The Furies (10 page)

“The gun!” Ariel cried, pointing at the iron box that John had tossed on the passenger seat. “There's a gun in the cache, right?”

Without hesitation, he reached inside the box, pulled out the Glock and handed it to her. “Who is it? Cops?”

She ejected the Glock's magazine, checking to see if it was loaded. Then she slammed it back into the gun and chambered a round. “Sullivan's men ride Harleys. Instead of disguising themselves as Amish, they pretend they're a biker gang called the Riflemen.”

There was no time to escape. The motorcycles were just a few hundred yards away. They'd reach the gas station before John could drive the Kia past the pumps. Ariel leaned against the rear door on the right side of the car and rolled down the back window on the left. Then, holding the Glock with both hands, she pointed it out the window. She might be able to pick off a rider or two as they turned into the station. But once the men aimed their assault rifles at the Kia, the show would be over.

John just sat there in the driver's seat. He was amazed at how calm he felt. He didn't even try to take cover.
At least it'll be quick
, he thought.
A storm of bullets, then lights out. And then I'll be with Ivy. I'll be with my daughter.

When the motorcycles came down the road, though, he noticed they weren't Harleys. They were big luxurious touring bikes, Hondas and Yamahas in neon-bright colors. The riders were overweight couples wearing matching silver jackets that said
PHILADELPHIA PHREAKS
on the back. They rumbled right past the Exxon station.

Ariel lowered the Glock and let out a long breath. John thought she might smile, but she didn't. Instead she pointed at the box again. “Any license plates in there?”

He had to think for a second. “Yeah. A couple of Michigan plates.”

“Take your Pennsylvania plates off the car and put on those. Just in case the police are looking for us.” She removed the Glock's magazine and pulled back the slide, ejecting the bullet from the chamber. “Then we'll gas up and get the hell out of here.”

 

 

John drove through the afternoon and into the night. He crossed the rugged hills of Pennsylvania, sticking to the back roads. Although he'd changed the Kia's license plates, he didn't want to take any chances with the state troopers on the turnpike. He stopped at a roadside convenience store to buy dinner—trail mix, Slim Jims, microwaved burritos—and then they cruised through the flat Ohio countryside. Taking the secondary roads slowed them down considerably, so it was almost midnight by the time they reached the Michigan state line. John was dead tired but he kept going north, driving for another two hours on an empty Route 52 until he reached the woodlands of central Michigan. Then Ariel leaned forward from the backseat and said, “In a couple of minutes you're gonna make a left turn. I know a place where we can stop for a few hours.”

John was surprised. He'd assumed she wanted to get home as fast as possible. “I don't have to stop. I'm fine.”

“We can't make it to Haven tonight.”

“How far away is it? Seriously, I'm not tired, I can keep driving till—”

“Haven's in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, John. It's separated from the Lower Peninsula by the Straits of Mackinac, which connect Lake Michigan with Lake Huron. To get from the Lower Peninsula to the U.P., you have to cross the Mackinac Bridge.”

“So what's the problem? The bridge doesn't shut down at night, does it?”

“There's probably a roadblock on the bridge by now. Sullivan has contacts in the FBI and the Michigan state police. He's used them before to pursue our people when they're on assignment outside Haven.”

“On assignment?”

“Sometimes our Elders ask us to perform certain tasks. For instance, every year they assign our botanical experts to go to the Amazon to collect rare medicinal plants. The experts travel with forged documents, so no one can trace them back to our community.” Ariel shifted in the backseat, grunting as she repositioned her legs. “Sullivan gives false information to the authorities, telling them that our people are drug dealers or terrorists. Over the past year three people from Haven have been killed in gun battles with the police, and two more died in prison after they were arrested. Sullivan was behind all those deaths.”

“But we changed the license plates on the car. How will the police know to stop us?”

“I'm sure Sullivan told them what to look for. A tall man driving a beat-up Kia, a redhead with injured legs.”

John slowed the car. He was wondering if they should turn around. “Is there another route we can take?”

“We could go through Wisconsin and take one of the highways running across the Upper Peninsula, but Sullivan has an outpost near Seney. His Riflemen keep watch over all the roads in that part of the U.P.”

