Dead Of Night Part 1

Dead of Night.

Lynn Viehl.

For my niece, Briana, with much love from your Enchilada.

One.

Most people have two lives. One is the life we carry on in the open where everyone can see it. It's who we are to our family, friends, and even strangers. In this life we are part of the real world. It's our day-to-day life, our normal life.

We also have another life, one that we have on the inside, out of sight. It's like a reflection of normal life, only with everything we feel and think and dream of and want to do added to it. Sometimes people close to us sense that life, or we trust them enough to share bits of it with them, but mostly we live it alone. That's our inner life, our personal life.

When we have to hide who we are inside from everyone in our real life, then we start living a third life. A secret life. And no matter how careful we are, it's what happens in the secret life that can ruin all the others.

That cold December morning I began in my normal life: living on a horse farm in Lost Lake, Florida. I was doing ch.o.r.es inside while my two brothers, Patrick and Grayson, were working with our new horses. Gray and I had just started winter break from school, so we wouldn't have to go back until January. Trick, who was thirty and our legal guardian, had quit his job and moved us from Chicago to Lost Lake so we could settle down and he could have his dream of breeding horses.

My normal life was nothing special. To everyone in town I was Catlyn Youngblood, a fifteen-year-old girl who had just moved to town in August. I hadn't been at school long enough to make many friends, but I'd never been much of a social b.u.t.terfly. I liked to ride my horse, Sali, read lots of books, and sometimes write bad poetry.

Most of that was even true.

After breakfast I finished my kitchen ch.o.r.es and started the laundry. It would have been nice to have a mom to handle the housework, but our parents had been killed in a car accident when I was little. By the time I folded the last load of towels and put them away, I checked the time. It was only 10:15 a.m., which made me wonder if my watch needed a new battery. But no, the wall clock in the kitchen also read quarter-past ten. Trick had promised to take me into town for my job interview, but the appointment wasn't until three.

That left me four hours and forty-five minutes to do the rest of my ch.o.r.es, make lunch, decide what to wear and practice looking responsible and reliable so I'd get hired and earn some extra spending money.

Most of that was true, too.

"Cat?"

I thought of Shakespeare's twenty-ninth sonnet, my favorite poem of all time, and recited it in my mind as I walked back to the kitchen. When in disgrace with fortune and in men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state ...

Trick stood at the back door, and hay and dirt covered his black T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans. "I need the first aid kit."

I stopped thinking about troubling heaven with bootless cries, whatever they were. "What now?"

"Flash had another tizzy. Gray's hurt." He held up one dirty hand. "Not bad, but-"

I didn't wait to hear the rest, but grabbed from under the sink the big white plastic case with all our first aid supplies. "How bad is not bad?"

"Not that bad." He looked down at me as I pushed past him. "I can take care of it."

"Sure you can," I said, heading toward our barn. "You can also give him a nice infection."

He caught up with me, dusting his palms on the sides of his jeans before glancing at them and sighing. "All right, but I'll warn you now, there's some blood."

"When Flash throws a fit, there usually is." I saw our problem child palomino tied and hobbled in the front training pen. Gray's horse looked angelic with his creamy golden hide and silky white-blonde mane and tail. Which he most certainly was not. As soon as Flash saw me he swung around so I was looking at his rear.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," I muttered. "Talk to the hindquarters."

Inside the barn Gray was sitting on a bale of hay. He looked pale, and held an old rag against his left temple. The blood staining it and the front of his s.h.i.+rt made my stomach clench.

"I'm okay," he muttered as I reached him.

I put down the kit and tugged the rag and his hand aside. The distinct shape of the ugly gash on his temple made me take a quick breath. "Flash did this?"

"He didn't mean it." My brother tried to put the rag back, but I tossed it out of his reach. "Come on, Cat."

In the past Flash had never hurt Gray. Now he was injuring him almost weekly. I didn't buy it. "This is, what, the fourth time he didn't mean it?" I demanded as I opened the kit. "Or the fifth?"

My brother put on his sulky face. "It's not that deep. Just give me some band-aids."

"Only if you put them over your mouth." I checked his ears for bleeding, but found none. "Any headache?"

His broad shoulders moved.

I made a victory sign with my hand in front of his nose. "How many fingers?"

"None. Claws? Two." He flinched as I yanked his too-long golden locks out of his face. "Hey."

"Look at me." I used a pen light from the kit to check his pupils, both of which dilated normally. "You keep up this feud with Flash and I'm going to have to take another first aid course. The one for treating reckless brothers who don't know how to hold their horses."

Gray muttered some words he wasn't supposed to use under his breath.

"Nice language." I used some antiseptic to soak a gauze pad. "This is going to burn like blazes. You want a stick to bite down on, tough guy?"

"I told you, it's not-" His voice turned into a pained grunt as I began cleaning the hoof-shaped cut. "For crying out loud, will you take it easy with that stuff?"

"As often as that stupid horse has been clobbering you lately, I should keep the bathtub filled with peroxide and dip you twice a day." Now that I had wiped away most of the blood, I saw that the cut was mostly superficial, although my brother was probably going to end up with a spectacular bruise.

