find to help it dig him up, the most
“Help dig him up?” she echoed. “I don’t get it. Why would it need
Frank licked his lips before speaking. He appeared to be teetering on the brink of a great revelation. “This is holy ground,” he said. “The entity is a profane spirit; it
“But why bother?”
“Like I said earlier, I think it wants to finish what they started five years ago, to bond together somehow. Oh, Lord, what if it has the power to bring him back? What if it can resurrect his soul somehow, because of their tie to one another?”
Frank swept a layer of sweat off his brow and rushed on, sorting out his sudden storm of ideas. “For five years, it’s been stuck in Kane’s half-dead body,” he said, “kept alive on life-support in the lockdown ward at the St. Peter’s Asylum, utterly powerless. But now the body’s dead, and it’s free again. It must have hung around the hospital for a few days, gathering its strength, using what energy it could get to cause other peoples’ deaths, probably by manipulating other medical equipment. I bet if you checked with the staff, they’d tell you there was an unusually high death toll the day Kane’s body died. After that, once it was strong enough, it must have come here to find Kane, homing in on him through whatever link they’d forged together all those years ago. Only it couldn’t get to him.”
Melissa shook her head. “That’s nonsense; it’s impossible.”
“Everything we’ve seen tonight is impossible!”
She stared at him in silence, knowing she still clung to her old beliefs like a drowning swimmer in an ocean of uncertainty. She wanted to argue; she wanted to rationalize. But the last of her skepticism washed away when she recalled emptying her gun into a walking corpse.
“Okay, forget the technical garbage. What do we do to stop it?”
A flash of lightning lit the area, and the bleak expression on his face chilled her to the core. “Wait a sec. Y- you do know how to stop it, right?”
“I have some ideas.”
“
“I’ve studied up on various religious ceremonies, exorcism methods and what not, but I can’t be positive they’ll work. I’m playing this by ear.”
“Oh, terrific.”
Frank turned and headed for the cemetery gate, leaving Melissa dumbfounded.
“That’s it?” she called. “Where are you going now?”
“Kane’s body is safe for the time being,” he called over his shoulder. “The entity can’t get at him, but we still need to track it down. It’s already been here once, with those two kids, and it’s probably searching for someone else to lure here as we speak.”
They left the churchyard and jogged toward the main road. Melissa kept watch on the woods along the way, but tried not to let her imagination shape phantoms out of the shadows. Instead, she concentrated on forming a plan.
“Okay, we know it wants Kane, so it’ll have to come back here sooner or later, right? Can’t we set up some kind of a trap for it, rig up a bucket of holy water or something? Better yet, why don’t we just dig up Kane for ourselves and set the bastard on fire?”
“It’s not going to be that simple,” he replied. “For one thing, we can’t chance waiting for it to come to us. Before it returns here, it’ll probably try to disguise itself again, which means another human body. After that, it’ll need to find someone else it can use to do the shovel work. There are too many people at risk. Besides, if Kane and that monster are already half bonded, that may be the one thing keeping it from simply picking out a new follower and starting all over again. Kane’s body is the link between them; destroying it might set the entity free.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Not really,” he answered. “But it’s possible. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been trapped in Kane for all those years. It would’ve abandoned him back in the cellar.”
Melissa clinched her fists. So much for the easy way out.
They returned to where Frank’s Blazer and the smashed sedan sat side-by-side on the far side of County Road 19, washed in the repetitive light of the one remaining police cruiser and numerous red flares the officers had put down to guide other vehicles around the wreckage. Not far away lay what remained of the teen-corpse’s charred body, tinted crimson by the flares.
“An ambulance is on the way here for the bodies,” the single remaining officer said once they reemerged from the forest.
“We need to get my truck back on the road,” Frank said to the man. “I’ve got tow straps in the back. Pull your cruiser up just ahead of me while I see if it still starts.”
Rather than follow Frank or the officer, Melissa paused to study the smoldering body on the blacktop. She approached cautiously and knelt a few feet from its heaped form. For a moment, she had the urge to reach out and touch it to verify that the night’s events weren’t apparitions in a dream.
“I think there’s something you should know,” the uniformed officer said to Frank, apparently mistaking him for her partner. “Dispatch radioed another emergency call just a few minutes ago. Some lunatic attacked a kid and his babysitter with a knife at that subdivision outside Loretto.”
Melissa bolted to her feet. “That’s the Andersons’ neighborhood,” she gasped. “Where did it happen, what house?”
The officer recited the address. “One of our guys is already there. Looks like both the kids are unhurt, but the perp got away.”
Melissa shot a distressed look at Frank.
“We have to hurry,” he answered. “It may already have a body preserved in the area that it can use, like it did with the Damerows. Maybe Judge Anderson? And we need to get those kids somewhere safe. The boy must be part of this, and if it tried for him once it might come after him again. That could work to our advantage. Maybe we can catch it while it’s still in a physical form.”
“What exactly is going on here?” the confused officer asked.
They didn’t have time to answer.
CHAPTER 45
The throb of firelight against the barn’s walls and rafters could no longer match the pace of Mallory’s pounding heart.
Derrick kissed her mouth, her cheek, her neck. He nibbled at her ear; she hadn’t expected such a thing to be so arousing. He kissed her neck again, her throat, cheek, then returned to her lips.
They slid closer together. Derrick ran one hand through her hair, then the other across her thigh.
She tingled with excitement, wanting to close her eyes and enjoy the exhilaration of the moment, but she couldn’t stop glancing over his shoulder, afraid one of her friends might ascend into the loft and see them. She wanted to wrap her arms around him, wanted to feel the contours of his body, but nervousness paralyzed her muscles.
Outside, another cycle of flashes shone through the barn’s weathered siding, casting bluish-white bands across the floor. Thunder growled, shaking the air with its low-end vibrations.
Derrick’s hand slid along her leg, caressing it, moving to her waist. He found the hem of her shirt, and Mallory tensed when his fingers passed from her shorts to the bare skin of her belly. His hand ascended the curve of her abdomen, climbing her ribcage, moving toward her chest.
For a second, she couldn’t draw a breath. Couldn’t move.
“Wait…”
