The man was yelling, but it was hard to hear beneath the fierce scream of an outraged stallion. Other horses, terrified by the noise, the smell of blood, and the rampaging stallion, began to spin in their stalls and whinny. I managed to sit up in time to see Charles clamber to his feet and stagger toward the door. But Vento wasn’t going to let that happen. He pushed the man hard in the back with his head and sent the thug sprawling. What the fuck, I thought? The only other time I’d seen anything like this was on a vacation out west when I’d watched a mare crush a rattlesnake that had entered her pen. Not that Charles wasn’t as dangerous as that rattler, but how could a horse know that? Vento reared, a terrifying sight, and came down onto the man’s back with both front hooves. There was an audible crack. The stallion continued to strike out, battering the limp form beneath his feet.
I tore the gag away, ripped off the belt that secured my legs, and struggled to my feet. I ran to the horse, arms outstretched. “Whoa, whoa, boy. Easy.” I kept my voice low and soothing. “What a good boy. Easy now.” The long head swung back to look at me, and the wild light faded from the deep brown eyes.
The horse turned away from the limp form and minced gingerly over to me. His front hooves were stained with blood. I swallowed hard. I threw my arms around the powerful neck, and hung on for dear life. Vento turned his head so he had me wrapped in the curve of his neck, his version of a hug. His nostrils flared, blowing warm breath across my back as his sides heaved with his frantic breaths. He was wet with sweat, his skin was hot, and I pressed closer because I was suddenly shivering. A sob burst from my chest. Over the chorus of frightened whinnies I heard the sound of car engines, one very close and one more distant.
A dark figure loomed in the door of the barn and ran toward me. “David!” I ran toward him and collapsed, sobbing, against his chest. His arms closed around me, pulling me close. He pressed his lips against my temple. He was cold, but the embrace was comforting in ways I couldn’t explain.
“Linnet. Dear God.” He looked over at the still form lying in the breezeway. “What happened here?”
I gestured at Charles. “He was going to kill me. He and Qwendar. Make it look like suicide.” I wiped an arm across my streaming eyes and my running nose. “But Vento saved me.”
David’s expression was a study in confusion. “Wait. I’m lost. That’s not Qwendar.”
“No, that’s Charles, a guy he hired.”
“How do you know his name?”
“Qwendar used it. Why are you asking me that?”
He pressed a hand against his forehead. “You’re right, that was stupid. I’m just so…” He shook his head like a boxer shaking off a hard uppercut. “Why don’t you put the horse away. Let me take a look at this fellow.”
It made sense. I took Vento’s halter off the hook by his stall, slipped it over his head, and started to lead him back to his stall. But the sight of the blood on his hooves was too disturbing. I took him into the wash rack, thinking I would clean his feet.
David knelt next to Charles and pressed the tips of his fingers against the man’s throat feeling for a pulse. He looked up at me and shook his head.
“He’s dead.” I shivered, turned on the hose. “Don’t!” David snapped. “We have to call the police and we have to preserve the evidence.” I hesitated but turned off the water.
“You won’t let them hurt Vento, will you? He saved my life.”
At that moment a man dressed in jeans and a pajama top, his bare feet thrust into tennis shoes, came running into the barn. “Jesus Christ!” he swore when he spotted the body.
David stepped forward, all competence and control. “Are you the manager of this facility?”
“Yeah. My house is on the other side of the property. I heard the horses going crazy and drove over. Who are you? And who’s he?” he gestured at the body. “And who’s she?”
“We need to call the police,” David said.
“Yeah, I guess we do.” The barn manager pulled out a cell phone and dialed 911. I led Vento back to his stall. David joined me. We slid the stall door closed together. I automatically went to clip it shut, but couldn’t find the clip. David bent and picked it up out of the dirt and sawdust. It was a metal clip, and the metal was twisted and broken at the hasp.
“It’s like the horse twisted it until the metal fatigued and broke,” the vampire mused.
“And then he pulled open the door,” I said. “That’s what saved me. That guy was about to pull the trigger when I fell backward.”
David looked around and spotted the pistol, half obscured by sawdust. He put an arm around my shoulders, led me over to a tack trunk, and sat down with me beside him.
“I don’t know a lot about horses, and no disrespect to this one, but doesn’t that rather make him the Einstein of horses?”
“I don’t know … yes. I think he just sensed that I was terrified.”
“Before the police arrive, start at the beginning and tell me what happened.”
“When I got off the plane there was a man—him,” I pointed at the dead man. “Waiting at the baggage claim with my name on a card.”
“And you just went with him?” David exploded. “A total stranger, and you—”
It was irrational and unfair, and I snapped, “Hey! When we arrived last month you just got in a car with Kobe, a total stranger. People do it all the time. And I thought you might have sent a car for me. Stupid to have expected that, I know.”
He was offended. “I was coming to pick you up!”
“You were? Oh. Sorry. How did we miss each other?”
“The airline overestimated how late the plane would be. You were gone by the time I got there. But go on with your story.”
So I did. When I got to the part about Qwendar trying to force me to write a suicide note using his magic, I stuttered and became reticent. I wanted time to process what Qwendar had said before I shared it with anyone else. Qwendar had only remarked on my seemingly miraculous escape from Jondin’s bullet fest, but he hadn’t known my entire history. He didn’t know about my equally improbable escapes from maddened werewolves. Escapes that had three different policemen in three different venues shaking their heads over my incredible “luck.” Now I had to wonder if it was luck, or if there was something about me?
I cleared my throat and said, “He … he tried to get me to write a suicide note, but I refused. They would have had to hurt me to make me comply, and Qwendar wanted it to look like a suicide. That’s when he ordered the thug to stick the gun in my hand, and shoot me in the head. Then Vento happened, and then you arrived.” I ended with a vague gesture.
After I finished David sat silent for a few minutes. “Clever. Devilishly clever,” he said finally. “Qwendar comes to me and tells me how he’s worried about you after the meeting with John, thus setting the stage for your suicide.” He made air quotes around the last word.
“Would you have believed him?” I demanded. The idea that I could be seen as crazy and obsessed didn’t sit well.
David gave an emphatic head shake. “No. Not a chance. You are sometimes—oftentimes—irritating as hell, Linnet, but you are indomitable. Nothing knocks you down for long. You’re like one of those damn punching clowns. The harder you hit them, the faster they bounce back up.”
“I guess that’s a compliment,” I said.
“It was.” An ironic smile twisted David’s mouth. “Not a very good one, I’ll admit.”