THEO WAS SITTING ON THE FOOT OF THE BED PUTTING ON HIS shoes after his nap when movement outside his window caught his attention. It was Ty running dead out toward the woods south of the cabin. Several things about that stuck Theo as odd and he watched the boy until he disappeared into the trees.
Why had Ty decided to go outside right now? Any fool could see the storm wasn’t finished with them yet. If his mama knew he was out there, she’d likely wring the boy’s neck, nervous as she got about lightning. And as on-edge as she was today, she’d grab that boy and snatch him bald-headed. Couldn’t blame her for being jumpy, though. Today was it. The full moon. That madman’s last shot at her. She probably didn’t even close her eyes to blink last night and hadn’t been able to sit still all morning. Didn’t help that it was storming.
Which brought his mind full circle to Ty. What was that boy doing out there in a storm? When he crossed the creek into the trees on the other side, he’d been looking back over his shoulder as he ran, then he turned and headed upstream. That didn’t make a lick of sense. Why had the boy run straight toward the woods like a bat out of hell when the place he always played was Notmuchuva Waterfall, in the back left corner of the bowlshaped valley? To get there, you cut diagonally across the meadow behind the cabin.
Last but by no means least in Theo’s list of confusions was the dog, or rather the absence of the beast. It was never more than a step behind Ty no matter where he went—even to the bathroom. Where was P.D.?
Theo slid his foot into his other shoe, tied it, picked up his coffee cup and saucer from the bedside table as he passed and headed into the family room. He noticed that the pile of kindling had been scattered on the floor and a brick was missing from the hearth.
He found Gabriella in the kitchen washing something in the sink. He had to speak up so she could hear him over the water running, or maybe he needed to talk louder so he could hear himself.
“Ty and that dog is just about joined at the hip, but that walking fur machine’s not with him now—and he’s playing outside in the rain.”
GABRIELLA SHUT OFF the water in the sink under the window and turned to face Theo, who was complaining about something P.D. had done.
“Theo, look at this!” She held out the dripping geode. “I found it—” Then she heard a sound the running water had masked. The sound of tires crunching on the gravel beside the cabin.
Theo’s eyes got huge. The coffee cup and saucer he was holding clattered to the floor and shattered, the sound gobbled up by the sudden hammering of her heart in her ears. She turned slowly, agonizingly slowly to see what Theo could see out the window over her shoulder. But she knew. Before she saw the black jeep and the man stepping quickly out of it, she knew. Yesheb had found her. She’d always known he would.
Which meant he had gotten the gate key from Pedro. A sob started in her throat but died there from lack of air. Pedro wouldn’t have given the key up willingly. What had Yesheb done to him to get it? The thought of Pedro hurt, maybe even … dead … no! Oh, please, no! Her protests melted away then like fog on a warm morning and she faced how much Pedro meant to her. Not that it mattered anymore.
The gun! It was upstairs on the bedside table. Maybe she could get to it before … but she couldn’t move. Her legs wouldn’t obey her command to run and she stood rooted to the spot. Her fingers turned numb and the geode tumbled out of them and turned over and over in slow motion as it fell.
A part of her mind registered a random impression before panic exploded in it, obliterating all thought.
Yesheb’s hair … it’s white!
THEO UNDERSTOOD NOW why Ty had run away, looking over his shoulder like the devil himself was chasing him. He was! A devil who intended to—No! Not Ty, not that precious little boy! But what could Theo do about it? Wasn’t a way in the world a useless old man could help the boy, or Gabriella either.
Lord, please! Tell me what to do!
And it came to him instantly. He wasn’t useless. In fact, if he played his cards right, he might be able to give Ty a gift that would save his life—time. Time to hide real good in the woods where that fruit loop would never find him.
Gabriella was frozen, a marble statue, but he could hear her gasping, drawing in great gulps of air like she was drowning. She must have felt like she was, having to face down a madman, must be scared out of her wits. Theo wasn’t scared, though. He thought the same thing he did the first night they ran away from the Looney Tune through the streets of Pittsburgh: Scared would wear you out, and right now Theo didn’t have a speck of energy to spare.
In much less time than it should have taken him to get from the jeep to the house, Yesheb materialized in the doorway leading to the mudroom.
