Blood of Cain

94

The man touched the barrel of the shotgun to Courtney’s back and said, “Not on my watch, girl. Raise up your arms. Now!” She did as ordered and the man lifted the .22 from her belt and stepped to the right side. He was in his mid-twenties, unshaven, feathered dirty hair under his cap. He glanced to his left as Dillon Flanagan approached.

Dillon looked like Abe Lincoln without a beard. Rangy. Gaunt face. Piercing black eyes with a molten, swirling fervor behind the irises. He rarely blinked. He was dressed in a black coat with tails, like a maestro’s jacket worn over a black T-shirt and dark jeans. His cowboy boots were narrow-toed, ostrich-skin.

“Greetings, Courtney,” he said, stepping closer to her. Two additional men stood on either side of him. Both looked like they’d slept for weeks in their clothes, grimy dungarees over flannel shirts, mud-caked boots. Neither had shaved or bathed recently. Courtney took a small step backwards. Dillon grinned, leaning in some. “You don’t look very pleased to see me. You tried to pull a gun on me. And all this time I thought I was your favorite uncle.” He grinned, his black eyes animated. “Diviciacus sent you, didn’t he? The man would cheat the gods to serve Caesar.”

“You’re a freak and you live in an insane world. You’re even sicker than I remember.” She lowered her eyes from his face to the gold bracelet he wore on his left wrist.

“I do live in an insane world, and I’m doing my part to change it.” He lifted his arm. “Is this what brings you to the mountains? You want this torc and all the power that it possess?”

Courtney said nothing.

He grinned, his eyes now fiery. The men stood a few feet away, each man’s whiskered face as vacant as field of weeds. Dillon said, “I think not, Courtney. You forget how to speak, girl?”

“Give me what you stole from my grandmother.”

“Why? Your grandmother’s dead.”

“No! Don’t lie!” Her heart raced, palms moist.

“The old woman finally left this world. I expect her to return as a sheep. Nothing more. Since you’re here, I have no doubt my brother, Sean, shall follow. Did you bond with your other uncle? Nothing like a family reunion to rock the cradle of your illusions. Let me paint a clearer picture for you, Courtney, one I’ll share with Uncle Sean when he joins us. You have no claim to the property in South Carolina or Ireland. That inheritance is mine. Always was. Always will be.”

“You killed her, I know it.”

“I can’t kill, I can only change the form of life through the act of death. It’s like an elevator ride to a different place, a different floor in your progression to reach enlightenment. That’s why the Celts never feared death in battle. They feared boredom in life. So when I change your life for the better, channeling through your death, you will one day praise me for having done so.” He turned toward his followers. “Bring her. We will begin the ceremony in a grove of mighty oak, because to catch a hungry lion, you have to set the trap by tying a lamb to the stake.”

I followed winding mountain roads en route to Linden, the rental car getting low on gas. I didn’t want to take the time to buy gas. Every minute Courtney was being held by Dillon was a minute too long. And I knew she’d never walk out of the mountains alive. I parked in the gravel lot of a country store, dust blowing from the lot. There was one pump. And the handwritten sign read: pay inside before pumping.

The interior of the old store was dark, some light coming from the front windows and a small wattage clear-glass bulb screwed into the base of a paddle fan. The wooden floor was made from knotty pine, worn smooth from decades of shoes and probably a lot of bare feet. I smelled barbecue pulled pork, hoop cheese, and barreled pickles as I approached the counter. A man sat motionless behind the counter, only his eyes moving under the bill of his cap, following me.

I said, “I’ll take forty dollars’ worth of regular.”

He nodded, stood slowly. “Okay, pump’s on.”

I set the money in front of him on the scratched glass counter. He used two fingers, pressing down hard on the old cash register keys. The cash register was non-electric, solid, mechanical, and the color of tarnished silver. Everything in the store appeared dated, old — merchandise that could have been sold from a Sears and Roebuck catalog. It was an antique store by default avoidance of the present. Everything was old except one thing. Something I spotted when I first entered.

A video camera.

Wide-angle lens. High definition. Perched like a silent Cyclops to the immediate left of a mounted deer head behind and above the counter. I looked into the glass eyes of the dead deer and into the glass eye of the live camera, streaming real-time video to someplace.

As the clerk counted back change, I asked, “Where’s Mount Gilead?”

“What’s that?”

“Mount Gilead. Probably not much left. Like an old logging camp back in the mountains.”

“Sounds like someplace in the Bible, not in Virginia. Never heard of it.” He looked directly at me, unblinking while he tapped tobacco slivers into a pipe bowl.

“Thank you.”

He nodded and I left. I began filling the tank with gas, my back to the store entrance. I could see the store from the reflection in the side mirror. I saw the clerk answer the phone, his head nodding. The call was brief. I was twisting the gas cap back on the rental car when I heard the gravel crunching, someone approaching quickly. I spun around just as the clerk raised his arm, an ice pick clenched in his right fist.

I ducked, the ice pick missing me by inches. I grabbed his arm at the wrist, twisting it behind his back, shoving hard. Pushing his arm to his shoulder blades. Snapping bones and cartilage. The noise like someone stepping hard on a Styrofoam cup. He screamed, a painful howling. Then I spun him around and drove my forearm into his mouth, shattering teeth like hitting a corncob with a baseball bat. He dropped to his knees vomiting pulled pork, white bread and blood.

I grabbed him by the collar and shouted, “Where’s Dillon Flanagan? Tell me!”

He tried to focus on me, his eyes drifting. I said, “Where’s the Prophet?”

He attempted to smile, nerves in his smashed lips twitching, his eyes watering. He coughed and said, “Exodus.”

“Look at me! Where’s the Prophet?”

“Exodus.” Then he slumped over, his eyes dazed, and he mumbled, “Nobody finds the Prophet ‘ceptin’ God himself. Exodus. You have been set apart to the LORD today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day. Exodus.”

I left him sprawled in the gravel lot, mumbling. I jumped in the rental and sped off, gravel and dust flying. My phone buzzed. Dave Collins said, “I’ve got Courtney’s location on GPS.”

“Where?”

“Not too far from you. I have your location and Courtney’s on a split-screen computer satellite grid here in my boat. Sean, she’s about twenty-two miles from where you are right now. Take Highway 797 to the right. Go north to Goose Creek — to an unmarked dirt road. Looks like there’s an old logging road about eighteen miles down on your left. If Dillon’s got her, they could be walking because the GPS location dot is moving slowly. So she’s not in a car. And it appears on a satellite topographical map of Virginia that she’s in some very remote mountain country. Better hurry, Sean.”

“Let me know if you can find an elevated area, a clear area, where I can spot them — someplace where I can get off a shot. That might be my fastest way to stop Dillon.”