"There," Val said, and pointed upward.
Rhiana could hear the leathery flap of giant wings. She released the energy she had drawn into herself and a shimmering curtain of light appeared in the center of the road. She urged her horse forward and shouted, "Go!" Kin-hera and riders leapt through together. The monster dove for the gate, so close that Rhiana could smell the stink of it and feel the wind from its wings.
The four survivors raced along the shifting, glowing floor of the tunnel that cut through the spirit world, while around them the walls billowed and bulged. She'd done a poor job of forming the tunnel. The walls should have been as smooth and slick as ice, and they should have held steady. Instead they blew like fabric in a windstorm. Rhiana felt movement behind her and realized the flier that dove at them had followed them into the tunnel.
Maybe we can get out and shut the gate before it comes all the way through, she thought, but she didn't believe it. The monster was too close and too fast.
Rhiana felt a shift and a snap, and realized the tunnel had broken away from the feeble anchor she'd given it and established another, stronger anchor on its own. The four of them were going to come out someplace other than in Smeachwykke Castle. She didn't care. She urged her horse to greater speed. All she wanted was to survive.
"Darkness ahead," Tik shouted.
"That's the gate," Rhiana yelled.
Val shouted, "Faster! It almost has us."
The walls shimmered and fluxed, and the dark circle got larger.
Rhiana could smell the monster's breath behind her. She crouched low over her horse's withers. She didn't need to urge him forward. The gate was dilating open, but not fast enough. The warrag leapt through it with the dagreth right behind him. She felt her mount gather herself for the jump, and she wished she could know what was on the other side; would she be jumping off of a cliff or into water? Would she be leaping to certain death?
No time to think. Time only to do—and Rhiana did. She curved her back, tucked her head low, balanced her weight with her thighs, and she and the horse rose and sailed through the gate and out into the darkness beyond.
Chapter Three
Kate left the security chain in place and opened the door. The moon had dropped to just above the horizon behind the house, and the sun wouldn't start to rise for another hour or so. In the meantime, the front yard was darker than it had been when she got home.
"The darkest hour is just before dawn," she said, quoting, or perhaps misquoting, a line from a song by The Mamas and The Papas. She'd heard the song recently and had taken the lyrics to heart. She was waiting for sunrise in more than just a literal sense.
She switched on her porch light. The yellow bug light cast a sickly circle that showed her Rocky, still lying across the path, and her little Escort in the drive off to the left. Nothing moved. The rhododendrons and camellias and azaleas hunkered with unnerving solidity beyond the edge of the light.
Kate clicked the shotgun's safety off, closed the door long enough to undo the safety chain, then went out. She opened the book again.
Put me on the ground out in the clearing in the middle of your yard, then back away fast.
Kate wasn't going anywhere. She tossed the book off of the stoop into the middle of the semicircle of grass she called her yard. Then she waited. For perhaps twenty seconds, nothing happened. Then the book began to glow, and above it a tiny sphere of light appeared. That sphere, made up of a rainbow of swirling colors, spun and grew and flattened with frightening speed until in less than a minute a shimmering oval curtain ten feet high and nearly eight feet wide hung in the air inches above the ground.
As soon as the curtain of light stopped growing, a black dot appeared in its center. Then that began to expand, too, eating away at the shimmering oval like a spreading stain. When she saw movement behind the blackness, she realized the black circle was a hole, and that things on the other side of that hole were waiting to come through. She raised the shotgun and sighted along the barrel. She exhaled to steady her aim and concentrated on slowing the beat of her heart.
Then something jumped through and ran for the woods, and another something right behind it, and then two bigger shapes at almost the same time. She heard horses' hooves, then. She didn't shoot. They were running away from her, not toward her.
But then a shriek like sheet metal ripping shredded the early morning hush, and a massive black shape tore its way through the circle of light, flapped, rose, and turned toward her.
It was moving toward the light, she realized.