What’s wrong with you people? Don’t never lock yo cars or yo houses! Might as well hang up a neon sign, flashing “Here I is; mess me over.”
Must have been some trick of his screwed-up senses, but Theo could have sworn a wash of cold air preceded the man into the room, like what hits you when you open the freezer door on a hot day. And it wasn’t no breeze from outside; he’d closed the outside door behind him.
Yesheb had obviously been out in the rain without an umbrella. His clothes were soaked, his hair—it was white!—was wild, must have partially dried in the wind as he drove. He didn’t have a weapon, at least not one you could see, but Theo knew the man was too smart to come here unarmed. He had a gun or a knife on him somewhere. And Theo was likely to make the close personal acquaintance of one or both of them in the next few minutes. But he would put off that introduction as long as he possibly could.
“I was wondering when you was gone turn up,” Theo said, looked the man right in the eyes. They were a blue as pale as ice on a bird bath. “It being a full moon and stormy, we been expecting you.”
“Stay out of my way, old man,” Yesheb said and took a step toward Gabriella.
“Not planning on getting in your way, wouldn’t think of doing a thing like that. Ole Slappy got better sense than to mess with a man like yourself, strong and powerful as you is.”
A little flattery goes a long way with some people.
“But I do got a question for you. You being a smart fellow—maybe you know the answer. Tell me … if you was to try to fail and you succeeded, which did you do?”
Yesheb stared at him, dumbfounded, like he was the lunatic. And that was fine. Theo didn’t care if the fool thought he was a cross-eyed aardvark. There was a clock going tick, tick, tick, and every second that passed Ty was getting farther and farther away from the cabin.
“Leave us alone, you crazy old fool,” Yesheb said. “I have no quarrel with you. Don’t make me hurt you. My business is with … Zara.”
He pronounced the name with a thousand shades of aching and longing.
“Nobody named Zara here,” Theo said. “Your GPS must have brought you to the wrong house. Happens up here all the time. We get folks who took a wrong turn in Poughkeepsie and boom, they’re on our doorstep.” Theo cocked his head to the side. “Shhhh. Listen.” He paused. “You hear it? That little shrunk-up Englishwoman out there in your jeep is hollering, ‘recalculating … recalculating … re—’”
“Shut up! Stop your prattling. Sit down at the table and don’t make another sound. I won’t tell you again.”
“You think I’m afraid of you?”
“You should be afraid.”
“What for? What’s the worst thing you can do—kill me? And that would be a bad thing because …?”
Yesheb shoved him toward the table but Theo was so unsteady on his feet, he went down in a heap on the floor, banging his knee painfully. Gabriella gasped, took a step toward him but he held up his hand. He looked at Yesheb and smiled. “Don’t get your feelings hurt that you don’t scare me. Don’t nothing else scare me, neither. I got me a brain tumor that should have planted ole Slappy under the daisies a long time ago.” He heard a stifled sob from Gabriella and was touched by it. Oh, how he’d hate it if something bad happened to her. “So you see, if you want to send me over the River Jordan right now, I’m good with that. The Archangel Gabriel probably gone put me in time-out for being late at the Pearly Gates as it is.”
Yesheb reached down and grabbed Theo’s collar, pulled it so tight around his neck he couldn’t get his breath. With one arm, he yanked Theo up off the floor to a kneeling position and ground out words into his face. “I am holding my temper for Zara’s sake. I want to be gentle with her, not upset her. But you will leave me no choice—”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I’ll be quiet, won’t say another word.” Theo made a little-kid zipper motion across his mouth.
Yesheb let go of his collar and he slumped back onto his heels. Then the white-haired man turned to Gabriella. “My dear Z—”
“Just … one more itty bitty question, and this is the last one, I promise.”
“I’m warning you …”
“If a turtle loses his shell, is he naked … or homeless?”
With the speed of a striking rattlesnake, Yesheb slipped his hand into his jacket, withdrew a pistol from his shoulder holster and slammed the gun into Theo’s face. He felt no pain, only pressure—like what you feel when the dentist pulls a tooth and your gums is so numb you got spit drooling down your chin. He could hear the bones breaking, though, and teeth shattering. He could also hear Gabriella’s high, wailing, “Nooooo!” but it came from a great distance, from some place on a high peak where the wind whistled and wailed with the voices of lost children.
