Black dawn (8 page)

She ran into the forest, dragging Cady with her. They had to find a place to hide--underbrush or
something. Maybe they could climb a tree....

But one look at Cady and she realized how stupid
that
idea was. The smooth skin of the girl's face
was clammy and luminous with sweat, her eyes
were half shut, and her chest was heaving.

At least Jeanne and P.J. got away, Maggie
thought.

Just then there was a crashing behind
her,
and a voice cursing. Maggie threw another glance back
and found herself staring at a man's figure in the
mist.

A scary man.
The mist swirling behind him made
him look eerie, supernatural, but it was more than
that. He was
huge,
with shoulders
as
broad
as a two-by-four, a massive chest, and heavily muscled
arms. His waist was surprisingly narrow. His face
was cruel.

"Gavin!
I've got two of them!" he shouted.
Maggie didn't wait to hear more. She took off
like a black-tailed deer.

And for a long time after that it was just a night
mare of running and being chased, stopping sometimes when she couldn't hold Cady up anymore, looking for places to hide. At one point, she and
Cady were pressed together inside a hollow tree,
trying desperately to get their breath back without
making a sound, when their pursuers passed right
by them. Maggie heard the crunch and
squish
of
footsteps on ferns and started praying. She could
feel Cady's heart beating hard, shaking them
both,
she realized that Cady's lips were moving soundlessly.

Maybe she's praying, too, Maggie thought,
t, and
applied her eye to a crack in the tree.

There were two people there, horribly close, just
a few feet away. One was the man she'd seen before

he
was doing something bizarre, something
that sent chills up her spine. He was turning his face this way and that with his eyes shut, his head twisting on a surprisingly long and supple neck.

As if
he's
smelling
us out, Maggie thought, horrified.

Eyes still shut, the man said, "Do you sense anything?"

"No. I can't feel them at all. And I can't see them,
with these trees for cover." It was a younger man
who spoke, a boy really. He must be Gavin, Maggie
thought. Gavin had dark blond hair, a thin nose,
a sharp chin. His voice was impatient.

"I can't feel them either," the big man said flatly,
refusing to be hurried. "And that's strange. They
can't have gotten too far away. They must be
blocking us."

"I don't care what they're doing," Gavin said.
"We'd better get them back fast. It's not like they
were ordinary slaves. If we
don t
deliver that maiden we're dead.
You're
dead,
Bern
."

Maiden?
Maggie thought. I guess in a place
where they have slaves it's not weird to talk about
maidens. But which girl does he mean? Not me;
I'm not important.

"We'll get her back,"
Bern
was saying.

"We'd better," Gavin said viciously. "Or I'm going
to tell
her
that it was your fault. We were supposed
to make sure this didn't happen."

"It hasn't happened yet,"
Bern
said. He turned on
his heel and walked into the mist. Gavin stared
after him for a moment, and then followed.

Maggie let out her breath. She realized that Cady's lips had stopped moving.

"Let's go," she whispered, and took off in the op
posite direction to the one the men had gone.

Then there was a time of endless running and
pausing and listening and hiding. The forest was a
terrible place. Around them was eerie twilight,
made even spookier by the mist that lay in hollows
and crept over fallen trees. Maggie felt as if she were in some awful fairy tale. The only good thing
was that the dampness softened their footsteps,
making it hard to track them.

But it was so quiet. No ravens, no gray jays. No deer.
Just the mist and the trees, going on forever.
And then it ended.

Maggie and Cady suddenly burst out into an-
_.
other
meadow. Maggie gave
a frantic glance
around, looking for shelter.
Nothing.
The mist was thinner
here,
she could see that there were no trees
ahead, only an outcrop of rocks.

Maybe we should double back....

But the voices were shouting in the forest be
hind them.

Above the rocks was a barren ledge. It looked
like the end of a path, winding the other way down the mountain.

If we could get there, we'd be safe, Maggie
thought. We could be around the corner in a minute, and out of sight.

