[Oxrun Station] The Bloodwind (15 page)

A footfall.
Something wide, something heavy pressed
into the snow.

She turned slowly to put her back against the shed
wall, her hands spread against the wood and her arms
slightly bent. She would run, but only at the last mo
ment. Surprise was a weapon she would be able to use
only once, and even then there was no guarantee it would work at all to save her.

What was it? What the hell was it?

The shed trembled as something brushed heavily against
it. Snow drifted languidly off the canted roof and into
her face. She shook her head, not wanting the dead cold
lying on her skin, blinked rapidly to clear her eyes as
she tried to judge from which side it would come. Left, and she would charge off to her right, through a hedge
row there, and angle toward the road; right, and she
would go left, seemingly heading back for the quarry,
but ducking around a broad stand of fir to charge straight
down the hill as fast as the snow and the slope and the
trees would allow her.

The haze deepened,
greyed
, filling the air with tiny
black specks.

The shed trembled again. Something sharp rasped across the front. Then it stopped. Everything stopped.

Slowly, her back arched, her shoulders drew together;
any minute now she knew a lance, an arrow,
a
spike
would crash through the weather-weakened wood and
into her heart. She would die before she was able to cry
out, to scream, to do anything but open her mouth to let out the blood. The thought paralyzed her, and dried her
mouth until it felt coated with sand. She shook it off,
and replaced it with another
—that the shadows creeping across the snow in front of her would suddenly become
three-dimensional. They would prance over the white
without making a track, pointing claws and fangs di
rectly to her position, cackling like witches, hissing like snakes, dancing to show her where she would find what
others would call her grave.

Shadows.
The shadows.

Since the sun was already setting, and since she was facing west, it wasn't possible that shadows would be
stretching out before her. It couldn't be. It was impossible. Just like the snow and the
nightred
and the bellow
ing and
—

She felt the shed trembling again, creaking under the
slow application of a weight it couldn't bear.

The shadow.

A head, huge shoulders
that seemed almost feathered, and the limbs she had seen now raised so high their black reflection reached the trees.

There was so little time to react she didn't realize she
was running until she heard her boots crunching harshly
through the crust, and she had no idea of her direction
until she found herself plunging through the under
brush, arms high, chest outthrust, legs pumping mad
deningly slowly as she fought to break through.

She screamed only once
—when she heard the bel
lowing, and the explosion of splintering wood. It had known she was there, and it had tried to crush her.

The scream, however, was a release. It spurred her through the hedgerow and guided her around the boles;
it goaded her through drifts that had piled against fallen
logs, lashed her into anger when her boot caught against
a root.

Behind her there was silence.

Temptation, then, to slow down, to turn, to see if pursuit had been directed another way or cut off en
tirely. It passed. There were too many obstacles coming
at her, too many opportunities to trip her, to kill her, to
slam her unconscious; she needed all her attention just
to keep herself alive simply in flight
—if anything on her trail was determined to have her it would have to run as she did, and catch her on the fly.

Running.
Her whole life running.
Her lungs protesting by filling her chest with knives, her legs begging
mercy by turning themselves to lead; her eyes watering,
the tears freezing on her cheeks, her lips splitting open
and the blood salty on her tongue; her head slumping
forward and lolling on her neck, her arms flapping like
broken wings and upsetting her balance against the wind in her face.
Her coat dragging her down.
Her boots grafting to the ground.
One knee buckling until
she screamed at it to straighten. No thinking. It was too
hard to think. Downward
was
the only direction, and the hell with the road.

Running.
At least she thought she was running, but
the trees weren't speeding past her as fast as they once
were, and it was getting harder to kick through the
drifts that seemed too wide to go round, and the wind
was easing, the wind of her own making, and her mouth wouldn't close and her eyes kept blinking and
she was positive someone had cut her hands off at the
wrist and her feet at the ankles. A clearing was wind-cleared, and the hunched brown grass was more trouble than mud; a birch grew too fast and smacked painlessly
against her left arm; ruts and depressions broke the
evenly laid snow, and it took her almost five minutes to
see she'd reached the road anyway, was taking it down
its center and not caring if she was seen.

Running.
No. She glanced down and saw her toes
flash out, disappear, and she knew she was walking.

She stopped.

She turned.

The hill was above her, the road swinging off to the
right, and she sensed more than felt a grin spreading
open her lips, showing her teeth, drawing more blood. She didn't care. She didn't mind. Right now bleeding to
death would have been infinitely more desirable than
what she'd just averted. What did it matter that she
could hear the grumbling up there? What did it matter
that through the
snowglare
between the trees there were
darts and winks of
nightred
?

