The Turning Season (33 page)

If Celeste is right. If he actually comes here. The longer the hours stretch out, the more doubtful I am. If he has any sense, he's already a hundred miles away, and we're idiots for spying on some poor old woman and her family out in the middle of an Illinois cornfield.

But Celeste has always been right about Ryan, always been in sync with his moods and his motivations. I was always the one who was just a little out of step.

Around three, Joe makes a cautious trip to the truck to fetch more water and food. Just as he's dropped back to the ground, we hear the low grumble of a car motor drawing nearer. Since we've arrived, we've caught the intermittent sounds of vehicles rattling past on the nearest paved road but none of them have made the turn onto the dirt track—until now. We flatten ourselves on our blankets and try to stop breathing entirely. There's simply nothing else out here. Whoever's arriving has to be headed to this house.

In a moment we spot a rusty blue pickup jouncing down the dirt road; it barely slows as it takes the left turn toward the farmhouse. We can make out two people sitting in the front seat, but we can't tell who they are until the truck stops and they step out.

Terry Foucault and his wife. She heads straight up the steps, a brown paper grocery bag in her arms.

Terry leans against the front fender and pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

“Shit,” Celeste breathes.

Shit, indeed. Terry has made himself into the perfect target.

Only if Ryan is here, of course, bent on murder.

*   *   *

B
ut he is.

T
here's the faintest movement along the side of the house, hardly more than the shadow of trees brushing along the exterior wall with a shift in the wind. I strain, trying to see more clearly. Is it a black cat—Ryan's typical incarnation? I think so. But it might just be a house pet, or a stray, by happenstance out hunting at this location this very afternoon. But Celeste grabs my arm with a grip tight enough to snap a bone, and I nod.
I see him.

While we watch, the stalking cat loses its color, loses its shape, turns pale, turns tan, puffs up, stretches out, and resolves itself into a man. He's naked and barefoot and a little battered looking, but none of that makes him seem helpless or vulnerable. Staying down in a low crouch, he inches closer to the front of the house, his left hand trailing along the join between the poured foundation and the weathered siding. Somewhere in that small seam he's found a storage spot, because suddenly he steps away from the house, and he's got a gun in his hand. A sniper might be able to take Terry out from where Ryan's standing right now, but he's not that accurate of a marksman; he's going to have to step away from the protection of the house to get a clear shot.

Celeste jumps up and screams,
“Terry! Look out!”

I'm also on my feet and I hear Joe clamber up behind me. Terry's head whips around, but he drops to the ground and rolls under his truck like he's been practicing for duck-and-cover his whole life. I see Ryan's face pull into a scowl. He gestures wildly at Celeste, waving her back, and abandons all caution. He runs forward, still in that half-crouch, now bent over to try to aim low enough to shoot under the truck.

Celeste starts down the hill, waving frantically. “Ryan, no! Wait! Listen to me!”

He actually lifts the pistol as if he's going to shoot her, which surprises her so much she comes to a dead halt. I crash into her, and Joe almost knocks both of us off balance. “Stay back!” Ryan calls. “I'm going to kill him!”

Then another voice says, “I wouldn't do that, son, if I were you.”

Everybody freezes.

The world stands so still for so long that I get a perfectly clear, perfectly framed glimpse of everybody gathered at the scene. Terry, rolled into a ball under his truck, hands wrapped protectively over his head.

Two women at the front windows of the house, one my age, one twenty years older, their faces wearing identical looks of fear and horror.

Celeste, a delicate, gorgeous statue of love, pain, and betrayal. Joe, a big, solid sentinel of sanity.

Ryan, poised like an Olympic athlete right before a competition begins. One arm is outstretched and level, pointing the gun toward the truck, one is flung up before him, as if to fend off rivals. He stands on the balls of his feet, ready to leap or run, and every muscle on his naked body stands out in perfect relief.

Sheriff Wilkerson, not twenty yards from Ryan, his own arm outstretched, his own hand holding a gun.

“Put down your weapon, son,” the sheriff says now. His sleepy Southern drawl sounds just as warm, just as soothing, as it always does, but on his face is an unyielding look of absolute conviction. “You don't want to be doing any more killing.”

Ryan hesitates for a second, then swings around and points his gun at the sheriff. Celeste screams and starts down the hill again, but Joe grabs her and hauls her back. We don't need anybody else in the line of fire.

