Nightingale

Chapter 5 Gunfire

Blair Kardashian shook with excitement as he punched the numbers into his cell phone. It had only been a few minutes since his encounter in Best Buy, and he had to report a sighting of two masaaks. Humans outnumbered the masaaks by well over 200,000 to one. To spot a masaak every five years was not uncommon. To spot two in a day was nearly unprecedented. It had been a good forty years since he'd last collected two masaaks at once.

In the back seat, Riley said, "I've got a bad feeling about this. That really looks like Bron. Maybe he's been captured. Maybe he's possessed."

Blair glanced at Riley, then pressed the Send button, and sat staring at the door of the Best Buy, in case the masaaks tried to escape.

Inside the store, Olivia pulled a Kleenex from her purse and wiped her fingerprints from the Toshiba, rubbing frantically.

Bron stared in surprise. "What are you doing?"

She handed him the items they had already picked out—the cell phone and iPod. "Go put those back. We can't buy anything here today."

Bron thought he knew why, but he couldn't believe that she would be that afraid. "Why not?"

"We don't want to leave an electronic signature leading them back to our house," she said. She pleaded. "You don't know who those people are.... Bron, they'll be waiting for us outside. They're probably already contacting their superiors...."

Bron felt stunned. "I don't get it. What's going on?"

Olivia shook her head roughly. "There's no time to explain. Just come with me!" She grabbed the two items, dusted off her fingerprints from the packaging, and tossed them behind a computer. She took Bron's hand and pulled him toward the door, racing as fast as she could.

Bron wasn't sure if he should follow. He's never been around anyone more paranoid than Melvina Stillman, but he thought, Man this chick is out there!

Olivia hit the front door at a near run, and they exited into the stabbing daylight....

The phone beeped three times before Blair's contact picked up. For security reasons, Blair didn't know the man's name. The contact asked, "Blair?"

At that instant, the two masaaks hurried from the store. Blair prodded a young acolyte, who raised his own cell phone and began snapping pictures.

"We may have a situation," Blair reported. "I've spotted two masaaks in an electronics shop in Saint George, Utah. One is an adult female—of feral heritage. The other is obviously of superior breeding, a young man."

Every instinct told Blair that he should accost these two, capture them before they had a chance to escape, but he dared not attack, lest the young man be a Draghoul lord. Blair couldn't even stop them as they hopped into a Honda CRY.

The contact pondered for a long moment. Blair almost worried that he'd left the phone, but Blair could hear steady breathing and fingers clacking on a computer's keyboard....

Bron slid into his seat.

"Fasten your seatbelt," Olivia warned as she turned the key. Bron was still buckling in when she urged, "Open the glove compartment. Hand me the gun."

"What?" he yelped.

"Give me the gun—" Olivia urged. "And the spare clip!"

Bron hit the latch. The glove compartment dropped open. Sure enough, he found a pistol there, on top of two paper bags. He took it carefully, afraid it might discharge. He'd never touched a handgun before. "Is this thing loaded?"

"It wouldn't be any use if it wasn't," Olivia said. Her face was pale, drawn into a frown. She grabbed the gun and set it in her lap. Her hands shook. "Get me the spare clip."

"What are you doing with a gun?"

"Mike bought it for me, to shoot at coyotes or intruders."

Bron pawed around in the glove compartment, but didn't see a spare clip.

"It's not here," he said. His heart pounded. He'd thought that Olivia was such a nice woman, and now he wondered if she was even sane.

"Damn," she whispered, "I wish that Mike would put things back where they belong!" Olivia threw the car into gear and backed out of her parking stall. She shoved the car into drive, hit the gas, and went speeding toward the exit onto the street.

Blair was waiting on the phone as his quarry left their parking stall. Over the phone, he could still hear keys clacking.

He didn't dare just let the masaaks wander off, so he put his own car into gear and followed discreetly. The quarry turned onto the main boulevard before his master finally said, "I don't believe that we have any operatives in that area. You think that a feral has what... co-opted one of our own?"

Blair's heart thrilled as adrenaline flooded his system. This was going to turn into a hunt!

"Yes—a young man, just a little older than a songbird."

Blair's superior breathed heavily as he considered. After a moment he said, "You're training your apprentices as hunters, are you not? Let the hunt begin."

"Let me verify: we have authorization to apprehend these two?"

"Absolutely. Do so immediately."

"And once we have them? What would you have done?"

The voice on the other end went cold. "I'll have the Dread Knights take it from there."

Olivia gripped the steering wheel. Her knuckles went white as she slid down West State, until she hit the red light at Telegraph Road. To the right was the underpass and ramp to the freeway. To the left were the guts of the city.

She took a heavy breath, as if she might hyperventilate.

"You aren't going to shoot anyone, are you?" Bron asked.

"Not if I don't have to," Olivia said.

"There's no reason for that!" Bron said, heart hammering.

Olivia glanced into the rearview mirror. "They're coming for us."

Bron glanced back. A black Mercedes Benz S600 sedan with tinted windows had pulled up behind them. Bron once had a friend who was a car geek, and Bron had learned a lot more than he wanted to know about such vehicles.

