for someone else to show up.
He thought of the monster he and Jeb had found in the canyons. 20He thought of the Bad Lands.
Maybe she was the last of a dying breed. Maybe the beings that had populated this country before the coming of men had become extinct and she was the only one left, surviving by her wits.
Darwin again.
Everything seemed to come back to Darwin these days. If he had had the power to go against her, he would have killed her there-on the spot. He would have stopped her heart or melted her down or set her ablaze, but he did not have her strength, had never had her strength, and she knew it. She dropped the small broken body on the rocks, and he turned away from the mine, sickened, galloping back the way he'd come. He returned alone to the town, holing up in the house.
Isabella came back many hours later, clean, fresh, and visibly happy.
They said nothing to each other about their encounter, and he knew that she was counting on him not to take any action.
They did not speak during supper or after.
He went to bed alone.
Once again he awoke in the middle of the cold night with a desperate need to relieve himself. Although he had gone to sleep alone, Isabella had in the interim crawled into bed with him, and her head lay on the pillow next to his. One of her hands gently cupped his genitals. He sat up, looked down at her, and the expression of perverse contentment on her face twisted his guts into a knot. Originally, he had not intended to do anything about what had happened. Upon returning home, a sort of moral paralysis had descended upon him. But now, thinking about what she'd done what THEY'D done
--and seeing her asleep in bed like this, her guard down, vulnerable, he suddenly had the strength to do what needed to be done.
He killed her as she slept.
He killed her, but she did not die.
He put the pillow over her head, held it there, and when he had done so until his arms were aching, he pulled the pillow up.
She was still breathing, still asleep.
And she was smiling.
The chill he felt was not from the outside air seeping in between the cracks of the windowsills, nor from the rheumatism that had permanently settled in his bones. He backed away from the bed, his hands shaking, his mouth dry. He kept waiting for her to sit up, to open her eyes, to acknowledge the attempt he'd made on her life and retaliate in some way. But she remained unmoving, asleep, and only that sly smile on her face let him know that she was aware of what he'd done..
He placed a quick spell on the bed and everything in it, a binding spell, and he rushed around the room looking for a weapon, determined to go through with what he'd decided.
He used her own knife to cut off her head, the long serrated one with which she'd disemboweled the girl. Blood spurted, flowed He stemmed it with toad powder, he separated the head from the body, but still she lived. The eyes blinked open; the arms moved up to casually scratch her disassociated cheek.
She was playing with him, he realized.
She looked at him and shook her head, the unconnected head rocking back and forth on the pillow, its raggedly severed veins flopping from the open neck like live red worms.
He was covered with blood, as were the bedsheets, as were the blankets, as was the floor He had never been so frightened in his life, and it was the knowledge in her eyes that was the most unnerving. For he had intended to kill her quickly and cleanly so that she would not know what happened to her, so she would not be aware of his betrayal.
But it had not worked out that way, and her eyes remained wide and seeing, watching each of his awkward fumbling attempts to murder her.
Knowing that she was aware of what he was doing filled him with a strange and terrible dread, a terror unlike any he had known before.
With a cry he grabbed the edge of the pillow and yanked it, tossing her head on the floor. He sliced her body in half, said a quick and dirty spell, then stumbled out of the house, breathing deeply, trying to fill his tired old lungs with the clean freshness of cold night air and to move the taste and smell of blood from his mouth and nos.
He had planned to keep her death a sret, at least for a little while, and then attribute it to natural causes. But the disruption in power must have ben sensed because a dozen people were standing outside his fence, dressed in nightcaps and bedclothes. He scanned the faces of those present, pecting to confront the wrath of those who had gone along with her purges. But what he saw instead filled his heart with joy. Relief. Gratitude.
They were glad she was gone, thankful that he had killed her.
He staggered down first steps, through the small yard, out the gate, and into the arms of Irma Keyhom and Susan Johnson.
By the time he reached them, his eyes were so full of tears that he could not even see.
They did not wait for morning. Several of the men accompanied him back into the house.
Matthew, Joshua, Cletus, and Russell carried out the two halves of the body, chanting spells to ward off malevolence, spells to protect themselves. William carried her head, have thing dusted it with invested bone meal in order to render it
inanimate, and though his emotions were churning, he had no doubt that he had done the right thing.
By this time most of the town had gathered out front, and they followed silently as the men carried what was left of Isabella up Main Street and out into the wilds of the canyon. The road became a wagon trail, then a horse path as it led farther into the darkness, farther from town.
William felt as though he should explain what he'd done and why, but he did not know what to say, and the truth was that words did not seem to be needed. The people of the town understood somehow, and he sensed nothing but support when he scanned the crowd.
They continued into the darkness.
-The cave was up the canyon in the marshy area by the ferns.
He had intended to entomb her there from the beginning. The cave was far from town but still in Wolf Canyon, and it was remote enough that her body would probably never be discovered. His intention was not to keep her corpse from harm, but to keep her from harming others. He had no faith that she was rendered completely disabled by death, that her power had died with her body, and he wanted to make sure that he did everything he could to ensure her permanent incapacitation.
Leading the way, he slogged through the muck and weeds that adjoined this particularly slow-moving section of the river. Underneath an overhang of rock on which grew clumps of green fern shaded from the sun and fed by a trickling spring located somewhere at the top of the cliff, the cave entrance yawned, a low, narrow opening in the rock that disguised a much larger chamber inside. One by one they entered and someone conjured a sand fire for light.
'We will leave her here,' William said. 'Place the halves of her body at opposite ends.'
He felt movement in his hands, a repugnant unnatural
squirming that startled him into dropping her head. It hit the powdered dirt with a quiet thud, rolling over until the blank staring eyes were looking up. He'd been half expecting something like this, but it still took him by surprise. He stared down at the head, not wanting to pick it up again, afraid to touch it. The eyes blinked, the cheek muscles twitched, and he knew that neither bone meal nor spells were strong enough to block her will.
He backed up a step. The men carrying the halves of her body had dropped them at the opposite sides of the cave, and they had joined the rest of the people near the fire. All eyes were on him. William heard a whisper, saw Isabella's mouth move. Her eyes shifted to look at him, then took in the rest of the crowd. The temperature suddenly dropped, a chilling of the air that was strong enough to dim the fire.
