The Borderkind

CHAPTER 2

In the darkness, surrounded by the whisper of the shifting sands, Collette could see nothing except the glowing sphere of white light that waxed and waned and danced in her cell in the Sandman’s castle. Sometimes it disappeared entirely, but it always came back. From time to time it would speak to her in hushed tones about her impending demise. The Vittora was a death spirit, forged of all the luck she had accumulated during her life, now preparing to abandon her because it sensed she would soon die.

It had become her only friend.

Collette needed a friend now, in the madness of this impossible world, for she lived in terror, and her dreams were screaming nightmares.

Most of the time she sat with her back against the rounded wall of the chamber of sand, wiping grit from her eyes and spitting it from her mouth. Her scalp itched like mad, but no matter how she tried she could not get all the sand from her hair. Her captor brought her barely enough water to drink, and trying to use it for personal hygiene would have been idiotic. But still, the itch was maddening. Her body had begun to itch as well and the stale smell that came from her every pore made her nostrils flare in revulsion. Collette often took more than one shower in a day. She hated being unclean.

But it was amazing to her how easily she could get used to certain things if it meant staying alive.

Pissing in the corner of the chamber, for instance. At first she had held on so long that the need had brought her to tears. Then, when she could not hold off any longer, she took off her pajama pants-for she was still in her pajamas from the night of her abduction-and simply went where she stood.

She camped elsewhere in the chamber from then on, and that spot had become the spot. For a couple of days she had tried to eat as little as possible of the fruit and cheese and bread the Sandman brought to her, knowing that it would eventually mean defecating in the same spot. But again, need overcame dignity. What unsettled her even more was that after she had relieved herself, the sand always shifted and the offending waste disappeared, disposed of somehow.

In a part of her mind that had begun to fray, she had begun to think of the spot as “the litter box.”

When she slept, curled into fetal position, the sand felt as though it crept across her bare flesh. At night, the sand was still warm, retaining some of the heat of the day. When the sun was up, however, the heat was terrible. The round chamber was wide and airy, with no doors but a dozen tall, arched windows set at intervals all around her. There was no glass, the opening to the outside world tantalizing to her, but they were twenty-five feet from the soft sand beneath her, and the walls were hard-packed sand like granite. Even in her few hopeful moments, she never imagined being able to climb up there to escape.

The days seemed to last an eternity, and the nights even longer, so that she knew her impression of how long she had been imprisoned could not possibly be accurate. Her body, though, told her the only thing that mattered…it had been too long. The muscles in her neck and back and shoulders were knotted from sleeping on the sand and the rest of her was stiff just from sitting against the wall.

Now, every few hours, she spent twenty minutes walking the perimeter of her prison, during the day moving from one shadow to another. At midday she always rested. There was no hiding from the sun when it was directly above and it was best not to exert herself then.

After dark, the walking continued.

The sand shifted beneath her feet as she marched on, sometimes stumbling as it gave way. Her arches were bands of pain, but she ignored them. The light of the Vittora accompanied her, hovering up near the windows now as though watching her, and it spurred her on. The walking kept her from withering, from just curling up and waiting to die. She would not surrender that easily. It was both a tiny bit of madness and the thing that staved off the deeper madness that awaited.

Step after step, she followed the circular wall, somehow always aware of the spot she had made her litter box. No matter that the sand drew the shit and piss down into itself, leaving no trace; she still circumvented that spot on her walks.

When she had first awoken to find herself captive, she had found comfort in her memories of her favorite films. Movies were a vital part of her life, so often she lost herself in them, and time and again now, her mind went back to those worlds, to Casablanca and Notting Hill, to L.A. Confidential and Rear Window, to The Philadelphia Story and The Godfather. But the Vittora was inside her mind and heart. It could see her thoughts and sometimes taunted her for her fantasizing about those films.

Love and tragedy: those were the things she appreciated most in the movies. Some of them had monsters, but all of the monsters were human. She’d never had an interest in the other sort…could not invest any real fear in them, because she did not believe.

But Collette believed in monsters now.

One of them had murdered her father and torn his eyes out, and kept her captive even now. From time to time she would look up and see the Sandman looking down at her from one of the windows with those filthy lemon-yellow eyes, face all sharp angles and fingers like daggers. Sometimes his fingers were covered with blood. He had spoken to her shortly after he had first captured her, but never since.

