Path of Needles (35 page)

Heath met her eye. ‘Very good, Corbin,’ he said. ‘Looks like you found it.’ He grimaced. ‘I can smell it.’

‘Me too. But I don’t know where he is. At least you brought Alice Hyland in, though – she’ll be safe. He must have been watching her. The picture—’

He drew a breath. ‘I don’t know how you figure that, Corbin. Either your eyesight’s better than mine or someone’s been trespassing, because all I can see is the edge of a noticeboard.’ He held up a hand to stop her. ‘Ignore that for now. Look, we don’t have her. We went to her place and she wasn’t there.’

‘But – they are fetching her, aren’t they?’

His voice was terse. ‘When you called this in, I told them to stop looking, got them back to base. There was no reason to believe Hyland was involved any longer.’

Cate stared at him; then she turned towards the woods. Below the canopy, everything was dark.

‘We need to set a perimeter here,’ he said. ‘I’ll get a
description out on Hyland, get a search warrant for this place. Then we can go inside, hmm, Cate?’

She had stopped listening to his words. She turned; her face was stricken. ‘I have to try and find her.’

‘No,’ Heath said decisively, ‘I’ll have the team go back to her house. We’ll track her down.’ He reached for his phone.

Cate stared into the trees once more. She knew that what Heath had said was the right thing, but she also knew it wasn’t any use: Levitt’s car was here and Levitt was gone. He was already after Alice, she felt sure of it. Whatever was going to happen, it would be in the woods; the place Alice talked about, that drew her as if it was part of the fairy tales she saw in her mind.
Don’t leave the path
, she thought, but it was too late for that: Alice was already in there somewhere, and Levitt was with her.

She turned further to the north; she thought that was the direction in which Alice’s house lay. In the next moment, she was moving. She heard Heath’s voice behind her, a sound without words, but she didn’t look back as she rushed into the dark.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

The thing Bernard Levitt was holding out towards Alice had a short wooden handle and sharp, curved metal spikes. They gleamed in the dim light that leaked through the walls. He smiled, made slashing motions with it, clawing at the air, demonstrating. ‘A bear,’ he said, ‘do you see? The other was a wolf. This one’s a bear, and it’s for you. But if you’re good … if you’re very, very good, I’ll give you a chance to take the poison first. Then it won’t hurt so much.’ He passed the claw from hand to hand as he stripped off his gloves and let them fall. ‘I don’t need these any more. We’re almost done, aren’t we? Now, Alice.’ He gestured towards the bowls on the floor, lined with scraps of food.

Alice stared. It wasn’t dried porridge after all; it was a thick paste, some sort of organic matter.

She clung on to the stool she held in her hands. Her palms were sweating and it was slippery and heavy.

‘Three ways to die,’ he said, ‘and all of them just right. And then do you know what’s going to happen?’

Alice knew it wasn’t any good, that it had never been any good. She wouldn’t be able to fight him. This was the way it was, how it was supposed to be: she had loved fairy tales from being a small child, all their rawness and beauty and yes, their magic. She had wished so hard and so often to live among their people and their ways and their deep, dark woods, and now they had come to claim her. There was only this.

‘You’re going to burn,’ he said.

Her whole body twitched.

‘You’ll blacken and you’ll crackle,’ he said. ‘You might still be alive, when it starts. You’ll smell your own flesh as it roasts. You’ll feel your face as it stiffens and your lungs as they sear. And I’ll be watching, Alice. I’m always watching. I’ll see everything.’ He set the claw down, leaning it against his leg, and took a small bunch of twigs and a cigarette lighter from his pocket. He tried several times to ignite it, and finally sent a tiny flame – so small a thing – sparking upwards. He held it to the end of the bundle and it started to smoulder, sending acrid white smoke into the air. It was herbal and sharp and she immediately wanted to cough.

‘It’s the smoke of the juniper tree,’ he said. ‘That should complete the spell, don’t you think?’ He pointed at the walls and Alice saw that he had woven juniper branches into the structure too, some with berries still clinging to them. ‘The Celts believed that juniper smoke aided contact with the dead.’ He wafted the smoke around in little jerks.
‘It will create the perfect conditions. Of course, juniper has other properties, too; other stories. Some say that anyone who digs up a juniper tree will be dead within the year. Do you think that’s true, Alice? You had my sister’s tree dug up, didn’t you?’

