[Oxrun Station] The Bloodwind (21 page)

"Ben,
damnit
!"

A whimpering that jerked up her head, made her
squint and fail to see the expression on his face.

"Ben?"

"He comes in around dinner on Saturday. He says he's had
it,
he's not going to be shoved around any
more. He says you even got the police looking for him
and he knew all along you couldn't be trusted. He said
he was through fooling around."

"Fooling . . . ?" She almost choked.

The chair creaked, and Ben stood. He walked to the
window and looked out at the quad, at the forest beyond.
Then he scuttled back into his corner, his hand raking
through his hair, rubbing hard down over his face.

"I wanted to stop him, see, but he wouldn't listen to
me when I said it wasn't any good. He's so much in
love he can't see straight, and he won't listen to anyone else. He just does everything, and the hell with how it
turns out. I mean, you should see him, Doc! He's crazy. I really think he's crazy. He's got Monty and
Hay out of here most of the day he scares them so much the way he bulls around, and I'm too tired to hold him
anymore.
God.
Oh Jesus!"
He rocked on his buttocks,
the empty sleeve swaying at his side. "I'm going away,
Doc. I got all the forms Friday and I'm transferring the
hell out."

"Ben!"

"No!" He stood again and came round the desk to stand in front of her. "No, please, there's nothing you
can say, believe me. I've been thinking about this for a
long time, and I want the hell out. I can't handle it. I
mean, I have enough trouble taking care of myself and
this"
—he jerked the stump of his arm toward her— "and I just can't handle what Ollie's doing."

She stood slowly, forcing him back a step. Reached
out a hand, dropped it when he shied away. "You
knew," she said, more in sorrow than disbelief. "You
knew all about it and you never said a thing." She
ignored the panic fed by his fear that
stumbled
him back toward the windowsill; she ignored the strangling sound
that escaped his throat; she ignored everything but the
need to hear the answer she already knew. "You knew,
Ben, and you never said a word."

"All right!" he shouted. "
Damnit
, I knew what he was trying to do right from the start. But I didn't
believe him. I didn't! I mean, would you, Doc? Would
you believe it if someone came up to you and said he
could do what's been going on around here lately?
Would you?" He slashed the air. "Shit no. You'd have
him locked up. You'd call the funny farm and have him
taken away. But he was crazy, man. I mean, the guy had lost every card in the deck. You couldn't talk to
him,
you couldn't make him see anything but what he was
going to do."
His hand in a fist, a feint at the window.
"Hell. Shit!" His shoulders slumped. Then he turned,
suddenly, and Pat thought for a moment he was going
to attack her. He pointed at her. "You
—" And he
stopped, grunted, and brushed past her into the
lefthand
bedroom.

She followed, not knowing what to say and needing
to say something in order to learn more. She had to
know more, it was the first principle in defending your
self against an enemy set to kill you.

Two dressers against the wall, two beds whose foot
boards were each below a casement window.
No rug.
Two wardrobes.
Ben was at one, yanking out clothes
and stuffing them into a suitcase scarred with frequent
use. A shirt fell to the floor and he kicked it angrily under the bed; a shoe dropped and he groaned; and
when a handful of folded
socks
tumbled from his hand,
he dropped to the other bed and covered his eyes.

"Doc?
Doc, I'm scared."

She sat quickly beside him, an arm around his shoul
ders, thinking this wasn't the way it should be- at all.
Her fury was still contained, but she should be out on
the hunt, not sitting in a dark room comforting a boy
trying hard to be a man.

"I am, too," she whispered. "And that's why you have to help me, Ben."

"I can't!" he said, almost wailing. "They said before they'd kill me if I said anything. And I wasn't going to say anything because I didn't believe it. My
god, how the hell can you believe something like this,
huh? How can you?" He looked up at the wall, eyes
blinking furiously.

He'll leave, she thought then; he'll leave and find a
new place to live and in a few weeks, a few months, he'll convince himself it never happened. It was a
dream.
A nightmare.
He'll shunt it aside and live again,
and every once in a while he'll wake up screaming and
not know what it was.

"All right," she said calmly, tightening her grip
briefly. "All right, Ben. But you at least have to tell me
where they went. I have to find them, tonight. You do
see that don't you? It's my life we're talking about
here, and I'll be damned if I'm going to give it up just
because Ollie wants me dead."

Ben laughed.