Now only the Vittora spoke.

“ Put one foot in front of the other, ” it said in a singsong voice that scraped off of the sound all around the chamber, “ and soon you’ll be walking out the door. ”

Collette shuddered, eyes moistening. It had plucked the song from her mind, some snippet from one of the Christmas specials she’d loved to watch on television as a little girl. The edge in its voice might have been irony or comfort or mockery, or some combination of all three. Clearly, the Vittora did not think she would be walking out the door, or it would not have appeared. It was the harbinger of her death, and though most of what it said was a nonsense echo of her own thoughts, there was a morbid amusement in its tone that made her want to scream.

But she would not scream.

The Vittora was light in the darkness and meant her no harm. It was not tragedy, but the observation of tragedy. It was the ringing phone in the middle of the night, resonating with dread, but still only the messenger.

Left foot, right foot, she moved in that dreadful circle. Soon she would sleep, but for the moment, she walked just to feel alive.

As much as possible, Collette tried not to think of home, but her thoughts were often untamable. She missed the glory that was New York City: the corner delis and the busy sidewalks, the fountains and the parks. It was winter at home, must be nearly Christmas now, or Christmas might already have passed. She had wanted to skate at Rockefeller Center on the outdoor ice rink there and smell the roasted chestnuts sold by sidewalk vendors and see her breath in front of her and all of the decorations. Christmas in New York could lift any heart.

She missed her friends. Terri Ehrlich would be grieving by now, presuming the worst. She missed her job at Billboard magazine and the people there-Lydia and Jane and Elissa and the funny guys in the mailroom. She wondered how long she would have to be gone before they would hire someone to replace her at work, and how long before the people who loved her would begin to lose hope that she might still be alive. She’d gone up to Maine for her brother’s wedding, but by now they must all know of her father’s murder, and that someone had taken her.

How long before most of them simply forgot about her?

Oliver, Collette thought. Oliver will never lose hope. If the Sandman was to be believed, her brother was still alive, and somewhere here, in this nightmare world.

That was half the reason she was here, after all, and the reason he had not killed her yet. The Sandman was using her as bait. They thought there was something different about her and Oliver, something special. Whoever they were was a mystery for another day. For now, all that mattered to Collette was that whoever had enlisted the Sandman to murder her father and kidnap her from their family home had done so in order to draw Oliver in, and that if Oliver did eventually come for her, they would likely both be executed.

God, how she wanted him to come and take her away, to save her from this! The idea of seeing him, talking to him, was almost enough to make her weep. But, of course, she could not stand the thought of anything happening to him, and so the other part of her hoped that no matter what they did to her, Oliver would stay away.

Hear that, little brother? she thought. Stay away!

The flannel pajamas were all she had to wear-not even panties beneath them-and they were far too hot during the day, though necessary to protect her from the sun. But at night, as now, they were vital. The chamber grew cold after dark, and colder still as night wore on.

Collette shivered and crossed her arms over her breasts as she continued to walk, staggering a bit as a pile of sand gave way.

“ Start spreading the news, ” the Vittora sang, knowing, mocking, and yet somehow sorry as well. “ I’m leaving today. ”

“Shut up!” she snapped, twisting in the sand and glaring up at it.

The light flickered and diminished, the sphere shrinking a bit, as it often did. It even disappeared from time to time, though she could sense its presence. When the time came that it was really gone, she was sure she would know that as well. But by then it would be too late. Her life would be slipping away like a fistful of sand.

Heart hammering with frustration, skin prickling with the cold and with grief for her own fate, she began to walk again, determined to dedicate another fifteen minutes to staying alive.

Then she heard his voice…the voice of the Sandman.

“ You see. A Bascombe. Just as promised, ” it rasped, voice grating and cold, words clipped and alien.

Collette halted and it took her a moment before she could glance upward in search of her captor. Her breath caught in her throat. The monster was little more than a shape framed by one of the windows high above, a deeper darkness silhouetted against the night sky beyond. Those hideous lemon-yellow eyes gleamed, reflecting back the light of the Vittora.

For the first time, the Sandman was not alone.

