Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller (22 page)

“You’re Ryan’s sister, right?”

Lee nodded, just enough to show that her heart was still beating. She was trying to straighten her hair as subtly as she could.

“Well,” Jimmy Long said hurriedly, the coach booming somewhere behind him, “I just wanted to apologize. Guess I wasn’t watchin’ where I was goin’.”

The girl nodded again. She still hadn’t looked up.

“Are you okay?” Jimmy asked. “I’m really sorry.”

The boy waited for a response that would never come. The sad thing was, this was one of those precious First Times, and Kain doubted either of them knew how special that was. Lee had a huge crush on Jimmy Long, you didn’t have to have
that
slapped in your face before you saw it, but the big Sioux himself seemed to be suffering more than a wee bout of smitten. He mused over a Turn to give this conversation (such as it was) another shot, but that wasn’t part of the game. This was the Real Deal, and the hand would have to be played.

Jimmy Long glanced at Kain, and Kain gave a small rise of his brow. The boy turned back to the girl. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

“… Thanks,” came the small reply.

“
MOVE IT OR LOSE IT, LONG!
”

“Kain.”

“Jimmy.”

The boy left them in a hurry.

“You can breathe now.”

The girl checked the mirror again and watched the ballplayer go. She sat up straight.

“How dumb was that, huh? How stupid was
that?
”

“You could always go talk to him.”

“What? Oh no. I couldn’t.”

“Why not? Jimmy’s a good kid.”

“I wish people wouldn’t call him that.”

“That’s his name.”

“No it’s not. It’s
Chayton.
”

“‘Chayton’?”

“It means
falcon.
I looked it up.” She shifted her head, trying to catch a glimpse of the boy in the mirror.

“I know him as Jimmy. Sorry.”

“It’s a stupid nickname. Ryan makes fun of it all the time. Says he got it because he can jimmy a car door in ten seconds.” She kept moving her head to eke out a better view. “He spent six—”

The girl silenced herself.

“… Lee?”

“It wasn’t real jail or anything. But jail’s jail, right? Anyway, he stole a car once.” She paused, downcast, as if she had just betrayed her one true love. “I hate that name.”

“So call him Chayton.”

“I just met him! Besides, Ryan told me that nobody calls him that. Said he hates that more than I hate ‘Jimmy.’ His last name isn’t even Long. It’s Longbow. He’s Sioux. He should be proud of that.”

Kain recalled the pitcher’s constant whipping up of the Tribe, the crazed Injun dancing and hollering. The endless mockery of native people. Jokes were one thing, it was good to laugh at oneself, but at times, it was almost as if Jimmy was trying too hard to fit in. He hadn’t known him long, but he had always suspected the boy had been running from his past—they were kindred spirits, two Little Ghosts on the run—and so he had to agree with this bright girl’s perceptions.

“He is a good kid,” he said again, as if saying it aloud made it so. “I like him.”

“Ryan sure doesn’t.”

“Why?”

The girl slumped in her seat and turned away from him.

“Lee?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it? He just doesn’t.” She stewed in her seat a moment and then turned back to him. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right.” He paused. “Can I say something?”

“I guess.”

“Jimmy likes you, too.”

“I wish,” she said wistfully. But then her eyes quickly widened, as if she had just remembered the most dreadful thing. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

“Tell—”

“You can’t tell
anyone!
Promise me you won’t.”

“If you like him, it’s okay. It’s okay to tell him.”

“
Please.
Promise me you won’t say anything.”

“I won’t … I
won’t.
”

“
Promise.
”

She was practically in a panic, and suddenly he realized there was more to this than being embarrassed should someone discover her secret love. This wasn’t about being teased at school by jealous girlfriends; wasn’t about Jimmy Long finding out she had a crush on him. This was about a young girl terrified of some imagined future horror. Or some earlier one.

“I promise.”

The girl nodded a dim thank you. Slowly, she drew her hair from her face. She had lost all trace of the youthful beauty she possessed, all in a single moment. In that solemn snapshot of time, she looked tired and old. And very afraid.

“I could never tell him,” she admitted, her small voice growing impossibly smaller.

