SOON the trees parted, and another road came into view: the main road that ran through West Glacier. She broke through the treeline and stopped at the side of the asphalt, scanning up and down. Across the street lay the West Glacier Motel, and next to it a line of gift shops and a restaurant. She jogged along the road without crossing, sprinting across the parking lot of a small camera store. Inside, customers browsed over the racks of filters and film.
She passed the store, then ran across the parking lot of a gas station, where patrons stared at her as she darted through the maze of cars.
She forced herself to stop running, to slow to a walk and figure out what to do. Chest heaving, she stopped altogether, bending over to catch her breath. Before her stood the impressive stone building of the Alberta Visitor Center, a tasteful structure of gray stone with large windows. The Canadian flag flapped in the breeze above it.
She wanted to get out of the open. Glancing back at the road and seeing no sign of the Toyota or “George,” she walked to the visitor center and opened the tall entrance doors. Inside, a cluster of visitors stood at the information desk while Canadian attendants busied themselves handing out maps and giving directions.
To one side of the desk stood a massive false rock face with a taxidermied mountain goat on top. She ducked down a narrow passageway to her left, winding by displays on logging and early tourism industry in the Canadian Rockies.
Finally she found a quiet little corner by a luge display and sat down next to its red and white sled. What could she do? What were her options? She could rent a car, but she didn’t know of any nearby places, and it would take her a while to find them. She’d also have to scare up a ride to the rental location if it was too far away.
She could hitchhike. But at this point, paranoia was tightening its already considerable grip on her perceptions. The creature could be any person who picked her up along the road. Stefan would just have to steal a different car, assume a different form, and nonchalantly pick her up from the side of the road.
She put her head in her hands.
“You okay?” asked a young voice next to her. A little blonde-haired girl stood there, a rubber lizard in one hand.
Madeline smiled. “Yeah. Just got a headache.”
“You should take aspirin. My mom gives me this orange-flavored aspirin. It’s pretty good.”
Madeline guessed at the girl’s age. Five. Maybe six. Kate’s age. In all the panic of the last few days, she’d nearly forgotten about the little girl she’d pulled from the dam. She hoped Kate was okay.
“Cool lizard,” Madeline said, indicating the girl’s rubbery companion.
“It’s a gecko. His name’s Dexter.”
“Hiya, Dex,” Madeline said.
The girl laughed. A woman walked up behind the child and put her hands on the small shoulders. “Ready to go? We’ll go get ice cream.”
“Really? I’m ready!”
She turned without a word and grasped her mother’s hand. Together they walked away, rounding a corner beyond further displays.
Madeline returned her head to her hands. “What am I going to do?” she whispered.
Outside, the distinct shriek of a train whistle sounded. She lifted her head.
The train. Lots of people would be on it. And the station was just around the corner from the visitor center. The whistle pierced the air again.
She was out of the visitor center in a flash, pushing past a family that was dithering over a map of Banff National Park in the doorway.
Outside, she ran up a small rise and saw the silver of an Amtrak train sitting at the station.
Scanning the road, she saw no sign of George or the car.
She rushed toward the station, hoping the train would stay at the station for a few more minutes.
Madeline ran to the ticket window, trying to catch her breath to talk to the cashier there. An elderly man with a neatly trimmed white mustache, he waited patiently while she gasped and tried to swallow away the dryness in her throat. “Does this train go through Mothershead?” she asked.
The cashier shook his head. “Nope. This is the Empire Builder. It goes west from here but stops along the way in Whitefish, and you can take a bus from there.”
“Great,” she said between gasps. “Is it leaving soon?”
“At 5:46 p.m.” He looked at his watch, a gold-banded thing with a black face. “That’s in about twenty minutes.”
“Terrific.” She pulled her wallet from the roomy back pocket of Noah’s jeans. Fishing her credit card out, she passed it across the counter.
He totaled up her ticket and finished the sale, handing her a small folder with her ticket inside. Then he pulled out a piece of paper and wrote something on it. “These are the bus times out of Whitefish,” he explained, “and directions to get to the bus station from the train.” He slid that paper across the counter, too.
“Thanks,” she said, taking the offered paper and envelope.
