Page 67 of Last Seen

“That was quick. They must have changed it this week, once Halley was taken.” To Halley Heather says, “Standard operating procedure when a new acolyte is brought in. They change things up until the woman is acclimated.”

“We’ve been planning this for a while,” Cat says, shifting the boy to the ground. Halley realizes with a start it’s the same child she saw out in the woods. He’s older than she thought, but so small, so skinny.

“This is Gray,” Cat says. “My son.”

“So it was you who put the note in my bag. You disabled my Jeep.”

Cat smiles. “You always were so clever. We hoped you would be as stubborn as an adult as I remember you being as a child. And if not, bring someone who was.”

She smiles, and Halley smiles back, pushing away the anger. This could have gone so many other ways, and it might still. But they can hash it out later.

“I really do want to know the whole story, but we don’t have much time. I think I can get us out of this, but we have to move. The Farm is on fire.”

“I know. Summer set the fire.”

“Need to bury the ashes of the ones we’ve lost. Purify them.” Heather mumbles this, and Halley shoots her a sharp glance but holds her tongue. She might be saying crazy stuff, too, if she’d been stuck underground any longer.

“We need to move. Avalon is that way.” Halley points and looks up again to confirm her direction.

Polaris is still visible through the smoke; she uses it to orient herself.

She stretches out her right arm. “That way’s north.

I’m facing west.” She moves her head forty-five degrees to the right, points.

“That’s northwest. Avalon is there. The fire is coming from our south. Let’s move.”

It’s slow going, with a few switchbacks for wrong turns, but each time, Halley is able to align them again, and fifteen minutes later, they break free of the labyrinth and are faced with the woods. They march another hundred yards before Halley realizes where they are. The writers’ retreat cabin.

“I assume you know where to go from here?” she asks Cat.

“Yes. Straight through there to the road. We can stay in the woods. We have supplies waiting.”

“They’re going to come for us.”

“I know.”

“You can’t just live in the woods on the outskirts of this town.”

“We can until you bring help. I always knew you would save us, Halley. I believed it in my soul.”

Halley impulsively hugs her sister. “Let’s go.”

They move off, one by one, the women leading their children, Halley’s head spinning. She counts fifteen women, and twice as many kids.

“What was this, Cat? Some sort of breeding facility? A cult?”

“It’s complicated,” Cat says. “Not a cult. None of us are here willingly.”

“How do they get here?”

“Me. I bring them. Ian demands it.”

Halley is brought up short.

“What did you say?”

But before Cat can answer, a thin mechanical wail cuts through the night, followed by another, and another. Sirens. The volunteer fire department is certainly working the fire already, but these are coming from the northwest.

“The road! Hurry! Fire trucks are coming, they must have called for help. We can flag them down.”

“That is simply not going to happen,” a dark and brooding voice says.

And Ian Brockton steps from the darkness.

Halley is surprised enough that she freezes, and in that moment Ian lunges for her and captures her arm.

He yanks her to his chest and slams a hand over her mouth.

He is warm, hot, as if he has a fever. She struggles, but he is incredibly strong.

He squeezes her, and she feels one of her ribs give way, cracking, causing so much pain she sees stars.

“Now, now. Don’t do that,” he says in that silky tone, but it’s hoarse now, as if he’s been inhaling smoke.

She realizes the women have also stopped fleeing.

“Good girls. You’re my good girls,” he starts crooning, and Halley feels a strange warmth start to move through her.

His sensory deprivation must come with a healthy dose of hypnosis or some other mind control, biofeedback or something to turn his victims into willing participants.

That’s why he talks so much. He is controlling them with his voice.

Fuck. That.

Ignoring the stabbing pain in her ribs, she goes completely limp.

The move surprises him enough that she’s able to wriggle free, and then she is fighting, kicking, screaming, and there’s more than one of her.

Several of the women leap forward, and Ian is stuck trying to fight them all.

It is a feral fight. He is subsumed by his victims. The hunter has become the prey.

With an almighty roar, he pushes four of them away. A gunshot rings out, and one of the women falls. The shock of the retort is enough for him to scramble to his feet, but Halley surges forward. She kicks the gun from his hand. It spins wildly in the dirt, toward the fallen woman.