In the Mercedes, the elderly man was just pocketing his cell phone. Bron could see determination in his cold eyes.

Olivia stopped at a red light, and behind them the Mercedes lurched to a halt. Instantly, all four teens lunged out their doors, rushing toward Olivia's car.

One young man grabbed Bron's door handle and pulled, but the doors were locked. "Get out!" he shouted. Bron looked up at Riley O'Hare, face twisted in rage.

Bron heard a click, and suddenly Olivia's gun was near his face, aimed at Riley's chest.

"No!" Bron shouted, pushing Olivia's hand. The gun discharged. The sound was deafening. The window shattered. Bron saw that Olivia had missed. The bullet had gone wide and to the left.

Olivia punched the gas just as Riley reached through the window, fumbling with the door lock. He grabbed onto the door post and just clung to it.

A truck honked and swerved as Olivia raced through the red light. Riley was still grasping onto the latch. He clung and cursed as the Honda dragged him.

Riley shouted in a foreign language, perhaps Russian, and Olivia sped up as she raced a couple hundred yards, hitting the next red light just before the freeway entrance.

Cars were coming from the opposite direction. She slammed the brakes, and Riley was thrown forward, onto the pavement, where he lay groggily. He had blood on his face.

Bron suddenly remembered when they were kids at the group home, Riley eating a ton of stuffing at a Thanksgiving dinner, laughing, with his mouth full.

He'd looked so completely different from now.

What the hell is going on? Bron wondered. He glanced back. The other three teens had returned to their Mercedes, which rushed toward them.

Olivia hit her horn and sped through crossing traffic, dodging a pair of cars.

"Get those paper bags out of the glove compartment!" she shouted. There was no way that Olivia could beat the Mercedes, but she floored the gas as she sped up the freeway's on-ramp.

Bron reached in the glove compartment. There were two paper bags. He grabbed one, and spikes poked through the paper and cut into his hand. He pulled the bag out. The thing was surprisingly heavy—perhaps eight or ten pounds—and was filled with little metal spikes of some kind. Olivia rolled down her window as she took the bag. She hurled it so that it lofted over the CRV and landed on the road behind them, breaking open. Little pieces of gray metal scattered like shards of glass.

Bron heard horns blare as the Mercedes barreled onto the onramp, accelerating. With over 550 horsepower in its engine, the Mercedes streaked toward them like black lightning.

The front tires on the Mercedes exploded, pieces of rubber flying like shrapnel. The car began to spin, then slewed off the embankment in a cloud of sand and dust. It rolled twice before settling on its hood.

Bron looked back at the flying dust, the battered vehicle, a side-mirror rolling down the on-ramp. He was scared and elated and confused, and found himself shouting inanely, "Epic failure!"

Olivia laughed in what sounded like pure relief, then punched the gas and raced ahead at eighty miles per hour until they reached the next exit. She was panting, her face stark with terror.

Bron's heart hammered, and his stomach twisted into a knot from adrenaline. His ears still rang from the gunshot.

He couldn't deny that those freaks had been chasing them. Olivia wasn't crazy. She had a right to be afraid. But pulling a gun?

"What the hell?" Bron demanded. He wasn't used to swearing in front of adults, but the situation seemed to demand it. "Who were those people?"

Olivia merely handed the gun to Bron, and nodded toward the glove compartment. He glanced down. The barrel said that it was a Glock 35, a .40 caliber. Bron didn't know much, but this looked like serious firepower. He laid it gingerly into the glove compartment, on top of the second bag of metal bits.

"Later," she said. "I'll explain later."

Blair crawled out of his overturned Mercedes, clutching at his chest. He felt a sharp and intense pain, one that nearly bowled him over, left him feeble and weak.

It's a heart attack, he thought, caused by the exhilaration. He knew that a heart attack was tricky to diagnose based on pain alone.

He worried. As a masaak, it was not wise to go to a hospital, expose himself to human doctors. With a careful examination, they'd recognize that he wasn't human.

Riley came limping up, nodded toward one of the acolytes. "I think Fields is dead."

Blair glanced back. Fields was lying on his back forty feet off the road. His eyes were fixed and staring. The boy's feet spasmed. His face was crushed and misshapen.

Blair, clenching his teeth in rage, called in his report.

"We've lost our quarry," he said.

"Lost them?"

Blair peered back. Another car pulled onto the ramp. Its tires exploded. It swerved to the left, into the median, completely blocking the road. The police would arrive soon.

"One of my apprentices was killed in the chase," Blair asserted. "And I'm not feeling well. It may be my heart."

There was a long silence. His superior would be trying to figure out how to remedy the situation.

"Take a hotel in town," his master said.

He's decided to let me die rather than letting the humans risk discovering us. If I'm to make it, I'll have to do it on my own.

He felt lost and alone, but among the Draghouls, to show weakness was worse than death. After all, everyone succumbs to death, but only cowards succumb to fear.

"Have your apprentices scour the area," his master ordered. "When you find your quarry, hobble them...."

