Dark Paradise (75 page)

A memory of the way the dogs had torn into the tiger in the video

flashed through her mind, and she shifted uneasily on the branch.

Samantha had endured enough horrors without being torn apart by a pack

of dogs, but if they weren't diverted soon, they would undoubtedly make

a dash for her.

The horse came a step closer and another step closer.

Marilee crouched down on the limb, wishing she had a weapon of some

kind. But there was nothing at hand, and wishing wouldn't save their

bacon.

Without allowing herself another thought, she stepped off the branch and

hurled herself down on Sharon Russell. She caught the blonde around the

shoulders with her arms, tipping her backward in the saddle. The rifle

went off with a crack as loud as the lightning that snaked across the

sky.

Startled, the horse bolted sideways, ducking out from under Marilee and

slamming Sharon's right leg into the trunk of a tree. She howled her

rage and twisted around in the saddle, swinging the gun in Marilee's

direction. Marilee scrambled to stand and fling herself ahead at the

same time, grabbing wildly for the rifle barrel. She caught hold of the

fore end of the stock and shoved it aside just as Sharon pulled the

trigger.

The rifle cracked again, spitting its load into the soft loam of the

hillside. Marilee hung on tight to the gun as the horse leapt forward,

eyes rolling, hooves scrambling for purchase. Sharon had the choice of

giving up her ride or her rifle. She came out of the saddle screaming in

fury.

Her momentum drove Marilee backward on the steep hillside, and she

stumbled and went down, letting go of the gun to try to save herself

from rolling down a hundred feet of Mountainside. She skidded backward

on the rain-slick slope, grabbing for anything she could and catching

hold of a broken branch that was three feet long and thicker than a

baseball bat. Her fingers gripped it hard as she struggled to get her

feet under her, her eyes on Bryce's cousin the whole time.

Sharon came at her with madness flaming in her eyes and terrible alien

cries tearing from her throat. She brought the rifle up against her

shoulder. Marilee surged upward, swinging the branch, once again

knocking the gun to the side. Without wasting a second, she lunged

closer and swung again with all her might, catching the woman hard

enough in the upper arm to make her lose her grip on the rifle.

The gun dropped and bounced down the hillside, twisting and flipping.

Both women scrambled after it, pushing and shoving at each other until

they went down in a tangle of arms and legs.

Samantha watched from up the trail, thinking she should do something,

but she couldn't think what. Her brain felt numb. The rain pouring down

gave the scene a weird, dreamlike quality and separated her from the

other women like a wall, like a window she could see through but not

move through. She could actually feel her consciousness retreat inside

her mind. She wanted to shut down, to black out, to fall into oblivion

where she couldn't be hurt and she didn't have to exist in this

nightmare. But a small, strident voice inside her shouted for her to

hang on, to get up, to do something.

She struggled to her feet and started down the hill.

Then the dogs turned and looked right at her with their eyes bright and

their teeth showing.

Down the hill, Marilee fought to get free of Sharon. They had come to

rest on a shelf of treeless ground that jutted out from the hillside.

The rifle lay half a yard away, nearer the edge. Marilee lunged for it,

her fingertips just grazing the butt of the stock as Sharon fell on her.

The rifle slipped beyond her grasp. She twisted onto her back and tried

to throw her attacker off, but Sharon's hands closed on her throat and

squeezed. Those hands were large and strong, as masculine as her face,

which was now twisted with madness and rage, distorted into a grotesque

mask. The features blurred and melted together as the blackness of

unconsciousness crept around the edges of Marilee's vision.

She struggled beneath the weight of the larger woman, clawing at

Sharon's sinewy forearms to no avail. Flinging her hands out to the

side, she scrabbled for anything she could use as a weapon and closed

her fingers on a jagged shank of wood. With all the strength she could

muster, she swung her arm up and jabbed the shard into Sharon's biceps.

Sharon screamed, twisting to grab the makeshift knife, throwing herself

off balance. Marilee heaved her hips upward and to the left, and her

assailant fell off her, allowing her to scramble to her feet. She jumped

up, dizzy, her legs heavy and slow beneath her. Sharon lunged sideways,

making another grab for the rifle and catching hold of the sling. She

pulled the gun toward her as she slid another five feet toward the edge

of the ground. Desperate, Marilee flung herself on Bryce's cousin,

knocking the gun from her hands and sending it over the edge and down

the side of the mountain.

The two of them wrestled and kicked and clawed, sending a hail of loose

rock careening down the slope.

Marilee felt her strength ebb as the initial burst of adrenaline faded.

She had been running for miles. Sharon was fresh. Sharon was in shape.

Sharon was insane. And as they came to their feet, she discovered one

other very important thing about Sharon Russell - she had a knife.

At the sound of the rifle shots, Will kicked his horse into a gallop

without regard for the terrain or the animal or his own life. He could

think only of Sam and how badly he wanted to hold her safe in his arms.

J.D. was right behind him, his thoughts on Marilee.

