He let off a rifle shot. It echoed off the mountain and into the ambient in a massive wash of <fear> and <hope> as everyone in Evergreen, deaf to the ambient or not, realized there was someone outside.
<Anger> came, too. Someone else—was fiercely <angry.>
They were shooting again, and Darcy flinched, though this shot was far away. “Listen to me,” John Quarles was saying through the closed front door. “Darcy? Darcy, —just for safety, I want you to find a sedative. I want you to find a strong sedative and get the girl calm. I know you want to protect her. You have a sedative, don’t you, Darcy?”
“Yes,” she admitted. But she didn’t want to do that. She didn’t want to lose the girl’s trust. Brionne was suspicious and afraid. Brionne suspected everyone out on the street, and John said terrible, incredible things, how something was prowling the village passages and it had killed people down at The Evergreen and it had killed Earnest Riggs.
She knew it was true, though. She knew the way she knew that people were outside and that they had designs on Brionne. It was as if pictures of everything were pouring in on her, John coming with the marshal, bringing her Faye’s body. She’d heard gunshots going off and it conjured that single shot that had echoed through the house, that moment she had known it came from downstairs, from Mark’s office. There were memories of blood, so much blood. Mark was a doctor. And he’d chosen that way, when there were easier ways in the locked cabinet. Mark had wantedviolence in the leaving of his life. He’d been so quiet. And he’d chosen violence for herto deal with.
He— dared—leave her—that unspeakable sight to remember. It was his anger. It was his spite. It was his blame. It was Mark saying again as he’d shouted at her the day before he died, Damn you, Darcy, shed a tear! Yell! Blame me out loud, don’t just look at me like that!
She wasn’t sitting on the couch, with John talking about God’s mercy, she wasn’t rocking back and forth like a fool, and still not able to cry, and John talking inanely about what colors to use at Mark’s funeral, as if anyone gave a damn. She was standing at the front door, and John was on the other side, begging her to drug the child senseless, when Brionne knew, she was sure Brionne knew people were betraying her. Pans were flying about the kitchen, crockery was breaking.
“I’ve got to go,” Darcy said.
“ Will you do it?” John shouted through the door.
“I don’t know,” she said. And then thought—if she did that—if she did that, John would be on her side. John was her arbiter of what the village thought. What John said was what they thought was good.
And if she quieted Brionne down, then everything would be quiet and John would help her.
So she went to the cabinet, and turned the key and shook powder into a prescription vial. Her hands were shaking, but she got it in, knowing fairly accurately the girl’s weight. She thought she’d make another pot of tea and put it in that. She stopped the vial and tucked it in her waistband, under her sweater.
Then she went to the kitchen, where Brionne was having a tantrum.
The crockery was all broken in pieces all over the floor. The teakettle was lying against the wall. Brionne was crying and had a metal plate in her hands.
“Honey. Put it down. It’s all right. I told him go away.”
“You’re lying!” Brionne clanged the plate down against a chair, and bent it, and flung it away against the wall. “I hate you! I hate allof you! They’re all talking about me! My brother’sout there, and he’s telling lies about me and everyone believes them!”
“I’m sure I don’t believe them. I think it’s all rather silly.” The playing cards were all over the floor. She crossed the kitchen and picked up the teakettle. She wasn’t sure there was a whole cup in the kitchen.
“My friend will come for me,” Brionne said. “You just watch! He’ll come.”
“Not a horse?”
“I’ll have a horse. I’ll have a horse when I want one! And everybodywill be sorry.”
Darcy felt such an angerfrom the girl, from somewhere, so much angerand confusion…
Brionne headed down the three steps to the passageway door.
“No!” Darcy said sharply, expecting obedience, but Brionne didn’t stop. Brionne flung up the bar, and Darcy crossed the kitchen in four fast strides, reached to stop Brionne and slam the door shut.
The door banged wide. A black shape was there, yellow-eyed, yellow-fanged. It reached a shaggy arm—an arm!—around Brionne, snatching her away, and the other arm swept with a force that flung Darcy back against the wall. It hit her again, and again. She was numb, and astonished—totally astonished—to see the blood spatter wide across the wall. Like Mark’s, that day…
Very much like that day.
Danny was trying to move Cloud into line with the gate to use Cloud for a ladder—but he <heard> people coming then, a <mass of people on the other side of the wall> that very soon he and Tara could hear aloud, swearing and encouraging each other.
“Open the gate!” Danny and Tara yelled, almost with one voice, and that reassured the people on the other side. Someone opened the gate, and Danny got through first, rifle in hand, the pain in his side grown acute, and his throat so raw he immediately went into a coughing fit. Cloud was behind him, and then Tara and Flicker, but the people in front of him, shadowed by the wall, were faceless to him, a mob, a mass—men from the barracks, villagers, he didn’t know.
He did know <horses and riders and danger in the distance, something inside the walls,> and he didn’t waste time trying to understand the shouts about <beasts> and <bears> and <men dead,> he just got control of his coughing enough to swing up to Cloud’s back, feeling the wobble in himself and the wobble in Cloud’s legs as he landed. He started moving through the crowd, aware of <Tara on Flicker behind him,> and it was a measure how frightened the crowd was that people bunched around two riders on horseback and pressed up close to the horses as a point of safety.
Cloud wasn’t used to that kind of treatment. It was a question whether they were going to get through before or after Cloud bit somebody, but the instant there was an opening Cloud jumped forward, instinct-driven toward the <nighthorses ahead> of him, and Cloud’s rider was along for the ride for an instant, Cloud knowing beyond any doubt there was <safety in the nighthorse herd.>
Flicker was close behind them as Cloud ran, and Flicker might not know the horses ahead, but they were a band Cloud knew: <Slip, Shimmer and Rain> was the presence at the mountain-end of the street. <Cloud and Flicker> flung the ambient wider and louder than Danny intended, but it was five horses now, with one mare in foal and a boss horse aggressive as hell toward whatever threatened their vicinity.
They came in where Ridley, Callie and Jennie were holding the area across from the doctor’s house. Randy was there, with a couple of armed women Danny didn’t know, with the marshal’s deputy, some of the hunters, and a very shaken-looking preacher, whose total contribution to the ambient was a roiling chaos of <fear> and <relief> at them being there.
“Tara Chang,” Danny said to Ridley and the rest, by way of introduction. “Guil Stuart and Carlo are coming, but they’ll be longer. What’s happened?”
He got more than he wanted. Cloud shied back from a rush of <beast with yellow eyes> and <Brionne Goss> and <blood.> Someone had died. He thought it was the doctor. He thoughtthe worst of the sending came from young Jennie, in the way of loud juniors and young horses, but he wasn’t sure, and rapidly there was more of it, <man running from the porch,> the echo of confirmation sounding in his head to be the preacher, and <beast-presence climbing in the house, flinging things, breaking things > was current and happening now—along with a presence he knew from brief encounters: Brionne Goss was the core of it, but it was <anger> and <confusion> and<looking for something before it darted aside on <anger> again.