The pickup charged, and Mulder fired a second time, hitting the windshield on the passenger side, causing Lanaya to swerve, and swerve again to avoid hitting the fence in front.
But the Wind didn't stop.
It hissed across the driveway, forcing him into a move he knew immediately was foolish but was too late to stop — he bolted to his left, away from the house and lawn. But the sight of it so close and the sound of its voice had panicked him, and by the time he was able to think again, Lanaya had turned the truck around.
Scully yelled at him on her knees from the porch, where Nando was now, a rifle in his hands.
The Wind had paused; a stone, a piece of wood, smashed through one of the ranch house windows.
Mulder felt dizzy. The exertion, the heat and the dust, the sound of that thing spinning slowly in place… he took a step back and almost fell, staggered sideways and saw Lanaya in the cab, grinning.
Sangre Viento; it moved.
Nando fired at the truck, and a headlight exploded.
It won't make any difference, Mulder thought, sidling to his left; kill Lanaya, and the Wind will still be there. It has its target now.
He froze.
No; no, it won't.
The Wind brushed against the corner fence post, and sawdust filled the air, some of it showering into the yard, the rest sucked into the spinning.
Lanaya gunned the engine.
Mulder had no choice left but to run straight toward him. If the Wind picked up speed, he would use the truck to stop it; if it didn't, he would stop it anyway.
If he was right.
The Wind moved, and Scully shouted a warning, her own gun out and aiming.
A Wind-whipped stone glanced off Mulder's knee, and he dropped before he knew he'd lost control. He felt the blood before he felt the pain, and the pain stood him up again.
At that moment, both Scully and Nando fired; at that moment, Mulder aimed and fired.
At that moment, Sangre Viento moved, and moved fast.
If I'm right, Mulder thought as he raced as best he could to the truck.
The windshield was pocked with holes and weblike cracks, the engine still ran, and as he grabbed for the door, he saw Nick behind the wheel, his head back, his face covered with running blood.
He saw the whirlwind speeding toward him.
If I'm right, he thought, and yanked the door open, scrambled onto the seat, and reached for Lanaya's throat.
It wasn't hissing now, it was roaring.
He grabbed the rawhide thong around the man's neck and pulled, pulled again as the truck began to rock violently.
Pieces of the windshield began to fall in.
Giving up on the thong, Mulder nearly crawled into the dead man's lap and ripped his shirt open, grabbed the medicine bag and tried to rip it apart. He couldn't, and something slammed into his side, into his shoulder, throwing him against Lanaya's chest and rocking him back.
Metal shrieked.
Glass cracked and shattered.
He held the bag up, as far away as he could, and put a bullet through it, blowing it apart as he threw himself into the well and waited for one of them to die.
TWENTY-FOUR
"They were ail acting," Mulder said.
He and Scully sat at the porch table with Annie Hatch, he with a slick glass of iced tea, Scully with a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade. They had invited themselves out on their last day, because Mulder felt the woman should know.
"Sparrow wanted us to believe he was either dumb as a post or a hick who was only around for comic relief. Ciola was the macho, I-dare-you-to-touch-me man, but he was terrified because he knew what Nick could do." He took a long drink and sighed. "And Nick didn't think we'd believe for a second in the Sangre Viento. We're trained agents, we deal with solid evidence and behavioral science and the magic we can do ourselves in the lab”
"It wasn't magic, Mulder," Scully said.
He smiled at the lawn. "Suit yourself."
Too many parts of him still stung where he had been struck by missiles hurled by the Wind, and his face was still an alarming red from his sunburn. He had also been right about the blisters.
Scully, too, was walking wounded, but over the past two days, neither of them had had much time to think about it while they filled out reports, filled out more reports, and listened as Sheriff Sparrow figured for the papers and local television news that the pickup had slammed into the fence while trying to run Scully and Mulder down.
The Sangre Viento had died when the contents of Nick's bag were scattered by the bullet.
None of the news people heard that story at all.
Annie poured herself another glass. "You know, I don't think any of my movies ever had so much excitement. I'm rather sorry I missed it."
Mulder looked at her until she had the grace to blush.
"All right, all right, I was scared out of my mind and hiding in the kitchen. And I'm not sorry at all, are you happy?"
He toasted her with his glass, emptied it and pushed away from the table. They had a late-afternoon flight back to Washington, and driving wasn't going to be all that easy.
Scully finished as well, and as she picked up her bag and stood, he saw genuine reluctance to leave the ranch and Annie.
"Fox?" Annie said.
He didn't correct her.
"What happened to Red?"
"We don't know for sure," Scully answered for them. "We think he was trying to conduct his own investigation. From what the office tells us, he was hardly ever there once we arrived. Sparrow admitted to keeping him informed on the phone, but even he hasn't heard from Agent Garson since the night before we went to the Mesa."
"I think he went there on his own," Mulder said, slipping his sunglasses from his pocket and sliding them on. "I think he'll be found before long, but he won't be alive."
Another actor, he thought; the easterners he couldn't stand had come out to conduct what should have been his investigation, and he had to pretend to like it all the way.
They said their goodbyes, and Mulder, if he hadn't already had the sunburn, would have blushed with pleasure when Annie kissed his cheek and made him promise to come back for a visit before she was too old to enjoy it.
They started for the car, but as Scully slid in behind the wheel, Mulder asked her to wait and hurried back to the porch. Annie leaned over the rail when he crooked a finger.
"What is it now?"
He pulled down his sunglasses. "There's a guy over there," he said, pointing toward the Wall. "He sits on that hill and fries himself practically every day. Maybe you ought to go over there sometime and have a talk with him."
Annie stared. "A talk?"
"It's a thought” he said.
"I'm not going back, Fox, if that’s what you're asking."
"I'm not," he said innocently. "But there was this guy they thought was a saint, and he turned out to be a thief and a killer. The kids liked him, I understand."
She didn't respond.
"Besides," he added as he pushed the glasses back up, "who says a saint has to be a man?"
She was still on the porch as they drove toward the main road, and he suspected she would be there for some time to come.
He didn't speak until Scully pulled out onto the interstate. "Amazing, wasn't it? The Sangre Viento, I mean."
She glanced over at him, unsmiling. "I'm working on it, Mulder, I'm working on it."
"Of course you are."
Gradually the desert gave way to the first houses, which multiplied and grew taller, and the interstate grew more crowded. Scully had a silent, close to obscene altercation with a pickup that cut them off, and another with an old tail-fin Cadillac that hadn't yet discovered the speed limit was all the way up to fifty-five.
A mile later, she glanced at him and said, "Do you really think it was power he was after? Because he wasn't really part of that world?"