by Anna Leonard
Chapter 9
One thing the myths and legends tended to warn about was the sheer power behind a charging unicorn. That was one thing they got right; especially a unicorn in the throes of the rut. The nice white door of the nice suburban house shattered under the second blow of the Mustang’s hooves, and he was through the splintered remains without hesitating, following the scent of Elizabeth’s anger and Maggie’s terror.
He took the scene in with a hot-eyed glare and then, head lowered, slammed his horn into the man holding Elizabeth captive, skewering him through the shoulder and tossing him aside like a sack of grain. The human landed with a thump on the carpeted floor, and tried to crawl away, then stopped with a groan of pain, rolling onto his side and clutching at his shoulder. He tried to sit up, and the Mustang pulled back, lifting one hoof in clear threat. The man fell back to the floor, and didn’t move again.
The woman who had taken the girls in stood to one side, and he could smell her confusion turning to fear. Had she allowed this? He stepped toward her, head still lowered, the tip of his horn bloody and gruesome, and she screamed, fluttering her hands as though to ward him away.
There was a noise behind him, and he turned to face the other dangers in the room, still keeping a strand of awareness on the wounded threat. There were two other men in the room, not men he had ever seen before, and one of them held a gun, the matte black mouth pointed directly at the Mustang. Infuriated, still riding a battle high, the Mustang went for that human first, generations of genetic memory of dealing with horn-hunters and cowboys driving his hooves as he struck.
Shock was still on his side, but the man got a shot off before the blow landed; the bullet whizzed past his ear and embedded itself in the ceiling. Fury took over; his hooves came down on the man’s gun hand, shattering delicate bones, and another blow knocked the man to the ground, where the Mustang trampled him without hesitation. That human had pointed a gun at him; that human had threatened his herd. Rattlesnake, cougar or human; there was no answer to that save death.
There was a small part of his brain, still human, that regretted the violence, but it was easily silenced.
One human left—where had it run to? Mustang reared back, barely missing the chandelier hanging from the ceiling, now decorated with plaster dust from the bullet, and pivoted again on his hind legs, searching for the remaining threat.
“It’s all right,” Elizabeth called to him, her voice quavering, but strong. “I’ve got it.”
The sound of her voice penetrated his fury faster than the sight of her on top of the third man, him facedown and her knee across his neck, clearly putting all her weight on it. He was already starting to move his arms against the floor, trying to find leverage to throw her off.
“Maggie, hurry!” she called. “Find rope!”
Maggie’s voice floated back from another room, slightly desperate. “I’m looking!”
“Oh, my God, you killed Stephen!” The woman named Meg was hyperventilating. “You killed Stephen. In my house.”
The woman had an excellent grasp of the obvious, Mustang noted, even as Maggie came back, triumphant, with a roll of duct tape in her hands.
“Meg, shut up and either help or sit down and stay out of my way,” Elizabeth snapped, clearly furious. “And you, stay down!” She dug her elbow into the small of his back, making him go flat again with a pained oomph. His Elizabeth had very sharp elbows, Mustang noted with approval. “You bastard. Did Ray send you? Did he?”
“He doesn’t like being told no,” the man said, grunting a little around the words. “Better us than what he’ll send next.”
“Screw you.”
Maggie tore off a foot-long strip of tape and got it around the man’s hands, binding them tightly—at what looked like a painful angle—behind his back. Elizabeth let up her pressure slightly, only long enough for the girls to flip him on his side and attach another strip of tape over the man’s mouth, careful not to cover his nose. Then Elizabeth got the tape and walked over to where the injured man was still cowering, obviously convinced that the slightest movement would attract the beast’s attention again. He was right. Mustang lowered his horn, ready to finish the job.
“No,” Elizabeth said, sharply. Her back was to him, and Mustang wasn’t sure if she was speaking to the attacker or him. But he took a pace back, giving her room to work without moving too far away. If the man made a single move that Mustang didn’t like...
Elizabeth bound a strip of tape around his ankles, immobilizing him, then taped his hands together, in front of his body to limit the stress on the wounded shoulder.
The obvious attackers were down or neutralized. But what about the woman? Was she friend or foe? Did she call these men here? He took a step forward, intending to shift, in order to question her.
Elizabeth looked up and met his gaze, shaking her head slightly. Stay in form.
Apparently a horse with a horn was more intimidating than a shape-changing man. Since he felt more confident of his fighting ability with hooves than hands, he flicked his ears at her in agreement.
“You killed him,” Meg said again, her eyes wide, as though she didn’t quite understand the words she was saying.
“They were trying to kidnap Maggie,” Elizabeth said, bitterly. “And you were going to let them. You lured us here, told us it was safe, and then you let them in.”
“I didn’t... I didn’t lure you. They have Douglas. They said... They promised...” The woman subsided under Elizabeth’s scornful glare.
“Someone came in and took your husband, and you trusted their promises over your obligation to my parents? To their memory? You were going to let them take a little girl—” and for once, Maggie didn’t object to being called little “—to save your own skin?”
The woman’s eyes were wide, and her face was set in creases, but she didn’t deny Elizabeth’s accusation.
