Shuffling down the hall, past the bookcase full of books older than me which had belonged to my great aunt, her parents and their parents, I rubbed my arms to warm up a bit. I was never sure whether to count the stairs as a product of the time the house had been built in, or a sign of affluence. Two people could easily pass each other on them, and it would be no problem to move furniture up the stairs, though the doorways weren’t particularly bigger than any other door. I slid my hand down the railing Aunt Lettie had installed in her later years. The screws in the center were forever working themselves out of the horse hair plaster; however, it was stable at the ends.
The kitchen had been reconstructed to suit my five-foot-two great aunt. I had to be careful to keep the table centered under the hanging lamp fixture so I didn’t bang my head on it. I’d bumped my noggin on the cupboard doors more than once when putting dishes away after accidentally leaving one open.
Shanda trilled in excitement. I opened a drawer as she danced around, rubbing up against the leg of the table. I dropped a few cat treats for her, then went to get myself my own morning treat.
I turned the coffee maker on and got a pod out of the cupboard, then got out my favorite big blue mug with trees on the side. In went cream for a count of five, then drops of stevia extract. Cup under the spout, I placed my pod in and closed it, then stabbed the button. In a minute, the heavenly scent of vanilla coffee came wafting up on steam as the brown liquid streamed into the cup, mixing with the cream and sweetener. I knew it took at least twenty minutes for the caffeine to kick in once I started drinking it, but just the scent perked me up on a cold morning.
Once it was done, I cradled the mug in my hands and sat on the small, squat wood stand next to the window to look out. Aunt Lettie had used it as a plant stand, but my plants were mostly outside. It was solidly built out of thick wood, painted light green on the bottom and white on the top, so I used it as a window seat. Outside, the lilac bush stood across the ruts of the driveway, neatly trimmed back. The pink tea rose canes to the left had gotten out of control again. I needed to trim them back so the roses could bloom in a month or so. The two bushes framed the large shed that housed the chicken coop in half of it and my yard tools in the other half. The coating of frost on the ground would melt quickly as the sun’s rays touched down and warmed things up.
As I watched, a depression formed in the frosted grass, then another. They were over a foot long and narrow at one end then about twice as wide at the other end. Slowly, one after another appeared, as if something ponderous walked between the two bushes toward my shed and the chicken coop. I held my breath as the depressions reached the shed. The door flew off its hinges, soaring up then down to land on the rose bush, as if tossed by a large and angry hand.
What the hell? I set my mug down, sloshing coffee onto the counter, then dashed into the other room, grabbed the key out of its spot, and unlocked the gun cabinet. I yanked my Ithaca deer slayer out of the rack and plucked some shells out of a box, shoving them in as I headed for the back door. I stepped out of my moccasins and into my muck boots. How did you defend against something you couldn’t see?
Outside, I could hear chickens screeching and clucking. I rushed to the door of the chicken coop and raised the gun to my shoulder, sighting down it. The focus of activity centered in front of the nesting boxes. Chicken feathers flew, and one bloody chicken hit the far wall with a thud. A bull-like snort gave me a target. I fired. A roar told me I’d hit my mark, but I didn’t know how well.
Apparently not well enough. The gun wrenched out of my hands and flew past me into the yard. Something like steel bands closed around my shoulders, claws biting through my robe and into my skin. I cried out as the thing lifted me up. It roared again, its hot, rancid breath pouring across my face, making me gag. I felt myself thrust up and then released, sailing through the air a few feet to slam against the wall of the chicken coop. Pain exploded in my head and down my back. I was falling, then I didn’t know anything more.
* * *
“Ally, come on, sweetheart, show me those beautiful blue eyes.”
I woke to the feeling of being supported, lifted, and the unpleasant jolt of footsteps. I opened my eyes, then groaned and shut them quickly. I was being carried, one arm under my legs and one under my shoulders, my head against a chest. The voice told me it was Matt.