Pat dropped her arm and stood quickly, backing toward
the door as Ben threw
himself
flat on the bed and
laughed hysterically. She lifted an impotent hand, opened
her mouth,
almost
turned to leave so she would not see
him finally go insane. But she stood her ground.
Listen
ing.
Waiting.
Watching as he rolled over on the mattress until his legs swept over the side. Until he stood
and closed the suitcase, wiped his face with a sleeve and shoved her to one side.

"Ben!"

He opened the door.

"Ben!" She ran after him.

He stopped.

"Please," she said. "Just tell me where Ollie and Harriet are and I'll leave you alone."

"It's funny," he said. He was grinning with no mirth
at all reflected in his eyes. "It's really funny."

Confused, she glanced to the desk, the windows,
back
again to him. "What? For Christ's sake, Ben, what the hell's so damned funny?"

"You," he said. "I thought you knew."

"Knew what?" A fist was at her throat to stifle a scream.

"Ollie," he said. "Weren't you listening to me, Doc? Didn't you hear what I said?"

"Benjamin," she said, lowering her voice as the last
shred of her
patience
died and became dust.

He leaned casually against the jamb, the suitcase between his legs.
A slow look around the room before he met her gaze and sighed.
"Doc, sometimes you can
be really dense, you know? Do you really think Ollie has the brains to think up all this crap? Ollie?
Our Ollie?"
His expression darkened to scorn. "He hasn't got the imagination of a flea, and you know it. If it
wasn't for her, he'd just be spouting garbage like every
one else on this godforsaken campus. He'd be a freak
like all the other freaks, only this one wears a cowboy
hat. Christ, a cowboy hat in Connecticut." The scorn
began to slip. "When he met her for the first time we
all thought it was great, you know? Ollie finally finds
someone who likes his act and lets him know she knows
it's an act.
But in a nice way.
I honest to god, Doc, thought she was good for him."

Freckle-head, they called her. Pat couldn't believe
Ben was talking about the same woman.

"Then it turned out she only needed him because
there has to be two. I'm not sure why. Maybe it has to do with however it is they get things to work. More
power, something like that. And Ollie
—he was getting
frustrated because the show wasn't coming off and it
was just what she needed. She used him, only I didn't
see it until it was too late and I couldn't stop him then.

The scorn was gone, and Pat saw him pale again,
saw him tremble. And what had she once called Harriet?
A redhead trying to be an
ail
-American blonde?
God almighty, how wrong she'd been.

"That's when they said they'd kill me if I told."

Harriet weeping in the
livingroom
.
Please, she'd said,
don't be angry with them.

"See, it was her. She wanted Doc Billings
—"

"What?" She blinked, unsure she'd heard the name
right.

"Well, who the hell else, Doc?"

"No." She put a hand to her forehead, to her lips.
"That's
—"

"Doc, you don't know, you really don't know."

"But she's just a girl, for god's sake," Pat protested
softly, suddenly aware the door was open to the land
ing. But when she looked at him he would not close it.
"Just a girl.
What does she know about men?
About life?
God, she's been locked up in this damned town all her
life, how can she
—"

"Hey, Doc," Ben said, his head tilted, one eye
almost closed. "Hey, are we talking about the same
thing?"

It was an effort not to stutter. "Yes," she said.
"Yes, we are. We are talking about Harriet Trotter and
what she's done to Ollie. That, Ben, is what we're talking about."

Suddenly the desk lamp sputtered out, the bulb over
the landing. A wind battered at the panes,
a draught
fluttering papers
greyly to the floor. Ben snatched up
his suitcase, ran out and down the stairs. Pat followed,
calling to him, shrieking while she held onto the banis
ter. He paused for a moment on the next landing down,
behind him the campus lights wavering through the
narrow slit windows.

"Ben, please!"

"Doc, you're great, but I
ain't
sticking around, not
now."

"But Harriet
—"

"Jesus Christ, Doc!" he yelled. "Jesus Christ, will
you please wake up? It isn't Harriet that's doing it, it's
that bitch Abbey Wagner!"

AND the lights went out.

The afterimage of Ben's face floated in the black, a
distorted grimace of anguish and fear that faded each
time she blinked until she was alone on the landing,
listening to the rising groans of protests, the opening
and slamming of doors, the receding slap of footsteps.
Her mouth had opened to call Ben's name, but she
made no sound. It was futile, and she knew it. He had
driven himself into a nightmare which would cling to him like a second skin, and no amount of screaming
would ever wake him again. As much as she was
determined to end it, he was determined to flee in its
shadow. It was a choice she had almost made herself,
and only the dark prevented her from collapsing on the
top step and giving way again.

