Rising Darkness

Chapter Seven

MARY NEVER REMEMBERED how she got from the Grotto back to her car. She simply became aware again of her surroundings when she was sitting behind the wheel, her head lying back on the rest. The sun had angled lower on the western horizon. The reflection of it caught in her rearview mirror, a great orange-red blaze that blinded her so that she had to squint and turn her face away.

She was covered in sweat as though she had raced the entire distance back. For all she knew, she had done just that. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she pulled the sleeve of her sweater over one fist and scrubbed at her face. Then she rolled down all four windows to let in the cold fresh air.

She shied away from thinking about what had just happened. It was too much. She couldn’t wrap her brain around it. All she knew was that she felt different. She felt eerie, light and hollow like a bird’s bone. The horrific pressure that had been building up inside of her, as though someone had been piling rocks one by one on her chest, had disappeared as if it had never been.

The world looked different as well. Everything around her seemed in constant motion, rippling as if a transparent Van Gogh painting had been draped across reality. She didn’t know how to interpret what she was seeing, but the trees along the line of horizon seemed to have a glow about them, a shimmer like a desert mirage. She sensed whispers again around the edges of her mind.

Van Gogh had cut off his own ear. Had he heard whispers too? Had he been trying to make it stop?

Without her permission, her mind slipped back to what had happened in the Grotto. What had the Lady said?

You’re in danger.

“Riiight,” she croaked, just to hear the sound of her own voice. It seemed to shock the silence in the car. “Let’s review. I’m fucking nuts. Any questions?”

What had they said in psych class? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean anything. You’re just paranoid. She continued speaking out loud, as she needed to hear the sound of her own voice. “I guess I’ve had that psychotic break now. I’m suffering from delusions—and now I’m talking to myself. Gretchen should have warned me that I had a seventy-two-hour psychiatric detention in my near future.”

There went her medical license and career. Whoopsie.

All of a sudden she was ravenous, as though her lack of appetite over the last couple of months had finally caught up with her. Images of different dishes flooded her mind and made her mouth water. She craved normality as much as food, and she desperately wanted to be surrounded with noise, humanity and banality. Her fingers trembled as she started the car. She had to find somewhere to eat. She was too shaky to drive the hour or so trip home without it.

Those incredible eyes, starred with candlelight. You can’t go home, the Lady had said. You must try to find me.

What the hell did that mean? And why was she looking for meaning in something that was so clearly insane? She shuddered and told herself to stop. She would eat first, get steadier, dig through her purse for her car keys and her sanity, and then think about what had happened. Where should she go for dinner?

Unsure about what the dining options were after several years’ absence, she drove north to Cleveland Road, cut east and turned south on Grape Road in the neighboring town of Mishawaka.

The area had once been farmland but had, due to urban sprawl, become the main shopping and dining area for the region. Over time, as many of the businesses had moved to the Grape Road district, Mishawaka had received welcome additions to its tax revenue stream, but as a result the downtown area of South Bend was riddled with urban decay.

She caught sight of a T.G.I. Friday’s, and on impulse she pulled into the parking lot. The restaurant was everything she had hoped to find: cheerful, noisy and banal. She parked, stripped off her jacket and left it in the car. Climbing out and locking the doors, she went inside and stopped at the hostess desk. Overloud music, flickering imagery from high-mounted flat-screens, the red – and white-striped decor and the babble of various conversations crashed over her head.

The wavy Van Gogh effect was everywhere in the restaurant. Reflections of light were sharp on the polished wood and edges of glass. For a moment everything seemed to shift, as if it were breathing. She stood disoriented and somewhat sick, as a young waitress in jeans hurried toward her.

“Hi, how many?” the waitress asked in a bright voice.

The girl was very Van Gogh, radiating near-invisible ripples like steam rising from a pot of boiling water. Trying to make it stop, Mary blinked several times as she looked around. Even though the day had faded into early evening, the tables were crowded. A high proportion of the patrons were families with young children. Everyone was haloed with the same kind of rippling effect.

She shifted from foot to foot. Maybe coming here was a mistake. She would hate to cut off her ear in public.

She became aware of the waitress’s fixed, patient smile and consulted her watch. It was already almost five o’clock. Where the hell had the time gone?

