Last Safe Place, The (26 page)

Her eyes scanned the room, seeking out Ty to make sure he was all right, was safe. The swelling was almost gone. She didn’t think it was likely Steve would have to give him another IV. To look at the boy now, you’d never have guessed he’d brushed up close enough to death to feel its cold breath on his neck. She shuddered, then dragged her thoughts away from Ty’s close call to the festivities around her.

The party had not started out loud and boisterous, but it had finally cranked into high gear. Once everyone had eaten, the old woman who’d helped with the tacos—who, it turns out, actually was Anza’s grandmother—brought out the birthday cake. The crowd of assorted misfits and miscreants held hands and formed a circle around the bed of a Sleeping Beauty who could not be awakened by a prince’s kiss. Pedro said a prayer of gratitude for the gift of Anza, then the group launched into an off-key rendition of Happy Birthday. Some sang in Spanish, others in English.

Afterwards, Pedro pulled out his vintage collection of old rock and roll tapes and actually had a boom box to play them in. Anza dragged him out onto the dance floor and though Pedro was certainly no Michael Jackson, the two of them danced to
Thriller.
Then the whole crowd took to the cleared-out area in the middle of the room, women dancing with women, children with old men, jumping around joyous and uninhibited.

Gabriella watched them,
studied
them with something like awe.

A flash of lightning strobed the darkened interior beyond the swinging doors and Gabriella jumped when the thunder on its tail rumbled.

Then she felt a hand slip over hers. Theo squeezed reassuringly. “You safe here.”

Such tenderness from Theo stunned her. Apparently, it stunned him, too, because as soon as it hit him what he’d done, he pulled his hand back like he’d stuck it in a toaster oven.

Gabriella struggled out of the hole in the couch to her feet. “I need to … after that taco, I could use a Tic Tac,” she said. “There’s some in the jeep.”

“Pedro moved it away from where you parked in front of the porch steps, put it down at the far end on the right …” He paused, wrinkled his nose. “…
keys in the ignition.”

She knew Theo still couldn’t wrap his mind around all the unlocked doors and cars. He’d told her, “leave a car unlocked in the neighborhood where I grew up and next morning that car gone be stripped down to a bare metal frame with teeth marks on it.”

Gabriella walked through the darkened store and stepped out into the damp night where the rain had been reduced to the dribble and plop of drops off the store roof. She sucked in a lungful of clean, ozone-scented air and let it out slowly. She’d used the Tic Tacs in the jeep as an excuse to escape. The real reason she’d left the party was that she was … what? Overwhelmed. It sounded so trite and corny, but she was blown away by the joy she saw all around her. For the first time in … maybe for the first time
ever
… she was in the presence of simple, happy people. Not her walking-dead parents. Not tweedy college English majors. Not wacked-out musicians or fanatical fans. Just people whose lives, by anybody’s standards, were far from perfect.

And
Pedro!
In all their conversations, he had never mentioned his own suffering. She’d dumped a load of her personal sewage on him last week, wailed about the pain in her life and he never said a word about the pain in his.

She had nowhere to put that kind of behavior, nowhere to process it. She probably hadn’t lived a day, in total accumulated time, in the peace and relaxed joy that was all around her at that party. It shocked her, engaged her … and frightened her. How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after
they’ve seen … How could she not long for that kind of freedom now that she knew it really was out there in the world?

A full moon shone through a crack in the clouds, but Gabriella didn’t notice it. Almost frantic to distance herself from the laughing people at the party, she hurried across the porch, down the steps and turned right on the street. The breeze blew wet pine needles along the ground and they tickled her shins as they passed like kittens with milk on their whiskers.

Then she felt a sudden chill. She hadn’t thought it was that cold outside.

* * * *

Yesheb drives through the night with all the windows down. The cold wind that smells of spruce and pine trees is refreshing and exhilarating. Far from feeling light-headed in the thin air, he feels complete clarity and laser-sharp focus. His time is drawing near.

He slows when he reaches a collection of old buildings on both sides of the road. He parks in the shadows across from what is clearly the only party in town. He can hear loud music and bursts of laughter every now and then. He is content to stare at the door of the building. Knowing his Zara is beyond that door, so close, fills him with a longing and a need he did not know he could feel.

