Angel Fire East

CHAPTER 13

By nightfall, eight inches had fallen and more was on the way. Local forecasts called for as much as two feet by morning, and a second storm was expected by Christmas. Ross listened to the weather report on the radio and stared out the kitchen window at the thick white fluff that blanketed everything for as far as the eye could see—which wasn't far, because snow continued to fall in big, swirling flakes that reflected the street and porch lights in gauzy yellow rainbows and curtained away the night.

Bennett Scott was sitting on the living-room floor with Harper, working on an old wooden puzzle. Harper would lift each piece and study it, then set it down again and move on. The puzzle had only twelve pieces, but she seemed to regard the preparation process as more important than actually building anything. Little John had turned away from the window and was sitting on the floor beside them, watching intently. He still wasn't saying anything. He still barely paid attention when he was spoken to. He was still a complete enigma.

Nest put together a stew for dinner, chopping up potatoes, onions, carrots, and celery, adding frozen peas, and throwing the whole mess in with chunks of browned chuck roast and some beef broth. She worked on memory and instinct, not from a recipe, and every now and then she would hesitate and consider before choosing or passing on an ingredient. She spoke sparingly to Ross, who sat there with his gaze directed out toward the snowfall and his thoughts drifting to Josie.

It bothered him that he found himself so obsessed with her. It wasn't as if he hadn't thought of her before he'd seen her this afternoon; he'd done so often. But his memories of Josie had seemed part of a distant past that was unconnected to his present. He supposed that seeing her again and remembering how strongly he felt about her simply pointed up the emptiness of his life. Bereft of family and friends, of loved ones, of relationships, of an existence of the sort other people enjoyed, he was one of the homeless he had worked with years ago in Seattle. It was only natural, he supposed, that he should want those things that others had and he did not.

Once or twice he pondered the appearance of Two Bears, but there was nothing he could make of the Sinnissippi that wasn't self-evident. A pivotal moment in the war between the Word and the Void was at hand, and Two Bears was there to monitor what happened. Perhaps he was there to attempt to tip the balance, as he had done twice before in Nest Freemark's life, but Ross knew it was pointless to try to guess what O'olish Amaneh intended. The Indian lived in a sphere of existence outside that of normal men, and he would do what was required of him. For Ross to dwell on the matter was a waste of time.

But so was thinking of Josie. So there he was.

It was after six and dark two hours already when Robert Heppler called. He wanted to know if Nest would go tobogganing in the park. A check of the ice by the park service people revealed it was strong enough to take the weight of an eight-man sled, and with the snow packed down on the chute, the slide was slick and ready. Robert was taking Kyle while Amy stayed home with his parents, but he needed a few more bodies for weight. How about it?

While she was listening to Robert and before Ross even knew the nature of the conversation, he saw her do something odd. She started to say it probably wasn't a good time or something of the sort, and then she looked off into the living room where Harper and Little John were sitting with Bennett, hesitated a moment, her gaze lost and filled with hidden thoughts, and then said she would come if she could bring her houseguests, two adults and two children. Robert must have said yes, because she said they would meet him at the slide at eight, and hung up.

She relayed the conversation to Ross, then shrugged. "It might be good for the children to get out of the house and do something kids like."

He nodded, thinking she was jeopardizing the morph's safety by taking it out where it would be exposed and vulnerable, but thinking as well that the morph was useless if she couldn't get close enough to it to discover what it wanted of her and that maybe doing something together would help. There was no rational reason to believe going down a toboggan slide would make one iota of difference to anything, but nothing else seemed to be working. Nest had gone out to Little John several times before starting dinner, sitting with him, trying to talk to him, and there had been absolutely no response. She was as baffled by the morph's behavior as he was, and trying something different, anything, no matter how remote any chance of it working might seem, was all that was left.

"Maybe Little John will like Kyle," she offered, as if reading his thoughts. "Maybe he'll talk with someone closer to his age."

Ross nodded, moving to help with silverware and napkins as she carried plates to the table and began arranging the place settings. The morph had taken the form of a child for a reason, so treating it like a child might reveal something. He thought it a long shot at best, but he couldn't think of anything better. He felt drained by the events of the past twenty-odd days, and the gypsy morph was a burden he wasn't sure he could carry much longer.