“You can go ahead and board, if you like. Might be a good idea. You can get a better seat.”
She nodded and turned away from the counter. Light from the setting sun streamed into the little train station, and she squinted against the golden brightness.
Outside the train waited, and uniformed Amtrak employees stood by the doors to assist passengers. She left the small station and crossed to the closest attendant, a young woman with cocoa-colored skin and long, braided hair swept up under her hat. “Go up to the second level and sit wherever you like,” she told Madeline. “The conductor will come by later and take your ticket once the train’s in motion.”
“Okay, thanks,” Madeline said, smiling at her. She scanned up and down the platform. She was alone except for the train workers.
She stepped up into the train and climbed the small staircase to the first level. Racks of baggage rose on either side of her, suitcases stacked neatly next to army duffels and backcountry packs. To her right stood another staircase, this one taller than the first. She climbed its carpeted steps and emerged on the second level in the heart of coach seating.
Most of the seats were empty, and she was glad for it. She’d been hoping to have a couple seats to herself so she could stretch out. She chose a seat on the right side of the train so she could look out that way in the direction of George’s car and the park. Only five people occupied the car: a couple near the front sat sound asleep; a woman in her fifties read a Dorothy Gilman novel; a young guy in a cowboy hat sat listening to headphones with his eyes closed; and the last one, a Caucasian dreadlocked guy about her age wearing a batik shirt, sat staring out of the window and looking as if he’d just left the love of his life behind. She could feel sadness wafting off him.
She sat down, bombarded momentarily by the white-noise Bus Seat Effect, which she tuned out. Leaning forward in the seat, she waited impatiently for the train to depart, watching out of the window with unease.
Madeline started awake with a jerk. She hadn’t even realized she’d dozed off. Her exhausted body had made the choice for her.
The train lurched out of the station, and her drowsy head knocked against the seat’s headrest. Out of the window, Glacier National Park stretched into the distance. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and shadows filled the forest. They chugged away from the station, slowly passing through the tiny town of West Glacier. She watched the Glacier Highland Resort go by out of the opposite window.
Gradually the train picked up speed as it chugged by the small, scenic towns of Hungry Horse and Columbia Falls on its way to Whitefish. When they’d been under way for ten minutes, Madeline stretched and got out of her seat. Her stomach rumbled, demanding a visit to the café car. She started for the rear of the train, bouncing around the center aisle as the train made its turbulent way down the tracks. On one lurch, she almost ended up in the lap of the woman reading Dorothy Gilman. The older woman smiled up at Madeline from beneath a flowered hat.
Madeline reached the end of the car and pressed the large metal button on the car’s door. With a noisy whoosh, it slid open, admitting her to the loud area between her car and the one behind it.
She pressed the square button on the next door, and with a whoosh was admitted to the next car. This one was even emptier, with only two people occupying it. One was a man in his fifties working on a laptop. He looked up as she entered, smiled faintly, and returned to his work.
The other passenger was a haggard, furtive-looking woman who was crocheting what looked like Christmas stockings. She gave Madeline’s muddy shirt an unfriendly once-over and returned to her hook and yarn.
Madeline walked to the end of the car, pushed the door button, and entered the confines of the place between the cars. When she pressed on the next button, the noisy door opened to admit her to the next car.
The first thing she saw when the door opened fully was George, standing up in the aisle, facing her, with a wad of paper towels soaking up blood from the nasty gash she’d given him.
He saw her. She backed up, the door sliding closed without her passing through it. He raced forward, pressing the button on the door just as she was pivoting to get back into the previous car. The door opened, painfully slowly, and Madeline was halfway through it when he caught her by the shoulder and pulled her back.
“What the hell is going on?” he demanded, shouting above the din of the train in the confined area. She flung his hand away. “You’re my friend, and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, but I’d sure like to know why you asked me to come all the way up here so you could smash my head open. And I’m still trying to figure out why I was crazy enough to follow you onto this train and abandon my car back in the park. I just saw you duck into the station, and my brain went out of the window. I wanted to help you.” He gingerly fingered the bandage on his head. “What was left of my brain, anyway.”
