Dark Duets Part 51

The weight of the huge animal knocked Talbot's hands away from Lisa and the two bodies tumbled to the ground, one human, one animal, with the animal quickly gaining the upper hand before Talbot slipped a knife free from beneath him and plunged it deep into the wolf's side.

The huge beast howled, and Burr felt a white-hot flare of pain in his chest. Above them the clouds seemed to open up, a great crash of thunder shaking the forest floor and lightning cracking across the sky. Burr felt the other animals in the forest cry out in wordless agony, thousands of them, along with the trees that seemed to shiver as wind whipped through the valley.

Burr thought he saw something move in the center of the clearing as a sound like the ancient moan of a shifting mountainside rose up to envelop them all. He stepped toward his daughter, the final phrases of the tree-planting ritual finally bursting forth from his throat like a cascade: "A mate koeny dlouho a tvuj duch ije dal! Mue lesa a chranit vas a krev svazat ducha!"

RODNEY TALBOT WAS on fire.

The blood of the Leshy had mixed with his, and it felt as if a million insects crawled beneath his skin. His mind expanded to fill the clearing and then the entire forest, and he felt the connection of every single creature, every tree. After all these years, the remainder of Arthur's secrets and knowledge were being pa.s.sed along to him.

The feeling was glorious. He reveled in it, throwing his head back as his body began to change, feeling the rain course down his face. His howl was without words, an animalistic sound of triumph and awakening.

Dimly, he heard someone else speaking aloud in the ancient tongue. And then something knocked him to the ground, breaking his connection with the Leshy. Rage filled his mind as he felt the rough fur of the wolf above him, its hot breath at his throat. "Zvie," Talbot growled. "Tva krev rozlije!"

He fumbled for the knife and stuck it deep into the beast's side, feeling its blood pump in a hot gush across his chest. He struggled with the weight of the body across his own as the wolf's life ran out of it and seeped into the forest floor.

Rain poured down in buckets when Christian Burr spoke once more.

Thunder shook the ground as Talbot looked up in shock. Arthur was moving, his huge, grizzled branches reaching toward the sky, as if to embrace the lightning bolt that streaked down to earth to strike.

The bolt sizzled with energy as it hit the largest outstretched branch with a tremendous cracking sound. The branch broke in half, tumbling toward where Talbot lay helplessly pinned beneath the body of the wolf. He had the time to see the rough spears of wood protruding from its broken end racing toward him.

No, he thought. Not this, not now. . .

CHRISTIAN BURR WATCHED as the huge branch tumbled down. It was nearly twice the size around of a man's chest, and its jagged end hit Rodney Talbot square in the face.

The man's head disappeared in a cloud of red pulp, driven cleanly from his shoulders and crushed into the ground beneath the branch's weight. The headless body jerked, then lay still as the branch tumbled onto its side with a crash that shook the forest.

Another moan rose up from somewhere deep within the ground, a sound like a whale in the ocean depths. The fierce storm began to subside, rain fading to a steady patter, lightning and thunder receding into the distance.

One by one, the animals emerged from the trees around the clearing, picking their way forward to where Lisa Burr still stood rooted in place. The forest hummed with energy as she shook once, then twice, the bark cracking from her skin and falling to the ground.

Lisa opened her eyes and spread her arms wide, drinking in the rain and the animals' presence, a light smile on her face.

Christian Burr ran toward his daughter.

Around them the animals waited, watching. The wind continued to howl, and the trees shivered with the wind's demands.

And on the ground the body of Rodney Talbot was taken by the forest. The rough bark that covered his skin was almost identical to that of the great tree nearby and where his blood had flowed a moment before there were now roots, fine filaments reaching into the ground.

Christian held Lisa in his arms and spoke softly to her, small nonsensical sounds of comfort that she responded to as she held on to him in return. But Lisa wasn't crying. She was smiling, her eyes wide with a primal joy.

AS TWILIGHT FELL three days later, and the darkness grew deep and the sounds of the waking forest drifted across the old farmhouse, the people of Glen Ridge came calling.

It began with a trickle at first; a knock on the door announced the arrival of James Footer and his two young children with a wax-topped jar of fresh honey, the children gaping at Lisa from behind their father's legs. Ten minutes later, elderly widow Joan Sunland came with a wrapped box filled with linens for their table, placed a wrinkled hand on Lisa's head, and then left without a single word. Five minutes after that came Terri and Steve and Giles, neighbors from Old Farm Road, along with their families, bearing fresh vegetables from their gardens. Terri ran a specialty clothing shop in town and brought organic blouses and pants for Lisa to make her more comfortable. She had served Lisa's great-grandfather, Terri said proudly, and was happy to be able to continue the tradition now.

