Hell in Heaven

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The girl slept in the bed in Joan's guest room. Matt hadn't wanted to bring her here, hadn't ever wanted to come back to this house. But he was afraid that the warring tribes would remember the cause of their fight and come looking for her. He couldn't take a chance of being found on the road with nowhere to hide except for woods that everyone here knew much better than he did. He had a feeling they'd think twice before coming here, even if they were sure Joan was truly dead. He'd brought the girl here and put her to bed, then doubled back to retrieve his pack and his axe from Orfamay's place.

He thought the girl was in shock. Her eyes were dilated and he could hear her shallow, gasping breaths from the living room, where he'd stretched out on the couch. Matt had tried talking to her as he carried her away from the barn, but she didn't seem to hear him. Her lips moved continually, but no sound came out. Finally he was able to understand what she was trying to say:

It wasn't rape.

Then what was it? Young love? Forbidden love? Cal Gilhoolie and Tally Vetch's daughter, teenagers from warring tribes, in love despite their families, despite their knowledge of what would happen if they were caught. Romeo and Juliet in the Cascades.

Had they been lovers for long, sneaking around behind barns and in woodsheds in this tiny town? He thought of the trickle of blood that had been running down her leg when her uncle threw her onto the floor. Of small red spot on the boy's penis before the giant had ripped it off and held it up as a trophy.

This was their first time.

And their last.

The boy was dead or dying. Matt had no idea if the girl would make it through the night. For all he knew what he took as shock was evidence of massive internal injuries. She could be bleeding to death right now, and there was nothing he could do about it.

There had been. One moment he could have stopped everything. They had asked him to step and in take the role of lawgiver. If he had, maybe that boy would still be alive. Maybe that girl wouldn't be gasping for breath in the next room.

Or if he'd never taken the highway exit to Heaven. If he hadn't gone home with Joan. Hadn't killed her. Before he came, there had been a lawgiver to enforce the rules. To make sure everything was even between Vetch and Gilhoolie. What would Joan have done if she'd found out about these two? Something worse than the burning the two families desired, he suspected. And they all knew it, and they all kept their passions in check. All their passions.

That's why the girl had been a virgin until tonight. That's why the boy had been alive until hours ago.

He'd killed a monster, but in doing so had he set free something worse? He thought of places like Yugoslavia and Iraq where warring tribes had been ruled by the iron fist of a dictator. Only when that despot was removed did anyone realize that he'd been the only thing keeping the sides from killing each other.

He was supposed to step in for Joan. He had killed her, and he was supposed to rule in her place. And with her methods. That's why Ezekiel Vetch and Alwyn Hoggins had accepted his settlement in their fight. Because if they didn't, they believed he would have done something to them… something terrible.

Now that fear was gone, and there was nothing holding them back. The last sight he'd had of the Grange was the assembled clans locked in combat as the flames grew around them. They were all so intent on killing each other, no one seemed to notice the barn was on fire. Matt assumed that wouldn't last for long. They'd feel the heat and run out into the night, and once they were separated they'd begin to think again.

It was possible that they'd come to their senses, realize how insane it was to wage war against their neighbors. That they'd reach out and embrace as they faced the new day together. Yes, that was possible. In the same way it was possible that when the sun rose, Matt could gather the girl in his arms and fly back to the highway.

Most likely what would happen was that both sides, when given a chance to think through the evening's events, would realize that they had failed to murder this poor young girl. They'd come looking for her.

And Matt had no idea what he'd do then.

There was a sound from outside the house. Matt started awake, and only then realized he'd drifted off to sleep. He listened, waiting for the sound to come again. It had been a sharp crack, a twig snapping or a pine cone kicked aside.

Not the mob. Maybe one person.

One person he could handle.

Matt went to the door, grabbing the axe from the coffee table where Joan had showed him photo albums of her son just one night earlier. Now the albums were gone, and Matt suspected they'd never existed, except as some kind of hallucination she'd planted in his head.

What had she wanted from him? Someone to rule by her side, she'd said. Someone to distract her from her loneliness. But why him? Because he'd been the first man she'd met who wasn't with the Vetches or the Gilhoolies? The first guy who happened to stop by?

But he couldn't have just happened by. He couldn't have. This town, with its feuding families, its strange way of speaking and lack of anything modern, it wasn't just some town lying off the highway in the Cascades. If there had ever been a town in Washington State with a feud like this, he would have heard of it. Everyone would have heard of it. It was simply not possible to be this isolated anywhere in the United States of America.

Not in the USA of the 21 ^ ^st century, that was.

How long had the Vetches and the Gilhoolies been locked in stasis under Joan's rule? Years? Decades? Centuries? It didn't seem possible. Hell, it wasn't possible.

He tried to shut the idea out of his brain. To pretend that it had never crossed his mind that this was anything but a perfectly normal town that just happened to be inhabited by perfectly strange people. That the people of Heaven, Washington, were what he had originally feared, some kind of bizarre religious cult.

But he couldn't.

There was too much that didn't fit. And most of what didn't fit was him. They'd known he was coming – known him by name. They'd prayed for him to come, that's what the little girl Mouse had said.

Then he remembered – only after she had started to say something else. Summ. Summoned?

They'd summoned him, like some hero or demon out of an ancient story? If that was true, what did it make them? What did it make him?

The night outside was cold and bright; the stars shone down, white like a cleansing fire. He closed the door gently behind him and listened. For a moment there was nothing. And then he heard a rustling in the brush.

And then a cry, high and piercing, so loud he could feel blood trickling from his ears the way it had dripped down the young girl's leg.

Matt whirled around as a black form exploded from a stand of trees. It was too big to see all at once, moved too fast to make out its form. He saw the black of feathers, the white of claw, jaundiced yellow beak.

Some kind of bird. Some kind of hideous black crow. But bigger than him, wingspan the length of the house, an eye as big as his head. And a jagged beak plunging down directly at his heart.