“I got nothing to lose by shooting you,” Ryan says, his voice so low and guttural I almost don't recognize it.

“Right back at you,” the sheriff replies.

For a moment, the tableau holds, no one moving, no one breathing, unless you count Celeste whimpering and squirming against Joe's iron hold. Ryan and Wilkerson are so engrossed in each other they don't seem to notice that Terry has cautiously unfolded himself and is now crawling forward on his belly, trying to make it to the safety of the house. The geometry of the gunfight is in his favor, because the truck is between Ryan and the porch. Once Terry's clear of the chassis, he pushes himself to a crouch and starts a quick, crabbed run for the porch.

But Ryan sees him, or hears him, because he whips around. “Fuck!” he cries, and shoots three times. Terry yelps and claps a hand to his shoulder, but he doesn't seem fatally wounded. Within seconds he's dashed inside the front door, which has been flung open by one of the women inside. Ryan fires again in clear frustration.

There's a report from a different gun, and Ryan howls and drops the pistol, cradling his bleeding hand against his chest and staring at Wilkerson.

“I guess you want to do this the hard way,” the sheriff says. He lifts his arm and sights down the barrel.

And then finally, finally, Ryan shows some sense. He whirls around and he runs. He runs. He stays on level ground but he heads away from the house, along the dirt road, straight toward the broken-down barn and the open land that will take him to freedom.

“Son of a bitch,” the sheriff curses, and takes off after him, holstering his gun.

Ryan's probably ten years younger than Wilkerson, but the sheriff's in good shape and he's not barefoot. There can't be more than fifty feet between them and it's not hard to picture that distance closing fast.

“He's got to change,” Celeste mutters as the three of us pivot to watch the chase unfold. We're still on high enough ground that we can see the whole thing with absolute clarity, although within ten seconds, both the runner and the pursuer are out of sight of the house. “He can't outrun Wilkerson on human feet.”

“Can he change that quickly again after he just transformed?” Joe asks.

“Yes,” we say in unison.

“But it's hard to do in motion,” Celeste adds.

“And he's wounded,” I remind her.

“It's his only chance.”

Do I want him to escape? My longtime friend, my ex-lover, a member of the select secret society that I have belonged to my whole life. I watch him fleeing past the old barn, across the open field, the picture of untamed wild beauty being pursued by implacable civilization. I find my hands clenched and my chest too tight to breathe.
Go, Ryan!
I want to shout.
Go!

So I guess I do. I want him to escape. I want him to live.

He takes three swift strides, then seems to stumble, seems to trip to his knees, and Celeste can't hold back a cry. She wrenches free from Joe and goes tearing down the hill after them. There is nothing we can do but trail behind.

But Ryan hasn't fallen. He's collapsed in on himself, tucked himself in; he seems to somersault across an old furrow of cropland. When he rights himself, he's a fox, red and slender, built for speed. He stretches out in a graceful sprint almost too quick to follow.

“Yes,”
Celeste sobs, coming to a halt and burying her face in her hands. “Oh God, we didn't even get to say good-bye to him.” She lifts her head and whispers, “Run, Ryan, run.”

If Sheriff Wilkerson is dumbfounded at what he just saw, he doesn't stop to bellow out his astonishment. If anything, he seems to pour on the speed until his body is almost a blur. The tan of his uniform glows golden in the sun—but it's not a uniform, it's a coat of fur—and he's doubled over, as if he's fallen to his hands and knees, but he's still running unbelievably fast—

He's changed. The sheriff has shifted shapes.

He's a cheetah, and he is faster than any fox, any animal, any day.

Celeste shrieks and sprints after them, moving in such a pell-mell fashion that she slips and falls, slips and falls, twice before I can catch up with her. I'm terrified she's going to take her own animal shape and go bounding after them, and I grab her arm and start shaking her like a madwoman.

“Don't do it! Don't do it! You can't help him! Stay with me!”

“But he's—but they're— Kara, he'll kill him—”

The sheriff will kill Ryan. The cheetah will kill the fox. I don't know the upper size limit of the kinds of animals cheetahs can bring down, but a fox seems well within their range.

“Maybe you'd better look away,” Joe says suddenly from behind us.

But we can't.