He leaned back hard in the saddle as his gelding skidded down the trail,

slipping on the mud and dead vegetation.

They crashed through the brush and over fallen logs, dodging trees and

boulders, stumbling over roots. The rain came down through the trees as

loud as nails on a tin roof. It sluiced over the brims of their hats and

obscured vision. They rode on, oblivious of it.

Del held his position, watching the goings-on through a 36x Unert

scope. The scope nearly ran the length of an all-black Heckler and Koch

.308 assault rifle. His meanest, ugliest, ass-kicking gun. He had it

tricked out to take a sixty-shot banana clip. It was the siege gun. The

gun he would use to protect his family and his land from all corners.

The time had come to use it. He could feel it. His nerves were jumping

like live wires beneath his skin. He felt as though he had a swarm of

bees inside his head, that if he could uncork the knot of flesh on top

of his head, bees would fly out by the hundreds. He wished he could do

that to clear his mind. He wished a lot of things.

He wished the little blonde - the talker - had not come to his place. She

said she had seen the tigers too, but he still wasn't sure she wasn't

trying to trick him. The blondes were like that. The one had lured J.D.,

the dead one, the same one that lured Del during the long nights. They

couldn't be trusted.

He had followed the talker a ways out from his place.

Not too far, because he didn't feel good about leaving the cabin now

that its sanctity had been breached. And then he had picked himself a

spider hole and waited. There was something in the air, something akin

to the storm that gathered angrily overhead. He lay prone in his spider

hole and waited as the anticipation built into a ball of energy at the

base of his skull.

He had expected the dog-boys and the hunters. What he saw through the

scope were the blondes. Two of them locked in combat. They were perhaps

five hundred yards out and sharply down the mountain from him on a lip

of ground that had always been called Bald Knob. The lack of trees on

Bald Knob afforded him a decent view, but his vision was obscured by the

rain and the light was nearly gone. The blondes moved together, like

dancers, like sexual mates, writhing and twisting, their bodies melding

into a grotesque mutation of the human form.

Del's fingers moved restlessly on the rifle, stretching, limbering. The

tip of his trigger finger hummed with energy as it caressed the arc of

steel. His heart was running like a generator in his chest. He couldn't

seem to slow it.

His lungs felt overinflated. Panic filled his throat. He could smell his

nerves like smoldering wiring. His stillness had deserted him. Thunder

boomed overhead, and he thought of mortar fire and listened to the

remembered crackle of radio static as it skated along between the plate

and his brain.

He didn't know what to do. Had they come to take the ranch?
 
To taunt

him?
 
To drive him mad?
 
To kill one another?
 
He didn't understand. He

couldn't calm himself enough to think. Time seemed to be moving at

hyperspeed and there was nothing he could do to still even one moment.

Kill them!

But he knew he shouldn't.

Protect the ranch. Make the family proud. Be a hero.

Hero.

Behind his eyes he saw the little blonde looking up at him. You can be a

hero, Del . . . J.D. will be so proud of you . . .

The blondes fought on, their features melting and distorting in the rain

until he couldn't tell one from the other.

He had to do something. Do the right thing. Do the hard thing. Save the

day. Save the ranch. Save himself.

He tightened the HK-91 against his shoulder and blew out half a breath.

Samantha faced the dogs, holding herself as still as a statue, thinking

that if she were still enough, she might somehow become invisible to

them. But they had already seen her and they had spent the better part

of a day trailing her scent. They took a step toward her and then

another. She took a step back, then they all sprang into motion at

once - the dogs lunging toward her, Samantha turning and trying to run up

the steep slope.

They would be on her in a heartbeat. She looked for a refuge - a boulder

she could crawl onto, a tree she could climb. All her brain could tell

her was run!
 
She had already run too far. Her legs moved as though she

were immersed to her waist in mud. She seemed to go nowhere. Teeth

snapped at her calf, and she screamed just as a horse broke through the

cover of brush ahead of her and came flying down the grade.

"will!"

The sound of her scream went through him like a knife. He had no time to

register the damage that had been done to her face or her hair. All he

could see was her terror, her arms reaching out to him, the dogs going

after her legs as she tried to run toward him.

He never even reined in his horse, but leaned down and caught her around

the ribs with one arm and pulled her awkwardly across the saddle in

front of him, oblivious of the pain that ripped through his own body.

J.D. blew past them, nearly crashing into a loose horse.

He had a clear view of Bald Knob. A clear view of Bryce's cousin as she

pulled a knife and swung it high above her head. A clear view of her

driving it into Marilee as she tried to stumble back out of the way.

At that moment he felt his heart stop dead in his chest.

He couldn't get to her in time. There wasn't time for his rifle to clear

the scabbard. She fell backward, arms flung out to the side, blood

spreading in a stain down the front of her shirt. Sharon fell with her,

dropping to her knees, raising the knife again.

He was fifty feet away and he was going to witness the death of the only

woman he had ever loved.

It was a terrible epiphany. A terrible irony.

He screamed her name. Jerked at the rifle that caught in its leather