"With pleasure," Blair said. Hobbling was a cruel thing to do. Stripping a captive of the knowledge of how to walk or crawl left prisoners as helpless as slugs, but it was effective.

They would not escape....

Olivia drove to exit four, then turned right, as if she'd head back into the mountains, to the little town of Pine Valley. Instead she turned into a crowded parking lot at a McDonald's and collapsed, resting her forehead on the steering wheel, gasping.

"You know those guys?" Bron accused.

"No," Olivia said. "I've never met them personally. But I've heard about them."

"Who are they? What have you heard?"

Bron felt desperate for answers.

Olivia picked her head up off the steering wheel and gazed into Bron's eyes steadily, as if wondering whether she could trust him to keep a secret.

"I'll tell you sometime," she promised. "Soon."

"I want to know now!" Bron demanded. He tried to reason more slowly. "In six months I'll be old enough to join the Marines. If there are dangerous cultists in town, you should tell me."

Olivia shook her head, as if she couldn't find the words. "Trust me, Bron. I just want to go home."

Her tone was pleading, but Bron didn't dare let her off the hook. He came to a decision. "I'm bailing," Bron said as he opened the car door. "I'm out of here."

He didn't know where he would go, or what he would do. He just knew that he had to force her to tell the truth.

"Wait!" Olivia focused on him. "Haven't you ever wondered who you were?" she asked. "Haven't you ever wondered why your mother abandoned you?"

Her words stopped him, yanked him as surely as if they were a chain around his neck. He felt like a child, again, a toddler whose world was defined by a dog collar and a length of rope.

He turned to her slowly, unbelieving. "You know?"

"I know," she whispered as if her heart would break. "I swear to god I know."

"Tell me," he said, settling back.

"I can't," she said. "Not yet. I'm not allowed to tell you."

"Is Mr. Bell behind this?" Bron demanded.

"No, he doesn't know anything," Olivia said. She held her arm next to his. "Do you see the color of our skin, the similarities in our hair, the shapes of our eyes? I can't tell you exactly who you are, but I know what you are."

"I'm listening," Bron said, and unexpectedly, his voice cracked. His eyes stung. "Tell me. Please."

"I'll make a phone call, as soon as we get home. By law, I can't tell you. But there's someone who can. I was going to call anyway, once I realized the truth, to get the process started."

"How long will it take?" Bron asked.

"A week, maybe two," Olivia said. "I can't be sure."

Bron leaned back in his seat and drew a long breath. He tried to block out his excitement, cast away all hope, until he felt comfortably numb.

"Make the call now," he dared her. He didn't think she'd do it.

Olivia studied him, pulled out her cell phone, and punched in a number. "Father Leery?" she asked.

Bron could hear a voice on the other end, solemn and grave. "Yes?"

"This is Olivia. I have a problem. I found a songbird."

"Oh... bloody... hell! A nightingale?"

"Yes," Olivia said.

"Black or white?"

"Black."

"Oh ...bloody ...hell!"

"There's more," Olivia said. "We went to a store. The enemy spotted him. We got away, just barely."

Bron had to lean close in order to hear the priest. "Enemies? How many?"

"Five. A master hunter, I think, and four acolytes."

"They'll be after you," Father Leery warned.

"I don't know what to do," Olivia said. "I'm thinking we should leave town...."

"That's just what they'll expect," Father Leery said. "They'll be watching the freeways for suspicious activity."

"So what should I do?"

"You live what, forty miles out of the city? Go home, Olivia. Go home and hide. I'll see if I can handle this."

"There's another thing," Olivia said. "Our songbird, the boy, wants to know what's going on."

"He needs to know," the priest said, "but you can't tell him. The law protects him as much as it does us."

"He needs to know soon" Olivia urged.

"I'll alert the Weigher of Lost Souls," the priest said, and the phone clicked off.

Olivia sat for a moment, breathing hard.

"He sounds as crazy as you," Bron said.

She grinned. "We're not crazy, Bron. We're in more trouble than you can imagine. There are good reasons for our laws, profound and important reasons. You're special. You don't know how special yet. But your world is about to grow very large indeed."

Bron studied her, made his decision. He wanted to know now, but he knew that he wouldn't get that. Still, he knew that if he put it off indefinitely, Olivia might hold out on him. "Two weeks," he agreed. "I'll give you two weeks."

Olivia smiled a terse grin, appraised Bron's broken window, and shook her head regretfully. There was a bit of jagged glass edging up near Bron, and she leaned forward, hit it with her fist, breaking it off. Now the window looked as if it were rolled down instead of as if it had been shot out.

She checked behind to make sure that they weren't being followed, then eased back onto the road and drove slowly through Saint George, heading out through the desert into the mountains.

"Bron," Olivia said when she'd settled down a bit. "You mustn't ever tell anyone what just happened. If this gets into the news, or even if the police hear about it, those people will hunt us down. You can count on it. Promise that you won't tell anyone. Not the police, not social services, not even Mike!"

Bron weighed the alternatives. "Are you sure that we shouldn't go to the police?"

"Very sure," Olivia said. "The police aren't equipped to handle people like these." She seemed convinced that she was being honest.

