Natural Evil, Page 2

  Finally Jackson finished working on the dog. When he removed the endotracheal tube, straightened and stripped off his gloves, she stretched her aching back and shoulders and stripped off hers as well, tossing them into the hazardous-waste bin by the back door.

  Jackson opened his battered fridge and pulled out two Heinekens. He popped the tops off the green bottles and handed one to her. Claudia accepted it and took a swallow. She watched him dig into his shirt pocket to pull out a cigarette lighter and a pack of Camels. He offered a cigarette to her. She shook her head. He tapped one out of the box, stuck it between his lips and kicked open the back screen door to step outside. When he held the door open for her, she glanced at the bandaged, unconscious dog.

  “He won’t be waking up for a few hours,” said Jackson. His pale blue eyes were keen.

  She took a deep breath and stepped outside after him. She drank her Heineken and looked around the scene as Jackson smoked. She could see the back end of the modest row houses that lined the sandy two-lane street. To the north, rising foothills provided an elevated horizon. The brown land was sprinkled with dots of sagebrush, cacti and yucca trees. A few of the houses had small landscaped areas of improbable green.

  Jackson’s backyard didn’t. It was the same brown as the rest of the desert. A small, battered trailer that rested on concrete blocks instead of tires took up most of the space in his yard. Bare concrete steps led up to the trailer’s door. The window coverings were raised. The trailer looked uninhabited, the parking space beside it empty.

  A large part of the evening sky had darkened. She nodded toward it. “Weird.”

  Jackson glanced in that direction. “Sandstorm’s blowing in. It’ll probably hit in another hour. Looks like we’ll lose cable again.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “That happen often?”

  “A fair amount. Cell phone reception is spotty here anyway, and it goes out completely in one of these storms. Sometimes we lose the phone lines too. If the phone lines go, it’ll take at least a day before we get them back.”

  “Damn.”

  “The storm might blow over in a couple of hours, or it might go all night. I knew one once that lasted a couple days, although that’s unusual. People watch DVDs, hang out in the bars, and there’s always a poker game somewhere.” He shrugged. “You get used to it.”

  The storm didn’t look that far off. She guessed it would be blowing in very soon, but for the moment, the heat of the early evening pressed against her skin. Spring hadn’t officially arrived yet; the vernal equinox was in just a few days. She liked the summer and winter solstices, and the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. They added a cadence to the year and made it feel balanced.

  The heat would go out of the day quickly, especially now that the sun had begun to descend. She imagined the spring nights would get quite cold, but for now she was still comfortable with bare arms.

  Jackson finished his cigarette, stubbed it out and tossed the brown butt into a coffee can by his back door. “I’d say you don’t talk much for a girl,” he said. “Except you don’t talk much, period. Those five words were the most you’ve said in a couple hours.”

  She took a pull from her beer. “Ran out of things to say a few years back.”

  Jackson grunted, tapped out another cigarette and lit it. He drew deeply on the cigarette and with evident pleasure. The glowing coal at the end flared bright red. “Why’s that?”

  She lifted a shoulder. Too much blood, too much death. Her unit got shot at one too many times, and the last time almost none of them survived to walk away. Sometimes, she thought, things happen that are so bad you go deep inside, down past the point of screaming, into silence.

  She finished her Heineken.

  Jackson smoked. She liked the smell of the cigarette smoke. It was comforting. It reminded her of people she had cared for more than her own life, people she would never see again this side of death.

  He asked, “So what’s the real story? You know that dog?”

  “Nope,” she said. “I found him, just like I said.”

  He said, “He should’ve died on that table couple times over.”

  “I figure,” she said. She stretched her neck again, first one way then the other.

  “Thought you might,” said Jackson. “You know, it could just mean he’s one hell of a stubborn dog. I’ve seen animals with a kind of will to live you wouldn’t believe.”

  “It could.” She waited. She thought she knew what might come next.

