Page 81 of All Saints Day
Just as I sink into dreaming, I am haunted by the echoes of Frank along the bond.
Louise gets the worst of it, of course, the only one of us to share a bite with Francis Castle.
For me, the pain is muted—the visions as if seen through a pane of glass smeared with Vaseline. But I see him and feel him at the mercy of the desperate Compton—freshly mourning the loss of Susan.
“Frank, Frank, Frank,” Compton sighs as he circles the metal chair Frank is chained to.
“You are at a disadvantage, kid. Susan was the one who liked you. She was the one who had your back,” he spits as he paces around Frank. “She was the one who told the higher-ups that we should keep you—like some sick puppy she could feed and dote on and turn into her own Mad Dog,” Compton snarls, continuing his onslaught. “Me? I don't care what happens to you,” Compton sobs. “I lost one of my best friends and oldest colleague today—and the Windmill lost one of its most critical pieces… You, you're less than your old man; hired muscle with a bad brain who can barely keep his shit together.”
“Aw, Eddie,” Frank grins up at Compton, one eye swollen shut—blood seeping from his split lip. “I never knew you cared.”
Compton fires off a right hook to Frank's chin, taking a few good steps back before one of the other technicians in the roomswitches on the car battery hooked to the metal chains binding Frank to his chair.
Even though I haven't exchanged bonding bites with Frank, I can feel the white-hot, searing pain as the electricity courses through him down the bond via Louise.
“You got real sloppy, Frank,” Compton continues. “Showed your hand—now we know the girl is the key to the cure. You better believe that we're going to get her back, and that we're going to hold on to her for a long, long time.”
Frank rises to meet the limits of his chained bonds, a manic grin on his face.
“Awfully confident you'll be able to get your hands on her again, aren't you, pal? She has her fated mates and a clear path far the fuck away from here. You’re never gonna be able to keep up with that crew, you saggy old bastard,” Frank cackles.
“Only problem is, we still have one of her fated mates,” Compton snarls, stepping forward to grip Frank’s stubble-shaded chin—his thumb reaching up, pressing painfully against Frank’s still-healing bonding bite.
“So what?” Frank growls, struggling under Compton's grip. “Susan already killed Mike Duboze; this just makes her and I even. Louise and the Saints don't need me; they never have.”
Disgusted, Compton lets go of Frank's face and seems to take him in—battered and bruised—before a low chuckle escapes Compton.
“They might not need you, but we need Louise, and what the Windmill needs, they get. It doesn't matter how far your little Penny goes—how well she and her Saints think they're hidden—the Windmill will always be there. Eventually, wewillfind them,” Compton threatens.
“That's a lot of tough talk, Compton, but you and I both know that if I hadn't served Louise and the Saints to you on a silver platter that day at the marina, you would have been stuck with your dicks in your hand and nothing else to show for it.”
Compton snarls, “Good thing you're a traitorous piece of shit then, Francis.”
I can feel Frank's grip on reality slipping, even through the haze of dreaming.
“Don't worry if we can't find them; there's an easy enough way to get Louise and her Saints to come out of hiding,” Compton scoffs.
There's a collective cold fear that grips all of us as the words continue to spill from Compton's lips.
“If we release the altered Zeitnot virus to the public without any cure or preventative on the horizon, Louise and the others will be forced to submit themselves to the Windmill to save humankind, or to watch as the virus ravages the population—irreparably changing the course of history—torrents of blood on their hands.”
I wake in breathless horror, my other mates already circling around Louise where she sits sobbing in bed.
In a few hours it will be dawn, and we will be on our way to rendezvous with Martin Penny in the Berkshires at a secluded backwoods camping area Martin suggested.
Only time will tell how the meeting will unfold. Until then, we must all be strong for Louise, for each other.
Chapter 30
Louise
We are the first to arrive at the meetup point: a clearing in a dense patch of forest pinned between the Cold River and Tannery Falls.
After making a modest camp, I'm left to my own thoughts, my gun a welcome weight in my palm as I sit waiting for my uncle to arrive.
I try to think back as far as I can remember, looking for some sort of tell that Martin might be the kind of monster who would kill his own brother.
My heart breaks itself into tinier and tinier pieces as I turn over the first few hours after I found my parents' bodies at the murder scene.
