Angel Fire East Read online

  "Get out of here!" she hissed in a low voice.

  A few disappeared. Most simply moved off a bit or shifted position. She glanced around uneasily. There were too many for coincidence. She wondered suddenly if they knew about John Ross, if the prospect of his coming was drawing them.

  More likely it was just the stink of the demon who had visited her earlier that was attracting them.

  She brushed the matter aside and hurried on across the frosted carpet of the lawn.

  She saw nothing of the figure who stood at the top of her walk in the deep shadow of the cedars.

  Chapter 7

  Findo Cask waited for Nest to cross the lawn to the Peter-sons', then for her to come out again when the big Suburban pulled into her driveway. He stood without moving in the darkness, virtually invisible in his black frock coat and black flat-brimmed hat, his leather-bound book held close against his chest. The night was bitter cold, the damp warmth of the sunny day crystallized to a fine crust that covered the landscape in a silvery sheen and crunched like tiny shells when walked on. Even the blacktop in front of the Freemark house glimmered in the streetlight.

  When Nest Freemark climbed inside the Suburban and it backed out of her driveway and disappeared down the street, Findo Gask waited some more. He was patient and careful. He watched his breath cloud the air as it escaped his mouth. A human would have been freezing by now, standing out there for better than an hour. But demons felt little of temperature changes, their bodies shells and not real homes. Most of Findo Cask's human responses had been shed so long ago that he no longer could recall how they made him feel. Heat or cold, pain or pleasure, it was all the same to him.

  So he waited, unperturbed by the delay, cocooned within the dark husk to which he had reduced himself years ago, biding his time. It had taken a bit of effort to find out Nest would be gone this evening. He didn't want that effort to be wasted.

  He passed the time keeping watch on the house, intrigued by the shadowy movements inside. There were lights on in a few of the rooms, and they revealed an unexpected presence. Nest had left someone at home. The wrinkled old face creased suddenly with smile lines. Who might that someone be?

  When everything was silent with the cold and the dark and there was no longer any reasonable possibility that Nest Freemark might be returning for something she had forgotten, Findo Gask left his hiding place and walked up onto the front porch and knocked softly.

  The door opened to reveal a young woman wrapped in a terry cloth bathrobe. She was rather small and slender, with lank hair and dark eyes. It was the eyes that caught his attention, filled with pain and disappointment and betrayal, rife with barely concealed anger and unmistakable need. He knew her instantly for what she was, for the life she had led, and for the ways in which he might use her.

  She stood looking out through the storm door, making no move to admit him. "Good evening," he said, smiling his best human smile. "I'm Reverend Findo Gask?" He made it a question, so that she would assume she was supposed to be expecting him. "Is Nest ready to go with me?"

  A hint of confusion reflected on her wan face. "Nest isn't here. She left already."

  Now it was his turn to look confused. He did his best. "Oh, she did? Someone else picked her up?"

  The young woman nodded. "Fifteen minutes ago. She went caroling with a church group."

  Findo Gask shook his head. "There must have been a mix-up. Could I use your phone to make a call?"

  His hand moved to the storm-door handle, encouraging her to act on his request. But the young woman stayed where she was, arms folded into the robe, eyes fixed on him.

  "I can't do that," she announced flatly. "This isn't my house. I can't let anybody in."

  "It would take only a moment."

  She shook her head. "Sorry."

  He felt like reaching through the glass and ripping out her heart, an act of which he was perfectly capable. It wasn't anger or frustration that motivated his thinking; it was the simple fact of her defiance. But the time and place were wrong for acts of violence, so he simply nodded his understanding.

  "I'll call from down the road," he offered smoothly, taking a step back. "Oh, by the way, did Mr. Ross go with her?"

  She pursed her lips. "Who is Mr. Ross?"

  "The gentleman staying with her. Your fellow boarder."

  A child's voice called to her from somewhere out of view, and she glanced over her shoulder. "I have to go. I don't know Mr. Ross. There isn't anyone else staying here. Good night."