Then Theodosius X. Carmichael’s lights went out.
GABRIELLA’S THOUGHTS WERE bats, diving at her in a darkened room where they could see and she couldn’t, water spiders racing across the surface of a pond without puncturing the delicate tension of the water.
Yesheb was in the room and she had no memory of him coming here. And no memory of any time that he wasn’t here—the forever now of her horror obliterated the past and the future alike.
She heard Theo talking to him in a normal tone of voice, like he was discussing the Dow Jones Industrial Average or bowling balls or crop circles. There was no fear in Theo. He was fighting with what little he had, waving a red flag in front of the bull.
The old man’s bravery splashed cold water into Gabriella’s face, slapped her into reality so abruptly her head actually snapped back. Yesheb shoved Theo toward the table and the old man stumbled and fell. She moved to help him but he waved her away.
“… got me a brain tumor that should have planted ole Slappy under the daisies a long time ago.”
A sob hitched out of her throat. He was sick. He was going to die.
Earth to Gabriella: So are you and Ty!
Ty! The boy was upstairs painting a picture like the one that hung now on the refrigerator with the watercolors still wet. A little-kid drawing of the view from the front porch—at least that’s what he’d said it was. But the proportions were all wrong so the valley looked like it was taller than the mountain range on the other side of it. There was something unrecognizable in the foreground—a squirrel or a bear, maybe. Perhaps just a rock. The colors were nice, though. Ty probably didn’t even know yet there was any danger. That a man in his mom’s kitchen intended to plunge a dagger into his heart to offer his blood as a sacrifice to seal an unholy union.
No!
She had to do something. Think!
Nothing. Her mind was as blank as an empty plate.
Wait a minute ... Yesheb planned to sacrifice Ty as a part of their wedding ceremony, right? But there’d be no need for a sacrifice if there was no wedding, no union to dedicate. There’d be no reason to kill Ty if she refused to marry Yesheb!
Was it possible that she could save her son’s life with a single word—no? Better question, could she actually stand up to this monster in a human being suit? She’d have to defy him, refuse to allow the all-consuming terror he ignited in her soul to control her.
That maddeningly rational voice in her brain spoke up then, like it always did when she least wanted to hear from it: If you refuse to do what this man wants, he’ll kill you. He has no reason to keep you alive if you won’t marry him and fulfill his monstrous delusion.
I die, Ty lives.
She took a deep, shaky breath.
Okay … I die, Ty lives.
The rational Gabriella stuck its nose into her business one final time: Reality check. What makes you think he’ll let Ty live, let any of you live, if you defy him?
That was reality, alright. It wasn’t likely any of them were going to get out of this alive. But she had to try. She had to face down the evil she had created out of the depths of her own despair. The Beast of Babylon’s story had to end here, now. Today.
She heard Theo say something about a turtle’s shell and Yesheb reached into his jacket pocket and drew out a gun. With savage brutality, he slammed the pistol into Theo’s face and the old man collapsed in a bloody heap in the floor.
“Nooo!” Gabriella cried.
Then Yesheb aimed the pistol at Theo’s head.
“I warned you, old man.”
Before he could pull the trigger, Gabriella lunged at his gun hand, threw her whole body at it. He wasn’t expecting a blow, wasn’t braced for it, and she knocked him off balance into the kitchen chairs. The gun spun out of his hand, hit the hardwood floor, slid all the way across it and vanished under the loveseat in the family room. She and Yesheb fell together in a tangled heap beside Theo.
Yesheb was as quick as a cat. Before Gabriella even thought to struggle, he rolled over on top of her and pinned her beneath him. He raised up to his knees, then, straddling her chest, stared down at her with a look of such naked lust it made her nauseous.
“Oh, my beloved Zara, how good your body feels beneath me.”
“Get off me,” she demanded. At least in her head, she demanded. But the words came out barely louder than a whisper—not defiance, just a pleading whimper.