But why would they want us? he wondered. A more pressing concern struck him. "What about our license plates? They had to have gotten a good look!"

"If they check the plates," Olivia said, "they'll find that the plates are registered to another car. I've been afraid that something like this would happen. So the plates are stolen. I've got my real ones in the barn. We can switch them out in the morning."

Bron's head did a little flip. Certainly witnesses in other cars had seen the altercation, but what would they have seen? A bunch of freaks attacking Olivia's car? Anyone in their right minds would have been writing down the license plate number to the Mercedes, not to the Honda.

With Olivia's tinted windows, no one would have gotten a description of Bron or Olivia.

"So what's in the paper bags," Bron asked, "the things that you threw on the road?"

Olivia shook her head, as if to clear it. "They're called caltrops. A thousand years ago, in the midst of the Crusades, peasants were often forced to fight mounted Arabs armed with scimitars. So during the night before a battle, they would take pieces of metal welded together and armed with barbed spikes, and hide them in the grass on the battlefield. When the cavalry charged, the warhorses would step on them and ruin their hooves. They were called 'cavalry traps,' but the name got shortened to caltrops. They work well on tires, too."

For a long moment, Bron thought about this. You couldn't just go down and buy caltrops at Home Depot. You probably couldn't buy them anywhere. Olivia had either made them herself, or had them made.

And she kept a loaded pistol in her car, a big heavy one.

What kind of person did that?

She obviously wasn't your average mousy little school teacher.

Olivia was so rattled that she didn't speak at all anymore. Instead she followed Highway 18 past a small, perfectly conical volcano near the town of Diamond Valley, then past two more volcanoes and the towns of Dammeron and Veyo, until they turned off the highway,

following signs that directed them toward Pine Valley.

The ringing in Bron's ears faded and his heart slowed to a steady thump. He decided that maybe Olivia knew what she was doing. He'd just have to pretend that this was "life—as usual."

He settled back, determined to remain calm.

"What are you going to tell Mike when he sees the window?" Bron asked.

"We'll say that we went to the store, and someone broke into the car—maybe a burglar, even though nothing got stolen."

It sounded believable.

"Do you lie to Mike a lot?"

Olivia flinched, as if Bron's words were a slap in the face.

"Not if I can help it," she said. "I love Mike. He's a good man. I'm sorry that he wasn't able to come meet you today. But there are some things that he doesn't know about. Some things that he'd never understand."

"He's not like ...us?"

Olivia smiled secretively. "He's not like anyone."

Bron decided to let the matter go, for now.

"You live way out here?" Bron asked. In the middle of nowhere?

"It's quiet, and pretty," Olivia said.

Bron didn't think it was pretty. The only vegetation had been sagebrush until they turned onto a smaller road. Big trees that looked like pines, except that the bark had a yellowish cast to it, backed some houses on the turn. Then they drove through a dense forest of juniper trees, with their sharp scent and tiny blue berries.

It wasn't pretty, Bron decided. It was remote, so removed from civilization that Bron suspected Olivia was in hiding.

He felt nervous about that, and about her husband Mike, who had not bothered to come meet him.

A dozen miles down the road, the car dropped into a small valley where a silver stream wound through emerald fields. A tiny town grew in the shade of a few pine trees on the far side of the valley. The town was dominated by a picturesque old church painted such a bright white that it was like a pearl lying upon green velvet.

Pine Valley didn't have more than a hundred homes, Bron guessed. The car reached the first and only intersection, then turned left and headed farther up into the hills.

"We live in this little town?" Bron asked. He'd never lived in the country before.

"Actually, we don't live in town," Olivia said. "We live outside of it." Her voice sounded more normal now, and her color had returned. She glanced back over her shoulder, searching the road behind. No cars were following.

She drove through town, past a couple of rustic restaurants decorated in western motifs. The homes were eccentric. A sagging pioneer log cabin crouched next to a modern mansion, followed by a vacation home from the 1980s.

People had built whatever they wanted. Olivia passed a little pine-shaded park where a sign announced "Mortensen Reunion." Perhaps a hundred cars crowded around.

Olivia stopped at a restaurant next to a gaudy statue of a giant horse and purchased dinner. It came in a brown paper bag that smelled heavenly. Moments later they reached the entrance to the campground for Pine Valley Reservoir.

A ranger's hut squatted in the middle of the road; a tourist had stopped his car at the hut's window, and he was buying a permit to enter. Bron wondered if Olivia lived in the park—maybe in a ranger's cabin, or in a camping trailer?

But Olivia turned onto the very last driveway before the park. Cedar poles formed a gate on each side of the driveway, and a huge log overhead, split down the middle, served as the backdrop for a sign that read "Heaven's Gate Ranch."

"Great," Bron said, eying some black-and-white cattle grazing in the distance. "Am I going to have to milk those things?" For a moment, he almost longed to be slaving away for the Stillmans. At least they didn't have barns to clean and stinky cows to milk.

"Those are beef cattle," Olivia said. "No one milks them. Mike takes care of them—though he might need you to help chase one down if it breaks through a fence."

