She might not be so lucky again.
It gave her pause that the demon was so intent on catching up to her. It had worked hard at finding her back in LA. It had discovered what she was doing to save the children in the other compounds, then ferreted out her secret entry into the one in Anaheim and set its trap for her. It hadn’t bothered with bringing help to destroy her; it had sufficient confidence—and likely pride—in its own abilities to want to do it alone. As it almost had.
Luck had saved her.
Luck, and a determination that matched that of the demon’s.
Still, to have it tracking her like this . . .
She glanced around quickly at the highway ahead and saw where it branched off into what must have once been an old logging road. Little more than a dirt track, the road dipped down off the embanked highway and disappeared into the trees. So, she thought. Easy enough to drive a hulk like the Harley Crawler down the middle of a paved road. Maybe it wouldn’t be so easy down a narrow, rutted trail.
She returned to the Mercury, where Ailie sat watching her, climbed back onto the seat, and restarted the engine. She felt Ailie’s slender arms come around her waist. “Hold tight, pococito,” she said to her.
She ratcheted the throttle forward and the ATV shot ahead to the dirt road. She turned down it without slowing, anxious now with twilight settling in and night coming on, knowing how hard it would be to get much of anywhere after dark. The Mercury coughed and labored as it hit the weed-grown interior of the trees, but she kept it on track, the dirt road a navigable ribbon that wound ahead into the woods, giving her a way ahead.
In seconds the highway had disappeared behind her and the dusk had thickened to massed shadows and inky gloom. She throttled the Mercury’s engine back again, picking her way carefully, searching out the track where it sometimes faded away into waist-high walls of brush and heavy grasses. These woods here were not as sickened as some, the foliage still plentiful and mostly green amid signs of wilt and some heavy stretches of decay. Hardwoods mingled with conifers, and in the deepening gloom it became possible to believe that the forest had never experienced the damaging effects of the chemical poisonings of the earth and atmosphere. Maybe some places were still healthy enough that they would recover in time, Angel thought, steering the ATV down the twisting path, eyes searching out the way. Maybe some places, like this one, would survive.
But uncertainty clouded her hopes, and she put the matter aside where it belonged.
They rode on for the better part of an hour without speaking, their progress slowed by the conditions of the road and the onset of night, but steady nevertheless. The logging road wound on mile after mile, sometimes splitting off into side trails, sometimes disappearing into open stretches in which the trees had been leveled to stumps and a star-strewn sky filled the horizon end to end.
When she could, she took roads that narrowed down to almost nothing and angled through trees and stumps grown so close together that the big Harley couldn’t pass between them. Once, she took the Mercury into a stream and ran it down the waterway for more than a mile before coming out again onto a bedding of crushed rock and flat stone. Whatever she could do to hide their passing, she did it.
Finally, she slowed and stopped and turned off the engine. “Now what do you hear?” she asked Ailie when the silence had deepened anew.
The tatterdemalion shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Do your senses warn of demons close by?”
Again, Ailie shook her head.
Angel smiled. “Buena. Even so, we will ride on for another hour or two before we sleep. Just to make certain.”
She climbed back into place on the Mercury, turned on the engine, and set out into the dark.
*
DELLOREEN KNEW SHE was getting close. The smells she was using as her marker to track the female Knight of the Word were getting stronger, fresher in her nostrils. She could not yet hear the other ATV over the deep, powerful roar of her own, but she knew it wouldn’t be long. She had been tracking it all day, choosing not to rush her pursuit, waiting all night before setting out so that she wouldn’t miss anything that the light might reveal. The female had no reason to know she was being tracked and would not take much time or effort to hide her trail. She had taken almost none so far, even in her efforts to hide the Harley’s solar cells. Her decision to leave the children she had rescued indicated clearly that she had something of more importance with which to deal, and it was preoccupying her thoughts. Her passage through the trees and onto the highway had been straightforward and direct. She had a destination in mind and incentive to reach it, and she was not going to deviate in her efforts to get there.