Beside him was a thing whose appearance made her gasp. It was crouched, like a gargoyle perched on a building’s ledge, and large, feathered wings jutted from its back. In the illumination cast by the spirit of her impending death, she thought the feathers looked green. It wore shapeless, dark garments that only partially covered its long, bony limbs. Yet what unnerved her most was that it had the head of a stag, with wickedly sharp antlers. Some ancient dread welled up within her at the sight, as though in the primitive part of her brain she knew that this thing was a predator. Beneath its gaze, she felt like a field mouse fleeing from a screech owl.

And there were others.

They shifted in the dark, moving to other windows with a rustle of feathers. There were at least three more that she could see, staring down at her as if she were an animal at the zoo.

What did it mean, A Bascombe?

And what were they, these things that the Sandman had brought to observe her?

The Vittora, shrunken now to a size no larger than a baseball, descended in a gliding, drifting pattern until it hovered nearby, and she heard it whisper. Words. Answers to the questions in her mind.

“ Perytons, ” it said. “ Hunters. ”

A shudder went through her and for a time selfishness triumphed over her love for Oliver in her mind. She knew that if he came for her, it would mean his death, but now that she knew the Sandman was not alone, that he had allies, she felt certain they would eventually find him anyway.

“Come on, Ollie. Find me,” she whispered, in a voice that was lost in the murmur of the shifting sands.

If they were both going to die, she would rather face the end with her brother. Nothing terrified her more than the thought of dying alone.

Oliver stared up through the trees as Blue Jay darted down toward them, an astonishingly small figure against the breadth of the sky. The bird opened his wings and glided between branches, not disturbing a single leaf. As he reached the ground, he beat his wings to pause in midair, but for a moment, to Oliver’s eyes, he seemed to continue descending. It was an optical illusion, however. The bird was not descending, but growing, transforming into a man. His wings suddenly spread out behind him, enormous, and then they were barely visible, just a trace of an image in the air.

And then gone.

Where the bird had been, there was now only the man. Blue Jay tossed back his hair, the feathers tied in it whipping in the breeze, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his blue jeans.

“Well, that’s shit luck,” he said.

Oliver might have laughed were it not for the utter gravity with which the words had been spoken. He glanced at Kitsune, who paid him no attention at all. She was scenting the air and studying the branches above, searching for any sign that there might be some other spy about.

Oliver turned to Frost, only to find the winter man studying him as though he were a riddle that Frost could not sort out. Oliver didn’t much like the feeling.

“So what now?” he asked.

Frost glanced at Blue Jay. “We’d hoped that Twillig’s Gorge might be a refuge for us, at least for a time. Now, at best, we can rest there briefly before moving on. We’ve no idea who the Jaculus calls master, but the way it lit out of here upon being discovered, we can be sure it means us ill.”

“Time to go, then,” Oliver said.

Blue Jay frowned, glaring at the sky. “If Gong Gong had been here, the thing would have been dead, and its master none the wiser.”

Kitsune lifted her hood, though they were deep in the shade of the woods. She hung her head slightly so that only her perfect mouth was visible beneath the fold of fur.

“Yet Gong Gong is dead. And so shall we be, I think, if we don’t move now. I am putting my trust in you, Blue Jay, that this Gorge truly exists. And trust is hard to come by today.”

“Isn’t it always?” the bird-man said, and then turned toward the river.

Just ahead, the woods ended at a sheer cliff face and the Sorrowful River continued right through it, a stake through the heart, into a natural tunnel, perhaps some ancient cave system. The light of the sun extended only so far into the tunnel and then all was darkness. The idea of wading into that river and letting the current take him into the dark was not at all pleasant, but neither was the thought of remaining here and waiting for the Jaculus to return with more formidable associates.

Still, Oliver stood and watched as Blue Jay went to the riverbank and stepped in without hesitation, water soaking into denim, making the legs of his jeans a darker blue. Oliver smiled wistfully. Trickster he might be, but Blue Jay was all right. He could easily have transformed back into a bird and flown through the tunnel, above the water.

When he had waded in up to his hips, the river flowing around his waist, he paused and looked back, waiting in silence. Oliver glanced at Frost, saw that the winter man was watching Kitsune, and looked at her.

