Marked In Flesh

CHAPTER 31

Firesday, Juin 22

Hearing Nathan’s growl and Jake’s scolding caws, Meg rushed to the front counter to find out what was wrong. Then her mouth fell open as she stared at Robert, Sarah, and Lizzy playing with a large ball in the delivery area—a place where a large delivery truck, pulling in fast, could hit them. A place that was not a playground. They knew that.

“Robert!” Lizzy shouted. “Grr Bear says we’re not supposed to play out here! We’re supposed to play out back!”

Meg gasped and grabbed the counter as a painful buzz filled her abdomen and lower back. When she heard the creak of someone moving around upstairs, the buzz faded as quickly as it began, leaving an echo of pain.

“Grr Bear is a poophead!” Robert threw the ball at Lizzy, who swung Grr Bear like a bat and managed to connect with the ball, sending it in a high arc.

“Robert!” Pete Denby shouted from an upstairs window.

Robert froze for a moment at the sound of his father’s voice. Then, seeing the ball arcing over his head, he turned to run after it.

Pain. Abdomen, back, legs. Remembering training images of people injured in car accidents, Meg’s vision grayed, and she screamed, “Nathan, stop him! Stop him!”

Footsteps pounded overhead as Nathan hurled himself out the door and caught Robert when the boy was just two steps away from the street—and brought him down in a way that guaranteed skinned elbows and knees. Then Pete Denby was there too, and the girls were crying because Pete was angry and Nathan was snarling . . . and the phone kept ringing and ringing.

The pain in Meg’s body faded again, leaving her feeling weak, but the skin along the right side of her jaw began to burn.

Focused on Pete and Nathan squaring off, she grabbed the receiver and said, “What?”

“Meg?”

The voice shook so much she wasn’t sure she recognized it. “Hope?”

“Meg . . . run . . . hide. Death.”

“Hope, what . . . ?”

“Run!”

“Hope? Hope!”

The girl wasn’t there anymore. Meg listened to the dial tone, then dropped the receiver back into the cradle. She rushed into the sorting room and locked the Private door.

Whatever vision she might have seen about Robert . . . That was done. She still felt weak and sick, but there was no prickle or buzz in her lower body. The pain was along her jaw now—the spot where she had dreamed of making a cut.

Run. Hope’s screamed command burned under her skin. But run from what? The cards hadn’t supplied the answer.

Meg opened her silver razor, laid the blade against the right side of her jaw, and made a long cut. Setting aside the razor, she braced her hands on the table and swallowed the agony as well as the words in order to see this prophecy.

Images piled up like a stack of photographs being seen so fast she could barely understand. Wolves. Blood. Death. That was common in all the images. But the land . . . Similar places but not the same places. A sea of grass. Cabins built near mountains. More places that became a backdrop for death. So many more.

For a heartbeat, she saw Simon at the Wolfgard Complex, one side of his face covered in blood. Then she saw . . . she saw . . .

Turning away from the table, Meg bent over and vomited on the floor.

Run. Hide the pack.

“Sam,” she whispered.

Turning away from the mess, she spotted the phone on the counter. She had seen . . . She knew that face.

The address book, recently purchased at the Three Ps, sat beside the phone. Meg flipped to the W section and called the number.

“Walker’s General Store. Jesse speaking.”

She forced the words out. “This is Meg Corbyn.”

“Meg?”

If she didn’t get out of there soon, something inside her would break. Still she struggled to lay out the images in a way that Jesse Walker would understand. “Bison. Rifle. Death. Wolves. Trap. Death. Bodies. Bodies. Joe’s face. Fire, fire, fire.”

“Meg?” Alarmed now.

The images swam in front of her eyes, too horrible to bear. “Run. Hide the puppies. Hide the children. Run. Run!”

Fear spurred her, and Meg followed her own warning. She snatched the BOW’s key out of her purse and ran out the back door, colliding with Vlad but unable to stop, unable to speak. She flung open the garage door, leaped into her BOW, and barely missed running over Simon as she backed out.

“Meg!” Simon yelled.

She looked at him, trying to find words, and could find only one. “Run!”

She stomped on the power pedal, careened around the corner, and headed for the Wolfgard Complex as fast as the little vehicle could go.