Lauren is dead.
Pat's lips drew taut, her hands clenched into fists, "I didn't kill her and you know it."
You didn't keep her out of the boat.
She was stunned, gaping, could not marshal the imprecations that swarmed round her tongue. And when Oliver raised his hand she could only stare at him stupidly, suddenly throwing up her own when he tossed the statuette at her. She caught it, and held it, a finger tracing its snout before she realized the others had turned around to run. Her scream, then, was ragged with the taste of blood in her mouth, but she hadn't taken two steps before the breeze became a wind that turned the air red and coated the stone grizzly in shimmering blood.
She ran.
Thought was denied her when fear clawed onto her back and gripped hard; thought was denied her when she saw over her shoulder the snow spill from the banks, from the branches, from the forest. Saw the whirling, the spinning, felt the pressure and the cold, saw the glimpses of fangs, of claws, of an eye that was searching.
Taller now, than she was, coasting effortlessly along the road, gathering snow no longer white while branches crashed into splinters.
And the bellowing, the challenge, that almost stopped her in her tracks.
She wasn't sure; she might have screamed.
She ran, that's all she knew, her eyes on the two figures racing past the twin pillars and cutting sharply to the left.
Bellowing. Screaming. A shadow growing in front, swallowing her own as the snow lifted to blind her. It stung, it drew welts, it cascaded down her throat until she finally closed her mouth. Refusing to look around. Arms pumping, legs reaching, the blood wind and her own wind freezing the tears on her eyelids, on her cheeks, on her lips.
She tripped.
Just as she reached the campus entrance what she thought was a shadow was a fallen branch on the road. It snagged her ankles, and she fell forward, rolling slightly to land on her shoulder so she could get to her feet again without losing much momentum. Turning and looking at last at the red-beast. Striding down the road in the midst of its white dervish, a paw thrashing out of the whirling, a snapping at the air, and eyes that were golden in spite of all the red.
An engine snapped her head around.
Abbey was behind the wheel of Oliver's pickup, and Oliver was yanking at the passenger door handle.
Thought returned, and Pat ran. Instinct more than planning, as the small truck pulled away slowly and she realized she was still carrying the statuette. With one sweep of her arm she brought it down on Oliver's nape, heard him shriek, heard the statuette land beside him, heard herself grunt as she flung herself at the vehicle and grabbed hold of the tailgate.
She was dragged for several yards before she was able to pull herself to the bed, sprawled and rolled over just as the red-beast cleared the pillars.
Don't look, she pleaded, but her head would not turn.
It broke onto Chancellor Avenue in a white-and-red maelstrom that whipped branches and twigs and stones from its center. An arm reached out, a paw opened with black claws, and Oliver was lifted fifteen feet into the air. Screaming. She could hear him screaming over the roar of the engine, over the bellowing of the beast. And her eyes would not close when the red jaws exposed teeth, when the teeth caught the moonlight. Screaming. She heard him screaming when the jaws clamped down.
And the red-beast was gone.
The bloodwind was gone.
A cowboy hat in the road, spinning on its crown.
Chapter 22
Screaming. She could hear him screaming.
Screaming. She could hear herself screaming as Lauren was taken from the water and placed gently on the quay.
She cowered beneath the cab's window, knees drawn to her chest, eyes still open, the wind taking the muffler from her hair and looping it down over her chest. Her hands were fists pressed hard under her chin, her elbows squeezing tightly against her ribs.
And the cold in two assaults: from the air that sucked the breath from her lungs; from within, where a sheath of dark ice had settled around her heart.
Silly thoughts: Ford Danvers twirling his mustache like a vintage Edison villain; Greg stomping around his classroom studio searching for the paintbrush lodged behind one ear; Harriet and Ben appearing one day at her office door, arm in arm, dressed (as Ben put it) to the nines for a night at a college dance; her station wagon in need of a wash and a waxing; the canopy over her bed sagging in its frame; the workroom wanting dusting; Kelly swooning and laughing over a man she'd just met; Linc arguing with Stephen over the value of chianti, while Janice stood to one side and raped the pianist with her eyes.
Silly thoughts that swamped her while her tears turned to ice; silly thoughts that prevented her from remembering what she'd seen until the pickup began to slow, the jarring of the small truck subsiding and bringing back the world.
And once the images had faded, thought linked again with coherence, she knew how she would die if the red-beast came again.