  She closed the door in his face. He stood staring at it for a moment. Apparently Ross still hadn't arrived. He found himself wondering suddenly if he had been wrong in coming to Hopewell, if somehow he had intuited incorrectly. His instincts were seldom mistaken about these things, but perhaps this was one of those times.

  He couldn't afford to have that happen.

  He turned around and walked back out to the street. The ur'droch joined him after a dozen paces, all shadowy presence and rippling movement at the edges of the light.

  "Anything?" he asked.

  When the shadow-demon gave no response, he had his answer. It was not unexpected. It wasn't likely Ross was there if the young woman hadn't seen him. Who was she, anyway? Where had she come from? Another pawn on the board, waiting to be moved into position, he thought. It would be interesting to see how he might make use of her.

  He walked back down the road to where he had left the car parked on the shoulder and climbed inside. The ur'droch slithered in behind him and disappeared onto the floor of the backseat. He would give Ross another three days, until Christmas, before he gave up his vigil. It wasn't time to panic yet. Panic was for lesser demons, for those who relied on attributes other than experience and reasoning to sustain them. He started the car and wheeled it back onto the roadway. It was time to be getting home so that he could enjoy the little surprise he had prepared for Nest Freemark.

  * * *

  Nest climbed in beside Kathy Kruppert, squeezing her over toward her husband on the Suburban's bench seat. In the back, somewhere between six and nine teens and preteens, two of them Krupperts, jostled and squirmed while trading barbs and gossip. She exchanged hellos with everyone, then leaned back against the padded leather while Allen backed the big Chevy onto Woodlawn and headed for the next pickup.

  Her thoughts drifted from John Ross and Findo Gask to Bennett and Harper Scott and back again.

  "Everything okay, Nest?" Kathy asked after a few minutes of front-seat silence amidst the backseat chaos. She was a big-boned blond carrying more weight than she wanted, as she was fond of saying, but on her the weight looked good.

  Nest nodded. "Sure, fine."

  "You seem awfully quiet tonight."

  "For a basically noisy person," Allen added, straight-faced.

  Nest gave him a wry grin. "I'm just saving myself for later, when the singing starts."

  "Oh, is that it?" Allen said, nodding solemnly. He glanced at her over the top of his glasses, beetle-browed and balding. "You know, Kath, it's always the quiet ones you have to look out for."

  They hit a bump where weather and repeated plowing had hollowed out a section of the roadway. Ouch! Hey, watch it! the kids all began yelling at once in back, offering myriad, unnecessary pieces of driving advice.

  "Quiet down, you animals!" Allen shouted over his shoulder, giving them a mock glare. When they did, for what must have been a nanosecond, he declared with a smirk, "Guess I showed them."

  Kathy patted his leg affectionately. "Father always knows best, honey."

  Allen and Kathy had been married right out of high school, both graduating seniors, six or seven years older than Nest. Allen began working as a salesman with a realty firm and found he had a gift for it. Ten years later, he was running his own business. Ten years earlier, he had approached Nest with an offer for her house at a time when she was seriously considering selling. Even though she had decided against doing so, she had been friends with the Krupperts ever since.

/>   "How are the Petersons?" Kathy asked her suddenly.

  "Pretty frail." Nest dug her hands into her parka pockets with a sigh. The truth was, time was running out on the Peter-sons. Their health was deteriorating, there was no one to look after them, and nothing anyone said or did could convince them to consider moving into a care facility.

  "You do the best you can for them, Nest," Kathy said.

  Allen shifted his weight in the driver's seat and brushed back his thinning black hair. "They're determined people. You can only do so much to help them. There's no point in fussing about it. They'll go on, just like they have been, until something happens to force them to change their way of life. You have to respect that."

  "I do, but I worry anyway. It's like sitting around waiting for the other shoe to fall."

  "Sure enough," Kathy agreed with a sigh. "My uncle Frank was like that."

  "Gran, too," Nest said.

