Page 12 of Sins of the Fathers
An ice-cold, impossibly strong hand closed on Grady’s collar and dragged him backward. He drew his knife as he turned and swung his machete right through the middle of a second man’s spirit—which he guessed to be Isaiah’s ghost—bisecting the figure an instant before it flickered out of sight.
Gasping for air, Grady dove for the tree as a shotgun blast roared over his head to clear the way.
“I’ll hold them off. Light it up!” Dawson shouted, reloading. He used the salt to draw a ring around where he stood, a ghost-proof barrier that kept him from getting tossed about while he watched Grady’s back.
Grady sloshed the dry grass, the bones, and the trunk of the hanging tree with lighter fluid. He hated destroying the old tree, but the ghosts were too connected to the place of their deaths for there to be another option. Dawson kept up a barrage of rock salt rounds, and Grady worked as fast as he could. When he had emptied the can, he flicked his lighter and tossed it onto the ground.
Flames roared up around the old tree, crackling on the dry bark and catching quickly in the scrub.
“Gray—get out of there!” Dawson shouted.
Grady turned to run, knowing that the whole field was likely to go up, not wanting to be caught in the flames.
All three ghosts blocked his path. Dawson’s salt blew John’s spirit to mist, but Isaiah grabbed Grady with rough hands, clearly intent on throwing him into the fire. Dawson wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot with Grady so close to the spirit.
“Gray!”
Grady struggled, but Isaiah’s rage-fueled spirit gripped him tightly enough to bruise, holding him off the ground by the upper arms so Grady couldn’t swing his blade. His crowbar lay useless a few feet away where he had dropped it.
Fire engulfed the base of the tree and worked its way up the trunk, licking at the bark and catching in the small twigs.
Isaiah lifted Grady to hurl him into the blaze when they both staggered backward.
Small, strong hands ripped Grady from Isaiah’s hold, shoving Grady away from the fire. He rolled and came up gripping his knife to see Matilda’s ghost holding tight to Isaiah’s spirit as she flung them both into the inferno.
John’s spirit rematerialized as fire wreathed Matilda and Isaiah. An awful, ghostly howl of pain and fury echoed through the forest. Matilda held out her hand, beckoning for her husband to join them, keeping her other hand locked on Isaiah’s arm. John’s headless figure stumbled into the flames, and all three ghosts faded and vanished in the conflagration. Grady remained where he was, in shock over being alive.
“Are you okay?” Dawson shouted again, running to him. “We’ve got to get out of here before we get cut off by the fire.”
Grady nodded, still a little out of it from hitting the ground so hard. Motion at the edge of his vision made him turn as a black shadow disappeared among the trees.
Another ghost? Or a spirit like thecu-sidhethat are drawn to death places? I don’t want to stick around to find out.
Dawson pulled Grady along, forcing him to run to keep up as they ran back to the bar’s parking lot.
“Are you hurt?” Dawson asked.
“Bruised. Got a headache. Could have been worse. You?”
“Same. Go ahead and get in the truck. I’ll drive. I’m gonna stop and make sure Mickey calls the fire department before the whole clearing burns.” He headed for McHenry’s back door, then shared a short conversation with the bartender, who nodded and went back inside.
“I told Mickey that I thought we’d handled the situation, but to call me if anything else weird happens,” Dawson recapped as he got in and started the engine. “Went to the back door because I figure the fewer people who saw us around here, the better,” Dawson said as he drove away.
“Did you see anything except the ghosts?” Grady asked.
“Like what?”
Grady shrugged. “Probably nothing. I thought I saw a shadow-thing, but it could have been the firelight. It made me think of acu-sidhe.” Grady knew that the large, vicious faerie dogs were rare, but that legend fit what he thought he saw.
“If we hear back from Mickey that they’re still having problems, we’ll check it out,” Dawson said. “Besides—any hellhounds in these parts are bound to the Kings. Dad told me that Adam King, the one who came here from Wales back in the day, made a deal with the faeries. We leave them alone, they leave us alone. The hellhounds and the protective elemental spirits in the mountains were the gifts from the fae to seal the deal.”
“Adam must have had balls of steel to make a deal with the fae,” Grady said. “But that explains why we don’t run into them.”
“Oh, they’re out there,” Dawson replied. “There are hollows in the deep woods where people never go. Those aretheirplaces. Smart folks don’t bother them.”
“It would be cool to have a pet hellhound,” Grady mused.
“Uncle Denny has Angel. She counts.”
