“I’ve got to go,” Darcy said.

“ Will you do it?” John shouted through the door.

“I don’t know,” she said. And then thought—if she did that—if she did that, John would be on her side. John was her arbiter of what the village thought. What John said was what they thought was good.

And if she quieted Brionne down, then everything would be quiet and John would help her.

So she went to the cabinet, and turned the key and shook powder into a prescription vial. Her hands were shaking, but she got it in, knowing fairly accurately the girl’s weight. She thought she’d make another pot of tea and put it in that. She stopped the vial and tucked it in her waistband, under her sweater.

Then she went to the kitchen, where Brionne was having a tantrum.

The crockery was all broken in pieces all over the floor. The teakettle was lying against the wall. Brionne was crying and had a metal plate in her hands.

“Honey. Put it down. It’s all right. I told him go away.”

“You’re lying!” Brionne clanged the plate down against a chair, and bent it, and flung it away against the wall. “I hate you! I hate allof you! They’re all talking about me! My brother’sout there, and he’s telling lies about me and everyone believes them!”

“I’m sure I don’t believe them. I think it’s all rather silly.” The playing cards were all over the floor. She crossed the kitchen and picked up the teakettle. She wasn’t sure there was a whole cup in the kitchen.

“My friend will come for me,” Brionne said. “You just watch! He’ll come.”

“Not a horse?”

“I’ll have a horse. I’ll have a horse when I want one! And everybodywill be sorry.”

Darcy felt such an angerfrom the girl, from somewhere, so much angerand confusion…

Brionne headed down the three steps to the passageway door.

“No!” Darcy said sharply, expecting obedience, but Brionne didn’t stop. Brionne flung up the bar, and Darcy crossed the kitchen in four fast strides, reached to stop Brionne and slam the door shut.

The door banged wide. A black shape was there, yellow-eyed, yellow-fanged. It reached a shaggy arm—an arm!—around Brionne, snatching her away, and the other arm swept with a force that flung Darcy back against the wall. It hit her again, and again. She was numb, and astonished—totally astonished—to see the blood spatter wide across the wall. Like Mark’s, that day…

Very much like that day.

Danny was trying to move Cloud into line with the gate to use Cloud for a ladder—but he <heard> people coming then, a <mass of people on the other side of the wall> that very soon he and Tara could hear aloud, swearing and encouraging each other.

“Open the gate!” Danny and Tara yelled, almost with one voice, and that reassured the people on the other side. Someone opened the gate, and Danny got through first, rifle in hand, the pain in his side grown acute, and his throat so raw he immediately went into a coughing fit. Cloud was behind him, and then Tara and Flicker, but the people in front of him, shadowed by the wall, were faceless to him, a mob, a mass—men from the barracks, villagers, he didn’t know.

He did know <horses and riders and danger in the distance, something inside the walls,> and he didn’t waste time trying to understand the shouts about <beasts> and <bears> and <men dead,> he just got control of his coughing enough to swing up to Cloud’s back, feeling the wobble in himself and the wobble in Cloud’s legs as he landed. He started moving through the crowd, aware of <Tara on Flicker behind him,> and it was a measure how frightened the crowd was that people bunched around two riders on horseback and pressed up close to the horses as a point of safety.

Cloud wasn’t used to that kind of treatment. It was a question whether they were going to get through before or after Cloud bit somebody, but the instant there was an opening Cloud jumped forward, instinct-driven toward the <nighthorses ahead> of him, and Cloud’s rider was along for the ride for an instant, Cloud knowing beyond any doubt there was <safety in the nighthorse herd.>

Flicker was close behind them as Cloud ran, and Flicker might not know the horses ahead, but they were a band Cloud knew: <Slip, Shimmer and Rain> was the presence at the mountain-end of the street. <Cloud and Flicker> flung the ambient wider and louder than Danny intended, but it was five horses now, with one mare in foal and a boss horse aggressive as hell toward whatever threatened their vicinity.

They came in where Ridley, Callie and Jennie were holding the area across from the doctor’s house. Randy was there, with a couple of armed women Danny didn’t know, with the marshal’s deputy, some of the hunters, and a very shaken-looking preacher, whose total contribution to the ambient was a roiling chaos of <fear> and <relief> at them being there.

“Tara Chang,” Danny said to Ridley and the rest, by way of introduction. “Guil Stuart and Carlo are coming, but they’ll be longer. What’s happened?”

He got more than he wanted. Cloud shied back from a rush of <beast with yellow eyes> and <Brionne Goss> and <blood.> Someone had died. He thought it was the doctor. He thoughtthe worst of the sending came from young Jennie, in the way of loud juniors and young horses, but he wasn’t sure, and rapidly there was more of it, <man running from the porch,> the echo of confirmation sounding in his head to be the preacher, and <beast-presence climbing in the house, flinging things, breaking things > was current and happening now—along with a presence he knew from brief encounters: Brionne Goss was the core of it, but it was <anger> and <confusion> and<looking for something  before it darted aside on <anger> again.

“Tarmin,” Tara said beside him. “That’s what it was like.”

Like and unlike, Danny was thinking. The Tarmin rogue wasn’t essentially a killer. It opened gates to those that were.

This thing—this confusion—had hands and walked upright, or it was Brionne herself.

“It’s in the upstairs of the house,” Ridley said, and how glad Ridley was to see the two of them was evident in the ambient. “It’s strong. God, it’s strong. We haven’t dared get close to it.”

“Five of us, now,” Tara said. “Let’s push it. Let’s get it out of here and hunt it later.”

Ridley was <scared,> and thought of <Jennie and Rain.> Danny understood the fear he had, bringing a kid’s mind close to that thing. But notdoing it guaranteed she’d be close for sure when the thing went further over the edge than it was.

“I don’t think it’s a rogue,” Danny ventured to say. “Part of it’s the same, but it’s not crazy. I don’t think it’s crazy.” A dreadful comparison occurred to him, and he unintentionally let it loose: <new rider with young horse, first ride, louder than anything near Shamesey; Jennie and Rain, louder than any horse in the camp. Brionne and the yellow-eyed predator.>

Tara, last person he’d have thought would agree, slid into that image with astonishing quickness and memories of <ruined shelter> and <nest. Bones with plaid cloth, near the lake.> “Smart like a horse,” she said. “Damn sure.”

“Paired with that?” Callie said in disgust.

“Nothing I want to see leave here,” Tara said, and intended <shooting it,> no question, while Randy Goss hovered in the low edges of the ambient, <scared,> and <sad,> and <homesick for Tarmin.> Danny knew that image of <Tarmin streets and the blacksmith shop and the house there,> the way Tara had to recognize it.

But Tara was trying to pull them together in <fighting the intruder,> which with Flicker’s essential skittishness had its difficulties. So hewanted it, in support of Tara’s effort, and Callie wanted it; then Jennie was there, fiercely so, and thatspooked Ridley into a direct attack that wasn’t native to him: Danny suddenly felt what Ridley and Slip could be when Jennie was threatened, and all of a sudden the marshal and the preacher and the rest were clearing back from them.