Chapter Eight
Daylight came late, a sullen sun reluctantly
appearing from a bank of heavy, dark gray cloud to the east of the
clearing. The air felt cooler, with a hint of rain riding in the
teeth of a fresh norther.
Ryan blinked his eye open, his hand reaching automatically to check
that his weapons were still secure. The Steyr rifle lay at his
right side, the barrel pointing toward his feet. The SIG- Sauer was
close to the rolled-up coat that had been his pillow for the night.
And the panga was still snugly sheathed on his hip.
Like the rest of the group, Ryan hadn't undressed for the night,
simply loosening the laces in his steel-capped combat
boots.
Krysty was very close to him on the left side, her firm buttocks
pressed against his groin and the tops of his thighs, so that the
lovers lay together like two spoons, laid neatly in a cutlery
drawer.
She sensed his waking and opened her bright emerald eyes, her arms
stretching, muscles creaking, above her head. Ryan noticed that the
coils of sentient hair were curled tightly and defensively against
her nape.
"All right, lover?" he whispered, not wanting to wake the
others.
"Sure. You?"
"Slept great."
"The samphire drink didn't give you any good dreams, did it? Like
Johannes promised."
He sighed, brushing a dried sycamore leaf from his chin. "No. Just
sleep. How about you, lover?"
She lifted herself onto an elbow, turning to smile down at him.
"Gaia! But I love you, Ryan," she whispered, lowering her face to
his, kissing him on the lips.
"Love you, too," he said, when they broke apart. "But tell me about
your dreams."
She looked around the clearing. The pair of bay mares were standing
contentedly still, heads close together, their breath just visible
in the cool of the morning. There was no sign of life from the
canvas-topped wag, nor from the hummocked bodies that circled the
fire.
"Dark dreams," she said.
"Nightmares?"
"Kind of."
"Remember them?"
Krysty nodded, lying down again and cuddling up to Ryan for warmth.
"Course. Nearly always remember my dreams. They were coiling and
dark."
"Tell me."
She laughed quietly. "No. Nothing more boring than listening to
someone else's dreams."
He nudged her. "Tell me before I beat it out of you."
She smiled. "Mmm, that's an interesting thought. Long as I can beat
you back."
"The dream?"
She hesitated a moment. "When I was a young girl, up in Harmony
ville, Mother Sonja would get me to tell her all my dreams. Every
night."
"You tell her the truth?"
"Course!"
"Always?"
"Nearly always, Ryan. When I was going through puberty, there were
some dreams that were so odd and embarrassing that I never told
her. Never told anyone."
He squeezed her hand. "You can tell me. Here comes the smut,
lady."
She giggled. "Not even you. Just say that some of them involved
horses, dogs and piles of soft cushions. All kinds of weird stuff.
But I never dreamed anything quite like last night."
"Go on."
"It was mixed-up. We were all in it, but we were in this huge
building, like an old office tower from the big predark cities.
Hundreds of floors and we were separated." She paused. "I was near
the top, above the clouds."
"Yeah?"
One of the horses whickered softly, and both of them turned to
look. Ryan's right hand dropped to the cold, slightly damp butt of
the powerful blaster in case the animal was giving them an early
warning of some potential danger. But the deep silence remained all
around them.
Krysty continued, whispering.
"I kept sleeping, sleeping inside my dream. I was a thousand feet
high, and I dreamed I was dreaming. You ever had that happen,
lover?"
"Funnily enough, yeah, I have. I once dreamed all my teeth had
fallen out. Put my fingers in my mouth and it was all bloody gums.
In my dream I yelled out and woke up. Got out of my bed and walked
to a big mirror that stood against the wall. I recall feeling so
relieved that it was all a dream. Stood in front of the mirror and
opened my mouth. And saw nothing but bloodied sockets and gums and
no teeth! I remember that I shouted out loud, screamed and then I
woke up."
"That's a bad one." She returned the squeeze of fingers. "Mine
wasn't nothing anything like that. In this building, it was a
strange kind of half-light, like just before dawn or just after
dusk. And there were these people." She swallowed hard. "There were
these people, trying to get into the building at me through the big
windows."
"A thousand feet high? They have wings?"
"No. That's the point, though lover. They were flying. I saw the
wind through their robes."
"Robes? What kind of ?"
"Okay, they were more like loose clothes. Gray. They all wore
gray."
"How many of them?"
"Give me time, will you? This is my dream, Ryan. Five or six, with
more women than men. Mostly old. Quite beautiful. And they wanted
me to go outside and join them."
"So, they were friendly?"
"No. They seemed friendly. They were pretending to be friendly. But
there was something unspeakably old and evil about them. Like they
were" Krysty struggled for the word. "Unclean. Unwholesome. They
were pissed because the glass had a power to keep them out and away
from me. They scratched at it with long nails." She shuddered. "It
really was triple-shit horrible. I can still hear the sound of
their nails on the glass. And they kept showing their fangs when
they faked these smiles."
"Fangs."
She laughed quietly. "Well, long white teeth. Mebbe fangs is
putting it a bit strongly."
"Then you woke up?"
Krysty sat up, and Ryan saw in the dawning light that she was
unusually pale. "Not quite. Someone joined them. Younger. Someone
who looked like Dean."
