God.”
She leaned away from him, pressing against the driver’s-side door as if he were pushing a serpent at her. He was patient, though.
“Seethe lets you be who you are running from,” Forsyth said. He moved his palm to his mouth and partook of the fiery dragon. The devil worked in this world, but God’s promise was one of ultimate victory, though the battles might be painful. “Become who you are.”
As his teeth crunched into the pill and he swallowed the bitter chemicals, another shot rang out, closer, and Alexis spun, the barrel of the AR-15 knocking the vial to the floor and scattering pills across the carpet.
“Mark,” she whispered, opening her door.
“We don’t need him,” Forsyth said, already feeling the self-righteous rage course through his spirit. All of God’s warriors were justified in their actions, no matter how bloodthirsty.
“I do,” she said. “And you can go to hell.”
Alexis reached over the seat, grabbed her backpack, and jogged into the woods. After a moment, Forsyth stooped and began collecting the pills from the floorboard.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Roland’s head felt like a lump of liver mush shot through with Louisiana hot sauce.
His cheek was pressed against sticky linoleum and his body was so heavy, he wondered if he’d ever move his limbs again. Voices came to him as if through a wall of water.
As he sucked for breath, he let his memory rewind, because he wasn’t sure where he was, how he’d gotten here, or why his skull throbbed like a giant broken tooth.
Wendy’s voice came to him first, and he made out the word “painting.”
Roland opened his eyes, and the morning light hurled spears of electric torture deep inside him.
“Roland?” Wendy was closer now, talking softly, which was good, because the voices had been clanging his eardrums like a plumber beating a cast-iron sewer pipe.
He tried to speak but all he managed was an urrrk, which was just as well because he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say.
“Sorry,” she said as her shadow loomed over him. “You had a gun.”
Another piece of the soggy jigsaw puzzle slid into place and Roland remembered the secret-agent guy who’d been hanging around. Whose side was he on? Whose side was Wendy on?
“No buh,” he said, a strand of drool trailing out and linking his mouth to the floor.
“No bullets,” said the man in the cabin. “The revolver’s empty.”
Of course it was. Roland didn’t trust himself. He’d heard that crazy people never questioned the rightness of their bizarre beliefs, but he wasn’t sure about that. And when he’d caught himself plotting to kill Mark, Alexis, and Wendy, he knew that was exactly the kind of thing Seethe would tell him to do.
The only way to prove Seethe didn’t make you crazy is to not do crazy shit.
But the philosophical debate worsened his headache, and Wendy was gently stroking his hair, so he focused on her fingers and away from the hot, orange-red center of pain.
“One of them’s down,” the man said, and Roland remembered his name was Gundersson. Or at least that was his fake secret-agent cover story.
“Mark’s here,” Wendy said to him. “We’re surrounded by men with rifles.”
“Am I shot?” Aside from his sodden head, he actually felt okay.
“No, I…I hit you.”
“Damn, honey. I thought we were past all that.”
“I thought you were going to kill him, and we need him.”
A sudden slew of bullets pierced the side window, shattering the glass and thwacking into the paneling above their heads. Wendy instinctively hunched over him.
“They’re shooting wild,” Gundersson said. “That means they’re losing patience.”
“Guess the floor is a good place to be,” Roland said.
“I love you,” Wendy whispered, squeezing his hand. “I’d do anything for you.”
“Love leaves you brainless.” He tried to smile but his face muscles were like barbed wire stitched into his skin.
“Listen, Roland,” Gundersson said. “I’ve got backup on the way. But we need to hold out for two hours.”
Gundersson made it sound like rescue would be a good thing. Which meant the backup could turn out to be the very people who’d started the whole hunt for Seethe and Halcyon. It wasn’t a stretch to imagine Burchfield pulling the strings from a safe distance.
Someone shouted from the forest, and Roland recognized Mark’s voice. He had to strain to make out the words: “You okay in there?”
“Don’t answer,” Gundersson said. “Let them keep guessing.”
“But Mark’s on our side,” Wendy said. “He’s trying to save us.”
Gundersson hobbled up the stairs without speaking, and Roland heard his boots drum across the loft. He lifted one hand and motioned Wendy closer.
He whispered, “Gundersson wanted us all together. That’s why he had you call the Morgans.”
Wendy shook her head as if Roland was being a silly, silly boy. “We need to get our heads together on this. The four of us.”
“Where’s the painting?”
“Oh, so you’re finally interested in my art?”
“Yeah, the deeper meaning.”
“It’s over there.” She waved toward somewhere in the room.
Roland tried to turn in that direction but he was still too woozy. “Do you know what you’ve painted?”
“The Monkey House,” she said. “The same thing I’ve been painting for the past year.”
“You painted the formula for Seethe. If these bastards get that, they don’t need us alive anymore. Did you show Gundersson?”
“He saw it but didn’t make a big deal of it,” she said. “I’ve not exactly had my shit together here for the last couple of days.”
“Because Seethe is back. I don’t think it ever left.”
Wendy shook her head in denial. “No. They couldn’t get us here. That’s why we hid away, remember?”
“You can’t hide from what’s inside you.”
Gundersson yelled from upstairs. “I don’t see anything, but keep on eye on the back side of the cabin.”
Wendy crawled across the floor to the kitchen window as Roland rolled onto his side. He groaned as a wash of fresh hurt rolled over him, and he felt for the lump above his ear.
If my skull cracked, maybe the Seethe poured out. And maybe I’m all better now.
In the Monkey House, Mark had taught him that pain trumped rage, that pain brought clarity, that pain was the most basic human condition. Pain ruled the kingdom of the mind.
“Keep that pretty head down, Wendy,” he said, just before the glass erupted above her head and showered her with sparkling shards.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Scagnelli pulled up behind the car he recognized from the Morgans’ driveway.
He’d made good time, thanks to the two dumbass agents who’d stored the cabin’s address on the stolen laptop. He’d also learned a National Clandestine Service agent named Gundersson was monitoring the couple, but he didn’t have a way to check out whether Gundersson was in the loop. He’d lost reception since entering the mountains, one of the pitfalls of cheap, prepaid cell phones.
