“Damn this Gaia weakness!” she exclaimed, letting go and flopping back onto the bed.
“Without it you’d likely have been butchered,” Mildred said. “You know that you can’t just use it and hope to get away free. Always takes a dreadful toll from you, drawing on the Earth Mother’s power.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know it. But if I’d been fit and able, then we could have pulled together for Doc.”
They hadn’t seen any sign of Joshua Wolfe or any of his crazed minions, not since Owsley had led his hunting party off into the deteriorating weather. The shutters had been battened down on all of the buildings, fires extinguished, the ville’s dogs gathered in to safety.
“Getting worse,” J.B. commented, leaning hard against the door to press it shut, softening the howling of the storm. “Hope Doc’s not caught out in this.”
“Hope Doc’s not caught period.” Ryan carefully turned up the wick on the oil lamp, pushing the dancing shadows into the corners of the room.
“Reckon they’ll bring him back here?” Mildred asked, stretching out on her bed.
Ryan nodded, dropping his voice even though they couldn’t have been more private. “Wolfe seems to be the sort who likes showing a good example. Let the Children of the Rock see his authority. Big public execution is likely his style.”
“Then us,” Krysty said.
He nodded again. “Yeah. Then us.”
DOC WAS as ready as he ever could be, the lion’s-head hilt gripped tight, his whole body braced to explode out of the chest.
He could almost see the sec man, poised to smash his wooden coffin, hear Maya Tennant protesting in the background. And above it all was the muffled fury of the storm.
“Last chance before I break it in, lady.”
“I have a key somewhere. Just give me a bitching minute, will you? If this man you’re after is in there, then he surely isn’t going anyplace.”
Doc grinned, lips tight across his excellent teeth. “Game to the last,” he whispered to himself.
“Sounds like the roofs going,” said another voice, high toned with the edge of panic. “Mebbe we’d best get out of here, Brother Owsley.”
Suddenly Doc felt the wooden walls of the chest start to vibrate, and he tensed himself, thinking that the pursuers were trying to tilt it or lift it. But it wasn’t that.
“WHAT FUCK?” Jak exclaimed, taking a couple of loose, staggering steps to one side, hands stretched out to fight for balance.
J.B. lurched toward the bed, stumbling and falling on top of Mildred, who reached up to check him.
Ryan and Dean were close to the bed where Krysty lay, and they managed to sit down quickly, feeling the floor shifting and rippling, like liquid sand. The timbers creaked and split, unpeeling furrows of white splinters.
And there was the familiar noise, rising all above and around the noise of the massive storm, like a dozen powerful war wags revving their engines at once, somehow directly beneath the planking of the cabin.
“Outside, lover, Dean,” Krysty said. “Safer than in here.”
He could barely hear her above the cacophony of noise from the twin sources.
There’d been bad quakes at other times in his life, and he recognized the bizarrely disorientating effects, with reality crumbled at the edges. He struggled to focus his mind on what they should do.
“Outside, everyone!” he shouted, agreeing with Krysty’s mutie feeling.
Easier said than done.
Ryan remembered being on a sailing ship once through a tornado, and when he stood the sensation was remarkably similar. The whole building was quivering like a frightened animal, and he staggered and nearly fell. He recovered his balance and held out a hand to steady Krysty as she swung her legs off the bed. Dean was up and moving.
Jak was first to reach the door, moving with the natural poise of the skilled acrobat, hesitating with his ringers gripping the handle. “Ready?” he asked, his voice shrill above the raging noise.
J.B. held Mildred by the hand, as they weaved across the heaving floor, looking like a couple of drunks trying to make a decorous exit from a frontier gaudy.
“Door’s jammed!” the teenager yelled. There was a ferocious shuddering, and the kerosene lamp crashed off the table onto the floor, rolling under one of the beds, plunging the room into momentary darkness.