She was still preoccupied with the trees, and he understood that she was faulting herself somehow for not having caught the Jaculus. It was not that she suspected the presence of other spies, but that she wished there were more, so that she might redeem herself.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Oliver said.

Kitsune glanced darkly at him and bared her tiny, sharp teeth. “Go on.”

He was about to argue, but Frost touched his arm with icy fingers that sent a shock of cold through him, making his muscles ache. Oliver pulled away, but nodded and started for the water. At the edge he sat and removed his boots, tied the laces together and hung them around his neck, with his socks tucked inside. He debated the wisdom of this for a moment, knowing that the river bottom would likely be quite rocky, but even if he didn’t mind soaking-wet boots, they would actually make it difficult to walk, weighted down with water. Using the same logic, he untied the jacket from around his waist, wrapped the Sword of Hunyadi in it, and carried them over his shoulder as he stepped into the river.

Oliver hesitated a moment. He slipped his hand into his pocket and felt for the single, large seed that the gods of the Harvest had given him. Konigen had said it might be helpful to him one day, when he needed it most. The last thing he wanted to do was to lose it or, worse, ruin it now. But he chose to leave it where it was. Better a damp seed in his pocket than a lost seed if he risked trying to stash it in his boots or hold it in his hand.

Frost was right beside him. As the winter man put his foot in, the water on the surface of the river just around his calf formed a thin layer of ice, which broke off and floated away, dissolving almost immediately. Then Frost and Oliver were moving toward Blue Jay. The water turned frigid, the current cold where it had flowed past Frost, and Oliver shivered and let him get ahead a few paces.

Back on the bank, Kitsune spared a final regretful glance at the trees and then slipped into the river. He expected the fur cloak to weigh her down, but the water seemed to run off of it. The cloak began to float, spreading across the river as she waded deeper, and then pooling around her as the current quickened.

“Let’s try not to get too deep,” Oliver said. “I’d rather stay on my feet if possible.”

Blue Jay reached the opening in the cliff and braced a hand on the rock. “I’m with you. The Gorge is on the other side of the tunnel, where it opens up again to the sky, but there’s no telling what’s between here and there.”

Oliver grimaced. “Wonderful.”

Then Blue Jay ducked his head and disappeared into the darkness, river and cave both seeming to swallow him. Frost followed suit a moment later without a backward glance. Though Oliver knew that the winter man had a great deal on his mind, still it made him feel more alone.

The water was mid-chest high by the time he reached the opening in the cliff face. The darkness beckoned. Despite his fear, something about it was inviting. The little boy in him, the explorer and believer in all things magical, relished the idea of the place. Sounds of dripping came from within, and echoes of tiny splashes-hopefully made by Blue Jay and Frost and not anything else.

Oliver stepped inside, though still within reach of the daylight.

As he moved out of the sun and into the darkness, the world shook around him, once, twice, a third time. Oliver shouted, his panic echoing back at him. In the diminishing light he could see a shower of dust and small rocks slide down the walls of the cave and into the water.

“Kit, tell me that’s not an earthquake,” he said, reaching his right hand out to touch the rock wall.

Her voice, when she replied, was hushed. “Worse.”

Oliver turned. She had thrown her hood back and her face and body were outlined against the sunlight at the mouth of the cave. Kitsune had turned and was staring upriver.

Perhaps half a mile north stood a creature as tall as the tallest tree-a towering, grotesque, albino giant. Its back was to them and he could see that its spine was a column of jagged spurs that jutted out through the flesh.

“What is it?” he said, only loud enough for her to hear him over the ripple of the river passing around them.

“Kinder-fresser.” Kitsune glanced back at him. “Child-guzzler, they call it. According to legend, of course. I’ve heard the tale, but never seen the thing. The story says that the river is made of the tears of all the mothers whose children it has eaten.”

“The Sorrowful River,” Oliver said, a tight knot in his gut.

“Must have come down from the hills. Just be glad it’s going the other way.”

“Why? If it eats children-”

“A flesh-eating giant might have preferences, Oliver, but hungry is hungry,” she said, and when she glanced at him there was a lean sort of desire in her eyes that was not at all sensual. He wondered, as a fox, what Kitsune had eaten, then wished the question had never occurred to him.