As a circling lion closes in on its prey, so Yesheb must close in on Zara. He must figure out a way to separate her from the herd of people, isolate her. The others—the boy, the old man and the dog—are totally secondary. What is of paramount importance is that he subdue Zara, strike such terror into her heart that she will offer no resistance, will follow his lead, docile as a baby rabbit. He imagines her eyes full of fear and pain and feels a thrill of such power and passion it is almost too glorious to contain.

The storm has set off fireworks in the sky, fulfilling the prophesy in the holy book. Now it is time for him to claim his bride and—

The door he is staring at opens. Zara steps through it and out into the cool mountain air. For a moment, he is too surprised to move, merely follows her with his eyes. She stands for a moment, staring into the night, then steps down off the porch and begins to walk down the street.

His shock vanishes. He opens his car door slowly; he has already loosened the bulb in the overhead light so it will not shine when he gets out.
He pushes the door closed but does not latch it. Then his senses drink in the darkness, his lair.

Though in human form he can no longer see them, he senses their presence. Demons surround him, all sizes and shapes, their corrupted mouths in drooling smiles. They glide along the cold ground where he places his cane and each footstep carefully, silently. He can almost hear the murmured approval from their pitted throats. They watch him, their leader, their master. They cannot aid him, but they have come because their mere unseen presence grants him the superhuman power he needs. He makes his way through the shadows. She walks in and out of the puddles of light cast by the pitiful little street lights that are nothing more than lanterns hung on poles.

He watches her movement, her grace. Then he wills himself to her, moves through space without limping, without even touching the ground until he is behind her. He reaches out his hand and places it on her shoulder.

She whirls around, the fabric of her garment making a whuffing sound like sheets on a clothesline in the wind, her scar pallid white in the moonlight. She opens her mouth to cry out, but is too stunned, too surprised to make a sound.

So is Yesheb.

CHAPTER
12

G
ABRIELLA WALKED ONLY A SHORT DISTANCE BEFORE SHE IMAGINED
she heard someone behind her. The sudden realization of what she’d done hit her so hard it stole her breath. She had just dashed off into the night—into the
full-moon
night.
Alone!
What had she been thinking? Her heart went into hyperdrive, hammering a hole in her chest wall. She didn’t burst into a run because she knew her legs wouldn’t carry her if she tried.

Then, in a reality ripped from her recurring nightmare, she felt a hand on her shoulder. But this was no dream. No overactive imagination.

And in the space between one heartbeat and the next, Gabriella Carmichael decided she was prepared to die—if it was
quick
. She wouldn’t let him drag her off somewhere and ...
No!

It only took a second to whirl around, but by the time she faced him she was determined that the only way Yesheb Al Tobbanoft would get her off this street was to kill her.

She opened her mouth to cry out, but didn’t. Just stood there staring.

“I am sorry,” Pedro said. “I only wanted … you looked upset when you left. Are you all right?”

Gabriella couldn’t speak. Terror and surprise and relief banged into each other in her head like bumper cars. Her knees felt weak. And she had to strangle back a peal of hysterical laughter.

When she said nothing, Pedro looked more closely and was instantly contrite.

“I really frightened you. I am sorry, I never meant …” He took her arm and guided her to the porch steps in front of the dry goods store where she plopped down with a decidedly unladylike clunk when her knees collapsed out from under her.

Gabriella finally found her voice. “Don’t be … sorry, I … overreacted.”

“No, you
other
reacted. You thought I was somebody else—who?”

“Pedro, do you believe in evil?”

“That is like asking if I believe in air. Evil
is.
Whether I believe in it or not—whether
anybody
believes in it—does not matter.”

“Do you believe in … demons?”

“Same question. Evil is the what; demons are the who.”

“So you think demons are real, that they exist here, around us?”

“I think the single best promotion of evil in the history of mankind was when we made it a cartoon and dressed it up in a red suit with horns and a forked tail.”

“But how can you tell the difference between real evil and … homicidal insanity? Between someone who is savage and brutal because he’s evil and someone who—?”

“If you are on the receiving end of the savage and brutal, it is a distinction without a difference. Is someone trying to hurt you, Gabriella?”

Her voice grew quiet. “The kind of man who delights in hurting other people—is he crazy or evil?

“Both.”

