Elias screamed, staggered, boots splashing in the stream that emerged from the culvert. Clouds blocked the sun and still it felt as if his skin were crackling, blackening. No smoke rose from his flesh, but he felt the day’s light as if he’d been plunged into a woodstove.
“Cover yourself as best you can. Find shelter, but find us a driver before you burn yourself out.”
The burning erased all other thoughts. Elias heard screams but was barely aware they came from his own throat. The rain did nothing to soothe him. Within seconds, his skin grew so hot that raindrops sizzled and steamed when they struck him. He careened up the gully, splashing, then scrambled up the hill beside a fat pine tree. The clouds blocked any view of the sun, but he could feel its face glaring down at him, sensed its location. For a moment, he put the pine tree between himself and the sun, providing slight relief. Enough to focus.
The gas station up ahead had a canopy over its pumps. Elias ran for that shelter, but even when he found himself beneath it, the gray daylight reflected from every surface. A tiny flame ignited on his forearm, and he extinguished it with a slap of his hand. Twirling, he searched for shelter from the daylight, for transportation, for a driver.
Inside the gas station, the cashier stared out the plate glass window, pale and still as a mannequin at Gimbels. Beyond him, a hooded red raincoat hung on a hook. Elias stiff-legged toward the plate glass. The man shot to his feet before freezing again, his eyes wide. Elias could see the man wanted to run, but weighed his odds of escape.
The hunger rose. Even with the pain in his bones from Maggie’s curse and the searing of the daylight, the hunger took him over. Elias grinned. His hands shook. Running felt like flying. He hurled himself through the plate glass. The shattering snapped the cashier from his paralysis. The man began to twist away, knowing this was real, these teeth were real, the pale thing once called Elias Wise, real.
Elias dragged him into the mercifully dark back room, out of the daylight, and ripped him open. Painted his own face with the man’s blood. Ate his heart. Sating his hunger helped to calm him. Murder took some of the sting of the daylight exposure from his skin.
Time passed. Perhaps an hour.
He could feel Root’s frustration, and it forced him to rise. Elias stared at the split chest of the cashier and the man’s ragged throat, and realized he could have been the driver they needed. Root would hurt him for this, but what difference did that make? Pain had become so familiar to him now, in so many flavors.
Elias dug into the cashier’s pocket and located a set of keys. Out behind the gas station, he found a Chevy panel truck withKELSO ELECTRICstenciled on the sides. The keys opened the door and started the ignition. The rain fell harder, but failed to cool his skin now that he was out in the daylight again. It did sluice some of the blood away, however.
Behind the wheel of the panel truck, Elias roared with the pain. His bare hands ignited on the steering wheel, little flames dancing over his knuckles. He shifted his hands to beneath the steering column and drove faster.
He’d killed the cashier, but there were plenty of living people in town.
As he turned the corner, headed toward the police station, a tall man staggered into the road in the storm. Bright red hair, long beard, clothes soaked with blood and rain.
Alfie Hannigan. Alive.
For now.
Elias hit the brakes.
37
The windshield wipers on the Frazer smeared the rain instead of removing it. The car wasn’t very old, but whoever owned it hadn’t kept up with basic maintenance. Fortunately, an hour or so after they’d left Crowson behind, the rain let up, and Malcolm could concentrate on the road.
“It’s cold,” Violet said. “I never thought about how chilly a convertible would be when the weather turned like this.”
Malcolm bent over the steering wheel and glanced at the sky. Had it grown whiter along with darker? They might have an hour or two until night fell, but with the cloud cover, it seemed nearer. That accounted for the darker sky, but not the gray turning to white.
He rolled the window down a few inches.
“What are you doing?” Jennie asked from the back seat.
Malcolm rolled the window up again. He’d caught the scent in the air, felt the crispness of it. “Snow’s coming.”
“Just what we need,” Jennie said.
“It’s early in the season for snow,” Violet observed.
Malcolm nodded and tapped the accelerator. He was already speeding, but he had to take the risk of being stopped. Once it started to snow, the windshield wipers would slow them down. Hope’s gun was tucked up under his seat. Violet’s was in the glove box.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. The boy, Benjy, sat with his hands cuffed behind his back. The kid had to be uncomfortable,even in pain, but hadn’t said a word. In the shadows of the back seat, his eyes gleamed. Malcolm watched him, and Benjy stared back as if the mirror held some sort of battleground. He didn’t like the way the boy studied him. The kid seemed too mature, too observant.
“Damn it,” Malcolm muttered.
“What is it?” Violet asked.
“The kid. I know he’s not in control of the things he’s done—he’s being driven, and Root’s behind the wheel—but we never should’ve brought him with us.”
