Lucas knew the dogs were on his heels, and he also knew that he had little chance of surviving this night, but he'd be damned if he would go out alone. He wanted in the worst way to take Bryce out with him, and maybe that bitch doctor and some of the others.
As he ran, he scattered Randy's clothes here, Meredyth's there in a continued attempt to keep the dogs-both animal and human-confused. Confusion now was his best and only ally, that and his native intellect. He hadn't given up his Bowie knife, which had been hidden the entire time in the sheath at the center of his back. It was his one hope, but a knife, however well he might wield it, was no match for sighted, laser-targeting, high-tech crossbows.
He led his pursuers deeper and deeper into the most rugged terrain he was able to find here. The forested area gave way to a dry riverbed, the sort of gulch that filled in an instant during a flash flood. He had little hope of seeing a flash flood here tonight, although the ancient riverbed was soggy and gave way beneath his feet as he raced on. Still, with the rain increasing, he hoped his scent and his tracks might be obliterated, but the hounds seemed on a scent and direction from which they could not be dissuaded-slowed, perhaps, but not dissuaded.
Out of the earth, like spirits from another world, a spectral fog began to rise, the earth being too quickly cooled by the rain. Lucas blessed the sight. It would provide more cover, and from the gloom, he might more readily strike. One more ally for him.
He continued into the rocky, pitted foothills, his arms free of the last vestiges of Meredyth's clothing now. He concentrated on locating a weapon, anything he might arm himself with, but the boulders here were all too large to handle and there were no tree limbs lying nearby.
One of the dogs had caught up to him; another was just behind. The first one attacked, leaping straight for him. He could hear the horses coming at a gallop, the shouting of excited hunters who smelled blood.
Lucas brought the Bowie knife up to strike the wild-eyed dog, but he missed, the speed of the animal too much for him. He tumbled over, the dog held away from his throat, yipping, biting out viciously, then Lucas brought the huge knife up and into the animal's gut, twisting and yanking upwards as if zipping the animal open. The result was immediate shock for the animal, and its whimper was painful to hear. Lucas lifted the dog while lying on his back and hurled it at the second dog, striking and confusing it.
Lucas got to his knees, the knife held out threateningly toward the animal, which was obviously trained well to please its master. The dog hurled itself at Lucas and was suddenly struck down in midair over Lucas, taking the arrow meant for Lucas when it jumped into the path of the laser beam.
Lucas felt the weight of this dead animal thud into him and he immediately yanked on the arrow shaft in the dog's back, rolling to his left, dragging the dead carcass with him, over once, twice, and into a small crevice between the rocks here. The dog was hung up overhead now, the arrow pointing straight down into the crevice. Lucas pulled it free, the animal's blood flowing over him, painting his features in wild color.
There was an exit behind Lucas and he crawled for it, taking the steel arrow with him, still holding firmly to his knife as well. Above and around him, he could hear the clatter of horse hooves and the voices of his assassins.
Bryce was shouting, 'The red devil's killed my dogs! That son of a bitch is going to suffer for this. Find him, find him and kill the bastard. Fan out!”
Lucas rolled and crawled and pulled himself along, staying low among the rocks. He heard the noise of a babbling creek and went toward it at a run.
Behind him, he heard the woman shout, “There! There he is!”
He felt the pain as an arrow tore across his calf, cutting a swath but veering off, not penetrating. He lunged into the creek, already soaked, hoping the water was deep enough and swollen enough to take him downstream. The hunters behind him had abandoned their horses for the moment, coming straight for him.
The water was deep and the current swift. He allowed himself to be carried along.
A singing arrow bit the water before his eyes. A second one slapped the water harmlessly beyond him. Several other shots were fired, and Lucas wondered how long his pursuers would take before they began using high-powered rifles that could open a hole in him the size of a grapefruit.
Lucas was slammed into a tangled nest of brambles, dead tree limbs, and growth in the stream, and he hung on, trying to catch his breath. The water felt soothing on his wounded leg and his shoulder where he'd torn out his stitches. He felt his blood streaming along with the cool waters now.
He heard Washburn, Dalton and Bryce taunting him now, calling out racial sneers. Besides being murdering assassins, they were also a pack of bigots, he thought.
He pulled himself along the shallows and found a bevy of reeds and cattails. It was shallow enough here to stand, the bottom mushy but holding. He quickly cut a reed at both ends and descended below the surface in the best of Indian traditions.
His hearing was impaired by the water, but not by much. He sensed that two or perhaps three of the deadly hunters now had passed his location. He waited patiently for any others, but he could hear and sense nothing. Finally, he gave up the vigil and surfaced.
