Obsidian Mirror Read Free Page B

she slammed down the lid, she heard the Replicant arrive.
    A footstep cracking a frozen puddle. A yelp in the lane.
    Immediately she turned and fled through the winter garden, flinging open a gate, racing through a paddock where blanketed horses whinnied and scattered. She slipped, picked herself up, twisted to look back.
    Shadows. One near the house, another around the bin, snuffling, long and lean. She stifled a hiss of dismay and slammed against a wooden fence, then leaped it, agile with terror.
    Crossroads.
    A weathered fingerpost leaned in a triangle of frosted grass.
    EXETER 12 OKEHAMPTON 11
    And in smaller letters underneath, pointing up a narrow lane:
    Wintercombe 2
    The wolf howled; it had her scent. She turned and saw it streaking toward her, unleashed, a low shapehurtling through the twilight, eager to pin her down. She was running and it was behind her and she couldn’t stop the terror now, it rose up within her like a red, snatched pain, the frozen lane quaked with it, the hedges roared.
    And then it slid alongside her—a vast scarlet machine, stinking of diesel.
    She flung her hand up, grabbed a metal pole, and leaped on board.
    “Hold tight, love,” the driver said.
    The bus roared away. Bent double, she dragged in air. The driver, his eyes on the road, said, “Where to, then?”
    “Sorry?”
    “Where to? Where are you going?”
    The lane dwindled behind her, the wolf snarling in the dark. She whispered, “Wintercombe.”
    “One forty.”
    Baffled, she turned. “I don’t have any…currency.”
    His eyes flicked to her in the mirror. “I should put you straight off.”
    “Oh give her a lift, Dave,” a woman said. “You were young once.”
    People laughed. There were five on the bus, all elderly, all watching her.
    “Okay. This once. And I still am young, compared to you lot.”
    She said, “Thanks,” and went and crumpled onto a seat behind the pensioners. A man glanced at her, disapproving.
    The moor was the same. But nothing else. She’d never seen a bus before, was alarmed at how it scratched down the lane, its windows clotted with dried mud. The rattling motion and the smell made her feel sick; she held tight to the metal rail in font of her, her bleeding foot braced on the floor. On the next seat was a discarded newspaper. The page was upside-down; she turned it quickly. It showed a picture of a blond girl in a gray dress. The headline was
Patient still missing from Secure Unit.
    She read the article carefully, feeling her heart rate thud to slowness. This was just what she needed. She folded it and dropped it under the seat.
    The bus ran over a small humpbacked bridge and stopped on a street.
    The driver peered around his screen. “Wintercombe.”
    It was far sooner than she’d thought. She scrambled to the door, looked out cautiously, and jumped down. “Thanks.”
    “My pleasure.” His voice was dry. Doors swished shut in her face. The bus roared away.
    It was the village, but intact. People lived here. Over the huddled houses, the sky was already darkening.Shouts made her turn, fast, but only a few men came laughing out of the pub. The Replicant and his wolf could be here in half an hour. She had to hurry.
    Avoiding the houses, she slipped down a footpath marked
Wintercombe Abbey;
it led into woodland. Great trees creaked overhead. She felt tiny under them, and uneasy because the wolf wasn’t the only danger. Getting into the estate would be difficult. Through the Wood.
    It was so silent, the rustle of her own footsteps scared her.
    The path descended into a deep hollow, banked on each side. Broken winter umbels lay snapped and trampled in the mud. After about a mile she stopped, holding her side, and listened. Everything seemed quiet. Then, as she turned to go on, she heard the sudden, excited howl.
    Too close.
    She ran, the momentum of the descent pulling her so fast that she almost tumbled out of the end of the path, and there were the gates, high black wrought-iron gates,