“Shall we go?” she said.

Oliver nodded and turned, moving into the darkness. Whatever lay ahead, it could not be worse than the gargantuan abomination they had only narrowly avoided. He pitied whatever creature it came upon next.

He waded deeper into the tunnel, comforted by the presence of Kitsune behind him. The echoes in the cave were like ghosts flitting about, whispering in his ears. Distance was impossible to gauge, sounds coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. Oliver rapped his elbow twice on the tunnel wall to his right and so moved the other direction.

The bottom sloped steeply, and he dropped a foot with a single step. The current tugged at him, propelling him forward so that he had to struggle just to keep from being swept away. He swore as he realized that his boots and jacket had gotten wet, even as he moved into shallower water.

The tunnel roof was higher here-he could no longer feel it above him-but he kept his head ducked just in case that should change. Soon enough he had a painful crick in his neck, but still did not stand to his full height. Walking slightly bent was better than giving in to the current and being dashed against some enormous rock or down an underground waterfall.

These were his silent fears as they made their way deeper into the tunnel. Indeed, there was a downward grade to the river, but no dramatic drop-off. There was also very little sediment on the bottom as they went deeper into the tunnel. Over the ages, the water had worn it nearly smooth, and the walls as well. Perhaps at certain times of the year the river rose nearly to the ceiling, he thought. That would explain the smoothness of the walls above the waterline. He was grateful this was not one of them.

One of his fears proved true enough, however. Blue Jay called back several times to warn them of large rocks in their path.

“Do you think these are pieces of the tunnel, caved in?” he asked Kitsune.

“Perhaps. I’m even happier that the Kinder-fresser was going the other way, now.”

There was a lightness to her tone. Oliver thought she was trying to alleviate his fear, but it didn’t help. His throat was tight and his pulse raced with every moment in the darkness. His eyes had adjusted, and he had them wide open to take in any trace of available light, but after a while, there was none. In all his life he had never known a darkness so complete-save for one Halloween when Collette had taken him to the windowless back room of their basement to tell him scary stories by candlelight, and then blown out the candle, plunging them into utter darkness.

Oliver had screamed that night. A shriek to wake the dead.

But he would not scream now. You will not, he said to himself, again and again, as he held the jacket-wrapped sword over his shoulder with one hand and searched the darkness in front of him with the other like a blind man.

The sound of the river was not a comfort. Here, across the Veil, it seemed just another predator, ready to swallow him at a moment’s notice.

They came to a place at last where the river did drop significantly, and the bottom was strewn with rocks that had accumulated there from cave-ins past. A fault in the mountain above them, probably.

He held his breath as he descended.

“We’re going to be all right,” Kitsune assured him, and it sounded as though her voice was right at his ear, an acoustic trick the tunnel played upon him.

With a deep breath, he mustered his will and pressed on, working with the power of the river rushing around him and pushing him onward, instead of struggling against it.

He blinked.

For just a moment, he thought he could see again. It looked as though the walls of the tunnel encircled him, and there were windows cut into the walls, high above. Beyond, he could see the night sky. It lasted only an instant, and then he heard another voice in his ear, this one barely a whisper, far more distant.

“ Come on, Ollie. Find me. ”

The voice was Collette’s. She smelled faintly of her favorite shampoo, coconut-scented stuff from Australia.

Stunned, Oliver stopped walking. In an instant he realized his error. The river knocked him down, plunged him under. The laces of his boots wrapped around his throat and began to strangle him. He rolled along the river bottom, across the rocks that lay there. Desperate, he clutched the sword to him-still wrapped in his soaked jacket-and clawed at his neck to loosen the laces of his boots. But they were filled with water, the weight tightening the cords even more.

Then, Oliver struck an enormous rock that jutted from the river bottom. He expelled the last of his air and began to drown. Still, his mind was working. Twisting around, he used the rock to brace himself, found the bottom with his feet, and forced himself upward. With his free hand, he reached upward and found a grip.

The water turned cold around him. Then a strong hand closed on his wrist and helped to pull him up onto the rock. He coughed up the water he’d swallowed even as other hands slipped the laces of his boots from around his neck.

