Terry Brooks - Armageddon’s Children

She glanced over her shoulder at her passenger. The tatterdemalion clung to her like a second skin, bluish hair flying out behind her. She was so insubstantial that Angel could barely feel her presence. "Are you sure? How do you know?"

The dark eyes blinked open. "I sense when the demonkind are near. One of them is near now, following."

It was that female demon from the compound. Angel knew it instinctively.

She should have found the reserves of strength she needed and killed her when she had the chance. Johnny always told her not to leave enemies alive; they would always come after you later. They would always think you were weak. Johnny knew.

"How far back?" The wind tore the words away and the roar of the ATV engine buried them.

The dark eyes met her own. "I can hear the sound of another ATV engine."

Angel gritted her teeth, then throttled back the Mercury 5 and pulled over to the side of the road. She cut the engine and waited as the ringing in her ears faded and the throbbing in her body eased. She climbed down and stood in the middle of the roadway, listening. All around her, a steadily darkening sky was pressing down to meet the twilight shadows, the world empty and gray.

Within seconds she heard the other engine's roar, big and powerful and instantly recognizable. A Harley Crawler.

Stupid, stupid girl! She chastised herself in fury. First for not killing the demon and second for not destroying that other machine. She had thought that taking its cells and hiding them would be enough, but the creature that hunted her was no ordinary demon. It had tracked her down and found her once, back in the ruins of Los Angeles, and it clearly intended to do so again.

She glanced over at the Mercury and the dark length of her staff, tucked down in the buckled grips of the storage slot. She did not think she was ready to do battle with this creature again so soon. It wasn't that she was afraid; it was that she recognized a hard truth about herself that she didn't much care for. She had been lucky to escape from her pursuer the first time. She might not be so lucky again.

It gave her pause that the demon was so intent on catching up to her. It had worked hard at finding her back in LA. It had discovered what she was doing to save the children in the other compounds, then ferreted out her secret entry into the one in Anaheim and set its trap for her. It hadn't bothered with bringing help to destroy her; it had sufficient confidence–and likely pride–in its own abilities to want to do it alone. As it almost had. Luck had saved her.

Luck, and a determination that matched that of the demon's.

Still, to have it tracking her like this …

She glanced around quickly at the highway ahead and saw where it branched off into what must have once been an old logging road. Little more than a dirt track, the road dipped down off the embanked highway and disappeared into the trees. So, she thought. Easy enough to drive a hulk like the Harley Crawler down the middle of a paved road. Maybe it wouldn't be so easy down a narrow, rutted trail.

She returned to the Mercury, where Ailie sat watching her, climbed back onto the seat, and restarted the engine. She felt Ailie's slender arms come around her waist. "Hold tight, pococito," she said to her.

She ratcheted the throttle forward and the ATV shot ahead to the dirt road. She turned down it without slowing, anxious now with twilight settling in and night coming on, knowing how hard it would be to get much of anywhere after dark. The Mercury coughed and labored as it hit the weed–grown interior of the trees, but she kept it on track, the dirt road a navigable ribbon that wound ahead into the woods, giving her a way ahead.

In seconds the highway had disappeared behind her and the dusk had thickened to massed shadows and inky gloom. She throttled the Mercury's engine back again, picking her way carefully, searching out the track where it sometimes faded away into waist–high walls of brush and heavy grasses. These woods here were not as sickened as some, the foliage still plentiful and mostly green amid signs of wilt and some heavy stretches of decay. Hardwoods mingled with conifers, and in the deepening gloom it became possible to believe that the forest had never experienced the damaging effects of the chemical poisonings of the earth and atmosphere. Maybe some places were still healthy enough that they would recover in time, Angel thought, steering the ATV down the twisting path, eyes searching out the way. Maybe some places, like this one, would survive.

But uncertainty clouded her hopes, and she put the matter aside where it belonged.

They rode on for the better part of an hour without speaking, their progress slowed by the conditions of the road and the onset of night, but steady nevertheless. The logging road wound on mile after mile, sometimes splitting off into side trails, sometimes disappearing into open stretches in which the trees had been leveled to stumps and a star–strewn sky filled the horizon end to end.

When she could, she took roads that narrowed down to almost nothing and angled through trees and stumps grown so close together that the big Harley couldn't pass between them. Once, she took the Mercury into a stream and ran it down the waterway for more than a mile before coming out again onto a bedding of crushed rock and flat stone. Whatever she could do to hide their passing, she did it.

Finally, she slowed and stopped and turned off the engine. "Now what do you hear?" she asked Ailie when the silence had deepened anew.

The tatterdemalion shook her head. "Nothing."

"Do your senses warn of demons close by?"

Again, Ailie shook her head.

Angel smiled. "Buena. Even so, we will ride on for another hour or two before we sleep. Just to make certain."

She climbed back into place on the Mercury, turned on the engine, and set out into the dark.

DELLOREEN KNEW SHE was getting close. The smells she was using as her marker to track the female Knight of the Word were getting stronger, fresher in her nostrils. She could not yet hear the other ATV over the deep, powerful roar of her own, but she knew it wouldn't be long. She had been tracking it all day, choosing not to rush her pursuit, waiting all night before setting out so that she wouldn't miss anything that the light might reveal. The female had no reason to know she was being tracked and would not take much time or effort to hide her trail. She had taken almost none so far, even in her efforts to hide the Harley's solar cells. Her decision to leave the children she had rescued indicated clearly that she had something of more importance with which to deal, and it was preoccupying her thoughts. Her passage through the trees and onto the highway had been straightforward and direct. She had a destination in mind and incentive to reach it, and she was not going to deviate in her efforts to get there.

All of which had made her very easy to track.

Because the Knight of the Word was not trying for extra speed or taking chances with the road and because Delloreen was, she was slowly catching up. If things continued as they were, she would have her by tonight and the chase would be ended.

Then, with her quarry's head in her possession, she would go back to that old man and settle things once and for all.

She flexed her cramped fingers on the grip of the heavy handlebars, and beneath her scaly skin her muscles rippled. The mutation was advancing more rapidly now, her reptilian appearance obliterating the last vestiges of her humanity. Her spiky blond hair was falling out in clumps, her facial features were smoothing out to a sleek, nondescript sameness, and her limbs were elongating. She was becoming something else, something much more efficient and deadly. It had been happening incrementally for the past year, but just recently it had taken on a new urgency. In part, she thought, it was because she was willing it to quicken, anxious to shed the last of her human skin. She despised her human self; when the last of it was gone, she would shed no tears.