“There you are. Come on, darlin’, time to wake up.”
I simply groaned again in answer. My head throbbed, and my upper left back hurt with a sharp pain when I inhaled.
“I know it’s painful, but you need to wake up so I can tell how badly you’re hurt and where.” His voice was rough, low, and grim.
“Chickens?” I croaked.
No answer. Not a good sign. I groaned again.
Inside, out of the direct sunlight, I opened my eyes. I couldn’t smell my coffee any more. How long had I been out?
“What time is it?” I croaked as Matt carried me through into the living room and set me gently on the couch.
“About 10:30.” He disappeared into the kitchen.
I heard the faucet turn on, then paper towels rip. He came back with a couple damp towels and a couple dry ones. I reached up to take them from him, but he just nudged my legs to the side and sat down on the couch next to me. “First things first, let’s make sure none of this blood is yours.”
He leaned in and smoothed a damp paper towel over my forehead. I let my eyes slide shut again as he stroked over my face and down my neck, then across my chest. The warmth of the water soothed my frayed nerves. He laid the damp towel on my upper right arm where it hurt. I looked over.
“Need to loosen the dried blood so I can peel the fabric off,” he said.
His face was blank, grim, and I could almost feel the vibration coming off him. He met my eyes, and I touched his hand. I sensed his jumble of emotions - anger, fear, frustration, remorse.
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you and that I ran away.”
He sighed and shook his head. “I should have explained better, convinced you, not let you go off alone.”
“This isn’t your fault,” I said. Somehow, I had a feeling he had a habit of taking too much on himself. “I should have trusted you, but facing everything that had happened in the past and is happening now… scared me.”
He brushed it off with a short shake of his head. “Does anything else hurt?” he asked, his voice soft yet tense.
I took inventory then cataloged it for him. “Upper arms, where it grabbed me, back of my head. Hurts upper right of my back when I breathe in.”
He eased my robe off my shoulders, leaning into me again as he did so. He was so close that I could feel his warm breath on my face. I watched his face as he slid the robe down, baring the wounded flesh. It would have been a very intimate moment if I weren’t covered in chicken blood, in so much pain, and he wasn’t so intent on my wounds. Under other circumstances, I would have really enjoyed such a handsome man peeling my clothes off. Instead, I inhaled sharply as the fabric tugged at the wounds where it had dried on, adhering to my bruised and cut flesh.
“Sorry,” he said tersely.
“S’okay.” I bit my lip as he applied the damp cloth to the wounds.
“Do you have any Epsom salts?”
I nodded, my head protesting at the movement. “Bathroom cupboard.”
“Okay. Give me a minute.”
I heard him rummaging around in the bathroom, then water running. He returned with a pan holding water and two towels. He lifted one out and wrung it well, then wrapped it around my arm and set to work on the other arm.
“How are you doing?” he asked, his eyes searching my face.
“I’ll be fine,” I said wanly.
He stopped what he was doing, cupped my face with both hands, and looked into my eyes, then grunted. “You don’t seem to have a concussion.” He released my face and went back to work on my other arm. “Have you ever tried to heal yourself?”
“Um, no, I haven’t.
” I considered it for a minute. Why hadn’t I? Well, I didn’t get hurt too often, having learned early to be a pretty cautious person. “I guess I always thought of it like witchcraft—not for your own benefit.”
He glanced up at me, the corners of his lips quirked up, and his eyes crinkled. “Can’t help others if you’re hurt, can you?”
“Do you heal people?” I asked.
His expression turned solemn, and he shook his head. “Not my line of work. I don’t have the… touch.” He lifted a second towel out of the Epsom salts water and wrung it out before wrapping it around my other arm.
“Your touch feels fine to me,” I said softly.
He met my gaze. Neither of us moved, yet I somehow felt closer. His eyes dropped to my mouth. He licked his lips, then looked away. Without a word, he finished taking care of my arm, then got up and took the pan of water into the bathroom.
