the thick veins bulging madly, purple and ugly.
Autumn yelled as she hit her mother again, “You’re horrible! Let my mother go! Mama, come back.” She kept hitting her mother, on her arm, on her shoulder, jerking on her hand.
Blessed looked bewildered. “You’re an amazing girl, Autumn—you can look at me and still you can resist me.” He slowly shook his head at the child who was staring right into his eyes. He then spoke in his natural voice, higher and sharper, with a kind of a country whine, “You’re really looking at me, aren’t you? Well, it makes sense, since you’re Martin’s daughter. I couldn’t stymie Martin either. See, you don’t know what you can do because your mother can’t teach you anything; she can’t even accept you for what you are, what you will become.
“Come here now, Autumn. You and I have a long road to travel. I imagine that idiot sheriff will be coming along real soon now. We have to go.”
Autumn didn’t move.
“You will come with me or I will have your mother hurt herself. Look, she wants to, all I have to do is tell her to pull the trigger.”
“No!” Autumn looked at her mother, who was still standing motionless, looking at the bed, the gun held out in front of her now, straight at Blessed. She looked vacant, like she wasn’t there. Autumn shook her mother’s arm hard. “You took my mama!”
“Yes, I did, but she’ll be all right if you come with me. If you don’t, I will make her kill herself.”
Autumn closed her eyes.
“Open your eyes. Stop that foolishness. What are you doing? What—?”
Dillon had taken a sip of tea as he listened to Ethan describe Blessed’s attack on Saturday night when Autumn screamed at him,
The tea spewed out of Savich’s mouth. He had his SIG in his hand and was running toward the house in under three seconds, yelling over his shoulder, “Ethan, get your deputies outside Joanna’s bedroom window; you cover the front of the house. Blessed is here!”
He slammed through the kitchen door, Sherlock six feet behind him, heart pounding, her SIG in her hand. She was running into back hallway when she heard a man’s voice yell, “You keep away or I’ll kill Joanna, you hear me?”
Autumn screamed at him, “Dillon, don’t look at him!”
“You look at me right now, fella, or she’s dead, you hear me?”
Savich raised his face to stare at Blessed Backman. He didn’t what he’d expected Blessed to look like, but this pallid, middle-aged man with his stooped narrow shoulders, his baggy pants belted too high over a golf shirt, his light brown hair thinning—this man wasn’t it. He didn’t look like a bogeyman in a horrific nightmare. Except for his eyes. There was something moving behind his eyes, something corrupt, something hot and twisted. This man looked like he saw things others didn’t. He looked like he saw the flames burning in hell. and warmed his hands over them. They were Tammy Tuttle’s eyes.
He watched Blessed’s face take on an immense focus, felt his un-godly need to get inside his head, to control him, destroy him. And he felt the instant Blessed realized he couldn’t get in.
Savich smiled. “I guess not, Blessed.”
Blessed’s eyes flared wild and panicked, and he howled, “No! Who are you? There can’t be two of you!”
Savich said, never taking his eyes off Blessed’s face, “Autumn, look at this man who let his gift be corrupted. Let Joanna go now, Blessed. Release your hold on her.”
Blessed swung those mad burning eyes toward Joanna. “Oh, no the bitch will do as I say.”
Joanna brought the gun up slowly, very slowly, and she aimed it her head.
Savich shot him.
The force of the bullet knocked Blessed against the wall, sending a picture thudding to the floor beside him. As he slid down the wall, he stared hard at Savich. He looked momentarily bewildered before he slammed his palm against his shoulder, and his mouth opened and closed as he watched the blood ooze bright red between his fingers.
Tammy Turtle’s face was bright in Savich’s mind. This man was as mad and dangerous as she had been, and he knew he should kill him because he would never stop, never. But he slowly lowered his SIG.
Sherlock ran to Joanna, took the gun, stuck it in her belt, and shook her by the shoulders. Autumn kept hitting her mother’s arm. Sherlock yelled right in her face, “Wake up, Joanna!”
Tears streamed down Autumn’s face as her fists flailed at her mother and she cried over and over, “Mama, come back, come back!”
Sherlock continued to shake her until Joanna blinked, her eyes finally focusing on Sherlock’s face. She looked dazed, but she was herself again. “What happened? Autumn? Where are you?”
Autumn clasped her mother around her waist, squeezed hard, and whispered, “Dillon shot Blessed. It’s going to be all right now. Sherlock, you’re sure Mama’s okay?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Sherlock said, and hugged the two of them against her. She saw Dillon jerk the case off a pillow, watched him drop to his haunches and apply pressure on the wound.
Blessed was moaning in short gasps, deep in his throat, obviously hurting, and that was fine by Savich. His eyes popped open, and he stared up at Savich.
“How did you do that?”
“Sounds like a question for your guru, Blessed. Press your palm hard over this pillowcase, and the chances are good the bleeding will slow. Don’t press hard enough and you might bleed ro death right here in the sheriffs guest bedroom. I doubt anyone would feel sorry about it.”
Joanna walked to stand over him, but she didn’t look at his face. She looked at the blood smearing his hand and kicked him hard to the side.
He moaned, tried to spit at her but couldn’t. “I stymied you. I should have had you put that gun in your mouth right away and—”
“When you stymied me? That’s what you call it? I felt you, you bastard, trying to make me crazy, trying to make me see and feel horrible things. I should have walked in here shooting. I should have emptied my gun into you.” She kicked him again, in the ribs, and he gave a long, lovely cry of pain. “You got anything else to say, you monster?”
He looked at her hard, but she still didn’t raise her eyes to his face. “Look at me, woman!”
“Forget it, Blessed, or I’ll shoot you again,” Savich said. “You should step back, Joanna.” He looked up to see Ethan standing in the bed-room doorway, his two deputies behind him. “Ethan, could you call 911? We’re going to have to do this carefully, blindfold him so he doesn’t attack anybody else. I’ll ride in the ambulance with him.”
Joanna said, “Stymie. That’s what this pathetic worm calls what he does to people’s heads.”
“Stymie,” Ethan repeated, as if tasting the bizarre word. He went down on his knees beside Blessed, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, and tied it around Blessed’s head, covering his eyes. “Try to take off the blindfold, Blessed, and I’ll kick you from here to the Sweet Onion River.” Only then did he dial 911. Faydeen answered on the first ring, as Ethan knew she would. Whenever she was on call for 911, she walked around with her cell phone clipped to her bra.
“Sorry to interrupt your lovely Tuesday evening, Faydeen, but we need an ambulance out at my place. We got Blessed Backman here, and he’s got a fresh bullet wound in his shoulder.”
“Good going, Ethan. Hey, why didn’t you kill the miserable bug?”
34
WHEN ETHAN CLOSED his cell he said to Savich, “Faydeen wants to know why you didn’t kill the miserable bug.”
Savich said, “I seriously considered it for a second, but I had to let it go. Sorry.”
Ethan shook his head. “We can’t kill him now, dammit. I mean, I’d like to, but I can’t, you know? Now we even have to keep him safe All right, we’ll deal with it.”