  Jackson did not disappoint. “Or it could mean something else,” he said. He pushed his hat back with the tip of his bottle. “Which is why you watched me so damn close the whole time I was working on him, wasn’t it? Why you wanted to help. And why you wanted to make sure about the drugs I was giving him. He could just be a stubborn dog that won’t die. Or he could be Wyr. In which case, what happened to him wasn’t just animal cruelty but attempted murder.”

  “I figure,” Claudia said again.

  Chapter Two

  Hearth

  “But the healing capabilities of the Wyr are famous,” she continued. “Wouldn’t we have seen some of his injuries heal by now?”

  “Maybe we did, which is why he didn’t die. You don’t have the magic sense to tell whether he’s Wyr or not,” Jackson said. He didn’t phrase it as a question.

  She answered him anyway. “Nope.”

  “I don’t either. Nor John, or he would have said something.”

  “Would he?”

  “The hell you mean by that?” He aimed a fierce frown in her direction.

  Earlier, the vast space she had been driving through had been so empty there hadn’t even been a bird visible in the sky. Rodriguez had to have been moving fast just to catch sight of her, let alone catch her on his radar. She knew why she’d been speeding, but she didn’t know why he had been. She wondered what had been so urgent it had caused him to drive at such speed. Yet whatever it was, he had abandoned it in order to pull her over.

  It could have been coincidence that Rodriguez pulled her over just after she found the dog. The sheriff had only put his hand on his gun, he hadn’t drawn it. The dog was so badly injured that anyone might have suggested putting him out of his misery. She’d thought of it herself.

  Rodriguez had brought it up twice.

  Coincidence and niggles. They were such small things. They almost certainly meant nothing. She kept her tone mild. “Nothing. I don’t know the sheriff. I don’t know you. That’s all.”

  The vet heaved a sigh. It sounded disgusted. “Well, obviously something happened for you to wonder if the dog might be Wyr.”

  “Rodriguez brought up a good point,” she said. “It wasn’t easy getting such a large animal into the back of my car.”

  “Yeah, but you managed it somehow. So?”

  She squinted up at the early evening, storm-swept sky. What was that color? It was not quite orange, not quite red. Maybe that was what brimstone looked like.

  “He was awake when I found him,” she said. “He was already hurting bad. I hurt him a lot more when I got him in the car.” She thought of the look the dog had given her, the sense she had gotten of a sharp intelligence behind the suffering, and searched for more words. They came harder when a body had stopped talking for a time. Jackson was staring at her. Finally she said, “He didn’t bite me.”

  Jackson sighed again. He opened the back screen door and gestured for her to precede him. She moved to the table and he joined her. They both regarded the unconscious dog. Jackson said, “You know, he’s probably mundane. He’s facing a long, hard recovery, and that’s just the physical component of his injuries. After the kind of abuse he’s suffered, it might take him months before he trusts anyone again. He’s gonna wake up in a few hours. I can keep him medicated for the pain, but I’m still gonna have to crate him.”

  She pursed her lips. She hated the idea of putting the dog behind bars, especially if he might be Wyr. If he was Wyr, and whoever had tortured him knew it, why
had they tried to kill him? What would they do if they found out he wasn’t dead? Jackson was sharp but he was also an elderly man, and at the moment the dog couldn’t defend himself.

  “I should take him instead,” she said.

  Jackson squinted an eye at her. “And do what? Go where? He’s too badly injured to travel, and the storm’s blowing in. You said you were from New York. Where are you headed, anyway? You were on I-80 going somewhere, and it won’t be good highway driving tonight.”

  “I’m on vacation,” she said. She had walked away from the army four years before she had earned a twenty-year pension, but with what her parents had left her, she got by. She’d been on vacation for the last couple of years, unable to concentrate for long periods of time. Unable to settle into a new job, unable to sleep, unable to stop the nightmares when she did. “I was headed south to do some early camping. But I have no agenda I need to follow. I’ve got time to look after him.”

