chapter Thirteen
Liberty left through the kennel, kept her wits long enough so she didn’t exit as a raging bull. No sense losing her head if she wanted a reunion.
Flipping the switch to extinguish the outside light, she stepped outside, taking stock of her surroundings. A quick visual search showed the absence of auras, and no human scent could be detected in the immediate vicinity. She listened. The only sounds came from nature. No vehicles were on Little Church Road, or Rimrock Hill.
Liberty followed the route Becky had, but she stayed far enough from the road to not get caught in any headlights. Nathaniel and Gabriel had taken the shorter route, but she couldn’t go through the woods if she wanted to keep a lookout for Sage’s car.
She made good time. By the time she reached the crossroads of Little Church and Athens Roads, she estimated only ten minutes had passed. She headed north up Athens and gauged it so she would come out approximately where she and Becky had sat in the truck during their stakeout.
Five minutes later she came out where she’d planned and peered up toward the Jenkins’ house. Sage’s car sat in the driveway. She reminded herself to stay calm, take stock, and not to make any stupid mistakes. She listened, looked for auras, and lifted her nose to the air. So far the area hadn’t raised an alarm, though she did catch a faint scent of Nathaniel. She figured he had probably exited the woods in the same area as well.
She crossed the road in a crouch and dropped to all fours in the field to the right of the house. She was still quite a distance away, but because the area was open, she decided it best to keep a low profile.
The path she chose would bring her out to the right of the property, between the house and barn. She was almost there when she sensed a dog, and then watched him emerge from a doghouse near the barn. She quickly bustled, and the hound sniffed the air, took a few laps from its bowl and then retreated into its den. Careful to keep up the shield, she got up in a low crouch and ran to the darkened side of the barn, the opposite side of where the doghouse sat.
The scent from inside the building was repulsive. It had obviously been where the previous owner conducted part of his taxidermy business. Various stages of decomposition, from various species of animals wafted through the siding. It was all she could do not to lean over and retch.
Focus on Sage, she told herself, and for crying out loud, don’t lose it now.
She stood, flattened herself against the rough planks and sidestepped to the front to check out the house from the shadows. She felt her pelt catch several times and grimaced, come daylight there’d be enough of her left behind to weave a scarf.
Near the front, Nathaniel’s scent was stronger, but she still found no sign of him or Gabriel.
Parked a good distance down the road, the house hadn’t seemed very big when she had come with Becky. But up close it looked massive. Even to her, bigger than a human man.
On the gable end of the house, facing the field she’d crossed over, were a set of over-sized garage doors leading down into the basement on sloped concrete. The doors were pulled down, but three small windows in each one showed a light was on inside.
Thick bushes lined the perimeter of the house and she worked her way around the ones on the backside, scrutinized each shrub to determine if Nathaniel and Gabriel had crouched and hidden behind one. All empty.
Surely they’d seen her, right? Humans couldn’t detect Sasquatch auras, but hers was a vibrant gold with red chasers. She had to look like a giant glowworm. Why hadn’t they signaled to her yet?
A television was on somewhere inside. The two windows above the garage doors were lit, as well as out of seven of the eight windows across the back of the house. She agreed with Becky. Certainly not ones for conservation. And why would they need the rooms so lit up? Maybe someone was afraid of the dark. She could relate to a degree. The dark was sometimes a dangerous, scary place.
A series of tiny rustles made her crane her neck, look into the patch of woods that bordered the backyard. Unable to discern any movement or abnormal shapes in the sparse foliage, she turned back toward the front and jerked when she saw the hound dog peeking around the corner, sniffing at her.
She motioned him away, hissed a little and then almost bolted when the same exact wail she’d heard earlier, when she’d been with Becky, boomed down from the sky.
What the hell? She looked up. Was there a Sasquatch on the barn roof? The hound started to nose around in the fur on her calf. She legged him, light for her, but for the dog it was a lot. He rolled and yelped. Thankfully he’d not gotten caught up in his chain. She wasn’t sure she could bustle enough to quiet a panicked dog. The dog headed back to his side with a whimper, so at least she’d accomplished her objective.
A moment later, the wail sounded again and this time she looked around the front of the barn to see if she could tell where he was. She couldn’t sense him at all, but even so, she knew it wasn’t Nathaniel, Gabriel, or Adrian. The tone was unique. Almost foreign, though she couldn’t place the area.
A halogen security light mounted on a telephone pole near the driveway flickered, and when it did she noticed a black box mounted near the top of it. Ten seconds later, another wail shrilled. A recording. A speaker.
Her stomach dropped. Movement in her peripheral vision made her duck back flat against the barn. Someone, or something, in one of the rear windows.
As she watched, a white aura appeared in the frame and Liberty’s breath caught in her throat. It couldn’t be denied. Sage was human and her aura had become white. Of course it had, Liberty bemused, her daughter was truly an angel. And coming home to be with her family soon.
The low hum of a motor came from the garage, and Liberty saw a slice of yellow reflected out onto the concrete as one of the doors began to rise. The smell of death carried out into the night. Her nostrils flared as she controlled the instinct to flee.
She looked back to the kitchen window and Sage was gone.
She wasn’t sure what happened next. Whether he dog barked and lunged at her. Or maybe it was the sound of footsteps pounding directly behind her. But in the midst of activity, before she even had a chance to turn around, she realized she’d been struck.
She looked down at her right thigh and saw a cylinder of some type lodged into the fur, the meat, and as she reached down to grab it, someone flung a thick, weighted net over the top of her.
Yanking out the cylinder, she fell to her knees. A thick needle attached to the tube had plunged deep into the muscle. And it stung when she removed it. She clawed at the netting with arms that weighed as much as boulders. A light shined in her face. Her lids slammed shut. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t open them again.
A male voice calling out, “Dad, I got another one!”