“I’m alone,” she said. “I can eat at the bar.”

“Okay! Here’s a menu. Just go have a seat, and someone will be with you in a minute.”

She took the menu and went to the bar, where the music was somewhat lower. Unfortunately, it still competed with the noise from the flat-screen mounted high in one corner. The local news would be starting soon, so she chose a seat nearest the television, although she still wasn’t sure she would be able to stay. The overload of input made her head throb worse than ever. The light, hollow sensation from earlier had intensified until she felt as if she was only loosely connected to her flesh.

The bartender worked in an area ringed by the bar. He came up to her, a young, blond male with an appreciative, blinding Donny Osmond smile.

“How’re you doing today?” he asked. He wiped the area in front of her.

Mary cleared her throat and tried not to look at his mouth. “It’s so noisy in here.”

His smile turned crooked. “Yeah, I’ve gone deaf since I started working here. I can ask the manager to turn it down, but I can’t promise anything. It’s out of my control.”

“Thanks.”

“Can I get you something to drink?”

“Coke, please.” She opened the menu and the items blurred in front of her. “I’m starving, so anything sounds good. What’s quick?”

“The burgers come up pretty fast.”

She ordered a burger with everything, fries and a salad, and sucked down the Coke he placed in front of her. He brought her the salad and refilled her drink as she tore into the food. “You weren’t kidding about being hungry.”

The high fructose corn syrup from the Coke and the first few bites of food helped to anchor her back in her body. Conscious of the bartender’s speculative expression, she swallowed and told him a version of the truth. “I’ve been too busy to eat right these last few weeks, and all of a sudden it caught up with me.”

“Oh yeah? I do that when I’m studying for finals. I live on caffeine and cigarettes. Afterward I sleep for three days.”

“Where do you go to school, Notre Dame?” she asked.

He laughed. “Naw, can’t afford that. I’m going to IUSB. I’m majoring in business administration.”

The South Bend area was filled with higher education schools. Notre Dame University was the most famous of the schools, but there were also Indiana University at South Bend, St. Mary’s College, Holy Cross, Bethel, Ivy Tech and others. The wide choice, together with a relatively low cost of housing, made the area a good place to pursue a higher education.

When her aunt had died, the inheritance Mary had received had been relatively modest. She had been able to afford the prestige of a Notre Dame degree but little else, so she’d had to share an apartment with three other young women to cover housing costs.

The bartender leaned against his side of the bar and talked about school while she polished off her salad. She kept one shoulder hunched against the intrusion of his admiring presence, as her gaze returned again and again to his moving mouth. Those strong, bleached teeth would make quite a bite impression.

She had treated a bite victim last week. It had been a human bite, not animal. Each tooth mark had made a distinct puncture. Dots of blood had welled from the tiny wounds. After dressing it, she had given the victim a tetanus shot and a round of antibiotics. Nasty things, human bites.

Her burger and fries seemed to take forever to arrive. At last the bartender took away her empty salad plate, brought her the burger platter and moved down the bar to serve someone else. She tore into her burger with the same single-mindedness she had shown for the salad, chewing while she sprinkled catsup on her French fries.

Then she caught sight of the bite she had taken out of the burger. The beef patty oozed pinkish juice. She looked at the bright red sprinkled across the fries, and the food in her mouth transformed into a rock as her ravenous hunger fled as abruptly as it had appeared. She fought to swallow, gagged and gulped more Coke to shift the clump down her throat.

The early evening news caught her attention and she looked up. The bar area was noisier than she thought it would be, and the TV’s volume was turned low. The channel was set on a news show that was more sensational than she preferred, so she didn’t think she was missing much.

She glanced up a couple of times as she struggled to eat a few more bites. She was unable to hear the news anchor’s voice-over, so she had no warning. From one glance to the next, the scene changed. When she looked up, she found herself staring at a broadcast being filmed live from her neighborhood in St. Joe.

They were filming her house.

It was on fire. Flames poured out of the windows.

The HDTV swam in her vision. She coughed food.

“Hey,” said the bartender. He moved back toward her. “Are you all right?”

She waved her hand toward the television and wheezed, “Turn it up. That’s my house.”

“What?” He glanced up. “You’re shitting me. Hold on.”