  Like the nearby mountain range, Jackson’s profile was worn, the edges softened by age. After a moment he said, “Back trailer’s empty.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I keep it for my daughter when she comes to visit from Fresno. She’s not too comfortable with the layout of my kitchen.” She managed to avoid grinning. Jackson continued, “You can stay there to look after the dog, if you like.”

  “That’s generous of you.” She couldn’t resist and let her fingers stroke lightly over the soft skin of the dog’s broad head. It was one of the few places he wasn’t covered in gauze. “Might be best if I checked into a motel.”

  He snorted. “How do you figure? I’m offering you the trailer for free. That’s a lot cheaper than a motel room. It has hot and cold running water, propane heat, and it’s hooked up to my electricity. The kitchen is small but usable. It’s a lot quieter than a motel too, except for the wind, and tonight you’re gonna hear that anywhere in Nirvana. And you don’t know if that dog’s gonna give you any trouble. He should be in an animal hospital, except there isn’t one around here. I want to keep him close by for the first night or two, so I can see how he does.”

  She rubbed the back of her neck. “All right,” she said. “That makes sense. Yes, thank you.”

  “Okay.” He paused. “Think we can move him into the trailer while he’s still out?”

  “If I could wrestle him into my car all by myself, I’m sure that together we can move him into the trailer.”

  The look he gave her was speculative. Nothing about his mind was worn or softened by age. “I don’t believe for a minute that you tortured that dog. You’re too angry about what happened to him. But John’s right, there’s something off about that story. He was in bad enough shape he couldn’t help you get him in the car.”

  She was too many years past innocence to manage a completely innocent smile. But she did bland really well. “I’m stronger than I look.”

  An hour later, reality had assumed a different appearance. Claudia folded her sleeping bag to use as a bed for the dog, and then she and Jackson carried him into the trailer. She used a surreptitious touch of her telekinesis, which made shifting his massive body more of an inconvenience than a real strain.

  Jackson turned on the trailer’s heat and showed her how to use the controls. She moved her car to the parking space by the trailer and carried in supplies—her Coleman cooler of food and drinks; the case that held her laptop and satellite phone; the locked metal box that held her stored handgun; the suitcase that contained her clothes, a few paperbacks, and the odd gift of an antique Elder Tarot deck.

  As the trailer warmed, the outside cooled fast with the setting of the sun. Inside, the living space was all in miniature, the furnishings a good thirty years old. The kitchen was about as big as a postage stamp. It was possible to wash dishes, cook something on the tiny stove, use the microwave and get something out of the refrigerator without taking a single step. Someone had stocked it with a basic supply of cookware and dishes, and at least the fridge was a decent size.

  In the living area, Jackson had folded up the dining table and secured it against the wall, so she could use the L-shaped booth as a couch. An old thirteen-inch television was bolted to a small shelf, along with a VHS tape player and a digital converter box. A portable radio rested on the narrow sill in front of the kitchen sink. The bathroom was almost the size of an airplane’s lavatory, except it had the addition of a shower stall. A double-sized mattress rested on a shelf where the trailer was designed to attach to a pickup truck.

  She liked the space in the trailer. It was cozy. The shades from the lamps threw a soft, mellow gold over everything. The dog’s prone form took up most of the floor space. She set a bowl of water in a corner, near enough so he could reach it, stepping over him carefully as she moved around. She stowed the things from her cooler in the refrigerator, mostly sandwich materials, yogurt, fruit, and bottles of water and unsweetened tea.

  After that she showered, dressed in dark jeans, t-shirt and plain black sweatshirt, and slipped on tennis shoes. She found an old set of sheets and blankets in a cupboard and threw them over the mattress, plugged in her satellite cell phone and laptop, and set the old wooden, painted box holding the Tarot deck, along with her books, on the tiny kitchen countertop beside medicinal supplies for the dog.

