all.
'Yes,' he said flatly. 'Yes. Do it.'
The animal waited a moment longer, then headed straight for the Howler, its gaze fixed on the man's chest, its legs lifting higher, coming down harder, and striking green sparks from the earth beneath its hooves.
When it was ten yards away, Falwick groaned in terror and whirled to his left, bolting for the trees, and the stallion rose against the moon, forelegs snapping out, mane billowing now as steam flowed like dark smoke from its nostrils.
Then it ran.
And the ground was silent except for the slap of the Howler's shoes, silent except for the sparks snapping into the dark, green and trailing and dying before landing.
Don rolled to his knees, his right hand closing unconsciously over the branch he'd dropped earlier, and he watched as the Howler veered to the left, swerved to the right, and spun around just as the horse reached him and reared.
Don shouted.
Falwick screamed.
And the stallion came down on him, sparks streaking to green fire.
SEVEN
Don sat up suddenly, eyes wide, mouth open in a scream that never passed his lips. His arms were rigid at his sides, and his head jerked in clockwork degrees side to side until he felt pressure on his right shoulder. His head snapped around. His mouth remained open. There was a woman's hand, long fingers pale as it tried to ease him back. His gaze traced it warily, found the wrist, found the arm, found his mother's face puffed and wan.
'Don, it's all right.'
He saw the lips move (the stallion rearing), heard the words (the Howler shrieking), and after several seconds he let himself be levered back while a dark figure at the foot of the bed cranked up the mattress until he was almost sitting again.
'Don, it's all right, honey.'
The echoless scream died at last, the tunnel collapsed in upon itself, and once his vision cleared, he didn't have to ask to know he was in a hospital room.
A nurse at his left side took his pulse; a doctor whose face was familiar entered and picked up the chart, read it, nodded, edged the nurse aside and pulled up a stool. His face was lean and creased with too many summers under the sun, his hair a thicket of unruly grey.
'How are you feeling, son?' Large hands moved-his brow, his chest, pressed through his hair and lightly squeezed his scalp. 'No aches, no pains? Your back is probably sore though, right?'
'How'd you know?' Don asked hoarsely, still trying to bring himself back out of the park.
The doctor gave him a smile. 'In bed this long without moving, it's bound to be.'
'Can he go home now, Jerry?'
'Later this afternoon, I think,' Dr. Naugle said. He looked to Don.
'Just to be sure, son, okay? I doubt we've missed anything, but just to be sure.' He looked across the bed to Joyce. 'Suppertime.' A jerk of his head toward the IV stand and the fluid dripping into Don's arm. 'After what we've been feeding him since midnight, he'll be starving.' A satisfied sigh, and he rose to his feet. 'I guess that'll be okay with you, son, right?'
Before Don could answer, he was gone, his mother hastening after him, the nurse behind. The dark figure finally moved out of the shadows.
'Dad?'
Norman tried to speak, then licked his lips and grinned as he took Joyce's chair. He patted Don's shoulder, his leg, stared blankly at the IV tubing and the tape on the boy's arm. His hair was uncombed and appeared greyer in the dawn light that slotted through the window's Venetian blinds; his eyes were bloodshot, the nose faintly red, the one visible hand jumping every few seconds.
Don was shocked-his father had been crying.
'Boy,' he said too eagerly, 'I could drink a whole lake I'm so thirsty.'
Norman grabbed gratefully for the water pitcher on the bed table, poured a glass, and finally a second.
'How do you feel?'
'Terrible. No; just lousy.' He shifted, and felt the bruise on his thigh and the circle of hurt where the Howler's knees had jammed into his spine.
Norman stood and walked toward the door and walked back to the chair.
'Sergeant Verona will be here in a few minutes, I guess. He's been waiting for you to ... for you to wake up.'
'The police?'
Green sparks green fire
'They want to know what happened out there.' He clearly wanted to ask, and was just as clearly afraid to. 'The reporters too.'
Don rolled his head to stare at the ceiling. 'Reporters.'
'Well, you're a hero, son. It's already on the radio.'
He felt panic, and it was cold. 'Dad, listen, I've got to-'
The door swung open and Verona walked in. His suit jacket was rumpled, his tie gone, a blade of wet grass clung to one elbow. Joyce was right behind him, and she protested when he suggested that the Boyds leave him and the boy alone. Norm took her arm; she glared at him, then blew Don a kiss on the way out. The door closed without a sound. The window light brightened.
He felt the panic again, but it subsided when Verona shook his hand warmly while taking the chair.
'That,' he said, nodding to their clasped hands, 'is for now. Later, I'll probably be cursing you from here to Sunday for what you did. Not that I don't like you,' he added with a crooked smile, 'but the papers are going to wonder how a teenage kid could dispose of the Howler when the police in two states couldn't even find a clue.'
Don shrugged, and his stomach growled.
there was blood, lots of blood, and the sound of trampling hooves
'So. Do you want to tell me what happened?'
Tell him, Don thought; and told him that he had been unable to sleep, that he had gone for a walk to do some thinking and had ended up at the park. That's where the man grabbed him, and that's where he'd gotten away.
Verona didn't take notes or have a tape recorder with him. He nodded. He listened. He asked more questions, and in the asking told Don what he needed to know.
It was the Howler. That grizzled old man was the man who killed Amanda.
Tissue samples from the body matched those found under the girl's fingernails, and his name was Falwick, an ex-army sergeant who evidently couldn't fit into the system. They had been able to retrace most of Don's struggles, but they still wondered about a few things. It couldn't be a pleasant memory, Verona acknowledged as he mopped his face with a handkerchief, momentarily hiding his eyes, but they did need to know.
Just a few things. Then he'd leave Don alone for some well-deserved rest. He would even keep the reporters off his back for a while.
Just-why did Don beat the man so severely? So savagely?
Don didn't know. 'I was afraid. He was going to kill me.'
Verona made a clucking sound. Jerry Naugle, Don's doctor, had suggested it was an hysteria-induced defense and certainly not uncommon. Instead of running away, Don had found the branch and used it to protect himself. He had known Amanda. Fear and anger, and perhaps a lucky blow, had knocked Falwick down. That's when hysteria took over. Adrenaline fueled it. Luis Quintero had been at the scene of the accident on the boulevard and had heard someone shouting in the park. He found Don kneeling a few feet from the body, the branch still in hand, blood on it and the boy's clothes. He was in deep shock and didn't even answer to his name.
'I guess,' Don said. 'Yeah. I guess.'
And it could have been, he thought. It must have been. If there had been a horse, they would have said so; if
