A Feral Darkness

by Doranna Durgin

  Thus fortified, she slipped on a pair of cut-offs, did the ritual spring examination of the old scar on her thigh from the time she'd taken the driveway descent too fast on her bike and landed on a broken bottle, and went back into the kitchen to gulp down the rest of the orange juice. Then she sat on the porch and cleaned and loaded the rifle while Druid rolled belly-up in the sun and stretched his legs to the four winds, not even twitching when she told him he looked like a pig ready for roasting.

  Finished, she gathered the Hobbes cleaner and patches and returned them to the dog room, and would have headed for the spring if she hadn't had a second thought, a twinge of remembrance. A gift, that's what she needed. Just like before. Although this time she wasn't asking for anything—just trying to reach out. Which was just as well, because offhand she couldn't think of anything equivalent to a nine year-old sacrificing her hard-grown hair to a damp spot on the side of a hill. After a moment she grabbed a carefully hoarded Ghirardelli dark chocolate bar from the freezer, and grinned all the way out of the house.

  She suspected that Mars Nodens had never been introduced to chocolate.

  ~~~

  Druid sat on the hillside and looked over the pasture, happy enough with his ritual of waiting in a down-stay just below the spring while Brenna went the rest of the way—not that there was far to go anymore, after weeks of working with him. If she stayed here long enough this afternoon, she might even get him all the way up. But she didn't particularly feel like either pushing him or putting up with the results.

  So she kicked off her sneakers and pulled her hair free of its binding and finger-combed it as she sat by the spring, easily falling into a contemplative reverie. The sun warmed her shoulders, and her dark hair soaked up its heat; with the unusually mild breeze and temperatures in the seventies, it was easy to forget this was only late April. Almost May.

  When she remembered the chocolate, she first set it next to the spring, and then decided that Mars Nodens would probably prefer it unwrapped. Tightly balling the paper and foil and tucking it into her pocket, she put the bar right into the ooze of water, where it would eventually melt and soak into the ground.

  Chocolate for the gods. At least it was good chocolate. Masera's mother would probably laugh herself silly, Brenna thought, and that notion made its way to her face in a wry expression. She sobered quickly enough, wishing for the expertise of this woman she'd never even met, truly wondering what she'd have to say about the chocolate, about the whole situation.

  And wondered what else the woman would be able to tell her, what life-saving little tidbits Brenna didn't even know enough to ask about, and then wished again that she'd run into this entire mess during the winter, when she didn't have the spring grooming rush to deal with and so would have had the energy—emotional and physical—to do proper research. Not only about Mars Nodens—and here Brenna suddenly remembered Emily's papers sitting on her couch, unread—but maybe into other ancient ways, so she'd have some idea what she was dealing with, and how to go about it.

  Then again, what she needed to know probably wasn't the sort of thing she'd find in a book. Probably it hadn't ever been written down at all.

  She wondered if any of it were lurking in Masera's experience, or if it had stopped with his mother.

  But she knew, sitting there staring at the forlorn candy bar in its mushy bed of slowly oozing water, that she was in way over her head. That she didn't have the faintest grain of true knowledge on which to base her actions. How absurd to think that such a person was the only one who stood between her world and a twisted rabies epidemic. How ridiculous to expect that somehow, she could be the one to stop the darkness.

  Then again...

  As a girl she'd set out to contact Mars Nodens, and she'd done it.

  Why not this?

  Below her, Druid whined; one of his thinking whines, the kind she suspected he didn't even realize he'd made. But it served a purpose anyway...a reminder. She wasn't alone. She had Druid, a dog who'd somehow shown up at this spring and who offered her tidbits of information and someone else's memories—his memories?—and enough mysterious clues so if nothing else, she'd been able to pull Masera from that dog fight the evening before.

  He discovered her watching him, and gave her a doggy smile—dropping his jaw in a relaxed pant, letting his ears tilt back in happiness—as his tail wagged briefly. He'd given her that, too—companionship, and a quickly deepening partnership that had gone past words and existed almost entirely in the realm of body language and expression.

  Not alone.

  And then there was Masera, feeding her tidbits about older powers and opening her eyes to possibilities of this world, possibilities that she hadn't even imagined—and still didn't even begin to understand. Latching on to her. Watching over her whether she asked him to or not.

  Caring.

  Whether she asked him to or not.

  No, not alone.

  Brenna took a deep breath, deep enough so it triggered a yawn and stretch, although that hadn't been her intent at all. It didn't seem solemn enough for the moment.

  Then again, neither did chocolate. And maybe Mars Nodens would appreciate a unique approach. After all, for the very first time since her childhood, Brenna was here to talk to Mars Nodens—not in a confused muddle of very Presbyterian prayer and guilt over religious conflict, but with a comfortable notion of how the pagan god fit into her own theologies. "Hey," she said, not having meant to speak out loud but not stopping now that she'd started. "Mars Nodens. I just came by to say hello and bring you something. I'm glad you're here."

  And oddly enough, that seemed sufficient.

  Brenna lay back on the hill and spread her arms to the sunshine and fell asleep.

