Then there was Calliope, with her camera. Meryam didn’t know whether to murder her or admire her. Maybe both. She fucked my fiancé. But damn, the work ethic on this woman. She knew it might not be work ethic at all, that maybe it was more about the idea that viewing this horror through the lens seemed to keep it at arm’s length. Calliope might feel safer with the distance the camera seemed to provide. Meryam knew it was a false distance, a false protection, but as much as she hated Calliope right now, she wasn’t going to take that away from her. Not when she would have given anything for a little distance, a little sense of security.
“Hakan,” she said, clearing her throat, mustering some residue of energy. “How much further before we can start hiking instead of climbing?”
Smashing his hands together to get the blood flowing, Hakan stood and looked over the ridge to get his bearings. His grief and fury were well hidden.
“Ten minutes if we move quickly,” Hakan said. “Fifteen at most. It’s really not far. After that we must still be very careful. Help one another. Use climbing poles if you have them.”
“We’re all going to stay together,” Meryam told them, surveying the faces around her, gauging their terror and shock.
“Like hell we are,” Belinda said, hidden behind goggles and balaclava. “Every single one of us should be climbing alone, and should retreat if anyone comes near. That’s what I’m gonna do. I’ll keep in visual range, but I’m not going near any of you until we’re down.”
No one spoke. Instead, each of the survivors began to study the others around them, almost vibrating with fear and paranoia. Meryam felt it as well. She wasn’t immune. From one face to the next, she searched for hints of the lunatic grin on their lips or the glint of orange in their eyes. They were all doing the same thing.
Was it here among them, even now? Was the demon inside one of them, relishing every moment?
“If we all stay together,” Walker said, “then if the demon attacks, there will be enough people around to prevent more fatalities.”
“Or try to, anyway,” Calliope said.
“Try to,” Father Cornelius agreed. “We will stay together. Those who wish to be on their own, we do understand. But if the evil enters you, takes you over, it may just make you hurl yourself down the mountain, or worse. We should be watching over one another.”
“I still don’t understand why this is happening,” Mr. Avci snapped. “Professor Olivieri said the bitumen charms—”
“It was a theory!” Olivieri shrieked, so fragile Meryam thought she could see little bits of his psyche breaking off with every word. “I had reason to believe… the Apocrypha spoke of it… and Noah’s family was wearing the damn things!”
The survivors had begun to pick themselves up again, shouldering their packs and making sure their faces were fully covered before they slipped over the ridge and began the careful descent.
Meryam took a deep breath to steady herself, then pushed off Adam’s shoulder and rose to her feet. Her thoughts blurred and for a moment she thought she might fall over. Adam reached out to steady her but she waved him away.
“No. If I can’t do this myself, you’ll have to carry me down, and it’s too dangerous.”
Taking long, even breaths, she managed to clear her head. She’d had a protein bar while they rested and she could feel the little bit of energy it gave her starting to take hold. Somewhere in Adam’s pack there were caffeine pills and she knew she might need those before long, too. For now, though, fear was all the motivation she required.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
The others had all gone over the edge of the ridge by the time she started to clamber backward over the rocks.
“Meryam,” Adam said.
She glanced up to see him digging down inside his turtleneck, pushing his gloved fingers between the sweater and balaclava.
“What are you doing?”
Adam found the bitumen charm, snaked a finger around the twine from which it hung, and yanked it off. Before she could object, he tossed it into the snow behind him.
“I know what you’re going to say,” he told her. “But we both know they’re not working. Maybe the demon’s already in us, maybe the evil’s taken root. Doesn’t matter. I think our only hope is getting beyond its reach.”
“Its reach?” she echoed, fresh fear buzzing inside her.
“Like a ghost can’t leave the place it haunts,” Adam said, his eyes hurt but hopeful. “I’m hoping that’s what it is… that once we really get away from the cave, it can’t hurt us anymore. If I’m wrong… well, if I’m wrong, we’d all have been better off going off the ledge that first night, dying right then.”
“Don’t say things like that.”
Adam glanced away. “Let’s just go.”
He stayed by her side as they caught up to the others, descending more quickly now that the slope was less treacherous. His words echoed in her mind and that look in his eyes lingered, breaking her heart by degrees with every moment of reflection. She knew about the dybbuk, about the fear that had been his constant companion as a child, and she had always hated his grandmother for having instilled that dark faith in him. He had never been able to escape it. Now he wouldn’t put his faith in anything, including the charm Olivieri believed might save his life.
But Meryam had to keep the charm around her own neck. She had never believed, and now this horror had instilled her with the faith she had always lacked. There was no way she was going to take off that charm.
Which meant she would have to watch Adam very carefully from now on.
For a handful of minutes, they scrabbled down the mountain face in silence replete with wary glances. Walker stayed with Kim and Father Cornelius at the center of the line of climbers, the comforting weight of the gun against the small of his back. Cold and numb as he’d become, he wondered if his fingers would cramp up if the time came for him to hold that weapon, to pull the trigger again.
When screams broke the silence, rising on the wind, he steeled himself and looked down with grim resignation. How could he be surprised, now? The demon had become their curse.
Kim swore and started to quicken her descent, but Walker barked her name and reached out to stop her.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “We have to…”
Her words faltered as she gazed into his eyes. She looked at Father Cornelius for support and found none.
“We have to what?” he asked.
Only twenty feet below them, Hakan’s cousin had turned on a student, a scruffy guy named Markus. He had a knife, and infernal strength, and with those tools murder took only seconds. Blood flew in the falling snow, whipped away on the wind. Belinda tried to stop it, but that knife and that strength did their gruesome work on both of them, and soon the blood had splashed in hideous patterns across a stretch of snow, right where the slope became more accessible… right where things should have become easier for them.
The demon brandished its knife, and that soulless grin, and it started to climb back up toward them in the body of that guide—the last of Hakan’s family on the mountain.
Walker pulled his gun. He held onto the mountain with one hand and aimed downward.
Shouting, Hakan skidded down from above, wanting him to stop, to let him try talking to the young man, give him a chance to drive the demon out. But the guide had that bloody knife and he was clambering spiderlike toward Walker and Kim and the priest, and Walker had been trained to eliminate the immediate threat.