She could feel its breath, smell its hate, see its gaping mouth with canine teeth that were unnaturally long. The animal was huge, big, black, powerful and somehow beautiful. Beautiful and horrible at the same time. It wasn’t at all like the dingoes she was used to. Much bigger and its claws resembled those of a big cat. It looked at home in the fire.
She thought it was going to attack, to kill her, but instead the most horrible looking man she had ever seen walked in out of the night. He had skin like burnt toast and breath like rotten fish. His clothes were shabby and torn, falling off his wasted body. He was short, old and evil. He captured her eyes with his and she was afraid.
“ Smell-your-fear,” the ragged man hissed.
She felt a blast of hot air and all of a sudden the fire was consumed by a star-white light, engulfing the screaming creature, causing it to leap from the flames. Then the light was gone and where only a moment ago the beautiful, horrible animal had been, there was only the charred smell of death.
“ Smell yours!” a deep voice attached to a man behind her said to the ragged man.
Without a word the ragged man fled, followed by the dingo dogs.
“ Are you all right?” He was the oldest man Ann had ever seen in person. An aborigine, but he didn’t dress like one. He wore Levi’s with a red checkered flannel shirt and cowboy boots. He was tall. His skin was rough and cracking. His hands were large. His arms were long. He had light brown skin, dark brown eyes and silver-white hair. He was thin and needed a walking stick to help him stand and Ann knew that he was a friend.
“ I guess so,” she said, “but my husband is hurt.”
The old aborigine bent over Rick, touched his head and said, “He’ll be all right in the morning.”
Ann looked disbelieving and said, “There isn’t any blood. Where did it go?”
“ Just a nasty bump, he’ll be fine.”
“ Will you stay until he comes to?” Ann asked as she searched her backpack for a fresh pair of panties.
“ I’ll stay, but you have to do something for me.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a small wooden box and handed it to Ann. She opened it and looked inside.
Chapter Two
The alarm on Mark Donovan’s watch went off for the last time at 6:45, the way it did every morning. He stretched, rolled out of bed, stumbled into the kitchen.
He opened the refrigerator, recoiled when the light hit him full in the face, blinked and reached into the cold for the coffee and set it by the coffeemaker. He yawned again and opened the pantry without closing the fridge. He took out the coffee filters, dropping one on the floor. He bent to pick it up without bending his knees.
The fridge light cast ghostly shadows through the kitchen as he put the fallen filter into the machine. He made the coffee strong, the way Vicky liked it.
He tapped his fingers while he waited, poured his first cup before the machine had finished working its magic. He gulped the hot liquid, racing the machine. He won. He poured another cup as the machine was steaming. He took a sip from his second cup, before pouring a third, for his wife. He added cream to hers and took the two cups into the bedroom.
Vicky enjoyed waking to coffee in bed, but probably not as much as he enjoyed waking her. He loved the way she looked with the morning light sneaking in through the curtains, basking the room in soft shadows. Vicky slept on top of the covers, in the nude, and the filtered light and morning shadows gave her sleeping form an artful, erotic appearance.
“ Coffee’s here,” he said, smiling.
“ So soon, can’t I sleep a little longer? It’s Saturday.”
“ No.”
“ But the bed is so soft.”
“ I know and the bathroom is so cold.”
“ Can’t we skip the riding today?”
“ If I had my way, we’d skip it everyday and sell the bikes. You’re the health nut. I was perfectly happy with donuts for breakfast and cheesecake for lunch.”
“ Don’t forget the steaks for dinner.”
“ Yeah, and steak for dinner.”
“ I don’t want a husband dead before he’s forty.”
“ I’m not going to die.”
“ You were eating yourself to death and you were getting fat. Look at yourself now.”
It was true, he had to admit it, since she’d put her foot down and made him ride with her every morning, he’d lost weight and had even started to regain the body he’d had in college. People were starting to notice and to comment on how good he was looking.
“ Honey, I’m worried about J.P.,” he said, changing the subject.
“ Why?”
“ I think he spends too much time with Rick.”
“ And what’s wrong with that?”
“ I don’t think Rick sets the right kind of example for the boy.”
“ What are you talking about?”
“ He’s a criminal,” Mark said.
“ Was a criminal, which is more than I can say for your precious brother.”
“ But Judy divorced him and now J.P. is hanging around someone just like him,” Mark said.
“ Rick is not just like your brother. Judy didn’t divorce Tom because he sold a few concert records, she left him because he couldn’t keep his thing in his pants. He was cheating on her every chance he got. She found out and dumped him and I say good for her.”
“ They could have worked it out if she really wanted to,” Mark said.
“ The only thing that kept her sane through it all was Rick and Ann. She moved here because she was able to rent the house next door to them. They were there for her when she needed them most and they still are.”
“ She should have stayed in Toronto.”
“ Come on, Mark, your brother loves Led Zeppelin more than he ever loved her.”
“ He does not,” he said. She was angry now and Mark was beginning to feel that he’d crossed the line.
“ You should be glad Tom brought Rick and Ann up last year for the Reggae Festival, because if he hadn’t, Ann never would have fallen in love with this place and they never would have bought that house. They would have stayed in L.A. and Judy would probably be living next door to them down there. You wouldn’t be able to see J.P. at all.”
“ I don’t see him that much now.”
“ Listen, Mark,” she said, calming down, “you’re not the jerk your brother is and Judy knows it, but you look an awful lot like him. Every time she sees you it has to remind her of the man she’s trying to forget. Give her a little more time and before you know it, you’ll be complaining about J.P. spending too much time here and not enough time with his mother.”
“ I hope you’re right.”
“ And one more thing,” she said, “Rick doesn’t do that stuff anymore, but your brother still does.”
“ But Rick got him into it.”
“ Oh come on, Tom was selling Zep bootlegs when you guys lived in Canada, before he ever met Rick. Rick just made it possible for him to make a living at it.”
“ Okay, I give up.” He raised his hands in mock surrender.
She laughed.
“ Come on,” he said, “let’s hit the shower.”
“ Right behind you.”
They took their coffee to the bathroom and showered together. Vicky was feeling a little frisky, so when Mark began soaping her breasts, she reached between his legs and the shower lasted longer than usual.
“ That’s a great way to burn calories, maybe we should do this every morning and leave the bikes in the
