the hidden form beneath, blending into the shadows that seemed to be stretching out toward him. From the heart of that darkness, a pair of eyes shone dully beneath the thin hint of light that somehow broke through the sheath of branches. There was something in those eyes that he had never seen before. They were so cold, so cold…
Thrusting with his hips, he flopped over onto all fours, scrambling across the dead needles that poked straight through the thick skin on his palms. The jeans shredded back from his knees as the hard ground rose up and tore at him, trying to keep him from reaching his feet.
Tears streamed from his eyes, his heart jackhammering, fit to burst. He could see the path ahead as he scrambled to his feet, stumbling before launching himself headlong into the masses of branches, barely throwing his arms in front of his face in time to keep the needles from raking the flesh on his face.
He hurdled along the path, breaking through the mass of branches that shielded the other side, his feet propelling him onward as he fought to see through the small gap he had left between his arms. Branches grabbed at him from all sides, trying to get a grip on him to keep him from escaping their wooden clutches.
There was a sharp and sudden pain in his right toe, his leg aching straight through to the thigh as he felt himself become airborne, his hands reflexively reaching out in front of him to brace his fall. His chest was the first to hit, slamming onto the frozen turf, knocking what little air he had in his chest out with a loud groan. Fighting for air, he tried to push himself back to his knees, unable to draw in even the slightest gasp of oxygen.
Straight ahead, he could see the light from the parking lot, the darkened apartment complex through the bare branches of the hedge from where they had first entered the forest. He could see Chopper sitting at the door, staring straight up at the doorknob as though someone were going to let him in.
Jeremy’s clawed hands tore at the turf, urging him toward the parking lot. His shoulders shook and tears streamed in waves down his cheeks, his collapsed chest struggling to come up with enough air to cry out.
There was sharp pressure to either side of his neck, clamping on the thin muscles above his clavicle. All he could do was watch the parking lot as he was suddenly ripped from the ground and into the air, his flopping legs dangling above the ground. He mouthed the words, hoping that just once the sound would come.
“Help me!”
The words came in a dry burst that wouldn’t even qualify as a whisper.
“Somebody, please! Help me!”
His voice trailed off into the night as he was turned, the parking lot fading away behind him. There was now nothing but wave after wave of snow-matted pine needles ripping into the flesh on his face as he was led deeper into the forest.
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THE BLOODSPAWN
Michael McBride
© 2004 Michael McBride. All rights reserved.
PART TEN
PART 10
XIII
Tuesday, November 15th
4 a.m.
Leaning back in the chair at the computer, Scott stretched his arms above his head, stifling a yawn as he tried to work out the dull ache that had settled in at the base of his spine. He had been pouring over the Internet for what felt like an eternity, trying to come up with anything at all that could lead him to the whereabouts of the child that Harry had saved so many years ago. Everything within the State of Colorado Department of Child Welfare and Social Services web sites was password controlled, and, try as he might, he had no luck entering. From there he had moved on to some of the adoption location agencies, some of which claimed they could locate the adoptive child’s parentage within forty- eight hours. He had found one such service, The People Network, which had been the only one of the many web sites that he had encountered that had anyone online to help. They had been unable to offer their forty-eight hour guarantee as special circumstances surrounded the initial adoption, but had gladly taken his credit card number. The agent, as he was called, had promised that they would either call or fax him as soon as they knew anything, but said not to expect to hear from them for at least four to five days unless they got lucky. So now, it was just a matter of waiting.
He rubbed his weary eyes and glanced over at the clock.
4:18 a.m.
His body was a seething mass of pain and discomfort, every strained and pulled muscle begging for him to just lie down, if even for just a little while. But he knew, as he could tell most every other night, that there was no way that his mind would shut down for any stretch of time, let alone long enough to fall asleep. And this night was no different than any other, but piled even higher with the stress of suddenly having to deal battling supernatural forces for the fate of two hundred souls. He was already short a couple of buddies from high school. The first thing on his agenda in the morning was to call what remained of his old social circle to see if he could convince the others—if they were actually still alive—to get the hell out of town for a while.
He still wasn’t sure that he completely accepted everything about the current situation as it stood. Sure, he had seen two of his best friends brutally slaughtered, but there was almost a dream-like quality to it. Almost as though their deaths existed only in his imagination. There were no bodies lying on cold, stainless steel tables in a coroner’s lab, their lifeless corpses awaiting the final touches on their make up in the back office of a funeral parlor. There was nothing tangible about it in the slightest. All that he had were the vague recollections of what, in all actuality, were fairly traumatic moments, with absolutely no physical evidence that the bodies had ever actually been there.
And then there was the diary and the files they had found in the little room back in the tunnel. The whole concept of a devil that wandered the earth planting his seed, with the sole purpose of that child, that bloodspawn, bringing the ultimate deaths of two hundred people was outside his comprehension. It seemed completely preposterous from just a surface view. The fact that there was an entire sect of nuns devoted to tracking and battling with this hitchhiking devil seemed like something out of an early eighties horror flick he might have seen on the USA network in the middle of the night.
But he had seen whatever it was that had torn his friend clean in two. He had felt it down there with him in that darkened tunnel earlier in the day, had tasted its cold breath, felt it on his bare skin. Maybe he would have been able to shrug the whole thing off and go to sleep; dismissing all of the nuns’ accumulated information with the most lackadaisical shrug. But the fact remained that he had seen it with his own eyes, and whether he bought into the whole bloodspawn theory or not, he had seen enough over the last couple of days to know better than to not take it seriously.
And, truthfully, he wasn’t sure of exactly what he was supposed to do, but from everything that he had read and seen that day, it seemed like the best place to start was to try and figure out this whole bloodspawn thing. The first question that needed to be answered was what had happened to this child that Harry had rescued from the Cavenaugh house so many years ago?
“Harry?” Scott said, turning in the swiveling chair to face the living room.
Harry’s head lay back on the top of the recliner chair, his mouth wide open as he wheezed heavily. His chest rose and fell rhythmically, the diary, which he had been reading, had fallen from his lap to the floor. The arms of the chair did little more than prop up his arms. His hands dangled over the sides, nearly touching the carpet.
Chuckling to himself, Scott rose from the computer chair and crossed the living room, stretching his arms straight over his head as he walked beneath the high, vaulted ceiling. He lurched up the stairs, his exhausted legs fighting him the whole way as they did little more than drag his limp feet up the steps. Rounding the corner and walking down the short hallway into his bedroom, he paused at the foot of his bed, staring down at the unmade
