Master of the Moors (32 page)

"Please...let me try to
get help."

He stopped, and something
changed in his face. It might have been a look of confusion, or
sorrow, the flames burning brightly in his eyes made it hard to
tell. He lifted one hand from the bed and brought it close to his
face. He studied it, as if it were something new to him. And in a
way, it was, for long thin bone-like nails had jutted forth from
them. His smile returned, and he peered at Tabitha through his
fingers. "I'm going to eat you all up," he said and lunged for
her.

She screamed, and without
thinking slid diagonally across the bed, her outstretched hand
grasping for whatever it could find to use as a weapon.

It found the lamp.

"Give it to me," Donald
roared as he tore at her nightdress. Fabric ripped and nails found
her skin. She screamed again and wrenched the lamp off the
nightstand. It almost fell, slipping from a palm made moist by
terror, but she tightened her grip and swiveled around.

With a gasp of excitement,
Donald tore open her nightdress, exposing her nakedness.
Instinctively she was mortified, but her embarrassment was quickly
dismissed by the awareness that soon he would hurt her, and badly.
In the state he was in, he might even kill her. As his mouth opened
wider than any mouth was supposed to, revealing a set of serrated
and pointed teeth, and his head ducked low to meet her small
breast, she brought the lamp over her head in a two-handed
grip.

"I'm sorry," she
whispered.

"There she is," Donald
said, a black tongue worming its way toward her right
nipple.

The hot glass burning her
hands, she brought the lamp down in as vicious an arc as she could
manage given the limited space. It connected and shattered on
impact, the flame guttering once before oil soaked the bed, and
Donald's hair. It ignited. Blue-white fire rushed over her
brother's face and he jerked away from her, away from the bed until
he was standing and slapping at his face. The white flames of his
eyes reached up toward his brow as if eager to meet its kindred
spirit, and then Donald was running, screaming, howling in agony
toward the window.

Tabitha didn't want to
watch what happened next. She couldn't. All she knew was that the
threat was gone, and had quickly been replaced by
another.

The bed was on fire.

But as she tumbled out of
bed, kicking in a panic at the blankets, she almost collided with
Donald as he dove headfirst through her bedroom window. She saw the
flames, blue and white and yellow, sailing back from his head as he
crashed through the glass and descended in a hail of screams to the
ground below.

***

"Get on the
horse."

Kate stared at him, mouth
agape.

He shifted his stance.
Swallowed. "Kate...I'm not foolin'. I said get on the bloody
horse
."

"No."

"If yer thinkin' I love
you too much to shoot you, yer right, but I also love you too much
to let those things get you and I'd rather you died by my hand than
theirs, so
get on the blasted horse
and get
out
of here!"

"Grady,
please
."

"
Now!
"

"Where am I supposed to
go?"

"I don't know. Not the
house. Get as far from Brent Prior as you can. Stop at the next
village and tell them what's happened. Get them to send all the
constables and hardy men they have. They'll need them. Only a fool
would come out here on his own." He paused, and smiled humorlessly.
"Or with a young girl."

"But I can
help
you." She glanced
pointedly at the pistol in her hand and for one appalling moment,
considered using it.

"Yer right. You can. You
can get on that horse right now and ride away. That's how you can
help me."

"Grady," she sobbed, still
making no move to comply with his demand. She couldn't believe this
was happening, that a man she had loved her whole life, as much if
not more than her father, simply because he had been there for her
more, was pointing a rifle at her and threatening to kill her if
she didn't leave. "I want to stay with you."

"Kate..." The gun shook in
his hand. "Please." The wind slapped at his raincoat.
"
Please
."

"You'll have to shoot me,"
she said, the remnants of the rain, now stopped, dripping from the
tip of her nose.

He paused, the rifle stock
nestled against his jaw, and he was weeping. Or perhaps it was just
rainwater dripping down his cheek, Kate couldn't be sure. His face
was ghost-white in the lamplight, eyes wide and glassy with
terror.

Kate braced herself as
sudden determination seized the old man's face, his eyes widening.
Again she became conscious of the weight of the pistol in her
clammy hand. Wondered if she could ever live with herself if she
used it.

"Don't..." she pleaded,
one last time, slowly bringing the pistol up.

Then, with a muffled
choking sound, Grady pulled the trigger.

27

In the Mansfield's yard,
Tabitha screamed as a section of wood the size of her fist tore
through the stable door in front of her. Instinctively, she ducked,
arms crossed over her face. Her eyes were ringing and the coppery
taste of blood filled her mouth. She fell to her knees into a
puddle, the icy water instantly soaking through her
skirts.

Despite her confusion, she
knew she had been shot at. She had grown up around huntsmen and the
thunderous report of a rifle had been unmistakable. Worse still,
something inside the stable had
growled
in response to the shot. Any
other night, she might have concluded that the Mansfield family was
keeping some kind of a dog in there. But after what had happened
with Donald, she knew better. Something terrible had been set loose
in Brent Prior and it seemed now that she was not the only one who
knew about it.

In a low crouch, she
hurried away from the stable door across the yard toward the
darkness that encroached upon the house from the moors, her feet
splashing through puddles that sent more water up her legs,
eliciting a gasp from her at the coldness of it.

"Wait!" said a voice and
Tabitha froze, aware even in her terror that disobeying the command
might mean her death. Shivering, she slowly turned around to face
the speaker. Her fear lessened only slightly at the sight of the
rotund charwoman standing in the doorway, framed by the light from
the hall. To her relief, she saw that though the woman was still
holding the rifle, she had lowered it to her side. "Who are
you?"