  Allen chuckled. "Good thing you two understand the problem so well. That way, you won't become part of it later on. That'll sure be a relief to a lot of folks."

  They picked up two more teens from the Moonlight Bay area, then headed back into town for a rendezvous with a van-load of kids driven by Marilyn Winthorn, one of the older ladies who still worked assiduously with the youth groups. From there, they started on their rounds, following a list of names and addresses supplied by Reverend Andrew Carpenter, who had taken over the ministry after Ralph Emery retired three years ago. At each stop, they sang a few carols at the front door, deposited a basket of Christmas goodies supplied by the ladies' guild, exchanged Merry Christmases and Happy New Years, and moved on.

  By the twelfth visit, Nest had stopped thinking about anything but how good this was making her feel.

  It was sometime around eight-thirty when they pulled into the driveway of an old Victorian home on West Third, an area of fallen grandeur and old money gone elsewhere. The name on the list for this home was smudged, and no one could quite make it out. Hattie or Harriet something. It wasn't a name or address anyone recognized, but it might be a church member's relative. They climbed out of the vehicles, walked to the front entry, and arranged themselves in a semicircle facing the door.

  There were lights on, but no one appeared to greet them. Allen stepped up to the door, knocked loudly, and waited for a response.

  "Creepy old place, isn't it?" Kathy Kruppert whispered in Nest's ear.

  Nest nodded, thinking that mostly it seemed rather sad, a tombstone to the habitation it had once been. She glanced around as the kids whispered and shuffled their feet, waiting impatiently to begin. It was a neighborhood of tombstones. Everything was dark and silent along the rows of old homes and corridors of ancient trees. Even the street they bracketed was empty.

  Someone came to the door now and inched back the curtain covering the glass. A face peeked out, its features vague and shadowy in the gloom.

  The door cracked open, and a frail voice said, "Goodness."

  Taking that as a cue to begin, Allen stepped off the porch, and the youth group began singing "Joy to the World." Their voices rang out through the darkness and cold, and their breath clouded the air. The door remained cracked, but no one appeared.

  They had begun the refrain, "Let heaven and nature sing," when the door burst open with such force that it shattered the glass pane, and a huge, hulking figure stormed through the opening and down the steps. Albino white and hairless, he stood seven feet tall and weighed three hundred pounds, but he moved with such quickness that he was on top of the group almost as quickly as their singing turned to shrieks of fear and shock.

  "Joy to the world! Joy to the world! Joy to the world!" the big man shouted tunelessly.

  The kids were scattering in every direction as he reached Allen Kruppert, knotted one massive fist into the startled realtor's parka, and snatched him right off his feet. Holding him aloft with one arm extended, he shook Allen like a rag doll, yelling at him in fury.

  "Joy to the world! Joy to the world! Joy to the world!"

  Fists pressed against her mouth, Kathy Kruppert was screaming Allen's name. Marilyn Winthorn was herding the kids back toward the vehicles, intent on loading them in as quickly as she could manage, her face tight and bloodless.

  Allen was kicking and shouting, but the big man held him firm, continuing to shake him as if he meant to loosen all his bones and empty out his skin.

  "Joy to the world! Joy to the world!"

  It all happened in seconds, and for the brief length of time it took, Nest Freemark was frozen with indecision. Her first impulse was to use her magic on the big man, the magic that caused people to lose control of their muscles and collapse in useless heaps, that she had used on Danny Abbott and Robert Heppler all those years ago, that she had used on her father.

  But if she invoked it now, she risked setting Wraith loose. It was the reality she had lived with since she was nineteen. She could never know what might trigger his release. She had discovered that three years ago at the Olympics, and she had not used her magic since.

  Now, it seemed, she had no choice.

  She shouted at the big man, striding toward him, small and inconsequential in his shadow. He barely looked at her, but his shaking movement slowed, and he let Allen sag slightly. He was all misshapen, she saw, as if he had not been put together in quite the right way and his parts did not fit as they should, some too large and some too small. He had the look of something formed of castoffs and leftovers, the detritus of the human gene pool.

