A Feral Darkness Part 15

Brenna hunted her wallet out of her pocket and pulled out the card, not caring what he might think about the fact that she not only had the card, she had it on her; her mind lingered on the way he said his brother's name, the way his tongue handled the unusual phonetics and then jumped right back to plain old boring English with only that hint of foreignness about it. Two different worlds, one man. Somehow it summed him up quite neatly.

"Here," he was saying, as he scribbled on the back of the card. "This is the home phone. Call it if you need anything and you can't get me on the cell."

Brenna gave it a glance as he returned the card. "Does it come with a secret code word, too?"

He snorted. "I'll make one up for you if you want it. Just don't hesitate to call. You ready?"

Home. Brenna did a quick mental inventory of her freezer, pessimistic about her chances of finding a frozen dinner there. If she'd eaten with her mother at the retirement community as was her habit a couple of times a month, it would have been Chicken Kiev and cheesecake for dessert.

Ah, well.

She followed Masera to his vehicle and climbed in, managing to avoid any expression of outright envy at the nifty interior featuresa"lights here, cup holders there, and a CD player that he thumbed off as she entered so she didn't have a chance to catch anything but a few notes of something that sounded cla.s.sical. He waited for her to buckle up and pulled smoothly out of the parking lota"and straight into the Burger King across the four-lane road.

"I haven't eaten," he said, when she looked at him. "And I don't imagine you have, either. Unless you got something seriously nasty from the hospital vending machine."

She shook her head, sinking into a sudden deep fatigue, and numbly offered up a food order when they reached the buzzy and incomprehensible speaker. She didn't argue when he paid for it, and she sat with their dinners warming her lap until he pulled up the long hill of her driveway fifteen minutes later. Emily had left the porch light on for her, bless her.

He pulled his burgersa"two of them, and large fries to boota"from the bag and looked at where she sat gazing stupidly out the window. "Brenna," he said, "I'm not everywhere. Just where I want to be."

And that, she knew, should probably have some significance to her, something more than just the words themselves. But she clutched the bag and slid down to the ground from the high vehicle, muttering her thanks.

He smiled a crooked smile at her, suddenly looking just as tired as she felt. "Get some sleep. I'll pick you up tomorrow morning."

She woke up late the next day, alarm unset. She had just enough time to brush her hair out and rebraid it, using a surfeit of hair bands to double it up where she'd gotten sloppy, and to slap a toothbrush around in her mouth. She threw an apple and some crackers into an old lunch tote, spilled food into Druid's dish, and leashed him up to come along even as he atea"he wouldn't have enough outside time to follow it up with an entire day in the crate. She then made the mistake of donning her vest with the tote handles clenched in her teeth and the leash in one hand, and managed to get her hair caught in both the leash and the vest. As Masera's SUV pulled up the driveway, she hopped out to meet it on one foot, still pulling her sneaker on the other and leaving Druid in a quandary over how to heel to such a gait.

Masera was still not a morning person.

That was fine; she didn't feel much like talking, either. She ate her apple and gave Druid the core, which he seemed to find a novel experience and worth much extra drooling and excessive chewing. The Pets! parking lot was empty aside from her trucka"not unusual for the managers to push the opening to the limit, never seeming to understand that she needed time to prep for the day's work before the first customer got therea"but she thanked Masera and bailed out anyway, glad enough for the time to walk Druid along the gra.s.sy fringes of the parking lot. He didn't show any signs of flipping out against the lead; he'd been unconcerned about the parking lot since that first day.

Soon enough she was wishing she'd grabbed her sweatshirt, too, for the clear day wasn't nearly as warm as it looked. And looking at the truck, canted sideways with both driver's-side tires slashed, she felt less and less confident about being here alone. So she jogged up and down the edge of the building until Roger finally pulled into the lot, and fell in behind him as he fumbled with his impressive set of keys and eventually got the door open, saying nothing much to her at all.

Roger was not a morning person, either.