That seemed to be the end of it, and Susan had put away the produce in the fridge and they had already gone up to bed when the sounds of vehicles could be heard below. Susan went to the window and stood motionless for a long moment.

"Come here," she said to Burr, her voice little more than a whisper. "You won't believe it."

He went and peered through the gla.s.s. The road that wound up toward the house was full of cars, a long line of them and more coming, twinkling headlights snaking all the way up to their front steps.

Burr went down to greet them, but it was soon apparent that they hadn't come for him. He got out of the way as the people laid their gifts at Lisa's feet. She stood radiant before them in a way he'd never seen before, the power in her seeming to thrum so that every person who set foot near her could feel it.

There was no point in trying to refuse the gifts, and no one would accept payment for anything. Susan began to help move them to other rooms, and while she did, Christian Burr slipped out the back. He walked through the moist gra.s.s, under the moonlight sky to the forest's edge, and followed the path inside.

He could remember how often the neighbors and friends of the family had come by to see his grandfather. It had never seemed particularly unusual when he was a child, and now, in hindsight, he remembered his grandfather's stories and understood better why they came. The Leshy can be kind. The Leshy can be cruel. That is the way of Nature and that is the way of the Leshy. When the Leshy is kind, it is best to say thank you.

It wasn't bribery, not really. It was simply the tradition that had grown in the old country and that was now carried onward in Glen Ridge, a town that had always prospered since Arthur Burr came along.

Burr followed the path deeper into the woods, moving through darkness without a single misstep. Earlier that day he had found the rest of his grandfather's papers in the bas.e.m.e.nt. These papers were now a tool for reaching Lisa and teaching her. She would never be like other children; he knew that and he understood it better now. But she needed to be reminded that she was part of two worlds, and Christian suspected that was where he came in.

The Leshy was the protector of the woods, and in turn, he would serve as her steward, to keep her safe from a changing world that failed to understand the old ways.

Your father said the light of stars was held in your eyes, that he saw this when you came from the womb, his grandfather had written. That light is pa.s.sed, one to the next. And once every few generations, it is allowed to shine forth. It is your job to a.s.sist with the transition.

It was the natural order of things, really.

Sometime later Burr reached the clearing. The huge tree, now missing a limb, reached upward toward the pregnant moon. There was no sign of the old man Talbot's body. He was gone, absorbed by the forest he had sought to control. The oddly shaped tree where he had been reached toward the greater tree as a child reaches toward its father.

The great oak did not seem interested in reaching back.

CALCULATING ROUTE.

Michael Koryta and Jeffrey David Greene.

The GPS was exactly the type of birthday present you could expect from David-cheap, thoughtless, and sans gift receipt.

Robin had gone overboard in her grat.i.tude, because while the USS Relationship was sinking she still wanted to pretend they could carry on, or at least turn around, but even as she kissed him she thought, What yard sale is this thing from?

It didn't have instructions, didn't even have a box. Just the display unit and the power adapter that plugged into your cigarette lighter, the thing so obviously secondhand that it should have had someone else's name written on it. In fact, she discovered when she turned it on, it as good as did have someone else's name on it: the home address was already programmed in, and it wasn't hers, and she couldn't figure out how to change it. Lovely.

Hardly a splurge from David, then, but she didn't need a splurge; all she needed was at least the imitation of compa.s.sion and caring. They'd been together five months, and anyone who'd been with Robin for five months should have known a few things about her, one being that she didn't venture outside of her comfort zone much. Her daily routes-work, grocery store, gym, dog groomer, rinse and repeat-were well trod. The more thoughtful gift would have been a blindfold to make the trips challenging, not a GPS to keep her from getting lost driving the same d.a.m.n roads she drove every day. With her birthday falling just ahead of Valentine's Day, he had another chance, though. Maybe she'd get the blindfold next.

Even the name was generic: StreetDreams2000. No Garmin or Magellan or even TomTom, nothing anyone had ever heard of, and with a number affixed that made it seem dated, more than a decade behind the times.

She loathed it not because it was pointless but because it was a perfect symbol of their relationship, and it became an even more perfect symbol when she actually went so far as to hang the dumb thing up in her car just to please him. There was no point to pleasing him, she knew this, and yet here she was, still trying. Now that was a symbol, and not one she wanted to consider too deeply, though it was hard not to when it stared her in the face on every drive.

