Holly cleared her throat. "This might sound bad… and I'm sorry to be the one to bring it up, but if it's that serious, why don't we just kill Ray right now?"
"Holly!" Trip sputtered. "That would be murder."
"Hey, I'm trying to be practical here," Holly retorted. "Whole world dies, or one nutcase buys it, no offense, Julie…"
"None taken," she said.
"Then I'm siding with the whole world. It's a pretty sucky place, but I like it not destroyed. Let's just plug Ray and bury him in the backyard," Holly said. I reminded myself to stay on her good side. Trip looked disgusted. Grant seemed impressed by her logic. I was morally ambivalent, but it was too damn hot to have to dig a deep enough hole to hide a body.
"I've thought of that myself," Julie told us. "But there's one problem. Dad is probably not the only way for them to find their Place of Power. I mean, Dad found a way, so that information is out there somewhere. And on the other hand, he is our only way to find out where the Cursed One is going to be…"
"So we can be waiting for the son of a bitch," I finished for her. My hand instinctively moved to the grip of my shotgun. "We need to make Ray talk."
"Stick Holly in with him for ten minutes," Trip said in disgust.
"Can I borrow your car battery and some jumper cables?" Holly batted her eyelashes innocently. "I've got fifty bucks says he talks."
"Damn, woman, you have serious issues," Trip said.
"Anything else, Grant?" Julie asked.
"Just one thing. The blood sacrifice to turn on this evil artifact… Byreika said that it had to come from a hero, a protector, a mystic champion."
Apparently none of us had a clue what that meant. I shrugged. Personally I had had about enough with the mystic garbage.
"The blood has to come from the heart of a Monster Hunter."
Chapter 19
The paper plate of ham and cheese grits was slightly heavy and oily in my hands. Needlessly polite, I knocked on the door.
"Ray, I brought you some dinner."
He snarled at me from his bed, and jerked on the handcuff, but the heavy railing snapped his arm back. He was not having a good moment. His hair was wild, his skin was pale, and his eyes were unfocused. He looked as if he was listening to something far away.
"Ray? Are you with me, buddy? Hello… anybody home?" I set the plate of grits next to him. Once again, all I gave him was a plastic utensil, and if he could take me out with a spoon, he deserved to escape.
Gradually his face returned to normal. His eyes focused on the food, and then he looked up at me.
"Sorry. I was having an episode." He sounded slightly confused.
"Not a problem." I had no idea what medications he had been on at the asylum, but we had nothing to help him with here. "I brought you dinner."
"Thanks." He took the plate and dived into the food with gusto.
"Have you given any thought to telling us some more information, Ray?" I asked politely.
"Have you given any more thought to letting me go?"
"We're talking about it," I lied. "If you gave us a little more to go on, a little something to show good faith effort, we would probably be more inclined to just turn you loose."
"I'll tell you everything I know as soon as I'm free. I'll call you from a payphone or something," he answered as he swallowed his food without chewing. Bits of grits ran into his facial hair. "Honest."
"Sure. I believe that."
"No, really. Look, once I'm free, having the world destroyed doesn't exactly fit my plans. I can't hang out with the pretty senoritas if the clock for the universe isn't ticking. I'm talking about a win-win situation."
I tried a different tack. "We found Byreika's journal. We know all about the Cursed One. We're going to figure it out without you, Ray. We'll figure it out soon enough. You help us now, you get on our good side, and then we can try to help you out."
He laughed at me. "Do you think I'm stupid? Jeez, kid. I may be a little crazy but I still have an IQ of 160. I've read that book too. All you know now is how serious your problem is. That old Jew had a lot more questions than answers. Besides, he's stuck in your head anyway, so you should already know all of this stuff."
"Why is he stuck in my head? How can he communicate with me?" I pressed for any information that I could, hoping that he would slip.
"You can't be serious? Really? Damn. My first impression was right, you are stupid. Earl must be hiring strictly by the bench press now. If you haven't figured out how that Old Man is trying to help you, then you really are up a creek. Even if I told you where to meet the Cursed One, you wouldn't know what to do when you caught him."
"What do you mean?"
"No mystery here, kid. I'm not Hannibal Lecter. I'm not trying to play mind games with you. I'm just surprised is all. You don't even know who you are, do you?"
"I know exactly who I am."
"If you did, then we wouldn't be having this conversation." He laughed at me again. "Oh shit. The world is screwed. Good night, kid. Shut the lights on your way out. Talk to me when you have a clue."
I was heading to bed when I heard the raised voices. I hurried toward the noise, thinking that it might be some sort of emergency, but slowed down when I realized it was Grant arguing with Julie in her room. She sounded rather calm, but he sounded upset.
Probably should have kept walking, but showing a real lack of character, I decided to eavesdrop through the door.
"-could have at least tried."
"Darné and his wights were right there. I swear, there was nothing I could have done except die along with him," Grant pleaded. "I don't like him, but you know I would never abandon another Hunter if there was a chance to save them, but there was no chance!"
"Well, he made it, so apparently you were wrong."
I suddenly felt very smug.
There was an awkward pause on the other side of the door.
"I know…" Grant sounded tired. It was the first time I had heard genuine emotion in his voice. "I've been dwelling on it every minute since it happened. I misjudged, and that mistake left a man to die. I left a fellow Hunter to die alone…"
Was he crying?
"Grant, it's okay, everyone makes mistakes."
"I don't… Sorry. I've got to go. See you in the morning," Grant said. I moved away from the door as fast as I could remain silent, and made it about ten feet before the door opened. I spun around, as if I had been coming from the other direction.
Grant was in fact wiping his eyes as he closed Julie's door behind him.
"Evening, Grant."
"Pitt." He nodded, then walked quickly in the other direction, his pride not able to show weakness to a rival. Especially a rival whom he had accidentally condemned to a horrible death, but I could tell by looking at him that it wasn't an act. He really was torn up by his failure. Torn up, and hurting.
I didn't feel so smug anymore.
Grant stayed the night. I still didn't like the man one iota, but it was rather nice to have one more person to pull guard duty. While it was dark, it did not do us much good to have somebody on patrol outside, so instead, we all clustered in one suite of rooms centered around Ray Shackleford's little prison. One person was awake at all times to walk the hall. The sensors had been rigged to alert us if anything bigger than a rabbit came within twenty feet of the house. We could have moved that perimeter back, but the number of deer in the woods would have been setting off alarms all night long.
Julie had taken extra precautions with Ray's room. She had put motion detectors all around his bed. If he even thought about making an escape we would all know.
Personally, I didn't think we had anything to really worry about. Nobody outside of Julie's immediate circle of friends and family knew about the home. The Heart of Dixie Historical Preservation Society was an effective front, so even if the Feds did have somebody leaking information to Lord Machado, they didn't know about this place.