A ranch, huh? Bron wondered. Ranches were big pieces of land, and he wondered idly if maybe Olivia was richer than he'd thought.

Bron studied the herd, and couldn't help but feel that something was odd. "What's wrong with those cows?"

"They're called Oreo Cookie cattle," Olivia said. "They're black on each end and white in the middle." Now that she'd mentioned it, Bron could see that it was true. Each of the cattle had a band of white around the middle of its stomach, and was a dark-chocolate brown, almost black, on each end. He'd never seen anything like it.

Olivia continued, "Their real name is 'Belted Galloways.' They're a rare breed out of Scotland. Their fur is shaggy, so they take the snow in the winters here pretty well."

She was trying hard to talk about normal things, he decided, to avoid discussing the attack. Bron gave in.

"Snow? I thought we were in the desert?"

"Sure, down in Saint George, but we've climbed a couple thousand feet into the mountains here." She jerked her chin toward some homes off to the left. "Most of these houses are just summer cabins for families from Saint George. People come up here to get out of the heat, or maybe do a little sledding in winter. Once the snow flies, the locals all huddle in. The driving gets dangerous then—between the ice, and the deer and elk leaping across the roads."

Bron glanced at the neighbors' houses, and caught sight of a young woman in a red one-piece bathing suit. She had beautiful long blonde hair, and she was walking around with a hose, spraying down a deep-red Lexus LX that couldn't have cost less than $85,000.

"Nice scenery," Bron said without enthusiasm. A girl that gorgeous, he'd never even get up the nerve to talk to her, and girls that rich wouldn't bother talking to him.

Olivia honked the car horn as she neared her house, and a huge man came walking out from the barn dressed in blue jeans, boots, and a red-and-white checkered work shirt.

"That's Mike," Olivia said. A black Labrador retriever danced about, wagging its tail, at Mike's side.

To say that Mike was a massive man was an understatement. He was huge—probably six-eight, three feet across the shoulders, maybe three hundred and fifty pounds. His fists were so big that Bron imagined that they could drive fence posts into the ground.

Bron suspected that this was the custom for the Hernandez family—buying dinner on the run, honking the horn to let Mike know that it was time to eat.

Olivia drove down to a little single-story ranch house that looked as if it had been there for a hundred years, and pulled into the shade of a butterfly bush. Hummingbird feeders hung beside the window, and wind chimes made of stained glass tinkled by the backdoor. Bron got out and smelled the clean mountain air and listened. Not a human sound came to his ears—no racing engines, no police sirens, no honking of horns. The only noise came from cicadas in the fields, distant birds. The quiet settled over him like a dead weight.

So this is home.

Mike trudged close, and stood with a smile across his face. "Hi," he said. "You must be Bron?" The black lab raced up to Bron, wagging her tail and sniffing for danger.

Mike reached out to shake, and Bron's hand disappeared into his grasp.

Mike wasn't a Mexican, Bron decided. Mexicans just don't come that big. His face was as broad as a catcher's mitt, and more the bronze that Bron associated with Indians. Mike had blackish-brown eyes, dark-brown hair, a day's stubble. He smiled at Bron and tried to nod cordially enough, but his movements were uneasy.

"I'm sorry that I couldn't make it to the school to meet you," Mike said. "I have a breeder coming in from Australia tomorrow, and I had to spruce things up."

Bron studied Mike. He dwarfed Olivia, and she wasn't a petite woman. Bron had seen Mike's unhappy expression on other people before: disappointment. He was displeased that his wife had picked out a son who was practically grown; he probably felt jealous of the stranger in his house. In Bron's experience, every family had one person who felt that way. Mike might even be worrying about how much Bron would eat, or whether he'd steal the family silver.

Bron nodded. "Thank you for letting me stay, Mr. Hernandez. You've got a beautiful place here."

Mike grinned broadly at the compliment. He was that easy to please. He eyed the car. "What happened to the window?"

"Someone broke in while we were at the store," Olivia said. "Must have gotten scared off. They didn't take anything."

"We'd better move it into the barn until I can get that glass replaced," Mike said. He scratched his head thoughtfully, as if planning the job. "Well, Bron," he changed subject, "come on in and make yourself at home, I guess." Mike trundled into the house. Bron followed in the giant's shadow.

"How do you think you'll like the farm?" Olivia asked. "I mean, I know that you're new to the idea still...."

"Seems kind of lonely out here," Bron said. "I don't imagine that there are many kids to hang out with."

"It's not so lonely if you know where to look," Mike said. "One house down, big log mansion?" He jerked his chin toward the three-story log house, gleaming of lacquered white pine, with the blonde scrubbing the LX beside it. "That's the Mercer place. Their daughter, Galadriel, is cute."

"Please, Mike," Olivia cut in. "She's an idiot."

"When she's hosing down that car in her swimsuit," Mike laughed, "she sure looks brilliant to me."

Galadriel Mercer was hosing dust off the Lexus when Olivia's white Honda CRV rolled in. Galadriel almost waved as Olivia got out of the car. They weren't great friends, but Pine Valley was lonely. If you saw someone you knew, you were expected to watch out for them, and say hello.