He searched for the remote while Mary stared at the scene of trucks, firefighters and flames that shot out of every window of her ivory tower. The bartender found the remote and punched the volume up in time to catch the end of the news segment.

“. . . A neighbor called it in just after three o’clock this afternoon. No one knows yet if the owner was inside. Officials say that they should have the fire out before dark. It might be well into tomorrow before what’s left of the home is cool enough to inspect. There’ll be more live coverage tonight. . . .”

Mary’s pulse pounded so hard she could hear it in her ears. She put a hand to her mouth, to her forehead. The bartender, his young handsome face concerned, leaned toward her. His lips moved around those sharp white teeth. He seemed to be asking if she was all right.

“No, I’m not all right,” she said. She gave him an incredulous look and flung out one hand in the direction of the television. “That’s my house.”

“There wasn’t anybody at home, was there?” he asked.

“What?” She looked from him to her plate full of greasy food. Back to him again. Already in knots, her stomach lurched. The film clip had shown the blaze roaring out of every window and door. Even if the firefighters were able to put the fire out right after the broadcast, her work, the quilts, the paintings, her clothes, the few mementoes she had from her childhood, everything would be gone. “No. No, nobody was home, I live there alone. No pets. Just me in my house. And all of my things. Everything. Everything I own.”

Mary and the young man stared at each other. The thick sticky film of shock began to evaporate, leaving raw incredulity behind.

This was a bad joke, she thought. Right? This was the beginning of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, like the one where the chick sits in a bar and finds out she’s being hunted by a psychotic maniac, only he’s not a psycho but a cyborg who sounded like he had a speech impediment, and he can’t say her name right.

Right?

“I’m getting you a drink. On the house,” said the bartender. He winced. “Shit. No pun intended . . . you just look like you could use a bit of brandy or something. I’ll be right back. My God.” He patted the air between them with both hands as if it might fix something, or mean anything, and he rushed away.

Mary watched him go. She knew what she was doing—she was having a Sarah Connor moment. Only this wasn’t quite like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. It was a cross between an Arnold movie and The Sixth Sense. She was having a Sarah Connor moment, and she saw dead people. Mother Mary or Mother Teresa, or whoever the hell she had seen in her vision, told her she couldn’t go home and she was in danger. Then she found her house burning on Live at Five.

Just because you’re paranoid . . .

Several feet away, the bartender poured coffee into a cup and tilted some brandy into it. He waved another waiter over and spoke to him. They both looked at her.

Her ricocheting thoughts continued. In the Arnold movie, the cyborg went to Sarah Connor’s apartment.

She knew she was mentally babbling, but it was an urgent babble because there was someplace she was supposed to get to, she could feel it, some appalled realization bubbling up out of the toxic sludge of her shock. She didn’t want to deal with it but she had to.

Because in the movie Arnold the cyborg went to Sarah Connor’s apartment.

Sarah wasn’t there but her roommate and her roommate’s boyfriend were. They died a horrible death.

And a neighbor called in the fire just after three o’clock.

Justin had said that he would come to pick her up around two thirty. She hadn’t been home, but he wouldn’t have left right away.

He was such a stubborn mule. He would have waited to see if she was late getting back from running errands. He would have stayed and stewed, paced and bitten his nails, and then he would have used his copy of her house key to let himself in.

Only when he was quite sure they couldn’t make the appointment would he have given up and called Tony’s office to apologize and say they were going to be late. Or maybe he would have said they were not coming at all that day and would have to reschedule.

But he would have been there.

She hadn’t brought her cell phone, because she hadn’t wanted to pick up a call from work. She lunged off her chair and grabbed her purse. The bartender hurried over to her with the brandy-laced coffee. She said, “Your pay phones.”

He told her, pointing. She raced to the phone mounted on the wall near the restrooms and dug in her purse for coins. She didn’t have enough for the long-distance call. She raced back to the bar and slapped down a ten-dollar bill. “Quarters.”

“Right.” He opened the cash drawer and handed her a roll. She raced back to the phone and fed it quarters until it let her place her call.

“Pick up and be mad at me, you dumb jerk,” she muttered as she dialed his cell phone number. “Come on.”

His phone didn’t ring. Instead she heard his voice mail message right away, which meant that his phone was turned off. Maybe it was recharging.

