"C'mon", Valentine said, pulling her toward the buildings.
"Let go, you bastard!" she cried, falling to her knees. "You're just bringing me so you can throw me into its arms when you see it, so you can get away".
"Suit yourself", Valentine said, letting go. She ran back to the gate.
He smelted the air, searched the buildings with his ears, heard only a clattering wind-chime noise.
Valentine passed wide around a boarded-up building facing the parking lot and into a courtyard. Doors were welded shut or barred with heavy padlocks. Other closed-off buildings, one marked cafe, surrounded what had once been a nice little garden.
While passing through Wisconsin on his way to Lake Michigan, Valentine and his two fellow Wolves had skirted a big old still-occupied farmhouse where the owner liked to make decorations for his yard. Animals, gnomes, old ladies bending over and showing bright-painted polka-dot underwear,
geese with wings that spun in the wind, even old Packer football helmets bobbing on counterweights as the breeze pushed them ...
The courtyard between the buildings reminded him of that farmer's land.
Somewhere or other Valentine had heard the phrase "bone garden". If there was such a thing in reality rather than a metaphor for a cemetery, this was it.
The wind chimes Valentine heard rattling were human skulls, hollowed out with tibiae suspended within to add to the rattle. Wheels within wheels of plasticized human hands, some holding fans, others carefully cupped to catch the air, spun in the November breeze. Skeletons sat on benches admiring winter-dead flowers; at least here the gardens showed some signs of being maintained. Around a table outside the cafe, four skeletons held forks and spoons over fresh, reeking piles of entrails.
Part of Valentine was horrified, another taken by the intricacy of the wiring, another grimly followed a mental train of thought about what effect the Kurians were trying to achieve. He'd heard auras could be "flavored" by the emotional state of the victim. Prolonged terror might add some kind of seasoning to the psychic palate.
The tableau even showed a grim sense of humor. A skeleton stood in the classic Hamlet pose, wearing puffy breeches and a nailed-on feathered cap, holding a fresh-looking human head - it certainly stank like a three-day-old remnant.
Hamlet didn't have his sword, but he had a femur.
The tattooed Cat who'd taught Valentine some basics of hand-to-hand combat always made Valentine recite the first rule of unarmed combat: Arm yourself.
Or in this case, leg yourself. He wrenched the leg loose, spun and spun and spun it on its wire until the link weakened, then pulled it free. He went to one of the cement benches and broke it off at the knee end, giving himself a sharpened spike.
Several paths led off the courtyard and the buildings. Valentine could see the lights peering at him from across a vast, brushy field,
bisected by cover. It was tempting to plunge into the bushes, but he suspected they thickened with what looked like Devil's Foot farther in. Even with a machete and thick clothing, he'd hesitate to hack through spiky Devil's Foot.
He chose one of the paths through the trees, and found it joined the path he'd discarded in order to get at the buildings.
To get to the trees he passed through a vaguely Oriental garden, at least judging from the architecture. The plants had mostly run wild, but there was still a bubbling, attractive-looking fountain.
The water smelled clean.
He reached forward.
A fortunate, foreshortened step saved him. He felt something brush his leg hairs, froze, looked down, saw a length of fishing line passing in front of the fountain. Valentine followed the wire to the trigger, then up to the overhanging trees, saw a big latticework like a spiky flyswatter ready to fall and cripple a hand dipped in the water. It looked flimsy; obviously it wasn't designed to kill, just to injure and cause pain.
Valentine decided to forgo the water, and stepped carefully onto the wooded path, every nerve alert. He willed his eyes into picking up every twig, every branch, every trap that might or might not be along the path.
There'd once been a sign, probably an explanatory map, at the beginning of the tree-flanked path. Now a human skin, face and hair still attached, was stretched between the posts.
DON'T RUN! YOU'LL JUST DIE TIRED
read the helpful tattooed warning.
The crotches of the trees held human skulls with glowing eyes. Valentine glanced at one as he passed; the "eyes" were golf balls painted with luminous paint. Valentine decided to parallel the path
after he found a shallow pit filled with sharpened wooden spikes smelling of fresh blood. Poor Co...
Reaper!
Valentine crouched, tried to lower his lifesign, tried to box up the cold and his sore knee. He gripped the splintered femur in both hands, left steadying it, his right on the ball joint, ready to drive it...