“So what are we gonna do?”

Ariel extended her right arm, pointing at the road ahead. “There's the left turn. We're going to rest for a few hours, and then we'll figure something out.”

She spoke in a firm, commanding voice, and John was too tired to resist. He turned left onto a country lane that rambled through pitch-black woods. Then Ariel pointed to another left turn, which put them on a narrow, rutted dirt road. After jouncing on this trail for a couple of miles they reached a clearing in the woods, a thirty-foot-wide space overhung by pine branches. “This is the place,” Ariel said. “We'll be all right here. Even if someone comes down the trail, they won't see the car.”

John maneuvered the Kia into the clearing. Then he shut off the engine and headlights, and utter darkness descended upon them. “Whoa. That's spooky.” He reached for the switch on the car's dome light and flicked it on. “I'll turn this off when we're ready to go to sleep.”

“I'm ready right now.” She pulled off her new sweatshirt—a simple gray thing John had purchased at the convenience store—and folded it to make a pillow, which she placed at one end of the backseat. Then she lay down and made herself as comfortable as possible.

John sneaked a look at her. She wore a T-shirt and gym shorts, also bought at the convenience store, and her legs were wrapped in bandages, but she still looked great. He remembered, with sudden vividness, how she kissed him in the hotel room in Brooklyn last night, how she shivered in his arms and led him toward the bed. Although sex was out of the question now, for a million good reasons, he still wished he could climb into the backseat with her. With great reluctance he turned away from her and focused on the lever for the driver's seat, tilting it as far back as it would go. This would be his bed for the night. Then he reached over his head to turn off the dome light. As he flicked the switch he glanced at the passenger seat, where he'd put the Pennsylvania license plates he'd taken off the Kia. The last thing he saw before the light went out was
IVY4EVR.

“Thank you, John.” Ariel's voice was softer now, a whisper in the darkness. “Thank you for everything.”

He should've just said “You're welcome” and left it at that, but he was too agitated. Over the past twenty-four hours he'd been tricked, seduced, and ambushed. He'd nearly been killed by assassins carrying assault rifles, and now he was fleeing across the country with a modern-day witch whose family might execute him to protect their secrets. But oddly enough, his greatest worry wasn't Sullivan or the Elders of Haven. His thoughts kept circling back to what Ariel had told him this morning:
Meeting you wasn't an accident. I chose you.

“Can I ask you a question?” He turned toward the backseat, even though he couldn't see a thing. “About the news story you saw on the Internet? The story about me?”

“Certainly. What do you want to know?”

“Was it the article that ran in
The Philadelphia Inquirer?
”

“Yes, it was.”

John took a deep breath. Several newspapers had published articles about the shootings on Kensington Avenue, but the
Inquirer
story was the worst. “It wasn't true. None of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“All those things they said about me? All that saintly turn-the-other-cheek crap? It didn't happen that way.” He clenched his hands. “I was ready to kill them. I was going to shoot every last one of those bastards.”

Ariel didn't say anything at first, but he could hear her moving in the backseat, propping herself up to a sitting position. He stared hard into the darkness, and after a moment he thought he could make out her silhouette.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she finally asked.

He wanted to. Very badly. But he'd promised never to tell. He'd sworn an oath on his daughter's grave, just fifteen minutes after he'd lowered her coffin into the ground.

“No, I can't,” he said. “I just want you to know I'm not a saint. I would've killed them. I was going to.”

She fell silent again. For the next ten seconds all he could hear was her breathing. Then he felt a caress on his cheek. She'd reached out and touched his face.

“It's all right, John. I never thought you were a saint. Now go to sleep, okay?”

He closed his eyes. Her hand was so warm. “Okay,” he said.

She kept her hand on his cheek for another few seconds. He leaned toward her, pressing his face against her palm, luxuriating in her touch. By the time she withdrew her hand and lay down in the backseat again, he was calmer. He kicked off his shoes and reclined in the driver's seat. Within moments he was asleep.

EIGHT

She was close. Sullivan could sense it.

