The older man said, "They ain't any places in North Carolina people ain't been, Roy. I say it's a sign of the latter days."
Roy looked at his colleague and sighed. "You would, James. I'll bet if we called a paleontologist, he could tell us what it was. And I'll bet a paleontologist would pay good money for the carcass, too." He looked at Rhiana. "You realize you could probably get money for this?"
She shook her head. "You came to take it away, didn't you? I don't want to keep it."
"Well, technically we came to get the horse," Roy said. "But we sure can't leave that here. We can take it first since it's blocking your door. Then we can come back and get the horse."
"I don't believe you're telling her that," James said. "We ain't supposed to dispose of demons."
Roy had gone over to the monster and was running his fingers over its side. "Man! This is amazing." He looked up at Rhiana. "What happened, anyway?"
"I shot it," she said.
"Well, yeah." Roy looked impressed. "But I mean, where did it come from? How did it get here? What do you know about it?"
Rhiana shrugged. "It attacked me. I shot it. That's all I know."
He'd moved onto the stoop, where he could see the monster's teeth. When he looked up at her again, she could see respect in his eyes. "You shot this? While it was coming at you? This is the scariest thing I ever saw."
"Me, too," she told him. Then she clambered over the monster's stinking back and stood for an instant in the doorway. "I will leave you to your work." She went into Kate's house and closed the door as far as it would go. Then, heart pounding and pulse racing, she leaned against the cracked wood and waited. At last she heard the hoist in action, and the sound of the Rift beast's carcass dragging along the ground. She peeked around the corner long enough to be sure the men were taking the creature with them and not just moving it. Then she shut the door, studied the mechanisms for a moment, and locked the sliding chain lock. The door was cracked and the frame had been split in places, but both ends of that lock were in solid wood. She thought that if someone attacked it, the door would hold long enough for her and her three associates to find places to hide. That was her only real concern.
But once the men were gone, the hours passed and no one else came to the door. Rhiana started when they returned for the horse, and every time the house broke its silence with some unexplained humming or clanking or shushing; she learned to identify the sound that preceded hot air blowing out of the vents in the walls, and located a huge white metal box that occasionally purred to itself, then fell silent. She found a mechanical contraption that forced a bird out of a little wooden door at regular intervals, and punctuated the bird's arrival with a startling "HOO-hoo! HOO-hoo!" She thought perhaps the device served to mark the passage of the day as the bells in Ruddy Smeachwykke marked the stations of the sun as it marched across the sky. Val and Errga slept, and Tik snuffled and snorted and pawed at the air in some chasing dream, and at last, weary from pacing and worrying, she settled into one of the broad, cushiony, comfortable chairs and slept, too.
Chapter Seven
Kate woke with her hand on the shotgun, brought to consciousness by a sharp distant crack. She sat up and strained to catch the noise again, but it was not repeated. She turned painfully to one side and studied the gun. For just a moment she couldn't understand why the weapon was in the bed with her. She experienced the confusion she always felt when her sleep had been troubled by nightmares. She'd dreamed of Craig again; dreamed that the two of them were still together and happy—and always, the dream ended with Craig leaving for work on that sunny Thursday morning and not coming back. As always she woke hoping to find that the nightmare would dissolve into a happy reality where Craig still lived and loved her.
As always, she woke alone.
But this time, she woke alone with the shotgun in hand and a throbbing head and an aching body; she hurt worse than she had when she went to sleep. She twisted around in spite of the pain and checked her door. It was closed and locked. She looked out the southeast-facing windows at the foot of her bed. Through the partially open slats of the blinds, she could see the lengthening shadows of late afternoon, and the gold-touched tips of the trees that caught the light up above the shadow cast by the house. She'd lost most of her day.
Full memory returned. The men. The horse. The outworlders.
Anger stirred in her belly. She rose and slipped a terrycloth robe over her pajamas. With the shotgun in hand, she quietly unlocked her bedroom door and went to the dormer window above the landing. She peeked down at her front yard. The monster was gone. So was Rocky.
She wasn't even awake when they took him away. She should have set an alarm or insisted that one of the Glenraveners come and wake her. She should have been out there when Animal Control came to take him away. He deserved better. Before she could stop it, a tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped at it roughly, forgetting the fractured cheekbone in her fury. The blinding pain shocked her out of her grief, but transmuted her white-hot anger into a cold, ugly rage. She wanted to find the men who had hurt her and killed her horse. She wanted to destroy them.
She thought of the outworlders downstairs—she found herself hoping they had left while she slept. If they were gone, she wouldn't have to figure out what to do about them. Time had tempered her resolve, which had been so clear and urgent before she slept. Now common sense and pain made her reconsider helping them. She was no hero; she wasn't the right person to go charging into a situation she didn't understand against magic far different and more powerful than anything she could manage, nor the one to do it on the say-so of a ridiculous magical book. Mere humans had managed to hurt her and would almost certainly try to hurt her again. How was she supposed to fight something supernatural?
And why should she?
