Ring of Knives

CHAPTER TWELVE

The moon stayed hidden, and Matt traveled in darkness. He moved as quickly as he could, following what he hoped was a broad curve that would skirt the Carthage grounds but lead eventually to the highway. Annica was in his arms, her bony chest covered with the flannel shirt he'd had wrapped around his waist. Her head rested against his collarbone.

"I told you."

He almost missed the words. They were whispered. It was the first time in ten minutes that the girl had spoken.

"I told you what I could do."

Matt swallowed, thinking back to their first conversation in Module One. Wild talents and all that. "Yeah," he said softly. "Yeah, you did."

A pause.

"I'm such a freak." Annica's voice was strained, miserable.

"Not compared to me." That was the God's truth.

Another pause. Longer. Then:

"My boob hurts."

"I'm not surprised." Matt decided not to mention that his wrist, back, ribs-and pretty much everything else-was killing him. "Listen, I need your help." He wanted to get her mind off of what had just happened. "I'm trying to find the highway, okay? But my hearing's not so great. Too many rock concerts when I was a kid. Total silence, for other people? Sounds like cicada season to me." Now he was rambling. "Anyway, can you help me listen for the highway?"

"Yeah, I guess." She put her head against his shoulder. In a small voice, she said, "Thank you."

Matt didn't respond.

"Thank you," she said again. "For not letting him… eat me."

A lump in his throat. "The road," he said. "Listen for the road." And then, after a long pause, "You're welcome."

# # # # # #

Matt walked on. The only sound he could hear was the soft whisper of pine boughs as they passed through the old-growth forest.

"Anything?" he asked.

"Mmm… Maybe to the right, a little? I'm hearing a sound like…" She stiffened in his arms.

"What is it?" he said.

"Matt," she whispered. "Someone's following us."

He stopped.

They stood dead still.

"There," she hissed.

She was right. He'd heard it. A crackle behind them.

Matt stepped behind a large pine trunk and gently set her on her feet. He drew the long carving knife from his belt. He put his hand on her bare shoulder and pressed her back against the tree. They stood in silence like that, neither one moving a muscle.

Another soft rustle in the undergrowth. Closer this time

And closer still.

The tree they were standing against had a split trunk. As the rustling came nearer, the blonde soundlessly turned her face towards the gap, to see what was coming.

Matt did the same.

They saw branches moving. Heard the crackle of twigs. They could half glimpse a shape in the fog, but it was darkness on darkness and meant nothing to them.

Just then, the moon slid free of the clouds, and a few slants of pale light filtered through the branches nearest them.

When she saw what it was, the girl sucked in a harsh breath.

Matt's hand snapped around her mouth the second before she could scream. To spare her the sight, he pressed her face into his chest. He could feel her hot breath against his palm, could feel her screaming silently into it.

He wanted to do the same, but he was frozen in place, watching the thing materialize out of the fog. She had understood what it was before he had. He hadn't recognized it without its black robe. Or its head.

But then, as the fog parted, he had seen the wide eyes carved into the torso, above the jagged, jack-o'-lantern mouth, and he knew it for what it was…

Rotting Jack.

It came even with their tree, moving slowly, the feet taking measured steps, a hand rising mechanically to push a dead limb aside. With it came the stench of a shallow grave, of a slaughterhouse in July.

It moved two steps past their tree and paused.

Matt stared into the upside-down eyes of Jesse Weston. They, like the rest of his bandaged head, hung from the truncated neck by a strip of skin no thicker than a Fruit Roll-Up.

Matt saw the frozen madness in those eyes. It's an honor, after all, to quench the thirst of a god. Jesse had given in to the beast, and it had eaten him alive. It would do the same to Matt if he let it. Looking into Weston's eyes was like looking into a mirror-a mirror of what could happen to him.

Those dead eyes drew Matt's gaze hypnotically, like a cobra transfixing its prey. Staring into them, Matt could almost imagine Weston's oily voice pressing through those upside-down gray lips, saying, To tell the truth, the act of biting another human being is surprisingly habit-forming…

The remembered words had a weird effect on Matt: he was suddenly aware of how much bigger he was than Annica, of how he held her face effortlessly in his hands. He swallowed, feeling the peach fuzz along her delicate jaw. Something in Weston's twisted death gaze seemed to advise him that no one would ever, ever know if Matt chose to lay the blonde down among the pine needles, climb on top of her, and bite and screw her to his heart's content, like a mantis devouring its mate.

But Matt knew that he was who he chose to be. And who he chose to be was not that.

A light breeze blew through the fog, dispersing it for a moment and making the boughs lift and fall.

Rotting Jack took a step forward, away from the split pine, and Weston's head swayed like the lifeless appendage it was. The spell, if that's what it had been, was broken.

Matt blinked, his eyes watering at the stench.

Rotting Jack took another step, and another, pausing only to turn its torso this way and that, as if the carved face were capable of sight.

Then the moon began to slide back behind its cloud, and the headless corpse shambled into a darkness made of equal parts fog and shadow. But long after it vanished, Matt could hear the rustle of its relentless, dead feet softly crushing the ivy, needles, and pine cones that covered the forest floor.