She studied him intently, the face she’d come to know as her friend’s face, the eyes she’d once trusted.
“I’ve read Noah’s diary,” she warned him. Behind her back she reached for the door button.
George lifted his eyebrows. “What?” He threw up his hands in exasperation. “Who’s Noah?”
She shook her head. “I know your MO. What you’ve done here is really clever, and I didn’t figure it out until it was almost too late. What did you plan to do? Drive me somewhere desolate where no one would interrupt you while you stole my life?”
George looked thoroughly confused. He put one hand to his temple, the other still holding the wad of red-soaked paper towels. Blood dripped down into his eye. “Okay… hold on. Have you completely lost it? What in the world are you talking about?”
Her searching hand found the door button, and the door slid open. She backed into the car, then turned and ran down the center aisle, the train lurching and throwing her off balance repeatedly as she went.
She glanced over her shoulder. George hadn’t followed. She could still see him between the cars, staring at her through the door’s window.
She passed through the doors into the next car, wanting to find a conductor or, even better, a large group of people. She thought of the observation lounge, the car on the train comprised almost completely of windows, including the ceiling. Usually they were packed. It would be near the rear of the train, back by the dining and café cars. And George blocked the way.
She’d have to think of some way to get around him or barge by him. She ran through the car and entered her own. Her eyes fell on the stairs leading down to the baggage area, where she had first boarded the train.
Quickly she bounded down them, finding the area much as she’d seen it before. No one was down there, just suitcases and duffel bags. A door lay to her right, and she pushed the button to open it. It didn’t budge. Beyond the door window it was completely dark. She guessed the sleeping cars were somewhere on the lower level. Perhaps this was one of them. Or some kind of off-limits train crew room.
She was going to have to get past George. Briefly she entertained the notion of climbing outside the train and up onto the roof, then leaping along from car to car like in so many thrillers she’d seen. At first the thought seemed crazy, but it started to grow on her when she thought of coming face-to-face with the creature again.
Tentatively she went to the door through which she had boarded the train. Feeling like she was shoplifting or hot-wiring a car, she reached out and pushed the door’s button. Nothing happened. She tried it again. The door didn’t budge.
Part of her was relieved. Taking her chances inside the train with the creature seemed only slightly riskier than stumbling along the top of the lumbering locomotive. She pictured tunnels with low clearance and tremendously cold, mountain winds that could sweep her off the smooth steel roof.
She turned away from the door and crept to the bottom of the stairs. Staring up the stairwell, she saw no sign of her pursuer, but she knew he was up there somewhere, choosing the best place to ambush her.
If only she could hide somehow. But the hiding places on a train were greatly limited, especially if one didn’t have a sleeping car. No matter how easy old movies made it look to completely hide from someone on a train, riding coach on Amtrak was a completely different story. Her options were in plain sight in a large group, locked in a toilet stall in the woman’s bathroom, or lying down inside someone’s duffel bag after throwing all their stuff out.
None of them seemed too hopeful.
With growing dread, Madeline returned to the stairs and peered upward. She listened for anything unusual above the trains clackity clack on the tracks. She didn’t hear anything.
Slowly she climbed the stairs and looked over the car. The same people still sat there. No one new. No one looked alarmed, all just reading or staring out of the window as scenic Montana faded into night.
She crept through her car, then passed into the next. Still, the two passengers sat there, not even looking up this time. Stefan could be one of them. She could file by them, and he could reach out and grab her, sinking teeth into her neck.
She rushed down the corridor and entered the next car, the one where she’d originally seen George. He still stood there, still clutched the paper towels to his head. He saw her enter the car, and she stopped.
“Madeline,” he demanded, “what the hell is going on?”
She wanted to know for certain if he was the creature. A desperate part of her wanted her friend George to be real. “What were you doing before you came to Mothershead?”
“I lived somewhere else.”
“Yeah, I know that part. But where?”
He wrinkled his brow. “Does it matter?”
“You know damn well that it matters. Answer the question!”
He visibly fumbled for an answer. “I was living in Billings.”
“Doing what?”
Again, he hesitated, caught off guard. “I worked as a bookkeeper. For a law firm.”
