All of which had made her very easy to track.
Because the Knight of the Word was not trying for extra speed or taking chances with the road and because Delloreen was, she was slowly catching up. If things continued as they were, she would have her by tonight and the chase would be ended.
Then, with her quarry’s head in her possession, she would go back to that old man and settle things once and for all.
She flexed her cramped fingers on the grip of the heavy handlebars, and beneath her scaly skin her muscles rippled. The mutation was advancing more rapidly now, her reptilian appearance obliterating the last vestiges of her humanity. Her spiky blond hair was falling out in clumps, her facial features were smoothing out to a sleek, nondescript sameness, and her limbs were elongating. She was becoming something else, something much more efficient and deadly. It had been happening incrementally for the past year, but just recently it had taken on a new urgency. In part, she thought, it was because she was willing it to quicken, anxious to shed the last of her human skin. She despised her human self; when the last of it was gone, she would shed no tears.
Others might, when they found out how much more dangerous she was in her new form. That old man, for instance. He might. Findo Gask, when he realized that his time was up.
She had been rethinking her declaration of disinterest in leading the once-men. Perhaps she had been too hasty in dismissing the old man’s offer.
Why shouldn’t she lead them? Wasn’t she better equipped, better able, than he was?
How much more quickly the annihilation of the human race would go if she were to take control. Then, when the demons and once-men controlled everything, they would begin to rebuild and resettle to suit themselves. Shouldn’t she be the one to make that happen?
She was so caught up in the idea that she was surprised when she discovered all at once that she had lost the scent she had been tracking. She was still roaring down the highway, still listening for the sound of the other ATV, certain she was closing in, but the sharp smell of its exhaust fumes and the more subtle smell of the woman herself were suddenly absent.
She pulled the Harley Crawler over to the side of the road, shut down its engine, waited for the silence to settle in, and listened. Nothing.
She walked out into the middle of the highway and back across several times, dropping down on all fours to sniff the cracked pavement, the clumps of wintry roadside brush, and the twilight air. Nothing there, either. Somewhere farther back, the Knight of the Word had turned off.
She took a moment to consider what that meant. Either her quarry had reached her destination or she had discovered she was being followed and taken evasive action. Delloreen favored the latter. She had to assume that somehow she had given herself away. The idea infuriated her, and she clenched her fists so hard her claws bit into the scaly hide of her palms. She stalked over to the Harley and turned it around with a furious wrench of its handlebars, and in a shower of gravel and dust she tore back down the highway.
It didn’t take her long to discover the dirt road turnoff that the Knight of the Word had taken. Ten miles back, there it was. You could see the ATV tracks in the dirt. A rough, narrow trail, unlikely to lead to anything, which only confirmed her suspicion that the other knew she was being followed.
How she knew, Delloreen couldn’t say. No one should be able to tell if she was tracking until it was too late. Especially not a human, Knight of the Word or not.
Growling her anger, she turned the big Harley down the dirt road and rocketed ahead, avoiding tree trunks and stumps and swinging wide of the narrow corridors her quarry sought to use as barriers. It would take more than a few trees to stop her. Foolish girl, thinking the woods would hide her. If anything, they betrayed her passage. Even better, the moon was up and its light provided a brilliant beacon by which Delloreen, with her demon-enhanced senses, could find the trail easily.
But the darkness was getting so deep that despite her resolve she was forced to slow to a crawl to make out the tracks of the other machine in the soft earth. The trees thickened further, as well, so much so that it became steadily harder for the Harley to find a path between them. Eventually she was detouring so far off the path before coming back again that it was taking longer for her to make progress on the bike than if she walked. But she pressed on anyway, refusing to be stopped.
It was nearing midnight when she gave it up. She had reached a creek and followed it for almost a mile before finding the Knight’s trail again, and her patience was exhausted. She shut the Harley down, climbed off, and stared into the darkness. Her choices were clear. She could stop for the night and see if the Harley would do better in daylight, when she could see the trail better and choose easier terrain to travel, or she could abandon it and proceed on foot.