Part 23 (2/2)

For two years, Addie had lived with that. With listening to her mother die and not intervening.With telling her father what she thought and making him splatter his brains across the room. It was her fault. Her sin. For two years, she'd regretted it, and now she did not. Now she realized they had brought it upon themselves, and had she interfered, she'd only have been lying there with them.They had not raised her to interfere, so she had not. As she would not now.

So she circled wide around the village, ignoring the screams, and continued on.

Addie found Sophia in Timothy James's cabin. She told her that Preacher was gone. Sophia wept as if she'd break in two, so much that Addie feared for the child.

She told Sophia what had happened. Or part of it.That Eleazar had returned the old man to Charlie's body. That he'd returned the souls of the murdered to the children's bodies. But there Addie's story for Sophia changed.

In Addie's version, Preacher had made his escape. He'd run to the village to warn them. He'd arrived too late, the children reawakening, but he'd fought for the villagers. He'd warned who he could and then he'd helped fight off the threat. He'd fought for his village, and he'd lost his life doing it. He was a hero.

That part was true. He had sacrificed his life-for Addie. And she would never forget it. He'd given her a family, and now she'd protect that family with everything she had, in every way she could.

So she told Sophia the lies that would set her heart at rest, and then she gathered her up, got her on the horse, and took her away from that place of death, off to find a place where she could bear and raise Preacher's babe, and where she could be happy.

Where they all could be happy.

Pipers

Christopher Golden

1 Ezekiel Prater drove his ancient Ford pickup along Doffin Road, enjoying the cool night air that streamed through the open windows. His daughter, Savannah, had never understood why he had spent the time and money to restore a sixty-year-old vehicle, but she sure liked riding in it.

”Turn it up, Daddy,” she pleaded from the pa.s.senger seat, barely turning from her open window. ”I love this song!”

He smiled and obliged her, though it was one of those bubblegum pretty-boy songs all the young girls seemed to love and anyone over the age of sixteen wanted to scrub from their brain. Zeke felt eighty years old when such thoughts entered his head, but he couldn't help himself. Savannah's preferred entertainment might have had rhythm, but it didn't sound much like music to him.

”So, who's going to be there tonight?” he asked.

The wind blew through the cab of the old pickup and carried his voice away. Savannah put her head back against the seat and closed her eyes, letting the breeze whip her hair across her face. His heart melted just looking at her. Savannah had gotten her big blue eyes and the spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose from him, but the copper skin and dark brown hair and lovely, sculpted features had all come from her mother, Anarosa, who'd found the lump in her left breast too late.

Zeke felt the familiar pinch of grief, but by now it had become his bittersweet friend, his rea.s.surance that he had found love in his life. Seven years had pa.s.sed since Anarosa's death and he still missed her constantly. Once in a great while he would find himself realizing that he had gone an entire day without thinking of her and the guilt would nearly suffocate him. Savannah always saved him with some bit of prattle about her day, a fight she was having with a girlfriend or a boy who had paid her some special attention.

He turned down the music.

”Hey, bud,” he said when she shot him her patented irritated-teenager look. ”Who's going to this thing tonight?”

”Most everyone, I guess. We talked about this already.”

”Refresh my memory.Terri,Vanessa, Abby . . . ?”

”Abby can't make it,” Savannah said, twisting slightly in her seat to face him, the seat belt fighting her. ”She went to Austin to visit her brother.”

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