To the east, a thin band of horizon shifted from black to purple. He wept blood from the pain, but he quickened his pace.
The wind shifted, and a sound reached them from somewhere out over the ocean.
A voice, screaming. A voice he knew.
Maggie’s.
49
“Let her scream,” Jennie said. “It’s not Maggie. It’s the thing replacing her.”
Malcolm wanted to vomit over the side, but his nausea wasn’t prompted by the way the boat jumped and slewed over the waves. Their mother’s face had become almost unrecognizable. Blisters grew and burst while he watched, and she dragged her cheeks on the bottom of the boat to scrape off the living skin to reveal the monster beneath. He could feel evil pulsing from her, prickling his skin even more than the cold and the spray of the ocean. If the bits of skin had turned to worms and tried to crawl inside his clothes and into his bones, he would not have been surprised.
Minutes passed, but he surrendered to the urge and vomited into the water.
His fingers tightened on the long handle of the shovel he’d taken from the shed. Jennie had a tire iron from the trunk of the Frazer and a rusty garden trowel. They’d hoped for a shotgun, but if the owner of the boat had any guns, they would have been in his house. They were short on weapons, but Malcolm told himself if they worked quickly, the only thing they’d need was the shovel.
Maggie stopped screaming. Without breathing, she seemed dead again, lying there in the bottom of the boat with her hands cuffed behind her back. But when he shifted slightly, he could seeher eyes, the way they wandered wildly in search of some escape from her pain.
Her eyes were black cherry red, and Malcolm couldn’t wait to bury them deep in the ground.
50
Violet woke up with a sharp inhalation, the air so cold it numbed her teeth. She’d nodded off behind the wheel of the Frazer, arms crossed in search of her own warmth. Benjy had curled up in the passenger seat. The snow fell gently now, the wind dying down. Snow dusted the back seat thanks to the rips in the vinyl roof, but seemed as if the storm would taper off to almost nothing by sunrise, which couldn’t be long now.
Benjy murmured in his sleep, a bit of a whimper. Violet reached out and placed her hand on his back, hoping some comfort would reach his dreams.
She heard snow crunch. White coated the windshield, but the upper part of the driver’s window remained clear save for icy crystals on the glass, and Violet leaned on the door and tried to peer outside. A stooped figure staggered across the snow-covered yard toward the house. Thoughts still tangled with sleep, she thought it must be Malcolm, until she saw the other shape out there. The one that had made the crunch as it fell to the ground. It pushed itself up onto its hands and knees, then slowly to its feet.
She held the gun tightly to her chest. If what she’d seen so far was any evidence, four bullets wouldn’t buy her more than thirty seconds, but somehow it still comforted her to hold the weapon in her hands.
The two Morák trudged toward the house, both of them bent in pain. She’d seen drug addiction during her years in Chicago, had even volunteered in an addiction ward that had been set upat the Cook County Jail. These two looked like heroin addicts, the way they walked and twitched, the way they pretzeled up their limbs as if every part of them was trying to escape the pain of withdrawal. Was Maggie’s curse the only cause of this pain, or was it hunger, too? After centuries underground, she guessed it was both.
The owner of that house hadn’t been woken by the noise of the Frazer’s arrival or the sounds of Malcolm and Jennie rooting around in his shed or the boathouse. She told herself maybe nobody was home.
Glass shattered, the sound bright and crisp in the predawn darkness.
A light clicked on in an upstairs window.
Violet slid farther down in the driver’s seat, one hand reaching for the key, ready to start the engine if they had to get out of there but not a moment before. It would be best if they simply stayed quiet and went unnoticed. The engine coughing to life would draw the Moráks’ attention. With sunrise so close, it would all be over soon, one way or another. Either the Morák would burrow back into the ground when the curse was restored, or they’d take shelter from the sun until night returned, giving her and Benjy time to find some kind of safety, for as long as any safety remained in the world.
Benjy murmured again.
“You’re okay, kid,” she said softly. “Sleep. I’ve got your back.”
Somewhere inside the house, a woman began to scream. More glass shattered. In the car, the sounds were so muffled that if she hadn’t awoken, she’d likely have slept right through them, as Benjy did now. Violet steadied her breathing, shuddering from the cold, and held back tears. Running would have been easier. Screaming would have offered some relief. But either one would get them both killed.
Her heart raced, pulse so strong she could feel it in her fingertips.Drive, she thought.Turn the key in the ignition and just go, fast as you can, while they’re still in the house.
But the house had gone quiet. Violet inched herself upward, back numb against the seat, raising her eyes level with the top of the steering wheel. She wanted to see the eastern horizon, to know how close sunrise might be. If they could hold out here, just stay unnoticed for a little while, the Morák—the goddamned vampires—would have to rush for shelter.
Could they smell her out here? Would they hear Benjy murmuring in his sleep? How much had pain crippled them, distracted them, weakened them?
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to steady her heart and slow her breathing. She’d been so cold her fingers had become hard to bend. Violet knew she had to move around to get her blood pumping, but she didn’t dare.
Her eyes opened. The moisture of unshed tears made her lashes cling together, as if they’d been about to freeze. Her breath plumed in front of her as she slid another inch upward and peered out through the clear portion of her window.
It stood down by the shed, tall and thin, head bent as if sniffing at the partly open shed door. Violet thought it must have caught the scent of Malcolm and Jennie, if that was something of which the monsters were capable. With two in the house, that made three Morák nearby. There would have been dozens, if the story were true, all burrowed into the ground at the edge of the water, just across the bridge from Shediak. They would have been hungry, driven by pain. She and Benjy were lucky only three had come this way.
