Part 20 (2/2)

He'd been keeping track, all right.

”Nothing's usual at work these days,” Brenna said, unable to keep the edge from her voice. Elizabeth, dead. ”How's your girlfriend feeling? I hear she had that cat put down. Too bad they didn't do any advanced testing on it.”

He gave her a sharp look, completely distracted from his twig-throwing. ”Those close to me are safe,” he said. ”I can't say the same for you and yours.”

”Don't underestimate me and mine.” So much for pretending innocence. So much for avoiding angry words.

His expression came alive, his body alert and intent and all but leaping out of its skin. The gloves were off, the battle joined . . . and he liked it. ”I want this land,” he said. ”I'll get it, too. And by the time I have it, you won't really be in a position to care any more.”

”Or maybe not,” she said, but she didn't like that s.h.i.+ft in his posture, the way his shoulders seemed to fill, and how his slanted gaze grew full of condescending confidence. Only years of standing down aggressive dogs allowed her to look back at him without evidence of the fear that tickled between her stomach and spine. To even look back at him with her own disdain.

But beside her, Druid's growling rose in pitch and intensity, and beneath her, she felt a responsive tingle between herself and the grounda”as if it felt her fear and responded to it, rippling outward like pebbles thrown in a pond.

”Oh, please,” Parker said, and she wasn't entirely sure to what he reacted. ”Don't even try. You think I don't know you haven't got a clue?”

”I'd come back with some equally clever response if I even knew what you were talking about,” Brenna told him. Casually, she felt for the rifle by her side.

”That's the whole point, isn't it? And don't bother with that rifle. We know you won't use it.”

”Do we?” Brenna said, las.h.i.+ng out at him with the very fear of how right he was. She couldn't even bring herself to point the thing at him. ”Do you really want to find out? Why don't you just run home instead? Go back to whatever socially responsible thing you've been up to. Or do you plan to stand there and try to intimidate me all night?”

She knew the wordsa”their challengea”were a mistake the moment they came out of her mouth, even before she saw Parker's sudden dangerous grin, before Druid whined . . .

Before she felt the surge of darkness.

A sharp spike of fear stabbed through her and right into the ground, and again triggered the strange tremble of response. Parker gave her a knowing look, one that said he'd seen her fear, and he shook his head with that frightening grin still in place beneath the mustachea”that good-old-boy mustache that she'd never be able to reconcile with his nature. He should at least have some sort of pretentious mustache-goatee combo.

Fine, she told herself numbly. When he gets here, maybe you can talk to him about that.

For he was coming, and she had the feeling it wouldn't be for conversation. As he eyed the bank and the shallow, navigable water between himself and the island and then Brenna's side of the creek, she had the feeling he fully planned to haul her away, back to his placea”where he'd hold her, or feed her to the dogs, or give her to his boys, or simply keep her out of the way while he did as he pleased on her land, watching the rabies problem grow out of control.

She could shoot him.

She couldn't.

Not so coldly, so brutally. Not with a rifle she'd started carrying against feral dogs.

She could run.

Yes. She could outrun him, surelya”

But not the darkness. Not whatever the darkness had done to Sunny. And she'd felt that darkness hovering moments earlier, she and Druid both. Druid still, the way he'd gone to crouching against the ground, frozen in fear, utterly unable to decide which direction might be the safest.

None of them.

That's when she found her hands shaking, her knees shaking, her whole body trembling with feara”

No, not her body. Not shaking that hard. That came from the outside, not the in. And Parker felt it too; she saw it in him, his condescending confidence interrupted by the inexplicable; it was his redirected stare that aimed Brenna's attention to the right place, that and the way he hesitated on his way down the sheer-cut bank to the stepping stones of the creek.

Down where the water had flowed away without being replaced, trickling away to leave nothing but tiny pools caught between rocks, the spring peepers along the banks caught startled and out in the open, a few cold crawdads crawling in befuddlement around what should have been their watery domain and quickly scuttling backward into rocky crannies when they realized how they'd been exposed.

Exposed, like Brenna sitting on the hillside, clutching Druid's collar in one hand and a rifle she couldn't bring herself to use in the other.

