In Love by Christmas: A Paranormal Romance

by Nathan, Sandy

  Dashiell’s men took off after her, but Dash whistled shrilly. They came back and surrounded him.

  36

  Let’s Play Polo

  “Please help me.” Leroy jumped when Arabella ran up to him and grabbed his hands. Her face was frost white and pinched, her hands like ice sculptures. “Please don’t let him get me. Father told me I had to marry Dash. He’ll kill me.” Breathless, she tried to explain what had been happening at Ballentyne Manor. He looked up to where she’d been sitting. Ten liveried servants grouped around her mother, all on their feet, leaning in Leroy’s direction. They’d be after her in seconds.

  “We’re all going to Spain after the hunt tomorrow. Something terrible is going to happen there … Oh please, I’m so sorry …” She was begging, terrified.

  The half-time was five minutes. In American football, you could put on a whole concert between the halves of the game. Not in polo.

  “Girl, he will never have you.” Leroy grabbed her elbows and looked into her eyes. “I’ve got you.” He pulled her to him, where her terror released. She grabbed Leroy around the waist, sobbing.

  “Oh, Leroy, I’ve been so afraid,” she looked at him, skin blotchy and tear stained, as beautiful as she’d ever been.

  “Arabella, don’t worry. My men are going to take you back to our stable area. They’re going to guard you. We’ll finish this game and then figure out what’s happening. You are not marrying him. He will never hurt you. We’ll sort all this out after the game.” He waved at the huge mansion and the crowds.

  Leroy climbed on his horse and went back to the game. He knew what he had to do. He’d conquered demons when he and Will were in Paris. “Tom, get the TV crews. I want one here,” he pointed, “and one here. Bring in as many as you can get. Tell them to look sharp and they’ll make their careers.”

  If the first three chukkers were rough, these were deadly. Dash’s team did their “attack from both sides” routine again, staying barely within the rules. The umpires seemed disinclined to enforcing the rulebook, or noticing that fouls were being committed by Dash’s team. This time they aimed the one-two punch at Leroy, who was riding a gigantic pinto that had to be mostly draft horse.

  The horse took the blows from the black animals as though they were flies on its flanks. It swatted its tail and kept flying. Dash shot to block Leroy, crossing the line of the ball, the direct line between the ball and the goal. A definite foul.

  “You’ve got to be blind!” Leroy screamed at the referee. “He was across the line of the ball on that play!”

  “This is not America, Mr. Watches. Team captains do not argue with the officials on the field. Free hit for Lord Dashiell’s team, thirty yards from the goal.”

  Leroy and his team backed off so that the goal would be undefended, as specified by the rules.

  Dashiell made the goal. He’d have to be a blind toddler not to.

  The umpires and referee were being coopted by Dashiell and his monsters. Some demonic magic was changing everything while he stood by. The blue team gloated and panted, riding by Leroy and his men. They were two, hard-fought goals ahead. The score was three to five.

  “They aren’t playing by the rules,” Leroy whispered to himself. So why should he? How had he beaten them in Paris? With words. There, he wanted them to go away and not hurt anyone. Now he wanted them to show themselves for what they were and not hurt anyone. He wanted everyone to see.

  In the fifth chukker, Leroy rode a high-strung bay mare, fastest of all of them. A failed racehorse, but a very good polo pony. He rode her in a Pelham bit, holding the double reins from each side of the bit crossed over her withers in his left hand. Clasping his mallet in his right hand, Leroy did a pantomime with that hand, pretending to release his lariat and shake out his loop. He swung his arm around like he was getting ready to throw. The mare didn’t like the unaccustomed movement.

  “Steady, mare. In a moment, you will be able to fly,” he said in his language. The demons were watching from the corners of their eyes as they moved down the field, wondering what Leroy was doing. In his own language, he said, “Stupid demons. You will now show us how stupid you are. Umpires! Referee! You will wake up and see.” He pretend-tossed the loop in the direction of one of the blue team riders, as though hauling him in.

  The demon immediately crossed the line of the ball to go after old Laurie, formerly of the IRA and a damned good polo player, who was steering the ball toward the goal competently. The demon rider was not over the line to bump Laurie; he intended to ram him.

