when it came to making money.

  Closing the station in the middle of the day was absolutely out of the question.

  He passed the house.

  He adjusted his outside mirror, and saw an unfamiliar car parked behind the store.

  No movement.

  None at all.

  When he checked the house the same way, and saw the open garage, he was tempted to turn around. It wouldn’t be unusual, the preacher come to call, and it would give him a chance to see who was in there, because whoever it was, it wasn’t the Ryman kids.

  When he realized he had eased his foot off the accelerator, however, he pressed it down again and stared so hard at the blacktop ahead, his eyes began to water until he forced himself to blink. No sense in it, he told his hands bloodlessly gripping the steering wheel; no sense in it, stopping. Doing the Lord’s work was one thing; committing sure suicide was something else.

  What he had to do was get to James, talk to him and that child and see if they knew where Peter had gone. What had happened to Jonelle. It might be nothing more than one of them taking sick, one taking the other to the clinic. It might be nothing more than that.

  He didn’t believe it.

  Not for a second.

  Despite the heat, he felt a chill, and while he refused to put stock in anything like premonition, he couldn’t help the feeling he had finally reached the end of a long, unlit road, the one he had taken with James many years ago, the one he was positive had no church or angels waiting for him at the end. It was a foolish notion. As he took the Snake at a speed slower than a man trotting, he knew it was foolish, just his imagination working to fill the curious gaps the empty house and station had left in the natural order of things.

  Nevertheless, he switched on the radio, found his gospel station, and did his best to sing along, as loudly as he could, until he topped the rise and saw the vehicles in James’ driveway, and the battered motorcycle on its side, half on the grass.

  He drove past the gap and parked on the shoulder.

  When he stepped out, he was struck by the intensity the heat seemed to have gained even though the sun was already on its way down.

  And by the silence.

  There were no birds. no distant s
ounds of cattle or horses, no muffled sounds of traffic.

  Not even a breeze husking through the weeds and leaves.

  He didn’t move.

  He didn’t move, but his eyes did, searching the house for signs of life, searching the field for signs of movement.

  Something was out there.

  He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it.

  This time it wasn’t his imagination.

  Something was out there, in the distant trees, behind a low knoll, crouching in the weeds, ducked behind a shrub.

  James stood in the doorway.

  But something was out there.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Why the hell, Jim asked, don’t you hit something, or cry, or kick the walls in?

  Something.

  Anything.

  Why the hell don’t you scream?

  But he felt nothing, and it was beginning to unnerve him.

  He stood in the doorway, watching the white-suit preacher test the air as if he were a hound, and he felt nothing; he looked over his shoulder and saw Jonelle on the couch, hands draped listlessly between her knees, hair in tangles over her face, and he felt nothing.

  With the first step Maurice took away from his car, he flung the cleaver down the hall, its clatter dull and flat. He tried to work the rage again as the tall man approached him, but when it stirred, he knew it was there because it was supposed to be, because he expected it, nor because he really felt it.

  And as Maurice wept over Nola’s body, and wept again for Peter, he felt himself turn away and head for the back door, kicking the cleaver aside, stepping onto the stoop, down to the grass.

  She was out there.

  They were out there.

  Gumdrop hills and pastures almost lush, wild flowers and weeds, the stuff of country songs and country poets and twilight mist with stars around an overhead moon.

  She was out there.

  Something small and dark on the lawn midway toward the back drew him closer, paying no attention to the possible danger, that one of them might be waiting in the trees to get him alone. He didn’t think so; he didn’t know why. But he did know why Rachel had left his gun behind. He swiped it off the grass and tucked it into his belt, not bothering to check it.

  She had used it on Nola because she had it.

  She dropped it because, out here, she didn’t need it.

  He stared blindly at his land, at the hills he’d like to own just to keep other builders away, and nothing he could do, not a memory he could summon, was able to prod him into grieving, into shedding a single tear.

  It more than unnerved him.

  It scared him to death.

  But before he could make at least some sort of token, private gesture, a hand grazed his shoulder, a shadow merged with his.

  “You never met my Daddy,” Maurice said, his voice a deep-note hymn. “Cussed a blue streak and went to church every Sunday. Got so he cussed even in his prayers. Died a happy man, I think. Last time I saw him, he was smiling anyway.”

  “Maurice, what the hell are you talking about?”

  The preacher gestured toward the low hills and pastures dead ahead, and to the mountains climbing at them to the north. “Most of this state is like that out there. I would like to suggest that we don’t try to find them unless you have some special radar hidden in a closet.” The hand squeezed once and fell away. “‘Wasn’t your fault, James. You and the Lord know it would have happened sooner or later.”

  “In Dunn’s,” Jim said, “l saw them, looked right at them, and didn’t know who they were.”

  Maurice leaned over, plucked some grass, tossed the blades into the air. No breeze caught them; they fluttered weakly to the ground. Several fell on the toe of a badly scuffed white boot, and he realized with a slow blink chat Jonelle had joined them, looking so much like a waif that he came damn close to smiling.

  Maurice nodded, cleared his throat. “The Lord didn’t make them like us, James, you know that. But those folks aren’t like those wolf things you see on the screen.”

  “Werewolves,” Jonelle said.

  “Right, child. Werewolves.”