"Oh."

Not a moan, not a revelation, not a marking of despair.

Simply: "Oh."

She turned; she walked; there was no question of
running because the running was no longer there. There
was only the sound of her boots on the road and the
nightred
behind her and an occasional whimpering she
could not restrain. Yet she tried. She urged herself into
a trot that lasted ten paces; she berated herself into a trot
that lasted ten paces more. She raised her eyes (her
head was too heavy) and watched the clouds thicken,
promising her more white unless she returned home
now; she opened her mouth and tried to widen her lips,
but the curses were weak, too weak to encourage.

Maybe, she thought then, it doesn't want to kill me.
Maybe it was sent to protect me instead. It could have
killed me before.
A couple of times.
Lots of times.
The night I was drunk and came home from the Inn. The
night I was promoted and took a walk and it chased
me and made me lose my hat. I could have been killed
then. It could have gotten me then. So why should it
want to kill me now? What I should do is, I should turn
around and ask it what it wants. Maybe it speaks En
glish. Maybe I could use sign language.

She stumbled.

Maybe it's as afraid of me as I am of it. Like bees.
Mother always told me not to worry about bees because they were always more afraid of me than I was of them.
Just ignore them and they'll go away and they won't sting you. So maybe
—

She stumbled, and fell to one knee.

—I should ignore it and it will go away. It doesn't
really want me because if it did it could have done it a
million times already. And the bigger they are the harder they fall and oh God I'm so
goddam
fucking tired! So tired! So—

She knew she was down. Hands and knees were
buried in the snow. The wind had risen and was tearing
at her hair. She looked up and saw the farmhouse
beyond the fence.
A beautiful fence.
Rail-and-post and
coated with untouched white, four chimneys above the
peaked roof, a gable in each corner, and smoke curling from a fireplace and merging with the haze. She could
scream.

The rumbling.

She could scream and the people inside would rush
out and see what was the matter and the
nightred
thing,
the thing born in the
bloodwind
, it would climb back up
the mountain and she would be safe. It had to be that
way because she was too tired for anything else.

The rumbling, now a bellow, and something thunder
ing down the road.

On hands and knees she turned to face it.

She couldn't scream. Her throat was dead, her lungs
were dead, her mind was so filled with pleasantly warm
cold that all she wanted to do was lie down and let it,
the
nightred
, the
bloodwind
, pick her up and bring her
back to the quarry where it was warm and black and she'd never have to think again. That's the way it would have to be.
Since she couldn't scream.
Since the people in the farmhouse would never come to save her.

A part of her, a place so deep now she hadn't known
it existed, told her to get mad, to get moving, to stop
feeling sorry for herself and accepting everything she
couldn't handle as inevitable. The red thing that had
come out of the
snowpillar
wasn't moving as fast as it
had been. She still had a chance. She ought to get up off her ass and start running again. She was rested. She knew it. She wasn't that tired. She knew it. She
ought to do something instead of kneeling in the snow
like a goddamned idiot and ending it all at the hand/
claws/fangs/of something that didn't exist in the first
place.

With a shove that almost sent her sprawling onto her
back, she lurched to her feet.

The
redbeast
rounded the last bend.

She stumbled in a circle and began trotting toward the farmhouse. And once she realized she could trot,
she began to run. And once she realized she could run,
she lifted her arms and she lifted her face and she lengthened her stride until she could barely feel her
boots crashing beneath her.
Could barely feel the knives
slicing madly at her lungs.
Could barely feel the wind as it split open her chin.

And she just reached the gate when the
redbeast
caught her.

AN
 
arm grabbed Pat around the waist as her legs
gave way and she sank toward the ground. She tried to
strike out, to scratch, to lift her knees, but nothing
would work. The arm gripped her too tightly, held her
too closely. And there was a roaring in her ears. A sharp cacophonous display that forced her to squeeze her eyes shut tightly, to bite down on her tongue to
keep from screaming. Because above all, and for no
reason that made
itself
plain to her, she did not want to
scream. She did not want to give it the satisfaction of knowing her fear. She was sure it could smell it
—in the perspiration that had drenched her clothes, in the stench
that rose from every pore of exposed skin; but she would not allow it to hear it from her lips. A foolish thing, inconsequential, but as she was dragged away from the gate through the cloud of white, of red, of
swirling colors that matched the buzzing swarming over
her, it mattered. Later, if there was a later, she would
attempt to understand it. Now, however, she had to keep her silence. Even in the hissing in her right ear,
the hissing that was insistent, almost vicious, she had to keep her silence, keep herself in the dark behind closed
lids so she could not see at so close a range the thing that belonged to the arm fastened so snugly around her waist.

