I followed him out to the lobby and paused at a breakfast spread someone had laid out. I had already decided to forget about our primitive bathing facilities, little more than a can of heated water in freezing shower stall, but I wanted food. There was coffee, weak but wonderful, and a big pile of homemade-looking sausages and homemade-looking flatbread. I realized that everything except the coffee, which was probably brewed up from salvaged grounds, we had made ourselves. Nick Hackler had on an apron and a smile as I approached his buffet. I realized instantly that he had probably gone to great effort to put all this together.
“Smells great!” I said, digging up three of the sausages, they were about as big as a hot dog each. I wrapped them in the lumpy brown flatbread and putting them on a plate. “Great to see we are becoming independent. No more canned crap around here!”
Nick beamed his appreciation. I meant the praise sincerely. We dammed well had better start making our own food at some point. I bit into the flakey bread and hot brown sausage with only the tiniest hesitation. The texture was all wrong and the taste was decidedly gamey, and what flashed into my mind was an image of Vance out there in the woods with his traps and his sack full of squirming animals. My hunger and my concern for Nick, who was watching me intently, got me through the natural gag reflex. I choked down a big bite and grinned at him.
The Preacher took a somewhat less ambitious helping and headed outside. Monika took nothing but a paper cup of coffee. We followed the Preacher out into the open air of the morning.
The air was clean and fresh and for once it was bright and sunny outside. But I could see immediately that gray weather was rolling in from the north, in fact, it looked like another storm. There was a black roiling center to those distant clouds. I recalled the terror of the last big storm we’d had and frowned northwards.
“I don’t like the look of those clouds,” I said.
“Neither do I,” said Mrs. Hatchell. She had appeared outside with us. “That’s the same look we had the day of the storm, the bad storm. All we need is another tree tearing the place up.”
“We should make preparations,” said the Preacher.
“We’ve already cut down all the perimeter trees,” said Hatchell, and I looked around, realizing it was true. When I had staggered into the compound at night I’d not noticed, but she was right, they had cut down the trees.
“What day is it?” I asked them, worried, suddenly, that I had lost weeks of time again while down in the underworld beneath the lake.
“Relax,” chuckled the Preacher. “Or perhaps don’t relax. For it is All Hallows Eve, and none of our few remaining precious children will be dressing up as goblins tonight. There will be no need.”
I eyed him and the sky in turn, alarmed. What had our ancestors feared during this night, the night of the harvest moon, for all those centuries past?
“I’ll go do what I can to prepare,” said Hatchell. She looked pointedly at Monika. “Monika, I could use your help.”
Monika looked startled, and then looked at me. I could tell she did not want to leave me alone with the Preacher, perhaps she did not trust his gentle intentions.
I looked at her and gave her a smile and a nod.
“Okay,” she said, and she followed Hatchell into the center. I thought I saw a calculating look on Hatchell’s face as she watched the Preacher for a moment, then led Monika away. Perhaps I was just getting paranoid. Hatchell always wore a calculating expression.
We ate our ground-up, spiced squirrel meat, or whatever it was, for few minutes in silence. I spat out a tiny bone and couldn’t finish my last one.
“We need to talk,” I said.
“Indeed.”
“Who goes first?”
“To build trust,” said the Preacher, “we should trade information one piece at a time.”
I nodded. “All right, I’ll go first.” I told him then about Wilton, about finding hoof-prints and then her hoof and then banishing her. I added in my encounters with the hag and her similar hooves, but didn’t tell the full story of the drowned habitation known as Elkinville, or the lantern, not yet. I did tell him about the sharpening stone, with the Hag’s hoof imprinted upon it. He listened to that part most intently.
He nodded speculatively. “I knew some of that, but not all. Thank you.”
“And, your story? Where have you been? What do you have on your belt?”
He sipped his coffee before beginning. “I find the part about your gift from the Hag to be the most disturbing. I too, you see, carry a gift from a creature not too dissimilar.”
He then told me that he had also visited Malkin in his limestone caverns beneath the hills near his cabin. It made sense to me that he would have found it first, that shift line was drawn directly between Redmoor and his cabin.
“My experiences in the cave were similar to yours, but not identical. I came out only last night, after you had gone to the lakeshore. I found when I got to the center that weeks had passed, not hours, just as you did. When I was there in his lair with him, he did talk to me, he did show me, at length, the heads that floated and rolled in the soupy water of his black pool. My reaction was different, however, and so was his. I talked with him about it, and I forgave him, and I told him how his sins might be forgiven forever,” at this point, the Preacher, gestured meaningfully with his Bible.
“And how did that go?” I asked, curious. I had not thought of talking about religion with these creatures.
“He did not laugh at me, he did not become angry. I’d say his response was one of curiosity. He told me he had slept eight times, and awakened nine times, this being the ninth awakening. He told me that long, long ago, in a time so distant that even his memory failed him, perhaps soon after his first awakening, he had had dealings with a creator such as the one I spoke of,” the Preacher shuddered, I thought from deep fear. I was concerned to see such an emotion grip him. He had never shown such a feeling before.
He shook his head, “I don’t know, Gannon. Does that make him an angel, or one of the fallen ones? Or something else that is not written of, that is beyond our feeble, short-lived knowledge?”
“Our ignorance of these things might kill us,” I said, and I told him of Wilton’s theory, that we were all shades of gray now, partway between human and changeling.
The Preacher nodded. “There is some wisdom in that point of view. We have all been tainted, there is no escape. We are all now creatures both mundane and magical.”
While he had spoken he had sat down upon the dead burned tree which now served us all as a bench in the parking lot. He stood up then, straight as a sword, and his face took on the stern demeanor I knew so well.
“But there is a line that can be drawn, I’m sure of it. Determining exactly where the line lies, however, is the difficult part. But it can be drawn, and I will be the one to draw it, if no other is up to the task.”
Again, as if excited by his mood, the thing on his belt shifted. It reminded me of an anxious pet, trying vainly to get its master’s attention. He turned blazing eyes to me. I blinked, there was wisdom and murder in those eyes, all wrapped into one. And, most strongly of all, what blazed out from those windows into his soul was stern, fixated stubbornness. I felt his strength of will like a warm fire and I admired it.
“And what of the thing on your belt, I don’t think you got to that part,” I said gently.
He relaxed somewhat, and breathed deeply. “Yes, our bargain,” he said. “I got the axe from Malkin. It was a gift from the fissures of hell, or heaven, or the primordial residue of creation itself-whatever these places connect one to. Unlike your sword, however, it wasn’t from an imprinted stone left behind, it was from a tiny cut upon his tiny foot, and a splash of his ancient blood that was left there. Like a magical oil, it brought the axe alive.”
“How did you catch him?” I asked.
The Preacher grinned and that grin was not entirely healthy and clean. “I was fascinated by him, and he by me, and when he did not accept the forgiveness I’m bound to offer even such a soul as his, I passed judgment upon him.”
With unnatural speed and grace, the axe appeared in the Preacher’s hand. He had reached down in a blur of motion and drawn it from where it begged to be drawn, ripped it from the loop of old stinking leather and pulled it out into the fresh air of the fall morning. It was big and black and it reflected the sunlight in white gleaming arcs. I was startled, but I could only stare at the curved black blades-for in the bright light of day I now saw the axe had two blades where I had seen it before with only one. The blades clouded over for a moment at the touch of my
