“What’s that?” Wy turned her head, listening.
“What?” Bill moved forward a step, and cursed the apprehensive note in her voice. She was nervous. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been nervous. She couldn’t have said why she was now.
Into it floated a voice, high, thin, thready. “Elaine. Elaine the fair. Elaine the lovable. Elaine, the lily maid. Come out, Elaine. Come out.”
On the bed, Rebecca whimpered without waking, her legs pumping against the blankets.
“What the hell?” Moses said, and went to the door.
“No, wait-” Liam said.
But Moses was before him and pulled the door open. “There’s no one named Elaine in here, but come on in and get out of the snow!”
The door pushed open against him and a man stood there.
“Gun!” Liam shouted, and Moses dropped into form one second too late. The weapon fired, the noise of the shot deafening everyone in the cabin, and Moses, foot half raised in something Liam recognized as the beginning of Kick Horizontally, crumpled to the floor without a sound.
Bill made a sound low in her throat and moved forward.
“Hold it,” the man said.
She either ignored him or didn’t hear him, dropping to her knees next to the old man, who suddenly looked infinitely older, whose blood welled red from beneath the fingers pressed to his side.
The man had a brown, seamed face surrounded by a halo of tangled, dirty gray hair, hair repeated in the collar of his shirt and on the backs of the hands gripping the rifle. A Browning, Liam noted. A semi-automatic,.270 maybe, or a.30-06. What did one of those hold, four rounds? Three, in magnum. He looked Moses, at his wound. Not magnum. Three left, then.
“Uuiliriq,” Tim breathed. “It’s the Hairy Man, Mom.”
Amelia’s eyes were enormous in her small face.
Mad eyes looked at Liam, saw the weapon strapped to his side and raised his rifle. “Lose the gun, son.” The words sounded rusty with disuse.
Liam didn’t move.
With uncanny instinct, the man took two steps forward and jammed the barrel of the rifle beneath Wy’s chin. She rose swiftly to her feet, to stand on tiptoe. Her eyes were wide but she looked more angry than frightened. His Wy. His own Wy, nobody else’s. Liam felt an answering anger kindle inside him.
The smell of the man filled the cabin, woodsmoke, dead fish, dried blood, sweat. Later, Liam would think it was that smell more than anything that made him pull out his weapon and lay it on the floor.
“Kick it to me,” the man said.
Liam managed to put enough of a spin on the kick that it slid to the opposite corner of the cabin, coming to rest beneath the bunk where Rebecca Hanover lay, motionless now, even her eyes still beneath their lids.
The man followed the path of the pistol with steady steps, and paused next to the bed. “Elaine.” His voice was low but audible to them all. “Oh, my Elaine. Why did you do this to yourself?”
He reached out a hand as if to brush the hair from her face, and she exploded into action, launching herself at him too quickly for him to raise the weapon. They both went crashing to the floor.
Liam went for the rifle, but the ragged man threw off Rebecca, who thudded hard into the wall, slid down and lay still. The ragged man got to the rifle a split second before Liam, but didn’t have time to aim before the rifle fired a second time. The shot boomed in the close confines of the room. Behind him Liam heard someone cry out, a soft thud as a body hit the floor. A second later, like Moses a second too late, he tackled the man and grabbed for the rifle, his hands closing around the barrel, warm from the two shots.
The ragged man was incredibly strong. They were close enough to touch, to kiss if they’d wanted to. The ragged man’s mouth was open in a rictus of a grin. He shifted his weight suddenly. Liam lost his balance and fell heavily to one side, maintaining through sheer will his grip on the rifle barrel. The ragged man snarled and the barrel inched down and there was nothing Liam could do to stop it. The rifle fired again, almost jolting his grip loose. His hands stung but he held on. One shot left.
Wy had been going for Moses’.30-06, mounted on a rack next to the door. The third shot had caught the.30-06 squarely on the breech, shattering it.
Wy cursed and hefted the rifle by the barrel in a strong batter’s grip. If it couldn’t shoot, it could club.
The ragged man twisted like a fish, dropping the rifle in a sudden movement and closing his hands around Liam’s throat. In an instinctive gesture, Liam dropped the barrel to grab for the ragged man’s wrists. The rifle was held between them by the press of their bodies, so tightly that it couldn’t fall. Liam was choking, his face a dull red, his hands clawing.
“Leave him go!” Wy shouted, and made good on her words when she swung the rifle. The butt connected with the ragged man’s skull with a satisfyingly solid smack.
His hands loosened from around Liam’s throat. He rolled to one side to lie on his back on the floor and blink up at the ceiling in a puzzled way.
Wy reached him first, kicking his rifle out of reach. “You son of a bitch!” she said fiercely.
He ignored her, turning his head to look at Rebecca Hanover sprawled in an ungainly heap, only just beginning to blink her way back into consciousness. “Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable,” he said dreamily. “Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat. My own Elaine.”
Behind them, Moses had crawled to Amelia and was cradling her in his arms. Tim knelt at his side, his face white and shocked. Blood had gathered and pooled on the floor beneath all three of them, but it had ceased now to flow.
“Goddamn it,” Moses said, in a tired voice Bill had never heard before. “Goddamn it all to hell.”
He put back his head and yelled, “You have to be right, don’t you, you sons a bitches! You just have to be right!”
Bill put her hands on his shoulders. “Hush, old man,” she said. “Hush now.”
“Goddamn it,” he said again.
He closed his eyes and rested his head on Bill’s breast.
TWENTY-TWO
Newenham, September 16
Liam came in at ten that evening. “She found it,” he said flatly, and disappeared into the bathroom.
“Would you like to sleep in the camper tonight?” she said suddenly.
His nose startled out ofThe Lost Wagon, Tim looked up from where he was curled on the couch and said, “What?”
“Sleep in the camper tonight,” she said. “That’s an order.”
He looked toward the bathroom, and when he spoke she could have wept at the effort it took him to make the joke. “What’s it worth to you?”
“A smack upside the head,” she said, grabbing for him.
He hot-footed it out of reach, not quite smiling but nearly there. He loved sleeping in the trailer, having his own little self-contained house around him.
She eased the bathroom door open and slipped inside. Liam was outlined behind the curtain, hands propped on the wall on either side of the shower head, head bent beneath the stream of steaming water. She stripped and stepped into the tub behind him.
He jumped when he felt her hands on him, but he was instantly responsive. He tried to turn, tried to reach for her, and she wouldn’t let him. It was part seduction, part subjugation and part the staking of a claim. He recognized it for what it was and the sum of all its parts, and he let her have her way with him.
She made him a late supper of cold moose roast sandwiches and Corona, and then they made love again on the living room couch, a fire in the fireplace and the curtains open to the river and sky. “My turn,” he murmured.