But Rachel never got the chance to admit she was scared out here, with the looming silence and encroaching darkness. Because as that moment, a predator topped the rise and headed straight for them.
A predator that bore no resemblance to the killer either had imagined.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite; no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food…
—Mary Shelley,
from Frankenstein
At first Zeke couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing, so he wasted precious seconds staring at the headlights and listening to the growl of the engine barreling toward them.
Even after he understood it was an SUV, his mind struggled for an explanation. Scofflaw hunters? Rowdy teens offroading, chasing deer for sport or trying to catch a little air as they raced over the ridge? As he fought to keep control of his mount, Zeke bellowed “Stop” and waved an arm, certain the driver would change course the instant he realized there were riders down here. Not defenseless wildlife but people.
Yet the big, dark vehicle kept coming, picking up speed. Gus sat on his haunches, braying, while Cholla reared. When Zeke looked around, he saw the pinto bolting toward home, until the horse—or maybe Rachel—realized the vehicle’s trajectory would cut off their escape. Wheeling around, the mare settled for second best—veering in the direction the deer had taken. Zeke had a glimpse of Rachel clinging to the mare’s neck, the reins torn loose from her hands and whipping wildly around her.
The SUV was nearly on him when with a scraping thump, its front bumper hooked a thick-based double yucca. The bloody wash of sunset reflected from the windshield, allowing Zeke only a bare glimpse of the driver. As the vehicle, still stuck, reversed and spun its tires, Zeke realized he needed to get clear of this idiot and find Rachel before she fell.
After releasing Gus, who galloped toward home, Zeke took off in the direction the pinto had run. In the thunder of his mount’s hooves, he nearly missed the sound of sharp cracks just behind him, casting him back in time to the incident at the viewing area. Was this the same son of a bitch, now firing from the still-stranded vehicle behind him? Somehow that didn’t seem right, didn’t mesh with the glimpse he’d had of what looked like a smaller driver. Was there a passenger inside as well? Maybe even more than one?
Zeke didn’t wait around to get a better look. Instead, he ducked low and prayed the shooter’s aim had not improved. Because as fast as Cholla moved, the horse stood not a chance in hell of outracing bullets.
Rachel was in trouble. Damned big trouble from the moment the panicked mare tore the reins from her hands. Stunned by the revving engine and the blinding headlights in a place no vehicle should be, Rachel had been momentarily distracted—giving Candle the moment she needed to render her rider all but helpless.
Helpless to control their flight. Helpless to save them—for nothing but disaster could come of this blind gallop.
Clinging to the thrusting neck, Rachel wound the fingers of one hand through the mare’s thick mane. She tried to think of how to communicate—how to stop this madness—but it was all she could do to keep her balance as her mount shifted to avoid a rocky outcrop, then veered around a patch of prickly pear.
Surely, the mare couldn’t keep this pace up much longer. Rachel heard her breathing hard, felt the heat rolling off her in waves. And the back she sat astride was sweating, making her perch slippery, as the mare plunged on and on.
“Don’t you fall on me,” Rachel begged the runaway. “You stay on your feet, and I’ll stay on your back ’til you get tired.”
But the newly named Candle wasn’t the one who broke faith with their unholy contract. Instead, it was Rachel who—when the mare gathered herself to leap a fallen juniper—tumbled from her mount’s back with a shout of horror.
A shout cut short by the hard-packed desert soil that rushed up to meet her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile;
So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,
Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.
—William Shakespeare,
Love’s Labor’s Lost
Act I, Scene 1
Like a vast eye, darkness closed upon the desert. As the bloody rim of twilight drifted off to plum, straight above, an obsidian dome dreamed star after brilliant star.
“Rachel!” Again and again, Zeke strained his throat to shout her name, then stopped his horse to listen. Again and again, the high plain returned only the distant howling of the clan of the coyote. From somewhat nearer came the chirping calls of tiny elf owls.
But nothing more, now that the engine noises had receded and the final echoes of the gunshots faded. No answering calls nor any hoofbeats, nothing to distract Zeke from the deepening darkness and the rapid cooling of the crisp, dry air around him.
He thought of Rachel declining his offer of a sweatshirt to augment her denim jacket. Thought about the other morning, when he’d awakened to light frost. He nudged Cholla with his boot heels, encouraging the horse to a brisk trot, though he doubted his mount could see much better than he could.
A stumble proved him right, nearly unseating Zeke and forcing him to stop. Once more, he called out Rachel’s name, praying she was close enough to hear him.
Maybe she’s close enough but can’t hear. Me or anybody. In his mind’s eye, he could see her, blood and brain matter
splattered on a rock or crushed beneath the pinto’s flailing body.
Zeke Pike trembled, though he’d begun to sweat.
“Rachel!” he roared. “Goddamn it, Rachel. Answer.”
Unnerved by his eruption, Cholla danced nervously and tossed back his head. Zeke fought to master the horse’s rising panic. Fought to tamp down his own terror.
