Stroke of Midnight (21 page)

"Listen to me," he finally said, collecting himself. "If you rest by day, will you have enough strength to ride at night?"

She nodded and covered her face with her hands for a moment, then put them in her lap. "But only if I have blood." She gazed in his direction. "But it's not safe for you. My mother allowed me to drink from her when I first went into the fever. Then she and a small group went after these creatures, and…" Her voice trailed off. "She was killed. I can't have something like that on my conscience. I can't have it happen to you. You have to believe that you mean more to me than that."

Rider walked out of the bathroom and yanked on his jeans and his boots, then glanced at his pocketknife. She'd warned him; that was true. She could have ripped out his entire throat last night—he wouldn't have cared—and yet she never even broke his skin. Instead she'd gone to the one who had made her, rather than put him in harm's way.

Half of his brain told him to make a run for it. He paused, catching sight of himself in the mirror above the dresser. He saw the places where she'd bitten him but found no evidence of puncture wounds. He touched his throat, remembering the loving caresses she'd placed there, how she'd pulled away every time—unlike him. He hadn't been able to control himself nearly as well. Perhaps she'd been more responsible than him?

He picked up his knife and slowly walked back to the bathroom with it. He flicked it open with a quick flip of his wrist.

"What are you doing?" she asked, shivering.

"I'm feeding you," he told her, his voice quiet and strained as he made a fist.

She shook her head no and tried to stand. "If I take it right from your vein, I'll infect you, too. That's why I tried so hard not to all last night." Her voice had come close to hysteria. "Please.
Don't
."

"Then I'll bleed it into a plastic cup," he said without emotion, taking one off the sink and pumping his fist. "You'll sleep in here so the daylight doesn't hurt you. I'll stand watch at the door. I'll give you the blankets off the bed. But as soon as night falls, we ride."

He ignored her tears as he made the cut, and couldn't look at her as the slow oozing color trickled from his wrist and made almost too loud slats into the plastic cup. He wrapped a used towel around his wrist and put the cup into her shaking hands. He left the bathroom as she brought it to her lips. He couldn't see for the tears as he swept up the blankets and sheets and pillows. The smell of her and them and their lovemaking made him bury his face in the bed linens. If she didn't come back from this, he'd die for her, for sure. He couldn't even think about it. He simply went back into the bathroom, made a small pallet on the floor, and turned off the light as he shut the door.

For the remainder of the afternoon, he made bullets, then dozed with his gun on his lap. As soon as the sun set, he heard the shower go on, but didn't flinch. His mind and soul were so weary that he just glanced up at her slowly when she came out and put on her jeans.

They packed only what was necessary. She reminded him to bring his guitar. At first, he tensed when she wrapped her arms around him after climbing on the bike, then he relaxed. This was still Tara, the woman he loved, an innocent who had been infected.

He was committed to her for better, for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health. All he had to do was get her down Route 666 in New Mexico to where the Navajo knew what to do. That's what he kept telling him-self as he crossed the border into North Texas. That's what he told himself as he found a place to hide her before dawn. That's what he told himself when he became very afraid.

But each day was worse than the one before. It took more blood to rouse her, more effort to wake her at sunset. She was always cold now, her complexion always gray. By the time he hit the edge of the reservation lands, she could barely hold on to him as they rode, she was so weakened.

He swept her up in his arms and carried her to the first house he saw, but he didn't speak the old men's language and they just shook their heads. Dogs backed away. The old men sighed, and an elderly woman walked down the dusty path speaking in urgent unintelligible phrases.

Rider looked into her dark, leathery face, searching her deep brown eyes.

"I don't speak Navajo," he said, his voice breaking, but he held Tara close with one arm and dug into his jeans pocket and produced the paper she'd once given him.

The old woman shook her head and called out. A young boy no more than five or six appeared. Rider looked from the child to the elderly woman, confused, but desperate enough to try to learn whatever he could.

"She says her grandma moved to higher ground. Arizona."

The old woman said more words that Rider couldn't decipher while the child listened intently to her. Then the boy looked up at Rider.