Parker's smile renewed itself. ”Looks like someone's going to make this easy for me.”

The darkness, he thought, as did Brenna, so gapingly astonished at the sight of the drained creek bed that she could barely think. Use the rifle. Pick it up and point it and pull the d.a.m.n trigger.

She didn't have to kill him. She didn't even have to hit him. She only had to drive him off. It didn't even matter how mad she made him in the processa”they'd gone beyond stopping whatever he'd started between them, it was only a matter of when they'd finish it. Now . . . or later. Later, when she knew more. When she was ready.

As if she'd ever be ready.

But Parker was ready. Parker was about to set foot in the exposed creek bed. If she saw correctly, he was deliberately aiming for one of the unhappy crawdads.

She pulled Druid into her lap and wrapped the leash around her leg. Then she picked up the rifle and sighted on the ground at Parker's feet. The smell of gun oil struck her nose like an acrid punctuation.

”Ooh,” he said. ”Scary. So convincing. Your finger's got to be on the trigger to have any real threat behind it, Brenna.”

She didn't like the way he said her name. She moved her finger to the trigger.

Still undecided.

But saved, then, as they both heard the new rumble of sound in the earth. She lifted her head from the smooth cool wood of the rifle stock as he halted in mid-stride; for all his previous snide confidence he now looked just as baffled as she felt, and nearly as alarmed. Druid gave several sharp barks . . . and they held no fear. They were an announcement of some importance, and he was on his feet now, braced against the reverberations in the earth but not with that look of crouching panic. His ears p.r.i.c.ked forward and alert and very intent, and he stared up the creeka”which remained empty of water as far as Brenna could see.

Maybe because he stood in the creek bed, Parker understood first; maybe his connections with the darkness gave him some advantage when it came to puzzling out things that couldn't possibly be happening in the first place. But Brenna had done no more than rise to her knees, the rifle drooping, looking right and left and even behind, when Parker lunged for the bank from which he'd come. He clawed his way up, digging fingers and toes and knees into the mucky soil, and as he threw himself over the top Brenna finally saw ita”a high wall of water, tumbling toward them at amazing speed.

It filled the creek banks to the top and overflowed along the way, spilling over with the force of a tidal wave. Parker didn't even try to get up in his flight from the creek once he reached the pasture; he rolled, gained quick ground before finding his feet and sprinting another fifty yards away. The water rushed by them, completely overtaking the small island as Parker stopped and turned and glared.

The roar of it obliterated his words but couldn't obscure the acrimony with which he shouted them, or the way his face distorted with the enormity of his rage.

Rage at Brenna. For it wasn't the astonis.h.i.+ngly flooded creek at which he screamed and gestured, but at Brenna herself, as if she had somehow created this event she couldn't even bring herself to comprehend.

Cold water sprayed Brenna's face; only a few drops, but enough to jar her mind from utter vacancy and into denial. This wasn't the Red Sea rus.h.i.+ng into place after Charlton Heston for pity's sake, it was her pasture, where horses had quietly grazed, where Brenna had romped and played through her childhood. And the creek was that same in which she'd spent humid summer days, splas.h.i.+ng and wet from head to toe with cool water. Had she been down there a moment ago, she'd have been washed clear to Lake Ontario. Had Parker been there a moment ago . . .

He'd been so sure it was his darkness, making life easy for hima”and moments ago, Brenna had thought so as well. Thought herself cornered by the man and his dark ally. Or the darkness and its human allya”she wasn't sure which. He'd been wrong. She'd been wrong.

Druid nudged her arm, his nose wet and cold; she put the arm around his shoulders, glad for his presence. Glad beyond belief that he hadn't flipped, hadn't added one of his fear fits to her already overwhelmed senses.

Beyond belief. That was the text of all of this. Beyond belief. For it hadn't been darkness coming to Parker's aid . . . it had been Mars Nodens coming to Brenna's. No longer just a theory, a vague tingle, a confluence of hints and clues and things that defied other explanation.

Mars Nodens in action.

Here.

Right in front of her.

<script>