  ~~~

  Goosebumps woke her; she didn't know if they were from the cooling air or Druid's whiskers grazing against the sole of her foot. "Oh, stop," she said, twitching her foot away from him. She didn't bother to open her eyes, but gestured, crooking her arm into an invitation of a waiting hug before she remembered how close she lay to the spring.

  But before she could change her mind, she felt him creep into place by her side, almost belly-crawling. He tucked his nose under her arm and burrowed into the hug, and she crooned praise for his act of bravery while one of those big Cardi ears twitched against her arm, tickling her.

  He couldn't bring himself to do anything else, to turn around and sit with the breeze in his face or even to lift his head. So she had no idea what had warned him when he startled her with a muted woof, but when she sat up, she knew immediately what had triggered it.

  Parker.

  A glance at her watch showed her she'd slept longer than she'd ever intended to be out here, and a look at the sky confirmed it—the sun hung low, and the rising breeze held the chill of impending twilight.

  And now here came Parker, still a small figure in the far corner of the pasture, but undeniably Parker. She knew that casual swagger, that particular shade of gold-laced blond hair. Hair that belonged on an angel, and not on the head of someone who could call up a darkness to threaten the world.

  She sat, uncertain what to do—to go or to stay, to pretend his enmity and attacks hadn't affected her. Or that she'd been too dense to puzzle out who lay behind them. In the end she decided to do nothing but sit. Not to turn tail and run, not to throw out angry words or drive him off the land. Not to tip her hand in any way.

  Just sit there. A woman next to a spring with her dog, the rifle at her side.

  She could see the moment he realized she was there, the way his body stiffened and the brief hesitation in his stride. But he, like she, was not about to run away. They'd bluff this one out together, she thought, each pretending more innocence than they had.

  To her relief, he didn't come to the footbridge. He went straight to the creek, opposite her spot on the hill and with the little island between them. The water ran lower today, down from its earlier spring swell, quieter and easier to speak over.

 
"Does this mean you've changed your mind about having visitors at your place?" she asked him, an oblique reminder to her declaration of closed boundaries on her side until he opened them on his.

  He shrugged, smiled that charming smile. "Not to speak of." Then he tilted his head slightly, another charming maneuver. It let him look at her from angled and shadowed eyes, but she suspected there was no warmth in those eyes. There certainly wasn't any in his voice. "Seems to me you've found ways to step into my business anyway."

  That took her right off guard, baffling her. He couldn't have had any news from Russell about the house sale yet; even if her mother had immediately called Russell, her brother simply wasn't that easy to get hold of during the work day.

  "I told you I had ways," he said. "You might be a little easier to get along with."

  What did he know? Her conversation with her mother, her phone call to Masera the night before, her awareness of the rabies? About his ways, she didn't even want to think. He certainly seemed to have obtained a comfortable relationship with the powers he'd helped call up years earlier, unlike her own blundering ignorance.

