Chapter Seven
To Find a Warrior
The forest beckoned, trees thick on either side of the narrow path, their long, spindly branches reaching out like gnarled fingers. I thought about turning around, giving serious consideration to finding another way to get to Grandview. It was a tough call to make. The last thing in the world I wanted to do at the moment was get lost and wander aimlessly on some dark treacherous back road. On the other hand, I didn’t particularly relish the thought of going into labyrinth Muerta either. I could only imagine why it was so named.
Letting the engine idle for a full two minutes, I chewed on a fingernail, hoping to gain some sudden insight on the best course of action. I had never taken this road before and really had no idea what to expect, although if the name and appearance were any indication, the smart thing to do would be to whip the car around and speed off into the night—in any direction but forward! But where would we go? This was the only road that I knew for certain would take us to Grandview.
I tightened my fingers around the leathery material that covered the steering wheel and sighed. We would have to take the path. The alternative was to double back around and take the left fork in the road back toward civilization, if you could call the demolished cities that made up the county “civilization.”
The further away from Lerna we had driven, the more distant the retrievers howling had become, so going back would be risking a run-in with the devil dogs and quite possibly the scavengers as well, for one creature was never very far from the other. The scavengers were usually the first to be seen. They used their paralyzing venom to incapacitate their prey before the retrievers stepped in and either took the unfortunate soul to Kahn or disposed of the body on their own. It was not a risk I felt willing to take, not with Ashley and not with myself. I hadn’t forgotten my last encounter with the scavengers and retrievers, and probably never would. Underestimating them was another sin I vowed to avoid repeating, for I knew firsthand how quickly they could team up and put a person out of commission. No, I decided, we would continue forward and hope that anything out there in this godforsaken forest was either sleeping or otherwise occupied.
I knew that it was probably too much to hope for, but I prayed Ashley would remain asleep until we were well out of the woods, especially if we were unlucky enough to encounter trouble along the way.
The tapping sound on the window had me jerking around in the driver’s seat, startled. A scream rose in my throat when I came face to face with the ghastly white thing pressed close to the window only inches from me. Heavily pitted skin the color of bleached flour stretched over teeth that were bared in an obscene grin, sharp teeth and round bulging eyes making a perverted mockery of the expression of joy. I knew immediately what I was staring at, its name suddenly crystal clear in my mind—coatyl.
I sat transfixed and unmoving, not daring to do so much as breathe, even though every fiber of my being cried out for me to flee. Time froze in a sick sort of suspended animation. The beast raised one hand, his long fingernails catching the moon’s rays and reflecting them like light on a steel blade before slowly, deliberately bringing the knobby fingers down and scraping them along the side of the SUV. The screech of metal being sliced away broke the terrified spell I seemed to have been trapped in, my breath caught on a sob. I slammed my foot down on the gas pedal without further delay and shot down the road, a spray of dust obliterating the view of the road behind us. Slow, I mentally cautioned about a mile down the pitch dark road, abruptly discovering why a dirt road would be called a labyrinth as the path cut sharply to the right. The car’s wheels spun out wildly for a heart-stopping moment, tires struggling to regain traction while I wrestled with the steering wheel for control. I narrowly avoided ramming the vehicle into a thick groves of trees and half dead vegetation several more times before the harrowing journey was over and done with, but finally, we reached the end of the path. Surprisingly, nothing else materialized out of the darkness, although I imagined I saw menacing creatures around every corner.
I peered from the inky black forest that surrounded us. In my head they were always only a hair away from leaping out at us and I remained on edge until, at long last, we emerged from labyrinth Muerta, frightened but otherwise unscathed. Rather, I was rattled. Ashley had somehow managed to sleep through the horrifying midnight ride, and for that I was profoundly grateful. The relief intensified ten-fold when I spotted the telltale shimmer in the distance. “Oh thank you, Lord.” The lights of Grandview burned low but bright in the dark, the gentle glow of the fence bathing the town in a halo of liquid gold. “We’re safe now. We’re safe,” I whispered to a sleeping Ashley, needing to speak the words aloud, seeking to reassure myself more than anything else that maybe, just maybe, things would turn out all right after all.
I drove around town for several minutes, letting the gentle illumination of people and life and normalcy wash over me. So acutely aware was I of my stress dissipating, evaporating into the night, that I was hesitant to put the moment to an end. I knew that the minute I did, my sense of peace and solitude would end. Maybe it wouldn’t be tonight or tomorrow, or even the night after that, but at some point, a whole new set of problems would inevitably present themselves, and when that happened, I knew my hard won peace would come crashing down like a house of cards in a hurricane.