“Why were you so evasive when I asked you about your past before?”
He winced, pressing the paper towels closer to the wound. “I was embarrassed, okay? Bookkeeper. Law firm. Not exactly exciting.”
It was a lame excuse, but the creature was obviously not willing to give up his deepest cover with her. “What does exciting matter?” she asked.
He paused. “It’s just that… when I met you, you were always hiking or rock climbing, all this exciting stuff. I was so boring. I just didn’t want you to know how boring.”
She shook her head. This was going nowhere. She wanted to see his wound. By now it should be nearly healed. If it was, or if he refused to show it to her, she would know. “Let me see your head.”
“What?” he asked exasperated, still covering it with the towels.
“Let me see it!” she yelled, suddenly aware of the other passengers in the car, who stared at her and then looked away quickly when she met their eyes.
George backed up. “I don’t think so,” he said.
“Why?”
He paused warily. “I don’t trust you,” he said finally.
She didn’t know how she was going to get past him. He completely blocked the aisle.
The other passengers stared. A couple in their thirties entered the car ahead of them.
“George,” she suddenly gushed. “Oh gosh, you don’t look so good. You look like you’re going to pass out!”
He wrinkled his brow in confusion. “No, I’m not. I-”
“Oh, yeah,” she went on. “Your pupils are completely dilated. You need immediate medical attention!” She turned to the couple as they approached. “Excuse me,” she said. “Can you help me take my friend to the train’s clinic? He’s really in a bad way.”
“Sure,” the woman said quickly. Her husband gave her a withering look. “We’d be glad to help.”
George shook his head. “Really-I don’t need-”
“Nonsense,” Madeline said quickly. Then to the couple: “I really appreciate it. He’s so stubborn. And I don’t think his balance is too great with that bump on his head.”
“No problem,” the husband grumbled, giving in to his wife’s good nature.
Madeline slid her arm around George’s waist, and the husband did the same on the other side. They began slowly walking him toward the rear of the train, where the medical attendant’s area lay. The wife walked ahead of them. “Are you okay?” she asked George.
He exhaled in exasperation. “This is totally unnecessary!”
“See how stubborn he is?” Madeline said to the wife. Inside, though, she knew it wasn’t stubbornness but calculated strategy. If he showed her the wound now, she’d know he was the creature. His refusal convinced her he was in fact her hunter. She had to get away while he was distracted.
The woman rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it. My Reginald is the same way.”
When they pressed the door button and entered the space between the cars, Madeline suddenly cried out in alarm, “Oh, no! George, I left your wallet with all our money sitting on the seat! I have to go get it!” She turned to the kind woman. “Will you see that he gets to the clinic?”
The woman nodded. “Of course.”
“Thanks!” Madeline let go of George’s waist and returned to the previous car. She’d wait there for a few minutes, long enough for the couple to escort him down to the clinic, and then she’d move forward to the observation car.
When she’d waited another five minutes, she passed between the cars and entered the observation lounge. About ten people sat around in the molded plastic white seats, most staring out at the sunset beyond. A businessman read a newspaper, a teenage boy relaxed with an MP3 player. Two kids about five years old pounded each other with their fists while their dad told them in an annoyed voice to cut it out. No sign of “George.” He’d have to play along with the couple till he got rid of them. He wouldn’t risk killing them out of annoyance in such a public place.
Madeline slumped down next to an older man in hunting coveralls reading a newspaper in the bright overhead fluorescent lights. She exhaled. Tried to work out some tension in her shoulders with her fingers. She shut her eyes briefly, then opened them, taking in the tremendous black peaks silhouetted against the golden sky.
The older man next to her lowered his newspaper and turned his head to stare at her. Unsettled, she tried to ignore him, but he watched her so pointedly that at last she turned and met his gaze. Terror swept over her. The sad eyes. The kind, fatherly face that had deceived so many. The wicked mouth turned up in a grin, revealing crooked, chipped teeth.
Sam MacCready, the Sickle Moon Killer.
He looked at her with interest, then pivoted to fully face her. “You look surprised,” he said, his voice trembling with anger. “You didn’t buy that killed-in-a-prison-fight story, did you?”