“If you don’t let him know—”

“Can we go home now? I want to go home.”

~ 22

The girl was nearly in tears on the trip back, holding them in like a bullied kid who has no way to go but through the bully and has found the courage to do so. Not surprisingly, she had slipped into that troubling remoteness for most of the drive. But suddenly her mood had brightened, so much so that Kain couldn’t believe she had asked.

“How am I supposed to learn if all I do is drive around in a parking lot?” she said, egging him again. She had asked three times already.

He should have said no, of course, flat-out no. But then there he was, slowing down, steering onto the shoulder. They were barely a mile from home.

He scanned ahead and behind. Nothing but open road.

“I don’t know about this, Lee.”

“It’s just over there,” she said. “I can handle it. I’m seventeen-and-a-half, you know.”

Kain’s cheeks ballooned with air, and he let it out in a burst. “All right,” he said. “All right.”

“Check your mirror,” he told her, when they had changed positions. “And put your turn signal on.”

The girl did as instructed. She began to inch ahead, checking her side mirror almost too cautiously. She stalled the engine, but without missing a beat got it going again, and then she started onto the road. He had to remind her to turn off the signal light, but she was doing well.

“Good … now get your speed up and shift into second … good … that’s good.”

She seemed to be having trouble at the higher speed, the truck swaying a bit. Still, she had a grin on her face that couldn’t be denied.

“Slow it down a little,” he told her. “Just keep us on this side of the road.”

A truck came up behind them.

“What do I do?”

Kain glanced in the side mirror. The driver was tailgating, and now the idiot was laying on the horn.

“Just let him wait,” he said calmly. “Let him pass.”

The truck pulled out and sped past. A dust storm struck them in its wake, and just as he feared the girl might panic, she slowed down, downshifting without a hitch.

“Good girl. Just keep going up to the stop.”

From the right, a white station wagon was creeping along to meet them at the intersection. They reached it first, and they could hear the rising voice of Gene Autry on the car’s radio as it drew near. It came to a painfully slow stop (it didn’t have to, it was only a two-way stop), the driver an elderly woman who must have been alive when Lincoln was president. She was frail to a fault. She could barely see over the wheel, her bony fingers clasped round it like talons. Squinting sharply behind narrow spectacles, she struggled trying to pull herself up for a better lay of the land. Time seemed to stand still as they waited for her, and only when she deemed it safe to go on did the woman turn right onto the road and keep on at that same laborious pace.

“Clara Brayfield,” Lee said, checking both ways to make sure the way was clear. “Old Clara and her shepherds.”

“There’s gotta be three or four in there.”

“
Five.
See?”

Kain looked again. Two big shepherds stood in the back seat, bruisers both, their coats as dark as charcoal. Two smaller ones, more brown than black, sat on their hindquarters in the cargo area. A fifth, a mix of gray and brown and black, it too nestled tightly in the back, shot its head up between its siblings. A beast of an animal, a postman’s worst nightmare, it yawned groggily, exposing a wicked set of choppers. The rear window was down, and the dog stuck out its huge head for a breath of fresh air.

“They’re kinda my cousins,” Lee said.

“Cousins—”

“Beaks had more oomph in the old days.”

“Ah.”

She moved ahead slowly, gave Old Clara Brayfield some room. The old bird was doing no more than thirty, but the dust was so fine it tossed a brown sheet in front of them. They crept forward for an agonizing quarter mile, when Lee asked if she should pass.

“No,” Kain said. “It’s not far now.”

“What’s
he
doing?”

“I see him.”

The big shepherd forced its huge body between the others. It was probably the biggest dog Kain had ever seen, save a Great Dane that had nearly snapped off his fingers in the seventh grade. It shot forward, its front paws resting on the wagon door, freeing its head and its shoulders from the constraints of the vehicle. A grizzly in dog’s clothing, it stood tall and unwavering, focused squarely on the threat pursuing its master. On Kain.

“Back off a bit, Lee.” The dog was baring those nasty teeth now; deadly yellow knives. It barked sharply, and the dogs in the back seat snapped to attention. The others in the cargo area stuck out their heads and joined in on the barking game. The driver seemed to pay the goings-on no heed. Either Clara Brayfield couldn’t hear what was happening, or didn’t care.