Fear spilled over into fury. At the maniac—he suspected Rachel’s stalker—who’d tried to run them down and then fired after them. At Kyle Underwood, for getting himself killed and causing all this trouble. Even at Rachel, for insisting she’d be warm enough, for volunteering to ride bareback….
For making him feel responsible, damn her, when he’d forgotten how to tend another person. Forgotten how it hurt to care, how it could be so unutterably painful….
Stupid, to let someone get this close. Bad enough the way he hungered to touch her warm skin and smooth the silk of her hair, to taste and feel and push himself inside her until his frozen core burst into bright flame. But to let her smile get inside him, to be infected by her conversation—it was insanity. It was death—or worse yet, the realization that its opposite, as he’d experienced it for all these long years, wasn’t life at all, only a crude mockery of what existence could be.
Enraged with himself above all others, Zeke swore, tearing a shrill neigh from the horse beneath him. Cholla fought to take the bit in his teeth, struggled to bolt home. Home, where hay and grain were, where his pasture mates should be, too.
Home, where the pinto bearing Rachel might have gone.
Had the mare circled around and headed—as horses would—for the familiarity of her pen and shelter? Could Rachel still be clinging to her, waiting and worrying about his return?
He blew on the spark of the image, kindling it into a vision warm as fire. Rachel, whole and unharmed, only a bit shaken. She would tend his animals, both the mare and Gus, but every few moments, she would stop to peer into the darkness. She would cup her hands around her mouth and call the name she thought was his.
Would he hear her from here if he listened? Would her voice carry so far on the clear night air?
With a terrible effort, he forced himself to stillness, a calm as dark and measureless as the night that slept around him. As Zeke silenced terror, mastered rage, the horse that he rode quieted until the only sounds left were their breathing.
And the whinny of another animal off in the blackness.
Cholla stepped forward and trumpeted his answer. A neigh of gre
eting to his pasture mate.
“Rachel,” Zeke called, the calm inside him splintering beneath the weight of hope.
Hooves clopped against hard soil, and Zeke recognized the shuffling off-cadence of a limping horse. The gelding beneath him shifted and stepped forward, nickering low as he stretched his neck eagerly.
Though the moon had not yet risen, the scant light of a million distant suns illuminated a dark form approaching. A horse, he saw, a pinto.
It came forth riderless.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.
—Virgil,
from Aeneid
Cold. So cold that shivering woke her. Such hard shivering that Rachel’s bones ached with it.
No, that wasn’t right. Or wasn’t all, at least. The fall had her left shoulder throbbing, the left side of her skull pulsing with violent bursts of light that sparked when she tried to lift her head.
Yet she had to raise her face from the hard grit, so she pushed off the uneven surface with her right hand. Pushed and strained to sit up, with the flashes blazing Morse code protests.
She waited out the pain, waited out the waves of nausea. And stared into a darkness so complete that she feared she’d been blinded. Hadn’t the doctor warned her to be careful, that another blow to the head, after her recent concussion, could have dire consequences? Memory issues, mood disorders, coma, even death—and wasn’t vision part of the brain’s function? The part that allowed her to create a photograph, to fly a plane or glider, to see the people she loved.
Her father’s face flashed through her consciousness, her grandmother’s as well. Even Patsy’s, and, more surprising still, Zeke Pike’s.
Where was Zeke? Had his horse, too, bolted after the off-road vehicle came roaring toward them? Fear shot through her center at the idea that he could have been struck down—perhaps because of her.
She blinked back moisture, then noticed a bright streak—a meteor flashing through the dark skies. As it dimmed, she stared upward at the swath of stars that speckled the cold expanse. Stars far brighter and more numerous than those that dotted the diminished sky of the light-saturated East Coast. By the tens of millions, they flanked the Milky Way’s pale swath, offering her reassurance that she could still see after all.
She sighed and shook her hands to get blood flowing into her chilled fingers. After buttoning her jacket, she rubbed her arms, then grunted with the effort of rising to her feet. Tottering for a moment, she watched the lights above blur as the canopy of night swayed. By widening her stance, she managed to stay upright, standing until the cold forced her to move.
But where could she go? Despite the bright display above, she couldn’t see where she was walking, so she was forced to take small and cautious steps. And she had no idea of direction, no way to gauge whether she was moving toward or away from Zeke’s place or the tiny airport, toward Marfa proper or the mountains. She pictured the area rolled out beneath her like a relief map, the miles and miles of emptiness she’d seen so often from the air. How easy it would be to miss one of the tiny outposts of civilization on this broad plain and wander off, directionless, into oblivion.
And yet she had to move to warm herself. To move and to pray that Zeke had made it back to safety, that he had gotten in his truck and gone for help.
Who could say how long she had been unconscious? Maybe searchers were already organizing parties and equipment. Maybe they were out looking with their flashlights and their lanterns. Or she might be closer to Zeke Pike than she thought.
She cupped her hands around her mouth and called, “Zeke, where are you? Zeke? Anybody?”
She never stopped to consider that “anybody” could include the same person who had tried to hurt her in the first place. Never imagined she could be so unlucky until she saw the headlights taking aim.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light?
