chapter 42
AS I WALKED BEHIND DACHEV, I KEPT GLANCING OVER my shoulder. None of the others followed us. Dachev must wield some power here—like the first man to travel beyond his prehistoric village and discover the existence of a greater world. Unlike those early explorers, I doubted Dachev shared his knowledge with his comrades, instead retaining that false edge of superiority for as long as he could.
When we reached the meadow, I led Dachev to a spot in the middle. Then I had a decision to make—turn my back to the village, to the forest at the other end, or to the meadow stretching off to either side. I chose the forest; it was far enough away that no one could leap out of it unnoticed, and I wanted to keep both eyes on that village.
As I turned to Dachev, I found him studying me, not with the insolent leer from earlier, but an academic stare, accompanied by a slight frown.
“We have met, have we not?” he said. “You appear familiar…and yet…” His frown flipped into a broad grin. “I’m quite certain I wouldn’t forget such an angel. So much prettier than the other one they sent. He wasn’t my type at all.”
“We’ve never met,” I said. “The last time you were top-side, I hadn’t even been born.”
He gave me another once-over, pausing at my eyes, his confusion obvious. He recognized something there…just wasn’t sure what it was. Too bad. If he didn’t know I was a witch, I wasn’t enlightening him about that, any more than I was letting him know I wasn’t an angel.
“Do you have a name, pretty one?” he asked.
“Everyone does.”
He waited. When I said nothing, his lips tweaked in a smile.
“The exchange of names is the first part of any polite conversation,” he said.
“Yep,” I said. “It is.”
When I didn’t continue, he laughed. “Not even going to humor me, are you? The other one did. He was very polite. Very…understanding. And most companionable. I think he wanted to be my friend.”
“I’m sure he did.”
Dachev’s brows lifted as he tried to suppress a grin.
“You doubt his sincerity? Oh, but he was so sincere. He didn’t make me stand in this meadow. He accepted my invitation, came right to my house, to prove how much he trusted me. Don’t you trust me?”
“No.”
Another barely contained grin. “You should. It makes things so much more pleasant. The other angel sat right at my table and told me he understood that I’d been tempted and succumbed. After all, I was human…just as he’d been, so he understood temptation. What the Fates did to me was wrong, putting this poor sinner in such a situation, into contact with one such as the Nix. She tempted me, and I fell from grace.”
“Uh-huh. Moving right along. You know why I’m here, so—”
“See? Now you’re being rude. Katsuo was so much nicer. He wasn’t in a hurry. He listened to me, listened most intently as I confessed my sins and told him what the Nix and I had done. Then I told him what I wished I’d done…in beautiful, intricate detail, everything I wished I could have done to those women, if only it had been me in those killers’ bodies. I described every cut I would have made, every degradation I would have inflicted.” Dachev’s face gathered in a mock frown. “That’s when he left. Left without even saying good-bye.” He looked over at me. “Do you think Katsuo remembers me? Perhaps in his dreams?” He flashed a wide smile. “I hope so.”
I said nothing.
“Do angels dream?” he said. “Can they have nightmares? Or are they all dreams like this?” He waved a dismissive hand around the meadow. “Visions of wildflowers and sunny skies. We dream, you know. When we sleep, the cracks in our memory open, just enough to let out a flash here, a glimpse there. And there are no wildflowers and sunny skies in our dreams. Sometimes I hear the others screaming. They keep me awake at night.”
“Damned shame.”
A shark-toothed smile. “A damned shame indeed. You aren’t even going to feign sympathy, are you?”
“If you want sympathy, I’ll send Katsuo. If you want to cut a deal, you’re stuck with me.”
“A deal? I do like the sound of that. Let me see…what should I ask for? Well, first, of course, I want out of here.”
I laughed.
“Oh, not permanently. Just a visit, under escort, of course. I—”
“No. I couldn’t arrange it even if I wanted to.”
“Pictures, then.”
“Huh?”
“When I was out there, with the Nix, whenever we killed someone, the police took so many pictures. Click, click, click. Every angle, every close-up.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “Such attention to detail. Even I was impressed.”
“You want those photos?” I said.
“No, no. Those I remember. And they weren’t truly mine. I want mine—the ones I don’t remember. I found newspaper clippings of what I’d done, but there were no pictures. So disappointing.”
“Cops didn’t take crime photos back then,” I lied.
“No?”
I looked him in the eye. “No.”