Then, suddenly wary of what she might find, Brenna hesitated before the grooming room. The gla.s.s was clean; not even a smear where yesterday it had been splattered and dripping. But then, all the managers had always insisted on impeccable gla.s.s at the storefront. Brenna had spent many a slow winter day cleaning the double set of airlocked doors.

She pushed her way inside, and had to concede that at first glance, someone had tried, truly tried, to clean and neaten. Nothing to be done about the mess of a schedule book; she grabbed a sheet of notepaper, also stained but serviceable, and started the list of clean-up ch.o.r.es. New scheduala"darn, and cross outa"new schedule book. When she looked up, her first customer was on his way in. Chubby little Bichon Frisea"b.i.t.c.hin' Frizzy she and Elizabeth called the crabby members of the breed, of which there fortunately weren't manya"and Brenna could tell at a glance that no matter what the owner wanted, there were too many mats in that soft coat to do anything but a cut-down.

Well, he'd dry fast.

DeNise came in an hour after Brenna arrived, looking tired, glancing as carefully around as Brenna herself had done. "Not too bad," she said, although Brenna was already discovering sneaky stray blots and spattersa"on the phone, along the edge of the counter. Inevitable, she supposed; they'd probably be discovering the widely strewn blood evidence of the attack for weeks.

"Glad you think so," Brenna said. "Two baths waiting for you, and the Bichon should be ready to lose the dryers."

DeNise took a deep breath. "Here goes," she said, and disappeared into the tub room.

Here goes just about set the tone for the day. Nonstop. Barely enough time for Brenna to call Elizabeth's cohabitating boyfriend and learn that Elizabeth was sleeping off painkillers but that the doctors were worried only about her thumb, which had been bitten into the joint, and that while she'd be off grooming for several weeks, she could come man the counter a week or so earlier. After that it seemed like just about everyone in the store had time to drift through the grooming room and ask about the incident. Roger stopped by to ask a few pertinent questions, but Brenna gathered that he'd shown up the day before while the police were there, and pretty much knew the details.

If he called to ask about Elizabeth, she didn't know about it. He didn't ask her, that's all she knew.

Near the end of her shift, she remembered what else she'd meant to do the day before, which was to call Emily and sic her and the girls on Mars Nodens through the Internet.

Which is what she was doing when Sammi came into the store, her face grim for the second time Brenna had ever seen; Brenna put the phone to her shoulder and said a wary "What?" by way of greeting.

"It's not on the news yet," Sammi said. "They're keeping it out until they can learn more."

"What?" Brenna said, not willing to wait even the moment it took Sammi to frame her next words.

"Rabies." Breathing even more heavily than normal in her upset, she repeated, "Rabies. The man who took one of the dogs Janean rescued. He's dead."

Brenna didn't even ask. Of course the dog had been through quarantine or had its shots on record. Of course this shouldn't have happened.

And then, with Sammi waiting on the other side of the counter and Emily tucked away on her shoulder, her phone-remote voice saying what do you mean, rabies?, Brenna knelt to where Druid sat at her feet and ran her finger around his collar until she found the tag she'd cleaned what seemed like ages ago. Rabies I/II, it said.

Druid whined uneasily, looking at her with earnest love-me eyes, his speckle-backed ears dropped back against his head in worry and in acceptance of her hands. A second whine, a thinking-too-hard whine, and Brenna's world whirled slightly, with someone else's words in her head.

Shedding rabies.

Chapter 13.

THURISAZ.

Foreseeing

If Roger had had his way, Brenna wouldn't have gotten days off at all. But for now, she had considerable power with Pets!a"if she walked, the store would be without a groomer. If she left on bad terms, she could worsen the already tenuous reputation Pets! had in the grooming community. So today she was out and about, decompressing. Not working.

Most groomers preferred the uncertain hours and higher wages per hour to the Pets! unusual retail schedule structure. Most preferred having more control over how they charged for their extra work, or for hazard duty with rough animals. Brenna had once opted for the health insurance that a Pets! position provided, and now found herself staying through inertia.

