Stephen Leather - Once bitten

Terry looked at me over her shoulder. No deaf and dumb sign language this time, she just raised one eyebrow. Ready? I nodded.

She moved, so quickly that I couldn't see the individual motions, it was just a black blur like a shadow cast by a curtain waving in the wind. A flicker. One moment she was crouched down at the base of the tree, the next she was in the air, her arms outstretched, her ponytail streaming behind her. I stood up and tried to follow, not sure what I should do. I ran and then my foot caught in something, a tree root perhaps, but instead of falling I kept moving through the air, a few feet above the ground and then I arched my back and I began to move up, curving through the air, twigs brushing against my arms, my eyes stinging from the wind. There was no need to flap my arms, or push, or do anything, I kept moving faster and faster and I seemed to be able to change direction just by moving my head. Terry was ahead of me and she turned and smiled and beckoned for me to catch her up. I flew faster, not knowing how I was speeding up but doing it anyway, and then I drew level with her and she reached out and touched me lightly on the shoulder, congratulating me, making me feel good.

We flew up so that we were skimming the tops of the trees and then she pointed and I saw the three figures in the distance, walking side by side down a narrow path that threaded its way through the forest. Terry grinned and licked her lips and then she swooped down and I followed, the sudden descent pulling the wind from my lungs and making me gasp. They didn't see us until we were right on top of them. The man was in his early fifties, a strong, weatherbeaten face, dark brown eyes, a firm chin, wearing a dark workman's jacket and dirt-streaked jeans, the woman a few years younger but still pretty, big blue eyes, a laughing mouth, her hair hidden by a colourful scarf, she was wearing a dark green coat over a green and white checked dress. The girl was about four or five years old, curly blonde hair, giggling and tugging at her parents' arms, wanting to be lifted.

What happened next came as a series of disparate images, like photographs shot with a time-lapse camera: the man looking up, his eyes widening with fear; the woman's left hand jumping up to her mouth to stifle her scream; Terry laughing; the child crying; Terry's hand reaching out, the fingers curled; the man's throat ripped clean open, blood spurting over his shoulder; the woman moving to scoop up the child; Terry laughing and rolling as she flew, her other hand curving to strike; the child falling to the floor, arms and legs scrabbling for something to hold on to; the woman's coat covered with blood as she crumpled to the floor. Then Terry and I were up in the air again, the cold breeze in our faces as we soared above the trees.

We circled, watching the girl kneel by her mother's side, taking her cold hand in her own and pushing it against her cheek, her tears mixing with the blood. Terry pointed at me and then at the girl. My turn. We dived down together, the ground rushing up and again it came as a series of separate images: the girl, blood on her cheek; Terry laughing; the girl's eyes open and blue, misty with tears; Terry's teeth, sharp and white making small biting motions; my hand forming a claw; the girl reaching up with a small hand as if trying to fend off the attack; the forest floor leaping up at me. Then I twisted and turned and veered away from the girl and the two bodies and next I was standing behind them, my feet on the floor, my hand aching in its still-formed claw. I looked up and saw Terry whirling through the air, her eyes hard and menacing, then she flowed down and landed next to the girl and picked her up around the waist. The woman groaned as she lay dying on the ground but Terry ignored her. The girl cried out and struggled but Terry put her mouth next to her ear and whispered something and the child went still as if drugged. Terry kept her eyes on me as she walked up with the child.

"She's yours, Jamie," she said as she got close.

"No," I said. "I don't want her."

"She's your's," she repeated, only this time her face was changing, she wasn't Terry anymore she had blonde hair, blonde like the child's, and her eyes were the same blue. It wasn't Terry any more it was Deborah holding the child, only the child wasn't a child anymore, it was a baby.

"She's yours," said Deborah and she held up the baby, and it wasn't healthy and laughing anymore it was crying and in pain and its lower half was as deformed and twisted as the trees in the forest around us.

"No!" I yelled. "No! No!"

Deborah narrowed her eyes and there was hate in them. "You can't kill a child!" she screamed.

"I don't want to kill her," I shouted back. "I don't! I don't!"

Then I woke up to find Terry looking down on me, her hair brushing against my face. "Jamie?

What's wrong?" she asked as she put her hand up against my forehead. I was sweating.

"Bad dream," I said.

"I'll say. What about?"

I shook my head and swallowed. "Nothing," I said.

She smiled ruefully. "Jamie, if you don't want to tell me, that's one thing, but there's no need to lie. I've been lying here next to you for the last five minutes wondering whether or not to wake you up you looked so uncomfortable, so don't give me that 'nothing' crap."

I closed my eyes. "I'm sorry," I said. "It's my problem."

"Problem?" she repeated, frowning. She lay down by my side, her chin resting on her right palm as she played with my chest with her left hand. "Was I in it?"

"Yes," I said. It was easier to speak to her with my eyes closed. Strange patterns in red and orange danced around, spirals and circles, almost hypnotic. Her voice seemed very far away as if she was speaking to me from the end of a very long tunnel.

"You shouted something about a baby?"

"A child. We were hunting a child."

"We?"

"You and me. We were in a wood, a terrifying, dark, cruel wood, blackened trees, tangles of brambles, a nightmare sort of place. We were flying."

"Flying?" She sounded amused.

"We were flying through the woods, above them, and then we were attacking a couple and their child." I felt pressure on my eyelids and realised that Terry was kissing them softly. "You killed them," I said. "You ripped out their throats."

"It was a bad dream, that's all," she said soothingly. "We don't fly through the air, Jamie. We don't rip out people's throats. We don't kill children. We don't kill babies."

I felt the tears go then, welling up and forcing their way through my closed eyelids. She gently brushed them away with the back of her hand.

"Who's April?" she asked. I tensed, flinched almost. She caressed my forehead again. "You called out her name. And Deborah, your wife's name. Who's April?"

"My daughter," I said. The two words sounded strange. I don't think I'd ever used them before.

"I didn't you had a daughter," she said.

"I don't," I answered. "Not any more."

"What happened?" she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.

"She died."

"Oh Jamie, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She lay next to me in silence for a while before she spoke again. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.

"No," I said. "Yes. I don't know."

"How did she die?"

"In hospital. A few days after she was born."

"She got sick?"

"She was born with spina bifida. She was all messed up, below the waist. God, it was so sad.

She looked so perfect everywhere else, her little hands, her lips, big blue eyes like her mother's, she was so cute. But everything else just came out all screwed up. There was nothing we could do, nothing the doctors could do."

"When was this?" she asked.

"About a year ago. Last April. That's why we called her April."

"Is that why you got divorced?"