They sat at the table and ate stew with hot rolls and butter and cold glasses of milk, the morph eating almost nothing, Harper eating enough for three. Then they cleared the dishes and bundled into sweaters, parkas, boots, scarves, and gloves, and headed out into the night. Nest had enough extra clothing that she was able to outfit everyone, even Ross, who wore spares she had kept from her days with Paul. The night was crisp and still, and the wind had died away. Snow continued to fall in a hazy drifting of thick, wet flakes, and the ground squeaked beneath their boots. No other tracks marred the pristine surface across her backyard and into the ball diamonds, so they blazed their own trail, heads bent to the snowy carpet, breath pluming the air before them.

Ross limped gingerly at the rear of the group, his staff making deep round holes where he set it for support. All the while, he glanced around watchfully, still not trusting Little John's safety. As they crossed the service road, he caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. An owl winged its way through the trees bordering the residences, lifting away across the park, a tiny shadow attached to its neck—Pick, on patrol.

"Mommy, look!" Harper called out, dancing this way and that with her mouth open and her tongue out, trying to catch snowflakes. "Mmmm, stawbury! Mmmm, 'nilla!"

They crossed the open spaces of the ball diamonds toward the east end of the park and the toboggan slide. Lights blazed from the parking area, which was filled with cars, and shouts and screams rose from the slopes where the sleds were making their runs. Ross peered through the snowfall, which was slowing now, turning to a lazy drifting of scattered flakes against a stark backdrop of black sky and white, snow-covered earth. The toboggan slide came into view, timbers blocky, dark struts against the haze of lights, looking like the bones of a creature half-eaten.

"Mommy, Mommy!" Harper was calling excitedly, pulling on Bennett's arm, trying to get her to move faster.

They found Robert waiting with the toboggan and Kyle throwing snowballs at another boy. Nest made quick introductions. Robert seemed pleased to see Bennett Scott and Harper and wary of Ross. Ross didn't blame him. Robert Heppler had no reason to remember him with any fondness. But Robert shook his hand firmly, as if to prove his determination to weather the unexpected encounter, and beckoned them onto the slide.

The toboggan slide had been in Sinnissippi Park since Nest was a small child. Various attempts had been made to dismantle it as unsafe, a climbing hazard that would eventually claim some unfortunate child's life or health and result in a serious lawsuit against the park district. But every time the subject came up for discussion, the hue and cry of the Hopewell populace was so strident that the park board let the matter drop.

The slide was built on a trestle framework of wood timbers fastened together by heavy iron bolts and sunk in concrete footings. A fifteen-foot-high platform encircled by a heavy railing was mounted by ladder. Two teams could occupy the platform at any given time, one already loaded and settled in the chute, the other waiting to take its place. The slide ran down from the top of the bluff to the edge of the bayou, where it opened onto the ice. A space had been cleared of snow all the way to the levee and the railroad tracks. A good run with enough weight could carry a sled that far.

At the top of the slide, a park district employee stood just to the right of the chute with a heavy wooden lever that locked the sled in place while it was being loaded and released to free the sled when it was ready to make its run.

When he got a close look at how it all worked, Ross took Nest aside. "I can't do this," he told her quietly. "Getting up there is just too hard."

"Oh." She glanced at his staff. "I forgot."

His eyes shifted to the others. "I'd better wait here."

She nodded. "Okay, John. I'll watch him."

He didn't have to ask whom she was talking about. He stood aside as Robert got the rest of them in line, carrying the toboggan tipped on end with its steering rope hanging down the bed. When they reached the ladder and began to climb, Nest took the lower end of the toboggan to help boost it up. Ross glanced downhill to where the toboggan chute rested comfortably in its cradle of support timbers, lowering toward the earth as it neared the ice in a long, gradual incline. Lights brightened the pathway, leaving the chute revealed until it reached the ice. On the ice, everything was dark.

Robert's group climbed the platform and stood waiting for the sled ahead of them to load and release. Ross shifted his weight in the snow, leaning on his staff, his eyes wandering off into the trees. A pair of feeders slid like oil through the shadows. He tensed, then shook his head admonishingly. Stop worrying, he told himself. There were lights and people everywhere. A few feeders creeping around in the darkness didn't necessarily mean anything.

