A Marked Man. Stella Cameron

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СКАЧАТЬ about her imagination wasn’t worth taking sleep from a busy man at this hour. And talking about the reality that haunted her from other times and places was out of the question—with Father Cyrus or anyone else.

      Annie had come to Toussaint to take over a new position as general manager at Pappy’s Dance Hall and Eats just north of town. Since she’d first visited the place while she was back in school and planning a fresh direction for her life, Annie dreamed of owning something like Pappy’s one day. She’d never expected the dream to come true and working there felt unreal and wonderful.

      Another unexpected surprise had been meeting Dr. Max Savage and falling into an unlikely friendship with him. He often stopped by Pappy’s after the lunch rush. Sitting with him while he ate had become a habit. His idea, not hers, but she probably looked forward to seeing him more than she ought to.

      Max and his brothers, Roche and Kelly, planned to open a clinic in the area. Roche was also a doctor, and Kelly took care of business matters. There would be more doctors on the staff by the time they opened. Max persuaded her to go out a couple of times and said he wanted her to consider him a friend. She wanted to, but the last time she accepted an offer like his…well, the outcome hadn’t been good. She surely didn’t want Max to find out about either her past or her present troubles.

      She and Max couldn’t be more different, he a highly regarded facial reconstructive plastic surgeon while Annie came from poor beginnings and had clawed for each handhold on the way to a modest, mostly trade education. Not that she wasn’t proud of what she had accomplished.

      Truth was, she intended to remain in Toussaint and make already successful Pappy’s into a destination people came from all over to visit. She would get accustomed to being alone and whatever happened, she wouldn’t be falling back on her family in Pointe Judah, not so far from Toussaint. She loved them but didn’t need them, or anyone, to survive anymore.

      She yawned and before her staring eyes, the candle flames blurred. Still watching the light, Annie lay on her side on top of the cushioned seat and pulled up her legs. There was no reason not to stay, just until it started to get light.

      

      He trained the flashlight ahead and she couldn’t see his face behind the yellow-white beam. The beam bounced and jerked. She heard the sound of something dragging over leaves and sticks, rocks and sharp, scaly pinecones. Another noise, a clank-clank of metal on the stones was there just as it had been each time the man had come.

       She heard him breathing, short, harsh breaths. But she also heard the sounds she made herself, a high little wheeze because she was so scared, her throat wouldn’t work properly.

       What if he heard her?

       She knew what he dragged behind him.

       Her eyes burned. They burned every time. Too many times.

       He dropped his burden and walked forward, his flashlight trained on a thick carpet of leaves.

       Rain began to fall. It splattered the leaves on the ground, turned them shiny so she saw them clearly, distinct one from another.

       Overhead, branches rattled together and wind whined.

       If he looked up he’d see her. She was right there.

       A scent swept at her nostrils. Coppery, like blood. And burned hair: there was no mistaking that, not when you’d smelled it so close before.

      The man said, “Here we go,” as if he was with his children and he’d just found the ice-cream shop they’d all been looking for. More clattering and he poked through the leaves and mulch with the shining point of a brand-new shovel.

       A woman’s body lay on the ground beside him, her eyelids burned off, and empty dark holes where her eyes had been. Her hair, nothing but a thin matted spongelike layer, shed filaments in the wind.

       “Here we go,” the man said again. He didn’t start digging a hole but cleared debris from an area no more than two feet across. Poking and scraping quickly brought his satisfied sigh and he lifted the woman as if she weighed nothing. Rags of blackened clothing stuck to her rigid body.

       “There we go,” the man said and dropped the corpse, headfirst into a hole that swallowed her.

       Annie, her hands outstretched before her, ran at the man. “Bring her back. Give her back,” she cried. But when she reached for him he turned into fire, and she cried out in pain.

      Her forehead struck the side of the altar. She fell to her knees, her arms upraised, and felt her left hand scorch. At the same moment she heard the sound of flame shooting along filaments.

      She opened heavy eyes and saw a movement. On the far aisle of the church, she thought. A hooded figure. “No,” she murmured. There was no one there.

      Then she was wide-awake, pulling herself to her feet, righting the candle she’d knocked over and using one end of a linen runner with silk fringes to beat sizzling threads cold. Immediately she ran to the sacristy and poured water over her hands and into the sink there. She held them under the cold water and realized she had been lucky to sustain little injury. No one need find out what had happened.

      The pain ebbed. She found a first-aid kit and wound a bandage around her left hand to keep the air from hurting the wound. Returning to the chapel, she took the runner from the top of the altar and used it to clean black residue from the marble.

      She would pay for another runner to be made.

      “Don’t jump,” a man said behind her.

      Annie screamed. She screamed and shook her head, and staggered backward against him. Sweat stuck her clothes to her body. That woman she had seen in the nightmares was her, Annie. Premonitions, not nightmares. They were coming true. The gagging sounds she heard were her own.

      “Annie, it’s me, Father Cyrus. People are lookin’ for you.”

      Chapter Two

       Hi, Max,

       It’s been a long time. Forgive me for not writing sooner.

       Have you picked your next victim yet?

       How was London? Clever of you to go there. Far enough away for you to get lost in another closed-ranks medical fraternity, but not so far you couldn’t keep an eye on things here. I expect you were surprised how quickly the media in the States forgot about you and your nasty little habit. I wasn’t surprised.

       The media is fickle, with short attention spans, but that means they’re always on the hunt for the next story, or the next installment of an old, sick story like yours.

      Did you lose a close friend in London? You know the kind of friend I mean. A woman. If you did, you hid the evidence well. We didn’t hear a thing about it.

       There are a few questions I want you to think about and maybe you’ll tell me the answers one day. Do you disfigure them so badly because you enjoy knowing СКАЧАТЬ