Or burned? Was his cell phone destroyed?

She hissed and slammed the receiver back on the hook. She made a gigantic effort to think with some rationality. Somehow she had to shake off the feeling that some trickster god had turned into a graffiti artist and had tagged her with the message LIGHTNING STRIKE HERE, spray-painted on her forehead.

Who would want to harm her, or burn down her house, or possibly hurt Justin if he was inside? Nobody, that’s who. She could think of a few people who probably disliked her in some mild way, but nobody who would burn down her house. That was insane.

Kind of like seeing a vision at the Notre Dame Grotto that told her she was in danger and she couldn’t go home.

Yeah, that kind of insane.

She tried to think of anything that could explain the day’s events in a reasonable manner and slammed into a mental wall. She knew she hadn’t started the fire by accident. When she had been a teen, she had burned her arm on a clothes iron that her aunt had forgotten to unplug. As a result she double-checked everything to make sure she had turned off machines after she used them. When she was overstressed, sometimes she triple-checked appliances and the oven, which was actually another thing she should put on her fix-it list.

Who was it that had said when you have exhausted all possible explanations, you should next try the impossible?

She couldn’t remember, although she was pretty sure it hadn’t been Van Gogh.

She walked back to the bar and slipped into her chair. The bartender—Danny, she saw on his name tag—came over as soon as he saw she had returned. “A brandied coffee,” he said as he pushed the mug toward her. “Did you make your calls all right?”

She shook her head, wrapping her fingers around the mug. “I couldn’t get through. Thank you.”

“The manager is going to stop by to see how you’re doing,” Danny said.

“That’s kind.” She tried a sip of the coffee and grimaced. The nasty-tasting liquid slithered down her throat to confront her already queasy stomach.

He handed her a sugar packet and a spoon. “Hey. Your house burned down. It’s the least we can do. Can you finish any of your food?” She looked at the plate of cold greasy food and shook her head. “And you wanted it so much too. Want me to put it in a carryout container for you?” She shook her head harder. “Okay. You know, you look a little glazed. Why don’t you just drink your coffee and take your time? Don’t worry, I didn’t put that much brandy in the coffee, but still—don’t go anywhere until you feel steady enough to drive, okay?”

“Sure. I should call the authorities and tell them I’m alive.” And tell them about Justin? Tell them what? That she had a vision, and thought of the film The Terminator and now she was worried about her ex-husband? She crossed her arms on the bar, put her head on them and groaned.

Someone farther down the bar called out. Danny turned toward him. “Hold on, I’ll be right with you!” He looked back at her. “Look, it’s just my opinion, but you know the authorities are still going to be available in twenty or thirty minutes. Take your time and let yourself deal with the shock.”

She said, “Makes sense. Thank you, Donny.”

“Uh, it’s Danny.”

“Right. Sorry.” Those damn teeth.

“And you’re welcome. Let me know if you need anything else.”

Mary sipped at her brandied coffee until she felt the caffeine and sugar add a fresh spike to her bloodstream. She was borrowing energy against an inevitable crash, but there wasn’t any other alternative. Her day had just become thirty times longer after watching Live at Five.

The restaurant manager came over, profuse with brisk concern and platitudes, but Mary didn’t warm to the other woman. She could tell the manager was acting out of professional obligation and would rather be doing other things. Mary killed two birds with one stone and got rid of her by asking if the other woman would call the St. Joe police to tell them she was alive, if somewhat in shock, and she would be in touch with them soon.

Danny came and refilled her coffee. She thanked him, elbows on the bar, head in her hands.

Okay, she thought. She had to get at least a temporary grip.

What did she know?

She knew she was an intelligent woman. Her experiences were interacting with the outside world. Okay, so the incident with the dancing sticks and twigs from early this morning was pretty iffy, but her house really was on fire. She didn’t know what it meant, but things were not just happening inside her head.

Psychic phenomena have been the stuff of myth and legend for millennia. She knew that for the last hundred years people had claimed to have experienced visions and have their prayers answered in the Grotto.

That was why she had gone there today. Even though she was not very religious, she had wanted to throw out a prayer. You know, just in case God did exist and would like to lend her a hand.

