Chapter 34

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CAT

I t took me all night to uncover a map of the pipes under Ford's End, comparing it with a map of the island itself. Most pipelines connected to Ford or the village, others linking up isolated farm houses or small manor houses dotted around the winding trails of the island. There were five random offshoots that made no sense with the present-day layout of the island. I took screenshots of the pipe schematics, pinned each location in my map app, and hurriedly got dressed.

I was out of Ford and driving down a steep, winding road long before the sun rose. I debated stopping in at Ford's End for coffee to fuel my search before I remembered the nice woman who ran the coffee shop had been mauled by the monster. Creature. Whatever it was. The image of the florist being eaten formed in my mind, so clear that I flinched and my hands jerked on the wheel.

I didn't crash, didn't even swerve, but I became hyper aware of how easily a distraction could kill me. I'd found Caroline Beaumont murdered and seen another woman torn to shreds in less than a week; my mind was full of nothing but distractions. Would Nightmare set that creature on my brother if I wasn't fast enough to find him? I knew it answered to her. There was no way a mysterious monster started killing people weeks after she warned the next phase of her plan would happen.

If you find the monster and rip out its throat, it can never hurt anyone else. You won't ever have to witness another death. You'll live happily ever after.

I shook my head, staring at the road ahead of me. "Not today. Today, I'm finding my brother."

I glanced briefly at my phone on the dashboard, following the little pin around a bend in the road I'd never driven before, taking me to the opposite side to Ford. Here, the grass grew higher and the trees thinned, the ground dropping away to a rocky cliff beside the road. If Nightmare wanted me dead, driving me off this road would be a good way to do it. The sea frothed below, eager to swallow me whole.

"It's just ahead," I whispered to myself, gripping the wheel in sweaty hands. "It's just ahead."

The red pin was my lifeline, promising salvation from the treacherous drop to my left, the lonely stretch of moors to my right. There was no one to witness my murder if someone decided to kill me.

They wouldn't dare, the darkness seethed. You'd sear every malicious thought from their brain with twelve volts of fatal electricity.

"Where would I even find electricity out here?" I muttered, colder with every minute I drove through this abandoned road.

Car battery, my darkness supplied.

"Oh good," I muttered. "You've given it thought."

It surged against me, eager for violence, aching to feel the splash of blood on my skin, and I shuddered. I didn't like how much the dark side of me was growing, taking on a mind of its own, seducing me to violence and murder. The idea of spilling blood before anyone could hurt me was too appealing. I had the knife Tor gifted me in the pocket of my thick winter coat, tucked away in a little leather cover that had shown up overnight. Like he'd noticed it sitting out when he came to see me. 1

"I'm not electrocuting anyone with a car battery," I said, my eyes darting between the little red pin and the road as it straightened into a wider arc. Whatever the first anomaly of pipes connected to was just ahead on the right. With the vicious cliffs still threatening on my left. Great. I'd hoped to leave them behind.

The darkness didn't say anything as I parked on the side of the road and climbed out, my phone in hand. Probably because I was too nervous and afraid for my subconscious to come up with something to say. It was hard to feel bloodthirsty when you were hyper-aware of a two hundred metre drop studded with razor sharp rocks all the way to the bottom.

I was relieved to follow the red pin across the moors and away from the edge of the cliff, but when a curl of snow drifted through the air the first hope of relief turned to dread. It had been snowing the day I found Caroline murdered. I gripped my phone tighter, breathing slowly through the dread.

"No one else is going to be murdered," I calmed myself. "Everything is going to be fine."

Except when I found where she was keeping Virgil, I had a single knife against Nightmare. What a fucking idiot. I should have bought a gun; there had to be someone at Ford who knew a guy who could get a gun.

"Okay," I breathed, finding that talking out loud settled the sharpest edge of my panic. "Okay, it's just around here." I turned in a circle, scanning the empty stretch of moors. There were no houses, no abandoned cottage to account for pipework, but that didn't mean something hadn't stood here and been demolished decades ago.

It also didn't mean there wasn't a bunker beneath me. The grass was certainly long enough to hide the entrance to one.

"Think logically," I told myself, standing right above the pin. "If there's something here, I'll find it."

I just had to make sure I checked every single inch of this place. I could do it. I wouldn't let a bit of fear and snow stop me from saving my brother. I stowed my phone in my pocket for now and began to walk in a spiralling path, the circle of my footprints in the grass getting wider with each pass, further from the pin's location. I kept my eyes on the ground, making sure to scuff the ground with the toe of my boot, searching for the clang of metal, the entrance to a bunker. By the time my expanding search reached the edge of the moor where my car waited, my heart sunk. Whatever had needed pipes once, it was gone now, and there was no entrance here.

"No," I argued, shaking the snow from my hair. "No, I'll find him. I just have to look hard enough. He's in another place."

I climbed back in my car and drove to the next pin, and the next.