  In an attempt to avoid revealing that blundering ignorance, she kept her silence. Beside her, Druid's throat vibrated in a barely audible growl.

  Parker seemed unperturbed by her lack of response. "You were here earlier," he said. While she was sleeping, and deeply enough so any response Druid might have had to his presence didn't rouse her. While she was sleeping. The very notion made her shudder. Not that Parker appeared to notice her reaction; he tossed a stick into the creek and watched it float away. "Not your usual day off."

  He'd been keeping track, all right.

  "Nothing's usual at work these days," Brenna said, unable to keep the edge from her voice. Elizabeth, dead. "How's your girlfriend feeling? I hear she had that cat put down. Too bad they didn't do any advanced testing on it."

  He gave her a sharp look, completely distracted from his twig-throwing. "Those close to me are safe," he said. "I can't say the same for you and yours."

  "Don't underestimate me and mine." So much for pretending innocence. So much for avoiding angry words.

  His expression came alive, his body alert and intent and all but leaping out of its skin. The gloves were off, the battle enjoined...and he liked it. "I want this land," he said. "I'll get it, too. And by the time I have it, you won't really be in a position to care any more."

  "Or maybe not," she said, but she didn't like that shift in his posture, the way his shoulders seemed to fill, and how his slanted gaze grew full of condescending confidence. Only years of standing down aggressive dogs allowed her to look back at him without evidence of the fear that tickled between her stomach and spine. To even look back at him with her own disdain.

  But beside her, Druid's growling rose in pitch and intensity, and beneath her, she felt a responsive tingle between herself and the ground—as if it felt her fear and responded to it, rippling outward like pebbles thrown in a pond.

  "Oh, please," Parker said, and she wasn't entirely sure to what he reacted. "Don't even try. You think I don't know you haven't got a clue?"

  "I'd come back with some equally clever response if I even knew what you were talking about," Brenna told him. Casually, she felt for the rifle by her side.

  "That's the whole point, isn't it? And don't bother with that rifle. We know you won't use it."

  "Do we?" Brenna said, lashing out at him with the very fear of how right he was. She couldn't even bring herself to point the thing at him. "Do you really want to find out? Why don't you just run home instead? Or do you plan to stand there and pretend to intimidate me all night?"

  She knew the words—their challenge—were a mistake the moment they came out of her mouth, even before she saw Parker's sudden dangerous grin, before Druid whined...

  Before she felt the surge of darkness.

  A sharp spike of fear stabbed through her and right into the ground, and again triggered the strange tremble of response. Parker gave her a knowing look, one that said he'd seen her fear, and he shook his head with that frightening grin still in place beneath the mustache—that good-old-boy mustache that she'd never be able to reconcile with his nature. He should at least have some sort of pretentious mustache-goatee combo.

  Fine, she told herself numbly. When he gets here, maybe you can talk to him about that.

  For he was coming, and she had the feeling it wouldn't be for conversation. As he eyed the bank and the shallow, navigable water between himself and the island and then Brenna's side of the creek, she had the feeling he fully planned to haul her away, back to his place—where he'd hold her, or feed her to the dogs, or give her to his boys, or simply keep her out of the way while he did as he pleased on her land, watching the rabies problem grow out of control.

  She could shoot him.

  She couldn't.

  Not so coldly, so brutally. Not with a rifle she'd started carrying against feral dogs.

  She could run.

  Yes. She could outrun him, surely—

  But not the darkness. Not whatever the darkness had done to Sunny. And she'd felt that darkness hovering moments earlier, she and Druid both. Druid still, the way he'd gone to crouching against the ground, frozen in fear, utterly unable to decide which direction might be the safest.

  None of them.

  That's when she found her hands shaking, her knees shaking, her whole body trembling with fear—

  No, not her body. Not shaking that hard. That came from the outside, not the in. And Parker felt it too; she saw it in him, his condescending confidence interrupted by the inexplicable; it was his redirected stare that aimed Brenna's attention in the right place, that and the way he hesitated on his way down the sheer-cut bank to the stepping stones of the creek.

