“That’s entirely possible,” Rafe agreed.
Ren turned to look at him. “There are six of us. You don’t think we could fight off whatever might be out there?”
“Maybe.” Rafe said as the night wind freshened and a cool breeze come drifting through the screen.
“Whew,” Ren exclaimed under his breath. “Smells like something died out there.”
It did. It was a very faint odor, but it definitely smelled like death. Rafe had not noticed it earlier but he was noticing it now.
“What if whatever it is has rabies?” Ren went on voicing his thoughts. “That’d be bad. Even if we could fight it off and someone got bit. Or scratched . . . ” He didn’t complete the thought. “That’d be bad,” he finished quietly.
“Something tells me it isn’t rabies,” Rafe said.
“What makes you say that?”
“Just a hunch,” Rafe answered him. Despite his reassurances to Kyn, he had a bad feeling about the whole thing. He couldn’t say exactly why he did, but he was accustomed to going with his instincts and his instincts were on high alert, or at least close to it.
As usual, Ren was the one to voice out loud what had been on all of their minds. “It sounded so damned- demonic. Almost human, but not quite.”
Yeah. Almost human, Rafe thought. Demonic.
“Could a mountain lion make a sound like that?” Ren wondered out loud. “What the heck- ” he said in a suddenly tense, breathless voice as he leaned closer to the screen. “I thought I saw something- ”
Rafe turned quickly to see what was out there. But the only thing he saw was darkness.
“What did you see?” he asked.
Ren continued to stare intently out at the deep, impenetrable layers of blackness. “Whatever it was, there’s nothing out there now. Wait! There is someone out there!”
A flock of disturbed birds took flight, putting Rafe on instant hyper alert. And then he saw it, too. A dark, shadowy form emerged from the trees and stood in the full blaze of moonlight.
As the moonlight illuminated the person standing there, Ren drew his breath in sharply. For the space of several heartbeats, he seemed to be frozen by what he was seeing. Finally he asked, “Am I seeing this right?”
“You are. It’s a woman,” Rafe answered him.
The awkwardly-moving figure came on, drawing nearer and nearer to the lodge. As the two men watched, the woman suddenly dropped to her hands and knees. She stayed there hunched over and jerking like maybe she was having trouble breathing. Sometimes Ren’s dog did that right before it heaved. Then, just like the dog, the woman wretched spasmodically and vomited a stream of dark liquid onto the ground. It all happened so fast, before either one of the astonished men could react. As both of them continued to watch, she got back up and began to approach the lodge again, this time at a much faster speed.
She definitely needed help, whoever she was. Rafe wasted no time. He threw the door open right after an alarming thump sounded against the outside of the lodge.
Moments later, Rafe stood in the doorway with the limp woman in his arms. He carried her straight to the leather sofa and laid her down. Gaut brought one of the lanterns over and held it high above her so they could all have a better look.
Either the woman was unconscious or she was dead. Her face and her shoulders were mostly covered by the dark tangle of her hair which was hanging in long, damp strands all around her. Her clothes were wet, too. Little bits of green moss clung to them like maybe she had fallen into a pond. What little of her face showed looked white, almost bloodless in the lamplight.
Her clothes were also badly torn and she had crisscrosses of cuts and scratches on her legs and her arms. There was a deep, gaping cut on one cheek and what looked like bite marks up and down one arm. Rafe held two of his fingers against her throat and felt the faint throbbing of a pulse, but he shook his head as he looked down at her. Whoever she was, whatever had happened to her, she was in bad shape, but there were so many wounds on her body that it was hard to know which were the worst ones and which ones needed tending first.
Ren asked the question that was on everyone’s mind. “Is she alive?”
“Just barely,” Rafe answered him.
He gingerly pushed some of her hair aside so that they could have a better look at her. Ren gasped out loud and, and for once it seemed like he didn’t know what to say.
