Release Me (Stark Trilogy, #1)(75)
Miriam opens and closes the fridge, her hand lingering on the handle, as if she is remembering something.
He hears the trickle of water and seeks out the source among the cabinets. Here the cave wall sparkles with water. A ladle flashes silver. A stream of water seeps from the wall into a pool big enough for him to dive into with a splash.
It is here that he first sees her. Reflected in the moisture of the wall. A warped rippling figure darting from a nearby tunnel and coming rapidly toward him. He swings the flashlight and his pistol at once, almost firing and then nearly crying out when he recognizes her, Claire.
She is running toward him, toward the flashlight, as though traveling down a tunnel of light, the white eye of the beam shrinking to home in on her chest. He feels such excitement he does not notice her expression, gray with fear and spotted with blood, until she is upon him. He catches her and she struggles against him a moment. He says her name and recognition dawns on her face and she says, “Run.” She is pushing him, dragging him away.
He is about to question her when a half-glimpsed shape knocks him to the cave floor. His ribs scream with agony. He nearly blacks out. His Mag light skitters away and the shadows reel and make the kitchen swarm with black wraiths. He can smell blood, maybe his own. A figure crouches nearby, encased in shadow, unseen except for the faint glow of what must be hair, almost phosphorescent. It is breathing heavily, and every breath has enough damp throatiness to sound almost like a word.
Patrick is on his back and crabbing backward on his hands and legs when the figure blurs toward him. Gunfire shouts. Amplified painfully by their enclosure, the sound echoes around him, clapping off the walls and making one shot into a fusillade. Patrick is so stunned he can’t register who has been shot, if anyone, until a flashlight arrests the figure—a man, Patrick can now see, a lycan with a narrow face and a body barely bigger than a child’s. He is crumpling sideways, clawing at the air with one hand and clutching his belly with the other.
Miriam has both arms outstretched, casting the beam of her Mag light and firing her pistol into its glowing funnel. She fires again, and again, and every gunshot brings with it a blast of daylight that dies as soon as it appears. She marches forward, and the circle thrown by the Mag light grows smaller until it pinpoints the lycan. She fires again. The lycan’s eyes roll back in his head and his body shakes as if possessed by a spirit he is trying to resist.
Chapter 29
THE CEREMONY IS to take place at nightfall, only minutes away, the sun cutting the sky with one last blade of light before sinking from sight. The windows of Fox Tower and the surrounding mall and office buildings glow yellow. Pioneer Courthouse Square—known affectionately as the living room—is a tiered and bricked crater in the heart of downtown Portland. A full city block decorated with fountains, now dry, and potted plants, now empty, and edged with pillars and trees through which, like a tangled spiderweb, hang garlands and strings of lights. The light-rail rolls by, its bell mixed up with the bell rung by the Salvation Army volunteer stationed at the corner.
On this cold November night, thousands of people have gathered. Breath plumes from their mouths. They stamp their feet to stay warm. They wear fleece and wool caps and red-and-green holiday sweaters. Daughters in Santa hats roost on their fathers’ shoulders. Boys sip from paper cups of hot cocoa and ask, dozens of times, how long it will be until the lights come on, and their parents say, soon, soon. All eyes are on the dark-limbed seventy-five-foot Douglas fir erected in the center of the square.
A fat, white-bearded man in a Santa suit walks through the crowd, ho-ho-hoing and patting heads and handing out tiny candy canes wrapped in clear plastic and crouching down to gaze kindly at shy children who hide behind their parents’ legs.
The sky is clear, but when the wind rises, it appears to snow, ice crystals blowing off the buildings and trees, making the darkened air sparkle.
Reporters from KGW and KATU and KOIN, wearing red scarves and black peacoats, stand before video cameras on tripods. They say that any minute now, the governor will appear for the annual Christmas tree lighting, any minute now—and wait—they bring a hand to their earpieces and listen and look over their shoulders and say, here he is now.
He wears a cowboy hat, a sport coat, and jeans. His teeth are bared in a smile. His cheeks are reddened from the cold. He works his way down a set of stairs, flanked by a seven-man security detail. He shakes hands, claps shoulders. There is applause, but under the applause, some muttering, a few boos.
Another minute and he is at the bottom of the amphitheater, standing before a microphoned podium with a rounded top, its dark wood polished to a glow, making it appear like an upright coffin.
“It’s that time, friends,” he says, his voice becoming many voices that boom from speakers stationed throughout the square. “The most wonderful time of the year.” He takes in the sight of the tree, a black silhouette against a purple sky, and his eyes crinkle with seeming wonder when he talks of Christmas, the season of peace and giving, of goodness.
He makes no mention of lycans or of a presidential run or of any of the other sound bites he is so well-known for these days. Instead he talks about candy canes and sugarplums and the magic of the season and the gift of kindness. He talks about Christmas growing up on the cattle ranch. He quotes Charles Dickens. For a few minutes everyone feels good—everyone looks at him with kind crinkly eyed smiles—as if they each carried inside them invisible candles that he has lit so that the square seems illumined before he even flips the switch, as he does now, and everyone gasps with delight and applauds as the tree explodes with colored lights that chase the shadows from every face and make every wide-open eye glimmer like a star.