Violet tapped the brakes, spun the wheel, and the Frazer slipped around until she was headed back the way they’d come.
“What are you doing?” Benjy screamed.
Which was a damn good question. Should she have kept going, headed south, back the way they’d come, where dozens of other Morák might be prowling homes for blood to help combat the pain of Maggie’s curse?
No. If she wanted to keep Benjy alive—not to mention herself—they needed to get away from these things, and therewas only one place the monsters seemed reluctant to go. Across the bridge to Shediak.
The stick-limbed vampire rose in front of the car. Heedless of the snow on the road, she floored the accelerator. The monster hunched at odd angles in the headlight glare. Benjy sobbed, put his little hands on the dashboard to brace himself, and she found herself crying right along with him. When he screamed, she glanced toward him and saw the reason—the Morák who’d entered that house had emerged, drawn by the roar of the engine. They half ran and half stumbled down the driveway, crippled by the torment of the curse.
The Frazer thumped, and she whipped around to peer through the windshield again. There was no sign of Stick-Limb, and she let out a cry of triumph, picturing him in pieces on the road behind her, torn apart by the Frazer’s bumper and undercarriage.
The passenger window shattered. She barely kept the car on the road when she screamed, turning to see a long, thin arm reaching in from above, grabbing for Benjy. The boy shrieked and crawled over the console, trying to get into her lap.
The thump hadn’t been a collision. It had been Stick-Limb landing on the vinyl roof. His foot found purchase in the torn part of the roof. Sharp fingers scraped the windshield as he fought to hold on, reaching farther into the car.
One hand on the wheel, she snatched up the gun from the floor, aimed it at the roof, and pulled the trigger until it clicked on empty. Four bullets, four shots into the monster’s torso. It jerked and flopped and syrupy black blood dripped through the bullet holes, but it didn’t let go. The gun had been useless.
She cut the wheel to the left. The Frazer skidded in the snow, but she kept it on the road, and now she could see the bridge to Shediak straight ahead. Several of the creatures remained, but the others had gone hunting, or dug themselves back under the ground as the horizon began to lighten.
Stick-Limb caught Benjy’s foot. The boy screamed in pain this time and started kicking with his other foot. Violet fought withthe steering wheel as his jostling made her swerve back and forth across the road.
She wrapped one arm around Benjy. Grabbed his belt, held on tight.
Grunting, angry, Stick-Limb poked its head through the window. Red mucus poured from its lips and nostril slits, and it grinned as it dragged Benjy nearer. Its jaws opened, fangs dripping. The agony racking the monster’s body made it weaker, but it was still stronger than Violet. She held on to Benjy’s belt, but her fingers began to bend.
She saw the bridge just ahead, went right up it.
Jerked the steering wheel to the right, sideswiped the guardrails, and smeared Stick-Limb along the Frazer’s paint job with a wet crunch of bones. They shot over the bridge, reached Shediak, and kept going.
Benjy didn’t stop screaming. One skeletal arm remained inside the car, fingers still wrapped around his ankle. Violet reached over, dislodged it, threw the arm out the broken window, and drove on.
A glimmer of golden light touched the windshield. Only minutes till dawn.
She prayed Maggie had already been laid to rest.
53
Jennie breathed in the crisp salt air. The wind rushed through the pines. Her body had gone without sleep so long she felt out of sync with the world. Her skin prickled with life, more awake than she’d ever been. She could hear the ocean crashing on the beach. The tips of the waves glinted with the hints of dawn on the horizon. She felt alive, as if she had arrived at the moment she’d been journeying toward since the moment she’d walked out the door of her childhood home.
Elias and Root had seen them now. Corrected course, darting across snow and sand. Jennie could still tell which monster had once been her brother, but there wasn’t much left to give him away. The shape of his eyes. The loping, ungraceful way he ran, even with the pain he now carried.
“Dig faster, Malcolm,” she said.
He said nothing. Kept digging, turning shovelfuls of dirt aside. The grave had to be three feet deep now. He should just dump her in and hope for the best, but Jennie knew he wouldn’t do that. Another six or ten inches maybe. Just to be sure. If they had the time.
“If she opens her eyes again,” Jennie said, “tell her I tried very hard to love her. Tell her all I wanted was for her to have a little faith in me.”
Malcolm started to reply, but Jennie wasn’t listening. She flexed her grip on the tire iron and ran toward the monsters, ran toward Root and the thing that had been Elias.
“You needed me, Maggie,” she whispered to herself. “But you didn’t deserve me.”
Her boots slid in the snow and sand. Heart thrumming, she fought the urge to stop and prepare to defend herself. The only way to survive this fight was with brutality to equal the monsters’. She expected Root to grin, expected it to relish its intent to murder.
Root didn’t grin. It sneered, mouth ragged. One side of its face drooped as if the pain had broken something in it. Its eyes held all the cruelty of the dark, devoid of mercy or human heart, knowing only malice and savage abandon.
Elias staggered and slowed, staring at his sister uncertainly. Struggling. Swaying.
“Jennie?” he rasped, voice pitiful, almost as if he wanted her help.
