He said, “You think we should keep going?”
The dog stood up, barked immediately, his eyes pleading.
“We’ve traveled nearly three miles. You think it’s followed us here?”
The dog tilted his head to the left, his eyes drifted toward the door to the mechanic’s place.
Sam swallowed. He turned around so that he could face the door, before completing a three hundred and sixty degree sweep of their defensive perimeter. “You think it beat us here?”
The retriever growled.
Sam said, “Where is it now, boy?”
The dog cocked his head to the right and fixed his eyes into the darkest section of the forest across the road, at a place shrouded in the shadows of the nearby mountain crest.
Sam aimed the shotgun at the darkness.
He could feel its presence.
Sam said, “It’s there, isn’t it?”
The dog gave a quiet bark.
“What’s it doing? What’s it waiting for?”
The retriever remained silent, but its head drifted to the right. Sam followed its gaze out to the middle of the roadway. A large shadow slowly crept toward them from the opposite side of the road.
Understanding dawned on him in an instant.
“It’s waiting for the darkness to come to us.” Sam said, “That’s it, isn’t it?”
The dog barked.
Sam looked at the T-Bird and then back at the dog. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.”
He didn’t have to give the golden retriever any more of a suggestion than that. The dog jumped up, over the low door, and into the Thunderbird’s bench seat. For a split second, Sam wondered what his grandfather might have thought about a stray dog going for a ride in his pristine collector’s car… but what other choice did he have? The dog was being hunted by whatever it was that was waiting out there for him. It wasn’t like he could leave it there.
Sam opened the door, climbed in behind the wheel of the classic Ford Thunderbird, and turned the ignition key. It started with a roar. He ran his eyes across the gauges. Everything appeared to be in order.
He lowered the handbrake, and slowly turned the wheel, until he faced south, along the road out of the Tillamook State Forest.
A strange figure of a man appeared in the shadow behind his headlight. It was so fleeting that he couldn’t be certain he had the right shape at all. Then, the brush up ahead moved faster than any human could have possibly run, as the creature raced toward them.
Sam gunned the engine.
The dual, four-barrel carbureted 312 cubic inch V8 roared, and the T-bird took flight. Three hundred feet down the road, and still picking up speed, Sam glanced in the rear-view mirror.
The specter of a man could just be seen disappearing once more into the shadows.
At fifty miles an hour, Sam settled onto the main road, starting to feel the strain and tension of the past few hours rapidly dwindle.
In the passenger seat next to him, Caliburn looked nearly ten years younger, as the wind swept across the dog’s head.
Sam said, “It’s all going to be all right now. What do you think, Caliburn?”
The dog gave a sharp bark.
“Yeah…” Sam grinned. “I know. We had a rough start, but it’s all okay now.”
Caliburn began to bark uncontrollably.
Sam jammed on the brakes and the antique T-Bird slid to a jolting stop.
Because, there, in the middle of the road, lit up in the Thunderbird’s high beams, was a woman waving her arms frantically at him to stop.
Chapter Nine
The woman ran around to Sam’s side of the car.
“Please,” she said, “Let me in… something’s chasing me! I need help.”
Sam reached over and opened the passenger door. Caliburn obediently shuffled into the middle space along the bench seat, making room for another human passenger.
She climbed in a second later and said, “Quick! We have to go…”
Sam happily pushed the three-speed Ford-O-Matic floor shifter into gear, and accelerated again, feeling better as the heavy old car picked up speed once more.
“Thank you. You just saved my life,” she said, her accent revealing a slight trace of British ancestry.
Sam kept his eyes focused on the road. “What happened?”
“I was being chased by…” she stopped speaking.
“What was it?” he persisted.
“I don’t know. It’s going to sound crazy. I never saw it. But I…”
“Felt it?” Sam suggested.
“Yeah, and it felt like pure evil. Does that sound crazy?”
Sam took a deep breath. “Yeah it does, but I believe you.”
“Why?”
“Because I felt it too — and the farther we get away from it the better I feel.”
She took that in for a moment and said, “I think you’re right. I can feel the evil presence being somehow left behind.”
Sam drove on in silence, taking care to put miles between them and whatever evil might still lay in wait.
After a few minutes, Sam turned his gaze and glanced at his new passenger.
She had wild, dark red hair, full of curly ringlets that spread across a striking face of porcelain. Her complexion was smooth and pale, with an array of fine freckles. It was a handsome face, straight out of a medieval painting of an Irish princess. She had a curved nose, strong, dark eyebrows. Liquid jade eyes with golden flakes, and a straight, thin-lipped mouth set in a dangerous smile. She was neither tall, nor short. Neither voluptuous nor skinny.
She was entirely bewitching.
Sam said, “Are you hurt, ma’am?”
“No.” She met his eyes, locking them for a moment, as though to prove it. “I’m okay. I’m alive.”
Sam turned his focus ahead, focusing on the curving road. “I’m Sam Reilly by the way.”
“Guinevere Jenkins,” she said, offering her hand.
He glanced at her. A street light caught her regal face, emphasizing her wild hair, a key marker of her Welsh heritage. In that moment, Sam thought that she looked every bit like the legendary queen of her namesake
He took it. Her handshake was firm. Her grip strong. Small calluses on her hand suggested that despite her appearance, she was physically active. She squeezed his hand, holding it slightly longer than was normal. It wasn’t flirting or sexual. Instead, it was more a form of human touch, and the embrace of two people who had survived a near death experience. Sam, suddenly aware of holding her hand, let go of it, feeling the slightest disappointment with the loss.
Guinevere smiled, revealing a set of evenly spaced, white teeth. “What’s your dog’s name?”
“Caliburn. But he’s not my dog. I… um… offered him a lift out of here, too.”
“Caliburn…” she said the name out loud. “Like the sword.”
Sam grinned. “Sorry?”
She turned her palms upward. “The sword imbued with magical powers once given to King Arthur.”
“Wasn’t that Excalibur?”
“No. King Arthur was given Excalibur by Merlin after his prized sword, Caliburn, was fractured into two pieces and lost during a battle fighting the crusades in the Middle East.”
“I thought he pulled Excalibur from the stone in the lake?” Sam said, a slight upward curl in his lips, teasing her.
“The sword in the stone?” She laughed. “That was all just a legend. Nothing but a story made to entertain kids in medieval Britain. How could a sword get into a stone in the first place? And what power would any man have to retrieve it over another one? Certainly not a boy named Arthur. Caliburn was the first sword. The most powerful of the two.”
Sam thought about that for a moment. “Okay, so Arthur had two magical swords?”