The Edge of Recall (29 page)

Instead she crossed to the labyrinth’s entrance. She stepped onto the bedrock traveled long ago by sandaled feet, buried in burnt hedge and broken promises, and considered those who had come in good faith, served willingly, and lost everything—maybe even their lives. She would not die of this hurt, but how many more people must she lose? Tears stung.

She took a step and imagined a gate closing behind her, hedges rising up on either side. Spreading her hands as though to touch their dense foliage, she walked the short length of the mouth, turned left in the first shallow curve, and doubled back. She moved straight toward the center and curved halfway around its perimeter. Twice the path skirted the center and then wended away to complete all the other circuits before actually entering in.

It was like a dance where the petitioner courted God, drawing near, then away, around and back before daring to enter the presence. She’d never thought of it that way before, but Smith demonstrated a faith she struggled to comprehend, praying with intimacy, as though the Divine delighted in fulfilling his desires. And wasn’t he getting what he wanted?

She pushed away the pain and cleared her mind of distractions. Forcing ghosts and monsters and Petra and Gaston, Bair, and even Smith from her mind, she opened to God’s touch—another new thought, that God could or would touch her life. A yearning clutched her so powerfully she dropped to one knee.

Her hand landed on the grass and vines and stony earth. Staggered by the need, she felt completely alone, empty, hollowed out like a husk. What could ever fill such emptiness?

Her breath caught on a sob. Smith had been hurt by his breakup, but he focused on what mattered and moved on. He didn’t crack open and find nothing inside. No wonder they’d all left her. She needed more than anyone could give because she was a gaping black hole.

Pressed to the trunk of the massive shagbark, breath held tight inside his chest … enraptured … he watched. Though she was close, perilously close, she did not know it was his place she wept upon.

Above them, clouds bunched together like suckling pups vying for a teat. He smelled the coming rain, heard the skittering of creatures taking shelter in the forest floor. Another storm, lightning bolts of pain to sear his eyes. He could not get back without her seeing.

But he wanted her to see. Wanted and dreaded it. Wanted her tearful eyes to rest on him, and if she screamed her fear would have to satisfy him. Hunger twisted, but not his stomach’s hunger. Hunger for a glance. One glance from her. He wanted and feared it, aching as her tears soaked the ground before the coming rain.

He would make her look, make her see him. He squinted through the stormy half light into the field where she hunched. He would go to her, soothe and comfort her. He wanted to. Wanted and he would.

But before he could, the other one did. No, no, no. Rage rose up, rage he hadn’t felt in so long, rage he couldn’t control, rage that could hurt, that could …

“Tessa.” Smith crouched beside her. He should not have left her alone. He should have told Danae to leave, should have told her he cared about someone else. He should have realized Tessa would take it to the extreme. “Tess, I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t you.” She sat back on her heels. “It’s me. I keep trying and trying to find what’s missing, but I can’t. I don’t know where else to look.”

Stunned by her distress and its apparent lack of connection to him, he sat back on his heels. “Tess, you’re searching for some mysterious God when what you need is the Father who loves you.”

She jerked her face up. “The Father who loves me?”

“God’s not a cosmic force. He’s a true being who wants you to know and love him, as he knows and loves you.”

“You don’t understand.” Her breath had jagged edges. “Fathers disappear and never come back. Fathers leave their children to the monsters.”

He shook his head. “God isn’t like that. He vanquishes monsters. And he wants to give you everything you need.”

“I needed my daddy, Smith. I wanted my mother to live. I want to sleep without fear, to live without a psychiatrist on speed dial. But none of that is going to happen. If God is a father”—she gripped the vine and yanked—“then he’s run off too.”

“God is faithful, even when we’re not.”

“How am I not?” Her eyes flashed.

“I don’t mean you. I didn’t mean it personally, only that—”

“Never mind, Smith. It doesn’t matter. ”

“It matters.”

She shook her head. Fury rose from her like heat as she jerked and tugged the vine, then staggered back.

Thunder rumbled overhead, but neither looked up from the filigreed metal disk just visible beneath the tangle.

“What’s that?” He bent over.

“I don’t know.” She knelt and shoved away the leafy vines that had covered but not rooted over the disk. “The Chartres labyrinth had a disk in the center that was surrendered in the revolution. Maybe this is a copy.” She and Smith ripped back more vines. Approximately three feet in diameter, the disk appeared to be bronze like the gate.

“Something used to be attached.” He pointed to brackets in the center.

“A cross, maybe. In your documents the labyrinth’s creator mentioned a cross at the center. I thought it might be symbolic, but it could be here.” She pulled at the vine once more.

Smith straightened and searched the lowering sky. “We’ll have to come back to it.”

“I want to look.”

Lightning split the sky. “Tess, really.” Thunder rumbled. Smith caught her arm. “If it’s under there, it’ll be there tomorrow—and the next day.”