A fat mosquito landed on Galadriel's arm. She brushed it off. Washing the car in a swimsuit kept her from getting her clothes wet, but it left her exposed to mosquitoes that sometimes drifted up from the marsh out in the back field.

She glanced up and saw a boy climb from Olivia's Honda, and Galadriel's heart began to pound.

She tried not to stare. From this distance she couldn't really see him well, but he looked hot, maybe even super-hot.

Galadriel remembered the binoculars in the living room.

She set down the hose and turned off the water. As she did, the phone rang in the house. Her mom picked up. By the time that Galadriel reached the front door, her mom was already opening it.

"Olivia Hernandez got a new son!" her mom said. Marie Mercer wasn't the town gossip—far from it—but news traveled fast in Pine Valley.

Galadriel went to the binoculars that her dad kept by the bookshelf. Usually he used them to look at the elk that often came down from the hills to graze in the fields, or to appreciate the bald eagles that nested nearby. For once, Galadriel found them useful for spotting her own quarry.

Galadriel didn't even have to move the focus rings. Bron's image popped right out at her. He had on a t-shirt, and she could see his six-pack right through it. His hair was stylishly cut, his jaw strong. But it was the sensuousness of his lips that left her weak—that combined with the sensitive expression in his eyes.

She studied him. He looked... frightened, shell-shocked, alone. She wondered how long he had known that he would be moving. She figured that this was all a big surprise for him.

His eyes seemed to say, "I've known pain, and I know your pain. Speak softly, and I will comfort you."

Marie trembled at Galadriel's side. It was unusual for Galadriel's mom to get so excited.

"Well?" Marie demanded.

"Yummy!" Galadriel said.

Her mom instantly went cold. Galadriel glanced to her left. Her mother's brow was pinched with worry, and the excited smile had fled.

Galadriel enjoyed the reaction. Anything to get a rise out of mom.

"I don't think," Marie said, "that one should discuss boys as if they were comestibles."

Where do you get those words? Galadriel wondered for the ten-thousandth time. Her mom was always so critical.

"Why not?" she asked.

Galadriel pulled up the binoculars again, heart pounding. The neighbors wouldn't see her, she knew, behind the glare of the window. The boy looked even better the second time around. She wanted to stand there forever, to really appreciate his beauty. I want to chew those lips.

Galadriel's mother waited for her to say something more.

"I think we should go welcome him to the neighborhood," Galadriel suggested.

"Not dressed like that, you won't!" Marie said.

Marie didn't approve of flirting, even among animals. Galadriel remembered a few months ago, her mother had been watching some elk out in the fields. Snow had been falling, and the young calves were loping about with their tongues out, trying to catch fat snowflakes. They were having so much fun. But then one young female had gone near a large bull, her tail up, and had nonchalantly begun to graze just a few feet in front of him. The bull's nostrils had flared, and he immediately took interest.

"See that," Marie had said angrily, as if she wanted to spank the elk. "She's such a flirt!"

It was just nature. At the time Galadriel had thought of her parents' daily motivational speeches. They were always telling her how, "If you want something in life, you have to go out and take it."

That's what the elk cow had done.

Now as Galadriel watched Bron head into the house, she knew what she was going to do.

"Yummy, yum-yum," she said.

The house was ranch style. The outside was covered with siding, but inside Bron could see that this was an old log cabin. The bare walls displayed varnished wood, bronzed with age, with calking between the logs. The house had a solid feel to it, but the walls were sagging. It was only a matter of time before the logs settled so far that it needed to be torn down. The ceiling was only slightly vaulted, and perhaps in its day the exposed pine rafters had seemed chic, but compared to the gleaming new extravagant cabins in town, the place looked antiquated. The ancient atmosphere was confirmed by a wood-burning stove in the living room, and a pair of muzzle-loaders with powder horns hanging above it.

The family sat down to a picnic table just off the kitchen. Mike took a bench all to himself, and Bron felt that he probably liked the picnic table just for that reason: he could fit on it.

Mike sat quietly, looking at the food. Bron couldn't have felt less welcome at the dinner table if he'd been a raccoon. No one acted as if they were hungry. Bron's stomach was still queasy from all the excitement, and Olivia seemed lost in thought.

Bron tried to break the silence with an innocent question. "So, Mike, you don't look much like a Hernandez?"

"I'm not," Mike said. "My great-grandfather was Navaho. When he left the reservation, he took the name Hernandez. He thought that trying to pass himself off as a Mexican would give him a leg up in the world."

"What made him leave the reservation?" Bron wondered. It seemed to him that a place that offered free land would have its attractions.

"Ah," Mike said, as if to say, "thereon hangs a tale." He took a deep breath and launched into the story in a voice both soft and deep, like distant thunder. "When he was nineteen, he became a brave, and a few weeks later, the tribal elders caught a skinwalker. Do you know what that is, a skinwalker?"

Bron shook his head. He'd heard of them, of course, but he wanted to draw Mike out, let him establish his expertise.