He wiped at his eyes and saw his friends around him. Frost stood just upstream, gaze set with concern. Blue Jay had helped haul him out of the water, and Kitsune had his boots in her hands. They were at a place where the river had leveled off somewhat, the current slackening.

“Are you all right?” Frost asked.

Oliver blinked. “I can see.”

“That’s a good sign,” Blue Jay told him, a smirk on his trickster’s face.

The light in the tunnel flickered and Oliver looked around to see that there were torches set in sconces high on the walls, the fire burning bright and hungry. Whatever was burning, it was no ordinary flame. He stood, still trying to catch his breath, neck sore from the chafing, and throat raw from choking on the water. But he was all right.

He’d live.

“It might have been simpler if you’d dropped the sword,” Kitsune said, head tilted with the fox’s curiosity.

“True,” Oliver replied, a bit sheepish. “But it’s the king’s sword. I’m counting on it to buy me a few seconds to beg for my life, when the time comes.”

“You might want to think about using it to cut off the head of whoever’s trying to kill you,” Blue Jay said helpfully.

Oliver laughed, then winced at the pain in his throat.

“We have company,” Frost said, his voice low and dark.

The river grew colder as it swept past them. The winter man was summoning his power. Oliver tensed, hoping Frost would not need it.

“Nagas,” Kitsune said.

Oliver looked. In the torchlight that flickered through the tunnel, he saw several people coming toward them, armed with long bows, each with a quiver of arrows slung across their backs. They looked ordinary enough, though they had long, sharp talons that likely made weapons unnecessary.

Then he saw the way they moved and realized they were not ordinary at all. From the waist down, they were serpentine, and their bodies moved swiftly under the water as they came upriver.

Beyond them, Oliver could see the end of the tunnel, where it opened into sunlight, and he gritted his teeth and shook the sword free, ignoring the jacket as the current carried it away. All that mattered now was living long enough to wish he’d held on to it.

Halliwell had never felt so old. It hurt him to think about it. Here he was in a place that should not exist, having seen more fantastic things in a single day than most people would see in their entire lives. Some dim part of his mind told him he ought to feel more alive, feel some thrill that there was truly such a thing as magic. Instead, he felt tired and hopeless and lost. Of course, he was all of those things.

The only direction he had now was to find Bascombe, but not because it had been his assignment-to hell with that. The only way to make sense of anything was to find the one person who might have some idea how to get him home.

Once he had Bascombe, of course, he still wanted answers. The mystery of the murdered children and their missing eyes and the connection to the Bascombe family was a riddle he needed solved. But getting back to the world was even more important. Untethered from everything he’d ever known, he had no touchstone for what mattered. What did it mean to be a policeman if there was no one to recognize his authority?

His service weapon was clipped to his belt at the small of his back. He’d worn it under his jacket, but now the jacket was abandoned. Halliwell felt no need to hide the weapon, but he had seen Julianna looking at it warily. She had been astonished that her firm, Bascombe amp; Cox, had arranged for him to have a permit to carry the gun in the United Kingdom. Halliwell had not.

Money greased the wheels of the world.

His world, at least.

He had no clue how this one worked.

But Oliver would. And Oliver was in love with Julianna. Having her along for the ride had at first been troubling to Halliwell. Now it had turned out to be vital. For if Bascombe got wind of her presence here, then he would come find them, and they wouldn’t have to search for him anymore.

For now, though, the hunt was on.

Julianna had caught up with him as they walked down the craggy, rocky slope to the river. Halliwell had taken a look to the north and seen only more of the same, unwelcoming landscape, so he had turned south instead, toward the forest. They’d been walking alongside the river ever since, and been in the shade of the trees for a while now.

“You seem awfully certain of your direction,” she said.

Halliwell kept his focus on the bend in the valley ahead, where the river turned and disappeared in the woods. “I am.”

“How do you know Oliver went this way?”

“I don’t.”

Julianna faltered and fell behind. But when Halliwell didn’t wait for her, she caught up to him quickly and moved around in front of him, forcing him to stop.

“I thought we’d established a pretty decent rapport, Ted,” she said, searching his eyes.

Halliwell let out a breath and nodded. He reached up and scratched at his stubbled chin. “We have. I’m sorry. Maybe I’m not handling this as well as you are.”