She stalked back into her bedroom and started tossing clothes onto her bed: a pair of jeans, clean underwear, socks, shoes, and her favorite sweatshirt, the one with New York Rangers, 1994 Stanley Cup Champions embroidered on the front. She did load the pocket of her shooting vest full of shells and added that to the pile.
She didn't owe the universe any favors. Before she slept she'd been much more amenable to the idea of helping the poor, lost otherworlders, and much more willing to consider their plight as something she had a stake in. But what had they done for her? Invade her home? Wreck her door? Add more bruises to her already-battered body? Point her own gun at her, threaten her, keep her prisoner on her own couch? They had done all of those things. And she'd been willing to help them?
Not anymore.
She showered, letting the stinging water pound on her bruises and cuts and bites, letting it remind her of all the things she deserved to be angry about. When she finished showering and dressing and drying her hair, she stood at the top of the stairs holding the shotgun, wondering what she needed to do next. She decided to be practical. She tucked the shotgun against her side and went down to rid herself of her uninvited guests.
The front door was closed and on the chain. Both the door and the door frame were damaged, but when she tried the deadbolt it still worked, and the metal bar she jammed under the doorknob and wedged against the floor would hold, too. She would have to find time to fix both door and frame, but for the time being only someone with an ax would be able to break through the front.
She went looking for the outworlders. None of them were in the living room, where she had expected to find them. She checked the kitchen and the bathroom, then looked outside. She didn't see them anywhere. They had left the back door unlocked, though, and the Fodor's lying on the dining room table.
She wasn't as relieved to find the Glenraveners gone as she would have expected to be. The sharp noise that had wakened her was making her nervous. It had sounded like a tree limb breaking off in an ice storm, or like lightning striking nearby…or like a gunshot. She wished she had been awake to hear it.
She locked the kitchen door, feeling edgy and uncertain, then returned to the dining ro
om table and picked the book up. Once again she felt that disconcerting tingle. Throw it out, she thought, but she didn't. Instead, keeping watch over her backyard from the corner of an eye, she opened the book randomly.
Why don't you feel a little more sorry for yourself? Why don't you dredge up the fact that your family disowned you? Why don't you mull around in misery over Craig's suicide some more? That's always productive. You can use that to excuse yourself from accomplishing anything for days on end. Why don't you remind yourself of how much you miss your brother and sister, and blame your parents for turning them against you?
"I don't feel sorry for myself," she muttered.
Really? You came down the stairs sulking about how you didn't owe the world anything, didn't you? You lost your family; you lost your lover; you lost your horse; you don't have any friends here; some intolerant creeps beat you up. Your life is shit, so you don't need to care about what happens to your world or someone else's world? Poor girl. Life's been so hard on you.
But all of that's true, she thought.
So what? Are you successful? Are you doing what you want with your life? Do you have food to eat and a place to sleep?
She didn't have to answer. What the book was saying was true and she knew it. She rarely let herself indulge in self-pity. Her parents had turned their backs on her because they refused to accept her choice of religion. She'd known that might happen when she became pagan, yet she had chosen to follow her heart, regardless of the consequences. Craig had been prone to depression long before she met him. The time they lived together had been the happiest she ever knew, but all along she saw that Craig wasn't dealing well with other aspects of his life. He was often moody, his personality could change abruptly, and he frequently considered dying as a remedy to the problems he faced. He refused to accept any help and he refused to discuss his fears even with her. Knowing that, she chose to love him anyway, and to start building a life that included him as an integral part.
After his death, she chose to stay in Peters, in the house they'd acquired together. She knew Peters was a backward, close-minded town; she knew people in it wouldn't accept her if they knew anything about her. She stayed anyway, and now she had to accept the consequences of that choice, as well.
At every step of her life, she'd had the opportunity to make other decisions, and those other decisions would have changed everything.
But I made the best choices I could at the time, she told herself.
Then stop complaining about the results of those choices now. Or else do what you have to do to make everyone else happy with you. Sell your house and move away from Peters. Give up your religion. Beg your parents forgiveness. Be the person other people expect you to be instead of the person you choose to be.
"No. I won't pretend to be something I'm not ever again."
Someone tried to open the back door, and Kate jumped, grabbed her gun, and turned.
Rhiana stood there, visible through the window, expression grim.
Kate kept the gun but went to unlock the door.
Rhiana didn't waste any time on pleasantries. "The warrag heard someone prowling around outside your house," she said. "He and the dagreth went outside to investigate—they are still chasing the vehicle the two men were riding. But now that you are awake, you need to come outside and tell Val and me what they were doing."
Kate tucked the gun into the crook of her arm and followed Rhiana out the door.
Outside, she found cans of spray paint. Someone had written, Burn in Hell Witch! and Devil Lover across the front of her house and had painted inverted pentagrams on her car doors. They had started to paint something on the side, but were interrupted, probably, she thought, by the warrag and the dagreth coming out to investigate.
Her gut tightened. Staring at the graffiti, she told Rhiana and Val, "They're harassing me…trying to scare me away. They want me to run away." She read the things written on the house to them and added, "The pentagrams are a common symbol associated with witchcraft and magic. Locally, people assume any religion that isn't theirs is some form of devil worship."