She wanted some answers. She couldn’t very well complain when she started to get some, could she?

Maybe she lived in Gretchen’s world after all.

The scientist in her tried to kick that thought out of her head. She frowned and held on to it.

Maybe . . . maybe all those years of med school were why she had started to doubt her own sanity in the first place. Maybe she was quite sane (there’s a thought), and she just hadn’t yet found the right explanation for everything that was happening. The doctor in her wanted clinical proof and scientific explanations, and maybe she wasn’t going to get any.

For the last several years she had been trying to play by someone else’s rules, and she felt more sick and unsure of herself than she had ever felt in her life.

“My dreams are real,” she whispered.

In spite of the fact that she was worried about Justin and had lost everything she had in the world, a corner of her mouth lifted.

Where did she go from here? She should talk to Gretchen again. She needed to ask more questions, about the woman she saw in her vision and how weird she felt afterward, and what the hell was going on with her vision.

Maybe the Lady didn’t say what Mary thought she had said.

Maybe Mary was in danger if she had tried to go home?

Maybe she would have been in danger if she had been home? The house might have caught fire from some bad electrical wiring, or even from vandalism.

In any case there was no reason for her to create a grand pattern out of everything. And Justin was fine. It was broad daylight. He would have been awake and alert, not asleep and in danger of smoke inhalation. He was pissed and he went back to work, so he turned his cell phone off. As for her, she needed to take things one step at a time and chill. Of course her vision had wonked out. She was chronically sleep-deprived.

She would need a week off to sort out her life. No other way around it. Maybe she would need two weeks. She had to deal with the insurance company and find a place to stay, buy clothes and essentials like toiletries. While she was dealing with all of that, she would get a script for Ambien, get some real sleep and reboot.

She started to feel almost cheerful, which was actually not too bad for someone whose life was in complete upheaval and who had lost everything she owned, aside from her car and what money she had in the bank. She waved Danny over. “I’m ready to leave now. Can you give me my check?”

“Forget it,” he said. “You’re good.”

“But I ordered a lot,” she said.

“You ate, what, three bites of your meal?”

“I had the salad, and the Coke and the coffee. . . .”

He leaned toward her. “I cleared it with the manager. Like I said, you’re good. She also told me to tell you that she called the police for you too. They’re waiting to hear from you. Go do what you need to do.”

“Thank you.” She picked up her purse and slipped off the barstool.

As she pushed outside, she passed a group of people going in. She paused to take in a deep breath of fresh air, grateful to be away from the hot, noisy interior. As nice as the staff had been, she didn’t think she’d ever eat at another Friday’s again.

The sun was setting. The sky was lavender and gold, the edges near the horizon deepening to purple. She looked around with care. The Van Gogh effect was still present, but it wasn’t as pronounced as it had been earlier in the afternoon. She lifted her face to a slight cool breeze.

It curled around her neck and kept circling, a jerky agitation of air.

She stopped breathing. She started to raise a hand to her neck and froze, not daring to move. Something was swirling around her upper torso but there was no weight or solidity to it. It felt as though she was wrapped in a puff of wind.

Then she heard a voice inside her head. Danger.

Seriously. Inside her head.

“Yes?” she whispered on a bare thread of sound. Her whole body tingled. “I know. I—Is it okay if I breathe?”

But then she had to. Stunned and feeling ridiculous, she clapped a hand over her mouth as she drew in air through her nose, as if that might help her to avoid breathing in whatever it was that swirled around her.

Must stay with you, keep you safe.

Gretchen had said that she had sensed someone was with Mary. Could this be BabyMama Two? She asked, “Who are you and how long have you been there? Were you in the car with me earlier?”

DANGER!

“Yes, I saw the news,” she whispered. Could this creature or spirit understand television, or care? “I know my house is burning.”

A couple approached the restaurant. Mary caught a sidelong glance from the woman as they passed. She started to walk again toward the parking lot.

The air grew more agitated. Not there. Here and now!

How can that be?

She rounded the corner of the building to the parking lot.

Two men approached. They were fit and tanned, in their thirties or forties. One wore a light jacket and jeans. The other wore khaki pants and a sport coat. Both were smiling. Preoccupied, she gave them the barest glance.

