Terry Brooks - Running With The Demon

The woman steps around him without a second glance and continues on, the flames of the city catching in their orange glow the empty look upon her face.

Do you know her? the Knight asks the man who has spoken.

Oh, yes, I know her. The man whispers, as if the night breeze might carry his words to her. His face is scarred and worn. She was a girl once. Before she became what she is. Her name was Nest Freemark. She lived in a little town called Hopewell, Illinois. Her father came for her on the Fourth of July when she was just fourteen and changed her forever. Her father, a demon himself, made her one, too. I heard him say so to a man he knew, just before he killed him. It was in a prison. Her father would have killed me as well, had he known I was listening.

Tell me about her, the Knight says quietly.

He turns the man in to the trees so that they can follow the others to safety, and in the course of their furtive withdrawal from the horror taking place on the plains below, the man does.

When John Ross awoke that morning in Josie Jackson's bed, he was in such pain that he could barely move. All of his muscles and joints had stiffened during the night, and the bruises from his beating had flowered into brilliantly colored splotches on his chest and ribs. He lay next to Josie and tried shifting various parts of himself without waking her. Everything ached, and he knew it would be days before he could function in a normal way again.

Last night's dream hung with veiled menace in the dark seclusion of his mind, a horror he could not dispel, and he was reminded anew of the older dream, the one that had given him his first glimpse of the monster Nest Freemark would become.

Should I tell her? he wondered anew. Now, while there is still time? Will it help her to know?

When they rose, Josie drew a hot bath for him and left him to soak while she made breakfast. He was dressing when she came in with the news of Evelyn Freemark's death. The details were on the radio, and several of Josie's friends had called as well. Ross walked in silence to the kitchen to eat, the momentary joy he had found during the night already beginning to fade. He tried not to show what he was feeling. The demon had outsmarted him. The demon had provoked last night's attack on him not because he was a threat to its plans, but to get him out of the way so he could not help Evelyn Freemark. He had spent so much time worrying about Nest that he had forgotten to consider the people closest to her. The demon was breaking Nest down by stripping away the people and defenses she relied upon. Ross had missed it completely.

He finished his breakfast and told Josie he was going out to see Old Bob, and she offered to come with him. He thanked her, but said he thought he should do this alone. She said that was fine, looking away quickly, the hurt showing in her dark eyes. She walked to the counter and stood there, looking out the kitchen window.

"Is this good–bye, John?" she' asked after a minute. "You can tell me."

He studied the soft curve of her shoulders against the robe. "I'm not sure."

She nodded, saying nothing. She ran a hand through her tousled hair and continued to stare out the window.

He groped for something more to say, but it was too late for explanations. He had violated his own rules last night by letting himself get close to her. Involvement with anyone was forbidden for a Knight of the Word. It was one thing to risk his own life; it was something else again to risk the life of another.

"I'll be leaving Hopewell soon, maybe even sometime today. I don't know when I'll be back." His eyes met hers as she turned to look at him. "I wish it could be different."

She studied him a moment. "I'd like to believe that. Can I write you?"

He shook his head slowly. "I don't have an address."

Her smile was wan and fragile. "All right. Will you write me sometimes?"

He told her he would try. He could tell she wanted to say more, to ask him why he was being so difficult, so secretive. But she did not. She just kept looking at him, as if knowing somewhere deep inside that it was useless, that she would never see him again.

She drove him back to the hotel so that he could change his clothes, then drove him out to the Freemarks' and dropped him off at the entrance to the park. She barely spoke the entire time. But when he started to get out of the car, she reached over and put her arms around his neck and kissed him hard on the mouth.

"Don't forget me," she whispered, and gave him a hint of the smile that had drawn him to her that first day.

Then she straightened herself behind the steering wheel while he closed the car door and drove away without looking back.

He had made up his mind in that instant to tell Nest Free–mark about her father.

Now, as he stood looking at Nest's shattered face, he wondered if he had made the right decision. The mix of shock and horror that flooded her eyes was staggering. She blinked rapidly, and he could tell that she wanted to look away from him, to hide from his terrible revelation, but she could not. She tried to speak, but no words would come. Old Bob was stunned as well, but his exposure to the truth wasn't as complete. He didn't know what Nest did. He didn't know that her father was a demon.

"My father?" she whispered finally. "Are you sure?"

The words hung between them in the ensuing silence, a poisonous and forbidding accusation.

"Nest," her grandfather began, reaching for her.

"No, don't say anything," she said quickly, silencing him, stepping back. She tore her gaze from Ross and looked out into the park. "I need to … I just have to…"

She broke off in despair, tears streaming down her face, and bolted from the yard through the hedgerow and into the park. She ran past the ball diamond behind the house, down the service road toward the park entrance, and off toward the cemetery. John Ross and her grandfather stood looking after her helplessly, watching her angular figure diminish and disappear into the trees.

Old Bob looked at Ross then, a flat, expressionless gaze. "Are you certain about this?"

Ross nodded, feeling the grayness of the day descend over him like a pall. "Yes, sir."

"I don't know that you should have told her like that."

"I don't know that I should have waited this long."

"You've tracked him here, her father, to Hopewell?"

"Yes, sir."

"And he's come for Nest?"

Ross sighed. "Yes, sir, he has. He means to take her with him."

Old Bob shook his head in disbelief. "To kidnap her? Can't you arrest him?"

Ross shook his head. "I haven't the authority. Besides, I can't even find him. If I do, I can't prove any of what I've told you. All I can do is try to stop him."

Old Bob slipped his big hands into his pockets. "How did you find all this out?"

"I can't tell you that."

Old Bob looked away, then back again, his face growing flushed and angry. "You come to Hopewell with a story about your college days with Caitlin that's all a lie. You manage to get yourself invited to our home and then you keep from us the truth of what you are really doing here. You do not warn us about Nest's father. You may think you have good reasons for everything you've done, John, but I have to tell you that I've put up with as much of this as I'm going to. You are no longer welcome here. I want you off my property and out of our lives."

John Ross stood firm against the old man's withering stare. "I don't blame you, sir. I would feel the same. I'm sorry for everything." He paused. "But none of what you've said changes the fact that Nest is still in danger and I'm the best one to help her."

"Somehow I doubt that, John. You've done a damn poor job of protecting any of us, it seems to me."

Ross nodded. "I expect I have. But the danger to Nest is something I understand better than you."