The Possessed
Chapter 9

 
Something in Gabriel's eyes fractured. It was like watching gray agate shatter into pieces.
He caught Kaitlyn by the shoulder. His other hand clamped in her hair, twisting her head to the side.
Black terror washed over Kait, but she didn't move. Her fingers tightened on the sleeves of Gabriel's borrowed shirt.
Then she felt his lips on the back of her neck.
The first sensation was a piercing, as if a single sharp tooth had penetrated at the upper part of her spine, just below her neck.
Vampires, Kait thought dazedly. She knew Gabriel was just opening a transfer point, but it felt as if he had punctured her skin. She could easily see how the legends about vampires had started.
The next instant the sharp pain had gone, replaced by a tugging, as if something inside her was being plucked up by the roots. She felt her own momentary resistance - like the Earth clinging to a handful of weeds being pulled. And then a giving, a yielding. As if the weeds had come free in the pulling hand.
Energy fountained out of the open wound in a narrow stream. Kaitlyn felt a flare of heat - and pleasure.
All right. It's going to be all right, she thought, scarcely knowing whether she was speaking to herself or Gabriel. The experience itself was frightening - it was like working with high-voltage electricity. But she refused to be afraid on other grounds.
I trust you, Gabriel, she thought.
She could feel the energy pouring into him, and once again she felt his gratitude, his appreciation. His relief as his need was met.
I trust you.
The energy was still flowing steadily, and Kait had a sense of cleansing. Her entire body felt light and airy, as if her feet weren't touching the ground. She relaxed in Gabriel's arms, letting him support her.
Thank you.
The thought wasn't Kaitlyn's, and no one else was in range - so it had to be Gabriel. But it didn't sound like Gabriel. There was no anger, no mockery. It was the free and joyous communication of a happy child.
Then, all at once, the current streaming between them was broken. Gabriel released her and lifted his head.
Dizzy, Kaitlyn clung to him for a moment, hearing her own breath slowing.
"No more," Gabriel said. He was breathless, too, but calm. The starving emptiness inside him filled - at least partly.
Then he said, "Kait..."
Kaitlyn made herself let go of him. She stepped back, keeping her eyes down.
"Are - are you sure it's enough? You'll be okay now?" She spoke because sharing thoughts was too intimate.
It had occurred to her - finally - that she was courting another kind of danger here. Being this close to Gabriel, giving to him, and feeling his joy and gratification - it had bound them together in a way even the web could not match. It had brought down Gabriel's walls... again.
And that was unfair, because on her part it was just caring. It's not like what I feel for Rob, she told herself. It isn't - love...
She could sense Gabriel looking at her. Then she felt an indefinable change in him, a mental straightening of shoulders.
"We need to get back," he said. His voice was short and he ignored her question.
Kait looked up. "Gabriel - "
"Before we're missed." Gabriel turned away and started out into the night.
But he waited for her after a few steps, and he stayed close as they made their way across the beach.
Kaitlyn said nothing as they walked. She couldn't think of anything that wouldn't make matters worse.
As soon as they got within sight of the van, she saw that something was wrong.
The van should have been dark inside, but each window was glowing. For one instant Kait thought the others had turned on the dome light, and then she thought of fire. But the glow was too bright for the dome light and too cool for fire. And it had a strange opaque quality about it - almost like a phosphorescent mist.
Fear, icy and visceral, gripped at Kaitlyn.
"What is it?" she whispered.
Gabriel pushed her back. "Stay here."
He ran to the van, and Kait followed, scrambling up behind him when he opened the door. Instantly the trip-hammer beating of her heart seemed to double.
She could see the mist clearly now. And she could see Lewis in the front passenger seat and Anna curled on the first bench seat. They were both asleep - but not peacefully.
Lewis's face was twisted into a grimace, and he was moving his arms and legs jerkily as if trying to escape from something. Anna's long black hair hid her face, but she was writhing, one hand a claw.
"Anna!" Kaitlyn grasped her shoulder and shook her. Anna made a moaning sound, but didn't wake up.