The idea was simply to have it visible, she had no intention of using it, but the device turned on every time she started the car. In this way, at least, it was ahead of other models she'd seen, because it didn't even have to be plugged into the cigarette lighter to function. That fascinated her. Turn the key, and the screen came on, as if they were linked, but she'd never attached it to the car in any fashion beyond the suction cup that held the mount to the windshield. It should have no way of knowing that it was even inside of a vehicle, as far as she could tell, but, to be fair, Robin wasn't a gadget girl, and she was used to marveling at things other people understood, like the way her iPhone would upload photographs to her computer without instruction. One of her friends had sighed with exasperation while trying to explain the concept of "cloud" file storage. Robin figured the StreetDream2000 must run on something similar.

Still, she didn't need it on, and so if it had just shown her the map in silence while she drove, fine, she could deal, but instead the thing talked. A chipper British voice asked her over and over again if she'd like help finding her destination. Finally she told it yes, just to shut it up, and the voice activation was remarkable, much better than those customer service robots that made you wish you'd been born in the day of the rotary telephone. She gave the address of her insurance office just one time, and it was a tongue twister, so she was sure the device would never understand, but immediately the British voice came back with: "Calculating route to Twenty-Three Thirty-Two Coriander Courtyard, Marietta, Georgia."

It took her a few miles to realize its flaw: the voice activation might have been top of the line, but once it was talking to her, she'd mindlessly followed the instructions, as if she was the robot, and made a left turn three miles ahead of where she needed to turn. She was swearing at the GPS, and at David, and considering a U-turn, when she realized she was on a one-way street. Nothing to do now but follow through.

The street kicked her out into a small subdivision that had sprung up in recent years where once there had simply been fields and For Sale signs. She'd never driven out to see the place, and once she got there she was curious, so she followed the GPS instructions through the winding streets, eyeing the look-alike brick homes, and suddenly found herself at a stop sign facing the back of the business park that included her company. She looked at the clock and said, "I'll be d.a.m.ned."

Robin knew exactly how long it took her to drive to the office, and, even if she'd caught nothing but green lights on the way, she was four minutes early. The shortcut through the neighborhood was a true time-saver. It might not sound like much, four minutes, but it felt like plenty. And if you did the math, that was eight minutes each day, and forty minutes per week, and two hours each month. Which meant it was exactly one day of free time added onto her life each year.

A day of your life back? She smiled at the StreetDreams2000. The gift that kept on giving, indeed.

THE MAGIC DIDN'T work everywhere, of course. The grocery store run was the same as always, and the gym, but on Sat.u.r.day she saved six minutes on the trip to the dog groomer, twelve minutes round-trip. It was funny how you never considered a change in route once you've determined the best way. Or at least she didn't. Maybe more creative types did. But once Robin locked on to something that worked, she didn't change it up without a good reason. The neighborhood that was saving one day of her life each year in four-minute increments had been behind her office complex for years and she'd never even thought to consider the driving possibilities it offered. The idea of a computer telling you where to turn seemed like anti-independence, but it didn't feel that way. Robin had always had an irrational fear of getting lost-perhaps one of the reasons she didn't explore alternative routes-and the GPS gave her confidence to try. After it saved her thirty minutes at least cutting through Atlanta rush-hour traffic to meet David for dinner downtown on Monday night, she began to think that perhaps it had been a very thoughtful gift, after all. Maybe he recognized some shortcomings in her that he didn't want to say out loud, and this was a gesture. It was an awful lot to a.s.sume about a used GPS, but, still, they had their best night together since the early weeks, and she couldn't help but feel a connection to the gift.

She wanted to go home with him after dinner, in fact, wanted to have s.e.x. No, check that-she wanted to f.u.c.k. And that wasn't a word she liked hearing for lovemaking; even in the movies, it gave her an involuntary sour face. The word belonged as an insult, not tied up with romance. But on Monday night, it was exactly what she wanted, and it was exactly what they did, even though he was working the late shift, which meant he was tying his shoes at midnight when she was pouring an unprecedented third gla.s.s of wine, watching him get dressed while she lay still tangled in the sheets.

"You wanna just . . . stay here?" he asked. "I mean, you can." He looked at her and then around the house with unease, as if she might take to prowling through the drawers and closets. She'd never been alone in his house before.

"No, I'll go home," she said. "It would be weird without you here. And lonely."

The last part she never would have said, but she managed to not only get the words out, but to do so coquettishly, and somehow it led to one more round of s.e.x and a spilled gla.s.s of wine and David running out the door already twenty minutes late for work while she stood barefoot on the sidewalk and laughed.