“I see. In that case, I will settle for descriptions. Those who reported on my case were most stingy with the details. Not so much as a single word about precisely what I did, only the broadest hints. I want—”
“Detail,” I said. “I get it. But you won’t get it, because I don’t know the details, and the only offer on the table here is one I can provide.”
“Use your imagination, then. Tell me what you think I did to those girls. Or, perhaps, I’ll tell you what I think I did, what I see when I close my eyes.”
“Sure, let’s do that. You tell me what you think you might have done, and I’ll listen. You have an hour. At the end of that, if I’m still here, haven’t tossed my cookies or bolted out the door, you’ll tell me how you caught the Nix. And you’ll tell me while I’m casting a lie-detection spell.”
Disappointment seeped into his face, then hardened into a petulant scowl as he realized this deal wouldn’t be nearly as rewarding as he’d hoped. I might not want to hear his sadistic fantasies, but I’d listen, and I’d listen without giving him the reaction he craved. After all, they were just words, words unrelated to me, words not even grounded in fact, just the fantasies of a sick f*ck who’d never have an opportunity to enact them.
“Never mind that,” he said at last. “I have something better. A game for two.”
“Let me guess. Hide-and-seek. And I don’t get to be ‘it.’”
A glimmer of confusion, then he smiled. “Yes, hide-and-seek, as you say. You will run. When I catch you…” His gaze slithered down me, eyes darkening. “I may do as I wish. And then I will tell you what you want to know.”
“Uh-uh. If you catch me, fine, we’ll do it your way. But if you don’t, you forfeit and tell me how to catch the Nix.”
He shook his head. “If that’s how you wish to play, then if I catch you, you forfeit. You allow me to do as I wish, and I tell you nothing.”
“Fine.”
He arched a brow. “You’re quite sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“I’m quite sure you aren’t going to agree to my terms, and I don’t feel like pointless arguing. We’ll set a time limit,” I said. “The sun’s starting to go down, so let’s say that if you don’t catch me by—”
“Not a time limit. A goal. There’s a book in my house. Katsuo brought it as a hospitality gift. Poetry of some sort. I have little use for it, but it may come in handy someday, so I’ve stowed it in the crawl space under my house. Find it—”
“Where?” I said. “Be more specific. Otherwise, you’ll probably nab me while I’m still searching. Where’s the crawl-space hatch, and where exactly down there is the book?”
He told me.
“Good. Now, which house is yours?”
He laughed. “I’m not giving you everything.”
“Fine. I’ll find it myself. Now I’m going to cast a spell, and you’re going to say a few words of it. You’ll repeat the deal and tell me that you will abide by its terms.”
He sighed and grumbled about my lack of trust, but did as I said. His eyes stayed green.
But that was the last bit of truth he told. After I’d ended the spell, he promised me a five-minute head start—and gave me less than three.
I made it to the forest, then my legs tried to shut down. They’d had enough of this “running away” crap. It was time to turn around and fight. The idea of being prey, even of playing at it for a while, brought a wave of bile to my throat. But if I was going to outwit Dachev, I needed to give him what he wanted…for now.
If cornered, I’d fight, but I already had a hole in my hand, a chunk out of my shoulder, and whole hanks of hair missing. I wasn’t too worried about the hand and shoulder scarring, but I really hoped the hair would grow back. In the meantime, the less damage I took, the better.
There was a path through the forest. It might seem like the smart thing to do would be to veer off that path and cut through the woods, but my goal was speed, not stealth. If I’d had my blur spell, that would have made things much easier, but I was trying hard not to bemoan what I lacked.
If I needed to hide, witch spells were perfect. Plus, since my death I had learned a few nasty offensive ones, the sort even spell-hungry Paige might deem too dangerous. They took time to cast properly—time I hadn’t had back in that village. If I needed them, I’d make the time to do them properly.
As I raced along the path, I kept glancing over my shoulder. The first time I saw Dachev, he was less than fifty feet behind me, but within a quarter-mile he’d dropped to well over a hundred feet back. Not accustomed to chasing former track stars obviously.
To my right, I caught glimpses of houses as the path circled behind the village. When I hit the far side of the village, the path divided, one branch heading back to town, the other going deeper into the forest. I took the village route. At the midway point between the fork and the path’s end, I dove into the woods and cast a cover spell. Then I waited. A minute later, Dachev appeared at the fork. He looked both ways.
“Did you keep running?” he murmured. “Or are you trying for the prize already?”