Lee-Anne gripped the wheel tightly. “What’s the matter with them?”

“Just give them more r—”

“
OH MY GOD!
”

The dog leapt from the car like some attacking phantom. It hit the ground hard, stumbling on enormous paws, but it pulled itself up and bolted right at them. Lee panicked as she hit the brakes, and she whipped the wheel right. A crow that had been pecking at some grass fluttered up and struck the windshield. It lingered there, stunned more than wounded, and then took off. The truck skidded off the road and onto the shoulder, came up on two wheels, kept on them for a good ten feet before coming down, and before they knew it, they were slamming into the far side of a ditch. Lee shot forward and struck the wheel, cracking the bridge of her nose. She let out a guttural grunt that sounded painful, so painful. She shot back against the seat in the reaction and drew her hands up to her face in one quick reflex. Kain had managed to brace himself with both hands on the dashboard, and seemed none the worse for wear as the vehicle settled into place.

“
Lee!
”

The girl was dazed; her head seemed to roll in her hands. He called her name again, and still she did not respond. He did a kind of sniffing double take as he sensed the undeniable linger of smoke, and when he looked about for its source saw it rising above the window beside her. A brush fire had started, spreading quickly through the tall parched grasses. His immediate fear was of it spreading out of control beneath them. And if there had been a gas leak—

Her hands fell away. Blood dribbled from her nostrils, rippling over her lips and down her chin and throat. She caught a whiff of the growing smoke, and her eyes widened instantly. Her face, indeed her whole body, seemed to tighten in one twisted knot when she looked out and saw the flames.

“
Lee! I need you to
—”

She couldn’t hear him. She was shaking now, a ball of fright. When he touched her she screamed, drawing her hands up against her face. He reached out to her again, and this time she recoiled deliberately, only to find herself crippled against the smoke and the heat. She wailed a piercing shriek, and then her eyes rolled behind two taut fists before she listed sideways against the door and lost consciousness.

“
LEE!
”

He tried to revive her as gently as he could. Nothing. Suddenly, he stiffened in his seat. Growling seemed to charge at him from every direction. He shot a look over his shoulder through the rear window and saw the shepherd at the side of the road. It was cold and taut and staring him down. Its fangs were shiny and sharp.

The station wagon was parked further down. His view was limited by the sharp angle of the truck, but he could see the old woman. Dressed in a drab cloth dress that would flatter no one, she had cupped a hand to her lips, turning up and down the road, walking aimlessly forward, sometimes back, as if she didn’t know where she was or which way to turn. Kain feared she might suffer a coronary, right then and there. He saw no other dogs in the vicinity, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t escaped; for all he knew, they were just outside the doors, a pack in wait. Scrambling, he reached over the girl and rolled up her window halfway. He did the same on his side.

He didn’t dare Turn. Not with someone so aged and fragile. The woman would survive the trip, certainly, but the destination—the potential after-effects—was another matter. Any number of things could go wrong, the least of which were those damned yellowed eyes. She might hemorrhage; even the burn could be lethal; she could go insane; and—

Another vehicle came racing down the road. For an instant, he thought it might be Ben Caldwell. The sound grew and grew like a runaway panic, and when the truck finally closed on them, he saw it was Al Hembruff’s flatbed. Al swerved onto the shoulder, his door already half open. The truck slid to a halt. The big man stumbled as he got out, and he shouted
NOT NOW CLARA
as he brushed past a distraught (and quite rambling) Clara Brayfield. He reeled at the growing flames, and for an instant, froze where he stood; only his quivering lower lip appeared to hold any life at all. Somehow he came out of his stupor, either by the grace of God or by sheer will, and he forced himself to move forward, to the cusp of the grassfire. He did not see the shepherd, not at first, and when he did, he stopped short in his tracks. His face fell cold with fear. The beast snarled and snapped, and then, without warning, the thing lowered its head, in posture of defense or attack.

Al Hembruff’s eyes were white balls. They kept shifting between the animal and his granddaughter.