[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Tears werepouring uncontrollably down her cheeks as she pulled at tendrils of bush that had entangled herankle and a good thing, too.A few tears might have blurred her vision, made her afraid as she hadbeen with the last two explosions of pain that she might pass out.But she was out on the road, her eyeswere washed clear, she could see the spruce and the sunset both directly ahead, and she was thoroughlyconscious.And that meant that if she headed for the sunset but at a forty-five-degree angle to her right,she couldn t miss the Dunstans ; driveway, house, barn, cornfield were all there to guide her afterperhaps twenty-five steps in the woods.She had barely stopped rolling when she was pulling at the bush that had thwarted her and getting to herfeet just as she pulled the last entangling stems from her hair.The calculation about the Dunstans househappened instantaneously in her head, even as she turned and saw the crushed swath she d cut throughthe greenery and the blood on the road.At first she looked at her skinned hands in bewilderment; they couldn t have left such a gory trail.Andthey hadn t.One knee had been skinned flayed, really right through her jeans and one seriouslymessed up leg, less bloody but causing her sheets of pain like white lighting even while she was not tryingto move it.Two arms with quite a lot of skin removed.No time to find out how much or to figure out what she d done to her shoulder.Ascreeeeeeech ofbrakes ahead.Lord, he s slow.No, I m fast, hyped up by pain and terror.Use it!She ordered her legs to sprint into the forest.Her right leg obeyed, but when she swiveled her left and ithit the ground fireworks went off behind her eyes.She was in a state of hyper-alertness; she saw thestick even as she was falling.She rolled over once or twice, which caused dull red flares of pain to go offin her head, and then she was able to grab it.It might have been specially designed for a crutch, aroundunderarm height and blunt on one end but sharp on the other.She tucked it under her left arm andsomehow willed herself up from her place in the mud: boosting off with her right leg and catching herselfon the crutch so that she scarcely had to touch her left foot to the ground.She d got turned around in the fall and had to twist to right herself again but there she saw it, the lastremains of sunset and the road behind her.Head forty-five-degrees right from that glow, she thought.Thank God, it was her right arm that was messed up; this way she could support herself with her leftPage 171Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlshoulder on the crutch.Still without a moment s hesitation, without giving Damon an extra millisecond tofollow her, she plunged in her chosen direction into the forest.Into the Old Wood.27When Damon woke up, he was wrestling with the wheel of the Ferrari.He was on a narrow road,heading almost straight into a glorious sunset and the passenger door was waving open.Once again, only the combination of almost instantaneous reflex and perfectly designed automobileallowed him to keep out of the wide, muddy ditches on either side of the one-lane road.But he managedit and ended up with the sunset at his back, gazing at the long shadows down the road and wonderingwhat the hell had just happened to him.Was he sleep-driving now? The passenger door why was it open?And then something happened.A long, thin thread, slightly waving, almost like a single strand ofgossamer, lit up as the reddish sunlight hit it.It was dangling from the top of the passenger window, whichwas shut, with the roof down.He didn t bother to pull the car to one side, but stopped in the middle of the road and went around tolook at that hair.In his fingers, held toward the light, it turned white.But turned toward the dark of the forest, it showedits true color: gold.A long, slightly waving, golden hair.Elena.As soon as he had identified it, he got back into the car and began to backtrack.Something had rippedElena right out of his car without putting so much as a scratch on the paint.What could have done that?How had he managed to get Elena to go for a spin anyway? And why couldn t he remember? Had theyboth been attacked& ?When he backtracked, however, the marks by the passenger s side of the road told the entire grislystory.For some reason, Elena had been frightened into jumping out of the car or some power hadpulled her.And Damon, who now felt as if there were steam rising from his skin, knew that in all thewoods there were only two creatures that could have been responsible.He sent out a scouting probe, a simple circle that was meant to be undetectable, and almost lost controlof the car again.Merda!That blast had come out as a sphere-shaped killing strafe birds were dropping out of the sky.It tore through the Old Wood, through Fell s Church, which surrounded it, and into the areas beyond,before finally dying out hundreds of miles away.Power? He wasn t a vampire, he was Death Incarnate.Damon had a vague thought of pulling over andwaiting until the turmoil inside himself had stopped.Where had such Power come from?Page 172Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlStefan would have stopped, would have dithered around, wondering.Damon just grinned savagely,gunned the engine, and sent thousands of probes raining from the sky, all attuned to catch a fox-shapedcreature running or hiding in the Old Wood.He got a hit in a tenth of a second.There.Under a black cohosh bush, if he wasn t mistaken under some unspeakable bush, anyway.AndShinichi knew he was coming.Good.Damon sent a wave of Power directly at the fox, catching it in akekkai , a sort of invisiblerope-barrier that he tightened deliberately, slowly, around the struggling animal.Shinichi fought back, withkilling force.Damon used the kekkai to pick him up bodily and slam the little fox body into the ground.After a few of these slams Shinichi decided to stop fighting and played dead instead.That was fine withDamon.It was the way he thought Shinichi looked best, except for the bit about playing.At last he had to stash the Ferrari between two trees and ran swiftly to the bush where Shinichi was nowfighting the barrier around him to get into human form [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]