Aidan screamed. His flashlight fell.
“Jesus and the saints preserve us!” Aidan muttered, falling on his knees. “No, lady, I beg of you, I’m not even next in line!” he pleaded.
Stunned, Devin gathered herself together and headed for him. She picked up the flashlight. He was on his knees, still muttering prayers, crossing himself.
“Aidan! It’s me—Devin!” she said.
He went still and then looked up carefully, looking at her with only one eye open—as if that would help if she were a demon.
“Oh, my God!” he breathed. “You look like death itself!”
“I had a run-in with some bones,” she told him. “Aidan, what are you doing here?”
“I’m finding the bastard—or the banshee!” he told her.
“In here?”
He let out a soft sigh.
“Aye, in here! I think that there’s a tunnel—leads all the way back to the castle crypts. I was reading a history about the Battle of the Boyne. Men escaped this way after the battle. A priest helped them burrow through the back of the graveyard. I figured that the tunnel still had to exist. It was after the Battle of the Boyne, you know, that the Catholic populous was displaced—lest they bargained like the lords of Karney! But before their bargaining went on, they helped dozens escape to America.”
“Have you been all the way through here?”
“I wanted to—I came today. But I couldn’t make myself do it. Then we heard the sound again tonight at midnight and I wasn’t going to be a patsy—let them kill the others and come for me!”
“Ah!” Devin said softly. “Well, then, shouldn’t we go on?”
She was answered—but not by Aidan.
A voice rang out from the darkness beyond.
“You need go no further. Alas, my friends, you found what you’re seeking. Fools. Aidan, it was never going to get to you. Or Michael. You should have left well enough alone—you should have stayed in Dublin. And Devin! Sweet American beauty! Ghost-catcher agent! I’m so sorry. Alas, you had to come. Ah, well. You do love history. Now you can be part of it.”
A shot rang out.
Aidan screamed, but not because the shot hit him; it slammed into the rock at his knees, frightfully close.
Devin slammed the flashlight out and grabbed Aidan, wrenching him to his feet.
Another shot ran out and then another.
She ran some distance and then paused, making use of the dead again. She shoved Aidan into one of the shelves, thrusting the bones aside. She felt him shivering, urged him to silence. She fell to the ground as well, sliding into the lowest shelf. Her fingers curled around something.
A thighbone.
It was going to have to do.
She lay still, barely daring to breathe. She waited.
The killer spoke as he walked toward them.
The killer.
The storyteller.
The historian.
Gary the Ghost.
“Come out, come out!” he called. “Don’t you see, it’s only just and fair! I’m the one who knows Karney, knows the castle and the history. And I love Kelly, you see. I’ve loved her since she was just a child. Now, I’m not at all sure, family tales being family tales, but word is that my great-grandmother had an affair and a child was born, my grandmother. The affair, naturally, was with a Karney. So, you see, I should be in line for the title and the castle as well. All I had to do was get rid of the old men—all seeped in the legends, thank the lord! Collum, such an easy mark. I substituted his digitalis with placebo pills, let out a fierce cry through a cheap, lousy speaker—and voila! All right, well, I do have a wee bit of the theater in me—I dressed up. Ach, so easy! Do it all and just leave nicely without a fuss through the tunnels. Because I know the place. Because it should be mine. And, of course, Kelly—lovely Kelly. She’d have been heartbroken, turning to me for comfort. There you have it. All right and just and…I will find you. I will find you!”
And he would. He was right by them.
He might go straight past them. Just a few more steps…
Aidan sneezed.
And Devin knew that Gary would shoot him without a thought—right where he lay, already in a crypt.
She took her thighbone and planning a careful strategy—she slammed it as hard as she could in the direction of his legs.
He let out a howl of pain and fell to his knees. The gun he held went flying. But he saw her.
In the dim light, he saw her. And his fingers wound around her throat.
She found another weapon…a rib?
Slashing as hard as she could, she turned it on him.
And then, she heard a sound. Footsteps—footsteps racing hard down the path. She saw around Gary, saw enough to realize that something huge and white and filled with vengeance and wraith was bearing down on them.
Rocky.
He ripped Gary from her, throwing him so hard against the opposite wall of shelving for the dead that bones clanked and fell.
Devin rolled from her slab and stumbled up, feeling along the floor for the gun. Her fingers fell upon it.
Just as a foot fell upon her hand.
She looked up.