speak, not only because changes within his throat made speech more
difficult, but because he was choked up with regret and grief and a
sudden crippling loneliness.
But she rejected him again, confirming the worst suspicions he had of
her and jolting him out of his anguish and self-pity. Like a wave of
dark water filled with churning ice, the cold rage of an ancient
consciousness surged into him again. The desire to stroke her hair, to
gently touch her smooth skin, to take her in his arms-that vanished
instantly and was replaced by something stronger than desire, by a
profound need to kill her. He wanted to gut her, bury his mouth in her
still-warm flesh, and finally proclaim his triumph by urinating on her
lifeless remains.
He threw himself at her, still wanting her but for different purposes.
She ran, and he pursued.
Instinct, racial memory of countless other pursuitsmemories not only in
the recesses of his mind but flowing in his blood-gave him an advantage.
He would bring her down. It was only a matter of time.
She was fast, this arrogant animal, but they were always fast when
propelled by terror and the survival instinct, fast for a while but not
forever. And in their fear, the hunted were never as cunning as the
hunter. Experience assured him of that.
He wished that he had taken off the boots, for they restricted him now.
But his own adrenaline level was so high that he had blocked out the
pain in his cramped toes and twisted heels, temporarily the discomfort
did not register.
The prey fled south, though nothing in that direction offered the
smallest hope of sanctuary. Between them and the faraway mountains, the
inhospitable land was home only to things that crawled and crept and
slithered, things that bit and stung and sometimes ate their own young
to stay alive.
Having run only a few hundred yards, Rachael was already gasping for
breath. Her legs felt leaden.
She was not out of shape, it was just that the desert heat was so fierce
it virtually had substance, and running through it seemed almost as bad
as trying to run through water. For the most part, the heat did not
come down from above, because all but a sliver or two of sky was clouded
over. Instead, the heat came up, rising from the scorching sand that
had been baking in the now-hidden sun, storing that terrific heat since
dawn, until the clouds had arrived within the last hour or so. The day
was still warm, ninety degrees, but the air rising off the sand must
have been well over a hundred. She felt as if she were running across a
furnace grate.
She glanced back.
Eric was about twenty yards behind her.
She looked straight ahead and pushed harder, really pumping her legs,
putting everything. she had into it, crashing through that wall of
heat, only to find endless other walls beyond it, sucking in hot air
until her mouth went dry and her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth
and her throat began to crack and her lungs began to burn. A natural
hedge line of stunted mesquite lay ahead, extending twenty or thirty
yards to the left, an equal distance to the right. She didn’t want to
detour around it, because she was afraid she’d lose ground to Eric. The
mesquite was only knee high, and as far as she could see it was neither
too solid nor too deep, so she plunged through the hedge, whereupon it
proved to be deeper than it looked, fifteen or twenty feet across, and
also somewhat more tightly grown than, it appeared. The spiky, oily
plant poked at her legs and snagged her jeans and delayed her with such
tenacity that it seemed to be sentient and in league with Eric. Her
racing heart began to pound harder, too hard, slamming against her
breastbone. Then she was through the hedge, with hundreds of bits of
mesquite bark and leaves stuck on her jeans and socks. She increased
her pace again, gushing sweat, blinking salty streams of the same
effluvient from her eyes before it could blur her vision too much,