And the anxiety that had buzzed at the edge of his thoughts slid clearly into focus.
There was a reason that his Uncle Alf had insisted that the marks be tended to on a regular basis.
As Patrick watched, two more figures emerged from the shadows in front of Izzie and Daphne. The two women were now surrounded, ahead and behind on either side, and the Ridden were closing in fast.
Izzie gave Daphne’s hand one last squeeze and then let go, reaching for her semiautomatic, which sat in a holster slightly behind her right hipbone. As she drew the pistol, with her other hand she reached into the left pocket of her suede jacket, fingers searching for the Ziploc bag that she’d stuffed in there that morning, hoping against hope that it was still there.
“Izzie?” Daphne stood shoulder to shoulder with her, and had already drawn her own pistol out of its holster. “Any ideas?”
“I’m working on it,” Izzie answered, and felt a brief surge of triumph as her fingers closed on the plastic bag in her pocket.
Izzie raised her left hand out in front of her, the makeshift gris-gris bag hanging from it, and held it out toward the nearest of the approaching Ridden.
But the Ridden seemed unaffected by the salt, quartz, and silver in the lumpy bag, and continued to shuffle toward her, its eyes seeming cold and lifeless in a face that was so marred by blots that it was practically a walking shadow.
“Izzie?” Daphne hissed through gritted teeth.
Izzie spared the briefest of glances down toward the mouth of the alley, where Patrick stood with his pistol in hand, Joyce right behind him. The Ridden seemed uninterested in either of them, which suggested that the unobscured and unobstructed marks on the building in that end of the alley were keeping the Ridden at bay. But how could she and Daphne reach that spot of safety? There were six Ridden approaching them slowly but inexorably, three on either side, blocking their escape down either end of the alleyway.
“Stay back!” Daphne shouted to the Ridden on her side, punctuating her words with a sharp jab of her pistol’s barrel. “I will shoot if you come any closer.”
One of the Ridden opened its mouth, jaw hanging open at unnatural angle, and an inhuman-human sounding noise shuddered forth. It sounded almost like “Ke-ke-ke-ke . . .”
Were the Ridden attempting to communicate? Was this their best approximation of human speech? Or was it just a voiceless threat?
The Ridden with the open mouth lurched forward, arms out and grasping toward Daphne only a few short paces away.
“Stay back!” Daphne shouted, pulling the trigger. Her pistol rang out as she fired a round into the Ridden’s torso, but the blot-covered shambler seemed unfazed.
Bullets weren’t the answer, Izzie knew.
“Hang on,” Izzie said, holstering her own pistol and then zipping open the mouth of the plastic bag. “I’ve got an idea.”
Simply holding the salt in her hand wasn’t going to be enough, she realized. She had to be smarter, use the tools at her disposal the way that she already knew would work. Her mind raced as she thought back to what she had read in Roberto Aguilar’s journals, taking a step toward the nearest of the Ridden.
“Izzie, what are you doing?” Daphne shouted.
“Did you bring yours?” Izzie bent down and tipped out a line of salt on the tarmac between herself and the Ridden, then continued in a slow clockwise arc as she moved in front of Daphne. When Daphne didn’t answer, she clarified, “The gris-gris bag? The Ziploc I gave you this morning?”
“Oh,” Daphne said in a quiet voice, sounding abashed. “No, I left it inside.”
“We’ll have to hope this is enough,” Izzie answered, eyes still on the ground as she carefully continued to mark out a tight orbit around the spot where they stood, leaving a faint circle of sea salt glittering on the dark tarmac underfoot.
By the time she reached the point where she had started, and closed the circuit around them, there were only a few grains of salt left in the plastic bag. She stood up, pocketing the Ziploc, and moved to stand close to Daphne at the center of a circle of sea salt roughly four feet in diameter.
Izzie remembered the circle that Nicholas Fuller had marked out on the metal floor of the lighthouse’s lantern room where he dismembered his victims, a final barrier against an attack. Would it be enough to protect her and Daphne now?
The nearest of the Ridden reached the edge of the circle and stopped short, as though it had hit a wall. The tips of its toes were mere inches from the salt, and if it had reached out its arms it could have grabbed Izzie easily. But the Ridden kept its arms at its sides, seemingly unwilling even to reach across the line.
As Izzie and Daphne huddled together, the other five Ridden approached the protective ring of salt, and all stopped short, just like the first one had. They stood, swaying slightly back and forth, feet planted on the ground just inches from the salt ring. And as one, they opened their mouths, impossibly wide, and that same horrible, inhuman sound shuddered forth.
“Ke-ke-ke-ke.”
Izzie thought that they were safe for the moment, but she wasn’t sure how long that would last. As the breeze picked up once more, Izzie could see some of the salt on the ground begin to stir, and she knew that it wouldn’t last for long.
Patrick had watched as Izzie shuffled her way around Daphne, hunched over and pouring out salt, and realized immediately what she was trying to do.
“Are you okay?” he called out, cupping one hand by the side of his mouth to direct the sound of his voice.
“For the moment,” Izzie answered, shouting to be heard over the unsettling sound coming from the
