Monsters (Ashes Trilogy 3)

An uncertain pause on the other side of the door. “Do you want me to go away?”

Don’t be a creep. It’s not her fault. Other than Isaac, the rest were hanging back, spending as little time with him as possible. As pissed as he was, he wasn’t sure he blamed them. “No,” he said, and shoved back from the table. “Come on in, Ellie.”

There was the thunk of a lock being thrown. The door cracked a few inches, revealing the worried eyes of that morning’s guard—a strawberry blond named Eli—and then a flash of golden braids as Ellie pushed past.

“Ellie.” Eli made a grab that Ellie easily dodged. “Jayden said we should wait for the dogs.”

“Mina knows he’s okay.” Ellie gave her dog an affectionate ruffle. “Don’t you, girl?”

“Relax, Eli, I’m still talking,” Chris said as Mina trotted over, gave Chris’s hand a welcoming snuffle, then immediately flopped on her back, tail thumping. Grinning, Chris obliged with a furious belly scratch that set the dog to squirming. “You like that, girl, you like it?” he said as the dog’s back legs pedaled. “That’s a good girl.”

“She’s such a baby.” Dropping to her knees, Ellie brushed aside a corn-tassel curl that had escaped her left braid to coil at her temple. “Like I never pay attention to her.”

“It’s okay,” Chris said as Mina stretched both front legs and let out a blissful moan. “I like it. My dog did this all the time.”

“You miss him?”

“Yup. Jet’s a good dog. I bet you’d like him.” Chris gave Mina’s belly a firm clap, then looked up at the little girl. “Going fishing?” “She’s always going fishing,” Eli put in.

Ellie showed Chris an exaggerated eye-roll. “I was wondering if, maybe . . . in a couple days, if they let you out . . . you want to come with me?”

“Sure,” he said, then couldn’t resist the dig. “But I guess it all depends on whether Isaac and Hannah think I’m going to eat you.”

“God.” Eli’s face darkened. “Don’t be such a jerk.”

The hopeful shine on Ellie’s face dimmed. “They don’t think that, Chris. You know they have to be sure.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Don’t be such a turd. “Sorry. I’m not usually an ass . . . uh, such a creep.”

“It’s all right. You’re just upset.” But her smile was more tentative than before.

“No excuse.” Reaching across the dog, he tucked that corkscrew curl behind her ear and let his hand linger a moment, enjoying the flush of delighted surprise that spread over her face. Cute kid, but he could see the sadness in the slightly dusky hollows under her eyes. “The least I can do is be nice to the girl who saved my life . . . and don’t start.” He held up a finger. “It is so a big deal.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.” Ellie looked pleased enough to burst. “Now that you’re feeling better, is it okay if I ask you a question?”

“Of course.” He said it easily enough, but he felt his stomach suddenly knot with apprehension. “Shoot.”

“Before I came here, I had these friends.” Ellie nibbled at her lower lip. “Alex and Tom. Not my age, but older like you? Actually, I think Tom was even older. He was a soldier, like my dad, only Tom was in Afghanistan, not Iraq, and worked on bombs and stuff. Anyway, we were all together. They . . . they took care of me, but then we got separated. When Tom . . .” Her eyes shimmered, and her mouth twisted exactly the way a little girl’s would if she was trying hard not to cry. “When these adults took me, Tom got shot and . . .”

He listened with growing dismay as she narrated a story he’d heard once before. Ever since that morning on the snow, when he’d swum back in such pain and fear to put two and two together, he knew this moment would come. Until this second, he wondered what he would do—and why that should be a question.

This kid risked her neck for you. The least you can do is man up.

“So, what I was wondering”—Ellie dropped her gaze to her hands as if afraid of finding the answer in his face—“was if Tom and Alex . . . if they got to Rule?” A tear broke against her fingers. Eyes still averted, Ellie knuckled her cheek. “Are they there? Are they okay?”

He was going to hate himself forever.

“I’m sorry, Ellie,” he said. “But I never met them.”

You are such an ass**le. Through the windows, Chris watched as Isaac put a hand on the little girl’s head. That loosened something, because Ellie suddenly flung her arms around the old man’s waist and buried her face. Even two stories up and across a half acre, Chris could see the little girl’s shoulders shudder. She’s the only one who cares, and you go and lie.

“Yeah, well, you get fed poison, cut off from a bunch of spikes, and left for dead, see how you feel.” The self-disgust on his tongue was so thick a bottle of mouthwash wouldn’t cover the taste. “You think she’s going to like you so much once she finds out that you got Alex killed? That you decided it was easier to pretend there was nothing the slightest bit weird going on with the Zone?” He wouldn’t be surprised if Ellie wanted dibs on the firing squad, and no, he was not overreacting. These kids put down people.

What bothered him, too, was how quickly the lies came. He thought he was past all that, the Night of the Hammer and his father and the strange, meaty thunks and Deidre’s screams. Ten years later, and he still remembered answering that detective’s questions: No, sir, I didn’t hear anything. No, I was asleep. Hammer? No, sir, I haven’t seen a hammer anywhere. I don’t think we even have one.

“No, Detective, I love my dad.” He leaned his forehead against chilled glass. Just below the sill were stark coils of some very thick but snow-covered vine winding up a high iron trellis. “I’m only eight, and I’ve just listened to my dad kill someone, and no, sir, he never hurts me.”

Despite the bright sun of early afternoon, the double-paned window fogged with his breath. Through the patchy haze, he watched Ellie boost herself onto the saddle of a dingy brown mare. The way to the lake wound through thick woods fringing a vast bowl of glittering snow that, from the wire and steel posts, must be the farmstead’s garden plot. Chris saw the old man raise a hand as Ellie, Eli, and their dogs disappeared and then gather the reins of a dun-colored saddlebred, which he led toward a weathered, dark gray stable just off the long frozen oval of a duck pond south of the house. Switching to the south-facing window, Chris tracked Isaac’s progress as the shadows of the man and his horse, long and spider-thin, dashed away toward distant, wooded countryside. Nestled a short distance to the right of the stable, a clutch of cows had gathered in a white corral around a feed station outside a red, high-pitched gable barn with a stone foundation. Like the stable, the barn was decorated with several hex signs: half-stars in fake arches over the windows that Hannah had called “Devil’s doors,” as well as white rosettes. With its east-to-west orientation, Chris could just make out a swirling blue and gold Wheel of Fortune beneath the peak at the gable end. As he neared the barn, Isaac waved to another boy—not tall enough to be Jayden, so maybe Connor or Rob—pushing a barrow of soiled hay.