Slowly, then, she moved downward, her right hand
clutching the worn and smooth banister while her left was outstretched, searching for the wall, or for obsta
cles that had no business being there in the dark. Every few seconds a light would flare outside, from candle or
flash, but it would fade before shadows had an opportu
nity to form and accentuate the black that settled over
the campus.

It was out there.

She had the front door handle in her grip.

Out there.

She had braced herself for the swarming cold.

Out there.
Waiting.

She stepped back as if slapped and listened to the wind
soughing through the bare trees, smothering the voices
of students passing along the Long Walk. The doors trembled slightly, and she needed no further prodding.
She turned and headed down, belowground, fingers
trailing along the
wainscotting
until she swerved left
into the tunnel that would, if she didn't get herself lost, release her at the front parking lot. It would have been
easier, much easier, if she could locate a flashlight, but
all the doors she passed were locked, and none of the
students had come down with her.

There was laughter. She could hear it faintly, filter
ing through the building's thick walls. A pane of frosted
glass glared and darkened. A door slammed, echoing after her as she forced herself not to break into a run.

Out there.

Her foot kicked against something that skidded away
ahead of her, and she ground her teeth to keep the
scream from escaping. It was no time to panic. She had to keep moving, had to keep hoping that she would be
able to find a way off the campus without the
redbeast
discovering exactly where she was. Without anyone else being killed before it found her.

Abbey.
Abbey Wagner.

A splinter in the paneling thrust into her thumb and
she whimpered, jammed it into her mouth and sucked.
And with the movement the wall fell away, she was in
the middle of the floor and she was falling. She knew
it. She could feel the darkness giving on all sides, could feel her weight shifting until there was no weight at all,
nothing left to anchor, and she threw out an arm, her fist crashing against the wall, opening so her palm could diffuse some of the pain. A moment for a deep breath, another for a choked sobbing, and she was
walking again, almost trotting. Her ears aching with the
strain of listening, her throat so dry it felt coated
with
sand. She stopped several times to allow the sounds of
her own footfalls a chance to fade
—but there was noth
ing behind her, nothing ahead, the roaring she was hearing swelling somewhere inside.

She swallowed hard and pulled back her hand to claw
lightly at her neck.

She stumbled forward, her stride shortening as she
estimated the turn that would take her to the left. She did not want to enter the wrong tunnel now, to find
herself
caught beneath the English building or Science.
At least here, despite the dark, there were people over
head; there, if she screamed, no one would hear her.

The turn.

Abbey Wagner.
How many times did they have a
drink together and laugh over Kelly's escapades
and
commiserate whenever poor Kelly came home crushed.
How many times had Abbey been thinking that Pat had
to die? How many months had it been before the woman
had discovered the way to drive off a rival?

She stopped and sagged against the wall.

In all the literature she'd read, all the novels, all the
stories, the seeking of some manifestation of supernatu
ral power was done not for the gold or for the silver or
for the assurance of immortality
—it was, underlying
all, for the power.
The power to achieve all those things
and more.
It seemed almost comical then that Abbey
should have discovered the workings of stone simply
because she was different, was different and in love.

No, she thought; there has to be more. Life means
more;
my
life means more. How in this day and age can
something so precious be threatened by something so
. . . so . . . She shook her head and pushed back into a
shambling walk.

Hand along the wall.

Feet flat on the ground.

Sounds fading, sounds dying.

"Oh!"

Her toe stubbed against the bottom step of the tun
nel's end. Immediately she fumbled in the dark for the railing, hauled herself up and fell against the door, the
brass bar snapping down under her weight and the door
flying open. She wasn't prepared, and she tripped over
the threshold, was able to negotiate the first two steps
before balance failed her and she fell on her buttocks,
sliding to the bottom where the ice took her into a
snowbank
.

A moan she couldn't stifle; her back stung, and her
elbow where it had cracked against one of the stairs.
She rolled onto her side, unwanted tears burning to her cheeks until she swiped them away angrily and scram
bled to her knees.
To her feet.
Swayed as she looked
around for orientation, for a sign.

The parking lot lay below her, the buildings of the
quad lifeless in spite of the candles she could see, the
voices she could hear already preparing for a nightlong
party. She was tempted to join them. It would be such a
simple thing to lose herself in the crowds now filling
some of the rooms, to have a drink, to be cajoled into
laughing, to wait safely inside while the
redbeast
waited.
A simple thing, and too simple.
One girl was dead (and
Kelly, where was Kelly?), and herself nearly dead. If
Abbey was truly that filled with hate, it would be easy
enough to talk
herself
into sacrificing a handful for the
one.