"Rob!" Kaitlyn turned to him. He was lying on his back, thrashing helplessly. His eyes were shut, his expression one of agony. Kaitlyn shook him, too, calling his name mentally. Nothing helped.
She looked over to see how Gabriel was doing with Lewis - and froze.
The gray people were here.
She could see them hanging in the air between her and Gabriel. Lewis's seat cut right through one of them.
"It's an attack!" Gabriel shouted.
Kait was reeling. She felt giddy and confused, almost as if she might faint. It was the web, she realized - she was picking up the sensations of the three dreamers.
Oh, God - she had to do something fast, before she and Gabriel collapsed, too.
"Visualize light!" she shouted to Gabriel. "Remember what Rob said? You defend against psychic attacks by envisioning light!"
Gabriel turned his gray eyes on her. "Fine - just tell me how. And what kind of light?"
"I don't know." Panic was rioting inside Kaitlyn. "Just think about light - picture it all around us. Make it - a golden light."
She wasn't quite sure why she'd picked gold. Maybe because the mist was a sort of silvery-green. Or maybe because she always thought of gold as Rob's color.
Pressing her hands to her eyes, Kaitlyn began to envision light. Pure golden light surrounding all of them in the van. As an artist, she found it easy to hold the picture in her mind.
Like this, she thought to Gabriel and sent him the image. The next moment he was helping her, his conviction adding to hers. She felt she could actually see the light now; if she opened her eyes it would be there.
It's working, Gabriel told her.
It was. Kait's giddiness was fading, and for the first time since entering the van she felt warmth. The mist had been as cold as the outdoors.
It slipped away now, like an oppressive blanket sliding off Kait. Still visualizing the golden light, she opened her eyes.
The sleepers had quieted. The last traces of the mist were vanishing, curling in on themselves and disappearing. The gray people were still hanging in air.
The next instant they had vanished, too, but not before Kaitlyn got a strange impression. For just a moment she had looked into one of those gray faces - and recognized it. It seemed familiar, although she couldn't put her finger on why.
Then the thought was driven out of her mind as she realized that Rob was stirring. He groaned and blinked, dragging himself to a sitting position.
"What - ? Kaitlyn - ?"
"Psychic attack," Kaitlyn told him calmly and precisely. "When we got back the whole van was filled with mist and you wouldn't wake up. We got rid of it by visualizing light. Oh, Rob, I was so scared."
Abruptly her knees folded and she sat down on the floor.
Anna was sitting up, too, and Lewis was moaning.
"Are you guys okay?" Kaitlyn asked shakily, from the floor.
Rob clenched one hand in his unruly blond hair. "I had the most terrible nightmare..." Then he looked at Kait and said, " 'When we got back?'"
Kaitlyn's mind went blank, which was probably a good thing. She was too shaken to summon a lie. But behind her Gabriel said smoothly, "Kait had to go to the bathroom, and she didn't want to go alone. I escorted her."
It was a good story. Rob and Anna had found a public rest room down the beach. But Kaitlyn felt little triumph when Rob nodded, accepting it. "Very gallant of you," he said wryly.
"We also saved you," Gabriel added pointedly. "Who knows what that mist was going to do?"
"Yes." Rob's face sobered. He tugged at his hair a moment and then looked up at Gabriel. "Thank you."
he said, and his voice was frank and full of genuine emotion.
Gabriel turned away.
There was an awkward moment, and then Anna spoke up.
"Look, why don't you two explain just exactly how you 'visualized light,'" she said. "That way we'll know what to do if they attack again."
"And then maybe we can go back to sleep," Lewis added.
Kait explained without much help from Gabriel. By the time she finished she was yawning hugely and her eyes were watering.
They settled down to sleep prepared for the worst, but nothing else happened that night, and Kaitlyn had no dreams.
She woke in the morning to Rob's mental exclamation. She hurried out of the van to find him and Anna bent over, staring at the ground beside the van.
The asphalt was covered with a thin layer of sand blown from the beach. In that sand, all around the van, were delicate tracks and footprints.