  Jim’s hands found their way into his pockets, and he looked over the woman’s head, seeing nothing. “The point, okay?”

  “What’s the point?”

  But he knew what it was; he just resented their having to make the effort to remind him. He knew there were no special-effects alterations of their bodies at night; he knew that except for those white-glow eyes, there was no concrete, photographic way he could point to one and accuse.

  It was an instinct that made people nervous around them, some sixth sense that had no name in any book.

  It was that same instinct that had kept him alive all these years; and the instinct that had failed him with Rachel and her brothers.

  For the first time.

  For the first time since that old cop had taken him on the night tour and he had learned what he had to do to avenge his sister’s life, he had failed.

  “James.”

  There had been times. a few. when he had been unable to catch one, or had been lured away by false trails, or had nearly fallen into a simple trap or ambush. But that, he figured, was to be expected. It was part of the hunt.

  Perfection belonged only to Maurice’s God.

  This wasn’t the same.

  This was a complete breakdown of the core of his system.

  It was, in a way, the destruction of him as a Hunter.

  The enormity of it, and the terror, turned him around to face the house. For a few moments he couldn’t breathe; for a few moments longer he could barely see.

  Jonelle took his hand. “There are things we have to do while the sun’s still up.” A gentle tug. He looked down, into red-rimmed eyes he had never realized before were the color of a summer night. “We have to go.”

  They took Maurice’s car back to the station, and spent an hour searching for Peter Ryman’s body.

  Maurice found it in the garage, rolled under his blocked car. It was naked, its back flayed in ridges as if by claws, and half his thighs were missing. There was hardly any blood. He and Jim used a portion of tarp they found tucked up in the rafters, rolled Peter in it, and placed him in the trunk. Jonelle stayed outside; Jim didn’t blame her.

  They buried their friends in the field’s soft loam, he and Maurice bare-chested and drenched with sweat as they dug with shovels Jonelle had taken from her garage. They spelled each other, the three of them, for nearly three hours. Saying nothing beyond an occasional grunt when they hit a rock, a curse when the digging stung. After the first few times a car passed along the road, they didn’t look up, but Jonelle reloaded the gun and kept it close to hand.

  The clouds moved in, taking the edge off the heat. But though they were dark and low, bringing twilight early, there was no distinctive scent of rain, no movement in the air. Sheet lightning flared once in a while over the mountains, weak, without a sound.

  When they finished, the bodies wrapped in sheets and lowered, while Jim and Jonelle shoveled the dirt back in, Maurice put his suit jacket on and said a few prayers, his face unmoving though moisture glittered in his eyes.

  And through it all, Jim felt nothing.

  It made his hands shake.

  It also shortened his temper when he noticed the others watching him, not directly, just a glance now and then, as if he was ready to explode any second and they didn’t want to be around when it happened, or they were afraid they wouldn’t be when it did. He held his silence, however, and when the graves were filled, and the sky below the clouds filled with swarms of birds in tattered dark ribbons heading for their roosts, he suggested they clean up, get clean clothes, and head to Dunn’s bar.

  “Why?” Jonelle asked, looking to Maurice, who only shrugged.

  “People.”

  “What?”

  “For the time being, I think it’d be a good idea to have some people around. It’s Friday, right? God, I don’t remember.
<
br />   The place will be packed.”

  “Ah.” Maurice grinned. “Safety in numbers, James.”

  He nodded. “Right. It’ll give us a chance to work out what we’re going to do next.”

  Jonelle was still puzzled. “But I thought we were going after them.”

  He checked the sky; the birds had gone save for a few wandering stragglers. “‘We don’t have to.”

  Ruthann paced the length of the concrete-floor cellar, feeling caged and hating it, while Bobby did his best to bind the wounds over Wade’s swollen eyes.

  She had heard the other return, but she hadn’t worried then, and she wasn’t worried now.

  All they’d wanted was the boy’s body.

  She peered through the high narrow window opposite the stairs, and smiled for the first time since fleeing down here.

  “Getting dark,” she said.

  Wade moaned.

  “Hush,” she said. “You’re not going to die.”

  “Ruthann,” Bobby said, caution in his tone.

  She didn’t answer.

  It was getting dark.

  There were so many places to hide and observe, it was laughable, and she couldn’t imagine now why Momma had been so upset by this man, and why she herself had feared him. He took no special precautions against her return, not when he was alone, not when the others arrived. And when he was outside, he moved as if he had been pumped with drugs. A zombie. Or a man who knew he was already dead.

  That puzzled her.

  He was powerful, no question about it; at least Momma had been right about that much.

  But it hadn’t taken much to let his air out, just the killing of a woman. Which, for her, had been not quite distasteful, but certainly unsatisfying. Necessary, however.

  The bitch would have ruined everything, and she had no idea why Jim had taken her into his clan. It sure wasn’t her beauty, or, she thought with a giggle, her monogamy.

  Not that she cared.

  After all, he was only human, and she had long ago given up trying to figure them out.

  She had intended to move on once the trio had driven away in the black man’s car, but curiosity held her because they hadn’t taken any weapons that she could see or sense. She took some of the time until their return to hunt down a squirrel to keep her stomach from growling, spent the rest dozing in the shade, until their voices woke her.