He lifted his face into the wind. It was past dawn, but still early—a time when the world seems hushed and every sense is at its peak. A wisp of scent came to him, and he inhaled deeply, testing it. Distinctive, yet faint; a shift in the air current might carry it away.
But it hung in the air as if to taunt him. His body stiffened, and he felt every hair stand on end.
He knew this scent. Not as he knew Alexandra’s, or any of the myriad odors of nature. It wrapped around his disordered memories like chains, boxed them in like un scalable walls. It tormented him like hunger and thirst and loneliness. Like the Voice that sometimes spoke within his mind.
Once before he had caught this scent, in the woods near Alexandra’s childhood hiding place. He had not remembered enough then, but now he did. It was the scent of a man. He knew it as he might know the face of an enemy.
He began to walk toward the scent, pulled like a puppet on a string. East—back the way they had come two nights ago. He and Alexandra and Lori and her son. But Lori would be gone now, and it was safe for him to return to Alexandra.
His steps slowed. Alexandra. The mere memory of her almost blotted out the scent, as he had tried to lose himself and keep her from his thoughts over the long day and night before.
Endless hours, because he had been apart from her. But now the taste and smell and sound of her filled his mind and senses, leaving no room for anything else.
Two nights ago, when he’d wanted Alexandra so much, he had felt the beast straining to break free, threatening to be released by the intensity of his emotions. With a few words and a touch Alexandra had accepted the beast and tamed it, accepted Kieran into her body and made him almost whole.
He stopped and almost turned back. She expected him now. In a few minutes he could be with her. In a few minutes she would be in his arms, feeding his hunger, filling him to completion.
But again the familiar scent came to him, and a growl started low in his chest. His body acted, beyond thought, propelling him into a run. Away, away from the motel.
Who are you? His pumping heart beat out the question.
He had run nearly a mile, behind the windbreaks and snowdrifts along the side of the road, when the second smell assaulted him.
Death. He stumbled and ran on. Blood, and death, mingled with the familiar scent and one other equally so. It sickened him, and still he ran, drawn inevitably to a circle of flattened snow a few yards from the highway’s edge.
A body lay there, surrounded by footprints. She sprawled on her back, sightless eyes turned heavenward in silent supplication, her face still taut with terror. Bile rose in his throat.
Lori. He had no need to touch her to know she was dead. Her blood stained the snow and soaked the remnants of her torn clothing.
Kieran sank to his knees. The horror of death surrounded him, and yet he could not move, could not touch her even to close her eyes. The scent that had drawn him here was mingled with all the others, telling a tale of violence and pain and a cruel, tragic murder.
Murder. Like Peter’s murder. Alexandra had told him. Body torn, as if by a crazed animal. Exactly the same here, a thousand miles from Merritt. It couldn’t be, an yet it was. Inescapable. Undeniable.
And, like a predator from ambush, memory came.
“Look, boy. See what you’ve done!”
The Voice. It mocked him, invisible, in a place that reeked of blood and fear. A place he knew within his mint wooded and steeped in emotion. Minnesota—
“Look!” the Voice said again. Kieran looked, as he has been commanded to do.
A body lay before him. Savaged and torn, throat ripped open, clothing rent to shreds by raking claws. A young Ojibwe woman’s face forever locked in a grimace of terror.