He didn’t move, just sat there staring down at her, twin flames burning in his eyes like pilot lights. Then, as he had done when he cornered her in the hallway outside her bedroom in Pittsburgh, he retreated, grabbed hold of his runaway emotions and held them in check. She actually heard his teeth grind together. He took a deep breath and let it out.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, my Sweet,” he said, his voice syrupy with feigned kindness. “I mean you no harm, ever. Surely, you know that. I want nothing in life more than to give you everything you ever dreamed of, to grant you a life free of care, a life where no desire of the heart is denied, no want unfulfilled.”
“Then get off me … please.”
“Of course, my beloved.”
He didn’t get to his feet, just lifted his body off hers and sat down on the floor beside her. She sat up and made to stand but he put a restraining hand on her shoulder. Just gentle pressure.
“Yes, we do.” She scooted away from him until her back connected with a cabinet and she leaned against it. She kept her focus on him, didn’t let her eye drift to Theo’s body, lying in a puddle of blood.
Her willingness to cooperate seemed to cheer him and he smiled.
“Our future lies before us and we have so many plans to make.”
The eagerness in his voice was almost pathetic. Incipient hysteria threatened to burst out—not in tears but in laughter.
Does he want to pick out wedding invitations and register our silver pattern?
She coughed, averted a peal of laughter and struggled to corral the stampede of thoughts in her mind and direct them out in a neat stream of words.
“No, Yesheb, we don’t have plans to make.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, but it was all the volume she could generate. “At least not plans … together.”
The look on his face was alarm, confusion. There was no anger. Yet.
“I want to make this as clear and uncomplicated as I possibly can.” Despite her best efforts to keep her voice steady, it trembled and quaked with every word. “I need for you to listen carefully and believe me.”
She took a deep breath, dived off the high board and began to fall, down … down …
“I am not Zara. I am Gabriella Carmichael. I wrote a book called The Bride of the Beast under the pen name Rebecca Nightshade. It was a novel. Fiction. Made up! Nothing in it was real.”
His hand shot out like a striking cobra and grabbed her wrist. His grip instantly cut off the circulation to her hand.
“I am not amused, Zara. The time for playfulness has passed. We are to be one today and we must—”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
The cork finally popped off the top of Gabriella’s bottled up emotions and she spewed out words she wasn’t conscious of formatting into language.
“How many things can no mean? No, I am not Zara. No, we are not going to be one. No, I will not marry you. You need me to draw you a picture?”
THE FOUNDATIONS OF the earth shift, rumble, and a mighty plume of fire licks up out of a crack in Yesheb’s other realm. The heat of it sears the back of his neck; blisters pop out on his skin.
“This. Cannot. Be!” roars The Voice in his head and the volume, force and pressure make blood squirt out of his nose and run down his upper lip.
“You do not mean that, Zara!” Yesheb’s voice sounds hollow in his own ears, airy and without strength or force. Almost … pleading.
“I do mean it.”
He can’t hear her voice over the rumble in his head, but he can read her lips. And every word is an individual dagger that stabs deep into his bowels, impales him so his blood issues forth from a dozen different wounds.
“I will not be your bride. In the story I made up, Zara has to come to the Beast willingly. I’m not willing. And you can’t force me.”
The world begins to slide into the flaming crack. He can see it happening as an overlaid image, like looking at a double-exposed photograph. Zara sits before him, so achingly beautiful he can barely breathe and in a filmy image in front of her, his universe is disintegrating.
“It is over,” says The Voice. Not shouting but dismissive. As if The Voice has better things to do than waste its time with a lowly ruler wannabe unable to control a single, powerless woman. Then The Voice booms, like the sounding of a great gong three times: “You. Have. Failed.”
Yesheb tilts his head back and emits a cry that is more feral than human, a cry huge and Jurassic that is ripped from the dark, fetid depths of his shattered soul.
He is hollow.
And then rage begins to seep into the hollow space like the sea through cracks in the hull of a mighty ship. It gains force, sprays into the emptiness in streams, begins to fill it up from the bottom, rising, rising. The deluge picks up momentum and rips out pieces of him, seawater chewing away hunks of the ship’s hull until finally the metal sides give way, the hull ruptures, and the sea rushes in to sink it to the bottom.
Yesheb Al Tobbanoft is no more. He exists only as the shell of a man filled to overflowing with a cataclysmic rage.
He leaps at Zara, actually growls, knocks her to the floor, fastens her slender neck in his hands and begins to squeeze the life out of her.