Dragging Cady, she headed for the rocks. They
didn't belong here; they were huge granite boulders
deposited by some ancient glacier. Maggie clambered up the side of one easily,
then
leaned down.

"Give me your hand," she said rapidly. "There s
a path up above us, but we've got to climb a little."

Cady looked at her.

Or-not looked, Maggie supposed. But she turned her face toward Maggie, and once again Maggie had the odd feeling that those blind eyes
could somehow see better than most people's.

"You should leave me," Cady said.

"Don't be stupid," Maggie said. "Hurry up, give
me your hand."

Cady shook her head. "You go," she said quietly.
She seemed completely rational-and absolutely
exhausted. She hadn't lost the tranquility which
had infused her from the beginning, but now it
seemed mixed with a gentle resignation. Her
fine
boned
face was drawn with weariness. "
I`ll
just
slow you down. And if I stay here, you'll have more
time to get away."

"I'm not going to leave you!" Maggie snapped.
"Come on!"

Arcadia
remained for just a second, her face
turned up to Maggie's, then her clear and luminous
brown eyes filled. Her expression was one of inex
pressible tenderness. Then she shook her head
slightly and grabbed Maggie's hand-very accurately.

Maggie didn't waste.
time
. She climbed as fast
as
she could, pulling Cady, rapping out breathless
instructions. But the delay had cost them. She could hear the men getting nearer.

And when she reached the far end of the pile of
boulders she saw something that sent shock waves
through her system.

She was looking up a barren cliff face. There was
no connection from the rocks to the ledge above.
And below her, the hillside dropped off steeply, a
hundred feet down into a gorge.

She'd led Cady right into a trap.

There was nowhere else to go.

CHAPTER 7

M
aggie could have made it to the path
above
if
she'd been by herself. It was an easy climb, third
level at most. But she wasn't alone. And there was
no way to guide
Arcadia
up a cliff like that.

No time to double back to the forest, either.

They're going to get us, Maggie realized.

"Get down," she whispered to Cady. There was
a
hollow at the base of the boulder pile. It would
only hold one of them, but at least it was shelter.

Even as she shoved Cady down into it, she heard
a shout from the edge of the forest.

Maggie pressed flat against the rock. It was slip
pery with moss and lichen and she felt
as
exposed
as a lizard on a wall. All she could do was hang on
and listen to the sounds of two men getting closer
and closer.

And closer, until Maggie could hear harsh
breathing on the other side of the boulders.

"It's a dead end-" Gavin's young voice began.

"No. They're here." And that, of course, was
Bern
.

And then there was the most horrible sound in
the world.
The grunts of somebody climbing up
rock.

We're caught.

Maggie looked around desperately for a weapon.

To her own amazement, she found one, lying
there as if it had been left especially for her. A dried branch wedged in between the rocks above
her. Maggie reached for it, her heart beating fast.
It was heavier than it looked-the climate must be
too wet here for anything to really dry out.

And the rocks are wet, too.
Wet and slippery.
And there's one good thing about this place-they'll
have to come at us one at a time. Maybe I can push
them off, one by one.

"Stay put," she whispered to Cady, trying to make
her breath last to the end of that short sentence.
"I've got an idea."

Cady looked beyond exhaustion.
Her beautiful
face was strained, her arms and legs were shaken
by a fine trembling, and she was breathing in silent
shudders. Her hair had come loose in a dark cur
tain around her shoulders.

Maggie turned back, her heart beating in her throat and her fingertips, and watched the top of the boulders.

But when what she was watching for actually came, she felt a terrible jolt,
as
if it were completely
unexpected. She couldn't believe that she was
seeing the close-cropped top of a man's head, then the forehead, then the cruel face.
Bern
. He was
climbing like a spider, pulling himself by his fin
gertips. His huge shoulders appeared, then his bar
rel chest.

And he was looking right at Maggie. His eyes met
hers, and his lips curved in a smile.