He now moved with the stealth of a cat, slowly, making no sound as he found the true shoreline and inched his way from the water. Rain still pelted the world, and darkness and gloom and fog lay over the creek, smearing the woodlands here with grim despair.
From what he could gather, from the number of horses he'd heard and seen thundering up, Bullock and Price had come along on the hunt. Some odds, he mused, five to one. Any betting man would not give him much of a chance.
He gave a moment's thought to how he had become embroiled in this horror, thought of Meredyth, pleased that the hunters had come after him in the mistaken belief they were all still together. Lucas wondered if he'd ever see her again, if she and Randy had made it out to the road, or if they were dead and lying somewhere beneath the cold rain. He had counted three dogs from the yelping and yet there were only two lying back there among the rocks. But he had to keep focused, keep his mind on survival. There were five deadly Questors, five murderous, live Helsingers in these black holes all around him, just waiting for him to step on a dry twig so he could be drilled through the heart by their arrows.
Again he blessed the rain. It had shielded him thus far, saving his life. He wondered if there wasn't some distant ancestor looking out for him.
A blazing eruption suddenly burned an image into Lucas's mind, an image of a man being electrocuted as a tree exploded within fifty feet of Lucas, a lightning bolt having caused the explosion. The lightning filled his nostrils with ozone even as it sent Lucas sprawling several feet and onto his back. It lit up the entire area, the fiery tree sending deadly shards in all directions and sending both a flaming body that looked the size of Stu Price and a burning tree limb cascading around Lucas's prone body. Lucas felt the other man's body whiz by like a twig, and he felt both lucky and vulnerable at once. Had anyone seen him?
The burning tree was lighting up the sky with crazy lights that flickered bright and low, now high and mighty, then dipping into a near-dark death with the wild rush of wind the fire itself had created. The raindrops hissed as they touched the fire.
The light was dangerous for Lucas, and the shock wave from the lightning strike had thrown him down so hard that he could not find either his knife or the arrow now ripped from his grasp. His singed eyes sought out the body near him, but Price, his body sending up a smoke cloud, had no crossbow fused to his hands. Lucas tried to frisk the smoking corpse for a gun, but the body was extremely hot, and it suddenly erupted once again into flames, sending Lucas scurrying back.
Now without weapons, he saw Pierce Dalton, silhouetted against the light from the fire. He came directly toward Lucas. Had he seen or heard Lucas's shout? Lucas couldn't recall if he had shouted, but it seemed likely, given the impact. His ears were still ringing.
Pierce Dalton didn't shout for Bullock or the others, but Lucas could hear the other three at a distance, shouting for Dalton and Price in the wake of the lightning strike. Perhaps they thought their comrades had been struck by the bolt or disoriented by it, and if so they were half-right. Perhaps the others feared that, in the tumult, Lucas had managed to get his hands on one or the other's crossbow.
Lucas thought it not a bad idea, so he worked his way around, slithering snakelike toward the burning tree. The closer he got to the tree, the more lit-up and exposed he felt. Still, if he could locate Price's crossbow, he thought he might have a fighting chance.
And there it was, lying at the base of a rock not far from the inferno. He inched toward it.
So far, Dalton hadn't seen him. Dalton had, however, found Price's body, and he was turning the dead man with his foot, gazing down into the shocked eyes, the still-burning hair. Dalton had been close to the flash as well, and he appeared shaken.
Lucas made a grab for the crossbow, found it blazing hot, burned his hands, and dropped it all at once, knowing the noise alerted Dalton. Dalton wheeled as Lucas rolled into a deep shadow created by a nearby overhang of rock and brush. Everything outside the firelight now was darker than ever, the black shadows multiplied tenfold by the flames.
Counselor Pierce Dalton, who no doubt had given Judge Charles Mootry his last legal advice before killing the man, came ever closer to where Lucas lay in the deepening shadows of this area. A second smoldering limb lay just out of Lucas's reach, but its jagged, pointed edge made for a tantalizing prize. Lucas dared inch toward the limb.
Dalton kept coming as if he had his eyes trained on Lucas, as if he could see into the empty wall of blackness here, but Lucas saw no evidence of the telltale red laser beam rising from his weapon. Closer and closer the malevolent man and the powerful crossbow came at Lucas, who now feared Dalton would see the whites of his eyes.
Dalton turned sharply in a 180-degree turn, hearing another sound directly behind him. He instantly lifted his bow and readied to fire, searching for the source of the noise. Lucas had heard it, too, but could not worry about it. He had only a split second in which to make his move.
He rolled to the burning limb, lifted it and himself toward Dalton's back, and as the man turned, his crossbow ready, Lucas jammed the pointed end of the burning limb into Dalton's gut and rammed it upwards with all his might.
