There’s something out there.
Some
one.
Chapter 3:
Virago
I make my way across the room to the sliding glass door and stand, open mouthed and staring into the abysmal darkness of the out-of-doors.
I thought I saw…
Nope.
Absolutely not.
I could not have
possibly
seen what I thought I saw.
I blink, swallow, fiddle with the ends of my robe’s belt.
But I thought…
Another flash of lightning.
My breath catches in my throat.
I flip up the lock of the door, and suddenly I’ve pulled the door open, the sash in my hand.
And before I know it, I’ve moved, unthinking, out onto the back porch, and down the three steps and I’m standing on my soaking lawn as the rain roars down around me, beating against me like the crashing wave of a tsunami.
The sound of metal against metal clashes out.
I see a spark in the darkness as I run across the grass, angling toward the back of my yard.
“Stand and fight me, bastard of darkness!”
This makes me stop, makes me skid to a halt.
It was a woman’s strong voice, ringing in a bellow, rising loudly around me.
Another bolt of lightning hits a nearby tree, or it must have hit something nearby, even though I didn’t see the bolt connect.
Because the crash and sparks that follow almost deafen and blind me.
But as I stand there, rubbing at my eyes, the rain pouring around me, I see something move in the backyard again.
What I thought I’d only imagined.
What can’t possibly be there.
What can’t possibly
exist.
It’s as tall as my house is my first thought, an abstract thought that slowly prostrates itself in my head and dies as the fear takes over, the fear that rises in me until it seems that all I am is fear.
Because whatever that thing is, it’s
as tall as my house
, and it’s dark, and it’s enormous, and I think those are
teeth
in a gigantic
mouth
, and if those
are
teeth, then they’re as long as my arm, and the mouth is as big as my
car
, and
what the hell am I staring at
as it rears up like some strangely misshapen dinosaur.
I’m staring at something that I
know
doesn’t exist, but at the same time…I’m
staring
at it.
And it’s then that I notice the person-sized shape at its feet, and thanks to another dangerously close lightning strike, I see the person-sized shape raise something that if I did not think that I was absolutely dreaming, right in this moment, I would say it was…well.
A sword.
“
Fight
me!” comes the woman’s voice again, demanding and absolute as she brandishes the sword overhead, pointing it at the sky.
But the lightning flickers and is gone, and there’s suddenly too much darkness to see anything.
But I can
hear
everything.
I can
hear
the sound of metal against metal, the clanging, the hot hiss that sounded a lot like the air being punched out of a tire.
There’s the roaring silence of rainfall and nothing else besides for a long moment, as my skin crawls, and I try desperately to see something—anything—in my dark backyard.
That’s when I hear that sound again, the sound that first brought me to the door, the bellow/scream/growl/hiss that really does sound like the cross of a tyrannosaurus rex (if Jurassic Park movies actually got that sound right) and a tiger, and it rises all around me, that terrible, nightmarish scream, and then there’s a
crunch
, and a slithery
shushing
that makes my entire body shudder involuntarily…
And then the silence of the pouring rain.
More lightning.
The…whatever-it-was is gone.
There’s nothing in my backyard now but that person-sized shape, and it’s no longer standing—it’s kneeling, crumpled.
Pure instinct takes over, makes me put one foot in front of the other, and I’m running the rest of the way across the yard.
If this is a dream, it’s a very real one as I draw closer, because she looks up, this woman who’s crumpled on my lawn, and she says with a strong voice that shakes only a little, and only at the end:
“M’lady, don’t draw closer…the beast could still be about, and it’s very dangerous…”
She can hardly get out that last word as she uses her sword—
oh, my God, she has a sword
—to try and lever herself into a standing position, but her hand slips on the hilt, and she crumples further, to her hands and knees.
“Please leave, I will give it chase, and I will…”
She coughs a little, and then she’s fallen over, onto her back, sinking down into the mud and grass.
I run the rest of the way and kneel down beside her, sinking down into the mud, too, as I stare down at this woman, my heart beating so quickly, I think it’s going to erupt from me, squeeze out from between my ribs and run around in the grass screaming.
Her eyes are closed, her brow is lined, and her lips are crumpled in a cry of quiet pain, but her eyelids flutter for just a heartbeat, and she gazes up at me.
Her eyes are so blue, they’re like ice.
No.
Stars.
Yes, they’re like stars.
Bright, burning, ice-blue stars.
Everything else disappears in that moment, the pouring rain, the squelching mud that clings to my legs, the fear that was everywhere a handful of heartbeats ago as I stare down into her ice-blue, star-blue eyes.
But then it’s over, and reality comes crashing back as she closes her eyes and folds forward a little, and that’s when I notice that she’s wearing…well, I don’t really know what she’s wearing.
It looks like armor, but it isn’t, really:
it seems to be leather and metal combined together, and it covers her chest and shoulders, and she has a fur capelet and a cloak.
Her sword, still gripped in a white-knuckled hand, is currently blade-deep in the mud.
As I stare down at this woman, this ridiculously beautiful woman wearing armor and wielding a sword in my backyard, I realize that she must be from the Knights of Valor Festival.
Of course she must be.