He returned, the detached expression back in place, and wheeled over my little green hassock to sit on rather than sit back down on the couch next to me.
“Okay, how does your healing power work?”
I started to shrug, then remembered my injuries in time. “I don’t know.”
“I mean, what do you do to trigger it?”
“Oh, well, I usually just lay my hands on. Sometimes I wish for the animal to be well, sometimes I picture them well, sometimes it happens so fast I don’t do anything. There’s just this discharge of… energy.”
“Right. Okay. Can you cross your arms sufficiently to put your hands over your shoulders, where the towels are?”
“I think so.” I slowly lifted my arms and crossed them. It hurt as if I might be straining something, but I gritted my teeth and reached the necessary contortion. Eyes screwed shut, I concentrated on breathing, then pictured my body pushing any contaminants out of the wounds and sealing them. The ache dulled at first, a bit like having a heating pad put on a very sore muscle, then it began to itch as the healing accelerated. The itch became almost unbearable, but the pain left me, so I squeezed my arms and concentrated on my body simply being whole and healthy. After a minute, the itching abated. I opened my eyes.
“How do you feel?” Matt asked.
“Weak, but there’s no more pain.”
He leaned forward and unwrapped the towel from my closest arm. A scab of some kind had formed, but it wiped right off, smearing a little and crumbling. Matt examined the skin. “There’s a mark, though it’s healed. Not bad, like you were cut a month or more ago.”
I closed my eyes, just for a minute, leaned back and I was out.
* * *
I woke sometime later to the smell of bread and something savory. Opening my eyes, I found Shanda on the back of the couch, regarding me. Her eyes squeezed shut as she purred. “Thank God it didn’t get you,” I said, stroking her head. I felt a twinge of guilt. In everything that had happened, I hadn’t even thought of her. Pushing the afghan off, I sat up and put my feet on the floor.
“Feeling a bit better?” Matt asked from the kitchen doorway. I turned to see him wiping his hands on one of my ivy patterned dish towels. He tossed it over his shoulder.
“Yes, thanks. I’m actually famished,” I replied.
A smile lit his face, and I had a vision of otherworldly beauty. It wasn’t just how he looked; it was the way happiness radiated from him. My breath caught in my throat. It just wasn’t fair. I looked down at my blood-stained bathrobe. “Just let me get a change of clothes first.”
I stood, feeling a little woozy but otherwise fine, and headed for the stairs.
“Are you sure you should be doing stairs right now?” he asked, stepping forward to help.
I waved him off. “I’ll be fine.” Of course, if you’d like to accompany me upstairs, I’d be better than fine, I thought, then I caught a whiff of the dried blood and figured I must look and smell less than pleasant. Could that be why he had pulled back earlier? It’s crazy, a monster attacks me, but he waltzes in, and all the world just feels right again. Things were changing. I just had to go with the flow, or I’d lose my mind.
I felt well enough to grab some clothes and take a quick turn through the shower before I dried off and put them on. I yanked open the bathroom door and jumped.
Matt winced contritely up at me from the top of the stairs where he sat, waiting. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you, especially after what you’ve been through.”
Once my heart climbed back down out of my throat, I could appreciate the picture. Shanda sat on his lap, her paws on his chest, purring as she stared up into his face. She certainly approved of him.
“Just making sure you didn’t fall over in the shower,” he said. Shanda rose and hopped off his lap.
You could have done that better from inside the bathroom. Ah, well, wishful thinking. “I’m fine,” I said out loud.
“Food?”
“Definitely.”
Downstairs, Matt had made himself right at home in my kitchen. “Sit,” he said, pointing to the table which held bowls, small plates, and silverware. He plucked a towel off a loaf of fresh bread, which he sliced, then ladled soup into bowls before setting one in front of me. Impressive.
I started to sit at the table but found I couldn’t stand having my back to the window. I got up and moved over one seat. I needed to see out the window, to be sure no other menaces lurked unseen, yet I was scared to at the same time. No more unseen forces left footprints in the grass, though.