"It's a man who uses sorcery to change into monsters, creatures half animal and half human. This man kept the hide of a puma, along with its claws and teeth. The sorcerer used magic to turn himself into a cat, and he attacked a woman and tried to kill her, but some men in the camp heard her cries and stabbed the cat, and drove it off.

"Later, the sorcerer was found in a cave with a spear wound to the chest, and his animal furs lying on the ground beside him."

"So the elders of the village put him on trial, and executed him. According to the law, he was executed at dawn and his body was cut up into four pieces.

"When you kill a skinwalker, you have to be careful. You have to carry the pieces far away from each other, so that the skinwalker doesn't rise from the dead. The heart cannot be near the head, and liver cannot be near the gonads. My great-grandfather, being a young brave, was given the honor of taking one of the sorcerer's quarters, and he rode off on his horse. The village Medicine Man warned him to ride far that day, at least twenty miles, and then to bury the leg at sundown, covering it with rocks, so that no one would ever find a trace. The goal was to make the evil sorcerer disappear forever.

"So my grandfather rode up out of the Grand Canyon and into the desert. The sun was very hot, and often he was tempted to stop and take a nap, but he did as the Medicine Man told him."

Bron glanced over to Olivia, who sat with her hands folded, eyes half closed, with a knowing smile. She'd obviously heard this story before.

"At last, at sunset, he was more than thirty miles from the village, out in a lonesome wash. He spent an hour digging a hole, and would have kept digging longer, but the leg began to jerk and kick in its sack, so he tossed it into the hole and buried it quickly, weighing it down with stones."

Mike sat back in satisfaction for a moment, letting Bron think. Outside, the evening was utterly quiet. There was no road noise. Bron heard a clank on the window and looked out. A moth had batted against the window, and smaller bugs were covering it, drawn to the light.

Here in Pine Valley, nightfall did not come all at once. The sun had dropped behind the mountains half an hour ago, and the sky was tinged with a hazy smoke from California wildfires. The setting sun left a band of violet on the horizon, with a touch of rose overhead, filling this little bowl of land with cold shadows that shut out all sound, like a hand clasped over a mouth. Bron shivered.

"My grandfather danced above the site and sang prayers, trying to force the skinwalker's soul to rest, and when the moon rose, grandfather began to lead his horse home.

"But a burrow owl screeched and rose up out of the ground at his feet. That is an evil portent, for the owl warns against death, and my grandfather did not dare return home. Instead, he stopped at that very spot, and he worried that something had gone wrong.

"He did not sleep all that night. Instead, he danced within a magic circle, and at dawn a girl from the village came for him, running and crying, so weary that she often stumbled. He was in love with her, and hoped to marry her someday, and she felt the same for him.

"She told him that one of the other warriors was dead. He had not carried his portion far from the village, but instead had stopped beside the river to take a rest through the heat of the day, and he must have fallen asleep. The young brave had been carrying the sorcerer's head and right arm, and the brave was found dead—strangled and covered in bite marks from human teeth.

"The skinwalker had survived!

"So my grandfather turned away from the reservation and rode north, and made his home here—far away, where the sorcerer would not look for him."

Something about the story left Bron shivering in fear. It wasn't just the tale of the skinwalker, it was the strangers in town, Bron's worries about the school—a mounting pile of things.

Mike fell silent, then asked in a happy tone, "Who wants chicken?"

He grabbed the bucket from Olivia and began to fill up plates. Olivia just sat with her hands folded. She looked to Mike, "But we don't believe in skinwalkers in this house, do we?"

She said it as if it were an old argument, as if she had trouble with Mike's superstitions.

Mike stopped grabbing food and stared up at her guiltily. "Well, I don't know...." he said. "I've heard a lot of strange stories. Doctor Carnaghan used to work down on the reservation, and he saw one once when he was getting ready to land his bush plane. He said it looked like half-man, half black bear, and it ran on all fours. He clocked it at forty-five miles an hour!"

"But we don't believe such stories, do we?" Olivia urged.

"You know what I believe?" Mike said, not to be cornered. "I believe that the world is stranger than we know, and we should eat this chicken before it gets any colder!"

After dinner, the Hernandez family didn't watch television like normal people do. Olivia got out her guitar and showed Bron her fingering techniques. She played a song that she had composed, using picks on each finger, thumping the guitar like a drum, humming a counter-melody.

It was a song about wind rushing over water, and pine trees creaking in the hills, and a bold elk coming out of the forest at dawn, with its rack held high, as it smelled the world of men for the first time.

At least, that's the picture that formed in Bron's head, and the music was just like that—sounds turning to pictures and colors and emotions all rolled into one.

Olivia wasn't just good, Bron decided within a minute. She was phenomenal—too good to be hiding her gift out here in the woods. He'd thought that she was exaggerating when she said that she'd once given a lesson to Joe Satriani. Now he realized that she had probably told the truth.

Yet if she was one of the best guitarists in the world, Bron wondered, what was she doing hiding up here in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere, wasting her time teaching kids? She should be working in music studios. She could be playing guest leads for major vocal talent. She could be making millions!

As he frowned at these thoughts, he glanced up into Olivia's eyes. She wasn't even watching her hands! She was staring right into Bron's face, as if daring him to ask her,

"Why?"

