Ash rolled onto her back and jerked the knife.
They both moaned.
“Enough,” Snare growled. Blood dripped over the red gash of a mouth. “You have nothing left to fight for.”
“The hell I…don’t,” Ash said, her consciousness fading, light dimming.
“I’ve waited countless years for this. For the final trade.” The beast dragged itself closer. Ash flinched as its hand crept further up her leg. “Your lives…your parts… They’ll be put to good use. They’ll ensure the rebirth of my tribe.”
“Tribe?” Ash didn’t care about the details, but she needed to buy herself time to recover. “What were you, some kind of warrior?”
“Not a warrior—a healer.” The creature’s weight flowed over Ash’s lower body like a soiled, soggy blanket. A swampy stench overwhelmed her as Snare’s hand patted Ash’s hip and slid up her torso. “I told you I used my mind to heal people’s bodies. My tribe, my family, my son—I saved so many. But then they were taken from me.”
“Taken…by who?”
“Settlers.” The hand roamed along Ash’s collarbone. “They had a sick child, one I refused to cure before my own people were healed. But the outsiders didn’t understand that. Nor did they understand that exiting and reentering my body took a toll. Those fools didn’t care. They pressured me to help, more and more, until one monster among them shot my five-year-old.”
Snare’s hand slid down Ash’s arm, toward her wounded hand.
“My last human memory was seeing my son’s insides fly out his back.”
“That’s…no excuse to kill us. We did nothing to your son, you bitch. All the people killed by your fog… You’re telling me they deserved to die?”
“It was nothing personal.” Snare’s hand paused on Ash’s forearm. “The fog was necessary. After decades of absorbing all your diseases and injuries, I had to purge my poisons.”
“Purge your…poisons?”
“Yes. Did you think your trades came without cost to me? That wasn’t the case. I’ve been harboring all kinds of cancers and fractures for decades. Even in water form, storing them was an excruciating burden. When I completed my collection I had no choice but to release them.”
“Take them back. If that fog keeps spreading—”
“It won’t. It’ll only spread as far as my reach—my ‘zone’ as your people call it.”
“Take it back anyway.”
“It can’t be done.”
“Bullshit!” Ash drew her impaled hand back and swung it at the creature, hoping the hilt would strike Snare and drive the blade deeper into her palm. Instead, Snare caught her forearm mid-swing and the knife slid free.
Stars exploded beneath Ash’s closed eyelids.
Despite the agony, she found the strength to slap the dirt. Her ruined palm struck some sharp twigs, and the beast hissed before rolling off her.
Somehow, Ash mustered the will to crawl a few feet, far enough to gain some breathing room. She lunged for the table, but Snare beat her to it and swatted the table away. It bounced behind her, landing near the spillway, but farther from where it needed to be placed.
“Stop this. You can join me in my new world.”
“I’d rather have the old one back.”
“That, I’m afraid, is impossible.”
“Bullshit. If you can revive your tribe, you can revive my town.”
“I’m not reviving anyone. I’m rebirthing. Creating children born of my mind and the waters of this creek.”
“Then they won’t be your people. They’ll be fake.”
“They’ll be as real as I remember them. As real as I am now. I can even rebirth Cheeto.”
Heat flamed across Ash’s cheeks. “Don’t you dare.”
“Why not? I swore I’d let you both off easy. Remember? Back when you promised you’d never play guitar again?”
Snare’s words stung, sending Ash back to three nights ago, when she lay helpless in the Dark Diamond parking lot. Lying on the pavement, she couldn’t gauge how tall her attacker was. Almost anyone could tower above you when you were scared out of your mind. But now it made sense. Turned out, the ski-masked man hadn’t been some random lunatic.
“You…” Ash said, gasping. “It was Mick. In the parking lot. It was Mick…you controlled him. You smashed my hand.”
“That’s right,” Snare said. “Thanks to Mick’s memories, I knew you’d be desperate enough to help me gather the final parts. All I had to do was ruin your hand. Once that was done, you did the rest.”
“You couldn’t gather the goddamned parts yourself?”
“I could only control Mick when his head was soaked with bend water. If he asked for parts while drenched, people would distrust him. I considered blackmailing Candace, but I suspected she might refuse. She was, after all, content to keep Mick within the zone.”
“Then why me, of all people?”
“Because of your birth parents.”
“What about them?”
“You were born from my parts, remember. Because of that, my waters had a special effect on you. I could speak to you. All it took was a little mist on your tongue. I could’ve done the same with Trent, but he hadn’t arrived in town yet. Even if he had, you were my first choice. You were the better option. You’d do anything.”
Tears stung Ash’s eyes. To think she’d been targeted from the start. Used. Lured along until she triggered mass damnation. And all because she’d wanted to peddle demo CDs after a show. All because she didn’t visit her bandmate in the hospital.
“My offer still stands. I can rebirth Cheeto as soon as we’re done.”
“Fuck off.”
“You’d rather abandon him in death?”
“I’d rather we both join him.”
Eyeing the table, Ash shoved herself upright, but she wobbled, about to pass out. Her senses randomly flickered, leaving her in darkness and silence. Then came an abrupt awakening. A shock of life. She clung to consciousness and stumbled toward the table. With her good hand, she grabbed the metal leg and yanked it toward the bend.
A hiss filled her ears as the beast lunged, hammering its shoulder into her side. The impact connected with her ribcage—their shared ribcage—and dropped them both flat.
Ash lay on her back, dazed, staring up at falling snowflakes. A bloody fist entered her line of sight. Before she could move, the fist dropped. First her hip, then her stomach, absorbed blows. Air whooshed from her lungs, leaving her shaken and numb. It was like the Dark Diamond parking lot, but worse.
The fist rose again, directly above her face.
Ash reached for the table. With her remaining strength she dragged it over her head like a clumsy shield and braced herself.
The beast hissed.
“Don’t move!” From the far end of the clearing a voice shouted. Ash’s hearing was fuzzy, but she recognized it.
Dad!
87
The place stank like an old wound. Even the fog carried a reddish tint. But nothing disgusted Karl more than the situation he observed near the spillway. There lay Ashlee, beneath the folding table and the beating fist of a blood-covered monster. Though she’d shielded herself, he couldn’t stand to see punches flying her way.