A moment’s hesitation, then he walked past me, into the village, and vanished. I considered slipping out and finding a better vantage point, so I could see which house he chose, but that was too risky. When I’d first seen him, he’d been coming from the far end of the road, meaning one of the last two houses was probably his. I suspected I’d know which house he occupied the moment I peeked through its window. No sleeping mats on the floor for that ghost.
After about ten minutes he returned to the path, walking fast. Again, he passed me. This time, when he hit the fork, he headed back the same way he’d come. Strange, but I wasn’t about to question his sense of direction.
When his footfalls faded to silence, I slid from my hiding spot and crept closer to the village. As tempting as it was to race in and find the book, it wasn’t safe, not in daylight, when the others were almost certainly still watching for me. The sky was growing dark already.
When I was close enough to see the village, I found a suitable tree, climbed to a sturdy branch, cast a cover spell, and settled in to wait for dark.
For nearly an hour Dachev hunted for me, twice coming to the edge of the forest and scanning the village to be sure I hadn’t returned. The third time he left the forest, looked around, then hurried to the last house on the left.
“Thank you,” I thought. “One problem down; one to go.”
When he emerged from his house, he surveyed the village again, peering into the gathering night. Then he walked to a stand of bushes by the forest’s edge. After less than ten seconds of contemplation, he strode back toward the road. A man like Dachev fancies himself a purist—a predator who catches his prey by running it to the ground, not by skulking in bushes, hoping it’ll run past.
Down the street, two other residents stepped from their homes. When they made a move to come closer and see what he was doing, he snarled something, then stalked into the woods. One followed. The bird-man—darting back and forth, weaving his way there, sticking close to trees and bushes, ready to dodge behind one at the first sign of Dachev.
Dachev had disappeared into the darkening forest before bird-man even got to the edge. Bird-man stepped into the forest, hesitant, head high, body tense. He took a few steps, then strained forward, obviously unwilling to go in any deeper.
He dropped to his haunches at the edge of the path and crouched there. Dachev returned roughly a half-hour later, which must have been how long it took him to scour the small patch of woods. I hoped his return would scare off the bird-man, but he darted into a thicket and waited for him to pass, then peered out after him.
Dachev surveyed the village once, then headed back into the woods. Bird-man stayed where he was. Wonderful. It was almost dark now, and from the blackness of the village, I guessed these guys didn’t have candles. Although a full moon shone overhead, it barely pierced the forest. One more once-over and Dachev would have to return to his house and wait for me there. Time for a new plan.
I eased along my branch and grabbed a vine looped around the tree trunk. When I yanked hard, the vine snapped in two. I shimmied down a branch and found a thicker one, which held no matter how hard I whaled on it. I unwound it from the branch, then found a second piece for backup.
After coiling the vines into balls, I started to put one into my pocket, then felt the hellsbane potion vial and stopped, envisioning myself yanking out the vines and the bottle tumbling into the undergrowth and forgotten. Instead, I tied them around my calf. Next I took off a sock and stuffed it into my empty pocket.
I shimmied down the tree until I reached the lowest branch that would hold me. I inched out as far as I dared. The leafy cover of the lower branches hid me well enough. I broke off a twig and dropped it. It caught in the lowest branch. I pulled off another, reached out as far as I could, and dropped it. This one hit the dry undergrowth and sent up a crackle that seemed as loud as a gunshot. Bird-man popped up from his hiding place. He looked around, gaze on the ground, head jerking as he searched. I let loose another twig. He took a step my way. Then another. A third step, and I dropped onto him.
As I fell onto his back, I slammed my forearm into his mouth. He bit down, hard enough to make me wonder whether I was going to lose another chunk. It took some wrangling, but I managed to get my flesh out of his mouth, and replace it with my sock. Once I’d bound him, I lashed him to the tree trunk with the loose end of the vine. Eventually his moaning and thrashing would alert Dachev, but I’d have a few minutes.
I followed the forest as close to Dachev’s house as I could. With the full moon, I didn’t dare go around to the front door, so I crept up to the open side window. As I crawled through, I heard someone moving through the forest. I somersaulted inside, hitting the floor with a boom, then sprang to my feet. I was in the living room. Dachev said the crawl-space hatch was under his bed. I ran through the only doorway, and into the bedroom, grabbed the bed frame, and yanked. No rollers, of course. I dragged the bed aside, then grasped the edge of the hatch. Running footsteps thumped along the dirt road. I yanked open the hatch and jumped through.