He glanced skyward for Pick, but didn't see him.

Moments later, Robert's group was climbing onto the sled, Robert steering, Kyle behind him, then Bennett, Harper, Little John, and Nest. They tucked themselves in place. Except for Robert, each had legs wrapped around the waist of the person ahead, hands and arms locked on shoulders. Kyle and Harper were laughing and shouting. Little John was staring off into the dark.

When the lock bar was released, the sled slid away from the loading platform into the night, picking up speed as it went, the sound of its flat runners on the frozen snow and ice a rough, loud chitter. Down the sled went, tearing through a wave of cold and snow, of freezing air, of shouts and screams. Ross watched until it reached the ice and disappeared from view.

All around him, families were lining up for another run.

One run, however, was more than enough for Bennett Scott. Harper, crazy little kid, was eating it up, screaming and howling like a banshee all the way down the run, laughing hysterically when it was over, then begging all the way back up the slope to do it again.

"Mommy, Mommy, go fast, go fast!" she trilled.

If the ride wasn't enough to give Bennett heart failure, the climb would finish the job, and by the time she'd reached the top again, she was gasping for breath and desperate for a cigarette.

"Mind if I sit this one out?" she asked Nest as they lined up for another run. That creepy guy Ross was standing off to the side, looking like he was about to be jumped or something, and if he didn't have to go with his kid, then Bennett didn't see why she should feel obligated to go with hers.

"Sure," Nest agreed, peering at her. "Are you okay?"

Bennett shrugged. "Define okay. 1 just need a cigarette, that's all." She looked at Harper. "Honey, can you go with Nest, let Mommy take a break?"

The little girl gave her a questioning look, then nodded and turned away to say something to Kyle. He appeared to have hit it off with her, even if Little John hadn't. Creepy kid for a creepy father. She felt sorry for him, but that's the way things worked out. She should know.

Deliberately avoiding John Ross, who was looking somewhere else anyway, she moved away as the others took their place in line. She took a deep breath, her lungs aching with cold and fatigue, fished in her pocket for her cigarettes, knocked one loose from the pack, and reached for her lighter.

Someone else's lighter flared right in front of her face, and she dipped her cigarette tip to catch the fire. Drawing in a deep lungful of heat and smoke, she looked into Penny's wild green eyes.

"Hey, girlfriend," Penny said, snapping shut the lighter.

Bennett exhaled and blew smoke in her face. "Get away from me."

Penny smiled. "You don't mean that."

"Try me." Bennett began to move away.

"Wait!" Penny caught up to her and kept pace as she walked. "I got something for you."

"I don't want it."

"Sure you do. It's good stuff. White lightning and mellow smoke. It'll make you fly and glide all night. I took some earlier. Let me tell you, this town becomes a better place in a hurry."

Bennett sucked on her cigarette and kept her gaze turned away. "Just leave me alone, all right?"

"Look, you hate it here as much as me. Don't pretend you don't." Penny brushed at her wild hair, eyes darting everywhere at once, feral and hungry. "This town is for losers. It's nowhere! I keep trying to find something to do besides sit around listening to Grandma snore. There's not even a dance club! Bunch of bars with redneck mill workers and farmers. 'How's the crop this year, Jeb?' 'Oh, pretty fair, Harv.' Like that. Only way to get past losing your mind is doing a little something to keep sane."

"I'm off drugs." Bennett stopped at the edge of the trees where the darkness grew so heavy she couldn't make out even the trunks. She was already too far away from the light. "I'm clean and I'm staying clean."

"State of mind, girl," Penny sniffed. "There's clean and there's clean. You do what you want, what you need. You still stay clean."

"Yeah, right."

Penny shrugged. "So now what? You gonna go back up there for more toboggan fun?" Her eyes were on the platform, clearly outlined in the light. "Gonna join your friends?"

Bennett glanced up. Nest, Robert, and the children were standing on the platform, waiting to go next. "Maybe."