“How did you…?” she said, her mouth gone dry.
“Find you? With the right… persuasion… men can give away even their deepest secrets. It cost your dad a lot of skin, but eventually he caved.”
Madeline stared. The terror she’d known since losing Ellie gripped her, freezing her to the spot. It was him. The Sickle Moon Killer. Same worry-creased brow, but the hair gray now, the physique muscular from years of prison weightlifting. From his hairy arms to his glowering expression, he was exactly as she’d seen him in nightmares haunting her since that day by the river.
She stood up silently and backed away, her movement in slow motion as in a dream. But this was no dream. Everything was too harsh. The reek of cigarette smoke, the vibration of the train, the echoing voices of chattering train passengers.
She backed up to the car’s door, mind numb. She should stay where she was, she thought. By all these people. He wouldn’t try to kill her by all these witnesses. And he was human. She could hurt him. She could kill him, if necessary, to save her own life.
He stood up, walked over to where she stood by the door. She moved off to the side, keeping an escape route open. Several people climbed up the stairs from the small snack bar below, talking animatedly and pointing out the mountains to each other while crunching on nachos. They sat down where she and the Sickle Moon Killer had rested moments before. She didn’t take her eyes off MacCready, making note of the other passengers in her peripheral vision. Even still, the flash of the knife darted out so quickly she barely had time to leap away. The blade tore through her sleeve, nicking her.
“What the hell?” cried a familiar voice. George’s head appeared in the stairwell from the snack bar, and he bounded up the remaining stairs. She’d almost convinced herself it couldn’t really be MacCready but must be the creature. But seeing George-that meant one of them was the creature. Didn’t it? She furrowed her brow.
Throwing himself at the Sickle Moon Killer, George knocked the old man sprawling, both of them landing violently amid the seats.
“Someone call train security!” George yelled out.
Madeline gripped her arm where she had been cut. Blood seeped through the material, soaking her hand.
The observation car exploded with activity, people crying out in surprise and yelling for security.
George struggled with MacCready on the seats, restraining the hand with the flaying knife. Madeline darted forward, twisted the hand painfully, and wrenched the knife from the man’s grip. His face contorted in fury when he saw her. Old, powerful rage and fear welled up within her, hatred filling her mind. Creature or not, she hated this man for what he had done, for haunting her all these years and killing the only person who had ever really loved her.
Her hand balled into a fist, and before she’d made the conscious decision, she pounded him in the face, his nose exploding with an audible pop. Blood sprayed out, flecking George’s face as he struggled to keep the man down.
“I fucking hate you!” she yelled, pounding him again, this time connecting with an eye. Her left hand joined the rain of violence, and she landed blow after furious blow, including one to the throat that left him choking and gagging.
And then uniformed officers grabbed her and pulled her off MacCready. One restrained her while the other pulled George away.
“Are you okay, sir?” the portly, younger officer said to MacCready, obviously seeing him as some sort of elderly, innocent victim of a violent attack.
“He’s the killer!” Madeline yelled. She thrashed in the restraining grip of the officer behind her, so angry she just wanted to pound the old man and the cop into oblivion.
By now all the passengers in the observation car and the snack bar below had gathered around the fight. “She’s right!” a man said. “The guy had a knife!”
“He cut her!” another added.
“Is this true?” asked the officer who held her, a lean older man with wispy white hair.
“Yes, damn it!”
The cop released her, and she grabbed her arm again, the sleeve completely soaked now in her blood.
“Madeline,” George said to her, pushing past the portly train cop to come to her. “Are you all right?”
She saw that his head had been neatly bandaged where she’d injured him.
She backed away, not sure what to make of him. “Stay back,” she warned, fists still balled at her sides.
Behind him, the older cop approached, pulled out his handcuffs, and stood the Sickle Moon Killer up on his feet while his hefty partner looked on.
George frowned. “I don’t understand. You leave without even saying good-bye. Then you ask me to come up here to get you and practically bash my brains in!”
Madeline stared at the Sickle Moon Killer, feeling half in a nightmare. It didn’t mesh in the real world. She looked back at George then, puzzled. “What do you mean, I left without saying good-bye?”