  Down where the water had flowed away without being replaced, trickling away to leave nothing but tiny pools caught between rocks, the spring peepers along the banks caught startled and out in the open, a few cold crawdads crawling in befuddlement around what should have been their watery domain and quickly scuttling backwards into rocky crannies when they realized how they'd been exposed.

  Exposed, like Brenna sitting on the hillside, clutching Druid's collar in one hand and a rifle she couldn't bring herself to use in the other.

  Parker's smile renewed itself. "Looks like someone's going to make this easy for me."

  The darkness, he thought, as did Brenna, so gapingly astonished at the sight of the drained creek bed that she could barely think. Use the rifle. Pick it up and point it and pull the damn trigger.

  She didn't have to kill him. She didn't even have to hit him. She only had to drive him off. It didn't even matter how mad she made him in the process—they'd gone beyond that. Now, it was only a matter of when they'd finish it what he'd started between them. Now...or later.

  Later, when she knew more. When she was ready.

  As if she'd ever be ready.

  But Parker was ready. Parker was about to set foot in the exposed creek bed. If she saw correctly, he was deliberately aiming for one of the unhappy crawdads.

  She pulled Druid into her lap and wrapped the leash around her leg. Then she picked up the rifle up and sighted on the ground at Parker's feet. The smell of gun oil struck her nose like an acrid punctuation.

  "Ooh," he said. "Scary. So convincing. Your finger's got to be on the trigger to have any real threat behind it, Brenna."

  She didn't like the way he said her name. She moved her finger to the trigger.

  Still undecided.

  But saved, then, as they both heard the new rumble of sound in the earth. She lifted her head from the smooth cool wood of the rifle stock as he halted in mid-stride; for all his previous snide confidence he now looked just as baffled as she felt, and nearly as alarmed. Druid gave several sharp barks...and they held no fear. They were an announcement of some importance, and he was on his feet now, braced against the reverberations in the earth but not with that look of crouching panic. His ears
pricked forward and alert and very intent, and he stared up the creek—which remained empty of water as far as Brenna could see.

  Maybe because he stood in the creek bed, Parker understood first; maybe his connections with the darkness gave him some advantage when it came to puzzling out things that couldn't possibly be happening in the first place. But Brenna had done no more than rise to her knees, the rifle drooping, looking right and left and even behind, when Parker lunged for the bank from which he'd come. He clawed his way up, digging fingers and toes and knees into the mucky soil, and as he threw himself over the top Brenna finally saw it—a high wall of water, tumbling toward them at amazing speed.

  It filled the creek banks to the top and overflowed along the way, spilling over the top with the force of a tidal wave. Parker didn't even try to get up once he reached the pasture; he rolled, gained quick ground before finding his feet and sprinting another fifty yards away. The water rushed by them, completely overtaking the small island as Parker stopped and turned and glared.

  The roar of it obliterated his words but couldn't obscure the acrimony with which he shouted them, or the way his face distorted with the enormity of his rage.

  Rage at Brenna. For it wasn't the astonishingly flooded creek at which he screamed and gestured, but at Brenna herself, as if she had somehow created this event she couldn't even bring herself to comprehend.

  Cold water sprayed Brenna's face; only a few drops, but enough to jar her mind from utter vacancy and into denial. This wasn't the Red Sea rushing into place after Charlton Heston for pity's sake, it was her pasture, where horses had quietly grazed, where Brenna had romped and played through her childhood. And the creek was that same in which she'd spent humid summer days, splashing and wet from head to toe with cool water. Had she been down there a moment ago, she'd have been washed clear to Lake Ontario. Had Parker been there a moment ago...

  He'd been so sure it was his darkness, making life easy for him—and moments ago, Brenna had thought so as well. Thought herself cornered by man and his dark ally. Or the darkness and its human ally—she wasn't sure which. He'd been wrong. She'd been wrong.