Alice moved – she had to do something so she struck out, thrusting the stool forward. His eyes opened wide with astonishment as it punched into his stomach, as if he hadn’t seen her holding it, hadn’t expected she could touch him. ‘You—’ he said, and the words failed, but he didn’t fall; he didn’t even stagger. He threw the burning bundle aside and moving, quickly, grabbed the stool by two of its legs. The awkwardness had left him; even his face looked smoothed-over, making him younger, leaner. He was smiling again, but Alice didn’t want to look at that smile any longer or his yellow teeth. He dragged at the stool and she held on, caught for a moment in some child’s half-hearted tug of war; then he yanked it hard, out of her hands, and swung it, smashing it into her shoulder.

Everything went blank, but only for a second. Alice was on the ground and she was clawing at it, but it wasn’t right; the ground was coming away in her fingers and she realised it was because the floor was made of rushes, of course it was, because she was in the hut: Levitt’s hut. She couldn’t hear him, couldn’t tell where he was; there was only a sound in her ears: a high buzzing that went on and on. Then there was a face, up close to hers, and
Alice remembered that she should be in pain because he had hit her, and she was down; but it didn’t hurt, not yet. She tried to cry out, but there was only a dry gagging, and when she heard that sound, she knew she was finished.

‘Oh, Alice,’ he said. ‘Oh, my pretty little Alice. Where’s my feather? Give it to me.’ Levitt started pulling at her clothes, trying to get into her pockets. ‘Where is it?’

She tried to push herself up. The pocket holding the feather was beneath her, she knew. She had carried it everywhere, had thought the blue bird her friend, and all the time it had meant her for this: for
him
. She tried to reach it herself but he pulled at her, rolling her over on the floor. The buzzing in her ears had changed note, becoming higher and sharper. Her face was wet, but not with tears. She wasn’t crying; her eyes were
hurting
, stinging, because somewhere there was a flame. She craned her head back, looking for the fire, and instead she saw the claw he had fashioned, its sharp points:
I made this for you
.

She stopped trying to reach into her pocket and felt Levitt’s prying hand enter it, his fingers grasping against her thigh. She let him, stretched out her arm, ignoring the shriek of pain it caused her shoulder, and her fingers rasped against the handle. Then the thing he’d made was in her hand and she swung it towards him.

The claw met something at once solid and yielding, landing there with a dull sound. She pulled on it, trying to drag it loose, but it had gripped and it held; she had
to let go. It was his now, it would stay with him, and she would die here, lying in a fairy-tale hut in a fairy-tale wood, and she would be alone.

Levitt screamed.

His cry went on and on, turning into a loud keening that didn’t sound like him, didn’t sound like a man at all. Alice rolled away, her shoulder flaring white-hot, onto her side. His chair was there and she put out one hand and tried to pull herself up. Instead something slid down on top of her, something old and musty and unpleasantly soft, like a solid layer of dust. As she pawed at it, trying to push it away from her, she realised it was feathers, masses of them, feathers of all colours save one.

The smell of smoke was strong in her nostrils. The hut was burning; the wood was starting to crackle and spit. She opened her mouth and drew in a deeper breath, and it was dense and choking at the back of her throat; she started to cough. She curled up, felt the cloak of feathers against her face; then it was lifted away and she gasped for air.

Levitt was standing over her. There was blood smeared across his face and he wasn’t smiling any longer. He clutched the cloak tight, pressing it against his chest. It wasn’t until he stepped towards Alice, standing over her legs, that she saw the claw was still embedded in his back, its handle jutting upwards.

‘You’ll burn,’ he said. His voice was low and hoarse, but she heard it quite clearly. She blinked; her vision was
clearing but everything was growing faint anyway. Smoke was spreading from the walls, and light was dancing amid the branches. It was whispering to her, the voice of the flame punctuated by sharp imprecations of splitting wood. Levitt was standing above her. She would never get out; she could see that he knew this. He had only been waiting for her to understand, to enjoy the look in her eyes when she did.

‘You’ll burn.’ This time it was a whisper, and Alice didn’t so much hear the words as see them on his lips.

