Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

The apartment. Forget the stink, at least it had been warm. He didn’t feel like he could remember warm and dry anymore. The apartment seemed like hours ago, though he knew it was only minutes. His teeth chattered. Movement, already hampered by the unsteady footing, was made more difficult still with his wet heavy clothes weighing him down.

When he neared a lamppost, he caught hold of its slick metal pole and swung around. This time he caught a glimpse of something moving low to the ground, a dark, quick-moving shape that darted out of sight behind a parked car.

A dog? Something on all fours, at any rate. Too fast, and not enough body mass to be a man.

He waited, but whatever it was didn’t show itself. Nor did he see any others. But he knew it was there, just as he knew it wasn’t alone. Just as visual confinnation wasn’t needed to tell him who it was, no matter what shape it might be wearing at this particular moment. Everything had changed for him. In the long minutes since the hard man had first appeared in the doorway of Miki’s kitchen, he’d been jerked out of his familiar world into some nightmare country. He was stumbling through unknown territory where nothing was the way it should be. Whatever doubts he’d had when Miki was telling her story had all vanished now.

He knew her fairy-tale Gentry were real. Pretending they weren’t didn’t fly for the animal senses that lay just under what he realized now was only a facade of rationality. The animal inside him was alert, alert and terrified.

The Gentry were real and they were after him, it was as simple as that. What was to stop them from taking some kind of animal shape? Who was going to notice a stray dog, or even a pack of them? With this weather people had more pressing concerns on their mind.

Wiping the water from his eyes, he stared at the place where he’d seen the dog vanish.

He thought he knew why it was hiding. It was probably a scout, waiting for the others to catch up before they took him on as a pack. They’d be cautious, thinking he was dangerous, knowing that he’d already killed one of them. What they didn’t know was that it had been no more than blind, dumb luck. That he was such a terrified mess they could knock him over with the flick of a finger. He was about as likely to hurt another one of them as the original Clash line-up was to launch a new tour.

He set off again, using the parked cars for support as he skidded and slid his way down the sidewalk. The place where the hard man had sucker-punched him the other night was aching again. His chest was tight, his breathing too fast and shallow. Turning suddenly, he caught sight of two low, quick shapes, slipping out of sight, sensed others.

Christ, they could move fast. What were they waiting for?

He pushed himself off the car he was holding onto, sliding to the next one, a fancy black Cherokee jeep, encrusted in ice. He thought his heart would stop when a mechanical voice commanded him to, “Step back from the car.”

He reeled away from the vehicle, flailing his arms for balance.

Car alarm, he thought as he went down in another puddle. That’s all. Just a stupid car alarm.

He crawled back to the Cherokee on his hands and knees and slapped the side of the jeep, ignored the car’s warning, banged against the metal until the warnings were done and the Klaxon wail of the alarm started up. He thought his eardrums would burst, but the pain was worth it. Surely the sound would draw some attention to him.

Look out the window, he willed the vehicle’s owner. Dial 911, for God’s sake. Can’t you see I’m trying to steal your car?

He banged on the door again, denting the metal.

I even look the part, he realized, with this handkerchief tied across his face.

He’d forgotten all about it. Playing Good Samaritan and trying to clean up Miki’s apartment didn’t feel like hours ago anymore, but a lifetime. He started to pull the cloth away from his face, then caught a glimpse of movement back down the street he’d just come down. Those low slinking shapes, darting from the doorways of stores to the parked cars and back again, getting closer with every dash. And then he saw one of the hard men come around the far corner, walking on the sidewalk as though it were bare pavement, not covered with a slick coating of ice.

His sudden appearance seemed to be a signal. The other Gentry rose up from behind the cars, stepped out of the doorways, men now as well, dark haired and dark-eyed, the tails of their trench coats slapping against their legs as they fell in step with the first one. None of them had trouble with the icy footing. They didn’t even seem to be wet.

Hunter wasn’t surprised. Why should the foul weather prove any sort of impediment to them?

The car alarm was making him deaf but he still heard the sound of a car engine above it. He turned to see its approaching lights. A van. He hauled himself to his feet and, using the hood of the jeep as a springboard, propelled himself out from between the vehicles. The van’s headlights caught him as he staggered out into the middle of the street. Then his legs went out from under him. He fell into yet another puddle and came up spluttering in time to see the van skidding on the ice, sliding right at him. He stared wide-eyed, waiting for the impact, but the vehicle slewed to one side, finally stopping with the front fender rearing directly over him.

He couldn’t hear the van’s doors opening over the wail of the car alarm, but he saw the vehicle shift on its springs as whoever was inside disembarked.

Oh, Christ, he thought. The Gentry. Don’t let them hurt these people.

He sat up and smacked his head on the fender, fell back into the puddle. The next thing he knew there was someone bending over him. Dark-haired, dark-eyed. He waited for the killing blow, but it didn’t come. He had long enough to recognize the Native American features of one of his customers before the face was suddenly jerked away.

Too late, Hunter realized. The Gentry had them now.

He was hauled up out of the puddle and onto his feet, the hard man holding him upright effortlessly. Hunter saw the man who’d stopped to help him lying on the street, the breath knocked out of him. As he watched, one of the Gentry smashed the window of the Cherokee with his elbow and reached inside, ripping something out of the jeep. He straightened up from the vehicle with a fistful of wires in his hand. The car alarm stopped and the ensuing silence seemed deafening.

He shouldn’t have been able to do that, Hunter found himself thinking. Who breaks a car window with his elbow?

Goddamn fairy-tale hardcases, that was who.

“I warned you, you pathetic little shite,” the leader of the Gentry said.

But before he could hit Hunter, another voice spoke. A woman’s voice. It was familiar, but so out of context that Hunter couldn’t place it.

“Don’t you hurt him.”

Yeah, Hunter thought. That’s really going to stop these guys.

But the hard man let him go. Hunter started to fall, caught himself on the grill of the van.

“You,” the hard man said, looking to where the woman was standing.

Hunter looked as well.

“Ellie?” he asked.

She gave him a confused look until he remembered the handkerchief tied across his face. He tugged it down.

“Hunter?” she said.

What in God’s name was going on? Ellie thought as the man by the hood of the van pulled down his handkerchief and she recognized Hunter. She recognized the men chasing him as well. They were Donal’s hard men. But give them long hair, she realized, and they’d be exactly like the group she’d seen on the lawn behind Kellygnow earlier today. Bettina’s spirit men. The only difference was they weren’t barefoot now and they were wearing trench coats over those dark suits of theirs. But the rain didn’t seem to bother them any more than the cold. Maybe they only wore boots and overcoats when they were out on the streets so that they would fit in better. Except that didn’t explain how their hair got longer and shorter.