“Hmm?” he asked, frowning as he glanced at her. “What’d you say?”
Meryam coughed and wiped her glove across her mouth, shaking her head to indicate that she’d said nothing important. That they should just keep moving.
The snow kept on, the wind rising and falling but never returning to its former fury. Meryam trudged onward, her vision blurring and her head bobbing as if she were on the verge of nodding off while she walked. Black spots danced in front of her eyes and edged in at the corners of her eyes and she knew her body wanted to stop. To fall.
Walker and Avci had their guns out. Several times, Adam paused and forced them to rest a minute, and Meryam saw those guns and wondered what good these foolish men thought they would do. Bullets might rend flesh, but the demon had no flesh of its own. She supposed she did understand the logic. If they encountered Hakan or Calliope or the priest, possessed, the guns would stop them. Bullets wouldn’t kill the demon but they would free those it possessed. And if those guns managed to kill everyone still wearing a bitumen charm, then perhaps these so-called survivors really would have escaped.
But Meryam felt haunted. The demon’s touch had carved a place at the base of her skull and it huddled there, even now, like a runaway hiding in the shadows of an alley. In her secret heart, the place where she kept only the most precious and the most horrible bits of herself, she thought it might be a good thing she was dying. It might be for the best.
She lost track of time. It blurred like her vision, came and went like the wind, but after a while she blinked and realized they had stopped for another rest. Drawing a deep breath, she looked around and saw Walker holding Kim in a tender embrace.
“Adam?” she said, oddly numb. Most of her pain seemed to be gone.
His face appeared beside her and Meryam realized they were seated, side by side, on a large rock.
“I’m here,” he said. “You still with me?”
Cheerful. But beneath the cheerfulness, she saw his grief. He knew she was dying. Of course he had known for a while, but now it was real. Even more real than the fear that had driven them down the mountain.
Meryam forced herself to perk up, reached down into a reserve of will that she had never known she had, until now—when she needed it.
“I’m still with you,” she said. “And we’re going to live. We’re going to make it.”
Adam smiled, and she saw that the snow had abated enough that it had become beautiful. The sky had turned gray instead of white and she knew they were well into the afternoon. Then she saw lumps beneath the snow on the ground, noticed the rock formations and recognized the shape of the clearing they were in, and she realized where they were.
“Camp One,” she said. “Have we come so far?”
“We have,” Adam said, squeezing her hand. “But we’ve got a long way still to go.”
A thought occurred to her. She glanced at Walker and Kim again. “Where’s—”
“Avci had to piss,” Adam told her.
Meryam almost managed a smile.
Then they heard the gunshot, and Avci screamed, and they all looked over to the edge of Camp One and saw the body slump from behind a rock and sprawl on the ground, pushing snow ahead of it.
And Father Cornelius stepped out of the storm. For a moment Meryam wavered on her feet, vision blurring again, and a muffled bit of consciousness at the back of her mind wondered if any of this were really happening. She could barely feel the cold, and the world around her had the not-quite-there texture of a nightmare. Sounds were muffled.
The priest stepped over Avci’s bloody corpse in a single, smooth stride, and she saw his grin. He’d torn off his balaclava and his jacket. Now he strode toward Walker and Kim with a smile so wide it had ripped his cheeks almost as far back as his ears. Blood painted his jaw and throat, streaks of vivid red that stood out against the white of the falling snow.
But his eyes were on Meryam. The grin seemed meant for her, and those eyes held a knowing gleam along with the glitter of orange fire, as if they shared a secret.
She wanted so badly to scream. Instead, she started toward the thing that had been Father Cornelius. Adam grabbed the sleeve of her coat and dragged her backward. Meryam tried to fight him and he shoved her to the ground.
“You can barely stand. He’ll kill you.”
“I’m—” she started to say. Dying. I’m dying anyway. But Adam had already rushed over to stand with Kim and Walker, leaving Meryam on her own, sprawled in the snow.
The demon in Father Cornelius crouched forward, lifted his hand, and gave her the same kind of little wave a circus clown might give a child in the audience, as if to tell her that this show was for her. Then it sprang on top of Walker, beating him with both fists as it rode him down into the snow.
Meryam could only watch the nightmare unfold.
Walker felt the blows in his skull like savage music thumping his brain. He’d seen the priest and he’d hesitated. So stupid. No hat, no coat, no balaclava, out there on the mountain more than an hour after they’d last seen him, an old man in priestly black and a white patch at his collar… zero chance he had gotten there without the demon driving him.
Its fists came down. Father Cornelius’s fists. An old man’s paper-thin skin and blue veins and age spots and chafed knuckles. Walker felt his nose break, tasted a rush of fresh blood, and he roared and whipped himself side to side, but the thing inside the priest had strength born of hell instead of muscle.
Hell, he thought, as a fist thumped his left temple and he felt the orbit around his left eye crack. He believed in Hell now. Which meant that somewhere up there, God existed, and Walker was beneath his notice. They were all, the people dying here on the side of Mount Ararat, not worthy of his attention.
Another punch. The right side, breaking off an upper incisor.
God, he decided, was an asshole.
Grunting, he jerked his arm, turned the gun, and pulled the trigger. The shot went wide, but the grin left Father Cornelius’s face. The orange glitter in his eyes flared brightly and he snarled as he wrapped both hands around Walker’s throat, as if he’d had enough of playtime and decided the killing moment had arrived.
Seconds. All of those blows, all of those thoughts, had taken only seconds.
Walker’s vision darkened. The lights were going out in his head.
Then he heard shouting—two voices, and one of them belonged to Kim Seong. The demon’s grip loosened and Walker blinked, focusing enough to see Kim and Adam struggling with Father Cornelius. Adam had an arm around the priest’s throat, wrestling him backward, trying to drag him off Walker. Kim had him by the left arm, clawing at his eyes with her free hand as she attempted to twist him away.
She stopped clawing at his face. Her hand dropped to her side and came back up with her climbing ax. The metal gleamed wetly as she swept it down and buried it into the priest’s chest. Sputtering and wheezing, Father Cornelius reeled backward. Adam shoved him and the priest went rolling to the ground with the climbing ax still jutting from a place high on his left side.
Father Cornelius whipped his head up, staring murder at them all. The orange fire in his eyes blazed so bright it might have been actual flame.
Walker lifted his gun and shot the priest once, the bullet taking him in the right shoulder and knocking him backward. It wasn’t too late, he told himself.
“Adam, get the charm off him!”
The demon twisted, hissing as Adam lunged. Kim wrapped herself around its left arm and tried to drag it back, but as Adam snatched at the priest’s collar, he came away only with the white tab that marked his office.
Father Cornelius grabbed Adam by the neck and dug in his fingers, then ripped out his throat in a spray of bright blood.