Before he could answer, the Sickle Moon Killer suddenly threw his arms up, throwing off the older train cop before he had a chance to snap cuffs on the powerful hands. “You’re dead!” he screamed at Madeline, spittle raining from his mouth.
He kicked the train cop in the gut just as the officer scrambled to get a hold on his prisoner. The flaying knife lay nearby on the floor, and he dived for it. Wiry fingers closed around the handle, and MacCready brought the knife up, connecting with the officer’s stomach. A long, red line appeared as blood seeped through the man’s torn button-down shirt. He staggered back, clutching his stomach. His young partner rushed to him as he fell, screaming for someone to get a doctor.
The Sickle Moon Killer advanced, eyes crazed and locked on Madeline.
She glanced around for a weapon but saw none, only bolted-down seats and other passengers staring on mutely. Her eyes fell on a hard-sided briefcase, and she picked it up, then hurled it at him. It connected with his shoulder, and he winced with pain.
Then the passengers started to panic. Some ran out of the observation car, piling into the dining car and sliding the door closed behind them. Three passengers came forward, two men and a woman in their forties who seemed to know each other. They moved forward as a single mass, shoulder to shoulder, and leapt as one at MacCready, grabbing his hands.
But the Sickle Moon Killer was amazingly strong, and his armed hand came free, flaying knife striking out at them, aiming for faces and arms and soft middles. One of the men screamed, a gash opening in his chest, and the woman crumpled to the floor when the knife tore open a pulsing artery in her arm. MacCready flung the last man to the side, and he clattered down the narrow stairs to the snack bar below, crying out in surprise and pain.
Now George and Madeline stood in the car with MacCready and the two wounded Good Samaritans, who groaned and lay sprawled on the floor. One train cop was performing EMT duties on his partner, who lay prone, the color washed from his face.
The Sickle Moon Killer advanced on Madeline. She backed up, throwing everything she could find at him. A basket of nachos with dripping cheese. A copy of the New York Times, which rattled and fell at his feet. An abandoned backpack with a heavy book inside. The MP3 player. They bounced off him ineffectually.
George moved to the side, keeping out of MacCready’s reach, furtive eyes searching for a way to restrain him. Madeline tried to think of the train’s layout. The only turf she knew for certain was the cars behind them. She glanced over at the two train cops. The uninjured one leaned over his friend, applying pressure to the slice. Both had guns on their belts.
A whoosh admitted a woman in a white coat to the observation lounge. Taking in the situation and wounded people, she rushed first to the fallen cop.
“I got it from here,” Madeline heard her say to the younger officer.
At that, the cop leaped to his feet, pivoting angrily.
As the Sickle Moon Killer steadily advanced on Madeline with the flaying knife, the cop unholstered his gun and aimed. A series of deafening shots rang out in the small confines of the car. Madeline clasped her hands to her ears as blood exploded from MacCready’s chest in four places, raining over the white plastic seats.
A surprised look spread over his face, and he paused, the knife sliding from his hand. It clattered on the floor, and Madeline stepped forward quickly and kicked it away. MacCready swayed, opening his mouth. Blood spilled out, bubbling on his lips as he tried to suck in a breath. Then he crashed forward to his knees, looked up at her angrily, and crumpled face-first onto the floor. He lay there for several long, agonizing moments, trying to draw in breath, the blood seeping across the floor as it spilled from his mouth and chest. His back spasmed, arcing backward at an awkward angle. Then he went still.
Madeline crept forward. Kicked his arm. No reaction.
The surprised eyes still stared, glistening and wet.
The train’s EMT stabilized the cop, then attended to the three Samaritans, the last of whom had just dragged himself up from the snack bar below. The EMT gestured to the wounded officer and the woman with the sliced artery, and said to the young cop, “We’re going to have to get these people to a hospital in Whitefish.” The officer didn’t answer right away. He just stared at the fallen body of MacCready, gun still drawn. Crinkly eyes that looked like he’d known a lot of laughter in his time now looked gaunt and gray. At last he lowered the gun, put it in his holster, and turned back to his partner.