Something odd and subtle caught her attention. She lifted her head with a frown.

RUN! the presence screamed.

She jerked to a halt, caught between trying to make sense of what her small voice said, and—what was so odd about those men?

Purposeful and bland, they strode forward.

Toward her, not the restaurant doors. She took a step back, then another.

Then she figured out what was so different about them. Her eyes widened.

The edges of the men’s bodies weren’t glowing with that strange Van Gogh effect, as was virtually everything else. Instead they were surrounded by a dull smudge of darkness. Wrongness snapped at her with invisible fangs.

One of them called out with a smile. “Dr. Byrne?”

He reached inside his jacket.

Alarm jolted through her. She whirled to lunge back around the corner. She heard footsteps running after her. They didn’t say anything further. That frightened her more. It frightened her badly.

She barreled into a family of four as they stepped outside the restaurant doors, a father and mother, a boy around eleven and an older woman. All were varying shades of blond. Mary’s knees weakened with relief even as both she and the older woman staggered. The man grabbed their arms to keep them from falling. The wife yanked her son out of the way.

“Careful,” the man said. “Are you two all right?”

The older woman shook free. She snapped at Mary, “You’re going too fast.”

“I’m sorry.” Words tumbled out of her. “Two men are chasing me.”

“Chasing you,” said the older woman.

“I beg your pardon?” said the younger woman, who looked around with incredulity. “Here?”

Mary knew how the woman felt. Whoever those men were, they wouldn’t do anything here at the front of the restaurant, not with the family as witnesses and all the cars whizzing by on Grape Road.

It was too public.

Just like Dairy Queen had been yesterday.

Fuck.

She knew when the two men rounded the corner. She felt their presence as a prickle along the back of her neck. She and the others turned to look at them.

“Let’s go back inside, Christine,” the husband said, putting an arm around his wife. “Just until this is sorted out. Right now.”

Mary reached for the nearest door handle. Even as she jolted into movement again, she knew she was moving too slow.

She heard flat, popping noises and turned her head.

Crimson exploded in the middle of the man’s forehead. The young woman Christine opened hazel eyes wide in surprise as she began a slow, graceful, downward pirouette. A spray of ruby stars appeared on the boy’s soccer league T-shirt. The boy looked down and fingered one of the stars as his knees collapsed. The older woman’s jaw shattered, bone and tissue flying.

Liquid warmth splashed over Mary’s face and torso.

She knew that warm wetness well. Red was an important color to her. Four people toppled to the pavement like mown flowers.

“No,” she said. She opened her mouth wide. Someone started to scream. She thought it might be her.

Her invisible presence screamed with her. RUN RUN RUN!

Still smiling, the man in the sports coat lunged at her and clamped a hand around her arm. The other looked around with a sharp gaze while he tucked his gun and silencer back inside his jacket.

She dragged hard against the fingers that dug into her flesh, still screaming.

“Come with us now, Mary,” Sport Coat said. “You don’t want any more people to get shot, do you? We’ll kill everybody in the restaurant if we have to.”

“Not that we’d mind,” Spring Jacket added. “We like to kill.”

But her body couldn’t be reasoned with, or ordered to obey. It had a mind of its own and convulsed into wild struggles. Spring Jacket stepped over the bodies of the family to reach for her other arm.

She was a small, underweight woman. Both men had at least sixty pounds on her. Even as she bucked and heaved against the hard hands that sought to subdue her, her mind was a different engine that ran on its own track.

They didn’t shoot me. They recognized my face. They called me by name. They want me for something.

What do they want from me?

Then she twisted into Spring Jacket’s body and brought one knee up hard between his legs. As he groaned and doubled over, she jerked her arm free to stab at Sport Coat’s eyes with stiffened fingers. He caught her wrist before she hit his face.

Sport Coat spun her around until she faced away from him. He forced both of her arms behind her back. She knew she was in serious trouble even as she tried to kick Spring Jacket in the head. He ducked to the side, and she missed.

With a grunt Spring Jacket stood upright. He backhanded her. Her head snapped from the blow. She bit her tongue so hard blood spurted in her mouth. Then she had to stop screaming because she started to choke.

“I’ll pay you back more when we’ve got time,” he said. She spat a mouthful of blood in his face. He wiped it off with a sleeve. “Keep it up, bitch. I’m running a tab.”