He and Marlowe were riding their Harleys up I-75, about ten miles north of Bay City, Michigan. To the east was the dark expanse of Saginaw Bay and to the west was Gladwin State Forest, which looked equally dark at four o'clock in the morning. The forest was a good place to hide, and the girl was expert at hiding. She'd spent more time outside Haven than anyone else in the community, and she knew all of Michigan's secret places. Sullivan knew them too, but he doubted he could find her now. Not in the dark, not in that vast tract of woods. No, he'd have a better chance of catching her tomorrow. The state police were already checking each car that crossed the Mackinac Bridge. Sullivan and his Riflemen would cover the other routes to Haven.

He gunned the Harley's engine as the highway sloped upward. The night was cold for early September, and the frigid wind slapped his face. But at least it blew away the stink of the junkie. After interrogating Rodriguez, Sullivan had slit the wretch's throat, and some of the blood had splashed on his jeans. Although Rodriguez told him plenty about John Rogers and the young redhead who'd been shot in the legs, the junkie didn't know which way they'd fled. Sullivan dispatched his men to the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the other interstate highways, and though they spotted many old, dented Kias, none of them was the car they were looking for. They had no choice but to regroup in Michigan and wait for their targets to approach Haven.

Still, the visit to Philadelphia hadn't been a total waste. Before leaving Rodriguez's house, Sullivan had placed the bloody knife on the floor next to the junkie's corpse. He'd acquired this knife from one of the gang members he'd hired to ransack Rogers's apartment. Its handle was greasy and covered with Rogers's fingerprints, and Sullivan had been careful to use gloves while holding it. Afterwards, he called 911 and gave the Philadelphia police an anonymous tip. John Rogers, he told them, had just killed Gabriel Rodriguez, a North Philly junkie, because of a drug deal gone bad. And now Rogers, he added, was heading for Michigan's Upper Peninsula in a 2006 Kia.

Sullivan got a call from Agent Larson two hours later. As expected, the Philadelphia cops had gone to the junkie's house and found the corpse and bloody knife. Then they'd gone to Rogers's apartment and discovered the fifteen pounds of methamphetamine that Sullivan had planted there. And then, after learning that Rogers was wanted by the FBI in connection with the shootings in New York, the cops had called Larson and told him what they'd found. Larson, in turn, contacted Sullivan to find out why Rogers would go to the Upper Peninsula. Sullivan acted cagey at first, pretending not to know anything. Then he said he'd heard a rumor that everyone in Rogers's gang was making a run for the Canadian border. His words had their intended effect: after another two hours, Sullivan's men in the U.P. reported that the state police had set up a checkpoint on the Mackinac Bridge.

Now, after riding his Harley halfway across the Midwest, Sullivan was less than two hundred miles from his destination. He glanced at Marlowe, who rode in the adjacent lane just a couple of yards to his right. Each man wore a backpack that held an M4 carbine and two hundred rounds of ammunition. Marlowe's face was a mess, so bloodied and bruised from the beating John Rogers had given him that his spiderweb tattoo was barely visible. But he rode his Harley as steadily as ever, his eyes full of hatred. Sullivan had promised him a chance to get his revenge on Rogers if they captured the man alive.

In addition to his M4, Sullivan carried a Mauser HSc, a vintage German pistol. Ever since he'd started the rebellion against the Council of Elders, he'd been collecting Nazi-era weapons and regalia. At first he did it as part of his effort to disguise his men, to make the Riflemen look like the other motorcycle gangs that roamed across the country. Over the past year, though, he'd come to identify with Hitler's Third Reich. Although the Nazis had committed some terrible crimes, at least you couldn't accuse them of underreaching. Their goal was to change the very nature of humanity. And this was Sullivan's goal as well. He was going to create a new race of men.

He kept his Mauser in a shoulder holster under his jacket. As he raced down the dark highway, the Harley roaring in his ears, he felt the pistol's handle against his ribs. In just a few hours this gun would make history. He was going to use it to kill the Chief Elder's daughter, the woman who'd opposed him more than any of the others, the woman he hated more than anyone in the world.