I applied some antibiotic ointment as I glanced at Trick. "The Red Cross instructor said even minor head wounds can be unpredictable. We should take him over to the E.R. to be checked out."

"I'm not spending the rest of the day sitting in a waiting area." Gray got to his feet. "Where's Flash?" He didn't wait for an answer but stalked out of the barn.

"Let him go, Catlyn," Trick said, catching my arm as I tried to follow. "He's embarra.s.sed."

I turned on him. "He got kicked in the head, Patrick. He's lucky his brains aren't leaking out of his ears." Now I saw a dark, wet patch under the dirt on his s.h.i.+rt and pointed to it. "What is that?"

Trick glanced down. "Gray's blood."

"It better be." I looked past him at the horses, all of whom had their heads over the stall doors to watch us (next to humans, horses were the nosiest creatures on earth). That's when I noticed the empty s.p.a.ce between Sali and Jupiter. "Where's Rika?"

"By now"-my brother rubbed the back of his neck-"on the other side of the farm."

Paprika, a pregnant mare my brother had recently bought, had been causing trouble since coming to the farm. An elegant Arabian the exact color of her namesake spice, Trick had told us she seemed good-tempered. And she had been, until we'd led her out of the trailer. The minute she'd stepped off the ramp she'd started fighting her bridle. Even after Trick had hustled her into her new stall she'd fussed for hours.

My brother intended to return her and get his money back, which was when he discovered Rika's former owner had moved out of the state the day after he sold her to us.

Since we were stuck with Rika, we tried to make the best of it. Gray, who had trained our other horses, began trying to gentle her. His experience dealing with Flash's tantrums made him a lot more patient than me or Trick, and his quiet, calm handling usually soothed the most aggressive mule-heads. For some reason, however, the Arabian didn't like him.

Gray had tried everything: training her alone, letting her run first, putting her on a lead rope, and sticking her in the smallest pen. Where, I suddenly realized, Flash was now in his timeout.

"Did Grim put Flash in with Rika?" I demanded. Grim was one of my nicknames for my brother, as was Grouch, Gross, and every other Gr-word that fit his surly personality.

"He tried to." My brother's expression turned wry. "For about ten seconds."

I couldn't believe it. Pairing a steady, well-trained horse with a troublemaker was one way to reinforce herd behavior; but Flash was about as calm as a hurricane. "Trick, when you want to put out a fire, you don't throw gasoline at it."

He glanced at the barn door. "Gray knows he screwed up," he said in a lower voice. "Now let it go."

"Yeah, sure." The frustration I felt was not so much about my brother's carelessness as the reason behind it. Ever since the Halloween dance Gray had been making a lot of dumb decisions, and some of that was my fault. I closed the first aid kit and went to grab my saddle, a coil of rope and a set of blinders.

Most pregnant mares became a little jumpy when they were ready to deliver; with her personality Rika would be ten times worse. "Could she be getting ready to foal?"

"Not yet, she's only thirty-two weeks." He dragged a hand through his hair. "You don't have to go after her."

"Of course I do." I opened Sali's stall and led her out. "She's not going to let you or Gray get anywhere near her now."

Once I had my Sali saddled, I had to force myself to use the mounting crate. If I were by myself I would have just jumped up from the ground to her back, but like a hundred other things it wasn't something I could do in my so-called normal life.

Pretending to be good old clueless Catlyn was the only way I could keep living my normal life. That didn't mean I had to like it.

Sali's hide, the color of bittersweet chocolate, gleamed in the mellow sunlight. I kept her to a walk until we pa.s.sed Gray, who was checking Flash's front legs. I looked into my middle brother's sky-blue eyes, but all I saw there was anger and resentment. "You'd better put him in his stall before I get back with her."

I tapped Sali's sides with my heels, and we took off. Normally I would keep her in her walking gait to start off a ride, but we had to catch Rika. Sali raced easily across the pasture at a smooth, gliding lope. I spotted some fresh clods of dirt and gra.s.s and guided her to follow them.

One hundred and forty acres around the old farmhouse belonged to us, so Sali and I had a lot of ground to cover. At first I worried the Arabian might have made for the woods bordering our land so she could hide; the density of the trees and the brush growing there would force me to go after her on foot, and I didn't feel like playing hide-and-go-seek. But the tracks she'd left made a beeline to the open back pastures, where only a handful of enormous, ancient black oaks still grew.

Sali lifted her head to sniff the air, and then turned as we both saw a reddish blur of movement along the back fence.

"All right, girl." I reined in Sali, reaching for my coil of rope and adjusting the slipknot. "This has to be quick but careful. You ready?"

Sali snorted a small cloud of white breath in the chilly air. She was always ready.

I leaned forward and hooked the reins over the horn to free both my hands. "Now."

Sali took off toward the fence, and once we were within sight of our runaway I released two coils of rope.