Even as Dalton's scream pierced the air, his cocked arrow twanged into a nearby tree as he keeled over like a felled tree, the limb sticking from him, still afire, its blaze suddenly sparked, it seemed, by the fuel of the man's blood. Lucas instantly tore the crossbow and arrow pouch from Dalton's lifeless, staring body, half expecting to be fired on from the other three killers. But from the darkness came only a terrified deer, suddenly skittering away like a graceful, saving angel.
Lucas raced back up along the creek, placing some distance between himself and his remaining pursuers, entertaining some thought at taking their horses. But with the lightning strike, it was doubtful the horses would have remained, most likely having returned to their stable by now. Once he located a safe place to catch his breath, Lucas saw that Dalton had only two arrows left in his pouch. In the distance now, he heard Tim Bullock cursing the sky over Dalton's body, shouting, “Stonecoat! Stonecoat! You bastard! I'm coming for you!”
Lucas, his bad shoulder throbbing now, fought with the stringing of the crossbow to ready his first deadly arrow for flight, realizing the math was all wrong-two arrows to fell three assassins who believed vehemently in their cause. The one-handed struggle with the bow was extremely difficult, taking precious time, but finally he managed to get the weapon prepared.
He lay on his back now among some boulders and overhanging trees. He didn't see Sterling Washburn or hear her approach; it was as if she'd been there all along, waiting for him, knowing he'd select this exact spot to nestle down into to hide and regain his strength. It was obvious she had not been with the other two, who had gone south, further along the river, hunting for Lucas in the shallows as he'd hoped they would. And now their eyes met, and his bow was down, lying across his chest, while hers was pointed, the red beam making its way to his heart.
She fired just as he lifted the slate stone beside him to cover his heart, knowing that she and the others always aimed for “the demon's heart.” The powerfully strung bow sent the steel shaft into the stone with incredible force, shattering it into two separate pieces and piercing Stonecoat's chest over the heart. It failed to penetrate beyond a centimeter, however.
Dr. Sterling Washburn believed him dead, and this belief made her hesitate a moment before starting to restring.
Lucas quickly brought up his bow and fired without using the laser attachment, sending an arrow in the blink of an eye into Sterling Washburn's own breast, the powerful shaft pinning her to a tree where she writhed in pain, her screams rivaling the banshee winds and the thunder overhead.
She was still flailing like a pinned butterfly against the stunted Texas box elder when Lucas got to his feet and found another location in which to hide. He fully expected Andrew Bryce or Tim Bullock to come running to the horrid sound of pain and anguish sent up to the heavens from Dr. Sterling Washburn's rain-soaked throat.
“White bitch,” Lucas said to allay any feelings of sympathy for the mass murderess. He couldn't waste another arrow on her, and he dared not linger to attempt gathering any additional arrows from her.
Lucas climbed to a higher vantage point, awaiting Bullock and Bryce.
Randy looked up to see Meredyth's rain-slicked apparition ahead of him, somewhat shielded by the rising, breathing ground fog which owed its life to the grueling heat that had baked the land all day long. Where the rain soaked the ground in meadows here, large steaming clouds were created to shroud the night's grim work.
They had heard the booming, earthshaking lightning strike followed by the sudden quaking, god-awful cry of a dying man, worse than any lightning or bobcat, Randy thought.
Meredyth ran back to Randy, their eyes meeting, both wondering the same thing. Was Lucas Stonecoat dead?
“We've got to turn around, make for the road,” Randy insisted, when suddenly several horses trotted, confused and frightened, into view.
“We've got to get those horses,” she told him.
“I've had some experience with horses,” he told her. “Approach them carefully, gently, hand out and talk baby talk to them. They'll respond if they're not too frightened.”
Each went for a different horse, and Meredyth did as Randy had suggested, but when she got within reach and snatched for the horse's reins, he bolted and ran, a second one following him.
Randy walked back with a horse in tow. She instantly refused to mount up, as he suggested.
“You go, Randy, turn back and get help. Get to the ranch house; find a phone. I'm going on.”
“I can't leave you here.”
“If you want to help, get to a phone.”
Another horse showed itself, pitched its way down an embankment to them as if on cue, and began nuzzling the already captured horse. Meredyth took this one's reins and carefully, easily climbed up into the saddle.
Randy held her hands in his across the gap between them. “Are you coming back with me?”
“No, I'm going on. Look.” On the other side of the horse, stashed into a sheath below the saddle, there was a rifle. “I'm going to do what I can for Lucas. Now, go! Get to the house and get a call out to 911, Phil Lawrence, and anyone else you can think of.”
“Are you sure, Meredyth?”
“Yes, now go… go!”
“All right,” he relented, kicking at the sides of the animal he rode, going due east in the direction of the ranch house. In the distance, he could see faint light.