Kate got just a glimpse of a sharklike maw and beating wings, sighted for the spot between the teeth, and fired, pumped, fired, pumped, fired, pumped, fired, pumped, fired, and jumped from her stoop into the azalea hedge to the right as the thing came slamming down, crashing into her door, crashing through her door. A stinking leathery wing flailed down on top of her and thrashed while the monster shrieked and gurgled and tried to rise. The wing slammed her into the front of the house and bounced her head off the wood; points of white light exploded behind her eyes and she sagged to her knees. Above her she heard glass shatter as the leading edge of the monster's wing slammed into the dining room picture window.
Kate dropped to her belly. The bushes gave her a little bit of cover and the wing didn't hit her again. She took stock of her situation. She had one shot left and she needed to make it count.
She clicked the safety on, pumped the shell into the chamber, and crawled beneath the beating wing, out into her yard. When she was safely behind the monster, she saw that she could crawl along its back to reach its head. If the back door hadn't been locked, she could have gone around the house and come at it from the front, but unfortunately, that wasn't an option. She tucked the twenty-gauge under her arm and slid onto the thing's back as if she were trying to ride a horse. She felt the monster shudder at her touch; then it began to roll from side to side to dislodge her, but it couldn't roll far enough to succeed. Its outspread wings, tangled in the shrubbery, prevented that. She kept scooting forward. She could see that it didn't have a neck, and that its huge eyes were placed low on either side of its head to give it a wide field of vision.
One eye rolled up as she inched close. She could hear the monster's jaws snapping open and closed. She wondered if the single shell she had left would be sufficient to kill the thing, even if the shot were well placed. She slid down one side just in front of the shoulder, jammed the shotgun into the thing's eye socket, and pulled the trigger. It shuddered again and a ripple ran through its body. Then it twitched and spasmed, and finally lay still.
For the first time she was actually able to take the time to look at it. Her first impression hadn't been too far from the truth. It still gave her a sharklike impression; it was essentially a gullet on wings. The enormous jaws with their multiple rows of triangular, serrated teeth could have swallowed her whole. The head connected directly to the torpedo-shaped body—the neckless design had worked in her favor. If the thing had been able to turn its head, it would undoubtedly have eaten her. Its pebbled, leathery skin was hot to her touch; it stank of rotten meat and death and filth. It wasn't a bird, but she didn't have the impression that it was a mammal, either. She wondered if perhaps it was some sort of dinosaur. It was unbelievably ugly, the most hideous thing she had ever seen.
She stared at it lying there on her doorstep, thought of Animal Control coming over in a few hours to pick up Rocky, and suddenly she started to laugh. "When they see this thing, they're going to shit," she said, and laughed some more.
She felt stronger than she had all night. The nightmare on her doorstep would have devoured her, but she'd taken care of it. She didn't falter, she didn't fall apart, and she didn't get herself killed. Now she could see the first faint graying of the horizon, as dawn began to make cutwork lace of the winter-bare trees and telephone lines across the road. She'd made it to morning.
She felt tireder than she'd ever been, too, and more in need of a long, hot whirlpool bath. She
tucked the shotgun under her arm, clambered back over the monster and walked into the grass to pick up her book.
"You killed it," a man's voice said.
She flicked the safety off and raised the weapon in the direction of the voice before she remembered that she was out of shells.
"Don't kill us," the voice said. "We're friends. The monster was after us, and you saved us."
Kate remembered the shapes that had launched themselves out of the circle of light before the flying horror came tearing through. "Who are you?" she asked, lowering the shotgun slightly. As long as they believed the gun was loaded, they would think twice before attacking her.
A man leading a horse moved toward her out of the shadows. He was tall and slender, with slanted eyes and thick, pale hair. Kate thought something was wrong with the shape of his mouth, but she wasn't sure. A woman, also leading a horse, walked behind him. The woman was barely five feet tall, with black hair and large blue eyes and a frightened look. The man said, "My name is Val. The woman is Rhiana."
