In
the Rift : Glenraven II In
the Rift : Glenraven II
Kate left the security chain in place and opened the door. The moon had dropped to just above the horizon behind the house, and the sun wouldn't start to rise for another hour or so. In the meantime, the front yard was darker than it had been when she got home.
"The darkest hour is just before dawn," she said, quoting, or perhaps misquoting, a line from a song by The Mamas and The Papas. She'd heard the song recently and had taken the lyrics to heart. She was waiting for sunrise in more than just a literal sense.
She switched on her porch light. The yellow bug light cast a sickly circle that showed her Rocky, still lying across the path, and her little Escort in the drive off to the left. Nothing moved. The rhododendrons and camellias and azaleas hunkered with unnerving solidity beyond the edge of the light.
Kate clicked the shotgun's safety off, closed the door long enough to undo the safety chain, then went out. She opened the book again.
Put me on the ground out in the clearing in the middle of your yard, then back away fast.
Kate wasn't going anywhere. She tossed the book off of the stoop into the middle of the semicircle of grass she called her yard. Then she waited. For perhaps twenty seconds, nothing happened. Then the book began to glow, and above it a tiny sphere of light appeared. That sphere, made up of a rainbow of swirling colors, spun and grew and flattened with frightening speed until in less than a minute a shimmering oval curtain ten feet high and nearly eight feet wide hung in the air inches above the ground.
As soon as the curtain of light stopped growing, a black dot appeared in its center. Then that began to expand, too, eating away at the shimmering oval like a spreading stain. When she saw movement behind the blackness, she realized the black circle was a hole, and that things on the other side of that hole were waiting to come through. She raised the shotgun and sighted along the barrel. She exhaled to steady her aim and concentrated on slowing the beat of her heart.
Then something jumped through and ran for the woods, and another something right behind it, and then two bigger shapes at almost the same time. She heard horses' hooves, then. She didn't shoot. They were running away from her, not toward her.
But then a shriek like sheet metal ripping shredded the early morning hush, and a massive black shape tore its way through the circle of light, flapped, rose, and turned toward her.
It was moving toward the light, she realized.
Kate got just a glimpse of a sharklike maw and beating wings, sighted for the spot between the teeth, and fired, pumped, fired, pumped, fired, pumped, fired, pumped, fired, and jumped from her stoop into the azalea hedge to the right as the thing came slamming down, crashing into her door, crashing through her door. A stinking leathery wing flailed down on top of her and thrashed while the monster shrieked and gurgled and tried to rise. The wing slammed her into the front of the house and bounced her head off the wood; points of white light exploded behind her eyes and she sagged to her knees. Above her she heard glass shatter as the leading edge of the monster's wing slammed into the dining room picture window.
Kate dropped to her belly. The bushes gave her a little bit of cover and the wing didn't hit her again. She took stock of her situation. She had one shot left and she needed to make it count. She clicked the safety on, pumped the shell into the chamber, and crawled beneath the beating wing, out into her yard. When she was safely behind the monster, she saw that she could crawl along its back to reach its head. If the back door hadn't been locked, she could have gone around the house and come at it from the front, but unfortunately, that wasn't an option. She tucked the twenty-gauge under her arm and slid onto the thing's back as if she were trying to ride a horse. She felt the monster shudder at her touch; then it began to roll from side to side to dislodge her, but it couldn't roll far enough to succeed. Its outspread wings, tangled in the shrubbery, prevented that. She kept scooting forward. She could see that it didn't have a neck, and that its huge eyes were placed low on either side of its head to give it a wide field of vision.
One eye rolled up as she inched close. She could hear the monster's jaws snapping open and closed. She wondered if the single shell she had left would be sufficient to kill the thing, even if the shot were well placed. She slid down one side just in front of the shoulder, jammed the shotgun into the thing's eye socket, and pulled the trigger. It shuddered again and a ripple ran through its body. Then it twitched and spasmed, and finally lay still.
For the first time she was actually able to take the time to look at it. Her first impression hadn't been too far from the truth. It still gave her a sharklike impression; it was essentially a gullet on wings. The enormous jaws with their multiple rows of triangular, serrated teeth could have swallowed her whole. The head connected directly to the torpedo-shaped body-the neckless design had worked in her favor. If the thing had been able to turn its head, it would undoubtedly have eaten her. Its pebbled, leathery skin was hot to her touch; it stank of rotten meat and death and filth. It wasn't a bird, but she didn't have the impression that it was a mammal, either. She wondered if perhaps it was some sort of dinosaur. It was unbelievably ugly, the most hideous thing she had ever seen.
She stared at it lying there on her doorstep, thought of Animal Control coming over in a few hours to pick up Rocky, and suddenly she started to laugh. "When they see this thing, they're going to shit," she said, and laughed some more.
She felt stronger than she had all night. The nightmare on her doorstep would have devoured her, but she'd taken care of it. She didn't falter, she didn't fall apart, and she didn't get herself killed. Now she could see the first faint graying of the horizon, as dawn began to make cutwork lace of the winter-bare trees and telephone lines across the road. She'd made it to morning.
She felt tireder than she'd ever been, too, and more in need of a long, hot whirlpool bath. She tucked the shotgun under her arm, clambered back over the monster and walked into the grass to pick up her book.
"You killed it," a man's voice said.
She flicked the safety off and raised the weapon in the direction of the voice before she remembered that she was out of shells.
"Don't kill us," the voice said. "We're friends. The monster was after us, and you saved us."
Kate remembered the shapes that had launched themselves out of the circle of light before the flying horror came tearing through. "Who are you?" she asked, lowering the shotgun slightly. As long as they believed the gun was loaded, they would think twice before attacking her.
A man leading a horse moved toward her out of the shadows. He was tall and slender, with slanted eyes and thick, pale hair. Kate thought something was wrong with the shape of his mouth, but she wasn't sure. A woman, also leading a horse, walked behind him. The woman was barely five feet tall, with black hair and large blue eyes and a frightened look. The man said, "My name is Val. The woman is Rhiana."
Kate lowered the shotgun. "I'm Kate Beacham."
Something hit her between the shoulder blades and knocked her face down to the ground. All her dulled hurts became sharp again; she cried out from the pain.
"Take her inside," the man said. "We'll go in with her. We aren't likely to find another place that will allow us to get out of the light."
Rough, claw-tipped hands grabbed Kate around the waist, turned her around, and picked her up. She got a quick glimpse at a face that made no sense, and then she was hanging over a sloping shoulder and being bounced along while whatever had her carried her to her house. An ugly black dog the size of a Shetland pony followed right behind, watching her with intelligent yellow eyes. The man picked up the shotgun, then led his horse around to the side of the house-evidently he'd found and intended to take advantage of Kate's pasture and shed. The woman knelt and picked up the book that had brought them through from wherever they'd been before. She looked up at Kate, her eyes full of curiosity. Then she shrugged and led her horse to the pasture, following Val.