“Funny, I thought you were handling it better. I’m feeling pretty brittle at the moment. One little thing and I might shatter.”

He smiled wearily. “At least you’re young. I’m an old bastard and pretty sure I’m in shock, and not in the best shape for a cross-country hike.”

“Bullshit,” Julianna said, eyes narrowing sharply. “You’re in better physical condition than I am. And you’re fiftysomething, not eighty-something. If you’re freaked, that’s fine. Me, too. But we’re here together. Talk to me.”

Halliwell nodded, thinking how beautiful she was, how fortunate Bascombe was to have a smart, pretty girl like this in love with him. How tragic it would be if anything happened to her here.

“Can we walk?” he asked.

Julianna got out of his way and fell in beside him as he started downriver again.

“Water is life, kid,” Halliwell said. “If we follow the river, we’re likely to find a settlement somewhere along the way. The other direction wasn’t exactly inviting terrain, you know? So I’m following my instincts, and a little logic. That doesn’t mean Oliver went this way, but if we have any chance of finding him, we’ve got to find people, to learn something about this place, figure out how to track him.”

“Logical enough,” she replied. “But you could’ve said-”

“Did you feel that?” Halliwell interrupted. He stopped and glanced around, staring at the ground.

“Feel what?”

Halliwell didn’t have to answer her. A moment later he felt it again, and saw in her eyes that she had felt it, too. A small tremor in the earth beneath their feet. It came a third time, more quickly, and he saw the leaves shaking on the trees.

“What the hell is that?” Julianna asked in a whisper.

He had no answer for her. The tremors continued, but this was not an earthquake. It was too regular, too rhythmic, to be anything of the sort. It was more like he imagined a battlefield would be, the impact of mortar shells or bombs not too far away.

“Let’s keep going,” he said.

They walked more quickly now, moving along the river’s edge beneath the shade of branches of the trees along the bank. The tremors continued at a slow, steady march, but they were growing in intensity.

“It’s getting closer,” Julianna said. “Ted, maybe we should go a different way.”

Halliwell shook his head, not in disagreement but simply in confusion. He had no idea what to do. Again, they faltered and came to a halt. Now the branches and leaves all shook with each tremor. The shaking of the earth was not strong enough to throw them off of their feet, but if it kept growing, it soon would be.

“Maybe,” he said at last. “Through the woods. West, I guess it is.”

Julianna turned to go into the trees, away from the river. Halliwell went to follow her but took one last look downstream. As he did, he saw the albino giant come around the bend in the river, towering as high as the trees.

The giant was hideous, the bones in its bleached white face jutting through taut leathery skin, eyes gleaming pink like a fresh scar, the bones of its ribs so sharply defined that they seemed about to tear through the flesh. It bent to snatch at something in the water and Halliwell saw jagged ridges of bones that protruded from the skin along its spine.

His hands shook, one going to his mouth as if to keep himself silent, the other to his chest, which tightened with a sharp, unfamiliar pain. Halliwell froze and stared at the thing, unable to breathe. He had never known terror before, and it engulfed him, unknown and unwelcome.

The thing had frozen as well. From a hundred yards downriver, it stared at him. Then it stood and cocked back its head. He was sure it was sniffing at the air, catching their scent on the wind.

“Weird,” Julianna said, a few feet away in the trees. “The ground stopped…”

Her words trailed off. He glanced over and saw that she had seen the thing now. She screamed, the sound tearing the air like fabric. The wind died in that moment, as though it were composed of spirits who stopped to listen, to watch.

A breath burst from Halliwell’s lips and then he was sucking another in, learning how to fill his lungs all over again.

The giant threw back its head and screamed in return, as if mimicking Julianna. Then it began to run toward them, a thunderous gait that was far swifter than Halliwell would have imagined. Its eyes were narrowed and its lips pulled back in a snarl that exposed a jagged mess of teeth.

He grabbed Julianna’s wrist. “Go!”

The two of them fled into the trees together. Low branches scratched at him and he held up his free hand to ward them off. They plummeted through the woods on a roughly westward path. Julianna was shouting questions at him, clutching his hand with such terror that he thought his fingers would break.