Kate lowered the shotgun. "I'm Kate Beacham."
Something hit her between the shoulder blades and knocked her face down to the ground. All her dulled hurts became sharp again; she cried out from the pain.
"Take her inside," the man said. "We'll go in with her. We aren't likely to find another place that will allow us to get out of the light."
Rough, claw-tipped hands grabbed Kate around the waist, turned her around, and picked her up. She got a quick glimpse at a face that made no sense, and then she was hanging over a sloping shoulder and being bounced along while whatever had her carried her to her house. An ugly black dog the size of a Shetland pony followed right behind, watching her with intelligent yellow eyes. The man picked up the shotgun, then led his horse around to the side of the house—evidently he'd found and intended to take advantage of Kate's pasture and shed. The woman knelt and picked up the book that had brought them through from wherever they'd been before. She looked up at Kate, her eyes full of curiosity. Then she shrugged and led her horse to the pasture, following Val.
Chapter Four
They'd lowered the blinds, pulled the curtains closed, and turned on her lights. When she got her first clear look at them, Kate wished they'd left her in the dark.
The woman, Rhiana, looked normal enough, but the other three 'people' in her living room were a freak show. Val's long fingers were tipped with retractable claws, and when he smiled, Kate got a good look at a set of canines that would have made a werewolf fall in love. The overall shape of his face was subtly wrong, too. The cheekbones were too high and the chin pointed sharply ahead of strong, square jaws. He had long hair that he'd tucked behind his ears, which Kate could see were small, slightly scoop-shaped, with pointed tips. His long, slanted eyes were pale amber in color. The space between his narrow, sharp nose and the full upper lip seemed excessive. Val was compelling in an exotic, uncomfortable way, but he wasn't handsome.
Next to the last two visitors, though, even he looked normal.
The big black dog wasn't a dog at all. Its name was Errga—
Kate had picked that up from conversations it had with the bearish thing, whose name was Tik, and with Val and Rhiana. It had settled itself into one of Kate's two armchairs. From this vantage point it watched her, grinning. Its face had a hint of greyhound to it, and more than a touch of wolf, but the high forehead and the intelligence in the lemon-yellow eyes would have told Kate it was nothing that belonged in her world even if she hadn't seen its furry, spiderish hands or heard it speak.
On the floor beside it sat Tik. If Smokey the Bear had shaved himself, worn bright red hair pulled back in a braid and dressed himself in a gaudy silk kimono, he would have approximated Tik, but imperfectly. This creature's bearish nose was the same tan color as the rest of its skin and it had stubby-fingered hands instead of regular paws; its pointed ears sat lower on its head than a bear's would have. But essentially, she thought, it was a bare bear in a party dress.
Kate lay with her feet up on her couch, her head on one of the overstuffed cushions, the blue-green afghan she'd crocheted pulled up to her chin, pretending a calm she didn't feel. She said, "What are you doing here, and what do you want with me?"
Val kept the gun pointed at her. Kate didn't bother letting him know it was no longer loaded. She figured anything she knew that the intruders didn't know could only work in her favor. Val said, "Rhiana is making another gate for us, and as soon as she completes it, we'll go home. The only reason we need you is because neither the warrag nor the dagreth can stand direct sunlight." He nodded at the bearish creature and the doglike one. "We needed to use your home and we didn't have time to ask nicely. The sun was getting ready to rise."
Rhiana looked up from her place in the center of the floor and said, "We aren't going to be going anywhere, Val. Probably not ever."
Val and Tik and Errga all turned and stared at Rhiana. Val bared his teeth and snarled something Kate couldn't quite make out. Then he said, "I hope you're joking."
"I wish I was. We can't go back for several reasons. First, something is blocking my access to the magic in this place. Second, whatever magic there is happens to be so weak I doubt I could form a gate strong enough to get us home. Third, if I could overcome both of those problems, I couldn't take us home because we're outside the boundaries of Glenraven, and the wards are now working against us."