"What can you do to stop them?"
"Catch them in the act. Maybe." Kate shrugged and turned away from the vandalism. "Maybe nothing. I can tell the sheriff's department about this, but if the man who did it is a deputy I don't think that will help."
"Your sheriff is corrupt?"
"No. Actually I think the local sheriff is honest. I think he cares about the people who elected him, and that he does a pretty good job. But if this is being done by someone who works for him, that person will be able to follow the investigation and influence the things that are found and the things that are done. He could plant false clues or lose real ones, and he'll know exactly what his fellow deputies will look for. He won't make the same sorts of mistakes someone who wasn't in law enforcement would make."
Rhiana said, "So you aren't going to inform the sheriff."
"I am. But I don't think it will help."
They went inside and waited for the warrag and the dagreth to return. Kate wanted to hear what they had to say about the two men before she called the sheriff again.
Errga got back first. Tongue lolling out of his mouth, panting heavily, he let himself in, stood on his hind legs to get himself a bowl, turned on the tap, and filled it with water.
Kate couldn't help but feel surprised. "I see you've figured everything out," she said. He panted, nodded, and lapped at the water, but didn't say anything until the bowl was empty. When it was, he turned to her and growled, "They got away. That thing they rode was too quick, and we couldn't follow the scent. There are too many scents we don't know here. The dagreth was doing better with the smells, but traffic on your roads is so fast…" He got another bowl of water, sat it on the floor, and flopped down beside it. At that moment he looked doggish, and somehow not intimidating. He lowered his head and lapped again, this time slower. Like a dog, he spattered water across the floor as he drank. Kate found that endearing, though she couldn't say why.
When he lifted his head again, Errga said, "Tik should be back soon. I'm not as fast as he is in a short run, but—" he grinned broadly "—I can run the legs off of him in the stretch."
When the dagreth arrived, no more than three minutes behind Errga, he was in a foul mood. "One of those horseless wagons nearly ran me down," he said. "As if I didn't have the right to use the road. It howled at me, but I turned and stood my ground and it swerved." He glared at Kate.
Kate tried to imagine the reaction of the people who had almost hit the dagreth. "You don't want to run on the roads," she told him. "Even though you're supposed to be able to ride bicycles and horses on them, they're really only safe for cars. Besides, no one around here has ever seen anything like you. If they get a good look at you, you'll cause an accident." She sighed. "Tomorrow there will probably be something in the paper about a grizzly bear sighted out this way."
He got himself a bowl of water as Errga had done, and growled while he carried the water toward the dining room. He said, "Your world stinks."
"It isn't so bad," Kate said, not liking to find herself on the defensive.
"Maybe not, but it stinks. Those wagons smell like fires in a garbage dump. All the smells I need to smell muddle up and disappear underneath the stench."
Oh, Kate thought. He meant it literally. She said, "You'll get used to it after a while."
Neither of them had gotten anything more than a glimpse at the two men, though Kate finally figured out from their description that the two men were riding pillion on a motorcycle. That would be next to useless.
She called the sheriff's department, told them about the vandalism, and that when she went out to investigate, the men had run away. She told the deputy it would be fine if the department wanted to send someone around to take a look the next day. She said she didn't think they would be back.
She hung up and said, "Evidently this is one of the bad Fridays. A friend of mine who worked a beat up in Detroit to
ld me she got the most violent crimes, women in labor and crazies when she had a Friday and a full moon on the first of the month. She called them three-F nights, and she said they were like pulling combat duty." Kate went back to the table and sat heavily. "Our complaint doesn't even come close to a shooting or a stabbing or a rape."
Rhiana said, "It doesn't matter whether they can come tonight or not."
"No?"
"The warrag and the dagreth might not have gotten a good look at the men who were painting your house, but the men got a good look at them. They were terrified. They won't come back tonight."
"Good." Kate hurt, but she hadn't gotten her prescription for Darvon filled, and she didn't want to go anywhere right then. She decided to take two Tylenol and two Advil and hope that her pain would ease off. Rhiana followed her out to the kitchen.
"If you don't have something else you need to do, perhaps you could show me how you make magic work here. I've tried everything I know, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm wasting my time."
Kate got her medicine and took a caffeine-free Diet Coke from the fridge. She popped the top and tossed the pills down two at a time. When they were down, she said, "Sure. We might as well. We need to get that figured out as soon as we can; I know you want to get home. And I can't go outside and paint tonight, anyway."
Rhiana was watching her, the expression on her face curious.
Kate said, "What do you want to ask me?"
The other woman blushed. "Why did you think I wanted to ask…? I didn't want to…I was only curious. I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize. If you have a question, ask. You aren't going to hurt my feelings."
Rhiana nodded thoughtfully. "I was just wondering…are you afraid?"
Kate laughed. "God, yes. Of course I am."
Rhiana still looked curious. "But you don't act frightened. You shot that monster, and you know the men want to hurt you, but you haven't run away, and…" Rhiana shrugged. "I only wondered because you are alone. And for women alone, things are sometimes very hard."
Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle - [Glenraven 02] Page 5