The cheetah is five yards behind the fox—two feet—he's sprung onto the back of the fleeing red animal and he rakes the smaller creature to the ground. Celeste wails, breaks free, and starts running again, just as awkwardly, slipping and stumbling as she crosses the dirt road and plunges into the abandoned field. Joe and I lope after her. Just as well, maybe—while we're in motion, our heads bobbing up and down, the scene ahead of us isn't as clear. I see the big cat swipe its paws, once, twice, against the fox's brushy red fur; I see the slim, sinewy legs of the fox scrabble against the air.

But we're still half a field behind by the time the fox stops struggling, all its limbs falling nervelessly to the ground. From this distance, against the green-and-brown of the cropland, the vivid color of the fox's fur, it's impossible to see any blood. But its head is snapped back at an unnatural angle, and its four feet are splayed before it.

And then, while we are still too far away to touch him, the fox begins transmuting into the shape of a man.

Which means that Ryan is dead or dying.

Celeste sobs again and redoubles her pace, but I slack up and finally stop, letting her go to him alone. Despite the fact that Ryan and I had been lovers, in so many ways Celeste was closer to him. They'd always had that supernatural bond, that inexplicable connection, as if they were twins, or soul mates. On the one hand, it seems almost poetic that he died defending her honor.

On the other hand, it seems dreadful beyond description that she is the reason he is dead.

The cheetah has moved off a little distance by the time Celeste falls to her knees at Ryan's side. I see her put one hand on his cheek, one on his heart; I hear her chant his name over and over. In his human state, the fatal wounds are easy to see, most of them centered over his jugulars, but his whole torso is bloody. Celeste doesn't care. She puts her arms around Ryan's shoulders and pulls him onto her lap, bending down to rest her dark curls against his pale face.

I stand back far enough to let her grieve in private, but close enough that, if she looks around for me, I can be at her side in two seconds. Joe comes up behind me and puts an arm around my shoulders. I lean against him for a moment, drawing in strength, drawing in warmth, trying to regain my balance.

I notice that he's carrying something in his left hand, a bag or a length of fabric, and I squint down to get a better look. That's when I realize he's paused to pick up the uniform the sheriff shed in his mad chase after Ryan.

“Did you know about Wilkerson?” he asks quietly.

I shake my head dumbly.
Janet knew,
I think. It's the only thing that explains how much she trusted him, how much he liked her. He had sworn her to secrecy, though, or so I assume, and being Janet, she was never even tempted to reveal what she knew.

I lift my eyes from the sight of Celeste still on her knees, still holding Ryan's lifeless body, and I look for the cheetah again. Oh, but he's a man now, beefy, confident, naked, striding purposefully in my direction. I can see traces of blood around his mouth, on the backs of his hands, but they're smeared, like he's tried to wipe them off in a patch of grass.

Joe leans forward to hand over his clothes. Wilkerson says, “Thank you, son,” and pulls on his pants and shirt and gunbelt. He doesn't look anywhere near his usual trim and professional self, but he looks more normal, more human, more like a lawman. Less like a wild beast.

He angles his head to study Celeste and Ryan for a moment, then turns his attention back to the two of us. His gaze is absolutely steady as he meets Joe's eyes and then mine.

“I'm sorry you folks had to see that,” he says in his molasses voice.

“Which part?” Joe asks.

Wilkerson's smile acknowledges the hit. “I meant the death. Though I'm not too eager to have people see me changing.”

“Woulda been a lot more shocked by that a few months ago,” Joe says.

Wilkerson nods. “I figured you were hanging out with enough shape-shifters that you'd already learned the truth.”

“How did you know about us?” I demand. “When none of us knew about you? Did Janet tell you?”

He shakes his head. “I just guessed about you, because of where you lived and how you lived, taking on Janet's work. I didn't know about your friends here until that little incident at Arabesque. I mean, obviously Bobby was telling the truth and obviously you both knew it. But there seemed to be no need to say so out loud.”

“How'd you find us today?” Joe asks. “Follow us?”

The sheriff nods. “Ahuh. Figured something like this would happen, just didn't know where Mr. Barnes planned to go next.”

“You let him go on purpose,” I suddenly realize. “At the police station. You didn't pick up the wrong keys—you took him outside and left him alone so he could change. So he could escape.”