Val shifted his attention completely away from Kate. Kate didn't try anything, because both Errga and Tik were still looking in her direction. She waited, watching while pretending not to watch at all. Sooner or later, she would have the advantage. When she did, she intended to make the most of it.
Val said, "The wards are working against us."
"Yes." Rhiana rose and stretched.
"I don't understand."
"The wards, Val. The barriers that keep the exiles out of Glenraven and protect us from the Machine World. We're on the wrong side of them now. As far as the wards are concerned, we're just four more exiles."
"So we can't go back?" Errga jumped down from his chair in a fluid motion and turned his back on Kate.
Tik rose, too. "We're exiles? You've made us exiles?"
None of them were watching her anymore. Kate pulled her knees up and shifted to her side, ignoring the pain, readying herself to leap.
Both Tik and Errga walked toward Rhiana. Val stayed where he was, holding the shotgun loosely in his right hand with the barrel pointed to the floor.
Ready, Kate thought.
"You have to get us home," Val said.
Set…
Errga lowered his head and growled. His lips skinned back from his teeth. "I do not wish to die an exile."
Go! Kate launched herself from the couch, crossed to Val in two running steps, grabbed the shotgun from him at the same time that she slammed into the Kin and knocked him to the ground, then jumped over the fallen outworlder and spun around to aim the shotgun at all four of them.
"Move and die," she said.
None of them moved.
Thank God I didn't tell them this thing was empty. They'd seen what it did to the flying monstrosity. They had a lot of respect for what it could do to them. Val raised his head and glared. Rhiana's face showed no expression at all. Tik and Errga slowly sat on their haunches, eyes wary.
"Now," Kate said, backing to the doorway that opened into the front hall, "the rules have changed, and I want to make sure you know them. I don't know what you people are. I don't know where you're from. But you're in my world now, and from now on you're going to do things my way. You can't go back home. That's too bad, and I'm sorry. But I didn't invite you here, and I don't see where you're my problem. I ought to send all of you out into the sunlight…just let you take your chances. Is that what you want?"
Errga and Tik shook their heads. Rhiana and Val watched her impassively. Val said, "The sunlight doesn't affect me."
"That's a lie," Errga said. "You aren't Kintari. You're just plain Kin. Maybe
the sun won't kill you, but it will hurt you."
And Tik added, "The only one the sun won't bother is the Machnan. Isn't that right, Lady Smeachwykke?"
Rhiana nodded once, simple affirmation. She never took her eyes off Kate, and never said anything.
"Fine," Kate said. "So you don't want to go out in the sun. I don't particularly want to shoot you. Blood is hard to get off of walls, and if you were dead, you'd be hard to explain to the police." She pointed the shotgun at each of them in turn. "But I'll shoot you if I have to. You understand?"
They nodded.
"Back up against the far wall," she said, pointing with her free left hand. "You, Val, and you, Rhiana, sit on the couch. Tik and Errga, sit on the floor in front of them. Keep your hands where I can see them, and don't give me any reason to shoot you, because after what you did to me, I don't need much of a reason at all." They backed and sat. They were as far from the doorway as she could get them, and they couldn't split up and move behind her. She backed along the wall opposite them to the little bay window with the windowseat. Rhiana had dropped the Fodor's Guide to Glenraven there, and Kate wanted it. If anything explained what was going on, or what she was supposed to do about it, that would.
With the book in hand, she edged over to the doorway again.
She kept the shotgun leveled at her four visitors, resting it on her right hip with her finger hooked through the trigger. The book was in her left hand; she tucked it against her ribcage and inserted her thumb beneath the cover, never taking her eyes off her company.
Then she lifted the book, holding it so that she could read it and watch them at the same time.
Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle - [Glenraven 02] Page 3