WHEN GABRIELLA TOLD Yesheb that she would not marry him she entertained the wild, irrational hope that he would simply get up and leave, a broken man, and never bother her again.
Then he leaned his head back and howled, the guttural cry of a dying wolf. The sound raised the hair on her arms, set her teeth on edge. It was not a human cry, not a sound that could possibly have come from a human throat.
When his outcry was over, he slowly lowered his head and she gasped at the sight of his face. His features were twisted in a tortured mask of blind fury, his eyes wells of bottomless hate. The Yesheb she had spoken to, who had chased her across the country, who had demanded she become a party to his delusional madness, was gone. In his place was rage in human form.
He leapt at her and grabbed her in a stranglehold.
“I will squeeze through the skin of your neck until your head comes off in my hands.”
Gabriella instantly saw black spots in the air, the sudden pressure forced blood up into her cheeks and she flushed bright red. She knew she would be dead in seconds.
Then he released the crushing force but kept his hands around her throat while she gasped in huge gulps of air.
“Oh, but you must not die before you know the fate of the others. Just as I promised that day in the airport, I will stomp the old man, break every bone until he is an unrecognizable, bloody pulp. And the boy …” He skinned his lips back in a bloodthirsty smile. “While your son squeals, ‘Mommy!’ I will cut his beating heart out of his chest, hold it quivering in my hand … and crush it!”
Gabriella wanted to scream, to cry, to claw his eyes out. But he began to squeeze her neck again and she knew she would not be able to save Ty.
Or Theo.
Or Pedro.
The three people she loved.
THEO AWOKE WITH the worst hangover of his life. He hurt everywhere, like he’d been hit by a truck. He couldn’t remember where he’d been or who he’d been drinking with, but he must have—
“… will cut his beating heart out of his chest, hold it—”
Theo opened his eyes. He was on his back on the floor and he could see Gabriella lying nearby. Yesheb was strangling her, his face twisted in maniacal hatred like Theo had never seen before.
Theo tried to move. Nothing worked.
You’re stronger than he is, Lord. Help me!
Two images appeared in his mind as clear as summer vacation slides projected on a wall. The first one was P.D. at the airport, his teeth bared, snarling into Yesheb’s face. The second was Ty running across the meadow toward the trees. Alone.
Theo understood. He summoned every ounce of strength he possessed and yelled with a commanding voice he could hardly believe was his own.
Just two words.
“P.D., come!”
There was a thundering sound on the stairs, a blur of blond fur shot through his vision and Yesheb flew backward into the kitchen chairs with eighty-five pounds of savage beast ripping at him. He hit the floor with P.D. on top of him, his muzzle already blood-stained from the hunk of flesh he had torn out of Yesheb’s arm. Yesheb screamed, writhed on the floor, tried to beat P.D. off. The dog emitted a rumbling growl as he clamped down on Yesheb’s wrist, fighting his way toward the man’s neck.
MUFFLED SOUNDS. GROWLING. Screaming.
Animal Planet, a lion attack with the volume turned down low. Gabriella opened her eyes, saw spots, closed them again. Thoughts and disconnected images spun around in her head but she could make no sense of any of them. And her throat hurt; every time she swallowed shards of pain shot down her neck.
The volume on the attack gradually grew louder until it sounded like it was right beside—
She opened her eyes again. She lay on her back on the floor, her head turned to the side. In her direct line of sight, maybe fifteen feet away, a savage beast she hardly recognized as P.D. was eating Yesheb alive.
Understanding hit her so hard it almost knocked her unconscious again. She turned her head slightly and jagged glass ripped open the inside of her neck. There lay Theo. His eyes were open.
Theo wasn’t dead! She couldn’t stand, but she managed to slide on her back across the floor to where he lay. His face was next to hers. She started to speak but discovered her voice was gone, her larynx too swollen to make a sound. Theo’s mouth was a mass of blood and broken teeth, but he was able to say all he needed to.
“Ty … ran away.” He sucked in a bubbling breath. “Find him …” Then his eyes slowly closed again. For good. Theo was gone.
Ty!