"It's me, Tabitha. Tabitha
Newman."

For a moment the woman
said nothing, then she stepped aside, allowing the light from
inside the house to spread out into the yard. "You'd better come
inside," she said. "And quickly."

"What's going on?" Tabitha
asked as she hurried to the door. "Why did you try to shoot
me?"

"I was trying to stop you
from openin' that door, lass. If you had, you'd be dead now, and
not from any bullet. Now get inside.
Quickly!
"

Tabitha rushed inside and watched as
Mrs. Fletcher slammed the door closed and bolted it behind
her.

"What's happening? Did
Neil come home?"

The charwoman turned, a
haunted look on her face. "No. There's no one here but us. And that
thing in the stable."

"What is it?"

"I don't know what it is,"
the old woman replied, gesturing at the stairs. "But we're goin' to
have to hide. Now that I think about it, weakenin' that door with a
shot wasn't very wise at all, but I panicked when I saw you tryin'
to open it."

"Well if it's locked up,
shouldn't we try and get into town?"

"It won't be locked up for
long, and once it's out, it'll come lookin' for me. I stabbed it
with a pitchfork." She smiled wearily. "Made it mad, I expect. It's
a fast bugger. Lightnin' fast. We'd never make it into town before
it got a hold of us, and we wouldn't see it comin'. It's the color
of night, that thing. We're better off here, where we can see
it."

Tabitha's mind raced. She
had come here hoping to find that the nightmare, which had begun
with Neil's disappearance, had been resolved, but now it seemed as
if she'd walked into another battleground. It led her to wonder how
many more houses around the village were trying to fight off
monsters.

Mansfield House, like her
own, was solid brick, a veritable fortress built to withstand the
harsh moorland weather but that hadn't prevented them from
infiltrating her room in the guise of her brother. "I've seen
them," she said. When the charwoman looked questioningly at her,
she continued. "They did something to my brother, changed him
somehow, and...and my mother's gone. I found blood in her bed but I
can't find her. I thought she might be here. I thought maybe she
had come to see if Neil had been found. I came here to see if I
could find
either
of them."

Mrs. Fletcher shook her
head. "I'm sorry, pet. No one has been back here. Except for that
thing, of course and I think it did my master in."

Tabitha nodded. This had
to be some sort of cruel nightmare. In the real world, people
didn't turn into monsters, and loved ones didn't die. And though a
tiny ounce of hope remained in her, she feared her mother was dead,
if not changed like Donald had been. She didn't know which was
worse. But while she knew there was grieving to be done, it would
have to wait. If not, it could distract her and make her another
casualty of this horrific night.

"It's not anythin' I've
ever seen before," Mrs. Fletcher said. "The more I try and
understand it, the more I think that the Beast of Brent
Prior
itself
is
locked up in that stable." She moved to the stairs and motioned for
Tabitha to do likewise. "Let's move. We'll hide
upstairs."

The Beast of Brent
Prior
. Tabitha swallowed.
It's supposed to be just a myth.
But so were all monsters, and the reality of them
had already been proven to her.

"But what if someone comes
home in the meantime?" she asked.

"We can keep watch from
the upstairs window. When we see them coming we'll shout a
warning."

Tabitha looked dubious. "I
don't like this."

Mrs. Fletcher took her by
the elbow and led the way upstairs. "Nor do I, child but we're
hardly spoiled for options."

They had just reached the landing when
they heard a sharp cracking sound like dry wood being broken across
a knee.

"Go!" Mrs. Fletcher said,
shoving Tabitha in the direction of the master's
bedroom.

More wood splintering,
then a furious crash as the stable door was destroyed.

In the bedroom, Tabitha
parted the curtains. She quickly snapped the latch and pushed the
window open. Hands braced on the sill, she peered out. In a voice
wracked with terror at the monstrosity she saw below, she said,
"Mrs. Fletcher...it's free!" The stable door was in ruins,
fragments of wood scattered halfway across the yard. "Oh my God,"
she breathed. "What
is
it?"

The creature below was
much different than the corrupted version of her brother. He at
least had retained a human shape. The thing in the yard didn't look
even remotely human.

The charwoman raised the
rifle. "Close that door," she said. "And lock it."

This time Tabitha ignored
the old woman's command, for the thing she saw lumbering across the
yard paralyzed her with fear. It was an abomination, an unnatural
thing woven from shadows, with white fire for eyes.

Donald's eyes...

It was the kind of monster
she had once feared might dwell in the darkness beneath her bed,
waiting to grab her ankle. As she watched, terror-struck, the
creature landed in a crouch directly below the window and raised
its queerly shaped head.

"Tabitha!" Mrs. Fletcher
shouted. "Where is it now?"

Tabitha couldn't speak;
her thoughts were leaves in an electrified stream of panic. She
wanted to tell the charwoman---knew she
had
to tell the charwoman---that the
creature was at the door, but even if she found her tongue, she
knew she'd be lying.

Because the creature was
not at the door. It was
on
it, hugging the wood with the ease of a drunken
man sprawled across a table, and slowly, ever so slowly, creeping
up the wall toward the window.

***

The scent of gun smoke wafted on the
air.

Kate sat on the sodden
earth, trembling.

The horse had bolted at
the explosive burst from Grady's rifle and now the two of them
stared at one another, ears ringing, but not deaf to the sound of
grass crunching all around them.