A Conspiracy of Ravens Read Free Page B

surprised as Dylan ran as fleetly as a deer and hurdled the fence using his arm as a fulcrum. He ran straight toward the bull, ripping off his coat as he went, and when the bull was no more than ten feet away from David, he shouted and waved the coat at the huge animal. Serafina saw the bull’s attention turn from David to Dylan. The bull whirled quickly, raising dust in the pasture, and made for Dylan. Dylan threw the coat at the bull, hoping, she thought, to throw it over his face, but it missed.
    And then she saw the massive horns of the bull swing in an arc and, to her horror, strike Dylan in the side. He was lifted like a bag of feathers and rolled in the dirt. Serafina knew she screamed, and she ran forward and saw that David had slipped through the fence to safety. She turned back toward Dylan and watched with terrifying dread.
    Serafina had never known such a sickening feeling. The bull was savaging Dylan, who was trying to fend him off, but the wicked horns swung, and she saw blood leave a red track along his left leg. “Dylan!” she cried as she ran forward but had to stop at the fence.
    Suddenly Danny was running. He held a shotgun in his hand and slipped through the fence as if he were greased. The bull swung his horns again, and the blunt side caught Dylan in the head. He lay still. But when the bull lowered his head, she heard the shotgun explode. The charge caught the bull in the nose, and he bellowed as he backed off. Danny, small but bold as a lion, ran forward and let the bull have the other charge. He bellowed again, turned, and fled, his hooves like miniature thunder on the hard turf.
    Serafina slipped through the gate and ran to Dylan’s side. She had seen the terrible blows, and blood was seeping out of a wound on his left leg. When she held his head, she felt a knot beginning to swell.
    She looked up and said, “You were wonderful, Danny!”
    “I keep this shotgun to run the crows away. It was only bird shot,” Danny said, his eyes wide.
    “Is he all right, Mum?”
    Serafina turned to see Albert Givins and Peter Grimes, the footman, coming. She called out, “Get a door and carry him to the small laboratory.”
    She pulled Dylan’s head up and knew that the horns could have penetrated his body in other places, even if no blood showed yet. She was holding his head tightly to her breast when she heard David say, “Is . . . is he going to die, Mum?”
    “No, he won’t die.” She sat there until the men came carrying a door, and all together they picked up the still form of Dylan Tremayne and placed him on it, then looked at Lady Trent for instructions. “We’ll take him to the outside laboratory,” she said.
    Danny Spears swallowed. “But that’s where you take the dead people to cut them up.”
    “There are instruments there.” She turned to her son. “David, run quick to the house and get your grandfather.”
    “I’ll get him right now!”
    She walked beside the makeshift stretcher as the four took the injured Tremayne toward the small building that her father used for autopsies, among other things. She tasted a bitterness in her spirit. I said awful things to him and told him not to come back! She had suddenly an overwhelming impulse to cry out to God to save Dylan, but she was out of the habit of prayer and not a word would come to her lips.

TWO
    I f Serafina Trent, the Viscountess of Radnor, prided herself on anything, it was her calm, reasonable, and logical approach to all matters, no matter how minor. As she walked beside the wounded Tremayne, however, she found that her hands were unsteady and her mind was filled with a dread that she had never known. Glancing over her shoulders, she saw the bull at the far end of the pasture, and the thought of what the vicious animal might have done to David sickened her. Her son was her treasure on this earth, and the thought of his being savaged by the bull was more than she could bear.
    She looked down. The wounded man was being borne