She slid, then, toward the low sidewall as the pickup swerved as close to the verge as the plow-born snow banks would permit and maneuvered clumsily into a wide U-turn. Pat crouched even lower, her chin on her knees, watching the trees swing until Abbey was headed back toward the college.
The statuette. Pat knew it had to be retrieved, though she didn't know if Abbey had seen what had happened to Oliver. There was no time to decide, however; Abbey streaked to the entrance and braked so hard, Pat was thrown against the cab's rear wall before she could grab hold. The door swung open, and Abbey stepped cautiously to the road.
Pat leapt.
She had gathered her legs under her as she crept toward the side, and just as Abbey passed her she flung herself over and grabbed the woman's neck. They went down silently, shoulders and hips thudding hard on the blacktop, legs kicking and free arms thrashing. A grunt, a curse, and an elbow rammed into Pat's stomach. The topcoat absorbed most of the blow, but her grip loosened nevertheless and she found herself flung to one side viciously, a knee slamming into a hubcap and sending lingering streamers of sparkling fire up toward her spine. She reached out desperately and took hold of Abbey's ankle, slowing her until Pat could scramble to her knees and yank. Abbey fell, hands taking the spill while her foot slipped from Pat's fingers, lashed back toward her face.
They stood, Pat leaning against the wheel well and gulping for air, Abbey swaying by the tailgate, her hair dark with perspiration and plastered like fissures across her forehead.
"Abbey." A gasp. "It's no good."
Abbey smiled. Slowly.
"You're alone. Oliver's dead."
Abbey laughed. Silently. And pulled from her coat pocket the marble red-beast grizzly.
Pat's mouth worked mutely, her throat constricted and her head shaking disbelief. Then she turned toward the school entrance and saw the other image on the blacktop, caught just at the reach of the pickup's headlamps. When she looked back, Abbey was caressing the grizzly's cocked head, her face in the glow of the taillights a demonic, dreamlike red.
And Pat understood. An intuitive leap based on half-formed impressions that suddenly, here on the road at a time long past midnight, coalesced like a kaleidoscope finally making sense.
Oliver was wrong in part of his assumption: not all that was inanimate had the life force he'd assumed. And she'd been wrong, too, in thinking the same—the two blocks she'd found in the quarry were not identical save in texture and color, so what Oliver had been carrying was not the red-beast at all. Abbey had kept it, and Abbey had been the one to slip into the apartment to gather up the pieces chipped off the statuette. Oliver had been a dupe, and Pat had almost fallen into a similar trap.
Abbey moved, then. Had been moving so slowly while Pat was thinking that she hadn't noticed it, until the woman had already passed her and was running for the image lying on the road. Pat broke into a sprint and threw herself on Abbey's back, spilling them both out of the reach of the headlamps' thrust.
Almost unheard: the
sound of stone rolling across the blacktop.
Heard all too well: the sound of Abbey's forehead slamming hard against the road.
But Pat would not relent even though she felt the woman slump into a temporary daze. She struck out with her fists, struggled to find an effective way to use her boots, finally rolled out of the way and lunged frantically for the grizzly. Had it and rose, passing a bruised and bleeding hand wearily over her eyes, then holding the statuette suddenly over her head when Abbey pushed herself to her haunches.
No! was a command and a plea, hands held out, fingers spread, face contorted into something feral and defeated.
Pat hesitated, but only because the sight was so repellent. Then she spun around and slammed the grizzly against the road, once, twice, grunting satisfaction when the arms split off, the teeth shattered, the pedestal cracked as she pounded it mercilessly, furiously, until all she held in her hand was the grizzly's midsection. A moment for a breath, and she stamped on every piece she could find, crushing some into dust, kicking others into the snow bank. Panting, blinking perspiration from her eyes, licking at her lips like, she knew, an animal savaging its prey.
Turning. Glaring. Reaching down and picking up Homer and holding it to her chest.
Abbey had sagged, all fight drained and all resemblance to the woman Pat had once known lost in the strain that produced acid lines about her eyes and skull-like shadows to her cheeks. She lifted her head after several seconds' dry weeping, searching the branches and cloudy night sky for something Pat knew with a warm rush could no longer be conjured.
She laughed once and shortly, and the sound startled her into a realization that from the moment Oliver had stopped his screaming the next few minutes had been spent in silence. She had spoken, but she hadn't heard herself; the pickup's engine still idled, but its rumbling passed unnoticed.
