Growling her anger, she turned the big Harley down the dirt road and rocketed ahead, avoiding tree trunks and stumps and swinging wide of the narrow corridors her quarry sought to use as barriers. It would take more than a few trees to stop her. Foolish girl, thinking the woods would hide her. If anything, they betrayed her passage. Even better, the moon was up and its light provided a brilliant beacon by which Delloreen, with her demon–enhanced senses, could find the trail easily.
But the darkness was getting so deep that despite her resolve she was forced to slow to a crawl to make out the tracks of the other machine in the soft earth. The trees thickened further, as well, so much so that it became steadily harder for the Harley to find a path between them. Eventually she was detouring so far off the path before coming back again that it was taking longer for her to make progress on the bike than if she walked. But she pressed on anyway, refusing to be stopped.
It was nearing midnight when she gave it up. She had reached a creek and followed it for almost a mile before finding the Knight's trail again, and her patience was exhausted. She shut the Harley down, climbed off, and stared into the darkness. Her choices were clear. She could stop for the night and see if the Harley would do better in daylight, when she could see the trail better and choose easier terrain to travel, or she could abandon it and proceed on foot.
She could track the woman like an animal.
She smiled at the idea, at the sudden rush of excitement that it generated, and her teeth gleamed. She might actually do better that way. She was mostly animal herself by now, able to go down on all fours, to sniff out the scent of her quarry, to see the impression of her prints. She was lean and quick and much, much stronger than the creature she hunted. How much difference would not having the use of the ATV make to her efforts to catch up to the other? Not that much, she thought. Not that much at all.
She stripped off her clothing and stood naked in the moonlight, all scales and claws and muscle. Exhilarated, she wanted to howl like a wolf. But no, not yet. Not until she was close enough for the female to know she was coming. Not until the sound of it would make clear that there was no escape.
She stretched and preened. Then she went down on all fours and began to run.
"ANGEL! WAKE UP!"
The words surfaced through a deep fog of sleep and dreams, vague and disembodied. She tried to make sense of them and failed. Her consciousness lifted momentarily, and then fell back again, adrift.
"Angel, please! You have to wake up!"
A child's voice. A little girl's. She blinked this time, the dreams and sleep fading. Her eyes opened. It was dark still, but the sunrise was a silvery brightening of the eastern sky. She remembered where she was. She had crossed out of the woods and reached another paved road sometime after midnight, then followed it to an old roadside shelter. She had hidden the ATV in the trees, left Ailie— who apparently didn't need sleep–on watch, and gone right to sleep.
"Angel, say something!"
Ailie. The tatterdemalion was bent over her, practically shouting in her ear.
"What is it?" she murmured, sleep–fogged and vaguely irritated.
"It's found us! The demon!"
She sat up quickly then, shock galvanizing lethargic muscles and numbed responses into action. She rolled quickly into a sitting position, reaching for the black staff, her eyes sweeping the darkness of the surrounding woods. She listened to the silence. No distant roar of an ATV. No sounds of any kind at all.
"I don't hear anything," she whispered.
"It's not coming that way!" Ailie's face was back in front of her own, blue hair wild, eyes bright with fear. "It's coming on foot!"
On foot? Angel rose quickly, grasping the staff in both hands now, taking a defensive position, her body reacting automatically, out of habit, even though her thinking remained clouded and sluggish. On foot? The words didn't make any sense. Even a demon couldn't have caught them on foot, and besides why would it…
A blur of white and blue flashed in front of her as Ailie rushed past, sweeping aside deliberation and confusion in a moment's time. "Angel, it's here!"
In the next instant something big and dark burst from the forest, bounding into the clearing in a terrifying rush, down on all fours and grunting and huffing like some monstrous wild animal. Angel barely had time to bring up the staff, the magic surging through it in response to her needs, quicker than thought. She went down on one knee, one end of the staff pointed out like a lance, catching her attacker in the chest as it leapt for her, pinning it in midair. The force of the attack threw her backward, and the staff vaulted the demon right over her head and sent it tumbling away.
She came back to her feet, fully awake now. The demon was already turning, a huge, sleek gray shape in the mix of shadows and half–light, its limbs impossibly long and disjointed, its head hunched down between its massive shoulders like a wolf's. She searched for a hint of the features that had identified the demon as female only days before, but everything recognizable was gone. No spiky blond hair, no human face or body, no skin, nothing. This creature was covered with scales, its fingers and toes were claws, its face was a muzzle split wide to reveal gleaming teeth, and its eyes were yellow lanterns.
Yet it was her nevertheless, Angel knew. It was the demon from the compound, come to finish her off.
"Diablo!" Angel muttered as she braced herself for the next attack.
The demon screamed suddenly, a bone–jarring, high–pitched sound that tore through the woods and froze Angel where she stood.
Then the monster rushed her, so swift it was on top of her almost before she could respond. But respond she did, sending the white fire of the staff surging into her attacker in a rippling, jagged–edged strike that burned the other's scaly hide despite its obvious toughness, knocking the demon backward and aside. It screamed again, as if the sound gave it special strength, and renewed its assault. Again it charged Angel and again she used the fire to throw it back.
It's too strong, she thought as she watched it bound up anew, its hide smoking, but its madness undiminished. I can't win this.
This time the demon got through her defenses far enough to backhand her so hard that she flew off her feet and halfway across the clearing. Her ears were ringing as she scrambled up, her head swimming with the blow. She fought off another attack, and then another.
"Ailie!" she shouted.
She didn't expect help from the tatterdemalion, but she needed to know where Ailie was. She was already eyeing the ATV, thinking that her only chance was to get away, to put enough distance between herself and the demon that it couldn't get at her. It felt like a coward's choice, not the right choice for a Knight of the Word, but it might keep her alive to fight another day.
She caught a glimpse of Ailie as the other peeked out from behind the Mercury. The tatterdemalion was thinking the same thing, but there was little she could do to help make it happen. Tatterdemalions were Faerie creatures, lacking sufficient substance to engage in physical combat. They were mostly air and light. She might reason and counsel, but she was not going to do much to fight off a demon.
Which right now was back on top of Angel, slamming her backward, striking at her as though the staff's terrible fire were thin paper. It was as if the pain was making it stronger, giving it fresh energy, while Angel's strength continued to diminish. Angel blocked the follow–up attack, sidestepping the other's shredding claws, trying not to look into the terrible yellow eyes. There was a hypnotic quality to the demon's gaze, the kind that predatory creatures used to freeze their prey in place while they ripped out their throats. Look too closely into that gaze and there was no escape. Angel concentrated on the elongated arms with their razor–sharp claws, still reaching for her, slashing.