Tala continued past it and then swung left. A small carport and a number of old tin sheds lined the back fence, but there was a gateway at the far end.
Tala stopped and the two rangers climbed out. I grabbed the pack and followed them. The night was still and quiet, and there was absolutely no sense of evil riding the darkness.
The soucouyant wasn’t here.
Duke’s nostrils flared briefly. “I can’t hear any sound coming from inside that house and there’s no olfactory evidence that anyone has recently passed by.”
“Would there be after twenty minutes?” I asked curiously.
“To normal senses, no. To a wolf or a dog, or indeed anything else that hunts by scent, yes.” He glanced at Tala. “What do you want to do?”
Tala grimaced. “We’ll have to check it out, just in case this creature has done the deed and fled.”
She’d certainly fled, but the deed hadn’t been done here. I rubbed my arms lightly and followed the two rangers through the gate. The path was broken and weed filled, but there was enough moonlight to prevent any slips or tripping over on my part.
Tala motioned Duke to the back door and then moved around to the front. I stopped and crossed my arms. There was nothing here—nothing but cobwebs and silence. Duke tested the back door, peered in through the laundry window, and then moved around to the other side of the house.
After a moment, they both returned. “The doors are all locked and there’s no sign or scent of life within the house,” Tala said. “What do you want to do?”
“Go back onto the highway and head out of town.”
She raised her eyebrows. “It’s still on the move?”
I hesitated, prodding the tenuous psychic thread for answers. “No. But it’s somewhere outside of Louton.”
Tala grunted. Though she looked dubious, she led the way back to the SUV. In very little time, we were on the move again.
As we drove out of Louton and the road began a series of sweeping curves that climbed up the mountain, the tenuous thread of evil grew stronger.
I leaned forward. “Slow down. We’re getting close.”
As Tala immediately did so, Duke said, “This isn’t a brilliant area to be killing someone. There’s no room to park on the verge, and the entire area is a mix of large allotments and small holdings.”
“There’re no street lights here, though, so if she goes off road, it’d be hard to see her,” Tala said. “And there are plenty of places along this road to do that, too.”
We swept around another corner. The road ahead dipped down a slight incline and then ran straight. The headlights gleamed off the trees lining the hillside to our right, but to our left, beyond the metal guardrail, the land fell sharply away. In the distance, a house light shone, but between them and us was a wide, dark surface on which moonlight glimmered. It was a large dam or a small lake.
The tenuous thread sharpened abruptly.
“There,” I said, pointing to the water. “They’re
near that lake.”
“I can’t see anything,” Duke said.
“You may not,” Tala said. “I know that dam—it’s part of Old Benson’s property. There’s a dirt road that goes around the back of it, and if they’re on that, then they won’t be seen from here.”
The protective guardrail ended as we hit the straight section of the road and, in the headlights, the land to our left began to look rather park-like. Tala swung onto a gravel entrance and killed the siren. Up ahead, the driveway split into two.
“Take the left fork,” I said.
She did so. As the headlights picked out the rusting metal structure of an old windmill, the tenuous thread of evil that had lead me here surged—and both trepidation and urgency spiked with it.
I clenched my fingers and peered out through the windscreen, but there was nothing beyond trees, darkness, and that windmill to be seen.
It was what I couldn’t see that was worrying me.
“There,” Duke said. “Up ahead to our left, just off the road in the trees.”