—Maurice Freehill
Twin lights. Much like headlights, except they rose like a child’s balloons above the desert. Rose and merged, the yellow-white left orb swallowing the right.
Silent and so lovely. The light swelled, spinning on a strangely disconnected axis. Hovering, then giving birth to gently glowing spheres.
The observer lowered the field glasses, smiled. Because the mystery lights were part of a pleasure so acute it had a sexual component. As if spent bullets and spilled blood had quenched a violent thirst.
From the farthest reaches of a nightmare memory, The Child’s weeping faded, the cries morphing into the happy yips of the distant coyotes.
And as the glowing crescent moon cleared the horizon, its thin curve seemed the desert night’s sadistic smile.
Hopeless. This is hopeless …
Yet Zeke couldn’t force himself to give up, couldn’t abandon the rough grid he had mapped out in his head to keep from getting completely lost out in the darkness. Leading both of the horses, he walked imaginary lines for hours, stopping every so often to call Rachel’s name.
He continued long after he had given up hope of hearing any reply. If he stopped and let the horses follow their instincts to lead him back home, he would have no choice except to climb into his truck and drive to town to ask for help. The sheriff would have to be called and searchers organized, none of whom would want to begin looking before daybreak. Might as well keep looking on his own, then, on the off chance that he would stumble across her.
Or maybe he was avoiding Rachel’s family. Zeke’s throat tightened at the thought of facing Patsy, who might have mixed feelings about her stepdaughter but wouldn’t thank him for losing her. And what of Walter Copeland, whose love for Rachel streamed behind him like a banner? No matter what the sheriff told him, Walter wouldn’t be able to hold off until morning. He’d come back out here with Zeke and crawl on his hands and knees if necessary.
Maybe he had that right. God only knew Copeland had more claim to this futile effort—to Rachel herself—than Zeke ever would. Head bowed in defeat, he reached for the horn and cantle of Cholla’s saddle and swung back aboard for the ride home.
From this new vantage, he sucked in a breath and stammered, “Holy shit…” at the bright orbs he saw floating off to his right. Floating, blending, shifting in color, and then separating.
Zeke had seen the area’s mystery lights a number of times during the years he’d lived in the high desert. But he had never seen them in this area nor looming so close, perhaps only two hundred yards away. Close enough to reach, with just a short ride.
As worried as he was for Rachel, the lights beckoned. How many times had he wondered about their origin, wished for a closer look?
The pinto pulled against the lead rope, a nervous nicker telling him she was no fan of the idea. Cholla, too, sidestepped uneasily, rather than moving forward at his rider’s signal.
Give up. Cold and hopeless, the words reverberated in the darkness, pointing him toward the path of least resistance, the path he knew too well. Give up on family, on the hope of clearing his name. Give up on building friendships, on making a real life using this name or any other.
Give up on Rachel Copeland, who, even when right next to him, stood so far out of reach. Giving up is what you’re best at, what you’ve come to know. Standing back and waiting for death to sort it all out, or to bury the problem six feet under.
“Damned if I’m doing that to night,” he said. Because if the strange illumination had drawn him, wasn’t it possible that Rachel, too, might be lured to investigate? With a prayer on his lips, he forced Cholla to move toward lights even more mysterious than the leering of the moon.
One by one, they winked out. First a yellow one, then a pink, then white. A greenish orb was last to go, an orb that vanished with a sound like weeping.
<
br /> Yet the crying lingered, floating in the cold air like the faint plumes from Cholla’s nostrils. Suspended in the starlight until Zeke realized it was human.
“Rachel! Rachel, is that you?”
His heart pounded, but his breath froze as he strained to hear the sobs.
“Zeke. Oh, my God. Zeke. Wh-where are you?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The citizens of Marfa describe the lights as almost sentient in their playfulness, as they frequently recede and disappear when followed. The lights have even, on occasion, been rumored to somehow “communicate” with people lost and stranded on the desert, in a few cases guiding them to safety.
—Professor Elizabeth Farnum, PhD,
from “Curious Customs of the Lone Star State”
Thursday, March 13
Rachel laid her head against Zeke’s back as they rode double, her arms winding around him for both security and warmth. He hadn’t trusted her to ride on her own in her condition, and he’d said something, too, about Candle favoring one foot.
“Keep talking to me,” he urged.
She wanted to close her eyes and savor the low vibration of Zeke’s words, to soak in the rich, deep sound of his voice as her shivering abated.
“Are you with me, Rachel?” he persisted. “I know you’re hurting, but you have to answer.”
“I’m still here.” She squeezed his midsection and found him as solid as a live oak, and just as reassuring in his realness. Heat streaked from her right eye. “I didn’t dream you, did I? You won’t fade like the lights did?”
Fear slashed at her, threatening to spill whatever little calm she’d gathered since what she had first taken for headlights appeared in the darkness.
“Not planning on it,” he assured her. “And pretty soon, we’ll be back at my place. Then we’ll get you cleaned up, and I’ll run you on home.”
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