Madeline looked back at MacCready’s body. As she watched, the eyes began to film over. He was dead.
George rushed to her side, placing a hand on her shoulder. She couldn’t look away from the body. All the years she’d lived in terror, the never-ending flashbacks. She didn’t think they’d go away now. She thought they’d get worse. Now the killer truly was free to roam anywhere, no longer confined to a body. His ghost would haunt her forever.
George’s fingers squeezed her shoulder.
She jumped and spun around, flinging off his hand.
“It’s okay, Mad. It’s over.”
She looked into his dark brown eyes. “It’s far from over,” she said. “What did you mean, I didn’t say good-bye?”
“You just left. I thought when I didn’t show up at the diner you’d at least stop by.”
Her brow creased in confusion. “Didn’t show up? But you were there. We had a long talk.”
George took a step back. “What? No, I wasn’t. I got jumped on the way.” He pointed to the underside of his chin. “See this bruise? This crazy guy beat me up! Didn’t even take anything. Just beat me up for the hell of it.”
She stared at him in shock, looking again at the fading bruise under his chin. “You really weren’t there?”
She thought of how alluring George had looked that night, when he never had before. How attracted she’d been. She took him in now. It was the same George she’d known for seven months-nothing strangely attractive about him at all now-and it hit her. Pheromones. It was pheromones that night. So Stefan had jumped George and replaced him for one night, in order to learn Madeline’s route through the desolate backcountry. But she had to be sure. “If this is true, then why have you always been so evasive about your past? And don’t give me that crap about being a bookkeeper.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just answer the damn question,” she demanded.
He looked down, ashamed. “I’m afraid you won’t feel the same way about me anymore if you know.”
“Just tell me.”
He exhaled sharply. “I was in prison. Okay? I got involved with these guys who held up a gas station in Billings. But it was a long time ago, and I’ve really changed my life around now. Going to college. Moving to a new town. Meeting you.”
She couldn’t believe it. The answer wasn’t at all what she’d expected. “Let me see your head.”
Dutifully he peeled off one corner of the bandage, and she peered closely. A dark, painful-looking bruise surrounded a tear in the skin. It was a regular, human-looking wound.
She threw her arms around him. “George! You’re you! You’re human!”
He patted her back, trying to keep her at a distance, still distrustful. “Great news. I’m human. What a relief.” Then he pulled back and looked at her in bewilderment.
“I’ll explain everything when we get home,” she said, glancing around the train car. Behind them, the EMT applied a tourniquet to the woman’s arm and helped her and the chest-sliced victim out of the observation car. The last Samaritan remained with the injured cop, holding his hand.
At her feet, the Sickle Moon Killer’s blood spread widely, dripping now into the stairwell leading down to the snack bar. An announcer stated that the train would be arriving in Whitefish in fifteen minutes.
A hand closed around her boot.
With a shriek she looked down, trying to jerk her foot away. The Sickle Moon Killer’s eyes were no longer filmed over but gleamed red, luminescent disks housing no pupils. MacCready lifted his head, mouth opening to reveal rows of hideously pointed teeth.
She tried to kick the hand away, but it held fast, the other hand reaching up to grab her leg. Pale, white skin gave way to inky black sharkskin, graying brown hair vanished into shadow, and the creature rose to his feet, sliding toward her in the blood.
Releasing his grip on her, he tore away the hunting coveralls, emerging like a hideous black insect climbing from a camouflaged cocoon. A sharp gasp issued from the man sitting with the injured cop. Madeline glanced over there. He sat staring with horror at the creature, the same way she had that first night on the mountain.
“Madeline,” George said in alarm.
“George, get the hell out of here.”
“What?”
“Just get the hell out! He’ll kill you!”
“That’s right,” said the creature, nodding at George. The coveralls fell in a heap at Stefan’s feet, and he kicked them away. He extended his left arm, and the black glowed brightly to become gleaming silver, the hand sharpening into a point, fingers vanishing. The spike. She remembered the devastation on the guys in the campground. Turning, she shoved George away violently. He stumbled over the edge of one bank of chairs and fell on his back.
“Get out!” she screamed at him.
Then turning, she tackled the creature.