She nodded, tears threatening to spill over her lashes.
I wanted to tell her she could cross through me, she could be with her parents who’d died that night – but a growl, low and guttural, caught my attention. Alarm raced up my spine and over my skin as my gaze darted from one shadow to the next. “Is that a bear?” I asked. “I hope that’s not a bear.”
Lydia’s expression had changed. She looked at me worriedly. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. I’m sorry. I just wanted you to see.”
I stood. “I know, honey. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. It was selfish of me.” She lowered her head.
“Not at all,” I said, my voice stern.
Her mouth forming a lovely pout, she whispered, “You should know, they were summoned.”
I put a hand on her arm and leaned closer. “Who, sweetheart? Who was summoned?”
She cast a worried glance over her shoulder. “The monsters.” The growl grew louder as she spoke. “They were summoned. All twelve of them.”
I stilled, my thoughts snagging on the word twelve. I straightened and whirled around, looking for the hellhounds, the beasts who’d escaped eternal damnation to frolic on earth. And to rip me limb from limb.
Before I could ask any more questions, she whispered to me once again. Her words curled around me like dark, ethereal smoke as she said, “You should run.”
2
We are all searching for someone whose demons play well with ours.
— BUMPER STICKER
I raced back to the campgrounds so fast, tree limbs and pine needles whipped across my face with cruel intent. I didn’t care. I flew over the fallen log and zigzagged past the trees, the landscape blurring in my periphery as I focused on sound. Not just any sound. A specific sound. A growl. But I had yet to hear it again.
I felt Reyes near me, incorporeal. His heat encircled me¸ but I didn’t have time to explain. I burst from the forest and sprinted back to the cabins, shouting, “Time to go! Chop, chop!”
Snapping at a very confused Kit, I scooped up the file I’d laid on the ground and raced toward her SUV. She didn’t argue. She followed behind me, grabbing her keys as she ran.
“Is there a bear?” she asked as we hustled into her SUV.
“Something like that,” I said, eyeing Reyes.
He bit down and examined the area as Kit maneuvered the SUV through a perfect three-point turn, stirring up dirt and clouds of dust.
I felt bad about leaving the girls behind without so much as a by-your-leave. I’d have to go back for them when this Twelve business was all said and done.
“Okay,” I said once we were on the road, “there are at least eight girls buried near that big boulder to the east of the cabins, just past the tree line.”
“What?” she asked.
“And Lydia Weeks is buried at the opposite end of the camp, in a shallow grave. There is a fallen tree nearby.”
Kit pulled to the side of the road. Our pause in forward momentum had me nervous again. Had the Twelve seen me? Would they hunt me down? Drag me out of the car for my dismemberment?
“We should keep going,” I said to her, my hands slick with perspiration. From physical exertion or from nerves, I had no idea.
“What are you talking about? What girls?”
“Oh.” I pulled out the file and opened it to the news article. “And this is your killer. He was using the area as a dumpsite. The campers got there on the wrong night. But we really should keep going.”
She took the file without looking at it. “How do you know all of this?”
I sighed in helplessness, unable to answer to her satisfaction. “It’s what I do, Kit. You just have to trust me. Say that we were investigating the area and we found a body. I can draw you a map of where to find her.”
“You can show me.” She started to make a U-turn.
I stopped her with a hand on her arm. “No, I can’t.”
We were idling in the middle of the road when a car approached. The driver slowed upon seeing us, unsure of what we were up to.
After a moment, Kit depressed the gas pedal and continued down the mountain. “I want a map,” she said.
“You’ll have it.” I pointed to the deputy in the photo again. “Do you recognize this man?”
She finally took a look. “No. Why?”
“Was he ever a suspect?”
“No, but one of the agents on-scene described a confrontation he’d had with a sheriff’s deputy from Los Alamos. Said he was asking all kinds of questions, which is natural, but he just remembered the guy as being dodgy. He’d wanted to know everything that was going on, even though it was well out of his jurisdiction.”
“He’s your killer.”
She blinked at me in surprise, then refocused on the road. After navigating a few tight turns, she said, “One of these days, you’re going to have to tell me how you do that.”
“One of these days,” I said, relieved beyond measure to be alive. And fully limbed.
Giving up all pretense of normalcy, I turned to Reyes in the backseat. “Are we safe?”
“For the moment. But we need a plan.”
“Like what kind of plan? I mean, they’re —” I gave one last fleeting glance toward Kit. She would never look at me the same again. Come to think of it, she might never look at me again, period. “They’re hellhounds,” I said, resigned to the fact that I might lose SAC. “What can we possibly do to them?”