the entire country.
That’s why everyone in town had gathered on Main Street to welcome him back that day, and why they’d be out the next one, too. Everybody loved Matthew Delaney.
As Joan talked about her son, Matt felt the same strange sense he’d had when he first saw the banner welcoming Matt Delaney home. The other boy’s early life sounded so much like his own, although in a happier, more successful retelling. It was almost like she was trying to convince him that he had actually grown up here.
Joan pulled out a book of photos, and Matt studied them carefully. At least the most recent ones. He didn’t care what her son had looked like when he was a child. He needed to know the face of the young man who was coming back.
Because Matt suspected he wouldn’t be able to see much of it when they actually met. If the Delaney kid had changed in the way his mother thought, his face probably wouldn’t be there anymore. The skin would be rotting off, eyeballs drooping from their sockets, great festering sores spreading across his blackening tongue.
And Matt would be the only one who would be able to see it.
But that didn’t mean he had any idea what to do once he saw it.
If the kid was infected, Matt knew one thing. He was going to protect Joan Delaney from the creature that had been her son.
How he was going to do it-a total stranger warning a small town against the young man they’d all loved for years-he had no idea.
But he’d been given this power, and if there was a reason for it, then this had to be why.
CHAPTER SIX
The bed in Joan’s guest room was surprisingly comfortable, and after so many nights in lumpy sleeping bags on the ground, Matt fell into a deep sleep almost before his head was on the pillow.
But not so deep he didn’t hear the door creak open.
He opened his eyes and saw Joan standing over him. Even in the dark he could see the flush that covered her cheeks when she realized he was awake.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she said. “It’s just that…”
“You’re thinking about him?” Matt said.
She flushed even deeper. “I should be, I know that,” she said. “But I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Matt sat up. “Me?”
“You’re the first man I’ve been really attracted to since my husband died years ago,” she said, then turned away. “I’m sorry. It’s ridiculous for me to be in here. You’re a young, beautiful man. You must think I’m some hideous old crone.”
She fled for the door, but before she reached it-before he knew what he was doing-Matt was out the bed. He touched her shoulder and she turned to him. He could see tears glinting in the moonlight that streamed in through the window.
“I think you’re beautiful,” he said.
“Just don’t turn on the light.”
He did.
She buried her face in her hands, hiding from him. Gently he eased her fingers away and tilted her chin up to the light.
There were lines in her skin. Matt knew that, because he had seen them when they were outside. But in the soft glow from the room’s only sconce they melted away. She was dressed in a sheer white nightgown, and the light streamed through the fabric, revealing the silhouette of a body any woman under thirty would kill for.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“No.”
He tugged the nightgown away from her shoulders and let it pool on the ground around her feet. “Beautiful,” he said.
Her no this time was little more than a whisper.
Matt dropped slowly to his knees, kissing down her body as he went. Her skin was unbelievably smooth and firm, and he could feel her muscles rippling in pleasure under his tongue.
Her legs moved slightly apart as his kisses dropped below her waist. She moaned and shifted forward, pressing her pelvis against his face. His tongue searched and found the opening, and she moaned louder.
Joan grabbed his hair, pressing his face further against her. Matt pulled back a little. He couldn’t breathe. And he was becoming aware of something. A smell. It was like the raccoons that used to crawl under his parents’ house to die, a scent of rot. Of death.
It was coming from her.
Matt gagged. The stench was becoming unbearable. He wanted to shove her away, scramble to his feet and get as far from her as he could. Had to stop himself, keep rooted to the floor. He couldn’t hurt her like that.
Did she know she was dying inside? What kind of cancer could rot her insides like this without sending her screaming into pain?
The stench was so foul it blocked out the rest of his senses, but he gradually became aware of her voice floating on the air above his head. “I knew you’d come for me,” she was saying. “I knew you’d come.”
Now he did push himself away from her. She didn’t seem to notice. Her head hung back over her shoulders, long hair streaming down her back, eyes closed. Only her mouth was moving, murmuring the same phrase over and over.
“They told me you would come,” she said, eyes still closed. “The warrior who would rule by my side.”
The words were strange, but Matt hardly noticed. Because now he was seeing her body, and it was changing. The skin that had been so smooth and clear was now rippled with lumps. The cancers covered her body, pressing up through the flesh, some stretching her skin so tightly they looked like they would break through in bloody sores.
“What’s happening to you?” Matt said. “I’ve got to get you help.”
Her head snapped forward with the speed of a crane. Her eyes flashed open. “You were sent here for me,” she said. “They promised I wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.” Her voice cragged and croaked; Matthew could almost feel the tumor growing in her throat.
“I wasn’t sent,” Matt stuttered, the absurdity of his words ringing in his ears. “I just came here.”
The tumors were multiplying, new archipelagos of cancer spreading under her skin, joining to form solid masses. And they were moving. Rippling like a weightlifter’s muscles.
“Join me,” she whispered.
She reached out a hand to him, although it was barely recognizable as human anymore. There was a pinprick of a tumor pulsing under the nail of her ring finger. Matt watched in horror as the growth pounded against the nail and then retreated to pound again. Then the nail popped off and it was free. It oozed out across her flesh. A string of moles grew up wherever it touched.
She took a step toward him, both hands extended. Matt shrunk back in horror. He wanted to scream, wanted to run from the room, jump on his motorcycle and get away from this house as fast as he could. But underneath that pulsating mound of diseased flesh he could still see traces of the woman who had taken him into her home.
“Stay away from me,” he said. “I’ll do what I can to help, but please don’t touch me.”
She didn’t move, but somehow her hands were closer to him. They were growing. The tumors were pushing forward, boneless talons of flesh. And they reeked of death.
“You are mine,” she sighed. “They told me you would come. I’ve been waiting for so long.”
One of her shapeless hands reached out for his. Before he could pull back, a tendril of the tumorous slime dripped from her nail-less finger onto his wrist. It burned into his skin; he could feel it fighting for purchase, trying to send down roots into his flesh. And as it grew under his skin, he felt a rage, blacker than he’d ever known, building in his mind. He slapped at his wrist with his other hand, and the thing flew off onto the floor. The rage passed as quickly as it had come.