Neither man had lost his empty mannequin smile. The four murders and the fight had taken less than a minute.

A short distance away, cars shot down a busy five-lane highway. She willed them to keep moving so that no one else got shot.

Even if someone noticed the fight and called 911, it wouldn’t do her any good. The men picked her up, one at her torso and the other at her legs. They jogged with her toward a dark unmarked van.

That van was the embodiment of every kidnapping nightmare.

She couldn’t go in there.

She was as good as dead if they got her in that van.

She bucked and kicked as hard as she could, and she barely made them stagger.

Panic enveloped her, a pure bolt that was as sharp and cold as a scalpel of ice slicing open a vein. It was followed by a blinding wave of white heat that filled her mind and body. A roaring madness took over the world.

She was aware, as if from a great distance, that both men had started to curse. They dropped her. She hit the ground hard and tried to roll into a ball. The roar of white noise filled her body and mind then began to recede.

She was being rolled on the ground, wrapped up in something.

Voices:

“Hurry up, goddamn it. Cover her legs with your jacket.”

“I’m going as fast as I can. What the hell did she just do? Somehow she fucking burned my hands.”

“I got burned too, ass-wipe, and I’ve got her shoulders covered. Come ON!”

The sound of a door sliding open. She stirred. Rough hands slid under her shoulders and legs. She opened her eyes. Felt herself being lifted. Looked up into two smiling mannequin faces. Liquid spilled out of her mouth.

A hawk with splayed talons plummeted out of the jewel-toned sky. It raked Spring Jacket’s head from nape to crown, slashing him open to the bone. Wetness sprayed her again. The man rocked forward from the blow. He dropped her legs.

Spring Jacket wobbled and turned toward what hit him. A second hawk dove for Sport Coat’s face. One of his eyes split like a grape under the slash of its talons. He lost his hold on her shoulders. She hit cement hard a second time. She would have whimpered if she’d had any breath. She managed to roll several times before she dared to lift her head.

Both men were bent at the waist, covered with dozens of attacking hawks. They beat at the air and slapped at the birds. Red streaked their flailing figures. One pulled his gun and fired blind. A few birds dropped to the ground. A dozen more took their place.

She struggled to her hands and knees but didn’t dare rise to her feet, for a shrieking cloud of raptors wheeled and dove in the parking lot. Red-tailed hawks, rough-legged hawks, turkey vultures, Cooper’s hawks, falcons, goshawks, harriers.

Calm descended on her for the space of one pulse beat.

She was not on earth. She was somewhere else where things like this could happen.

A breeze whipped around her damp neck, and that small voice said, They die for you. Don’t waste their sacrifice. Run!

She ducked her head to crawl away from the battle. Gravel bit into the heels of her palms and her knees. Her hearing was filled with the sound of her harsh wet breathing.

Car. Keys. Purse. Where’s the damn purse?

She had been carrying her purse by its strap. She had dropped it somewhere when she had been attacked. She crawled toward the front of the restaurant, searching the ground of the parking lot as she went.

She had to go back around the corner of the building. Her purse was lying close to the woman named Christine, near the dead woman’s outflung arm.

She touched Christine’s still-warm fingers and said in a harsh croak, “If your spirit is still here, I’m so sorry. I don’t understand why this happened. I would have done everything I could to avoid your family if I’d known.”

She snatched up her purse, struggled to her feet and ran, bent over, back around the corner and down the line of parked cars until she reached her Toyota.

Scrape, fumble.

Get the damn key in the lock. There.

She yanked at the door and fell into the car. Locked the door. Started the engine.

It stalled. A sob broke out of her. She tried again.

The engine roared. She jerked the stick shift into reverse, misjudged the distance and clipped an SUV as she pulled out.

Thunk!

Something hit her trunk. She screamed and twisted at the waist to look out the rear window. A blood-covered figure pushed off of the trunk of her car and fumbled along the driver’s side toward her door, one arm curled over his head while shrieking birds continued to dive and rip his skin to ribbons. His raw, red flesh was unrecognizable as a face.

She screamed again, yanked her car into first gear and slammed down on the gas pedal. With a squeal of tortured tires, the Toyota shot away.