Bloddeuwedd.
Even with her crippled beak, the huge owl tore off quite a bit of the roof of the carriage.
Everyone was screaming and no one was giving much good advice. Saber and Damon had both damaged her: Saber by raising right off the three soft laps he was sitting on and lunging straight up for
Bloddeuwedd’s feet. He had torn and shaken one before letting go to fall back into the carriage, where he almost slid off the back. Elena, Bonnie, and Meredith grabbed at whatever portions of canine anatomy they could reach, and hauled the huge animal into the backseat again.
“Scoot over! Give him his own seat,” wailed Bonnie, looking at the shreds of her pearl-colored dress where Saber had taken off and ripped right through the gauzy material. He’d left red welts in his path.
“Well,” Meredith said, “next time we’ll request steel petticoats. But I really hope there isn’t going to be a next time, anyway!”
Elena prayed fervently that she was right. Bloddeuwedd was skimming in from a lower angle now, undoubtedly hoping to snap off a few heads.
“Everybody grab wood. And spheres! Throw the spheres at her as she comes close to us.” Elena was hoping that the sight of star globes — Bloddeuwedd’s obsession — might slow her down.
At the same time Sage shouted, “Don’t waste the star balls! Throw anything else! Besides, we’re almost there. Hard left, then straightaway!”
The words gave Elena new hope. I have the key, she thought. The ring is the key. All I have to do now is get Stefan — and get all of us to the door with the keyhole. All in one building. I’m practically home.
The next sweep came in even lower. Bloddeuwedd, blind in one eye, with blood filling the other one, and her olfactory senses blocked by her own dried blood, was trying to ram the carriage and knock it over.
If she manages it, we’ll be dead, Elena thought. And any who’re still writhing like worms on the ground, she can pick off.
And then something like an airplane flew so close to her that she felt tufts of hair being pulled out, caught in its claws.
Elena heard a cry of pain from the front seat but didn’t raise her head to see what it was. And that was good, for while the carriage suddenly slammed to a halt, the next instant a whirling, screaming, bird of death came searing out on the same course. Now Elena needed all of her attention, all her faculties, to avoid this monster that was buzzing them even lower.
“The carriage, she is finished! Get out! Run!” Sage’s voice came rumbling to her.
“The horses,” screamed Elena.
“Finished! Get out, damn you!”
Elena had never heard Sage swear before. She dropped the subject.
Elena never knew how she and Meredith did get out, tumbling over each other, trying to help and only getting in each other’s way. Bonnie was already out, by virtue of the coach having hit a pole and sending her flying. Fortunately, it had sent her into a square of ugly but springy red clover, and she wasn’t seriously injured.
“Ahhh, my bracelet — no, there it is,” she cried, grabbing something glittering out of the clover. She cast a cautious look upward into the crimson night. “Now what do we do?”
“We run!” came Damon’s voice. He came around the wreckage of the corner where they had fallen in a heap. There was blood on his mouth, on the previously immaculate white at his throat. It reminded Elena of those people who drank cow’s blood as well as milk for nutrition. But Damon only drank from humans. He would never stoop to equine blood…
Elena reached for his hands, gasping. “Damon! I’m
“GET OUT OF HERE,” Sage was roaring.
“We have to get to Stefan,” Elena said, and grabbed Bonnie with her other hand. “Help guide me, please. I can’t see the ring very well.” Meredith, she trusted, would get to the Shi no Shi building on her own resources.
And then there was a nightmare of running and flinching and false alarms by a shaken Bonnie. Twice the horror from above came skimming straight toward them only to crash just in front of them, or a little to the side, breaking wood and tile road alike, throwing up clouds of dust. Elena didn’t know about all owls, but Bloddeuwedd swooped down at an angle on her prey, then opened her wings and dropped at the last moment. Part of the worst thing about the giant owl was her silence.
There was no rustling to warn them of where she might be. Something in her own feathers muffled the sound, so that they never knew when she was going to drop next.
In the end they had to crawl through all sorts of rubbish, going as fast as they could, holding wood, glass, anything sharp over their heads, as Bloddeuwedd made another pass.
And all the time Elena was trying to use her Power. It was not a Power she had used before, but she could feel its name shaping her lips. What she could not feel, could not force, was a connection between the words and the Power.
I’m useless as a heroine, she thought. I’m pathetic. They should have given these Powers to someone who already knew how to control such things. Or, no, they should have given them to someone and then given the someone a course on how to use them. Or — no—
“Elena!” Rubbish was flying in front of her, but then she was cutting left and somehow getting around it. And then she was on the ground and looking up at Damon, who had protected her with his body.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Come on!”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered and held out her right hand, with the ring on it, for him to take.
And then she doubled up, heaving with sobs. She could hear the flapping of Bloddeuwedd right above her.
Matt and Mrs. Flowers were in the bunker — the addition to the house that Mrs. Flowers’s uncle had put onto the back for woodwork and other hobbies. It had fallen into even more neglect than the rest of the house, being used as a storage space for things Mrs. Flowers didn’t know where else to put — such as Cousin Joe’s folding cot and that old sagging couch that didn’t match a stick of furniture inside anymore.
Now, at night, it was their haven. No child or adult from Fell’s Church had ever been invited inside. In fact, except for Mrs. Flowers, Stefan — who’d helped move large furniture into it — and now Matt, no one had even been in for as long as Mrs. Flowers could remember.
Matt clung to this. He had been, slowly but surely, reading through the material Meredith had researched and one precious excerpt had meant a lot to him and Mrs. Flowers. It was the reason they were able to sleep at night, when the voices came.
And oh, the voices…
He was profoundly glad now that he’d taken Meredith and Bonnie’s advice and gone to Mrs. Flowers’s first before going home. The girls had convinced him he’d only be putting his parents in danger by facing up to the lynch mob that awaited him, ready to kill him for allegedly assaulting Caroline. Caroline seemed to have found him at the boardinghouse immediately, anyway, but she never brought any kind of mob with her. Matt thought that perhaps it was because that would have been useless.
He had no idea what might have happened if the voices had belonged to ex-friends long ago invited to his house while he was at home.
Tonight…
“Come on, Matt,” Caroline’s voice, lazy, slow, and seductive purred. It sounded as if she were lying down, speaking into the crack under the door. “Don’t be such a spoilsport. You know you have to come out
