"Barry, I mean, Steve..."
"No, wait till you've heard it all, then decide if you still trust me so much. The kid, the killer I mean, he had a--how do I say this?--a condition, a genetic condition, like a mutation. Do you follow me?"
Hesitantly, she shook her head.
"No, I don't suppose you do. I'm not sure I do myself half the time. Sometimes I wake up and think we must all be insane. I do know this boy wasn't the only one. Something to do with the gene pool in that part of the barrens. Isolated. Inbred for generations. It--the condition--was rampant." His tone of voice told her he was quoting someone. "We think they brought it with them, the people who settled the area, I mean. Some ancient European affliction. Probably the same thing that started the werewolf legends in Europe all those centuries ago. So maybe there've always been people like this. Every country has legends." His arm swept back inland. "And here. In the pines, I mean. Every generation or so, there'd be another one. It started a different legend."
"You're telling me what? This guy was some kind of a monster?"
He got up and headed down the wooden stairs.
"I'm sorry." She leaned over the rail and called down to him as he reached the beach. "Tell me." She watched him pick his way across the wedge of pebbled sand. "Oh hell, right into the wind again." With a sigh, she followed him. Instantly, cold numbed her flesh, and she plodded unsteadily. Graveled earth looked churned and lumpish, and her exhaustion seemed to make her see every grain too distinctly. The beach hardly existed here. With little more than a single stride, they were at the water's edge. The sand looked black.
They watched waves roll into the shattered lighthouse. Once, the fence had kept the curious away from the dangerous ruins, until the promontory itself had given way. A few yards in, nubs of broken posts protruded in a row, waves sucking around them, and farther out, rust red tentacles broke the water--the ribboned remnants of iron supports. One clutched dried seaweed above the waves like a nest of straw; others twisted coils around hunks of concrete. The top of a cyclone fence protruded from the wash, seaweed and barnacles clogging the links. Spray exploded from a concrete pillar. From along the halfsubmerged wall of stone, terns rose in a shrieking flurry to float in the sunlight, dipping for the uneven glint.
"Sand dollar," he muttered, stooping. He studied it a moment. "You never see them alive." He held it out to her. "Only after they're dead, after they wash up onshore." His words came out in a rush of sound. "You don't know me." Wind buffeted them, rolled over them, blowing clouds of fine gray sand around their legs. "You only know what's left."
She pulled off her glove. "It's really beautiful, isn't it?" Like a splinter of ice, the sand dollar lay in her palm. Beyond the breakers, birds had settled on the water, mere flashes of white, indistinguishable from the flickering surface. The pale rind of the moon hung above the water.
"...never really brave." Hoarseness grated in his voice. "It kills in secret--the young, the defenseless."
"It?"
"They. We think they mostly die young themselves. There are convulsions that come with the changes. Or else they're killed by the people around them, family, whatever, unless they just run off to the woods and starve or die of exposure."
A wave collided with the closest rock and droplets sprayed them. "Monsters." She turned and wandered along the edge of the surf. Clumps of vegetation mottled the mud, and she found a stick of driftwood almost buried in sand.
"They can't help what they do. It takes them at puberty, when they're still children practically, and..."
She threw the driftwood far out into the shimmering whitecaps, watched it crest a hill of water. "I can't hear you."
"...like a disease. They need help. But other things go along with it. Gifts. Special abilities. I've seen them do things."
"Them." The word hovered. "I can't believe how cold it is. I can't believe I'm freezing on the beach, talking about what? Mutants? Werewolves? Ever since I met you, I feel like I'm out of my mind. For one thing, I must be crazy just to be out here."
Splinters jutted from the sand at their feet: a short distance away, more shreds of wood seemed to sprout from the gravel. "What the hell's buried under here?"
"A piece of the old dock maybe," she answered. "Don't make conversation. Just tell me. How many?"
"How many?" he repeated.
"Monsters or whatever."
"We've found...a few."
The thunderous slap of another wave startled her. "Hell, I'm getting wet. Where do you have them?"
"A house. Far away from anybody who might get hurt. I can tell you that much. And they're well supervised."
"In the barrens, you mean? My God. Just like the stories. Monsters in the woods. Look, just give me a minute here, all right? Let me just make sure I've got it straight. You want me to believe these kids are..."
"Demons. Changelings. Whatever you want to call them. She says it can be a gift. I don't know. Sometimes I think she's..."
"Delusional? Swell. This is the woman I remind you of, right? Assuming for a moment that you're not a stark raving maniac--and I'm trying to--aren't you, well, apart from everything else, aren't you scared?"
The cloud of his breath dissipated. "Every second of every day."
She touched his arm.
"I've been...close to them." The muscles in his face tightened. "She believes they can be helped, that they're the future."
"This woman," she murmured, "that's why you're here. Am I right? You collect monsters for her?" She watched him flinch, watched the thoughts untangle themselves on his face. "I knew you were just using me," she added before he could respond. "I knew it. You don't care about stopping any killer. You couldn't care less about saving any hostage."
"You don't understand. I do want to help the girl...if there is a girl...if she's alive. That's the biggest part of it. For me. Keeping them from hurting anybody. You don't..."
"I don't know if I can believe anything you say."
They had backed away from the water, moving closer to the boardwalk. "I guess I can't blame you."
"It's insane." The wind shifted, and bursts of grit rippled across the beach, tracking each other in silent swells, until the gusts grew stronger and spun themselves into a conch of sand. "What if it's true?" She shielded her eyes. "What if they ever got loose?"
"I thought you didn't believe me?"
"I don't. Look at me. Be honest. I'll know if you're not." She squared her shoulders. "Do you really think...? Do you really believe Ramsey Chandler is one of these...?"
"No." He saw puzzlement twist her expression. "Not him." In the frigid sunlight, the fine veins near her temples were like purple cobwebs, the delicate hollows of her face almost blue. For an instant, he felt as though he confronted some weird child, some seductive elf with smoky red hair and eyes the color of moss. "It's the boy," he told her.
"What?"
"The brother. Don't you see?"
Her mouth opened and closed. "He's only...what? Fourteen? Fifteen?"
"That's how I got onto him. That's what I was searching for."
"You were looking for a little boy?" Twisting away from him, she ran. "Oh God." Cold air stabbed into her chest as she pounded over the gravel. "You're crazy." He caught her at the stairs and held on, until they leaned against each other, panting painfully. "Get away from me." But she didn't fight, only jerked her arm away. "What have I done?"
He released her. "Kit?" As he plodded up the stairs behind her, she dodged into a tiny gazebo. "You have to listen, Kit." He found her huddled on a bench. "Please. After the first killing a few months ago...the pond where they found the first girl. Remember? I went there myself. On a hunch." The balustrade blocked the worst of the wind. "I hid in the woods. And waited. It paid off. I spotted a boy prowling around. I stayed hidden. He seemed to be searching for something. Kit, I'm good at what I do. I've had to be. There's no way he could've seen me, but all of a sudden, he knew I was there. He just knew. And he took off. Only animals run like that. No way I could move fast enough. I figured I'd blown my one chance at him, never thought I'd get close enough again. But then a second killing made the news a few months later, farther down the coast, and I played another hunch and started checking out the resort towns. Especially small deserted ones, right on the outskirts of the pines." He chuckled grimly, a sound like the crunch of a clamshell underfoot. "It helped that I started hearing about Jersey Devil sightings."