What a night. What an odd, wonderful night. It had taken on an amusing fog to her, the wine good-natured as it settled into her bloodstream, and she was sleepy, and for just a moment, one long lonely hesitation, she thought about staying. She could be asleep within minutes, and maybe this was just the sort of thing they needed.

In the end, though, she couldn't do it. Got dressed and found her keys and left despite the alcohol buzz. It was no doubt a product of the buzz that she thought the GPS turned on before she turned the key in the ignition. She wasn't used to being drunk, or anywhere in the neighborhood of drunk, but hand to G.o.d she felt she'd barely slammed the car door before the screen lit up. Maybe not, though. Surely not. As the engine warmed, the polite British voice asked for her destination, same as always, trustworthy, and she said, "Home" before remembering that it wasn't programmed right for that.

"Taking you home," the British voice said, and she corrected it.

"Thirty-Seven Thirty Collins Drive," she said. "New destination. Thirty-Seven Thirty Collins Drive."

"Calculating route."

No bold ideas from the GPS this time, just out to the freeway, same as always. She was enjoying the haze of wine and s.e.x and her mind was on David as the dark road rolled by, thinking that maybe she'd made a mistake, maybe they did work, maybe she should finally break down and suggest a trip out of town, to that place in the mountains, the one where- "In 10.6 miles, take Exit 29E-Sandy Plains Road," the GPS intoned.

"Yes, sir," she murmured, and for the first time she really felt sad about her decision. Maybe she'd imagined the uneasiness on David's face, maybe he wanted her to stay. G.o.d, could she get through one day of her life without so many maybes?

"Take exit ahead."

Maybe, she thought as she exited the highway, the problem wasn't him, or even them, but her. She was set in her ways, she knew this, and his gift of the GPS had proven that it wasn't always a good thing. She'd benefited from some changes. And now, being set her in ways had her going home alone to an empty bed. No, it wasn't always a good thing.

"In one mile, turn right onto Hiram Avenue."

She wouldn't have taken Hiram. She glanced at the map, trying to see how this was a good idea, but it was zoomed in tight. When she tried to adjust it, the British voice chastised her.

"We ask that you refrain from operating the GPS keypad while your vehicle is in motion. Thank you."

Well, the h.e.l.l with it, then. She'd take Hiram and see if this shortcut was as good as all the others.

What Hiram was-long and dark. What Hiram wasn't-a shortcut, not that she could see. The pleasant wine fog was fading, and she was suddenly aware of how late it was and remembering all the reasons she didn't like to be out alone at this hour. Robin hated being scared, and these situations were ripe for fear. Just when she was about to make a U-turn and return to the highway, the StreetDreams2000 interrupted her fear with a rea.s.surance: "In three-tenths of a mile, turn right onto Sterling Street."

Progress. She knew Sterling Street, or at least knew one end of it. She imagined she had to be at the far opposite end now, but her internal navigation wasn't great, so she trusted the GPS and turned right. The darkness ahead and lights in the rearview mirror made her second-guess this immediately, but the GPS voice told her "Continue to follow the road" and she figured the only thing you could do to make a bad shortcut worse was to deviate from the new plan.

She made a left turn on South Ballanger, and then another right, and she had the idea that the GPS was doing the same thing it had done to shave four minutes off her drive to work-cheat by cutting through residential neighborhoods. That relaxed her, as it was already a proven technique.

"Turn right onto Sampson's Ferry Road."

She'd been driving for twenty minutes now on a trip that should take no more than that, and she no longer recognized anything. Maybe it was time to give up on the genius of the StreetDreams and double back to Sterling Road. The only problem with that was that she was no longer certain how to double back. The route to get here had been convoluted. The iPhone had a GPS option but she didn't like the idea of driving and using her phone, and she certainly didn't want to pull over in this dark stretch of desolate road to play with her phone. It looked like she was driving down the streets of a neighborhood that hadn't been built yet, the pavement fresh but the lots on either side empty. Not a streetlight in sight.

"In five hundred feet, bear left."

Bear left? There was no place to go. The road dead-ended, and now she saw that it was exactly what she'd suspected-an unrealized residential development carved into what had once been farmland. Her headlights were shining on a large lot map and a sign that boasted DREAM HOMES STARTING AT $400,000, COMING NEXT YEAR!

They were still selling lots, but no construction had taken place. The sign looked old and dirty, too, and she wondered whether next year had really meant this year or even last year and the development plan collapsed beneath the real estate market and the economy. Regardless, she needed to figure her way back out of these winding roads.

She pulled onto the hard-packed dirt and gravel to turn around. Ahead of her a weathered, decrepit barn loomed against the night sky like a discarded set item from a B-movie horror flick, and the British voice said, "You have arrived at your destination. Welcome home."