Or misguided loyalty.

Be loyal to Brenna, she thought, jamming her backpack full of books outside the Parma Hill library. Paperbacks, mostly, because she could fit in more of them in one trip, but one hardcover thriller she'd s.n.a.t.c.hed from the new rack and couldn't resist. As if she needed any more thrills in her life right now. This one was a Robin Cook, tooa"but he was writing about organ conspiracies again, and not plagues or rabies.

The daya"not her usual day off but nothing was usual of latea"had been too gorgeous to waste. After an early trip to the spring with Druid, some target practice and a little much-needed, old-fashioned rug beatinga"a token nod to the spring cleaning to which she ought to be subjecting the housea"Brenna pulled her bike out of the barn, topped off the air in the tires, and headed the handful of miles into town. She had books to return, but mostly it was just for the ride. The sun on her shoulders, the breeze in her face, the pleasant burn of active muscles in her legs. Of course, with her hair bundled up to avoid the bicycle spokes, her jeans taped with duct tape to stay out of the chain, her vented helmet, and the dorky sungla.s.ses she found that fit her and the helmet both, she was also the ultimate in biking geekery.

As a glance at her ghostly reflection in the slightly smoked library gla.s.s door panels confirmed. You've definitely got it, she told herself in mock solemnity, but refrained from giving herself a thumbs-up. That would be too weird.

And there were already enough weird things going on in her life.

She swung a leg over the bike and wove her way through small-town traffic, flipping to a higher gear once she reached the shoulder of a more open road. The later part of the afternoon was ahead of her . . . maybe she'd get to some of those cleaning ch.o.r.es yet. Or maybe she'd finally put that new dryer vent hose in place. Or what the heck, maybe she'd sit down in the hammock with a good heavy quilt and read a book.

A crossroad presented itself; a different way home, but not much longer. On an impulse, she cruised around the corner.

Or maybe not much of an impulse after all. For there, bright white in the sunshine, the church cried out for her attention. And she thought of what Masera had once said, that the Christian philosophy wasn't contradictory to the idea that Mars Nodens lived in her backyard. Well, maybe that's not exactly what he'd said. Something about them not being mutually exclusive. Brenna stopped pedaling, straightening, leaving the bike to follow the road on its own.

Reverend Dayne's car sat in the incomplete spring shade of the single mature tree at the edge of the parking lot. There'd been more, lots more, before the ice storm of the early nineties, but now all they had was one scarred maple and a scattering of staked saplings.

Brenna's bike seemed to make the decision for her, wobbling slightly in its trajectory. She leaned over the handlebars and swooped into the parking lot, leaving the bike unlocked and the backpack leaning by the front wheel with her helmet propped against it.

She found Dayne in his office, absorbed in notations. Writing his sermon, she thought with guilt, knowing she was interrupting, suddenly not so sure this was a good idea anyway. And then he flipped a page and she realized he was looking at a television guide. Perversely, the discovery took away her nerves; she stifled a grin and cleared her throat, leaning in the doorway. Abruptly aware that her dorky sungla.s.ses hung from her fingers, she jammed the earpiece into her back pocket.

Her presence startled him, which she hadn't expected, either, especially since she hadn't been particularly stealthy. He touched his eara"a hearing aid?a"and that, too made him seem more human. More approachable.

"Brenna," he said. "I'm surprised to see you." Then he must have realized how it sounded, for he smiled. "Glad, of course. But after a gap of so many years, I expected more time to pa.s.s before our next encounter."

"I've been thinking," she said, and she had, tooa"furiously, these past several minutes, about just the right way to ask this. And still she hunted for words.

"I can see that you have," he said, after a moment of struggling silence. "I didn't mean to take your presence lightly."

"If a culture hadn't been exposed to Christianity yet, or to the Old Testament Yahweh," she said, slowly enough so she could take back a word in an instant if it felt like the wrong one, "and yet G.o.d was acting among them, then they'd have to find their own words and ways to explain what was happening, don't you think?"