Penny laughed, her angular frame twisting for emphasis. "You lie like a rug. You wouldn't go back up there on a bet! But you make believe all you want, if it gets you through your pain. Me, I got a better way. Have a look at this."

She took out a plastic pouch filled with brilliant white powder, took a little of the powder on her finger, and snorted it in. She gasped once, then grinned. "Mother's milk, girl. Try a little?"

Bennett wet her lips, eyes fixed on the pouch. The need inside her was so strong she didn't trust herself to speak or move. She wanted a hit so bad she could hardly stand the thought. Just a little, she was thinking. Just this one time. Penny was right. She was all twisted up inside, fighting to stay straight and not really believing there was any hope for it.

It wouldn't hurt anything. I've used before and kept going. Besides, Harper will be all right, no matter what. Nest is here. Nest is looking after her, probably better than me. Harper likes Nest. She doesn't need me. Anyway, doing a little coke would probably give me some focus. Just a little. I can take as much as I want and stop. I've always been able to do that. I can quit anytime. Anytime I want.

Oh, God, she thought, and squeezed her eyes shut until it hurt. No. No. She folded her thin arms against her body and looked back at the toboggan slide. "You keep it."

Penny kept looking at her for a minute, then tucked the pouch back into her coat pocket. She glanced up at the platform, where Nest and the others were climbing onto the sled.

Her smile was a red slash on her pale face. "Better get back with your friends, take another ride down the chute," she said. She smiled in a dark sort of way, giving Bennett a look that whispered of bad feelings and hard thoughts.

Then she walked over to the edge of the rise and looked down at the bayou. "Be a good mom, why don't you? Keep your kid company." She reached into her pocket, brought out a flashlight, pointed it downhill, and clicked it on and off twice.

She turned back to Bennett, stone-faced. "Maybe later, girlfriend," she said. "There's always later."

She waved casually over her shoulder as she walked off.

Standing in the shelter of the big oaks and scrub birch bordering the bayou's edge, back where the lights from the toboggan run didn't penetrate, Findo Cask watched Penny Dreadful's flashlight blink twice from the top of the rise and smiled. Time to start demonstrating to Nest Freemark the consequences of engaging in uncooperative behavior. He'd wasted enough time on her, and he wasn't inclined to waste any more.

He stepped from the shadows to walk down to the water's edge. The water was all ice just now, of course. But everything was subject to change. It was just a matter of knowing how to apply the right sort of pressure. It was a lesson that Nest Freemark would have done well to learn before it was too late.

Garbed in his black frock coat and flat-brimmed hat, he might have been a preacher come to the river to baptize the newly converted. But the demon had something more permanent in mind than a cleansing of the soul. Baptism wasn't really up his alley in any case. Burial was more his style.

Aware of the clutch of feeders creeping hungrily out of the shadows to be close to him, he knelt beside the ice. Feeders were fond of Findo Gask; they could always depend on him for a good meal. He saw no reason to disappoint them now.

He reached down and touched the ice with his fingers, eyes closing in concentration. Slowly, a crack in the surface appeared, broadened and spread, then angled off into the darkness toward the clearing on the ice where the sleds usually ended their runs, close to where the levee that supported the railroad tracks rose like a black wall. He lifted his hand away from the ice and listened carefully. Out in the darkness where the crack had gone, dispatched by his magic, he could hear snapping and splintering, then the soft slosh of water.

A nice surprise would be waiting for Nest Freemark and her friends when they came down this time.

He stood up in time to catch a glimpse of a large bird streaking out of the trees behind him, bolting from cover toward the slide.

Atop the loading platform, the locking lever released.

The toboggan slid out of the starting gate with a crunching of ice crystals under wood runners, easing down the chute, quickly picking up speed. There were only five of them riding the sled now, Robert in front, gloved hands fastened on the steering ropes, Kyle behind him, Harper and Little John next, and Nest in the rear. Hunched close against each other, legs looped over hips and around waists, arms clasped about shoulders, and heads bent against the rush of wind and cold and snow, they watched the landscape of dark trees and hazy trail lights gradually begin to blur and lose shape.

"Hang on!" Robert shouted gleefully, grinning back over his shoulder.

"Hang on!" Harper repeated happily.