"This is not home," she snapped as she put the car into reverse, and then she paused before pressing down on the accelerator, struck by a sudden, alarming realization: this had never been home for anyone. Even if the GPS was a secondhand gift, as she'd suspected, no one would have programmed an empty lot in an undeveloped neighborhood into it as their home address.

Something moved in the rearview mirror then. A ripple of shadow, and Robin screamed, a sound so loud and high and hysterical that she couldn't believe it had come from her.

And all for nothing, too. Because the shadow was gone. She stared in the mirror and saw nothing but empty black fields, and ahead nothing but that weathered sign boasting of unbuilt dream homes, and she knew that it was time to get the h.e.l.l out of here because she was starting to get scared, really scared, and Robin had led an overly cautious life for many years rooted in one simple principle: she hated to be scared.

Now the time had come to admit two things-she was scared to stay here, and, for a completely irrational reason, she was scared of the GPS. She didn't like the way she blindly, dumbly trusted it, and four minutes saved going to and from work each day wouldn't mean much if it led her down the wrong street sometime. An empty, dark street.

A street like this.

She put the car in park, grabbed the GPS, and-after one careful glance in the mirror and then out the window to her left, making sure that the moving shadow had indeed been her imagination, she stepped out of the vehicle, walked to the back of the car, and heaved the GPS as far as she could into the darkness. She got some distance on it, more than she'd expected-fear was fuel, evidently.

"I'll find my own way from now on, thanks," she said when it landed in the distant weeds, and then she turned back to her car for the last time in her life.

POLICE FOUND THE car in the same position the next day-door open, engine still running, though the low-fuel light was on by then. Robin's body, what was left of it, lay some six feet away.

Her boyfriend told police he had no idea what she was doing in that empty maze of streets at midnight, so far from her home, and everyone they interviewed a.s.sured them that Robin was not one to take shortcuts or try new routes home. She'd been driven there, they insisted, kidnapped and forced into the abandoned area; there was absolutely no other explanation.

Motives were hard to come by. Her purse remained in the car, untouched. The only thing they could say was missing for sure was a GPS unit, but the boyfriend confessed that it couldn't have been worth much, as he'd picked it up for $40 on the afternoon of her birthday, a panic gift because he'd forgotten that it was her birthday. If it had been a botched robbery attempt, they'd have been better off with the car or the purse.

For a time there was some hope that her final movements could be tracked using the GPS, and possibly the killer even located through it, if it was still on and putting out a signal. But David, the boyfriend, had no corresponding paperwork or serial numbers and couldn't even recall the brand. It wasn't one of the common names, he said. Just some generic rip-off. A p.a.w.nshop special.

Two weeks later, David having been cleared through witness accounts and autopsy time of death, the police had no suspects in the homicide.

AT FIRST RILEY didn't even recognize it as a GPS.

It just looked like the corner of a black plastic rectangle that someone had wedged between a busty Power Girl action figure and a Cthulhu plushy doll on the toy rack in the back of the comic book shop.

Could be Star Trek memorabilia that somebody left behind, he thought with idle disinterest as he moved through the shelves. A replica phaser or something. He was too busy to investigate at the moment and figured it belonged to Carmen-Riley's sole employee. Carmen was the weekend guy, and he was always messing up back orders and leaving Jolt Cola cans and other c.r.a.p all over the place. Riley liked Carmen though, particularly because Carmen took most of his paycheck in store credit.

Only after a lunch of jalapeno-flavored ramen did Riley find time to give the imposter item a second look. This time he shoveled the Power Girl figure-in her glossy clamsh.e.l.l packaging-aside and reached for the suspicious black square.

Strangely, it wasn't a toy, or a statuette, or anything else related to Star Trek, Firefly, or Battlestar Galactica.

It was a GPS.

Wonder who left this here? Riley thought, pushing the only visible b.u.t.ton on the device. The GPS powered on and its screen flickered before showing a cartoony image of a moon with a human face gazing down at a long cobblestone street below.

The moon's face smiled and winked, as if it was holding some secret knowledge, and a moment later the text scrolled by: The StreetDreams2000.

Riley knew the onslaught of new-comic-release-day customers would be in any moment, demanding their comic books, so he headed back behind the counter and placed the device next to the register. As the afternoon regulars filed in to pick up their issue pulls, Riley questioned each one about the GPS, but no one seemed to know anything about it. He was pleased-for once-when Carmen finally pushed his way into the shop seeking out his pulls for the week.