“We’re leaving now,” Elizabeth told her in disgust. “Wait an hour, then call someone at the Community to come pick them up. Let them deal with the body—and maybe they’ll help you find where Ray stashed your husband.”
Mustang wanted to object—you didn’t leave rattlesnakes alive to attack again—but this wasn’t his call. And his Elizabeth, while fierce, wasn’t a killer.
“You can’t trust her,” Maggie said, recovering from her scare, still sitting on the floor with the roll of tape in her lap. Her face was too pale, but her expression was just as fierce as her older sister’s. “Put her in the closet. We’ll call someone to let her out, once we’re away.” Maggie glared at the woman, outraged the way only an almost-teenager can be. “Maybe.”
“Maggie. No.”
Even as she scolded her sister, Elizabeth felt the idea’s appeal. She had trusted Meg, had counted on her. Being betrayed like that was almost worse than the scare. If Josh—Mustang—hadn’t charged in right then, they would be on their way back to the Community, even now.
“Why not?”
Her sister’s pout was almost irresistible. Elizabeth resisted. “Because we don’t know anyone to call to come and let her out, without giving away where we are. Unless we call the police, and that’s not going to help us if we have to go to them later, no matter how we explain it.”
“Oh.” Her bloodthirsty side thwarted, Maggie played with the roll of duct tape and tried to think her way through to a satisfying solution.
“Better to just leave her here,” Elizabeth said, aware of Mustang behind her, the solid bulk of his presence giving her strength to do what had to be done.
“In the closet?” Maggie asked hopefully.
“Not in the closet,” Elizabeth said. “There’s not enough room there, anyway. We leave them all here. Ray’s men will check in at some point to see what happened to their people, or someone will see the door and call the police, if they haven’t already.”
There had been no outcries or sirens, though; this was a residential neighborhood, and most people were either already at work, or in school. But they couldn’t count on that calm lasting.
The hall closet actually did have room in it, testimony to someone’s organizational skills. Maggie won: they shoved the surviving would-be kidnappers inside, leaving the door ajar just enough to let fresh air in.
They tied Meg to a straight-back dining-room chair with more of the duct tape, and shoved a washcloth from the bathroom in her mouth to keep her from calling out before they left.
“If the cops come by first, you’d better come up with a really good story,” Elizabeth told her former family friend. “They’re never going to believe a unicorn killed that guy.”
“We should rob her, just to make it look right,” Maggie said, a bloodthirsty spark in her voice.
“Maggie...” Elizabeth was starting to get annoyed with her sister, and her voice showed it.
“All right. But I’m getting food. It’s lunchtime, and I’m starving. The least she can do is feed us.”
While Maggie quickly went through the kitchen and gathered fresh fruit and sandwich fixings, and the Mustang kept a watchful guard over the bound would-be kidnappers, Elizabeth knelt down beside her former family friend and stared her in the eyes.
“I hope that they bring your husband back safely,” she said sincerely. “I know my parents liked him, and you, and I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. But I will never, ever forgive you for betraying us. Do you understand that? You will never be forgiven, you will never be able to tell yourself it’s okay, that I understood, because I don’t, and I won’t. Ever.”
A tear formed in the older woman’s eye, and she nodded once, indicating that she understood. Elizabeth stood up. “Maggie! Let’s go.”
The Mustang stepped carefully through the wide doorway between living room and dining room to stand at Elizabeth’s shoulder. The woman’s eyes went even wider as the horn—now washed clean—lowered to rest directly against her chest. Something intense seemed to pass between them, and the tears fell unchecked.
Satisfied, the Mustang moved back and rested his chin briefly on Elizabeth’s shoulder, the rough bristles there scratching even through the sweatshirt, and then stepped toward the now-shattered front door, out of sight of the bound woman. Maggie, still shoving food into her knapsack, followed without a backward glance.
Elizabeth paused a second longer, looking around at the house she had hoped would be a refuge. She had no idea what to do now, no idea where to go next. The only thing certain was that Ray was willing to resort to kidnapping—and violence—to get Maggie back...and she had to be willing to do the same to keep her safe.
* * *
By the time she walked outside, Josh had resumed his human form, and was checking a protesting Maggie for injuries.
“I’m fine! Stop worrying. You’re as bad as Libby!”
“I just...”
His hands were shaking, and, as Elizabeth watched, her sister reached up to cover his hands with her own much smaller, more steady ones. “I’m fine. Libby’s fine. But we have to get out of here, now. The bad animals are coming.”
Neither of them asked what she meant, this time. They walked away, going as slowly and steadily as possible, only detouring to pick up Josh’s pack. Maggie’s usual exuberance was noticeably muted, hanging back to be close to the adults rather than, as was her usual wont, wandering away to look at whatever caught her fancy. Once they were out of the cul-de-sac, though, her normal demeanor seemed to return, and she went ahead a few paces to try to coax a large black squirrel down from the tree to sit on her shoulder.