  Nest shouted harder, and now the strange pink eyes fixed on her. Screwing up her courage and tightening her hold on Wraith, who was already awake and pressing for release inside her, she hammered at the big man with her magic, trying to make him take a sudden misstep in her direction, to lose his balance and release Allen. But it was as if she had run into a wall. He shrugged aside her magic as if it weren't even there, and in his eyes she found only an empty, blank space in which nothing human lived.

  Nothing human…

  He tossed Allen aside, and the realtor collapsed in a crumpled heap, head lowered between his shoulders like a broken fighter as he struggled to his hands and knees, Kathy racing over to kneel next to him, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  The big man wheeled on Nest. "Joy to the world! Joy to the world!"

  He came at her, and she hit him with another jolt of magic, eyes locked on his. This time he slowed, staggered slightly by the force of her attack. The kids were still screaming in the background, some of them calling to her to run, to get away, thinking she was paralyzed with fear and indecision. She stood her ground, watching as Kathy tried in vain to pull a battered Allen to his feet.

  The big man snarled at her, an animal sound, a deep, throaty growl that brought Wraith right up into her throat, so close to breaking free she could see the tiger striping of his wolfish face and feel the thick, coarse fur of his powerful body. She backed away, trying to keep him in check. If she failed to do so, everyone would discover the truth about her. Whatever else happened, she could not permit that.

  "Joy to the world!" the big man howled as he lumbered toward her. "Joy to the world!"

  "Twitch!" a voice shrilled.

  The big man stopped as if he had been reined in by invisible wires, jerking upright, his strange, misshapen head lifting like a startled bird's.

  "You come right into this house!" the voice ordered. "You are so bad! I mean it! Right now!"

  On the porch stood a solitary figure bundled in a heavy coat and scarf, frizzy red hair sticking out all over. It was the young woman who had introduced herself at church that morning, the one called Penny. At the sound of her voice, the giant slowly turned away and trudged back toward the old house. Nest took a deep, calming breath as the screaming behind her died away into hushed whispers and sobs.

  The young woman stood aside as the giant lumbered past her sheepishly and disappeared inside. Then she came down the porch, shaking her head in exasperation.

  "Nest, I'm rea
lly, really sorry about this." She came up and took Nest's gloved hand in her own and held it. "That's my brother. He isn't right in the head. He doesn't mean any harm, but he doesn't know how strong he is."

  She looked over at Allen, who was finally climbing back to his feet. "Are you all right, mister? Did he hurt you at all?"

  Allen Kruppert looked as if he had just climbed out of a working cement mixer. He tried to speak, coughed hard, and shook his head.

  "I think he's okay," Kathy offered quietly, bracing him against her with both arms wrapped tightly about his bulky form. "That was a very scary thing your brother did, miss."

  Penny nodded quickly in agreement. "I know. I should have been watching him more closely, but I was upstairs working. My grandmother answered the door, but she is so old and feeble she can't do anything with him. He just pushed her aside and came out." She looked quickly from Nest to the Krupperts. "He just wanted to play. That's what he thought all this was about. Playing."

  Nest gave her a brief, uncertain smile. She had the oddest queasy feeling. Penny seemed sincere in her apology, but there was just a hint of something in her voice that suggested maybe she wasn't.

  Nest glanced up at the house. "Do you live here, Penny?" she asked conversationally.

  "Sometimes." Penny's red hair gave her the look of something that had shorted out. Her green eyes glittered. "Right now I'm just visiting."

  "With your brother?"

  "Yeah. With Twitch. We call him Twitch."

  "Is it your grandmother who belongs to the church?"

  Penny shrugged. "I suppose."

  "What is your grandmother's name?"

  Penny smiled. "I better get back inside, Nest. I don't like leaving Twitch alone after an episode. You know how it is. Thanks for coming by with the church group, though. It was really nice of you."