She was lifted.

Her feet left the ground and she was swung gently
through the air.
Gently.
Carefully.
Set down again,
and the arm slipped away and her back rested against
something firm, something that gave when she pressed
against it. She held her breath. The hissing, the buzz
ing, the roaring had vanished.

She opened her eyes and saw the star-shaped patterns
of frost on the windshield.

And as she slowly, incredulously, gazed around the inside of the car, her hearing returned
—to the creak of
warm metal snapping against the cold, to the steady
blast of the heater breathing summer on her legs, to the
voice beside her laden with concern.

"Doc?
Hey, Doc, what's the matter? Why'd you run
like that, huh? God, I could've run you over."

Focus.
Snowglare
receded and the fencing shimmered
into sharp relief, the outline of the red sedan etched in a
white background, the scratches and worn padding of
the dashboard, the faded jeans and sheepskin coat, the
stubble-shadowed face lean and leaning toward her. The
single gloved hand on the steering wheel. Beneath a
hunter's cap whose earmuffs had been tied over the
crown, Ben's eyes were dark, searching, filled with a hope that she would smile and cure his worry.

"Doc?"

She began to tremble. Her legs, her arms, until she
clamped them all together and hunched over, ignoring the exhaust-tinged air forced to the floorboards.

The engine fired and the car eased forward.

"I'd better get you to a doctor," Ben said, though his gaze refused to stay on the road. "You're sick."

"No." It was a whisper, harsh and unlike the voice
she thought she had. "No, please. I'm all right. You
frightened me,
that's
all."

From his silence she knew he didn't believe her, but
she said nothing until he'd turned onto Cross Valley Road. The
snowbanks
here thrown up by the plows were nearly as high as the roof of the car, and when
they crept onto Williamston Pike and headed in toward
the village, she forced herself not to panic when brief
gusts of wind buffeted the vehicle, and sent trails of snow lifting toward the trees.

Finally, thawed, her toes and fingertips stinging, she
sat back and laid her hands flat on her thighs. "Ben,
what were you doing up there? You were up at the
quarry."

He nodded.

Ask him the other one, she ordered herself then; ask
him,
damnit
, ask him!

"Why?" It was the wrong question. Courage; she needed courage.

"Well, we didn't exactly welcome you with open
arms yesterday, you know." Guilt and apology were genuine, she was sure, but she couldn't help a glance to
see if his eyes mirrored the tone. "And then Harriet told me this morning she'd seen you last night." He sighed, loudly. "She shouldn't have done that. We
were just letting off steam. You know how Ollie is. His
mouth is bigger than any brains he has." His smile broke, held,
faded
quickly.

"The quarry?"

"I went to your place to talk a little."
A shrug, not quite an apology this time.
"You didn't answer, and
when I came back outside Doc Billings had pulled up.
He was in a real foul mood, and he told me where you
were." He grinned, and it held. "I almost hit him."

Ask him. Ask him!

"Did . . . Ben, did you see anything up there? I
mean, while you were up there did you see anything
unusual?"

"What's to see this time of year? The sheds and a hole
in the ground, that's all. God, we have any more snow,
Doc, that
thing'll
fill right to the top when it all melts."

She stared at him, startled. He's lying. She knew he was lying. He couldn't have missed the wreckage
of the shed the beast had crushed, or the gap in the ice through which it had risen. He couldn't have. It was
impossible.

He looked to her, back to the road quickly. "Hey, did I say something wrong?"

On their left the first signs of the park's spear-tipped
iron fence rose from the snow. The pike lifted, fell
again, and the library on the corner of Centre Street seemed to act as a signal. He slowed, indecisive.

"I don't know who your doctor is, Doc."

"It's all right," she said stiffly. "Please, if you'd just take me home, I'd appreciate it, Ben."

"Are you sure? You look like
—"

"Please!" She stared straight ahead, afraid of what he would see in her expression, in the way she held herself so rigidly.

"Sure, Doc. Whatever you say."

He sped up, nearly sideswiping a bus that had lumbered out of Centre onto the pike. He did not apologize
for the near-accident, however. He only held his speed
until he reached Northland, turned left sharply and braked
almost angrily in front of her home. They sat for a
moment in strained silence while she sought the words
which would ease the tension.