They hadn’t spoken to each other since leaving the house, and Elizabeth was afraid that Josh was angry at her for dragging him back in to rescue them once again, for the fact that she had misjudged Meg so badly, for...for everything and anything her mind could touch on. For not having a plan that would get them out of this mess, once and for all.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally.
He stopped and stared at her. “Sorry? For what?”
“For... You shouldn’t have had to come save us. Again. Maggie shouldn’t have...”
“Maggie didn’t. I knew something was wrong, I heard her scream.” There was no way he could have, not through the walls of the house, the now-shattered door, not even in his Mustang form, and yet he had.
Elizabeth didn’t seem convinced of that, more willing to believe that her sister had somehow forced him to do her bidding, and that drove him to ask her about it.
“I know that you don’t like to talk about it, but what’s the extent of her ability? Squirrels, bears...unicorns. What else can she call? And—” and there was the question he had to ask “—is it simply a matter of calling, or does she control the things she calls, too?”
Elizabeth could feel the quick succession of emotions flickering over her face, and she kept her eyes looking straight ahead so that he couldn’t read anything in them. “She can’t control animals. They’re too...ephemeral. Their thoughts flicker and their emotions are too swift...she can call them, and ask them to do things, but there’s no way to hold that for very long. She doesn’t control them, just coaxes them.”
Josh stopped and placed a hand on her arm. The touch was electric, but the look on his face was sobering. He had seen, anyway, or suspected. “That implies that there is something she can control. People?”
His voice wasn’t angry or confrontational, but Elizabeth cringed anyway. Years of keeping it a secret, a thing never even thought, never whispered out loud, made the words stick in her chest. She didn’t want to say anything more, too well trained to protecting Maggie. And yet, he had stood by them, had rescued them twice now, had his own incredible secret that he trusted them to keep—although, who would believe them if they tried to tell?—and she owed him the truth.
“Strong emotions are what she can catch at. If a person has very strong emotions, she can call them, too. And we hold on to our emotions longer than animals do.” She had learned, from practically the moment Maggie was born, to keep her own emotions carefully controlled and even. “She would never do anything bad, or make someone do something against their will—” their parents had taught her ethics at a very young age, to prevent just that “—but when she was younger, we used to have to be careful, all the time.
“Now...I think she’s a little scared of it. Which isn’t a bad thing.”
From the dawning look of understanding Josh’s face, a great deal of Maggie’s behavior—and Elizabeth’s as well—suddenly made sense to him. “It could be useful, in self-defense. Back there in the house, if she could have controlled the men—”
He wasn’t saying anything she hadn’t already thought of. “She’s thirteen. I don’t want her carrying that kind of weight on her shoulders. There’s enough...”
Her voice trailed off as everything that she had been carrying around rushed back, the events of the past few days fading under the memories, and she almost doubled over under the weight.
“Elizabeth? Libby?” His shoulder brushed hers as he moved closer, and she breathed in the scent of his skin, that same musky, slightly musty scent that his other form carried, but underlaid now with a more seductive hint of human male. She straightened, intending to insist that everything was fine, but then his hand sought hers, warm fingers twisting with her colder ones, and she couldn’t form the words. He knew it wasn’t fine, knew what Maggie was, what she could do, what they were facing. He knew almost everything.
Almost.
As they walked along the quiet street, the sound of traffic on the main road getting closer and closer, she made her final decision.
Elizabeth started to talk, softly, barely even aware that she was doing so. “When I was growing up, things were different. The Community was such an open place...we were all mi
sfits, one way or another, choosing to be out of step with the outside world. I went to public school, but I loved coming home every day, spending my weekends not watching TV or being online but getting outside, getting my hands dirty, or reading. When Maggie was born, even when we realized what she could do, we didn’t exactly broadcast it, but there wasn’t any real concern, either. Maggie was special, but she was safe. Being good with animals wasn’t so unusual.” She smiled, a little sadly. “There were people, when I was growing up, who were just as odd, by most standards. Doctor Colleen, she always knew when someone was hurt, even before they got to the clinic. Sweetwater Jack could tell you how well your garden would grow, just by looking at how you’d planted. Things like that.”
“It sounds like the Community was a special place.”
Elizabeth nodded. “It was. Emphasis on was. I told you things were changing, going wrong. The past few years, even before the illness, the Community’s been changing. People...aren’t as open as they used to be, like there were secrets to be kept. Things to be scared of. Things...or people. Like it wasn’t always safe to speak your mind. That’s the world Maggie’s been growing up in.”
“And the ‘bad animals’ she said were coming? Who are they?”
“I don’t know. I thought that it was just her picking up what was wrong, and saying it the only way she understood, but...” She took a deep breath. There were things she had never told her parents, never even told Cody. Had never told anyone, barely able to believe them herself, wondering if anyone else had seen them as well, if they, too, felt the unease and fear that was settling over the Community.
She had told Cody just her most surface fears, and he had either committed suicide rather than face them, or been killed for knowing too much. If she told anyone else...
But Joshua wasn’t anyone else. He was a Mustang.
“I think I know what she’s talking about. I’d hoped it wasn’t true, hoped we’d both just imagined it, but it’s either real or we’re both going crazy.”