Halley realizes with horror that it is Cat. Cat has been shot. Ian has shot Cat.

The primal scream that comes from her throat is enough to make every woman and child freeze. Not again. Never again. She will not let him hurt her, or anyone else. She will not let him take another person from her. She will not let him take Cat from her.

But as she lunges for the gun, Cat rolls, and in a fluid movement reaches the gun, rises to her knees, and pulls the trigger. Then she collapses.

Red. Red. Everywhere she looks, red.

Ian Brockton goes down.

Screaming. Crying. The chuckling fury of the encroaching fire. The haze descending upon them. Shouts in the distance. It all disappears in the face of the scene before her.

Halley kicks the gun away from Cat’s hand and collapses at her side.

“Cat. Oh my God, Cat. Are you okay? Where are you hit?”

It is a stupid question; the blood is spreading across Cat’s chest and bubbling on her lips. She looks straight into the night sky, the constellations blotting out with the smoke.

“Leave it to you to find a way out with the stars. Our little comet girl.” She coughs, and Halley feels a fine spray of blood on her face. Deep in the woods, with no help, this wound is fatal. Her sister is dying.

Sobs rack her, and the pain in her chest is compounded by the fact that she can’t get a breath.

Her sister reaches up, places a soft hand on Halley’s cheek.

“Gray. Please take care of him.”

“I will. I swear it. But hold on. They’re coming.”

The sirens are so close. There is a chance. They can save her. Halley finds the wound and puts pressure on it. Cat’s hand finds hers. She squeezes, her grip so light. Her strength is waning. She’s bleeding out.

Halley has to save her. She has to fix this.

Like she did with her mother, she kneels in blood and holds fast.

“Don’t leave me, Cat. Hold on. Please, hold on.”

It is not enough. There is no such thing as time in the darkness, no such thing as pleading with a body that is in the throes of death. The beating of a heart is not defeated until the end.

Cat’s hand moves to Halley’s ear. “Mom’s diamonds. She loved them. You wear them still?”

“Always.”

“I miss her. I loved her. I’m sorry.”

Tears drip down Halley’s cheeks, making dark tracks in her sister’s hair. “You’re going to be okay. You have to be okay, Cat.”

She knows that is not to be. Cat is too pale, too still. Her pulse skitters and slows.

Cat’s last words are so quiet Halley can barely hear her.

It is so like her mother’s voice fading as she cried “ Run .” Except Cat is whispering, “Read. Read. Read the letters. I did it all for you, Halley. To keep you safe. To keep him from seeking you out. Ian was always obsessed with you. Everything he made me do, I did because I loved you. I love you, Halley. You’re safe now. ”

“Cat. Cat, please. You can’t die. I just found you. I need to know. Why did you kill our mother? Why would you take her from me. From you?”

Cat’s getting paler and paler in the meager moonlight. “It wasn’t me, Halley Bear. It was Ian. Read the letters,” she says, the light leaving her eyes. “Take care of Gray.”

And with a final ragged breath, she goes still. Her hand slips to the ground.

A mournful cry starts up among the women, and Halley joins them. The little boy is brought to her side. Summer is holding him. Heather is stroking Cat’s hair.

“Say goodbye to your mother,” Summer says. “It is an honor to be by her side as she moves to the heavens.”

The little boy looks at Cat with a cry twisting on his lips, but he doesn’t let it loose.

Halley is thrown back to the moment she kneeled next to her own mother, bloodied and bruised, the moment before she was yanked by the foot and thrown headfirst into the fireplace mantel.

The moment her life changed forever, the moment that set her on this path.

She had no time to say goodbye to her mother.

She was too young to truly understand what it meant.

And now, she’s lost her sister, too. The woman she mourned for so long is here, covered in dirt and blood, to be mourned again.

She pulls herself from Cat’s side and takes the little boy—her nephew—in her arms.

“Shh,” she says, though he is not uttering a sound. She says the words she wishes were a part of her waking memory. The words that will hopefully eventually transform this nightmare into a bad dream. “Shh. It will be okay. You’re safe now. You’re safe.”