There was another reason why my hands went cool and clammy as I deftly turned the SUV down the long, winding tree-lined lane that led to Bob and Marta’s sprawling estate. I was about to see Mark for the first time in a year. The slender trees that rolled past on the ascent up the paved road would have, under normal circumstances, captivated my attention, their dome-shaped tops swaying in the light breeze.
Pale pink blossoms fluttered lazily to the ground, a few buttery-looking petals coming to rest on the hood of the car, their pastel hue providing a sharp contrast to the deep blue of the SUV’s hood.
Tonight, however, the beauty of the scene was a pale imitation of the real thing. My mind was on other, more imminent matters, such as what I would say to the three unsuspecting residents of the house that came into view as we crested the hill. What would they say to me? It was hard not to be nervous about our upcoming meeting; after all, I was about to spring not only myself, but a six-year-old child upon them in the middle of the night.
A year had passed since I had vanished from their lives without so much as a goodbye, see you later, and it was impossible not to worry about their reaction. They probably assumed that I was dead, I thought with a cringe.
Ashley began to stir almost immediately once the car stopped its forward motion, coming to a smooth stop on the gravel driveway that lined the side of the immense house. The porch light was every bit as bright as I remembered it to be, coming awfully close to turning night into day. Memories of sitting with Mark on those wide porch steps in the calm, quiet evenings long after the rest of the house had retired to their rooms brought a smile to my lips as I gently rousted Ashley. During those long ago nights, we had sat side by side and made fun of the intense glare of the double fixture porch lights, calling them floodlights and attributing their lighthouse-like beacon to Marta’s fear of “varmints.” Oh, how I treasured those nights. I could still remember feeling like nothing could touch us, not here, so long as we stood together, daring fear and uncertainty to try and do its worst because, together, we were solid, and for the most part—unshakeable.
I snorted. “Shows how much I know,” I muttered, shifting Ashley’s weight higher onto my hip. She had fallen asleep once again somewhere between exiting the car and being carried up the stairs. That was probably a blessing, I decided, taking one last look around the enormous whitewashed porch and drawing strength from its gleaming brilliance. Taking a deep breath, I exhaled and stabbed a finger against the brass doorbell before I could lose my courage and do something foolish, like hop back into the car and bolt.
The five-minute wait for someone to answer the door was almost more than my
nerves could take; when Marta answered the door and said, deadpan, “Oh it’s you,” it was almost anti-climactic.
“Hi,” I mumbled, for lack of anything better to say. “Uh. Can we come in?” I asked, wishing she would stop looking at me as though I were something that even the cat wouldn’t have dragged in; no matter that, at the moment, I did look the part. Long moments passed while we stared each other down, facing one another like gun fighters in the street. But finally, the older woman’s shrewd eyes shifted to the sleeping child cradled in my arms. “Well, I suppose you might as well come inside.”
I murmured a thank you at her retreating form, although it was doubtful that she heard the quiet words. Understandable. I had given her quite the shock and she hadn’t slammed the door on us; Ash and I would have a clean, comfortable place to sleep for the night, and we were safe for the moment. When I would have been tempted to bristle under Marta’s less than gracious treatment, I reminded myself that the present outcome was more than I had hoped for only a few short hours earlier.
“You can sleep in your old room. The one you used the last time you were here,” she spoke crossly, leading the way past the formal parlor, beyond the floor-to-ceiling stone hearth, and up the curved staircase to the second floor.
“I remember the room.”
“Here it is,” she announced, flipping the light switch. “Lay the child down on the bed and I’ll help bring in your luggage.”
A single light burned in the foyer by the time I descended the stairway to join a neutral-faced Marta. I stumbled into the room to greet her, courtesy of missing the last step. Way to make an entrance, Claire, I mentally chastised.
“You been drunk driving tonight?” Marta demanded, eyeing me warily from across the room.
“No,” I groaned, righting myself, then taking a seat on the stair tread that had just tried to kill me.
“I have not been drinking. I almost wish I had been. But I’m just tired, Marta. It’s been a while since I’ve slept.”
“Well, you looked like you might be drunk.” She shrugged.
“Well, I’m not.” I frowned.
