The Omen Machine

CHAPTER 66

Kahlan woke to the feel of warm breath on her face. It made absolutely no sense.

The alarm of her inner voice warned her to keep her eyes closed and to remain perfectly still.

She frantically tried to understand what was going on, but she couldn’t make sense of it. She knew that it wasn’t Richard. He was worried about her and would never do something that would frighten her, especially when she was not feeling well.

Her left arm hurt. She only dimly recalled Zedd putting something on it and wrapping it in bandages. But her arm was not the immediate problem.

Her experience during the war, and even more, her training and experience as a Confessor, automatically took over. She ignored her still-throbbing headache, her nausea, the ache of her arm, and put her full focus on the problem at hand. Without opening her eyes, or moving, or changing her breathing, Kahlan began to take assessment.

Something was keeping her tightly pinned under the blanket. She tried to imagine what could be holding her down. As she put her mind to understanding it, she thought that it felt rather like someone on their hands and knees directly over her, with a hand and a knee to either side, pinning the blanket down.

She knew that the room was heavily guarded, so she was at a loss to imagine how anyone intending harm could have gotten in. She couldn’t think of a single person who would do such a thing as a joke. She realized that the smell of the thing was decidedly unpleasant and not human.

The heavy breathing had an element of a low growl to it.

Ever so carefully, she slitted her eyelids open just the tiniest bit.

Near to her, to each side, she could see something slender. Something slender and hairy. She realized that it could only be the front legs of an animal like a wolf or dog, possibly a coyote. In the dim light of the single lamp on the bedside table, it was hard to tell the color.

With that bit of information, the frantic, bewildered confusion began to clear. Her thoughts of what it could possibly be, thankfully, began to coalesce.

It was not a person on all fours over her. It was some sort of animal. By the weight of it on the bed, what ever it was had to be rather big, too big, she realized, to be a coyote.

And then she heard the distinctive low growl, and felt the hot breath again. By the smell of the thing, the legs she could see, and the panting growl she was pretty sure that it had to be a big dog, possibly a wolf.

She was having a great deal of difficulty conceiving of what it could be doing in her bedroom.

She recalled, then, the dog that had crashed into their bedroom door, the wildly aggressive dog that the soldiers had been forced to kill.

She didn’t know how this dog could have gotten into the room. She set aside the effort of trying to figure it out. It didn’t matter how it got in. It only mattered that it had, and that the animal was dangerous— she had no doubt of that.

With her body pinned under the blanket, there was no hope of leaping up and racing for the door. It was too close to her. She would never make it.

As she opened her eyelids just the slightest bit more, she could see the muzzle snarled back, and the long teeth. If she tried to jump up, slowed by being trapped under the blanket as she was, the beast would rip off her face before she had a chance to get her arms up to defend herself.

She realized that the animal was standing between her right side and her right arm. Her left arm was trapped close to her body, but her right arm was not; it was outside the animal’s legs.

She knew that she had only one chance. She also knew that she could not delay. Dogs and wolves both had a predator instinct. They were excited by prey trying to get away, by it running. As she lay perfectly still, the prey drive was being kept in check.

But only as long as she was perfectly still, and only for the moment. She knew that the dog could decide to act first.

She could hear the low, menacing growl getting deeper, getting a little louder. She could feel the vibration of it in her chest.

The dog was deciding to flush its prey.

She had no time to waste. She knew that once it sank its teeth into her, there would be no escape.

She had to take the initiative.