The chittering sound of runners pounding over packed snow, ice, and wooden boards grew louder as their speed increased, mixing with a rush of air until they could only barely hear themselves shouting and yelling in response to their excitement. Nest clutched at Little John, trying for a response, but the boy continued his stoic silence, blue eyes fastened on something out in the night, his pale child's face expressionless and distant.

"Eeeeek!" Harper screamed in mock horror, burying her face in Kyle's parka. "Too fast! Too fast!"

They were halfway down the slide, the darkness of the ice drawing steadily closer, the toboggan flying over the packed surface of the chute. Nest grinned, the burn of the wind on her cheeks sharp and exhilarating. It was a good run. Even with only five of them to give the sled weight, they were getting a smooth, fast ride, one that should carry them all the way to the levee. Ahead, Robert was bent all the way forward toward the sled's curled nose, trying to cut down wind resistance, anxious for more speed.

"Go, Robert!" she yelled impulsively.

They were almost to the end of the chute when a dark, winged shadow streaked out of the night, angling close, pulling even with Nest as she rode the sled. Huge wings and a barrel body hove into view, barely within her line of sight, and Pick's voice cried out in her ear, "Get off the sled, Nest! Cask's cracked the ice right ahead of you! Get off!"

At first she thought she was imagining things—catching a blurred glimpse of the owl, listening as Pick yelled at her out of nowhere, hearing words that sounded crazy and dangerous. She turned her head in response, half expecting the shadow and the words to disappear, to prove a figment of her imagination. Instead the shadow swung closer, barely clearing the heads of riders pulling their sleds uphill for another run, shouts of surprise breaking out as the sled on the chute and the trailing shadow swept past.

"Nest, get off now!" Pick screamed.

She felt a jolt of recognition, a moment of deep shock. She wasn't mistaking what she saw or heard. It was real.

The toboggan launched itself clear of the chute and onto the ice, tearing away through sudden darkness as the trail lights disappeared behind.

"Robert, turn the sled!" she screamed at him.

Robert glanced over his shoulder, confused. She reached forward with a lunge, jamming all three children together as she did so, grabbed Robert's right arm, and hauled back, causing him to jerk sharply on the steering rope and yank the sled out of its smooth run. But the ropes gave only minimal control, and the sled continued to rush ahead, skidding slightly sideways, but still on track.

"Nest, stop it!" Robert shouted back, yanking his arm free. "What are you doing?"

The darkness ahead was a black void beneath the clouded, snowy sky, and only a pair of very distant track lights provided any illumination. Nest felt her stomach clutch as she imagined what waited, and she yanked on Robert's arm anew.

"Robert! There's a hole in the ice!"

Finally, in desperation, she grabbed him by both shoulders, the children locked between them, shouting and screaming in protest, and launched herself sideways off the sled, pulling all of them with her. The toboggan tipped wildly, careened on its edge for a moment, then went over, spilling them onto the ice. Riders and sled separated, the former skidding across the ice into a snowbank, the latter continuing on into the dark.

Lying in a pile of bodies, gasping for breath and fighting for purchase on the bayou's slick surface, with Harper crying and Robert cursing, Nest heard a sudden sloshing of water. A dark premonition burned through her.

"Hush!" she hissed at the others, grabbing at them for emphasis, needing their silence in order to hear what was happening, but fearful of what might be listening for them as well. "Hush!"

They responded to the urgency of her words and went still. In the silence that followed, there was a rush of freezing wind across the open expanse of the bayou, and the temperature dropped thirty degrees and what little warmth the night had provided was suddenly sucked away. Ice cracked and snapped, shifting and reforming as the cold invaded its skin.

Swiftly, the gap closed. There was a crunching of wood as the ice seized the toboggan, trapped it like a toothpick in a giant's

dark maw, and sealed it away.

Nest took Harper in her arms and soothed her with soft words and a hug, quieting her sobs. Kyle was staring out into the darkness with eyes the size of dinner plates. Little John was staring with him, but with no expression on his face at all.

"Damn!" Robert whispered softly as the last of the terrifying ice sounds died away. "What was that?"

You don't want to know, Robert, Nest thought in the dark silence of her anger and fear.