The tails of her muffler were pushed to her chest. Her
nose ran. Her ears burned. The back of her neck felt as though a razor had been drawn over it by the flat of its
blade. She glanced at the dark rows of cars in the lot,
made darker by the glow of the snow as the clouds
shredded and the moon came out. There would be no
keys there, and she had no idea how to hot-wire an
ignition.

Walk. She would have to walk. Once on Chancellor
Avenue she would be able to hitch a ride into town. To
see Wes and tell him and not care if he thought her
crazy as long as he didn't send her home for a rest. He
would apologize, of course, for nearly accusing her
earlier, would feel guilty and perhaps want to accompany her to the door. But the last thing she wanted was
to be anywhere
near
the apartment tonight. There were shards of that marble lying in the workshop, and as long
as she stayed away she knew she was safe.

Her hands, then, unbidden, dove into her pockets.
Searching.
Her heart stopping a beat when her fingers
closed on a lump, starting again when it proved to be
lint.

Safe.
For the moment she was safe.

And she walked around the lot and down the road to
the trees. Where the moon was sliced in ribbons and the
branches clawed for the stars, where patches of ice
glittered too much like water, where the wind sighed
down to a breeze and toyed with her hair, the hem of
her coat. She kept to the right side, every few yards
glancing over her shoulder in case a car should come
along. But it did not take much time before even the
few faint glimmerings of window-based candles were
screened by the firs and she was left alone with the
remnants of the moon.
Teeth chattering.
Chin quiver
ing.
Her only accompaniment the crack of her heels and
the whisper of the breeze.

Briskly.
Spine rigid.
Eyes straight ahead.
Refusing to
think that perhaps she'd been wrong, that perhaps the
redbeast
no longer needed the spore of the marble.
She
assumed it was drawn to the pieces by order, that in
whatever state it existed its guidance was limited to that
and nothing more.
Which explained Susan's death, and
her own narrow escape.
But what it did not explain
—

A branch split, and she spun around wildly, hands to
her chest.

And when she turned back toward the avenue there
was someone in the road.

A stumbling step forward before she stopped. Her mouth open, breathing deeply,
raspingly
; the figure
standing quite still just fifty yards away. The face was hidden, the outline hazed, its head oversized and gro
tesque until she realized it was wearing a wide-brimmed
hat.

It was Oliver.

Waiting.
While over his shoulder plumed streams of
cold white.

"Doc," he said, his voice carrying though he did not
speak loudly. He shook his head once. "You should have stayed up there, you know."

There were too many things to say to him, too many
conflicts from pleading to rage; she lifted a hand toward
him, pulled it back and turned to run.

And stopped when she saw Abbey step out of the forest.

"No."
A whisper, a denial.

"Doc," Oliver
said,
several quiet steps closer, "you
never should have left the quarry, you know. You were
supposed to be up there looking for more stupid rocks.
You were supposed to fall. You weren't supposed to run."

Abbey was standing in a wavering patch of moon
light. Her blond hair touched with grey, her eyes turned
to shadow. She kept her hands in her pockets, but Pat
could see her smiling.

"You're something, you know that, Doc?"
Closer.
Still soft.
"I mean, you didn't take off and you didn't
fall in the quarry and you should have been dumped for
that car thing
. '
Course, that was pretty stupid, I know
that. Don't blame that on Abbey. It was my idea, and I
put me stone in the wrong car. It was dark in the
parking lot.
Stupid, right?"
Closer.
Softer.
A smile that
carried the dark humor of execution.
"It's like you
always told me, Doc
—you got to think it all out before
you start to work. I should've listened to you, I guess. All these dumb mistakes just because I was too stupid
to listen."

She turned her back on Abbey, startling Oliver into
halting.

"Dumb mistakes?" she said, almost ending in a scream. "A poor girl's dead, and that's a dumb mistake?" When Oliver didn't answer, she advanced a
stride, was grimly pleased to see him fall back. "And
what about Kelly?" she demanded. "Where is she?
Damnit
, Ollie, where is she?"

"She found out," Oliver said, and needed to say no
more.

"Bastard," she said quietly, suddenly too weary to
be angry. Then she jerked a thumb over her shoulder.
"What does she do, Ollie? What's so special about her
that you'd do such a thing?"