  Laurie saw the black devil coming and let out a ferocious Irish war cry, “Cromadh-abu! Cromadh-abuuuuuuuu!” He spun his animal, which responded with the adroitness of a stock horse. Leroy had taught all the horses on his team how to stop and spin and back like blazes. Laurie charged the approaching rider, keeping his mallet low, not intending to do anything with it, obviously—to everyone, especially the TV crews, which Tom had placed exactly where they needed to be to film the field.

  “You are a stupid demon,” Leroy shouted.

  He did not reckon on how stupid. The blue team rider, grimacing and screaming in some satanic dialect, swung his mallet at Laurie’s head. Dodging the English had undoubtedly sharpened Laurie, who saw what was coming and ducked behind his horse’s neck. The pointed end of the mallet hit the horse squarely in the middle of the forehead, where the mechanical bolt would have landed, had one been employed to put the horse down. The horse dropped stone-fast. Laurie was able to scramble off before the dead horse rolled over on its side and pinned his leg.

  “Oh, ye stinkin’ bastard. Ye killed ma Liam.” Laurie threw himself on his horse as it lay in the field, “Oh, Liam. They killed ye dead. Oh, lad.” Laurie howled in anguish, TV cameras recording. When he saw them, he leapt to his feet, screaming, “Ye saw that, bonnie lads! Make sure every man, woman, and child in the world sees what that,” the phrase he used to describe the demon must have been Gaelic, “did to ma horse. Oh, ma Liam.”

  Leroy’s mare got to use her speed as he raced to Laurie. This was not what he’d hoped the demon would do. And Laurie was distraught. He hugged the older man, blessing him in his language, stroking him, and alleviating his grief. “Liam is in a better place, Laurie. He’ll always be sound with lots to eat.”

  “Really, Leroy?”

  Leroy had his eyes closed, praying. “I see him, Laurie. He’s in a bright pasture, waitin’ for you, Laurie. I see him, true.”

  Leroy stood up and faced the officials. “You did see that foul? If you didn’t, they did,” he pointed to the cameras. “The game’s over. I will not play with those cheating”—an extremely unflattering Native American word. Leroy took the mare’s reins and started off the field when noise erupted.

  His entire Irish and Scottish team, back-ups, and barn staff rushed onto the field, screaming, “Kill the bastards” in Gaelic. Leroy had that in mind, but it wasn’t peaceable, and therefore outside his repertoire.

  Lord Dashiell rode over, not even affecting crocodile tears. “So sorry, old fellow. Polo is dangerous. If you haven’t the heart for it, I’d be glad to accept your admission of defeat.” He swept his arm, indicating the entire castle, its grounds, and Arabella, wherever she was. What he would win.

  “Sir, Leroy, if you wish to stop, we will finish the game,” one of the Scots said.

  Leroy smiled grimly. “No, let’s finish it.” He would destroy Dashiell Pondichury and he would do it on the field with everyone watching.

  First, the knacker had to come, attach chains to the murdered horse’s hocks, and drag poor Liam up a ramp into the bed of a high-walled truck. Laurie cried, but then turned toward the demons with his “Cromadh-abu!” The spectators moaned, but remained where they were, transfixed by the horror of death.

  Leroy rode yet another horse in the fifth chukker, a straight up roan with wild eyes and the heart of a panther. Dodging the black beasts, Leroy drove through, flanked by his men, and made another goal handily. The score was four to
five. The team lagged, but not irremediably.

  “You are stupid demons. You will show us what you are,” Leroy sat his horse between chukkers, half-yelling at Dash and the blue team. He was riding a dangerous horse this last chukker. A good horse, an elegant and beautiful dark bay, but with a fatal vice. Which he hoped she would employ, if the situation arose, which he suspected it would.

  “Stupid demons. You will show us what you are. You will not hurt anyone or any horses. You will create your own downfall by your vicious greed.”

  Leroy had the ball and was driving it toward the goal, square and true. Dashiell and one of his riders came up on him from the rear, one on each side, getting ready to execute their double bumping maneuver. Their horses moved at preternatural speed, faster than normal horses could move. They closed the ground inexorably. Leroy’s mare was flat out.