It was, finally, simple enough: "Thank you, Ben. And I'm sorry I snapped at you."

He dismissed it with a casual wave. "No sweat, Doc.
I'm surprised you're still talking to me, after what
freckle-head told you."

"It's just that I had a scare," she said, as if she
hadn't heard him. "It's awfully lonely up there. I was
seeing things, I guess, and they made me run."

"I thought you were training for a marathon."

She smiled. "I'd never make it past the first mile."

The houses loomed. There were children in a snow-
battle in a yard up the street. Line was across the road,
talking with Still worth. She turned suddenly
to
Ben,
and his eyebrows lifted in wary surprise.
Waiting.
But
she couldn't do it. Here, amid all she'd lived with for
the past decade and more, the terror she'd felt had been
relegated to something less than physical, though she
definitely hadn't forgotten the flight, the pain. But she
couldn't ask him to take her back. Something stopped
her: the puzzled expression on his face, the quiet crawl
of ice along her arms, the idea that going out there
would yield her nothing but what Ben had claimed
—
snow, the quarry . . . and nothing else at all.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said. Her hand fumbled at the
doorlatch
, pulled it to her, and she stepped out into the
street.

"Doc," he said, leaning toward her.

"I'm all right," she said, gesturing him to leave. "I'll see you tomorrow."

She stepped back until her legs pushed into the curbside
snowbank
, waited until he'd driven off slowly before
walking to the open mouth of the driveway. The shadow
of the garage was already lapping at the sidewalk, the
haze breaking up again to show her dark patches of
blue. The children laughed and shrieked. She stood for a moment, watching them, until the cold reminded her
of the cold she had felt, and she hurried to the porch, through the door and up the stairs. Her footsteps were loud, and she wished the
Evanses
would return from
Florida so she could sit in their living room, listening to
their stereo whispering a favorite opera, drinking tea and nodding while the couple filled an hour or more with trivial details of a trip they'd taken twenty years ago.

But they were gone, and she didn't feel up to the ex
uberance of Kelly's nonstop talking. She opened the door
and shrugged off her coat, letting it fold to the floor. Into the kitchen where she automatically put on the
kettle and turned the flame as high as it would go.

"It
was,
wasn't it," she said to the kettle. "I saw it. I saw it."

She walked dreamlike around the room, pressing a palm to every cool surface, wandering into the living
room and switched on the lamp. Stared at the windows until she saw flickering, hurriedly pulled the draperies
closed and stepped back to wait.

"It
was
real."

The bedroom was next.

Coverlet still thrown back, indentation in the pillow
where Greg had positioned her head before he'd gone
off to make breakfast.
She walked around the dresser on
the left, paused at the window and glanced down into
the drive, saw nothing and continued on into the bath
room.
Stared in the mirror.
At the tangle the wind had
made of her hair, at the suggestions of shadows beneath
her eyes, at the raw deep pink at chin and lips and
across her high cheeks. She reached for a container of
hand lotion and spread it over her palms. Massaged her face gently, feeling the skin loosen, smelling the herbal
scent that lingered even after she rinsed her hands.

Workroom.
Dust.
Clutter.
An impotent red sun spiked
through the treetops.

The kettle whistled and she ran to it, poured herself a
cup and watched the tea from its bag drift into the water.

"It was real."

With an anticipatory wince she sipped the tea, wrin
kling her nose at the curling steam. She grinned sourly
then when she remembered a fragment of time, an
afternoon her mother had told her she had no imagination. Had the woman been with her this
afternoon, that
much disappointment at least would have been dispelled.

She sat, her palms warming against the cup.

The room darkened.

There was no question but what she had seen at the quarry was not connected with the occult, the supernat
ural. It was, however, part and parcel complete with
stamps connected to the experience in the street and all the rest.
A masterful conjuration of illusion.
An elabo
rate attempt to multiply the pressures she'd been under
lately. To what end? To break her, she decided. Noth
ing quite
so
dramatic as driving her insane, but a shove
in the direction which would lead her to believe she
wasn't capable of handling the responsibilities of the new department. The pressures she would feel there,
too. The leadership she would have to provide after all these years of following. She would believe that she'd
bitten off more than she could chew, and she would
back out. She would give up the fight. She would pass
up the departmental promotion and give it to someone
else, someone stronger, someone who wanted it as much as she and would do the job she herself had
dreamed of, had planned for,
had
bucked the odds for
over months beyond counting.

Unless it had nothing to do with the job at all.

Unless it was a reaction to something she had done,
something she had said; unless it was in itself a reaction
to a reaction.