"They're animal tracks," Anna said. "You see these? These are the tracks of a raccoon." She pointed to a footprint three inches long, with five long splayed toes, each ending in a claw. "And these are from a fox." She moved her finger to a series of delicate four-toed marks.
"And those oval ones are from an unshod horse, and the little ones are from a rat," Anna finished. Then she looked up at Kait.
Kaitlyn didn't even bother saying, "But all of those animals couldn't have been here last night." She remembered very well what Rob had said yesterday - sometimes victims of a psychic attack found the footprints of people or animals.
"Great," she muttered. "I have the feeling we should get out of here."
Rob stood up, brushing sand from his hands. "I agree."
It wasn't quite so easy, though, since the van picked that morning to be obstreperous. Rob and Lewis fiddled with the engine but could find nothing wrong, and in the end it started.
"I'll drive for a while," Anna said. She'd been sitting in the driver's seat, starting the engine when Rob told her to. "Just tell me where to go."
"Stay on 101 and we'll head into Washington," Lewis instructed. "But maybe we'd better stop at a McDonald's for breakfast first."
Kaitlyn wasn't sorry to say goodbye to the black basaltic Oregon coast. Gabriel had been edgy and silent all morning and she was beginning to wonder if what she'd done on the beach last night had been a mistake. She knew she would have to catch him sometime and talk it out, and the idea sent humming bees and butterflies into her stomach.
Please let us find the white house soon, she thought. And then, with a twinge, realized that Gabriel had been right. She was expecting a lot of the people in the white house. And what if they couldn't solve all the problems she was bringing them?
Kait shook her head, then turned to look at the dismal, slate-gray day outside.
They passed stands of what Anna said were alder trees, which from a distance looked like big pink clouds. The alder branches were mostly bare, but there were a few reddish leaves hanging on each twig, which gave the stand an overall reddish cast.
By the side of the road were little kiosks which held huge bunches of daffodils, yellow as spring. Signs on the kiosks said $1.00 A BUNCH, but there was no one to take the money. It's the honor system, Kaitlyn thought. She longed for the pure gold of the daffodils, but she knew they couldn't spare the money.
Doesn't matter, she thought. I'll draw instead. She opened her kit and pulled out aureolin yellow, one of her favorite colors. In a few minutes she was drawing, glancing up only occasionally as they crossed a high bridge over the Columbia River. A sign proclaimed:
WELCOME TO WASHINGTON
THE EVERGREEN STATE
"You're home, Anna," Rob said.
"Not yet. It's a long way to Puget Sound if we're sticking to the coast," Anna replied, but Kaitlyn could tell from her voice that she was smiling.
"And we may not get there," Lewis put in. "We may find the white house first."
"Well, it's not here," Gabriel said shortly. "Look at the water."
The left side of the road, which dipped down to the ocean, was lined with large brown rocks and boulders. Nothing like the gray rocks in the dream.
Kaitlyn opened her mouth to say something - and her hand began to cramp.
A sort of itching cramp, a need that had her picking up a pastel stick before she knew what she was doing. She knew what the sensations meant. Her gift was kicking in. Whatever she drew now would be not just a picture but a premonition.
Cool gray and burnt umber, steel and cloud blue. Kaitlyn watched her hand dotting and stroking the colors on, with no idea of what image was forming. All she knew was that it needed a touch of sepia here - and just two round circles of scarlet lake in the center.
When it was finished, she stared at it, feeling a strange creeping between her shoulderblades.
A goat. She'd drawn a goat, of all things. It was standing in what looked like a river of silvery-gray, surrounded by cloudy surrealistic fog. But that wasn't what frightened Kait. It was the eyes.
The goat's eyes were the only dash of color in the drawing. They were the color of burning coals, and they seemed to be looking straight out of the picture at Kaitlyn.
Rob's quiet voice made her jump. "What is it, Kait? And don't say 'nothing' this time - I know there's something wrong."
Mutely Kaitlyn held out the picture to him. He studied it, brows drawing together. His lips were a straight line.