"She left something for you and her." The child pointed to Tara's limp body. "Knew a guardian would protect her. Said a bad wind was coming." Then the child ran away.

"Where in Arizona?" he shouted to the old woman before him. Frustration and terror were making his ears ring.

She walked away slowly and met the young boy and took something dangling from his hands. Then she shuf-fled back unhurried and looped a small leather pouch over his neck and one over Tara's.

Rider stared down at what was given him. It was a leather pouch on a long tether that had some type of herbs and sandy-feeling stuff inside it. The outside of the bag around his neck had silver and turquoise pieces interspersed with long eagle feathers, short hawk feathers, and what looked like some sort of animal tooth. On his there was a jade cross, on Tara's there was a silver medicine wheel with turquoise and jade stones set in it. He almost cried. He'd ridden hard for all those miles for an asafoetia bag? This was bullshit. The child gave him a crumpled-up piece of paper with the new address on it and he tucked it away, then brushed Tara's forehead with a kiss.

Without a word, he trudged back to the first house where the old men were sitting on the porch, produced a twenty-dollar bill and pointed to the dilapidated truck in the road and toward his bike.

"Where's the nearest medical center? A doctor?"

One of the old men chewed his pipe, stood slowly and simply walked down the steps toward the truck with a sigh, waving away Rider's money.

"How bad is she, Doc?" Rider said, clasping Tara's hand and brushing her hair away from her forehead, and then looking into a pair of old, wise blue eyes.

"There's probably some type of acid in that thing they put around her neck, the way it's burning her chest," the doctor said with disgust. He lifted it away from her skin with two fingers, exposing a large red blister between her breasts. "Take it off her and give it back to her family. Superstition drives me nuts with these people." He raised Tara's lids and looked at her dilated pupils and roughly took the bag off, thrusting it toward Rider. "What's she on?"

"Nothing. She has a blood disease," Rider said carefully, accepting the bag and putting it in his vest pocket. The wise eyes were failing him; total defeat had a stranglehold on him. This man didn't understand.

The doctor's eyes met his. "Do you think I'm crazy?" he snapped, pointing at the holes in her flesh and then at Rider's wrist bandages. "For the love of Christ, what's she shooting up on with you? If you want her to come out of this coma, you're gonna have to come clean and stop playing games and help us. Time is of the essence, young man!"

"I don't know what it is," Rider told him honestly. "But can you give her a blood transfusion, or something, to bring her back?"

"We're gonna give her a pint, because she's obviously anemic, then run some blood tests to determine what's in her system. She might be borderline OD, or have some sort of viral staph infection, or hepatitis from using dirty needles… but I've never seen injection sites so large. It looks like she was shooting up with a ballpoint pen."

He swished away from Rider, ordering the blood work and telling the nurses to give Tara a blood pint, and to keep her hydrated with an IV drip while on oxygen.

"Why don't you go have a drink and sit this one out?" a nurse said offhandedly, as she came into the room and began studying Tara's chart, but not looking at Rider when she spoke. "If she passes, does she have any next of kin?"

He just stared at the short, squat woman who had cold gray eyes. "I'm all she's got," he said just below a whisper.

"Fine job you did taking care of her." The nurse shut the chart with a snap. "How old is she?"

"Eighteen," he said, staring out the window.

"You two married?"

"No."

"Then you
ain't
next of kin." The nurse sighed with impatience. "You got insurance?"

He shook his head and dug into his pocket, producing two hundred dollars.

The nurse looked at him hard and accepted the bills, handing him back fifty dollars. "Put some gas in your tank and ride to wherever the hell her family is and go git 'em. That won't even cover the blood work, but by law, since she came in here under emergency conditions, we can't turn her away—even if she's a wetback."

"I'll go make more money and cover the bill. Just give her the best." He looked at the small form lying prone in the bed. "She has a grandmother that I have to go find. The old woman doesn't have a phone." He dug in his vest pocket and thrust the crumpled paper at the nurse. He'd already burned the new address into his memory.

"What's Tara's last name?"

He stared at the indignant woman before him and then headed toward the door. "Ma'am, I don't truly know."