“She ran right up onto the porch,” Rafe said. “And then she slammed into the wall of the cabin or the door- I’m not sure which. When she hit the wall or the door, she must have collapsed.”
“What would make someone do that?” Kyn asked.
“You think she was trying to get away from whatever is out there?” Ren asked, looking over his shoulder at the door which was still open. Trace hurried across the room to close it.
“Maybe she’s in shock,” Gaut said. “She’s obviously been attacked. I’d say it was by some kind of wild animal by the looks of it.” He looked at Trace as he rejoined the group. “Maybe the animal we heard? Could it have been a bear? Or a mountain lion?”
Trace shook his head mutely, thinking fast and deciding that only a bear or mountain lion could have done something like this. But it hadn’t sounded like any bear or mountain lion that he had ever heard.
Seeing the doubt in Trace’s eyes, Kyn asked, “What about a wolf?”
“A wolf?” Trace echoed. He doubted a wolf could have done so much damage.
“Nah,” someone broke in. “There have been no reported fatal attacks by wolves in the United States.”
“Fatal attacks,” Kyn repeated as he looked down at the woman.
“I heard that was a myth,” someone else said.
“I read once that wolves killed thousands of people in France alone hundreds of years ago,” Ren spoke up. “That doesn’t even include the rest of Europe. Which doesn’t make sense because why would they attack people in France but not here?”
“We’re talking about rabid wolves, not healthy wolves, right?” Gaut asked. A rabid animal, whatever it might be, doing so much damage made a lot more sense to them, but it also brought a whole new set of worries.
“I’ve heard of wolf attacks in Alaska and Mexico,” Trace replied. “But I’ve also heard there have been no reported attacks by gray wolves. Like everything else, I suppose the results depend on who’s making the report.”
“Are you saying it makes a difference what color the wolves are?” Ren asked, thoroughly confused by now.
“No, I’m just saying that you can’t believe everything you hear,” Trace said.
“You’re right,” Kyn said. “But I know for sure that there are documented cases from the 1800’s of wolf attacks on people right here in this country.”
“I’ve heard that coyotes will attack people,” someone said.
“I don’t know about that,” someone else added. “But I do know that they kill dogs.”
“Really?” Ren asked.
“Whatever it was,” Kyn said. “It needs to be put down before it attacks again. From what I’ve heard, they can do DNA tests to make sure it’s the right animal.”
“Aren’t wolves on the verge of becoming extinct?” Ren asked.
“Actually, the wolf population here is- ”
“Enough with the fucking wolf theories,” Kyn broke in heatedly. “Does it matter at this point? Before you start arguing about whether it was a black bear or a grizzly, or Big Foot that attacked her, give it a rest. Something did this. And that something is still out there.”
He was right. Trying to make guesses was pointless. They needed to deal with the facts here.
“She needs a doctor,” Gaut said.
She did. But where could they get a doctor at this time of the night in the middle of nowhere and no phones to call for help? No one knew. But the woman’s appearance did convince them of something that they all now agreed on. It convinced them that they should not go outside. Something was out there and it was a dangerous something.
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A loud, wheezing groan came from the woman’s lungs as if she was suddenly having trouble drawing air into her lungs. Her body arched on the bed, then spasmed violently.
Ren wanted to ask if she was having convulsions but he couldn’t get the words out because just then she suddenly collapsed back down on the bed. This time she really did look like she was dead, but as the men watched, she slowly sat up.
Dead silence reigned in the room.
Ren wasn’t the only one who reacted with a start when she opened her eyes. Those eyes were moving back and forth wildly. There was something wrong with them. Really wrong. They were pale and colorless, not like eyes any of them had ever seen before.
“You’re safe,” Gaut tried reassuring the woman, thinking she must be traumatized, maybe in shock by whatever had happened to her. “We’re going to get you some help.”
She didn’t answer him. Instead, she made a low, rattling, animal-like growl in her throat.