Meredyth pushed on alone, praying against all odds that Lucas had killed one of them rather than that he had been killed. The runaway horse was, she believed, a good sign. She snatched out the rifle and held it up, checking out its balance and sight and determining if it was loaded. She tried to recall all that Lucas had taught her about firing a weapon.
She moved on cautiously but quickly, telling her horse repeatedly to giddap.
She realized how deep her feelings for Lucas had run; she realized that he was, in fact, the best friend she had ever known, and that he had sacrificed everything for her.
Lucas struggled to locate another safe haven in which to await his quarry with the patience of a turtle, knowing that his enemy would come. But he also knew that he had only one arrow left. If Bullock and Andrew Bryce came together, he stood no chance.
He waited. His shoulder throbbed, his leg burned, and he was exhausted, but he tried desperately to remain alert. In a moment, he heard them coming.
They were together. They had seen wjiat devastation Lucas Stonecoat could wreak, and they wisely remained in sight of one another. Lucas heard their whispers as they approached, but could not tell from which direction they came. Overhead? To his right? Left? Front? Back? It was impossible to tell in this rocky area where echoes bounced like stones ricocheting.
Lucas heard no one now, the voices falling silent, but he sensed that his two would-be executioners were extremely close, certainly within range of the deadly weapons they carried.
Lucas saw no one, heard not so much as dust flake from the rocks when an arrow burned through his side, cutting a wide, angry swath through his flesh and pinging on the rock surface he lay against, making him yelp in pain.
“I got the bastard!” It was Bullock's voice.
Lucas fired where he saw the shadowy figure raise a victory sign by lifting his bow over his head. Lucas's arrow was a shock to Bullock, who didn't quite believe it was sticking from his stomach and out his back. He dropped his bow and grabbed on to the arrow shaft in his abdomen, holding on to it as if it were the handle for a ride. This, moments before he toppled over backwards and some forty feet into the dry riverbed behind him.
Lucas had no more arrows now, and he was bleeding badly from the new wound to his side, his shoulder stitches and his leg. He feared moving and he feared staying. He didn't know where Bryce was, and he didn't know if an attempt to move now would be met with another arrow.
There was only silence.
Bryce was the only one left, but Lucas had lost. He was empty-handed, wounded, unable to defend himself. Lucas tried to soothe his frustration and anger with the knowledge that Meredyth and Randy had had time to get free, and that he had killed the lot of them, save Bryce.
“End of the road, red man!” shouted Bryce, whose eyes and red laser were directly covering Lucas where he lay in shadow among the rocks.
Lucas gulped for air, feeling the blackness and weakness overtaking him, feeling a blackout coming on, grateful that he would not feel the arrow sting, when suddenly a gunshot exploded from somewhere in his subconscious-some wishful thought, he believed-and he blacked out, imagining he'd never wake again in this life.
Overhead, Andrew Bryce let fly with the arrow meant for Lucas Stonecoat, but it had gone astray, high into the sky, because he was clawing at his back where the melon-sized hole in his chest had originated when the hunting bullet ripped into him. He twirled, knowing he was dead, pirouetting on recoil and to face his killer.
“I'll see you to hell, woman!” he cursed Meredyth Sanger. “No, I think you'll be quite lonely there, Helsinger One!”
She used the stock of the gun to shove the dead man over the side and into the rocks below where Lucas had unsuccessfully hidden.
Meredyth wasn't sure if there were others nearby still stalking Lucas and her, so she held fast to the rifle, climbing down to Lucas, praying he was still alive. He looked quite dead.
Panting, listening for any flicker of noise or movement, she made her way to Lucas, finding him still breathing, the arrow in his side looking nasty and menacing. Lucas had stripped away his shirt at some point, likely to throw the dogs off, and his body was painted with streaks of blood.
She feared for his life, grabbed him up in her arms and held him tightly to her, reassuring him, speaking gently and soothingly into his ear, telling him that Randy was getting help, that help was on the way. She cried as she spoke, the huge Remington rifle at her side, but no one came and Lucas's blood began to discolor her skin, bra, and panties.
He could barely speak, but she found Lucas mumbling some gibberish about a creation myth, saying “My forefathers believed that their homeland was in the center of the universe… pictured Earth as a floating island suspended by four cords from the heavens, and the sky was made of solid rock.”
“Shhhh,” she tried to get him to rest.
“Before the island was created, all men lived above the rock sky…”
She tearfully pleaded, “Don't you die on me, Stone-coat…”
“But it became crowded above the sky, so the water beetle was sent down to explore the water world beneath the floating island. It was the beginning of this world…”
“Hold on, Lucas… Damn you, hold on. Don't you go dying on me,” she said in a threatening voice, which disintegrated into tears.