  Then she set the metal case that held her Glock on the booth/couch and sat down beside it. Storing her gun already cleaned and unloaded was an old habit, but to make sure it was in optimum working order, she field-stripped it, racked the slide, reassembled it and snapped a full magazine of ammunition in place. Her movements were fast, sure and automatic. The gun was a familiar companion, as comforting as Jackson’s cigarette smoke. Tension eased from her neck and shoulders as she worked.

  As a young woman just finishing college, she had watched with deep interest when the Pentagon came close to banning women from active combat in 1994. They had cited both physical and psychological concerns, but the outcry against such a decision had been so public, the Pentagon had been forced to abandon their stance.

  None of the seven Elder Races demesnes had ever banned females from any part of their military or ruling structures, so it was viewed as reprehensible for human society in the US to even consider barring women from serving combat duty in the army. The public debate had actually piqued her interest in joining the army. Her abilities had solidified her career path in Special Forces. Two years ago she had retired a Major.

  She lived the same story so many other soldiers did. She was haunted by the ghosts of those she had served with who had fallen, by the ghosts of the innocents harmed by war, by the ghosts of decisions she had made and not made, and now would have to live with for the rest of her life.

  And there was something that slept deep inside of her that only came awake when she held a gun.

  The sound of someone racking a gun slide yanked the dog awake. Adrenaline dumped toxic waste in his bloodstream. He was awash in pain and feral urges. He wanted to tear into flesh. He needed to hear bones break and somebody screaming. He hurt so bad, it almost made him vomit. He breathed shallowly because the binding on his broken ribs wouldn’t let him do anything else.

  Quiet, warmth, golden light. They made no sense to him. As he worked to get his bearings, a sneakered foot shifted beside his head. The foot was attached to a long, trim, jeans-clad leg. He remembered steel-toed boots slamming into him, and his lips pulled back from his teeth in a silent snarl. If he could have, he would have lunged forward to savage that leg.

  That was when he caught scent of her. The woman.

  He had been drowning in a dry, fiery ocean of agony, scoured by endless sand and scorched by the sun, when she’d appeared. She’d cradled his head in long, strong fingers, and bathed his parched mouth and throat with cool water.

  When he had lost all reason to live, she’d whispered to him, “Don’t die.”

  So he hadn’t.

  Now they were together in this quiet, warm, golden place. Wherever this was. A knock sounded a
t the door. He tried to lunge to his feet to protect her, but his abused body wouldn’t obey him. He watched through slit eyes as she rose to her feet. She was a long, tall woman who moved with confident, lethal grace. His thirsty soul drank down the sight. Just before she answered the door, she tucked a gun into the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back, underneath her sweatshirt.

  She was the one who had racked the slide. If he could have, he would have smiled.

  Cold air sliced through the warmth. A worn voice said, “Settling in all right?”

  “Yes, thanks,” the woman said. “It’s cozy in here.”

  The voice was male. The dog growled. The sound he made was hoarse and broken. Fresh pain erupted in abused throat muscles. The woman turned to stare at him. She said, “Shush.”

  The calm command in her voice startled him into shushing. But he kept his lips curled, and he showed the newcomer his teeth.

  “He’s awake,” said the other male. “That’s a bit early.”

  “Is it?” the woman said.

  The male said, “Doesn’t mean anything conclusive. It’s just a bit early.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’m getting takeout from the diner. It’s not fancy but they’ve got good food. Want me to get supper for you?”

  “That’d be great, thanks.” The woman dug into her jeans pocket, pulled something out and handed it to the male. “I’ll have whatever you’re having. Could you buy another meal that has lots of well-cooked beef and hopefully some gravy too? Tomorrow I’ll run to the store, but for now I’d like to have something on hand, just in case.”

  “You got it,” the male said.

  The blast of cold air cut off as she shut the door.

  Now that the other male was gone, the dog’s gaze slid out of focus. He started to drift.