Chronic fear

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Alexis froze when Mark leaped at Scagnelli, but the shots from the AR-15 broke her daze before the chill had a chance to settle deep.

Mark grunted in pain, and the groan rolled up into a roar of animalistic ferocity as he slammed into Scagnelli, knocking him down the embankment. The AR-15 flew away and skittered across the leafy ground before thumping into a gnarled root.

Scagnelli cursed, fishing into his cargo pants for his pistol, but Mark was on him, clawing, wallowing, and snarling.

Mark fought with desperation, but Scagnelli was ruthless and experienced, punching Mark twice in the neck and causing his head to snap to one side. Alexis resisted the urge to join the battle, knowing she’d be no good in close combat anyway.

Get the gun.

She slipped on the damp leaves, tumbling into the ferns and low tangles of doghobble and Virginia creeper vines. She dragged herself forward, clawing in the dark mud, the flesh of the ancient mountain giving way beneath her fingers.

Kill or be killed.

The Monkey House flashed in her mind, only a moment-the bloody metal tool in my hand-and then she reached the rifle. Mark said it contained thirty rounds, which meant it had plenty more to go.

She heaved the thing to her shoulder but couldn’t get a clean shot. The barrel swayed back and forth before her as she wilted from exhaustion and anxiety.

“Shoot!” Mark bellowed, a plaintive note in his cracked voice.

That was when she saw the two crimson blossoms on his back, spreading fast through his tan shirt.

Scagnelli bucked and kicked, nearly throwing Mark from atop him, but Mark curled his fingers like claws and jammed them into the killer’s collarbone, sinking in to grip the man’s meat.

Mark moved his face near Scagnelli’s, and Alexis aimed at the man’s torso. Mark drove his mouth forward and sank his teeth into Scagnelli’s cheek, ripping away a chunk of flesh.

Mark turned toward Alexis, eyes gleaming and crazed, a strip of pale gristle linking him to Scagnelli, who screamed and stopped fighting long enough to reach for the wound.

“Shoot!” Mark shouted again, and this time it wasn’t a request, it was a decree from hell, issuing from that bloody, grinning mouth that had kissed her so often.

Oh, my God, he’s ENJOYING it.

And this was Seethe, condensed to its purest essence.

The thing she’d fought to preserve.

The secret she wanted to possess.

From the bottom of Pandora’s blackest, bitchingest box.

“Do it,” Mark snarled, and she wondered if she meant him, if he was begging for an end to his suffering.

Scagnelli’s hand made it into a side pocket and she saw the metal target guide of his pistol.

“Druh-drop it,” Alexis said, but she didn’t even convince herself.

Mark thrust an elbow into Scagnelli’s kidney, slowing the draw, but more of the gun slid into view. Then she saw the bulge of the barrel tilting up in his pants, and then came a muffled explosion.

Mark rolled away at the sound. The bullet had struck a tree three feet to the right of her, head high, and Scagnelli could shoot plenty more.

If she didn’t shoot first.

She wasn’t sure if she kept her eyes open or not, but she remembered Mark’s words-squeeze once for every shot-and before she stopped, her finger was numb.

Scagnelli lay on the ground, moaning, his limp fingers still dug into his pocket, although they’d gone slack around the gun’s grip. She didn’t know how many bullets he’d taken, but the one that mattered most was just below his heart, the stain on his green T-shirt growing larger with every weakening surge of his pulse.

“Finish him,” Mark wheezed, and now she could see the two wet blotches in his own abdominal cavity, creases of meat below his ribs.

“No,” she said. “That’s murder.”

“You can do it. Just like in the Monkey House.”

“I didn’t kill anybody in the Monkey House, goddamn it.” Her rage shifted from Scagnelli to her husband.

Even in his pale, depleted state, a vicious sneer twisted Mark’s lips. “Do you want Seethe or not? If he lives, then it’s Burchfield’s. Sooner or later, it’s Burchfield’s.”

Scagnelli’s eyelids fluttered, and he seemed to come around long enough to focus on her face. He smiled, and it was the arrogant benevolence of Sebastian Briggs, the populist solicitude of Senator Daniel Burchfield, the false piety of Wallace Forsyth.

All mirrors, all the things that she’d become.

Seethe had made her just like them.

Mark was right.

Not only could she kill Scagnelli, but she would love it.

The next best thing to suicide.

The only question was whether her husband should be next.

She staggered to Scagnelli and stood over him, his blood seeping down to feed the organisms in the soil. His arm gave one final spasm as he tried to make it operate the pistol, but he finally sagged in acceptance.

“Just doing my…job,” he wheezed, causing the wound in his chest to gurgle.

“Me, too,” she said, pointing at his head and squeezing the trigger four times in rapid succession.

Alexis heard Mark laughing behind her, and the triumphant sound mutated into a moist, ragged cough. She ignored him, bending to fish through Scagnelli’s pockets until she found the vial of pills.

Mark wouldn’t keep her from them this time.

She smiled.

Seethe is mine. As it was meant to be.

To do it right and make it look good, she’d need to use Scagnelli’s pistol to kill her husband. Someone was going to reconstruct the scene using advanced forensic techniques, and lying would only tell half the story.

Facts are troublesome things. But they’re the currency of knowledge.

And knowledge is the price we pay to ease the pain of ignorance.

“Lex!” Wendy said, stepping from the shadow of the forest, with Roland and a strange man standing beside her. Both were armed.

Alexis fought the rage that wanted to claim her face, that screamed at her to raise the AR-15 and empty the rest of the clip, that owned her deepest and most intimate core.

Instead, she smiled as if glad to see her old friend. “Wendy!”

Roland rushed to Mark’s side, while the strange man in the camouflage vest looked from Alexis to Scagnelli’s corpse, trying to connect the two. His pistol was pointed skyward, but at a crisp angle that suggested he could lower and fire in the blink of an eye. Alexis let the rifle drop and the man relaxed a little.

“Mark’s been shot,” Alexis said, giving Wendy a quick but desperate hug, already building the lie in her head.

As they gathered over her husband’s unconscious form, Alexis slipped the vial into her hip pocket.

Mine.