Adrenaline washed over Maggie. She felt almost disengaged from her body, as if she might float
away from it. But she didn't faint. She stayed mo
tionless as the terror buzzed through her like elec
tricity-and she tightened her grip on the stick.

Bern
kept smiling, but his eyes were dark and
expressionless. As she looked into them, Maggie
had no sense of connecting to another mind like
hers.

He's not human. He's
. . . something else, a dis
tant part of her mind said with absolute conviction.

And then one of his legs came up, bulging with
muscle under the jeans, and then he was pulling
himself to stand, looming over her, towering like
a mountain.

Maggie braced herself, gripping the stick. "Stay away from us."

"You've caused me a lot of trouble already,"
Bern
said. "Now I'm going to show you something."

There was a little noise behind her. She glanced
back in alarm and saw that it was Cady, trying to
get up.

"Don't," Maggie said sharply. Cady couldn't, any
way. After a moment of trying to pull
herself
out
of the hollow, she slumped down again, eyes shut.

Maggie turned back to see
Bern
lunging at her.

She thrust the stick out. It was completely in
stinctive. She didn't go for his head or his midsec
tion; she jabbed at a fist-sized pit near his feet,
turning the stick into a barrier to trip him.

It almost worked.

Bern
's foot caught underneath it and his lunge became uncontrolled. Maggie saw him start to un
balance. But he wasn't the huge muscle-bound ape
he looked like. In an instant he was recovering, throwing his weight sideways,
jamming
a foot to
arrest his fall.

Maggie tried to get the stick
unwedged
, to use it
again, but
Bern
was
fast.
He wrenched it out of her
hand, leaving splinters in her palm. Then he threw
it overhand, like a lance. Maggie heard it hit the ledge behind her with explosive force.

She tried to dodge, but it was already too late.
Bern
's big hand flashed forward, and then he had
her.

He was holding her by both arms, looming over
her.

"You trying to mess with me?" he asked in disbe
lief.
"With
me?
Take a look at this."

His eyes weren't cold and emotionless now.
Anger was streaming from him like the strong, hot.
scent
of an animal. And
then
...

He changed.

It was like nothing Maggie had ever seen. She was staring at his face, trying to look defiant, when
the features seemed to ripple. The coarse dark hair on his head
moved,
waves of it spreading down
his face like fungus growing across a log. Maggie's
stomach lurched in horror and she was afraid she
was going to be sick, but she couldn't stop looking.

His eyes got smaller, the brown irises flowing out
to cover the white. His nose and mouth thrust for
ward and his chin collapsed. Two rounded ears un
curled like awful flowers on top of his head. And
when Maggie was able to drag her eyes from his
face, she saw that his body had re-formed into a
shapeless, hulking lump. His broad shoulders were
gone, his waist was gone,
his
long legs bulging with
muscle were squat little appendages close to the ground.

He was still holding Maggie tightly, but not with
hands. With coarse paws that had claws on the ends and that were unbelievably strong. He wasn't a person at all anymore, but something huge and
vaguely person-shaped. He was a black bear, and
his shiny little pig-eyes stared into hers with animal
enjoyment. He had a musky feral smell that got into Maggie's throat and made her gag.

I just saw a
shapeshifter
shift shape, Maggie
thought with an astonishment that seemed dim and
faraway. She was sorry she'd doubted Jeanne.

And sorry she'd blown it for Cady-and Miles. Sylvia had been right. She was just an ordinary girl, only maybe extraordinarily stupid.

Down on the lower boulders, Gavin was laughing
maliciously, watching as if this were a football
game.

The bear opened his mouth, showing ivory-white
teeth, darker at the roots, and lots of saliva. Maggie
saw a string of it glisten on the hair of his jowl.
She felt the paws flex on her arms, scooping her
closer, and then

Lightning hit.

That was what it looked like.
A flash that blinded
her,
as bright as
the sun, but blue.
It crackled in
front of her eyes, seeming to fork again and again,
splitting and rejoining the main body of its energy.
It seemed alive.

It was electrocuting the bear.