And unnoticed until now were the headlamps jouncing in the distance, growing and flaring brighter, pinning Abbey to the road and draining life from her eyes.
Pat staggered but kept her place. She felt no joy when the vehicle slowed and pulled up behind the truck, felt no elation when a sudden whirling red broke over the patrol car's roof. She only watched as Wes jumped out with handgun drawn, watched as Greg joined him to stare at Abbey, kneeling.
And then there was Ben, abruptly at her side with his hand deep in his pocket and his face ashamedly averted.
"I couldn't do it," he muttered. "I ran all the way into town."
Greg was before her as Ben shambled away, holding her arms and searching her face intently with a gaze that finally forced her to look up.
Empty. She knew her eyes were empty when Greg gnawed on his lower lip and turned back to Wes. But the policeman was handcuffing Abbey and pulling her gently to her feet. Greg told him he would bring Pat in with the truck, said nothing as Ben passed them, Oliver's hat dangling from his hand. Wes did not protest; he only nodded curtly.
And once they were alone he slipped his arm around her waist and led her to the truck. Opened the door. Helped her in. Engaged the gears and gripped the wheel.
"Ben found me home," he said, glancing sideways, looking front. "I left early." He raced the engine. "I wanted to make sure it was . . . I had to think, Pat. In spite of everything you showed me, I had to think."
"Yes," she said, looking down to Homer and stroking absently his head.
"We thought you'd be at her place. You weren't. We went upstairs and looked around, and Ben found . . . he found Kelly there, Pat."
She closed her eyes tightly.
"Abbey was apparently going to try to pin a murder on you, as well. Kelly was—hell!"
Pat knew. The bed's canopy had been sagging.
Then Greg shifted and stared at the statuette in her arms. "Are you sure that's the right one?"
It took a long time, a great effort, before Pat could say, "No." A longer time before Greg wrenched the truck around and they drove back to the village. In silence. Each alone. Greg worrying at a knuckle between his teeth while Pat remembered the afternoon she had seen Homer in the flesh, the care she'd used to bring him to her home, the mornings she'd grinned at him, the evenings she'd made wishes. And it was less the horrors she had faced that finally brought quiet tears than it was the death of her talisman, the snatching away of her crutch.
A hand on her knee, and she was quick to cover it with her own.
"You'll be all right, Pat."
She wondered, though she supposed she would. But in all of those dumb movies they never showed her the after—like how she would face each rising of the wind, how she would drive Oliver's screams from her sleep, how she would explain to Greg that she didn't want him to touch her.
She would be all right, but she would be different. And with half a lifetime to go, she wondered if she could stand it.
Then the thought formed, only a vague impression while she'd been watching Wes take the woman away. "Greg," she said.
"Hey, you feel up to it?" He took his eyes from the road and watched her, slowed then when a car turned out of Centre Street and gave him the benefit of a horn. He parked in front of the police station and put a hand to the back of her neck. "We can always tell him—you should go to the hospital, you know, for a checkup or something."
"No," she said, bringing Homer's head to her cheek. "I'm okay. I'm not hurt." She stared at the double doors, at the blocks of marble on the facade. "It's Abbey."
"You're really not going to tell him about—what did you call it, the bloodwind?"
"No," she said. "I just . . . Greg, if she can do it once, she can do it again."
"She'll be in prison for murder, Pat. For the rest of her life."
She turned to him suddenly, Homer slipping from her grasp and sliding to the floorboard between her feet. "She'll have a lawyer, Greg, a good one. She's not stupid; she knows. She'll be jailed, I know that, but sooner or later she's going to get out. One way or another she's going to get out."
Greg could not meet her stare. Instead, he waved off her fears with an insincere half-smile and opened the door, and as he passed in front of the hood, now in the light, now in the dark, she knew what she'd be doing for the rest of her life—
Working at the college, perhaps loving Greg again, making amends with her parents and trying to keep Harriet on course; fighting with Danvers, watching Stephen and Janice marry, doing her own work better and perhaps achieving another level of success; fixing her car, repainting the apartment, adopting a child to prove she hadn't really lost Lauren.
More than she could handle; enough to bring her ease.
Until the sun set.
Then she would turn out the lights and stand at the window, stand at the window and listen for the wind.
Every night, every year. Standing. And listening. While Abbey was in prison, perfecting her hate.
The Bloodwind - An Oxrun Station Novel (Oxrun Station Novels) Page 21