She forced herself to move, though not towards Levitt; it was too late for that. Even wounded, he was too strong for her. She couldn’t fight him. Instead, she shuffled away, half rose to her feet, put her hands against a part of the wall that wasn’t burning and pushed. If she couldn’t get past Levitt she would force her way through to get away from the smoke. The wall was pliant and it bulged under her hands, but there was something wrong with it. The branches didn’t snap or break apart; instead she found something smooth there, at once giving and unyielding. It sprang back, pushing her with it, and her fingers hooked into it and then she understood: wire. He had lined the walls with wire. This thing he had built was not a hut; it was a cage.

She turned to face Levitt. He was laughing at her, and she could see the madness in his eyes, but there was triumph there too. He had been right: soon she would burn. At least then she wouldn’t have to look into his face.

Alice closed her eyes. They felt hot and angry, as if they were already burning. She stepped forward, her legs gave way and she fell, landing on her knees. She couldn’t catch her breath. She stared down and saw pale smoke rising from the rushes lining the floor. She let out a strange sound and didn’t recognise her own voice; it turned into another choking cough.

There was a flash of colour amid the rushes and she realised what it was at once. He had forgotten it in the pain and the heat. It was the one thing she had held on to amid everything that had happened and she reached for it now. The feather was ragged and spoiled, but she didn’t care; it was hers.

She heard Levitt cry out as her hand closed over it.

‘I need that.’ His voice was the voice of a child. ‘I
need
that.’

She looked up at him, held it out, her hand flat, the feather balanced upon it. It wavered in the simmering air. He came for it, letting the cloak slip from his hands, and as he reached out she closed her hand into a fist, crushing it, and she threw what remained as hard as she could towards the burning wall.

Levitt howled his anger and strode after it as she scrambled away, stumbling over the fallen stool. She picked it up and hurled it after Levitt, but it was no use; he batted it away as if he hadn’t even felt it. One of his fists closed over something; his eyes gleamed.

Alice stepped back. The doorway was behind her now,
but if he came after her … she knew it was too late; she had nothing else, no fight left in her. She wouldn’t be able to run. She moved towards the entrance anyway, sensing clearer air; it was blessedly cool against her skin. The smoke inside the hut had thickened; it was twisting and writhing. She heard laughter within it. ‘Did you know?’ His words came low and rough between dry, sputtering coughs. ‘Did you know juniper smoke aids contact with the dead?’

She couldn’t see him clearly any longer, only a darker shape within the grey; moving awkwardly like some lumbering beast. It barely looked like a man any more. It let out a guttural cry and something swiped the air. It was reaching for her, welcoming her in; it sounded like death.

There was an answering sound behind her and as she turned, something brushed by her face, something blue as the sky in springtime, its voice clean and pure as sunlight. It was the blue bird, come for her at last; then it was gone, flown by her and into the choking air. She caught a glimpse of outspread feathers, grasping claws; she heard Levitt’s cry of anger, saw one hand pawing the air.

She didn’t see him fall, only heard it. There was a thud, and another sound, the meaty crunch of metal claws punching deeper into flesh and bone. Levitt let out a single brief howl; then he was silent. Smoke took him, wrapping itself around him, smothering his body.

Alice could smell scorched feathers. It was a choking stench, bitter and impossible to breathe. She staggered towards the clean air, blinded by smoke, her eyes pouring, and felt something wrap itself around her feet: the cloak. Its touch was soft and insidious and she tried to pull away, almost fell. She couldn’t get out; even now, it wouldn’t let her. She bent and thrust her hands into it, pulled it clear. Then she threw it behind her, into the burning hut.

There was a burst of orange flame and for a moment she thought she saw something else: a bright splash of colour hanging in the air. Then she was outside, there was cool air on her face, the soft air of a springtime evening, and Cate was there, supporting her arm, keeping her from falling. Her lips moved, but Alice couldn’t hear the words. She could only draw deep, blessed breaths of air, and then it all came back; there was a loud
whoomph
as the structure Levitt had made collapsed inwards. For a second it was lost in billowing smoke, then a bitter burst of sparks rose and Alice could see a pile of branches, canvas, wire. It was a bonfire, nothing more, consuming what lay beneath, sending flames up into the oak tree, whipped into greed by the clean air.