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER the camp was up and stirring. The embers of
the previous night's fire had been revived with some dry kindling
that Forde fetched from the wag. The horses were fed and watered,
and some coffee was boiling away on the flames.
Everyone was bustling around.
Everyone except Dean.
The boy had opened his solemn brown eyes and blinked up at his
father when Ryan had shaken him awake.
"Oh! Hi, Dad," he mumbled. "Time to get up already? Only just fell
asleep."
"Been in the sack for long enough."
Ryan had been busy helping to get the fire going again, as well as
washing himself and using some hot water from Forde's battered iron
kettle to shave. He'd never bothered to check if Dean was
up.
"Looks like the lad had himself a late night," Forde said,
grinning. "If I didn't know better, I might have thought he'd been
out getting his coals hauled at some nearby gaudy. But there isn't
one and he hasn't."
When Ryan looked across he saw that Dean was fast asleep
again.
He lay on his side, his hands delving between his thighs for
warmth, knees up to his chest for the same reason. His eyes were
tightly shut.
"Hey, come on, son," Ryan said loudly, kneeling on the wet turf and
shaking the boy again by the shoulder. "You waiting for breakfast
in bed?"
"Is it time to get up already, Dad?" The words were slurred and
barely audible. "Seems like I only just got into bed. Feel triple
tired. Can I have a few more minutes?"
"No!" Ryan replied loudly, and with more than a passing touch of
anger. "You can't."
Krysty had been walking by, carrying a copper pot of water from the
small pool that lay just beyond the fringe of trees. She paused and
laid down her burden. "He looks pale, lover."
Ryan hadn't really noticed. In the first light of dawn, most people
tended to look pale and slightly soiled, their skins sagging and
waxen from the night.
"Suppose he does." He touched Dean on the forehead with the flat of
his hand. "Doesn't feel fevered."
"Seems like I've just run ten times round a plowed field," the boy
moaned.
"Get up and have something to bridge the gap between backbone and
belly," Mildred suggested, kneeling beside Ryan, staring intently
into Dean's face.
"Yeah," the boy replied, managing something that started off as a
smile, then sort of lost its way on the road.
With an an obvious struggle Dean sat up, swaying from side to side
as though he had an ague. Mildred put an arm around his shoulders
to support him.
Forde joined the group, his cavalry sword trailing in the wet
grass, his boots damp to the tops. "Got an invalid, have we? Can't
have that."
"Sorry, Dad," Dean said. "I'spect I'll be better once I'm up and
had some food." Ryan helped him to his feet, holding him firmly
just below the elbow. "You know I had a triple-sick dream last
night."
"What was it?" Krysty asked quickly.
"Sort of like being wrapped in a big blanket of fog. But I couldn't
breathe properly. And I was growing smaller and smaller. The room I
was in was getting bigger, and the window with the moon behind it
was getting farther away. There was someone or something behind the
window that was dangerous to me. Next thing I knew was you shaking
me, Dad." The boy took a slow, deep breath. "Feeling better now.
Think you can let me go. Yeah, definitely better."
Ryan took a cautious step away from his only child, watching him
with continuing anxiety. He glanced across and caught a similar
look of concern on Mildred's face, which did nothing to make him
feel better.
The woman moved to stand close to Dean, making him open his eyes
wide, telling him to put out his tongue and cough a couple of
times.
The boy obediently did what she told him.
"You haven't got any nasty pains anywhere, have you?" she
asked.
"Bit of a headache and I feel a bit sick. But I'm sure I'll be all
right."
Ryan noticed that Mildred was checking both sides of his throat
with some interest, as if she was looking for some specific
symptoms.
Finally she patted Dean on the shoulder. "Just growing pains, I
guess. Go sit by the fire and take it easy until we get on the road
again."
They all watched him walk away a little unsteadily and squat by the
fire, holding out his hands to warm himself.
"Well?" Ryan said to Mildred.
"Well, nothing. Can't find anything wrong. No swollen glands. No
temperature. Pulse is a little bit slow, but he's only just woken
up."
"Why were you looking so carefully at his neck, Mildred?" Krysty
asked.
"Checking his glands. Mumps. Glandular fever. That kind of
thing."
"Was that all you were looking for, Doctor?" Doc pointed the ferule
of his swordstick accusingly at her. "I beg leave to call that
statement into question, if I may."
"What're you on about, you old peckerwood?"
"Were you not looking for marks on the lad's throat? Perhaps for
bite marks?"
"Maybe I was. But there weren't any."
Forde straightened. "Vampire bats that had been sucking the
lifeblood from the boy?"
Mildred sighed. "All right. Everyone's a smart ass, it seems. Yeah,
something like that was a possibility. No more than that. But there
are no marks so it's not that."
They all broke up to go their separate ways. Jak and J.B. hadn't
been a part of the conversation and were both coming back from the
trees together.
"Sky's clearing," the albino called.
While everyone else went about their business, he sat by Dean, who
had rolled up his sleeve and was peering at a small mark in the
crook of his elbow.
"What's that, Dean?"
"Don't know, Jak," the boy replied. "Looks like something must've
bit me in the night."