"Do you have any idea what it means?" he asked.
Kaitlyn rubbed pastel dust between her fingers. "No. But then I never do - until it happens. All I know is that somewhere, somehow, I'm going to see that goat."
"Maybe it's symbolic," suggested Lewis, who was leaning over the back of the other bench seat to look.
Kaitlyn shrugged and said, "Maybe." She had a nagging sense of guilt - what good was a gift that gave you this kind of premonition? She had produced the picture; she ought to be able to tell what it meant.
Maybe if she concentrated...
She thought about it while they passed beaches of packed sand and mudflats - none of them like the white house terrain - and while they got lunch at a Red Apple Market. But all the concentration brought was a headache and a feeling of wanting to do something, something physical, to let off tension.
"I'll drive now," she said as they left the market.
Rob glanced at her. "Are you sure? You hate driving."
"Yes, but it's only fair," Kaitlyn said. "You've all taken a turn."
Driving the van wasn't as hard as she'd thought it would be. It was less responsive than Joyce's convertible, but the single-lane road was almost deserted and easy to follow.
After a while, though, it began to rain. It started with cat's-paw splatters that made a pleasant sound, but it got worse and worse. Soon it was raining violently - huge sheets that turned the windshield opaque in between sweeps of the wipers. As if someone were throwing buckets of silvery paint against the glass.
"Maybe someone else should drive now," Gabriel said from the bench seat behind Kaitlyn. He'd relinquished the front passenger seat when Kait had taken the wheel - as Kait had suspected he would.
She glanced at Rob, who'd taken the vacated seat. If it had been Rob's suggestion, she might have acquiesced. But Gabriel had a mocking, goading way of saying things that made you want to do just the opposite.
"I'm fine," she said shortly. "I think the rain is easing up."
"She's fine," Rob agreed, giving her one of his slow infectious smiles. "She can cope."
And then, of course, Kaitlyn was stuck with it. Tongue pressed against her front teeth, she peered into the rain and did her best to prove Rob right. The road straightened out and she drove faster, trying to demonstrate casual competence.
When it happened, it happened very suddenly. Later, Kaitlyn would wonder if it might have changed anything if Rob had been driving. But she didn't really think so. Nobody could have coped with what appeared on that narrow road.
Kait was almost convinced of her own competence when she saw the shape in the road. It was directly in her path but far enough ahead to avoid.
A gray shape. A low horned shape - a goat.
If Kaitlyn hadn't seen it before, she might not have recognized it - there was so little time. But she knew every line of that goat; she'd stared at it for hours this morning. It was exactly like her picture, down to the red eyes. They seemed to blaze at her, the only wink of color in the gray and rainy landscape.
Silver, some part of her mind thought wildly. The silvery-gray river hadn't been a river at all but a road.
And the fog had been the rain-vapor rising from the ground.
But most of her mind wasn't thinking at all, it was just reacting. Brakes, it told her.
Kait's foot hit the brakes, pressing and releasing the way her driver's ed teacher had advised for bad weather.
Nothing happened.
Her foot slammed down in utter defiance of the driver's ed teacher. And again, nothing happened. The van didn't skid; it didn't slow in the least.
The goat was dead ahead. There was no time to scream, no time even to think. No time to pay attention to the sudden clamor in the web as the others realized that something was wrong.
Kaitlyn wrenched at the steering wheel. The van swerved and careered to the left, into the opposite lane.
She got a flash of trees getting close very fast.
Turn right! Swerve back!
Kait wasn't sure whose thought it was, but she was already obeying. The van swung right - too far.
I'm going off the road, she thought with a curious calm.
Then everything was confusion.
Kaitlyn could never really remember what happened next, except that it was awful. Trees whipped by.
Branches hit the windshield. There was an impact - shocking - but it didn't seem to slow them.
Then the van seemed to leap and go rocketing downward.
Kaitlyn had a sense of being rattled around like a pea in a tin can. She could hear screaming - she thought it might be her own voice. And then there was another impact and everything went dark.