Until now.

She leaned the shovel against a tree and covered her face with the ruined hands. So tired, deflating now, as if the air had been let out of her lungs and the blood from her veins. If she could just sit down in the cool darkness and not get up again. This day had been years long, painful and difficult, but she had only come undone at the sight of chipped polish and broken fingernails.

No – it was not quite that simple.

Everything had been lost – all the family she had ever known, and she had also lost important memories. She had not been able to remember the name of the dog when he lay dying. And now she was alone again, in a state she had always believed preferable to the company of people who would eventually leave her, every one of them, by death, or on foot, as Charles had left her tonight.

Mallory turned off the penlight and stood in the dark, taking deep breaths and quietly rebuilding herself. Had there been light enough to see by, there would have been no trace of pain or any other emotion when she picked up the shovel and moved on.

She entered the clearing where she had left her dog. After pulling the loose branches away, she knelt down beside his body and pulled the black leather duffel from a rotted-out log.

The penlight was trained on the hollow in the wood, where insects scrambled over one another to escape the sudden brightness. Behind the duffel, she had stored a canvas bag with a cache of electronic equipment. She pulled it out and opened it to stash her leather sling, the tool kit and her minicomputer safely inside the metallic lining.

When everything was well hidden again, she picked up the shovel and began the sad work of digging a shallow grave. Later, she could come back and properly weight the animal’s body down. Now it was only important to her to see him into the ground. It would be harder to do this in the daylight, not for the danger, but for the look of him in age and death. In the dark, it was easier to picture her dog in his prime, when they had loved one another and gone everywhere together. Good dog.

There was only time enough to drive the spade into the earth before the gunshot exploded behind her.

She was hit, and the shovel was falling to the ground. Her gun had cleared the shoulder holster before she spun around to fire one shot into the tree. She had no target in sight. The leaves were a mass of blackness. Aim was guided by the intuition of a new creature in the world, all reflex and instinct, detecting form in utter darkness, just as game animals distilled sound from the hunter’s idea of silence.

Fred Laurie’s body dropped from the tree – dead weight with a large bullet hole in his chest.

She nodded, approving the shot. She had selected the.357 magnum over the police-issue.38 for its improved stopping power – a good choice. This was what went through her mind as she stared down at her kill and appraised the hole in the target that was once a human being.

Mallory the Machine was back.

When she holstered her gun, she felt the wet slick of her own blood on her left shoulder and found the exit wound. She looked down at the rifle lying near the man’s body. It was a.22.

Well, that would certainly mess up a frog. He should have used a different gauge for hunting humans.

Fool

There was no pain from her wound yet, but it would come soon enough. She felt around the back of her shoulder. Exploring fingers found the wet entry wound. So there was no bullet to dig out. On the downside, there were two holes to lose her blood by. Still she could manage. When she was a little girl, Tom Jessop had once told her there were more than a dozen small animals running through these woods carrying bullet wounds from idiot Laurie brothers, and yet living to a ripe old age.

She waited, listening for the first sound of footsteps coming to investigate the shot. She saw nothing, heard nothing, yet she was aware of a body twenty feet in front of her. Mallory bolted away from the dog and the duffel bag and the dead man.

She had lost Mallory in the trees, but that was not a problem. Lilith was running past the point of fatigue. Racing in that comfort zone where she gave up the struggle, doors opened in her mind. She knew where Mallory was headed. They were connected, moving through space in tandem. Lilith paused at the rim of the cemetery. Cass Shelley’s angel towered over every other monument. It was magnificent, poised for flight. She walked around the unfurled wings to the back of the statue, and there she met the angel in the flesh. The statue was twinning. The stark white face of Mallory emerged from the stone folds of the flowing robe, and in the next instant she was gone, and blood dripped from the marble as though the stone had been wounded.

The deputy streaked after her, running across the grass, skirting graves in her path. Mallory was disappearing into the woods beyond the cemetery, her gold hair shining through the leaves and then gone, blotted out by the dense foliage. Lilith screamed into the night, “If you keep running, you’ll lose what blood you got left.”

And now she became unhinged as the sound of laughter came back to her. Lilith ran faster now. The gold hair was in sight again, and she was closing the distance between them. And then Mallory folded and sank to the ground. Lilith was drawing ragged breaths when she came to stand over the fallen body. She drew her gun and held it in a two-handed posture as she had been taught to do.

Mallory groaned. She was bleeding from a wound in her back. Lilith knelt beside her, raising her gun barrel to the sky and freeing one hand to roll the body over. “Who did this to you?”

She was startled by the sight of the gun in Mallory’s hand. In an unreal expansion of time, she watched the trigger finger pulling back in a slow squeeze.

“Back off,” said Mallory, and Lilith did as she was told. But her gun barrel was lowering. “Careful, Rookie.”

Lilith went rigid, her gun still aiming elsewhere. It was not quite a standoff. Mallory would have the edge – if it came to trading shots.

“I wasn’t put on this planet to raise you from scratch,” said Mallory, leaning on one arm. “When will you learn?”

“It cost you a lot of blood to run like that. You’ll die before you clear these woods.”

“What’s that to you, Rookie? It’s not as if you were a real cop.” Mallory was smiling now. “I know the feds recruited you from the state Police.”

“You don’t know – ”

“Don’t I?” Mallory was sitting up now. “Any idiot could’ve worked it out. The feds keep track of every cult in the country. Or they like to think they do.”

“I don’t have any – ”

“And you’re so green. You probably bought that old line about a bright future with the FBI. Am I right? Well, surprise, Rookie. They lied. They do that a lot.”

Mallory was on her feet now, while Lilith remained in a frozen crouch. “The FBI will never take you, and you can’t go back to the state police, can you? They cut your orders. They know you’re cooperating with the feds behind the sheriff’s back. Why should they trust you? Your career is over, Rookie. Or maybe not. You could still salvage this.”

Mallory tilted her head to one side. She had to be in pain, but she seemed not to notice the holes in her body and the streaming blood. Her voice was less sarcastic now. “The last thing you want is the sheriff bringing me in. Even you can see that.”

But all Lilith could see was the blood from the shoulder wound. Mallory paid it no attention, and that was maddening. How much blood could she lose before she -

“Feeling a little sick, Deputy? Maybe you’re thinking about that moment when you get caught, when you have to face the sheriff while he spits on you.” She leaned her body into the conversation, standing easy, with nothing in her face to agree with the bullet wounds in her body, no sign of feeling. So cold.