And there’s something wrong with her—she looks like she’s hurt.
“Are you okay?” I ask, my voice shaking, my teeth chattering together.
The rain’s too cold—it’s early July, but the rain that pelts down around us is as cold as the water I store in a pitcher in my fridge.
She doesn’t respond.
Her eyes are closed, her long lashes resting against tanned cheeks, her full lips parted, and her breath coming in low, harsh pants.
I think she’s unconscious now.
Well, shit.
I don’t know what to do.
They say to
never
move someone who may have sustained trauma, but really, what could she have sustained trauma
from
?
And isn’t this a dream, anyway?
I glance up at the dark sky, squinting my eyes against the rain, but the lightning seems to have stopped for the moment.
But even if there was lightning, what would it illuminate?
What was that…thing?
What did I actually
just see
?
A…monster?
I bite my lip for a moment—I honestly don’t really know what to do—and then pure instincts take over again.
If this is a dream (and if this
is
a dream, it’s the realest dream I’ve ever had in my life), then it won’t matter what happened in it once I wake up.
And if it
isn’t
a dream, I’ve got to do something about her injuries.
Or at least figure out what her injuries are.
I roll the woman over as gently as I can, then try to leverage her upper body into a seated position so that I can lift her arm and put it around my shoulders, help her stand, or at least get her into a position where I can drag her as gently as I can into the house.
But I guess her armor is heavier than I thought, and she’s taller than I thought, too, and she seems to be made of
one pure muscle
since she’s so ridiculously heavy that I can’t even lift her upper body even a little, and the arm I’m trying to get around my shoulder is as hard as a rock.
I grapple with her shoulders for another moment, but because I’m trying to be careful, and because her armor is wet and slippery, she slides right out of my hands, and I catch her head before it lolls back against the soaking mud and grass, my fingers tangling in her soaking ponytail.
Her eyelids flutter, and she opens them a crack, breathing out and groaning, her forehead furrowed.
“M’lady,
please
,” she mutters, her voice low and velvety.
She tries to turn over, push herself to her hands and knees again.
“You need to get inside, so that I can—”
She begins to cough, her voice catching.
She spits something out of her mouth, something dark that, even in the night, I realize is probably blood.
She shudders and takes another ragged breath, shaking her head.
“You’re hurt.
I think.” I mutter to her, again tugging at her arm so that I can loop it around my neck and shoulders.
“I’m trying to get you inside okay?
I want to help you.”
“M’lady…”
She grips my wrists tightly with leather gloved hands, glancing at my face before closing her eyes again, groaning under her breath.
She reaches down, grips her side, taking a deep breath.
“It’s not safe,” she whispers then, her low voice catching.
“Please, go.
I will…I will…”
Her gloved hand comes away from her side, and I grip it tightly.
My hand is slippery against her glove, and I glance down at my fingers.
There’s so much blood.
“It’s okay,” I soothe quietly.
Maybe she has a concussion.
(
Or maybe she’s talking about that thing you refuse to acknowledge you saw,
I think to myself.)
“We’ll get you inside.
My house is right here.
It’s perfectly safe.”
Maybe she doesn’t have enough energy for more words, because she doesn’t say anything else, only breathes heavily as she finally acquiesces, shifting her weight on her knees and leaning heavily on me just then.
I fumble with cold hands, but manage to grip her wrist and pull her one arm over my shoulder (God, she really
is
super muscular—her bicep alone is rock-hard and larger than normal.
Maybe she lifts weights?), and then manage to place my other arm around her waist.
The fabric of her shirt not covered by armor is hot to the touch, and when my grip slips for half a heartbeat, my fingers connect with skin.
Smooth, soft skin that’s so hot it’s burning under my fingertips.
And, as odd as the situation is, as cold as the rain that pours around us…I still find myself blushing when my hand curls over that warm skin.
God, seriously, Holly
, I groan to myself.
What a moment to realize that I have my arm around a gorgeous woman.
I manage to leverage her up to a somewhat standing position, though I’m not even really sure how I did it.
Probably the pure adrenaline that’s pounding through me helped me, because this woman is taller than me, more muscled than I am, and wearing really heavy armor.
I can’t breathe, there’s rain in my eyes, my nose, my mouth, and we stagger toward the back door as I splutter, do my absolute best to try and hold her up.
Shelley choose that exact moment to come
tearing
out of the house through the sliding glass door that I, like an idiot, left
completely open
.
The lightning must have kept her inside until now—it’s really the only thing that frightens my over-exuberant ball of energy.
“Shelley!”
I hiss as she comes bounding joyfully up to us.
“Baby, get back inside
now
,” I mutter, but when has Shelley ever listened to me for a moment in her life?
She continues to spring alongside us, leaping up and trying to sniff the dangling drenched bits of fur from the woman’s capelet.
I drag the woman up the three steps to my back patio, and then across the patio and through the sliding glass door, and—blessedly—we’re out of the rain.
I help her limp to the touch, and then I let her slump down as gently as I can onto its cushions.
I rush back to the sliding glass door and whistle for Shelley, who comes darting inside and shaking, rain water and wet dog smell everywhere as I pull the sliding glass door finally closed.