"You say the sweetest things." I craned my neck and looked up at the sky. "I think that's a star up there. Or is it a plane?"
"A star. Blinking and moving fast. They do that in the city."
He pulled me against him, and I snuggled in, the heat of his body perfect against the chill night air. I closed my eyes, and when he kissed me I could smell the forest, see it, feel it and hear it all around me, and then I was there, not just imagining it but lying in a forest glen. I could feel the warmth of him still on my skin, but he was gone. I didn't jump up. I just stretched out on my stomach, toes brushing the grass.
A whine floated over on the breeze. I lifted my head and squinted. Another whine came. Then a sigh. A deep, shuddering canine sigh.
The hound.
I rose and hurried to the edge of the clearing. I could hear the hound, sighing and shuffling, as if moving about. I jogged toward the sound and spotted it near a cabin. The hound guarded the door, and while I could see no sign that it was bound in any way, it felt bound, as it looked into the forest as if longing to run. It was a perfect fall night and yet the hound couldn't enjoy it, and I felt the grief and the frustration and the sadness of that as it paced and then, with a sigh, lay down in front of the cabin door.
When I started forward, the hound lifted its head and peered into the darkness. Its red-brown eyes glimmered as it searched, as if sensing me but seeing nothing. Then it stood and whined and tried to come to me but stopped short and gave a growl, ears pricked forward, seeing me and...
No, not seeing me. Not sensing me.
"Forest," Ricky whispered, and I was back in the alley, Ricky pulling from the kiss, saying, "The hound is in the forest. Guarding a cabin. You..." He grinned and pulled me into a tight hug. "You found it. Thank you."
"Um, you...saw...what I was...?"
He grinned again as he rose. "Forest. Cabin. Hound. That is what you were seeing, right?"
"Yes, but how...?"
"No idea. Hound radar plus omen vision, I guess. We should have skipped the riding around and gone straight to bike sex."
"I'm pretty sure it wasn't the bike sex that did it."
"Of course it was. Anytime we need to figure something out, we'll start with bike sex. If that doesn't work, we'll keep trying until it does."
I laughed as I pulled on my jeans. "As for a location, though, all I got was forest."
"I know where to go."
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
We were about a half hour south of the city, long off the highway, on roads I'd never seen before until, finally, Ricky brought the bike to a stop at the side. I could see forest across a moonlit field. He tilted his head, considering, and then squeezed my thigh, telling me to hang on, before he turned the bike into the field, rolling slowly over the rough ground. When we reached the edge of the forest, he idled there and I tugged off my helmet. I could feel tension strumming from him as he looked into the woods.
"Wrong place?" I said.
"No, just wrong."
As I leaned against his back and looked into the woods, I felt what he must. Uneasy. Unwelcome. This wasn't like other forests--no sense of invitation, of adventure, of voices whispering in the
dark for us to come play. I looked at this stretch of woods and I felt that ancient sense of the forest as alien territory. Dangerous territory. The dark unknown.
As I shivered, I tumbled into a vision. A cabin. Not the one from my hound vision. This was a home in the forest, the door bolted shut, the shutters battened tight. I was inside, fumbling with a lantern, desperate to ignite it as a girl's voice whispered, "Something's out there," and I could feel that, beyond those closed shutters. Something out there, something in the night. That primal fear of what the dark brought, what the forest brought, when the sun dropped.
I snapped back to reality with a shudder, still feeling the terror of our ancestors, shut in for the night, praying for morning, knowing that beyond their door lurked danger, that unshakable fear that would, even today, make children beg their parents to check under the bed, look in the closet, please don't turn out all the lights.
I rubbed my arms, reminding myself that I had a gun and a switchblade, and I was no peasant cowering in the dark. I knew what was out there. I'd faced it. Overcome it. And yet...well, logic and confidence only gets you so far against those primal whispers.
A dog started crying. Not the hound. Just a dog.
Ricky murmured, "Bad omen?"
"Yep. Better late than never." I was twisting to look around when I spotted a raven gliding silently across the moonlit field. It swooped toward us, as if to fly into the woods. Then it veered sharply and instead came to rest in a dead tree twenty paces from the forest's edge. It hunkered down, feathers ruffling, head pulled between its shoulders.
"Uh, yeah..." I said. "Let's see...Overwhelming sense of foreboding. Omen of impending danger. Freaked-out Cwn Annwn raven. Do you get the feeling--?"