Those colorless eyes continued to move from man to man. They were eerily piercing in the glare of the lantern as her mouth drew back in a snarl. And then, without warning, she opened her mouth wide and a bloodcurdling screech filled the room.
Chapter 3
Eymann put his still-damp poop shoes on and securely fastened the Velcro straps. He was only wearing them because they were the quietest shoes that he owned. He couldn’t be sure but he thought there was still a lingering odor in the rubber although Helice had told him he was only imagining it.
Once they were on, however, his shoes were the last thing on his mind. The letter was the important thing. The letter insured that everything that needed to be said had been carefully thought out ahead of time. The letter meant no interruptions by the other person as Eymann had his say. Most importantly, it made everything perfectly, abundantly clear and would give Caleb Lydon plenty of time to contemplate his plethora of transgressions. Eymann had the letter in his hand right now. In the other hand he carried the evidence, double bagged in two layers of plastic.
He looked back over his shoulder. Helice, who was silent for once, was waiting back at the house, half hidden in the shadows of the forsythia bushes. She was staring at him with an alert, owlish expression on her face, her eyes wide and round behind the lenses of her glasses. He knew she was probably thinking that he was going to chicken out, but she would soon see how wrong she was. Eymann was on a mission. He had no intention of turning back now.
“Go on,” she mouthed silently, shooing him vigorously with the back of her hand when she thought he was hesitating.
The Lydons had come home two hours ago. Eymann had sat patiently in the dark waiting for their lights to go off. Patience was, after all, a virtue, one that Eymann had carefully cultivated over the years, one that he prided himself upon. Because of his patience, the house next door was dark now. Everything was quiet and he knew they must be in bed. All he had to do was to make his delivery.
One of the porch steps creaked loudly under his weight. In the silence it sounded like a gunshot to Eymann. He froze in place for a long time before going on, waiting to see if anyone inside the house had heard it. With every nerve straining, he remained poised statue-like there on the step, with one shoe raised, listening for the slightest sound from inside the house.
But the house remained as silent as a tomb, undisturbed and unaware. The only sounds in the darkness that surrounded him were from the crickets.
He finally reached the top step, luckily with no more creaks. He paused once again and looked back at his own house. High above the roof, the ghost of a moon was disappearing into an ominously-heavy cloud cover that was rolling in. It was quickly eating up the sky and making the blurred orb look like it was melting into the sky. A faint mist was starting to rise from the ground. It lent a ghostly eeriness to the Lydon’s yard with its dark mounds of untidy shrubs. Eymann looked at Helice again for a moment as she gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up right before he disappeared into the deep shadow of the porch.
The air freshened, bringing with it the scent of rain. Eymann didn’t need a weather report to tell him that it was going to storm before the night was over. Good, he thought with satisfaction. His garden needed the rain. Now he wouldn’t have to run his water bill up. In his opinion rain water was always better for the plants. They would grow twice as fast now.
He looked around, trying to decide where to leave his letter. And the bag. The rain wouldn’t get to it under the porch roof, but he had to think about the wind if that storm got bad. He decided that the metal chair nearest the front door would be the best place. He already had a small rock in his pocket to place over it to keep it from blowing away. Lydon would be sure to see it there the moment he stepped out of the house in the morning. But as he moved forward, Eymann stumbled over a flower pot he didn’t see in the darkness and pitched forward, hitting his shin but catching himself on the metal arm of the chair before he went fully to his knees. The chair teetered precariously for a moment. Balancing his weight on the arm of the chair and holding his breath against the pain in his shin, Eymann closed his eyes as he waited for the excruciating agony to subside. In fact, he was completely oblivious to anything that was happening around him for the next few moments. The pain was that bad.
He finally drew in a slow, fortifying breath. No doubt he would have a nasty bruise by morning, he thought as he painfully straightened. As it turned out, luck was definitely not with Eymann Buckminster tonight. As he turned, he tripped over something else, the wooden rungs of the Lydon’s rocking chair this time.