"I'm certain you're right," he said, frowning. No doubt trying to understand how this fit with her previous discussion.

"So if that culture called the power they believed to be responsible by their own name of, say, George . . . then you or I might call them heathens, but wouldn't we be wrong? Wouldn't that mean they were only identifying G.o.d in the best way they knew how?"

Dayne was still frowning, but it looked more thoughtful than before. "G.o.d has worked through prophets to make sure we do know who He is."

"Yes, in the culture that we consider to be dominant," Brenna said. "But I should think G.o.d would be wise enough to choose a method that best suited the culture he was working within."

A slow smile spread across his face. "I'm not sure I can agree with the fact that G.o.d isn't wise enough be able to get his point across to anyone he wants to," he said. "But this conversation truly does make me wish I could entice you to the women's study group. A fresh point of view would be most welcome. It would give me time to consider the question more thoroughlya"in truth, I'm caught a little short here. Maybe I've been a little too complacent lately, comfortable with counseling bereavements and divorce issues."

"Well," Brenna said, "it's not like I called ahead. And really, just being in a position where I had to put the questions into words has helped." Because no matter what the pastor's reaction had been to her last comment, Brenna felt something inside her ease as soon as her words came out. Differing labels wasn't a complete resolution to her dilemma . . . but it felt like it was close.

He reached for a fresh piece of paper, scrawled down a couple of lines. "You might find these books helpful, if you have a chance to get them. I don't think the library has them, but they can borrow from the city library."

Brenna took the paper from him. Robin Lane Fox, Ramsey MacMullen.

"I don't remember the exact t.i.tles," he said, nodding at the paper. "The best Fox book is Pagans and Christians, I believe. But go looking for those two authors, and almost anything you find will be on the subject."

"Thank you," she said, sticking the note in her back pocket. Maybe when she returned this batch of books, she'd ask about it. "Sorry to have interrupted."

Outside, she donned her helmet. The sun had dropped low enough, behind her, that she stuck the sungla.s.ses in her pack before she shrugged it on. She headed back for the road in a more thoughtful mood. She was on the right track to reconciling her relationships with two different belief systemsa"supposing it was possiblea"but she hadn't gotten there yet. And she needed to get there, because as a girl she'd made a call to a very specific deity, and in retrospecta"knowing how impossible it was for the old hound to have rallied, knowing what Masera had told her and of all the recent eventsa"it seemed obvious that the . . . being . . . had responded. If I'm going to believe in the darkness, I darn well better believe Mars Nodensa"or somethinga"was there first. And Mars Nodensa"or somethinga"had answered that specific call when her early prayers had gotten her nowhere.

Which seemed very much to indicate a difference in the beings involved. The G.o.ds involved.

It was hard to even think those last words. She made herself face them, to linger on them. At least Masera hadn't made any indication that he considered the darkness to be a devil a.n.a.logy. Then again . . . she wasn't certain he considered Mars Nodens an actual G.o.d, either.

She groaned out loud with the awareness that she'd have to ask him about these confusions, see if she could pry more answers from his closemouthed self. And also with the awareness that however she came to peace within herself, it might never be on terms that satisfied her own religious community.

She had nearly made it home, had reached the long stretch of travel along the road that ran in front of her house and had her pasture in sight, when a vehicle came up behind her . . . and didn't pa.s.s her. She hugged the shoulder, as close as she could come without slipping off the pavement to the gravelly dirt, and still it didn't pa.s.s her; she could hear the radio blaring inside; then it cut off.

A man's voice yelled at her, incomprehensible over the noise of the vehicle and the wind in her ears. A trickle of uncertainty took up residence between her shoulders; she found herself calculating how quickly she could swap directionsa"faster than a car, that was for surea"and how long it would take her to reach the last house she'd pa.s.sed.

Too long.