The ground shook now with each pounce of the towering monster. Once. Twice. They made it half a dozen feet between each impact. On the third one, Halliwell heard the splintering of wood behind him and bits of the forest crashed down.

He was not a man prone to prayer. Now he whispered to God; thought of the daughter he had not seen in so very long, who had never really understood how much he loved her, and stopped. Julianna cursed loudly, madness in her eyes, hair wild, face scratched. She struggled to be free of him, but he held her fast.

“We can’t-”

Its shadow fell upon them, swallowing the sun, and then it landed ten feet away, trees crushed to pulp beneath its mass. It stared down at them with those revolting pink eyes and snarled, baring its filth-encrusted, jagged, broken teeth. It slid its tongue out and a thick string of drool dripped to the ground.

It looked hungry.

Julianna staggered backward, still wild-eyed; there would be no reasoning with her. Halliwell was nearly beyond reason himself, but suddenly the pain and tightness in his chest gave way. This wasn’t the death he’d imagined for himself. But if he was going to die, it wouldn’t be screaming. He’d been a cop all his life.

“No,” was all he said, as the thing reached down to scoop them up, one in each hand. Julianna tried to run and its fingers scurried after her, snatching her easily.

In the moment before it picked him up, Halliwell drew his gun.

He was cold inside. Like ice. Numb.

Maybe this is how it feels to be dead, he thought.

The giant carried them back to the river, walking now, in half a dozen strides. Halliwell hung limp in its grip, staring up at it, repulsed by the sickly white flesh and the way its bones jutted from the skin. It paused, standing in the water, and lifted Halliwell up to its face. He wondered dully if it would eat him. It sniffed at him, nostrils curling. A little voice in the back of his head urged him to fire, but he could only watch.

It lifted Julianna toward its mouth and then breathed in her scent as well. From deep in its throat came a sound of contentment and desire that was the single most unsettling noise he had ever heard. The grotesque perversity of it curdled his insides.

It studied her greedily for another moment, then opened its jaws and brought her toward its mouth.

Halliwell raised the gun and pulled the trigger, all in one motion. The first bullet burst one of its eyes, sending a shower of pustulent fluid down upon Julianna. The second bullet struck its temple, bringing a foul trickle of black ichor. He kept pulling the trigger as the giant staggered against the current, walking upriver, shaking its head like a wet dog.

On the fourth bullet, it dropped them.

Halliwell hit the water and the current took him. He was under for a moment and he tried to swim. He got his head above the water and looked around, saw Julianna surface nearby. She saw him, and the terror was still in her eyes. But they were free.

The river carried them southward. Halliwell hoped the giant had fallen, that it was dead, but then he saw that it was still standing and feared it would pursue them. As they swept along downstream he watched it stagger in the opposite direction, slapping the side of its head with an open hand as though trying to dislodge the bullets in its skull. Half-blind, perhaps brain-damaged, but it kept walking.

Then they were carried around the bend and out of sight.

Gun still clutched in his hand, Halliwell fought the river only enough to get nearer to Julianna. “We’re all right,” he told her. “We’re okay.”

She didn’t argue, but the look in her eyes was enough to show him how ridiculous she thought his words were. And she was right. They were a whole world away from being all right.

Soon they came in sight of a cliff rising at treacherous angles ahead. Halliwell started toward shore, unsure where the river went from here. Julianna followed suit.

“It looks…can it go right into the mountainside?” she asked.

It did. The river plunged into a dark tunnel in the cliff face.

“We’re not going in there,” Julianna said, standing in the water as it rushed around her, moving for the bank.

“Damn right,” Halliwell replied. After what they’d just been through, no way were they swimming some underground river, with God knew what waiting in the darkness for them.

On the bank, they followed the river until they reached the cliff.

Julianna looked up. “What now?”

Halliwell felt the exhaustion in his bones. But there was no rest yet. Not when all they had for a direction was a guess. He pointed westward, along the base of the cliff.

“We go up the side of the valley until we can cross over the top. The river’s got to come out somewhere.”

She hesitated. As a plan of action, it was shit. But they didn’t have anything else.

“I hate being wet,” she said, holding out her arms and looking down at her sodden clothes, nose wrinkled.

Then she started along the base of the cliff, westward, and Halliwell followed.