When the demon reached for him again Oliver shouted the filthiest obscenities he could think of as a kind of battle cry and threw himself backward, simultaneously tearing his hand away from the bark that had grown over his fingers. His skin burned. Pain drove up his arm and for a moment it took his focus, so that he barely felt himself dropping through the lower branches of the tree, branches and leaves and cherries whipping past him as he fell. He struck a thick branch and his weight and momentum broke it, the parka helping to blunt the pain of the impact.
He crashed to the island on his back, grunting in pain as he landed on the shotgun case that he still carried. The wind was knocked out of him and he struggled to breathe, face flush with pain and panic, his shoulder and spine aching as though he’d been struck with a baseball bat. Above him he heard Kitsune begin to bark, and somewhere in the midst of his agony and terror felt a small spark of relief that she was alive. Twined in those branches, she could not transform or the constriction might be the death of her. But for the moment, the cherry tree had not killed her.
“Oh, yes, Mr. Bascombe. If it is a game you desire, I will play.” Aerico clambered down through the branches toward him.
Oliver stared up at the demon as it descended. His fingers were scraped raw, a hundred pinpricks of pain. He took in long, ragged gasps of air, steadying himself. The ache in his back was so brutal he thought there was a chance it might be broken, and that he would then lie here like carrion awaiting the vulture’s arrival.
Except for the times he had played one on stage— and perhaps that was why he enjoyed acting— Oliver Bascombe had never been a hero. Not even the hero of his own life. In his own mind. He had studiously avoided conflict. But he was more terrified of dying than he was of fighting.
He rolled over and staggered to his feet, muscles in his back protesting. Unsteadily he backed away, staring up at the cherry tree, and swung the shotgun case around so that it hung in front of him. Aerico laughed softly in that sticky voice and dropped to the lowest limbs of the cherry tree. Oliver shot back the zipper and reached in, hauling out the gun. There was more ammunition in the case, but the shells already loaded would be all the chance the demon would give him. He let the case fall to the ground and swung the shotgun barrel up.
Aerico leaped out of the tree. Oliver tracked him with the gun and fired. The blast resounded across the island, bouncing off the masonry of the bridge and echoing out over the river. Leaves flew and cherries exploded and a branch cracked and hung toward the ground. But the demon had not been lunging at Oliver at all. The branches of the next tree swayed and Oliver’s stomach twisted as he realized Aerico had made the leap from one to the next like some flying squirrel.
“Shit,” he whispered, backing away from both cherry trees.
The demon did not like direct sunlight. Oliver had one shell remaining in the shotgun. He swept the barrel from side to side, trying to sight Aerico in the trees and knowing that he had little chance. The demon’s natural camouflage, the texture and color of his skin, meant only the motion of branches could give him away . . . and every time he saw branches moving and tried to get a closer look, the demon was already gone.
Oliver fled.
But Aerico was correct. There was really nowhere to run.
He darted beneath a pair of apple trees, past dangling pears and ripe nectarines whose sweet fragrance would normally have pleased him and now sickened him. His head turned in a frenzy as he sought to make certain the demon did not surprise him or get behind him.
He nearly fell into the river. Erupting from between two pear trees he turned, watching the trees, backed up, and accidentally shot one foot off the island’s shore and into the water. The current tore at him, trying to unbalance him. His arms pinwheeled and he managed to regain his balance, still holding the shotgun with one hand.
Spinning, certain Aerico would use the moment to drop down upon him, Oliver gripped the shotgun firmly again. His scraped left hand sang with pain and he bumped it with the gun. Oliver gritted his teeth and cursed at his own stupidity.
His right hand trembled with the urge to pull the trigger, to have the satisfaction of blowing a hole in the cherry-tree demon.
The sunlight shone on his back. The river rushed past. There was no sign of the army up on the stone bridge. Somewhere in that small orchard he heard Kitsune begin to cry out in pain in the voice of a fox. Images flashed through his mind of the winter man, speared through with cherry-tree branches, cherries blossoming through his body.
Off to his right, up in the trees in the shadow of the bridge, branches swayed and leaves rustled.
Oliver swung the barrel of the rifle and his trigger finger twitched. He was certain he saw the demon crouching in the tree, but he forced himself not to fire. He had one more chance. Only one.
Now the sound of Kitsune’s pain became even greater and he faltered. He had never intended to leave his friends to die, only to survive himself and find some way to help them if he managed to destroy the demon. But he could not hear that sound, could not endure her pain, without attempting to aid her.
Back to the water, gun aimed at the branches above, he began to circle the small island as swiftly as he could manage. He stumbled over roots and stepped into the water several times, for the trees grew nearly right up to the shore. Oliver had worked his way perhaps a third of the way around the circumference of the island and Kitsune’s cries continued, yet he had not seen any further trace of Aerico in the orchard.
What if he went back to them? He could be killing them, even now. Or Kitsune. Frost is probably already . . .
He didn’t finish the thought. Instead he stood, breathing heavily, pain still there but receded, overridden by adrenaline. He could jump into the water and let the current carry him, try to make his way to shore downriver. Or work his way around the outside of the island to the bridge and try to climb up to the stone rail before the demon could get to him. But either way, he would be alone beyond the Veil, hunted by the army and every citizen with a taste for whatever reward would be given for the head of an Intruder. Without his companions— his friends— he was as good as dead.
There were more noble reasons why he could not abandon Frost and Kitsune, but survival demanded only one course of action.
He surveyed the branches of every tree in sight, peaches and apples and pears, but nothing moved there. Above the island, far above the bridge, birds flew in formation above the sky. There was no sign of Aerico.
Oliver hesitated not a moment more. He gripped the shotgun and ran into the trees, ducking under branches and working his way around the largest apple trees, making a direct course for the trio of cherry trees he knew were on the other side, just beside the bridge. The skin of his left hand stung. It was bright red where it had been scraped raw by bark. His right wrist was covered in blisters from the demon’s touch. But his hands were steady now and he watched the branches above him as he ran, gaze sweeping the orchard.
There was a small clearing ahead. A spot of sunlight. Beyond that, through the screen of the branches of a pear tree, he saw those gigantic cherry trees. His own heartbeat filled his head. He could barely take a breath, and when he swallowed it hurt his throat. The man he had always been would not have recognized this guy running through the trees. A voice he recognized as his own, as the professional voice of Oliver Bascombe, lawyer, screamed at him to stop this foolishness, to run and pray for a miracle. But the voice of his heart and now his head as well, the voice of the man he was onstage, projecting to the back of the audience, shouted it down. There was no room for sheepish, unassertive Oliver here. He had to be the man he always wished but never believed he could be . . .
Or he would die.