A glance behind showed her a small, square-fronted vehicle. She didn't recognize it, but at her look the shouting from within repeated itself. She bent over her handlebars, wondering if she should just ditch the bike and go cross-country, where the car couldn't followa"but as long as her legs were, they'd never been particularly swift. She pedaled hard. I don't see you. You're not there. I'm just minding my own business. Almost home.

If he wanted her, if he caught her anywhere, it would be going up that hill of a driveway. d.a.m.n.

Another car approached from the opposite direction; she thought about trying to catch the driver's attentiona"how? and say what?a"and too late; it whooshed past.

As soon as it did, the car behind her accelerated; she heard the change in engine pitch. It pulled out and alongside her, with the driver still shouting, leaning over to the pa.s.senger window and steering with one extended arm. Great. If he didn't run her over on purpose, he'd do it by accident.

Brenna slowed, letting him pull ahead of her, getting her first good look at the vehiclea"and suddenly it all fell together. A small, Jeep-like sport vehicle, the shoutinga"Brenna, he'd said, at least some of ita"and the dark hair, the bold nose of the driver. She came to a dead stop; he pulled over to the shoulder just in front of her, and she dismounted the bike to walk with furious strides up to the pa.s.senger window.

"Eztebe!" she said, and hit his car for emphasis, "what the h.e.l.l are you doing stalking me down the road? Don't you know any better than to scare a woman like that?" And she hit his car again, with the flat of her hand and making plenty of noise.

Enough to get him out of the car, looking at her over top of it, unable to reach her but stretching out his arms anyway, his hands spread against the roof. "Brenna!" he said. "Ez dut ulertzena"please, why are you upset? I done nothing!"

"Why do you think I'm upset?" Brenna said, but she didn't hit the car again. Her hand still stung from the last time. "How do the women in your country feel when a stranger lurks behind them?"

"But you know me," he said, true confusion apparent. "I'm Iban's brother, we talked at my door."

She hissed in irritation. "We talked once, Eztebe. We didn't do it with you on one side of your windshield and me on the other, moving down the road at thirty-five miles an hour!"

He took on an uh-oh look. Much easier to read than his brother. "The car," he said. "You did not remember it."

"No, not at first." She bit her lip, frowned through it. "You called me by name. I never gave that to you. And why did you stop me, anyway?"

"Iban pointed you out at the store," Eztebe said.

That was bound to happen, she supposed.

"I stopped you because I am here on this road to see you, anyway. Your house is not far, I think."

That wasn't. She stared her most direct stare at him. "And you know where I live . . . how? Do you Masera brothers make me a habit or something? Haven't you got anything better to do?"

He scratched the back of his neck and said tentatively, "The phone book? Your address is right there."

"Meaning you didn't ask your brother."

"No, he doesn't knowa"" Eztebe stopped, scowled, and said, "This isn't going right."

"I don't suppose it is." She toed her bike's kickstand down, shifting the backpack. Too many books. "You've got about thirty seconds to make it go right. After that, I'm going home to call the police. That probably wouldn't do your visa any good, would it?"

That alarmed him, all right. "No, noa"let me get some thoughts straight." He closed his eyes, fingertips ma.s.saging little circles at each temple. It didn't take him long, which was good for him as far as Brenna was concerned. He'd already used at least forty-five of his thirty seconds. "First, I apologize for scaring you. It was thoughtlessness of me." He hesitated as another car, too much in need of a m.u.f.fler to talk over, pa.s.sed them. "Iban speaks of you; I know he has been here. To your home, I mean, not this side of the road."

"I would think he goes to many homes," Brenna said, still without any understanding of what had prompted this visit, and getting impatient. More impatient. "Considering his line of work, I mean. What's the point?"

"The point." Eztebe shrugged suddenly, offering up his hands. "I worry about him. He keeps something from me, and it sits on him. He comes home with injuries all over his face. He buys young dogs not for himself, works with them, does not try to sell them. He does these things without sense."