He sought further, deeper, inviting Natasha in even though he hated the sense of her in his head. Especially this Natasha, newly risen from the ground with a shout instead of a whisper.
"How does the air feel on your skin, monster?" he said. "Are you lonely without the bones of your kin to keep you warm, vampire?" Like all berserkers she despised the word vampire, he knew, but it was more out of vanity than anything else. She hated for her berserker clan to be thought of as anything other than unique. "Wrinkled dry dead thing crying like a baby when I chained you up with those vermin you called mother, father, brother."
A chuckle in his mind; not his. He did not feel her intrusion, but he knew that she was there, hovering slightly beyond. He drove on, trying to discern which direction the laugh had come from.
"Laughing at what I did to you, Natasha? You won't find it funny when I catch you this time. You think ten years was a long time in the ground, smelling your family rotting around you? Feeling their flesh grow cold, wet, fluid? Or did you eat them to stay awake, just for a little while longer?"
She laughed again, a sound so filled with confidence and hate that Cole slowed the Jeep, shivering. Fuck you, Misterwolf.
He came to a junction and turned left.
"Still awake then, vampire?"
I'm no vampire!
"I bet you're sucking the life out of that poor man already."
She was silent but still present, and Cole narrowed his eyes as he tried to put direction to the slithery touch now evident in his mind. He veered left and right on the road, striving to sense which way was closer.
Warm, Natasha said.
"I'm going to find you and kill you," Cole said. "I'll kill him, too."
Why should I care? the girl said, and Cole smiled when he heard the doubt in her voice.
"Get out of my head!" He had to cover what he had heard, hold it to himself for whatever advantage it may yield him.
I'm not in your head, Misterwolf … I'm below it, down here rooting through all these things you want to forget. Would you like me to describe some of them to you now? Dredge up these memories for you to feast on? They're all here, awaiting their fair showing. Here, this woman Sandra Francis with her long red hair and—
"Shut the fuck up!" Cole hissed. He swung the Jeep left into a narrow lane, and the sense of his mind being invaded grew warmer, wetter.
Warmer.
"You want me to find you."
There's always fun in the chase.
He pressed his foot down on the gas and flicked the headlamps to full beam, taking corners at a mad speed, careening into a high bank, wheels spitting mud and gravel as they squealed against protruding stones, away again, light dancing and vibrating across the road ahead of him as the Jeep bounced and jolted from side to side.
Warmer still …
Cole reached over and grabbed the .45 with his left hand, clicking off the safety and resting it between his legs. It was a cool, comforting weight. He fought with the steering wheel as the vehicle splashed through a deep puddle. A house flashed by on the left, whitewashed walls reflecting headlights back at him. Its occupants were probably tucked up cosy in bed, unaware of what had passed them perhaps only a few minutes before. They were dull sheep, sleeping and working, breathing and eating, never questioning the realities they were brought up to hold as truth.
Cole had seen things, done things. He knew that all such realities were lies, invoked because they painted comfortable pictures out of unnatural, unbearable paints. The truth was never easy to accept. It could drive a man mad. His own madness, his own unbearable truths, were buried deep. And he liked it that way. They spoke to him sometimes, but usually only in dreams, and he had become adept at forgetting his dreams.
Sandra with her long red hair?
Cole shook his head, and the point of one of those hidden memories sank back down into safe, impenetrable depths.
Ooh, very warm now Mister Wolf. Be seeing you soon. Don't forget to have fun, because fun is what it's all about. What else is there? Only death, and decay, and ten years of purgatory, you bastard. You'll never win, Cole. Never!
"What game are you playing?" Cole said, but Natasha did not answer, and he suspected that she had fallen silent for now. Is it just this? he thought. Maybe it was a tease and they went the other way. There's no rule to this little bitch, no rhyme or reason.
There was a hollowness in his chest at the thought of her being out, a void where hope had once existed. So many times over the years he had considered returning to the Plain, excavating the grave, pulling out Natasha's corpse and finishing what he had started. But he was scared and in denial. Even with everything he knew of the berserkers, he had believed that she would be dead. And that belief, that hope, had kept him away. That, and the certainty that unearthing a corpse that spoke to him would drive him mad.
Around the next corner a tractor blocked the road.
Cole stomped on the brake and clutch, righting the juddering wheel, the Jeep shuddering as the ABS kicked in, the farmer turning in his tractor, his face big and pale and comically shocked, mouth open and one hand coming up to protect his face against the two tonnes of metal hurtling toward him. Cole shouted and pressed the pedals harder, actually standing from the seat and bracing himself against the steering wheel. The tractor jumped forward as the farmer sped up, a reaction as useless as it was automatic. And the one thought that screamed out in Cole's mind was, What the hell is he doing out at three in the morning?
The Jeep hit a pothole and bumped to the left, burying its nose in the hedge. Cole was thrown forward, seatbelt locking across his chest and biting into his neck. It knocked the breath from him and, winded for the second time in an hour, he slumped back in his seat and gasped for air. The Jeep's bumper had nudged the tractor's big rear wheel, but only slightly. The farmer drove on for an extra few feet—as if afraid that the Jeep would leap ahead again, like an animal lunging at its prey—and then pulled over into a gateway.
"You alright?" the man shouted, jumping from the tractor and waddling up the road. He was wearing a boiler suit and Wellington boots, and in the glare from the Jeep's headlamps he looked like a lumbering puppet. Cole sucked in a breath at last and let out a hooting laugh, realising as he did so that he had been grasping the .45 so tightly between his knees that he could feel bruises forming there already.
"So do I just shoot this twat?" he said, laughing so hard that a string of snot powered from his nose. I'm losing it, he thought, too pumped up, too careless.
The farmer reached the Jeep and held out his hand as if to open the door. But then he looked inside, and whatever he saw in Cole's face caused him to move back a few cautious paces, eyes downcast. Dominant male, Cole thought, snorting again. He gave in to the laughter as he restarted the Jeep—it had stalled after striking the hedge—and by the time he scraped between the tractor and the far hedge he was guffawing almost beyond control. But it felt good, it felt like regaining control, so he let it come some more.
"Nearly there!" he said, laughing again. "Nearly there for you, Natasha! I've been warming my gun so that the bullet's not too cold when it goes into your skull." His head hurt, his leg was stiff with dried blood, and every time he turned the steering wheel it felt as though blades were slicing into his hands. "Soon," he said.
Cole glanced once in his rearview mirror. The farmer was already climbing back onto the tractor, probably trying to get his story straight so he could tell his fat wife later.
Natasha was there then, probing his mind, seeing how close he was and withdrawing again. She left something behind, an echo of herself. To Cole it felt like fear. He smiled.