With a strength she didn’t know she possessed, Gabriella pulled herself to a sitting position, then lurched to her feet, the pain in her neck excruciating. P.D. and Yesheb fought violently a few feet away. Both were covered in blood. P.D. had obviously bitten into something vital. Yesheb would quickly bleed out at that rate. But she couldn’t think about that now. She couldn’t think … period. Gratefully she didn’t have to; she knew everything she needed to know. She had to find Ty.
She staggered toward the back door. She could hear the rain, could see through the window on the door that it was coming down hard. The sensible part of her mind was only connected to the rest of it by a thin thread, like a balloon on the end of a string. But it methodically produced a rational thought that told her she needed a raincoat, so she reached up and lifted hers off the hook by the door.
Bright flashes of lightning made iridescent shadows that fluttered like dream fire across the floor. Thunder rumbled on top of it. The storm was attacking the mountain again and Ty was out there somewhere!
She pulled the door open and stumbled out into the rain, dangling her jacket on the wet ground behind her like a sleepy child dragging a security blanket.
YESHEB DOESN’T KNOW at first what has hit him. Something huge crashes into his side, knocks him off Gabriella and sends him sprawling into the kitchen chairs. Then there are teeth and claws and pain. He cries out, tries to knock the monster dog away, but it clamps its teeth into his left forearm and rips out a piece of it. Yesheb howls in agony, flails at the animal. They tumble over and over. He kicks it, hits it, but it is all over him, biting and clawing, its teeth reaching up, seeking his neck.
The life-and-death struggle goes on and on; the world is a growling, savage beast with teeth that dig into his flesh. He screams, horrible, deathrattle shrieks and tries to roll away from the dog but it sinks its teeth into his shoulder and drags him back. His kicks and pummeling fists have absolutely no effect on the animal. It will not stop until it kills him.
He is dimly aware that Zara is gone. He manages to half stand, gets his feet knocked out from under him again and falls into the living room, goes down in a heap, drags a table down with him, scattering a lamp, bowls. He scrambles on his back, tries to beat the dog off when his hand lands on something long. A pipe! No, an umbrella. But it is the only weapon he has so he whacks the dog over the head with it. The beast yelps, grabs the umbrella in its teeth and yanks it out of Yesheb’s hand. Now, he has no weapon at …
Yes, he does! The dagger is in a sheath at his waist. But it is on the back of his belt and his jacket is buttoned on top of it. He can’t get at it and he is getting tired, so tired.
You’re going to die now. Die a pathetic failure, your disgrace unavenged, your honor gone.
It is not The Voice who speaks now. The place The Voice dwelt is a dark, empty hole where a cold wind whistles. This is Yesheb’s own voice.
You have only one chance to survive. Play dead. Curl into a ball, renounce pain and do not move no matter what the animal does.
Yesheb obeys. He scoots his back against the cabinet, buries his chin in his chest, wraps his arms around his knees and stops fighting. The dog keeps at him, rakes his claws down Yesheb’s thigh, sinks his teeth into his shoulder and shakes. Yesheb doesn’t respond. He feels the dog’s nose near his cheek right before it bites down on his ear, shakes back and forth and Yesheb feels his ear rip off. The dog steps back, barks. He steps forward again, bites Yesheb’s upper arm and pulls backward, growling. Yesheb doesn’t move.
He can hear the dog panting, looks out through a tiny slit and a forest of eyelashes. All he can see is a section of blood-smeared floor. And his own severed ear.
In the silence, they both hear it.
“Ty! Where are you? Ty, answer me. Ty!”
At the sound of her voice, the dog lifts his head, turns and bolts out of the room and out the door into the rain.
Yesheb remains rigid, fears the dog is waiting there, out of sight, ready to pounce at the first sign of life. And Yesheb knows he will not survive another attack. He has lost too much strength, too much blood.
He forces himself to count to three hundred slowly. Then he inches his eyes open, looks around without moving his head. He can see out the open back door into the gloom below the gray overcast. It is raining again now, but not as hard as before. Through the film of rain, he sees two figures in the distance. He lifts his head to get a better look. Yes. It’s the dog running out ahead and the woman behind it.
Yesheb uncoils, moans and tries to assess his injuries. He pulls himself to his feet, looks around the kitchen, finds a towel and shoves it over the gaping wound in his forearm. He must bind up his wounds as quickly as possible. And he must find something, a mop or broom handle, to knock his gun out from under the loveseat.