  The black demons rode up on each side of him, planning what? Murder? The mare grew increasingly nervous. Her ears flicked and she rolled her eyes. Sweat flew from her. The closer the demons got, the greater her distress. The instant the horse on her left moved in to bump her, she did exactly what Leroy thought she would. He just didn’t know how hard she’d do it.

  She leapt to the right in a way only the most athletic horse could, executing a jump that a stadium jumper would be hard-pressed to match. She vaulted up and to the right, rearing high and leaping far.

  She landed on top of Dash and his horse. Her front hooves struck Dashiell’s stallion’s head immediately behind the ears. That spot, the poll, is the most sensitive part of the horse. It is the kill spot. Carnivores know it from birth. They instinctively bite right behind the skull, crushing the brain stem and spinal cord and producing instant death. When the mare’s steel-shod hooves struck its poll, Dash’s devil-horse dropped stone dead.

  Blood rushed from the stallion, creating a vile-smelling stench. The mare’s eyes seemed to double in size as greater terror took her. She thrashed and attempted to leap again and again, but she was unable to raise her belly off of Dash and the dead stud to jump free.

  She panicked, repeatedly leaping and rolling from side to side, pulling her hind feet under her, trying to get enough traction for one great leap. Leroy was able to jump free early in her struggle. He flipped her reins over her head and attempted to calm her.

  “Quiet, mare, calm down. You are all right.” He sang in his language, but it did no good. Dash’s eyes were wide open; he struggled to extract himself to no avail. Dash made guttural sounds of distress, but didn’t scream in pain. Every time she moved, her body crushed Pondichury into the dead stallion.

  Leroy had found out during his two-month-long training session in Scotland that the reason this fine mare had been so cheap was that two riders had bumped her and thrown her to the ground in a rough game years before. He thought he’d healed her; but her reaction had been much more intense than what he’d wanted.

  “Quiet mare, be still,” he said over and over. He tried to calm her and get her off of Dash, but he couldn’t. The Lord remained underneath the mare, taking blow after blow from her belly and legs. He should have been crushed; the mare weighed over a thousand pounds, plenty to kill a fallen rider.

  Finally, the horse heaved herself onto her feet and jumped hard, shoving with all her strength to clear the dead horse and Dash. Her front end provided most of the initial lift, but her rear end propelled her over the downed stud. Her rear hooves landed just on the other side of his corpse.

  Dash’s skull crunched like a raw coconut when her left rear hoof settled on it. Everyone heard it. The cameras rushed in, as did much of the crowd. Everyone (except for some of the aristocrats who thought it in bad taste) had been filming the match all day.

  Leroy turned to Dash and tried to pull his body away. He screamed for help from the crowd. An ambulance. Doctors. Someone to save Lord Dashiell. He couldn’t heal him; Dashiell wasn’t human.

  The dark blue ambulance drove onto the field, along with the knacker’s truck, again. All those of strong stomach saw it. The dead horse lay there, black with a satiny, shiny coat ruffled by the wind. As the knacker set up his chains around the animal’s hocks, the skin of the horse’s face thinned and then fell away, revealing a complex electronic mechanism attached to metal pieces matching a horse’s anatomy. The flesh quickly pulled from the robot’s bones. It did have bones, long bones of metal, perhaps stainless steel.

  A glass eye rolled in its metallic socket, revealing gears and electronic sparks inside. The once-beautiful animal, now a shiny, complex, and chillingly beautiful metal sculpture, rolled up on its breastbone, stuck its front legs in front of it, and heaved itself erect. Blood flowed from its trailing veins, along with scraps of flesh that hadn’t fallen entirely away. Blood, streaming intestines, metal rods, and electronic flashes. A horse from a horror movie. The crowd panicked, clawing its way from the field. Only the TV crews stood their ground. This was a career maker, as that chap who let them on the field had said.

  The metal head turned, and the thing opened its mouth. A roaring sound filled the field. The other “horses” responded. Their riders had already piled off and stood gaping. The animal—or something—trotted toward its mates. They nickered, ghoulish imitations of horse sounds. As one, they ran for the main road faster than Maseratis.

