"Molly," Mrs. Carlson warned.
The Breitlings exchanged looks. Valentine figured that discord was rare in the Carlson house.
Molly stood and took up her plate. "I'm finished. May I be excused?" She went to the kitchen without waiting for an answer.
Valentine could not tell how much of the byplay was real, and how much was acting.
Two days later, he and Molly Carlson rode out on a fine, cool morning with a hint of fall in the air. Valentine's indomitable Morgan walked next to Molly's quarterhorse. She wore curious hybrid riding pants, leather on the inside and heavy denim elsewhere, tucked into tall rubber boots, and a sleeveless red flannel shirt. They chatted about their horses as they headed west toward the high, bare hills.
"Lucy here is great with the cows," Molly said, patting the horse on the neck affectionately. "They'll follow her anywhere. It's like she can talk to them."
"I've always wondered if animals talk to each other," Valentine ventured.
"I think they can, sort of. In a real simple way. Like if you and I had to communicate by just pointing at stuff. We couldn't write the Declaration of Independence, but we'd be able to find food and water and stuff. Warn each other about enemies. Hold it, Lucy's got to pee."
Molly stood up in her stirrups while the mare's stream of urine arced into the grass behind her.
"You know horses," Valentine observed. "Those are fine riding pants. Do you ride much?"
"No, too much to do at the farm. My sister's the horse nut. But I did make these breeches. I like working with leather especially. I used to have some nice riding boots, but some creep in the patrols took 'em off me. These rubber ones are hotter than hell, but they're good for working around the cows. I sewed a leather vest for Dad, and when Mom does her calving, she's got a big leather apron that I made."
They trotted for a while. Watching the up-and-down motion of Molly posting left him desperate to switch the conversation back on.
"I get the feeling you don't like us staying," he finally said when they slowed to cut through a copse of mixed oaks and pines. The sun had warmed the morning, but Valentine was flushed from more than the heat of the day.
"Oh, maybe at first. Still don't know what you're doing here-"
"Just passing through. I tried to find out what was going on up at Blue Mounds," Valentine explained.
"You probably wouldn't tell us the truth anyway. I don't know much about the insurgents, but I know you wouldn't tell what you were doing so they couldn't get it out of us, just in case. Or is it because I'm just a girl?"
"It's not that. We have plenty of women in the Wolves. And I hear over half of the Cats are women, too."
"We've heard about you. Werewolves, always coming in the dark, just like the Reapers. Don't you guys go into Kansas and Oklahoma and kill all the people there, so the Kurians have nothing to feed on?"
"No," Valentine said, somewhat taken aback. "Nothing... quite the opposite. Just this spring my company brought over a hundred people out of the Lost Lands. That's what we call places like this."
"Lost Lands," she said, rolling her eyes skyward. "I'll buy that. We're lost, all right. How would you like to spend your life knowing it's going to end with you being eaten? I've developed a lot of sympathy for our cows."
"Your uncle seems to be watching out for you all," Valentine said, trying to reassure her.
"My uncle. I should tell you about him. No, my uncle doesn't mean shit. A hungry vampire could still take us any night of the week, good record or no. Uncle Mike has done everything in his life exactly as the Kurians want, and he still doesn't have one of those brass rings. And even if you get it, any Kurian can still take it away if you screw up. And if I'm all testy over the husband thing, it's just because it makes me think about something I'd rather not think about. Let's go up this hill. The view's pretty nice from up top."
They walked their horses toward the grassy slope. They crossed a field with a herd of the ubiquitous Wisconsin Hoi-steins in it, and Molly waved to a man and a boy mending a fence.
"That's the Woolrich place. The poor woman who lives there is on her third husband. The first two got taken, one while doing the morning milking, and the second when a patrol came through just grabbing whoever they could get their hands on because a bunch of Reapers dropped in for a visit."
They rode to the top of the hill and dismounted, loosening the girths on their wet animals. The horses began to nose in the tall, dry grass at the top of the rolling series of hills. Farmland stretched below in all directions, crisscrossed with empty roads. A hundred yards away, an old highway running along the top of the hills had degenerated into a track cleared through the insistent plant life.
"Is that why you don't want to marry?" Valentine asked. "You're scared of becoming a widow?"
"Scared? I'm scared of a lot of things, but not that in particular. If you want to talk about what really scares me... But no, to answer your question, I don't want the life my mother has. She's brought two children into the world, and is taking care of another, and for what? We're all going to end up feeding one of those creatures. I don't want any children, or a man. It just means more fear. It's easy to talk about living your life, trying to get along with the system, but you try lying in bed at night when every little noise might mean something in boots and a cape is coming in your house to stick its tongue into your heart. The way I see it, the only way for us in the Madison Triumvirate to beat these vampires is to cut off their food supply. Quit pretending life is normal."
"I see."
"My grandmother on my mother's side, Gramma Katie Flanagan, she was a teacher or something in Madison before everything changed. When I was about eleven, we had a long talk. She was getting old, and I think she felt her time was coming. As soon as the old people slow down, the patrols show up, sometimes with some bullshit story about a retirement home. She told me about in ancient times there were these Jewish slaves of the Romans who rose up and fought them from a fortress on top of a mountain. The Romans finally built a road or something so their army could get up to the fortress, and all the Jews killed themselves rather than be slaves again. Gramma said if everyone were to do that, it would cut off their power, or whatever they get from us."
Valentine nodded. "I heard that story, too. It was a place called Masada. By the Dead Sea, I think. I always used to tell Father Max-he was my teacher-that I wouldn't have killed myself if I were up there. I would have taken a Roman or two with me."