X found Dervish at the edge of the forest. The lord was lurking behind the last row of trees, making certain he could not be seen from the house. He wheeled around toward X. He smiled so widely that his crooked teeth glinted in the dusk.
“So this is where you have played house with your pretty little mortals,” Dervish purred horribly. “Do you know how easy it would be for me to murder them all? How easy—and how pleasing?”
“I do,” said X, fearing that if he added even one more syllable it would enrage the lord.
“Bring me the soul whose name swims in your blood,” Dervish said coldly, then pointed toward Zoe’s house. “Do not fail a second time. Else I shall return here tomorrow night—and I shall swim in theirs.”
nine
X dove into the ground as if it were water. He blazed through snow, dirt, rock. The earth itself parted before him and closed again once he had passed.
Stan Manggold’s sins were flowing through him in a rush once more, this time coupled with X’s own fury. He had released the man—he had shown him mercy—only so Stan could murder again. Now X had been torn from Zoe. Now his heart was in ruins, all the worse because he’d only just discovered what his heart was actually for.
X burst out of the earth in a hot, sludgy marsh. He was in a part of the country he had never seen. He tried to orient himself, but there was no time: noises were already assaulting his ears. A hundred yards off, a pack of hunting dogs barked riotously, a squadron of geese swarmed the sky, and a half dozen shotguns crackled, decorating the air with smoke.
For all the villainous men and women he had encountered, X had never heard gunfire. The noise jolted him. He felt it under his skin.
Three birds plummeted from the sky. The hunters lowered their guns, and broke into chatter about the wind and the light. They drank from silver flasks that winked in the day’s last light. Some of them already had dead geese strung around their necks on giant necklaces. They reminded X of stories Ripper had told him about cannibals who wore skulls across their chests. He was no better than the hunters—or even the cannibals. He might as well have worn 14 skulls on a necklace of his own for all the souls he’d taken.
Stan’s skull would be next.
The hunters collected their trophies and pressed on. As he waited for them to disappear, X’s mind crept back to Zoe. He pictured her wearing his coat in the rain. He was glad he’d left something of himself behind. She would wear it, even if it was too long for her, even if it hung down around her ankles. He knew she would. And someday soon he would knock on her front door and say…
What would he say?
He would say, I forgot my coat.
She would like that. She would smile. And then he would kiss her for the second time. She’d expect him to be shy, but he was finished with shyness forever. There was no time for it.
When he could no longer hear the dogs, X climbed out of the marsh and wrung the water from his pants. The ground was flat for miles. It looked nothing like Montana. There were clumps of trees here and there, but mostly it was just wetlands marked by wide rivers and tiny, tufted green islands. It looked as if the world had been flooded and the water had only just begun to recede.
There was no road in sight, but X didn’t need one. He moved at a superhuman pace. The anger in him fed the longing, and the longing fed the anger. The marshy ground exploded with water as he passed. Had anyone been watching, they would have seen what looked like a comet cutting through the landscape.
After a mile, X felt the pain coursing through him deepen. The Trembling was guiding him. He was on Stan’s trail.
He found him just a few minutes later. Stan was walking the main street of a dusty town, eating an ice cream cone and peering into a shop window, looking as innocent as a child. X was repulsed by the sight of him. But there were too many people dotting the street for him to charge at Stan and snap his neck. He stepped out of sight, and waited for his prey to turn down some quiet passageway.
X didn’t know the name of the town. Half a mile back, atop a pole wrapped in vines, there had been a sign, shaped like a coat of arms. He had stared at it, sensing that it welcomed him to the town of Somewhere in the State of Something. The name of the state had an X in it. He recognized it from what Zoe had written on the back of his hand. He looked down at his hand, wishing she’d told him what the other letters meant.
The message was already beginning to fade: My X.
He shook off the thought of her. He had to deliver Stan to the Lowlands. If he did, there was a chance he could see Zoe again one day. If he failed, she and her family might not even survive until morning.
When he looked up, Stan had disappeared.
X headed down the sidewalk, catching his reflection in a store window. He looked like a wild creature. His pants were filthy. His shirt was torn. And his hair … His hair looked as if it had been in an ice storm and a marsh. Every strand was straining in a different direction.
He’d draw too much attention like this.
He found a shop with a horse etched into the door, and a rack of colorful shirts on the sidewalk. X peeked inside. No one was watching. He slipped one of the shirts off its hanger. It was purple with decorative white stitching that looped across the chest. X put it on over his own shirt. It was too small for him, and he could not even begin to manage the pearl buttons, so he left it hanging open. He stared at himself again in the window. Now he looked like a wild creature wearing a purple shirt.
He shook his head and went after Stan.
The pain told him which way to go as surely as a compass.