Half blind with the pain in his big toe, which just happened to be the infected, ingrown one, he sucked in his breath and gritted his teeth against the almost unbearable agony. It was a far sharper pain than the one in his shin. But that soon became the least of his worries. Someone inside the house must have heard the commotion he was making. He heard muffled voices. The porch light went on. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Helice had taken a step forward out of the shadows of the bushes. She was now completely exposed. His wild hand gestures conveyed his frantic, silent commands as he mouthed, “Run!”
Before he could do the same himself, he heard the squeak of hinges behind him. He had already started back down the steps and now, panicking, he tripped over yet another flower pot on the steps. He wasn’t able to catch himself in time and again he pitched forward, bumping his forehead on one of the porch posts. He then tumbled down the rest of the steps and hit the ground hard, landing in a blinding heap of pain on the Lydon’s concrete sidewalk.
He finally managed to get slowly and awkwardly back up onto his knees, which were on fire since they’d taken most of the impact of the fall. Both of his palms were scraped raw, too, one of them pretty badly from the feel of it.
Worse than all of that, however, was the pain of his humiliation. He had been caught red-handed sneaking up onto his neighbor’s porch in the middle of the night. More damning than that, perhaps, was that he had been caught trying to run away. Eymann didn’t know if he had ever been so mortified in his entire life.
Just as he got back to his feet, he looked up to see Caleb Lydon step over to the edge of his porch. The man seemed much taller somehow and far bigger than usual because of the looming shadows and the glow of the porch light behind him.
“Eymann?”
A low, distant peal of thunder rolled across the darkness, confirming Eymann’s prediction of rain, but he barely registered the sound. All his focus was centered on the man standing above him.
“What’s going on here?” Caleb demanded to know. “What are you doing here in the middle of the night? Is something wrong?”
Eymann had to look up to meet his neighbor’s darkly-frowning gaze. Just then, Caleb turned his head and saw the white envelope on the chair. And the bag beside it. He took one look inside the bag and straightened, his face settling into grim lines as he asked Eymann, “Is that what I think it is?”
When Eymann didn’t answer, Caleb released a slow breath and sl
owly folded his arms across his chest. “You want to explain this?”
At first Eymann wasn’t sure how to respond, but then he suddenly remembered that he didn’t have to explain anything. He had already put everything down in his letter. The bag spoke for itself.
Still, for the space of several heartbeats, in the face of the man’s intimidating glower, Eymann faltered in his mission. It was why he avoided confrontations in the first place. It was the reason for the letters. Caleb Lydon seemed so threatening as he stood there above him. He was so much bigger than Eymann and being asked to explain himself made Eymann crumble for a few moments until he felt like a small, helpless child again. For several agonizing moments, he felt paralyzed, unable to speak, act, think. Or save himself. And then, only because he had no choice but to brazen the situation through to the end, he was able to summon up enough righteous indignation to say, “I have asked you politely to keep your dog out of my yard. Obviously,” he paused as another long peal of thunder kept him from finishing his words. When it was silent again, he nodded toward the plastic bag which Caleb had dropped on the porch floor at his feet. The porch light continued to shine on it like a spotlight dramatically highlighting a crucial prop on a stage. “My request fell on deaf ears,” Eymann finished, congratulating himself inwardly on the steadiness of his voice.
By now, half a dozen neighbors had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the two houses. The beams of several flashlights were probing the darkness as more curiosity seekers came to see what all the commotion was all about. A wicked bolt of lightning streaked across the black sky. Another long peal of thunder followed immediately after.
“What’s all the noise over here?” someone wanted to know.
“What’s happened?” another neighbor asked.
Thinking that he would have their full support and sympathy when they heard the whole story, Eymann straightened to his full height as he said to Caleb, “So far, talking to you hasn’t done any good, so you’ve forced me to take this action. Your dog has been leaving those- ” He paused as he indicated the bag with an accusing jerk of his head. “In my yard.”
Deadrise (Book 7): Bloodlust Page 3