  After filming their retreat, the cameras turned back to Dash, who looked as bad as a human being could, or at least his head did. Leroy stood by in anguish; he had not wanted him killed, just revealed.

  The white mush, bone fragments, and blood that were his brain and broken skull quickly reformed, and black, scaled skin covered his wounds. His human flesh dropped away as the horse’s artificial hair and hide had, revealing Dashiell Pondichury, the ninth Duke of Lancature, in his true form: a scaled demon, venom dripping from his jagged teeth, erect scales marching down his back to the end of his barbed tail. He saw Leroy and turned toward him, claws extending. Then he saw all the cameras. Crews from more stations had been arriving. All the big networks were there.

  Enzo would not like this exposure.

  “Leave here,” Leroy said in his language. “Leave here and take all your spells and deviltry with you. Get away from me, Evil One!” He used a few more sacred words to drive away the satanic. Also to seal the images in the cameras permanently, so that Enzo Donatore couldn’t corrupt them. So that the world could see.

  Calling to his teammates in his rasping language, which replicated the sounds of the stones in the bowels of the earth grating, Dashiell headed for the treed park beyond the field, his “men” followed him. Tails and scales burst through their polo garb. They were exposed, and filmed by all the media in Britain.

  Leroy was exhausted and at wits end. Crowds from the mansion were heading across the playing field, while the more timid guests ran for their cars. Camera teams and announcers with microphones approached. His team stood on the edge of the sward close to the barns.

  “Great One, Ancestors, tell me what to do. I pray to you. What do I do now?” He raised his hands toward the heavens. The winter weather had been holding back for months so that Leroy could complete his errand in Switzerland for Will and get to Ballentyne Manor for his day of polo. Clouds had piled up around the estate as if waiting for a command. Leroy’s prayer was that command.

  The deluge was fast and utter. Nothing could describe it: the heavens opened and all the rain that existed fell. All the ladies in their stupid hats, the local gentry, including the owner of the new upscale market with the escalator from the first to second floor “just like in California,” and everyone else who did not belong on the estate ran like chickens pursued by the most vicious weasel ever to draw breath.

  The rain was part of their desire to vacate Ballentyne Manor, but the police cars blocking the drive told them that it was really time to leave. Officers of the law and crowd of ominous men in black raincoats poured out of their vehicles toward the mansion. The news people stayed where they were, putting longer lenses on their cameras.

&n
bsp; What was left was Leroy, the Ballentyne family, most of their original servants, a whole bunch of Irish and Scottish polo players, and a small herd of horses of dubious merit, who could really kick butt like crazy. Or at least play polo.

  And more kinds of cops than any of them knew existed.

  37

  Sorting Things Out

  Leroy took control. He turned to his team, “Put the horses away an’ see ‘em fed. Then come to the house. I’ll need you. Tom, bring Arabella out. Let’s go back.”

  Arabella clung to him and Tom walked on her other side. They threaded their way along paths that were mostly puddles, soon to be small lakes. Rain whipped them and made talking hard.

  “You’re not going anywhere, ‘Bella. You didn’t see what happened when you were hidden in the barn, but Dash and his team, even the horses, showed themselves for the monsters they are. Let’s go. Some things need sorting.”

  He put his arm around her and led her toward the house through the downpour. An umbrella’d crowd was milling around the rear patio—the press. Dozens of microphones were shoved in their faces, rain and all.

  “What were those horses, Mr. Watches? Robots?”

  “Did you know they were robots?”

  “Lord Dashiell …” The rain slashed at them, almost blowing them over.

  “Why is Interpol here? That’s their van …”

  “You better get out of the rain before you electrocute yourselves,” Leroy said. “Let us through. Lady Arabella needs to get inside.”

  Another crowd was inside, milling around the vast entry hall. He shoved his way through a troop of serious men and women in black raincoats. Behind them, toward the servants’ stairs to the kitchen, the former staff of Ballentyne Manor clustered, goggle-eyed. Leroy decided to dodge the raincoats and get Arabella settled. He headed for the servants.