Matt didn’t say anything about my change of seating, just moved the place setting over. Famished, I bit into the fresh bread he had cut, buttered, and offered. I scarfed down one piece, then picked up my spoon and dipped into the soup. Chopped up chicken and celery paired with the tang of buffalo wing sauce and the velvety texture of cheddar cheese. “Delicious,” I said, and he smiled indulgently, like a pleased grandmother.
I ate quickly, and he refilled my bowl without my asking. After another piece of bread, I finally slowed down, the edge taken off my hunger. Healing was a calorie consuming business, apparently.
“So, did you see what attacked you?” Matt asked.
I looked up from my bowl and set my spoon down, wiping my mouth. “Not exactly.”
“Oh?”
I sighed. It sounded impossible, but he had been the one trying to explain “impossible” things to me a day or two ago. “I had just gotten up and made coffee. I sat down on the little bench at the kitchen window.” I threw a glance over my shoulder to indicate the window in the cooking area. “I saw footprints appearing, as they were being made, in the frost on the grass. They were big, over a foot long, narrower at the heel than the toe. Then something tore the shed door off its hinges.” I shrugged. “I assumed whatever it was wanted the chickens, so I ran and got my gun. I got one shot off before it grabbed the gun, tossed it aside, then threw me against the coop wall.” I shook my head. “Guess there’s quite a mess out there to be cleaned up, huh? Do you know if any of the chickens survived?”
Matt looked doubtful, shrugged. “Maybe a couple got away, hid in the yard somewhere.”
“Did it eat any of them? It just… killed them.” I grimaced. “Do you even know what it was?”
“From what you’ve described, a demon of some kind, but I don’t know other than that. Did it speak, say anything to you?”
“No, it just roared when I shot it, then again when it picked me up and threw me. It sounded most like a...” I thought for a minute about the sound it had made. “You know, it sounded more like a human roaring than an animal.”
Matt stared at some point on the ceiling as he ruminated. “Did you try to touch it at all? Bless it?”
A feeling of stupidity blossomed in my head. My cheeks burned. “No, I didn’t.”
“It’s okay.” He reached across the table and took my hand. “It’s not easy to know what to do in the heat of the moment, especially when you don’t have any training or experience.”
I stared at our interlocked hands. The familiar way he twined his f
ingers through mine, as if we had known each other for longer than a few days, was at once comforting and confusing.
He cleared his throat and let my hand go. “Sorry, I shouldn’t,” his voice trailed off.
“No,” I protested. I really enjoyed holding his hand, truth be told. “It’s just… sometimes, I feel like I’ve known you for a lot longer than I have. It’s weird.”
I met his gaze. He looked hopeful.
“I feel the same way,” he said quietly.
“So, what do we do now?” I asked, trying to make my tone light.
“Now, we finish lunch,” he said, picking up his spoon.
I picked up my own spoon. “Then what?”
“Then we burn chicken carcasses, in case they were contaminated in some way.”
“What? Worried about chicken zombies?” I joked.
“Something like that,” he replied.
I almost choked on the spoonful of soup I’d taken but managed to swallow. “Okay, then.”
“Then we start with the more mundane ways to protect yourself.”
Chapter 7
After lunch, I grabbed another short nap while Matt burned chicken carcasses, then we walked down the dirt road to the edge of the woods for a shooting lesson, leaving both our cars parked at the house.
“What do you know about firing a gun?” Matt asked. “I know you’ve used a shotgun, but what about pistols? Rifles?”
I crossed my arms and looked around, uneasy being out in the open after what had happened only hours earlier. What if there were more unseen demons lurking?
Matt opened the case he’d brought along, displaying a variety of guns set into molded spaces.
I shrugged. “I have a shotgun, in case of a rabid animal, or if a fox or raccoon goes after the chickens.”
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