Still, he had to know. This might be the last chance he got. He recalled what the sheriff had told him just fifteen minutes before about the three runaways. “Our mothers. They left? With us?”
“They did. One of them must have heard you. Babies aren’t the quietest of creatures. They figured things out somehow, hatched a wicked plan, snatched all three of you and they ran.”
They ran. Camden’s head pounded. He’d dreamed it, or at least that’s what he’d thought it’d been. A dream. But no, it was a memory. A memory of being carried through the forest, a mirror in his hand. Why did she make me carry a mirror? Some strange superstition? Or was it simply a toy he’d brought along, clutched in his grasp, his own eyes wide, jaw slack, as he stared back at himself?
God, the memory made his head hurt. He’d been so young. He was likely misinterpreting most of it. “You killed them,” he said in a monotone. “You had to because we were proof of what you’d done.”
“The right thing is not always the easiest thing, Camden. Farrow men have always known this. If more of my blood than hers filled your veins, you’d know it too. You’d believe.”
More of my blood than hers. Thank the Lord. Thank the Lord above he had more of his mother in him than this sick, twisted bastard who stood before him now.
“We tracked those girls down. They’d hidden you in that forest, but we found you, brought you home, made things right.”
Home. Lilith House. He didn’t trust himself to speak.
“But we failed in our mission thirteen years ago. We let that girl get away. And because we fell short, evil gained strength. Our Women’s Ministry was struck down and engulfed in flames. And still, because of what we didn’t do, our town, Farrow’s people, our very way of life has been cursed. Just like the Bancroft family who died off when those natives escaped their God-ordained fate! That beast roams the woods, it grows in ever-increasing power, it plagues the children of even our most pious citizens with unearned signs of sin, it returns them to us when we attempt to cast them off.”
Cast them off? He recalled the whisperings he’d heard of a scattering of animal attacks on infants. But that had been while he was gone, and nothing of the sort had happened since. There was no evidence to substantiate those rumors, and nothing at all in the sheriff’s database. Now he knew why. And in that moment, he realized the truth that had only skated around the periphery of his mind, too terrible to comprehend. Camden swallowed, horror filling his veins, horror and rage. They’d tortured young girls for their own pleasure, they’d murdered, they’d left babies to die in the woods and they believed their sin was unearned? And that the punishment was delivered by some horned devil, emboldened by their failures, and out to exact his long-awaited justice?
Perhaps he—it?—deserved the vengeance he sought.
But he wasn’t the only one.
“Only ten families now,” the sheriff went on. “My own wife barren. We needed you. Farrow needed you. We thought you were lost to the outside world, but then you came back of your own will and hope was renewed. You were to replenish, not to replete!”
Like hell.
The anger flaring inside fueled him, primed his muscles. The sheriff must have noticed the hot burn of fury in his eyes because he removed his weapon and reached for his phone. Camden didn’t waste a moment. He leaped forward, smashing the gun into the sheriff’s cheekbone with all his might. The sheriff howled, blood spurting as he whirled sideways and gripped his desk. Camden raced past him.
The sheriff lunged for him but missed, and a loud boom filled the hallway, a gunshot smashing into the door at the end of the hall, wood splintering. Camden swore, ducking as he rounded the corner, another gunshot ricocheting off the wall next to him.
“There’s no way to get out of town, Camden!” the sheriff shouted. “We won’t let you leave Farrow. Come back and admit your crime. Accept your punishment. You killed that girl, didn’t you? Camden!”
Shara peeked her head up from behind the desk as Camden raced by, her eyes wide with fear. He flew out the front door, jumping into his truck and peeling out of the lot just as the sheriff appeared in the doorway, taking aim once again. The shot went wide, the sheriff bringing his phone to his ear as Camden turned out of the lot, speeding toward the road that led to town.
He beat on the steering wheel, swearing savagely. He was a liability now. The coverup they’d planned on wouldn’t work without his cooperation. So now they’d try to pin it on him somehow. Goddammit! The entire guild was going to be after him, rifles at the ready, prepared to shoot him down and blame him for Kandace’s murder. And they’d come for Georgia. For Mason.
“Fuck!” Mason was at Lilith House. With Scarlett. Scarlett and Haddie and Millie too. Georgia would be at work right now.
The split in the road approached. Drive to town to warn Georgia, or drive to Lilith House where the rest of them were, completely unaware of what he’d just set into motion?
A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face. He didn’t know what to do. There was no good answer. At the last minute, he yanked the wheel, heading toward Lilith House.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Scarlett ran/limped through the woods, her head whipping back and forth as she called Haddie’s and Millie’s names. Her breath came in quickened bursts of panic. Something had her baby, something dangerous and unnamed. An animal, or even a demon. She could believe that now, after being attacked by the thing that must have once been a woman and now lay dead in a heap of bones in an old nun’s bedroom.
She stopped, taking a moment to catch her breath and listen to the sounds surrounding her. The trill of a bird. Leaves and foliage rustling in the cooling breeze as evening began to descend. The scampering of something close by. But nothing that told her where Haddie and Millie might be. Not the crunch of bones, or the tearing of flesh. She let out a terrified whimper as she raised her uninjured arm and clamped a fist over her ear, pounding once, as though she might beat out the visions her thoughts brought forth. A small sob escaped her throat but Scarlett drew her unharmed shoulder back, moving forward.
She was not going to fall apart. Not when her child needed her. Not when Millie, Kandi’s child, needed her.
Scarlett followed the path Haddie had led them on to find Kandi’s bones, cradling her useless arm to her chest. She had no other idea, no other way to go that would be based on anything except panicked wandering.
The pain of her injuries made her feel woozy, but her fear was bigger, and far more pressing.
She didn’t know whether it was wise to continue to call Haddie’s and Millie’s names, so she stopped. What if it only alerted the thing that had taken the girls as to Scarlett’s whereabouts? What if it helped the thing avoid her?
She ran on, weaving through the trees, and stepping over fallen branches as the day fell to dusk, washing the woods in an ethereal pale peach glow. The rustling noises picked up, the bird calls increasing in their noise level and enthusiasm, and a little girl in a pale pink dress with a green satin sash stepped from behind a tree. Scarlett gasped, a small cry emerging as her heart jumped and she raced forward, toward her daughter.
With another cry, she went down on her knees in front of her, bringing one shaking hand to her shoulder and then pulling her forward breathlessly, wrapping her arm around her. “Haddie, Haddie, oh my God, Haddie. Are you okay? Baby, are you okay?” She pulled back, her head whipping around. “Where’s Millie? Haddie, we have to—”