"You know the woman who was helping Zarek? Sharon?"
"What about her?"
"We just found her. She was beaten up pretty bad and her house has been burned to the ground. My money says it's Zarek bent on revenge."
Jess's blood went cold. "Bullshit. Did you talk to her?"
"Trust me, she wasn't in any condition to talk when we found her. She's with the doctors right now and we're headed back to Zarek's cabin to see if we can find that bastard and make him pay for this before he hurts anyone else."
"What about Sharon's daughter?"
"She was staying at a neighbor's house when it happened. Thank God. I've got Mike watching over her in case Zarek comes calling again."
Jess couldn't breathe and it wasn't from the frozen bite in the air. How could this have happened? Unlike the Squires, he knew Zarek didn't have any part in this.
He alone knew where Zarek really was.
Ash had trusted him with the truth of what was going on and had charged him with making sure no one fubarred it until Zarek's test was over.
Well, things just went further south than a herd of geese in the fall.
"Don't move until I get there," he told the Squire. "I want to go to his cabin with you."
"Why? You planning on getting in our way again when we take him down?"
Those words rubbed him like a herd of porcupines. "Boy, you better take that tone and flush it. I'm not a Squire you're talking to; I happen to be one of the guys you answer to. It ain't none of your damned business why I'm going. You just don't move until I tell you to or I'm going to show you how I once made Wyatt Earp piss his drawers."
Carmichael hesitated before he spoke again. When he did, his voice was nice and cool. "Yes, sir. We're at the hotel and are waiting for you."
Jess hung up the phone and returned it to his pocket.
He felt awful about Sharon. She shouldn't have been in any danger at all. None of the Squires would have dared hurt her.
And in spite of what the others thought, he knew Zarek wouldn't have done it even if he'd been able to.
Zarek just didn't strike him as the type to go after those weaker than him.
But then, who else would have dared?
Astrid found Zarek alone in the center of a burned-down medieval village.
There were bodies, burned and unburned, scattered everywhere. Male and female. Every age. Most of them had torn throats as if a Daimon or some similar creature had fed off them.
Zarek walked among them, his face grim. His eyes tormented.
He had his arms wrapped around himself as if to protect him from the horror he was witnessing.
"Where are we?" she asked.
To her shock, he answered "Taberleigh."
"Taberleigh?"
"My village," he whispered, his voice angst-ridden and tight. "I lived here for three hundred years. There was this one old crone who saw me once when she was a young girl. She used to leave me things from time to time. A leg of dried mutton, a wineskin of ale. Sometimes nothing more than a note to say thank you for watching over them." He looked at Astrid, his face haunted. "I was supposed to protect them."
Before she could ask him what had happened to the village, she heard the muffled cries of an old woman.
Zarek bolted toward her.