23.
Petal
She screamed again, falling to the ground and backpedaling away from the apparition that had appeared in front of her.
“This isn’t real,” she whispered. “This is a dream. I hit my head in the truck, and I’m hallucinating. I’m still in the truck. I’m asleep. This isn’t real, Petal. Wake up. Wake up, Petal. WAKE UP!”
She started yelling at herself, but bits and pieces of driveway whipped around the base of the wind-person, and occasionally they would flick out and painfully hit her.
Pain, she’d been told, was the one thing that couldn’t be felt in a dream. If she were feeling pain, it meant she wasn’t dreaming.
“I can still be hallucinating though. Nice try, mind. But I’m not so insane yet to believe that wind-people actually exist.”
The ghostly thing stopped floating toward her. Its head tilted to one side. She got the impression that its sightless eyes were staring at her.
“Do you always talk to yourself?” it asked.
“Damn straight. I’m a crazy person. You should probably go away, lest you get the crazy yourself.”
The wind-person chuckled, a soft musical noise like chimes in a cool summer breeze. It was female, Petal realized suddenly. The wind had a gender! She peered closer at the swirling bits of air and other things that had gotten caught up in the slipstream of the—she needed a better name than “wind-person”—and noticed that there indeed were faint bumps where a human might have breasts.
Petal scrambled backward some more, putting distance between her and the wind-rider. It was better, at least, but she still wasn’t satisfied with the name. Getting to her feet, she pelted full-bore down the driveway. Perhaps it was magical and couldn’t come off the property. If she could just get past the gates, maybe she would be safe!
Her escape lasted all of three steps before she ran into a wall of air. Momentarily thankful that she hadn’t gotten up to full speed before hitting it, Petal flailed about blindly, trying to make headway. The air was so hard, however, that it felt like she was hitting solid metal.
“Ahhh, such feeble struggles. Like all the others. It means nothing, you know. You can’t escape.”
Petal stopped struggling and turned around to confront the wind-demon. More accurate, but not really badass. “What others?”
Before she’d even finished speaking the ethereal hand gestured. A vortex of wind surrounded Petal, lifting her from her feet. The hand beckoned and she was carried along the property, through the carport, and into the backyard.
The scene before her made her stomach heave violently.
“Weaklings,” the apparition sighed.
The air-cocoon disappeared and Petal fell to the ground. She closed her eyes tightly, but the tableau arranged in the backyard was already seared into her brain. The four dead bodies, staked out to four individual trees around a fire. Tubes ran from the bodies to the fire, and they were stained a dark reddish color.
Harvesting, she realized suddenly. They’d been harvested for their blood. A corner of her brain, slightly more rational than the rest, recognized the face of one of the bodies as the first woman who had gone missing in Surrey. Leslie Mckay, she thought the name was. Which meant that this is where they’d all been taken to.
And Petal was next.
“What do you want with me?”
An eerie keening wail filled the air as the suddenly solidified around the woman. It grew so fierce that Petal’s view was blocked, obscuring what was going on behind it. Fearful that the power was about to be unleashed on her, she looked around frantically for cover of any sort. The backyard was bare…except for the firepit.
Petal started crawling toward it, but before she’d gotten halfway to the big steel drum, the noise stopped. Scared and yet immensely curious at the same time, she glanced over at the wind-demon.
“You’re human,” she gasped.
The miniature cyclone had dissipated, revealing a disheveled, wild-looking woman in her place. A brown tunic of some sort covered her upper half, and a—was that a bedsheet?—covered her lower half. Black sandals adorned her feet. Long tangled brown hair hung from her head, infused with leaves, needles and other debris.
“Not quite,” the woman—she looked no older than fifteen, maybe eighteen—said, her voice now devoid of the slight fuzziness it had had while she was made of air.
Listen to her. Made of air! People weren’t made of air. They were made of flesh and bone and blood. Not the wind. People like that simply didn’t exist. It couldn’t exit. Could it? Did people like this really walk the earth? How could they exist and yet there be no records of them?
“I’m so confused.”
The woman, no more than a girl really, walked over to Petal, ignoring the comment. She tried to run, but a quick gesture whipped up some more air, pinning her in place. When the girl drew close enough she gestured with her hand, and the air leapt to obey. Petal’s long blonde hair swirled up above her head, and then was pulled with violent force after the woman.
“I don’t have another tree. So I hope you don’t mind a bit of metal.”
It was then that she noticed the thin metal pole next to the last body. Another bar had been lashed to it crosswise.
“It’s a crucifixion,” she said weakly, understanding at last. “Oh shit.”
“Up you go!”
The laughter was completely at odds with the death sentence that she was pronouncing on Petal, who screamed and struggled mightily, but to no avail. The wind lifted her up to the metal pole, acting as restraints. Her arms spread wide until they were pinned against the cross pole. Other circlets of wind wrapped around her upper arms, chest, waist, and legs. The control of the wind this woman exhibited was terrifying. Especially considering she shouldn’t be able to do that.