Wind tossed her hair. “What if he takes it?”

“Who?”

“The monster. What if he finds it?”

“He’ll likely leave it on the doorstep and save us hauling it.”

Lightning flashed again.

“Come on. I don’t want to be barbecued where we stand.”

She scowled up at the sky as rain rushed upon them like water tipped from a garden pitcher.

Smith held out his hands with a wry look. “Satisfied?”

She lurched up and screamed, “Smith!”

He spun. The creature was no ghost. Lightning flashed on the blade he held, the blade he plunged.

The scream had scarcely left her throat when the monster reared up from Smith and grabbed at her, his gruesome face a twisted mask. Teeth bared. Eyes pale. She stumbled on the uprooted vines and fell back with a cry, prying at the hands that squeezed her throat.
Smith!

He hadn’t moved. As she fought, he lay motionless in the rain with the knife in his chest. Groaning, she heaved the monster off, groped toward Smith, shook him. No response.

The monster seized her wrist. She landed a kick, but he didn’t let go. Shoving her free hand into her pocket, she seized the canister. There was no distance between them, and it might not work in the rain, but it was all she had. She twisted the lock and raised it to the monster’s face. Holding her breath, she depressed the nozzle.

He screamed and collapsed to the ground, clawing his eyes and choking. She staggered back, coughing and crying as well. Smith lay still as death, eyes closed as rain pooled in the sockets. With a moan, she turned and ran. She could hardly see, hardly breathe. She stumbled and fell, pushed herself up and ran.

Her heart pumped; her lungs burned. Gasping, she fell into the trailer, grabbed her purse, and found her phone. She staggered back out the door, eyes blinking against the burning spray. She pulled open the car door and slid inside, dialing 9-1-1 as she started the ignition. He hadn’t followed. But he would. Monsters always did.

He rolled in agony. Nothing had ever hurt so much. Choking, crying, gagging, he dragged himself to the body and pulled out his knife. They would come. They would search. He couldn’t let them see what he had done. No, no, no. No one could know.

He pawed the man’s chest where the knife had gone in. There should be more blood. His heart should have gushed, yet this wound hardly bled. He couldn’t think about that now. He blinked through streaming eyes and dragged himself to the disk.

Gripping the center bracket, he pushed the heavy metal aside. His throat burned. His nose streamed. His eyes screamed. Crawling back to the body, he got to his feet and dragged. No one could find it. No one could know. He rolled the body into the hole, then followed as lightning seared the sky.

CHAPTER

27

Tessa had poured out the story in detail, told Sheriff Thomas what had happened and watched him grow more and more skeptical. How could he not believe her? How could he think she had killed Smith? Everything had spun out of control.

Had she truly lost her mind? Dr. Brenner believed her delusional. She wished, oh, she wished she were.

But she had seen Smith stabbed, fought off his killer. Unless …

Could she have imagined that very first call, conjured up the whole job? How likely was it that her old college crush had found an ancient labyrinth and wanted her to build it? Maybe he’d been “on-site” because she’d imagined him there, given him a companion to round out the scene, a whole cast of characters with whom he interacted in the fabric of her mind.

How real were Rumer Gaston and Petra Sorenson? Katy and Ellie. She swallowed the lump of dread in her throat. The day she’d arrived Smith had appeared out of nowhere in the woods, shown her the trailer. Was it some deserted hulk she had holed up in to live out her delusion? Maybe the nightmares weren’t breaking through; maybe her whole reality was a nightmare.

She moved her head in a slow rejection of that thought. This was real, terrible in its reality, but real. Smith had come between her and the monster. Theseus had defeated Minotaur, but Smith had not been prepared to fight. She curled up on the bed, hurting worse than she could bear. Guilt crushed her, and inside the guilt, the monster’s words reverberated.

“You won’t say a word, will you. Not a word.”

But she had.

“I’ll find you. Just the way I did tonight.”

She had told Smith, and the monster had killed him. No tears could wash away the awful truth. They could not ease the pain. Smith was gone. Dr. Brenner had betrayed her. She had no one, nowhere to turn.

“God wants to give you what you need.”
Smith’s words penetrated, but they weren’t true.

“God vanquishes monsters.”

No. She shook her head. Smith had trusted God and died. She had tried to tell him fathers could not be trusted. He’d been so sure she was wrong.

Now there was no escape. No help anywhere. She closed her eyes, sick to death of running, of hiding. No matter what she did, the monster would find her. For so long she had struggled to survive. Now she welcomed an end to it.

In her mind, she lay down beside Smith on the soaked and streaming ground. Why had she left him? Why had she run? She wrapped her arms around him as the monster charged, flames blowing from his nostrils, bearing down on her, but before he reached her, he became the creature in the field—pale eyes, pale skin like death, knife flashing.

Her breath came in shallow gasps as the monster changed again—now neither the monster from her dreams nor the creature she’d fought in the field.