Rika's sides already bulged with the bulk of her unborn foal; now sweat and foam made dark diagonal streaks over it. As soon as she saw us she veered away from the fence; she was smart enough to avoid getting boxed in between Sali and the wire. But the burden of the foal slowed her, and she couldn't keep ahead of us. As soon as we got within ten yards I tossed the end loop of my la.s.so high over her head. As the loop came down I jerked my wrist, pulling it back so that it fell over her head. Immediately I hauled back the slack, tightening the slipknot.

Rika fought to free herself from the la.s.so, and jerked the line across the back of my wrist. I ignored the rope burn and her caterwauling as I came alongside her and hustled her over toward the fence.

"Okay, okay," I said in a soft, soothing voice as I swung off my saddle and got in front of Rika's head. "You've had your fun, now it's time to think of the baby and settle down. Settle down," I repeated as she kicked out with her hind legs.

Sali whickered her annoyance with Rika as I kept a tight hold on the rope. I also kept talking as I inspected the Arabian. Her dark red sorrel hide made it hard to make out fresh wounds, but I found some scratches on her forelegs and her right flank, and a bald spot on her tail. I didn't see any signs of the edema at the bottom of her belly, and she didn't have any fluid streaks on her hindquarters that would mean she was delivering the foal too soon.

"I've got bad news, girl," I told her as I kept my hand on her back and made my way around to her nose again. "You're going to live."

Rika's head drooped, and her nose touched my shoulder briefly.

"Believe me, I feel the same way." I stroked her short nose before I looked into her eyes. I knew it was safer to put the blinders on her, but she looked so defeated I didn't have the heart to. "Listen, I know you don't like it here, and my brothers scare you, but there's no place else to go. So come back to the barn with me and Sali now, okay?"

Rika looked as if all the fight had gone out of her, but I knew better, and kept her tethered until I was mounted again. She fussed a bit more, nipping at Sali, who showed her dominance as lead mare by head-b.u.t.ting Rika until she quit.

"Here we go, ladies. Let's take it nice and slow."

I kept both horses at a walk all the way back to the barn. Rika didn't give me any trouble until we came within sight of the pen, but fortunately Gray had put Flash away. I led the Arabian to the back of the barn instead of the front, where I dismounted and led Rika into the treatment pen where we put the horses for vet checks and vaccinations. I couldn't give her too much water, which would have made her sick, but I put enough in the trough to keep her occupied while I put Sali away.

"You'll be next," I promised my mare, giving her an apple cookie and kissing the white blaze on her nose before I went to the supply cabinet.

It was too expensive to call the vet for every little thing, so we did a lot of simple doctoring ourselves. First I checked the rope burn on my wrist, which wasn't bad, and then grabbed the horse kit. After bathing the Arabian with a lukewarm spray, I rubbed her down and smeared some salve over her scratches. Once I finished I put a little of the special pregnancy formula feed in the fence bucket as a treat. Rika shuffled over, giving me one last suspicious look before dipping in her nose.

"You're welcome," I said, and turned to see my oldest brother leaning against the fence. "Not interested in helping?"

"You had everything under control." Trick came and examined my handiwork. "Looks like she tangled with some wire. I'll check her records and see when she had her last teta.n.u.s shot." He took the dirty towels and jar of salve from me. "Now you need a bath."

"Now I need to take of Sali," I corrected him.

"I did that while you were was.h.i.+ng Rika." He smiled a little. "Thanks for catching her."

"Anytime. And I don't mean that." I glanced over my shoulder at the Arabian before I added, "Trick, there is something wrong with that horse. She's not just bad-tempered or wild. Something is setting her off."

"Arabians are usually wound pretty tight," he reminded me.

"No horse is that tight all the time." I followed him into the barn. "And I don't think it's personal. I think she'd be this way with anyone, anywhere. It's like she hates the world."

He thought about it for a minute. "I haven't found any scars on her that would indicate she was abused in the past."

"Maybe her old owner didn't beat her." I knew how stupid that sounded, but my brother knew a lot more about horses than I did. "Could he have locked her up, or starved her?"

"She's not underweight, she doesn't have any significant scars, and her muscle tone is fine." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'll call Dr. Marks and see if he still has her old records. He may have treated her for a fall or a bad injury."

Severe stress could cause horses to misbehave, and getting hurt was extremely stressful. While the injury could heal in a few weeks or months, the memory of what caused it stayed with most horses. Some could never again be ridden or worked.

Rika had challenged me and Sali, but only after we had cornered her. She should have responded well to Sali's presence, as horses had herd mentality and for them two were always better than one. Something else had made Rika run, something that made me wonder just what had happened with Gray and Flash.

"You should ask the vet if he knows who trained her," I said. Some owners hired professionals who were harder on the horses than was necessary; the type who always referred to training as "breaking in." If Rika had been bullied during training, she might always a.s.sociate it with fear.

My brother nodded. "I'll give him a call later."

The slant of the sunlight through the barn windows made me glance at my watch. "It's almost noon. I'll take a shower before I fix lunch. You can still drive me into town for my interview, right?"

"I said I would." Trick closed the supply cabinet door. "I don't like the idea of you working through the holidays, though, especially in town by yourself. If you need money for clothes or Christmas gifts, just ask."