* * * *

Yesheb stares dumbfounded at a young woman who looks just like his Zara—but
isn’t.
Flowing black gown. Long black hair hanging straight down around her shoulders. Bangs cut to a point on her forehead. Red fingernails, bright red lipstick. And a scar!
The
scar. The
exact
scar that graces the face of his beloved.

“Who are you?” he demands, his voice tightly controlled so she hears no emotion, neither anger nor desperation.

The girl backs up a step. “Who are
you?”
But she appears only startled, not frightened. And then he watches it happen, the shift, sees in her eyes what he has seen in the eyes of countless other women so taken by his good looks they wouldn’t notice if he held a severed head in his hand that was dripping blood on their shoes.

“Why are you dressed up like Zara?”

“Zara? Oh, no, not Zara! Though they’re certainly quite similar, aren’t they.” The girl touches the scar on her face and giggles self-consciously. “But in my mind’s eye, I see Rebecca Nightshade’s appearance as merely
suggestive of Zara, like a sketch of the original, an underdeveloped negative. I wrote that in a paper once, the underdeveloped negative part. I got an A minus.” She realizes she’s babbling, stops and refocuses. “But who knows how much of herself Rebecca Nightshade poured into Zara since she’s never granted an interview. That’s why we want her to come here.”

“Who is ‘we’?” He speaks each word individually, for clarity and because his jaw is clenched so tight he can barely speak at all. His blood is beginning to boil. Literally. Rage is a blast furnace in his chest. Every vein, artery and capillary is swelling with over-heated liquid.

“We are The
Live
Poets’ Society … like the movie with Robin Williams, except not ‘dead.’”

Yesheb doesn’t respond.

“English majors at Plymouth State University.”

He still doesn’t respond.

“In Plymouth.”
She is beginning to address him like a three-year-old. “That way.” She points toward White Mountain, a gigantic dark smudge on the black New Hampshire sky—where the clouds have cleared away in front of the full moon. “The society is dedicated to
living
authors. We’re into nontraditional literature like horror fiction. And the Silver Center for the Arts flicks its intellectual ashes all over ‘trade writers,’ only invites speakers like Rosanna Warren, Marilyn Nelson, Sharon Olds.”

She pauses. “Warren … Nelson … Olds …
poets!”

Yesheb can tell the grace his good looks purchased for him has about run out. His grace toward her is about gone, too.

* * * *

Gabriella’s heart could finally speak each beat clearly again without stuttering. She took a deep, trembling breath and yanked the conversation firmly away from discussions of pain and evil. Even managed a small smile when she asked Pedro about something she’d been wondering all evening.

“When I got here this afternoon with Ty, it was almost like Steve was waiting for us. He came up with that steroid IV out of his van in seconds. How could he possibly have known we were coming?”

“His granddaughter, Cheyenne, called and told us about you. She’s the redheaded girl you met when you were looking for Steve. She’s allergic to
bee stings so she spotted right away what was wrong with Ty.” He paused. “Now Steve has an interesting moral dilemma. He’d grounded her—that’s why she wasn’t here at the party—for running up a $450-and-change cell phone bill, took her phone away and said she couldn’t make another cell phone call of any kind all summer. So should he—?”

“He can’t punish the kid for trying to help—it wasn’t exactly a trivial call.”

“Sí, you are right. He would be violating Rule 139.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. What’s Rule 139?”

“Do not sweat the petty stuff and do not pet the sweaty stuff.”

* * * *

The young woman standing before Yesheb smiles at him dismissively.

“I really need to go. I left my dog in the car and I—”

“Why are you dressed like Zara?”

“I was picked to make a presentation about being broad-minded, thinking outside narrow paradigms, to the Silver Center this afternoon—before Bartlett’s annual June Moon party.” She nods toward the lighted house where the music is so loud you can understand the lyrics out on the street. “And I came up with this idea—didn’t tell
anybody
—that it would be more effective if I gave the presentation looking like Rebecca Nightshade! My roommate, Ruell—rhymes with spool and tool, it’s from the Bible—she’s a theatre major and she is a-
ma
-zing at stage makeup. You should have seen the Quasimodo head she did for—” She stops, refocuses again. “Anyway, she made the scar out of latex, used the picture on the book jacket to—”