“Why are you killing me?”
“Why, my dear? Why? Because. You are in love! The best kind as well. True love. Do you have any idea how much more powerful that makes your blood? Oh, the things I will do to Surrey with such power at my fingertips. It will makes everything else look like a warmup!”
The crazy girl who could control the wind devolved into maniacal laughter as she busied herself detaching some of the tubing from one of the dead bodies, obviously preparing to use it on Petal.
Think, Petal. Think smart and fast if you want a way out of this.
What was she talking about? How could her blood be powerful? And what was she going to do with it? How could her blood hurt Surrey? Petal looked up at the other bodies, assuming the woman had done the same thing. She noted that the first two were set apart from each other, but the last two, the ones closest to her, were much closer. Three separate groups. And Petal would be the fourth. But fourth what?
The answer came to her with an abrupt clarity.
“The storms.” Petal knew as she spoke that she was right. “You caused the storms. With them.” Her head nodded at the other bodies. “Why?”
“Why?” The word was a fury-infused hiss. “Because you humans dare to step foot in my valley. You build your buildings, you pave over the beautiful ground. You cut down the wondrous trees. You are killing the valley, and you don’t even care!”
Petal’s ears hurt by the end of the rant, the wind acting like an amplifier to the words. She cried out and shook her head, trying to block out the sound, but the wrathful air-woman continued to wail. There were no words, just a sound of mixed anger and sorrow. Finally she came to a halt, her brown eyes glowing with orange-hatred as she fixed them on Petal.
“For that, you will die, and I will wipe the town off the face of the earth with your blood.”
“Please don’t.” She shook her head weakly. “I don’t even live there.”
The woman—what was she?—gave a very humanlike snort. “You can’t fool me. You’re all vermin.”
“Excuse me?” Petal’s head snapped up as fire coursed through her blood. “Vermin? You dare to call us vermin? You who would slaughter four innocents without a second thought? People who hadn’t done a single thing to you? People who didn’t even know you existed, because you’re too scared to reveal yourself? You are a coward! And you have the nerve to call us vermin? Pathetic. We don’t even know what you are.”
The wind had begun to whistle the instant Petal started speaking. As she lashed out at her captor it increased to a shriek and gusts of wind began striking at her, lashing out like whips. Petal screamed and tried to pull herself free, but she couldn’t. The wind kept her firmly in place while it struck her. A cut opened on her arm as it started to flay her alive.
“WHAT ARE YOU?!” she screamed, shouting the question to be heard over the gale-force roar.
The woman stood shaking, her eyes fixated on Petal as she quivered on the spot, clearly overcome with anger. She was forced to squint against the wind to keep her eyes on the woman. It was only because of that action that Petal saw the gray-white blur shoot across the clearing and ride the woman to the ground before it leapt free and shot back off into the nearby forest that encroached on the backyard.
Whatever had happened, it clearly got the wind-woman’s attention. The blasts of air striking Petal stopped, and her restraints dissipated instantly.
“Argh!” she cried out, dropping eight feet to the ground to land in a heap, pain exploding all over her body from the impact. It faded swiftly though, telling her that nothing serious had happened.
“NO!” The shriek came from the downed woman, who had gotten to her feet. Miniature tornadoes appeared in her open palms, and she startled hurling them at the forest.
Petal watched in awe and horror as the tornadoes grew in size as they shot forward. When they reached the trees the trunks exploded under the force of the wind. The woman continued to hurl them from left to right, obviously trying to hit whatever had struck her.
“I won’t lose to you this time!” she shouted, walking a path of destruction across the forest.
“HYPOCRITE!” someone yelled. Petal was amazed to realize it was her.
The woman turned to look at Petal. She had begun to lose some of her features, the wind aspect creeping back in as she lost control of the situation.
“You heard me! You want to kill us for destroying the valley, but look at you. One little hissy fit and you’re destroying acres of forest! Why do you deserve the valley more than we do, if you can’t even keep it alive?” By the time she finished Petal was on her feet, facing down the woman. She’d dealt with bullies her entire life, and this one was no different, except for the whole controlling of the wind bit.
But if Petal was going down, she wasn’t going to do it without giving her a piece of her mind.
“I’ll kill you for that!” With a shriek she raised a hand at Petal.
“You were going to kill me anyway!” She yelled back. “Oh shit!”
The woman flung a tornado at Petal.
She turned and ran sideways, but not before she saw the same gray and white shape come shooting out of the deep woods like a rocket. After that Petal was forced to duck for cover as the tornado shot by, slamming into the side of the house. Wood exploded everywhere, peppering her with pulverized pieces of siding and walls. She screamed and kept running, until she’d gotten far enough out of the path of the damn thing to be out of danger.
Then she turned. What she saw made no more sense to her than anything else she’d seen that day. After all, why wouldn’t a massive wolf be fighting someone made out of wind? That was clearly the next logical step, right?
Even as she watched, the wolf tore a chunk of flesh off, exposing the wind-form underneath.