And before he could look away, she saw the compassion and sadness under his thought.
The warmth vanished instantly from her eyes, leaving them bleak and bitter and angry: You don’t understand.
But he did, and that was what angered her. She got to her feet and walked off into the woods. He rose to follow, to draw her back, but she was moving quickly, and he lost her in the tangle of trees.
He pressed on, searching in the fading dusk, when the glow of a shifting light drew him toward a clearing.
Tina was there, unaware of him. She turned slowly in midair, arms and legs poised in an exquisite arabesque, regarding herself in the play of light against the fallen, dried leaves that carpeted the ground. Beautiful, but so forlorn.
Cal stood a long time, not disturbing her.
And, watching unsuspected from cover, silent as a hawk, Colleen contemplated the look on his face, the fear and tenderness there, and the love that she had thought beyond the capability of any man but her father.
They continued, past Wilmington and Aberdeen and Perry Hall, swinging wide of Baltimore, ever southward, moving fitfully and uncertainly, like a band of blind men drawn by a distant sound. Or, more accurately, a sound that only one of them could hear.
But then, it wasn’t like a sound, Cal reflected, lying in his sleeping bag while Doc stood guard by moonlight over the camp they had pitched at Cedar Beach, the cool waters of the Chesapeake softly lapping the shore. It was like a far-off molten core radiating mad heat. Cal studied his sister’s sleeping form, shielded in a North Face tent, her glow damped down to a phosphoresence that mirrored the night-washed waves. Tina’s sleep was nightly raked with dreams, from which she would wake trembling, unable or unwilling to describe what frightened her. The closer they approached the white-hot glare of whatever was summoning her, the more she seemed to be melting away, growing ever more distant and abstracted. As if she were leaving them already, in small steps, imperceptibly, until she would be gone entirely.
Seeing Cal studying his sister, Doc crouched near. “When one administers an X-ray, it always gives pause,” he said, seeming to catch Cal’s thought. “Will this help to relieve suffering or will it, in years to come, be the one fraction of difference that causes a cancer to form? It is the same with heart surgery, with almost any choice. The physician asks himself, Am I curing, or am I-” He stopped himself from saying killing. “Or am I creating harm?” He laid a hand on Cal’s arm. “Take heart, my friend. She is still with us, and we are together-what do you call them? — merry men, eh? And one woman who would choose to be called anything but. We will beard that lion in his den.”
If only it were just a lion, Cal thought. Even closing in on it, Tina still had no idea what it was. Crazy and angry and sad. . like the world it had created.
What lens, Cal wondered, was it seeing through?
Later, while the others slept and Colleen stood watch, Tina dreamed of darkness again and gasped awake.
“Sh, it’s okay,” whispered Colleen, bending down to her in the mouth of the tent. She reached over and stroked Tina’s back, now as unsettlingly fine-boned as a baby bird’s. Beside such fragility, Colleen felt clumsy and rough.
She became aware of Tina’s gaze on her, turned to the scrutiny of those intense, blue-in-blue eyes.
“Your boyfriend,” said Tina softly, “Rory? He changed, too, didn’t he?”
“Rory was a punk,” Colleen replied, and there was a shakiness in her voice that surprised her.
Tina cocked her head, not taking her eyes off Colleen. “You wanted to love him, but you couldn’t. . so you settled for him needing you.”
Colleen felt her chest clench, the breath in her go dry. She felt naked, seen by this being that had been a child, had been human once, and was increasingly becoming something other, something more.
“I thought of leaving,” Colleen managed to say.
“We leave when we can… or when something takes us.” Tina scanned the dark waters, the woods enfolding them, the open gulf of air beyond the jagged coastline.
To the south.
“ ‘Rory was a punk,’ ” Tina repeated to herself, voice nearly inaudible. “And Mr. Stern was a dragon in his heart, long before the Change. Is this,” she spread her spider-fragile hands, through which the light of the campfire could almost be seen to shine, “because of what I am?”
She dropped her hands, and there was resignation and release in the gesture. “Maybe soon I’ll know.”
Her gaze was turned inward, and she floated silent, her soft radiance filling her like an opal, playing over the interior of the tent. Colleen peered at her, sensing her despair, knowing the feeling so well and so long in herself. The fear of abandonment, the fear of loss. Striving to be the best- whether that meant being the prettiest, the most graceful or the toughest on the block, it really boiled down to the same thing. Having value to someone. . and feeling so afraid of being worth nothing at all.
Colleen ached to comfort her, to say, Everything will be all right. But her heart brooked no false promises, to Tina or herself.
The campfire crackled as a log fell, sending up a firefly swarm of sparks, drawing Colleen’s attention. On the far side of the flame, Cal and Doc and Goldie drowsed in their sleeping bags beneath the dark velvet of the eastern sky. Colleen found her glance lingering on Cal. The amber light of the fire picked out the grave features, the long chin and straight nose, the soft light-brown curls. He looked troubled, even in sleep, saddled with the weight of the world.
“Do you love him?”
Colleen turned her head sharply at Tina’s question, asked in that same small voice. She was drawing breath to say something, though she didn’t know what, when Tina looked up suddenly and her eyes flared.
On the far side of the fire, a huddled form darted, snatched up a leather backpack and tore off into the brush.
“Cal! Doc!” Colleen was on the run, unslinging her crossbow, keeping the shadowy form in sight. It was a puny little cuss, about the size of a child, but it moved incredibly fleetly through the darkness over the uneven terrain.
A light rose up behind her, and Colleen heard the hubbub of Doc and Cal following, one of them having seized a burning stick from the fire. She plunged on, unmindful of the evergreen branches whipping at her face.
The little fucker was moving like greased lightning, despite the weight of the cumbersome pack, gaining ever more of a lead. By his rough silhouette, the pointed, tufted ears that stuck out on either side of his oversized head, the baggy clothes that hung off him, it was pretty damn clear just what he was.
A nightcrawler, like the bunch that had bustled past them on the way to the hospital. That had cornered Cal in the tunnels under Manhattan.
That had once been someone she’d shared her life with. Ahead of him through the cover of trees, Colleen could see a darkness in the rock face.
It was a cave mouth.
Oh no, you don’t, thought Colleen. She raised the crossbow and fired, deliberately missing him. The bolt struck a cedar trunk ahead of him with an authoritative thwak. He let out a cry and ducked away. She reloaded and loosed another arrow. This one lodged in a mound of earth on the far side of him.
The thief flailed in panic, then wheeled and ran directly at them, shrieking like a banshee.
Colleen held her ground, readying for the impact. But before the figure reached her, its foot caught on a root and it tumbled headlong, crashing down with a solid “Oof!” The pack went flying, spinning end over end, bouncing off a thick branch and deflecting into a ravine. It struck an out-cropping in the cliffside and burst open, raining tins of devilled ham and apricots and baby corn into the void.