“You show up here in the middle of the night with bloodshot eyes and you nearly fall down the stairs, and you take offense that I think you’re drunk.” The cross woman shook her head, as though she didn’t know what to make of the situation.
“The truth is, I had a hell of a time getting us here…”
“You’ve been to Lerna, then,” she correctly assumed.
“Yes. What’s happening here?”
“I wish I knew,” she frowned, then shrugged. “We’re safe enough here. For now. So,” she commented after a moment of tense silence, “you’re back.”
“Yes…I know this must come as a surprise,” I said, fighting through my fatigue to refocus on the conversation.
“You can say that again. Who’s the kid? Is she yours?”
“Yes, she’s mine. I adopted her this year. She’s a wonderful little girl.”
“She’s a pretty little thing,” Marta conceded, softening a little.
“I’m sorry I left so suddenly before,” I blurted, suddenly wanting to get everything out in the open, seeking to dispel the awkward tension in the room.
“It’s not me who needs to hear that.”
“I didn’t want to leave things the way that I did.” I struggled with the apology. “If there had been any other choice, any other options…that day…” I held my hands out, appealing to the stone-faced woman who sat before me.
“The last time I saw you, we were standing in my kitchen and you grabbed a box down from a high shelf for me, read the address on the side of the carton, and tore off out of here saying you would be back by nightfall.”
“And I never came back. I know. I’m sorry.”
“What trouble did you manage to find in Keogh?”
“You knew that’s where I had gone?”
“What can I say? You’re not a good liar. I never did believe a word of that ‘I’m going to scout some leads’ business that you tried to hoist on me that afternoon.”
“I was afraid if I told you I was going to an unprotected zone—to a guard base—that you would try and stop me, and I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Worry? We thought you were dead. We searched for months, Claire. We organized search parties and came up empty every time. Mark tore up every inch of ground between here and Coztal looking for you. He was frantic.”
“Where is Mark?” I leaned forward, glancing up the stairwell. “How is he?”
“I don’t know,” she muttered. “I don’t even know if my boy is alive.”
“What?” The word felt as though it were torn out of me.
“When he couldn’t find you, he left. We haven’t seen him in nearly eight months.”
“What are you talking about? He just up and left without saying where he was going? Why?” I demanded, firing the questions at her in rapid succession.
“He told Bob and I that he couldn’t stay here anymore. He was devastated. We haven’t seen him since,” she answered, her voice catching before she appeared to rein the emotion in, her face once again becoming a stern mask of disapproval. It was clear to me that she held me personally liable for Mark’s absence. And hell, maybe, in a way, I was. It was a bitter pill to swallow, sitting across from Marta. For a moment, it was difficult to look her in the eye. While Marta may have begun as the housekeeper, once Bob’s first wife Pamela—Mark’s mom—had run off, Marta had become a mother to him, raising him in addition to her other household duties.
I scrubbed my hands over eyes that felt gritty from lack of rest, and filled her in on the events that had transpired the day I had disappeared from Terlain and the subsequent year I had spent in my own world. I was careful to leave out the finer points of Ashley’s adoption, glossing over the details and making no mention that I had found the girl that day in the woods near Keogh. I wasn’t sure how that particular bit of news would be received by Marta, and I wasn’t on her top ten list of favorite people as it was. Plus, it really wasn’t anyone’s business but my own, I reasoned. I had rescued the girl, legally adopted her, and been a good mother to her for the past year. To my way of thinking, that was what really counted, but I wasn’t positive that Marta would see my not returning the child to her own land as such an acceptable act, and we had enough tension between us as it was.
“You’ve had quite an ordeal yourself,” she sighed when I had finished my retelling of events.
“I suppose.”
“So your boss is trying to kill you again.” She shook her head. “Do you have to work to attract this much trouble, or does it come to you naturally?”
“It would seem that I have a penchant for it,” I responded glumly.
“You and your daughter are welcome to stay here with us for as long as you require. You should be safe enough here.”
“Thank you. You don’t know how much it means to hear you say that. I’ll pull my own weight around here; you won’t have to do for us, I promise.”
“Hmm. Well, it might be nice to have a child in the house again. I suppose she’s an early riser?”
“A little. She’ll probably be up earlier than usual this morning since she slept the whole way here,” I answered, smothering a yawn.
“You look like you could use more than a few hours of sleep. I’ll get up with the girl. Now, off to bed with you.”