He came closer.
She kept her flashlight trained on his indistinct form.
The sight of him with a gun in his hand was not only shocking but repulsive, and her first thought was that she was glad his father was not alive to see this.
She still had in her own hand the gun she’d taken from Julia—the gun he’d used to kill Sasha
—and though she had no intention of using it, did not even know how to use it, she grasped it as she’d seen in movies and on television and pointed it at Gregory, illogically hoping that it would scare him away.
He shot at her.
Agafia jumped back, almost fell, and did drop the flashlight, though she managed to hold on to the revolver. She chanced a quick look behind her, but did not see anybody dead or injured, and she prayed that he had not hit anyone.
Gregory ran forward as fast as he could.
It was totally unexpected behavior, and in this place and under these circumstances, it appeared to be the move of a madman.
Screaming crazily, shooting at the church, causing everyone to scatter, he ran toward her, past her, up the steps—
And pointed his gun at Julia.
Agafia knew she had to act fast. He was not playing around, not trying to gain leverage or make demands. He wanted only to kill his wife, and Agafia stepped up, shoving her gun hard against the side of his head, the side with all the blood. He winced but did not drop his weapon, did not waiver from his intent.
“Forgive me,” Agafia said softly in Russian, not knowing if it was Gregory to whom she was speaking or God.
She pulled the trigger.
Gregory dropped.
Julia screamed. It was a cry of sheer pain unlike any she had ever heard, and Agafia felt a twin of that pain within herself, a cry that wanted to escape and be let out but that she kept bottled up inside for fear if allowed free rein it would never end.
They were staring at her with horror, all of the other Russians. Aside from Gregory, she was the only Molokan she had ever known who had willingly and intentionally taken a human life, and that sin weighed on her like a mountain on a peasant’s back. Awareness that the life she had taken was also the life she had created, her son’s, made her crime that much more heinous, made Agafia feel empty inside. She almost expected God to strike her dead right here and now, but as the others started moving forward, as the Indians emerged from the storm, she understood that that was not going to happen. She would not be taken, she would not be granted an easy way out. She would have to live with what she’d done, with what she was.
Evil.
She thought of Russiantown.
But she could have done nothing else. It was either her son or her daughter-in-law, and she had chosen. If she’d done nothing, Gregory would have killed her next, and the kids, and then however many others he could have before someone stopped him, so she’d made the decision to do it herself. It was something she would not have been able to carry out had she had time to think about it, but running on instinct, she’d made the split-second decision to kill him.
It would be God who judged her finally, and she was prepared to accept His verdict no matter what it was.
Julia was next to her, next to him, on the ground, touching Gregory’s face, but she was already pulling herself together, obviously attempting to be strong for the children, and Agafia admired that. Julia was tough. She was a survivor and, no matter what, could always be counted on to do what had to be done. Agafia was proud of the choice her son had made.
Her son.
She had no son any more.
She had murdered him.
Again, the scream was within her, threatening to escape, but she pressed it back, would not let it out. She looked down at Gregory’s bloody body, then turned away, looked over at the others watching her, staring at her.
She took Julia’s arm, pulled her up. “It not over,” she said in English. “Indians are right. We go back to house. Finish it.”
Twenty-one
1
They parked on the road.
Julia made Adam and Teo stay in the van, with the doors locked. They were both stunned, shell-shocked, and neither objected nor even responded. Dan was in there with them, and one of the old Molokan men volunteered to remain outside and guard the kids.
The rest of them walked up the drive to the house.
There were at least forty of them—Molokans and Indians—and the sheer number of people made her feel safer, more secure. There was safety in numbers, and even up against something as vast and incomprehensible as the supernatural, she felt reassured being part of a crowd.
The wind had disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived, but the blackout continued, and after all the howling, this new silence seemed creepy and somehow ominous. Most of them had flashlights, and the way before them was well lit. Ahead, at the end of the drive, its black bulk still too far away to be illuminated by their lights, was their destination.
The house.
Where Sasha lay murdered in her bed. Julia focused on Jedushka Di Muvedushka, trying to figure out where the Owner of the House might be hiding. Like an alcoholic, she was taking everything one step at a time. She concentrated only on the present, only on the here and now, only on what lay immediately before her—not on the fact that her husband, her lifemate, her love, had been shot and killed by his mother on the steps of the Molokan church while their son and daughter watched
—and she purposely kept herself from thinking about the larger issues and implications, about what she was going to do after this was all over, about what was to become of the rest of her life.
They reached the porch.
“I’ll go in first,” the chief said, moving in front.
Agafia pushed past him, motioning for Julia to follow. “No,” she told him. “Our house. We go first.”
Julia did not want to be first. She wanted to remain right where she was, safely in the middle of the crowd, borne along by the momentum of those around her, carried on the tide of consensus. She didn’t want to have to make decisions, didn’t want to think about—his brains blown out of his head by his mother seconds before he was going to shoot her, and the expression on his face in the second before it disintegrated into a wash of red, that knowing, horrified look that she would remember to her dying day, that was imprinted forever on her mind, that would always cause her to wonder if at the last minute he realized what he had done
—what to do, but she accompanied her mother-in-law up the porch steps, the others falling in behind them.
They walked into the house, and as scary as it should have been, the atmosphere was dissipated by the number of people tramping through her living room. They were like an army, and Agafia was the general, directing half of the Indians and Molokans to explore the first floor and the back porch with Vera and the chief while the rest of them went upstairs.