Yet he knew from her expression that she wouldn't answer.

She played a couple of songs, then Mike began to sing, and she accompanied. Bron suspected that they did this every night.

But on the third song, Olivia asked Bron, "Why don't you get out your guitar? I'll be happy to teach you a few tricks, maybe even a few that Joe Satriani doesn't know."

Bron ducked his head shyly. Olivia was so much better than him. It would be like a concert pianist playing chopsticks with a six year old.

"I've never played in front of other people," he apologized.

"At least you could sing with us," Olivia suggested, but Bron shook his head. His singing was even worse. A knot of alarm coiled in his stomach.

"You don't sing or play in front of others?"

He shook his head. "At my last home, I wasn't allowed to do it in the house."

"No one's that bad," Olivia said.

"Mr. Stillman worked as a trucker," Bron explained. "When he got home, he needed to sleep. Melvina, his wife, had a touch of tinnitus. She didn't want me making noise in the house."

"Music is never 'noise,'" Olivia said. "Even when it isn't played well. There's more going on here than it seems. This Melvina sounds as if she has a cruel streak."

Bron shrugged. "I've known worse."

"You're starting in a school for the performing arts on Monday," Olivia said in exasperation, "and you don't perform?"

"Not in public," Bron said.

Mike teased, "Dude, you got to grow a set on you, and fast!"

Bron fell silent, thoughtful, and got his guitar. He picked one of his favorites, Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," and for the first time ever, he dared sing the lyrics in front of others.

It wasn't great. He wasn't used to singing and playing at the same time, and he fumbled in a couple of places. When he finished, he felt queasy.

Mike didn't say anything, simply smiled, but Olivia offered, "Good job, Bron. Tomorrow we'll start practice."

Bron fell silent, thoughtful. "Olivia, can you show me my room now?" he asked. He felt wearier than he'd imagined. It was as if he'd been running on adrenaline all day, and now he just wanted to collapse.

She and Mike took him to a large room at the back of the house. It had once been a woodshed, in the old days when the house was heated by the fireplace, but now it was insulated and boarded in. A single window with no curtains let in the starlight. The bulb, a 40-watt, hardly chased back the shadows. There was a dresser in the room, and a closet, but the whole place smelled of dust.

A back door to the house was at the far end of the room, locked with an ancient-looking deadbolt.

"We'll have to clean up in here tomorrow," Olivia apologized. "We hardly ever use the guest room. We could try opening the window to let in some fresh air, if you like?"

She went to open the window, but Mike stopped her. "Wait until we're gone, and turn out the lights first. There's no screen in that window, and the light will attract moths."

Mike said goodnight, and Bron sat on the bed for a moment. Olivia just stood, staring at him, as if she wanted to speak but didn't dare.

He felt that she was on the verge of opening up, so he asked, "What is it that you're hiding from, Olivia?" She paused in thought. "Is it just those people who chased us?" Bron suggested. "Or are you afraid of the cops, too?"

Olivia smiled sadly. "Not now. Not so close to sleep."

To his surprise, she grabbed him by the shoulders, leaned down and kissed him on the cheek. "My mother kissed me goodnight when I was young," she explained, "every single night. Even the last night that I saw her in the hospital, dying from cancer, she did it. It was comforting. I miss my goodnight kisses."

The closeness, the tenderness that she showed, had an effect on Bron. It was warm and comforting, and he wanted to try it again. She turned out the light, then went to the window and opened it a crack, and he could not help but notice how shapely she was in the starlight. She had a dancer's figure. She probably had to do a lot of dancing if she taught musical theater. He felt creepy being attracted to her.

He'd never loved any of his foster parents. He knew the danger of getting too close. He suspected that she sensed that, and so she was working to break through his barriers.

He blinked away his thoughts.

She left the room, and Bron lay wide awake. A mosquito entered through the open window and buzzed around his head. Bron didn't kill it. For some reason, mosquitoes never bit him.

He wondered if Olivia's kiss was more than a kiss. Was Olivia flirting with him? He'd heard of women like that. A teacher in Highland, a town near his old home, had just been sentenced for abusing a boy.

How old is Olivia? he wondered. Mr. Bell had said that she was in her early thirties. But she could have been in her late twenties.

No, he decided, she wasn't flirting. But there was something going on here.

There was something odd about Olivia. She looked a lot like Bron did, at least in the strange color of their skin, and the slightly off shapes of their heads. Her eyes were more hazel, where his were gray.

They looked so much alike that he could almost imagine that she was his mother. He got an odd notion: what if she'd had a child when she was young, and had abandoned it?

Mr. Bell had said that she had applied to become a foster parent three years back. Could she have just been waiting for him, hoping to reunite?

It sounded crazy, but this woman with her touchy-feely attitude, her instant bonding, her fear of... something—Bron had never met anyone like her.

He wondered about his real parents. He wondered if they ever lay awake at night like this, speculating on what had become of him.

So he lay on his bed, in utter turmoil, wonders whirling like autumn leaves caught in a dust devil, until he finally settled down to sleep.