A bad wind was coming, that was no lie. He knew it as soon as he'd put Tara on a gurney and the white coats had taken her away. But they were hooking up blood to her arm when he'd left—that was all he could do. At least she was somewhere safe, where there were professionals, where there weren't dust and rain and things that slithered in the night. Unshed tears stung the back of his throat and mixed with Jack Daniel's as he sat at the local bar, oblivious to the music, the crowd, everything.

Time had been his enemy. If he'd had more time, he would have sat out on a porch with her and brushed her lovely hair in the moonlight. If he'd had more time, he would have used his hands to build her that cabin she'd told him she'd dreamed about… the one in the woods, decorated with her people's art, the ancient ones. And still, time was preciously slipping away just like he could feel she was. The gun in his waistband felt so heavy. He'd have to go get her before morning, before the sun started to blister her beautiful brown skin, or blind her for good. But once he'd delivered her to what he thought was a medical sanctuary, time had sped up as the professionals around her slowed down, searching for answers that no one had.

A familiar voice laughed loudly and made him turn around on his stool easy. Crazy Pete was walking in the door with Snake and the rest of the gang, missing five. Rider stood slowly, trying to allow his mind to catch up to the images. He'd seen one of them die, and after what he'd been through, he knew the rest of them had died, too. He could now identify that metallic taste on the back of his throat. It was the smell of living death. Eyes that knew his met him, and heads nodded with sly recognition. He carefully set down his money for the bartender and glanced around for an alternate exit. As soon as he looked back toward the main entrance, they were gone.

The medical center stabbed into his temple. He moved toward the front door so fast that he nearly took out a waitress who'd been carrying drinks. He dashed toward his bike and then stopped as the shadows moved. Snake stepped out of the darkness with Crazy Pete, then Razor, and Bull's Eye, until his old squad formed a ten-man horseshoe ring around him.

"You left us, Rider," Snake said, his eyes glowing. "Thought we was going all the way to the limit, one gang, one road?"

"Plans changed," Rider said, the muscle in his draw arm twitching.

"There's only one way to save her, man," Crazy Pete said. "Don't knock it, till you've tried it."

It was reflex, not a thought. The light caught Pete's fang and made it glisten, Rider unloaded his revolver dead aim. Pete, Razor, Snake, center-of-the-skull hits, exploding them into ash and cinders. Two more of his boys lunged from either side, and took a bullet in the center of their chests on a quick pivot shot. Rider immediately spun, the hairs on the back of his neck registering the slightest movement, and he caught Bull's Eye mid-flight as he came down, burning.

"He's got that shit hanging on his chest. Don't reach for him, he's poisoned," one of the remaining creatures said, nodding toward the bag around Rider's neck. "Later, we'll settle up."

Later indeed. Rider was still pulling the trigger as they disappeared. Instantly he heard commotion behind him and knew it was time to ride. There were no bodies, just ash and the distinct smell of burning remains. He was gone before anyone could get a good look at him or his bike, and way before the sheriff's sirens ever sounded.

He reloaded his weapon and sat by her side all night, intermittently arguing with the authorities about at least allowing her to be in a dark room before morning came. Then security ushered him to the door with a brawl that drew the sheriff. He had one option: be cool, or do a night in a cage.

But all of that was for naught when the doctor came out and shook his head at dawn. Rider looked up. He was so defeated that he couldn't even cry. The only thing that made it all right was that they finally let him go in and see her. And she seemed so peaceful, like a sleeping baby. Her color was back, her beautiful eyes were shut, long black lashes dusting her high cheeks. Her once-agonized expression had disappeared as her facial muscles relaxed when she'd passed. He stroked her hair and it was velvet again.

"I'm so sorry that we ran out of time." He put his head on her chest and closed his eyes, hoping that she'd heard his whisper.

"We found something that we've never seen," the doctor said, his tone subdued. "There were no drugs in her system, and we'll have to send her work up to the Centers for Disease Control. If you can make contact with her family, they may have to wait for the body until we can determine that what she's carrying wasn't communicable."