The Traveling Vampire Show(143)

 

I knew that the next thing I felt would be her teeth sinking into my neck.

 

Instead, I felt Valeria yielding to my push.

 

She’s just letting me think....

 

Then I saw the thin wooden shaft protruding from her right eye. Sort of like a pencil....

 

Someone stabbed her with ...

 

As she stumbled backward, I saw how long the shaft was. I saw the feathers near its end. Then came a heavy thunk, a second arrow hitting her. This one popped through the nipple of her right breast and blood squirted. The arrow went in deep, skewering her breast, holding it rigid while she staggered backward.

 

Still on her feet, backing away from me, she got it with a third arrow. This one caught her high on the left side of the chest, just over the heart. Her left breast jumped. Unsteady now, she raised her arms for balance. Only a couple of inches of the last arrow showed. She looked as if she had a strange, feathered broach pinned to the skin of her chest.

 

Waving her arms, she fell. She landed with a splash and lay spread-eagled on her back in the mud.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Fifty-nine

 

 

I stared at Valeria. She twitched and shuddered. Blood poured out of her wounds, but was quickly washed away by the rain. When she stopped moving, I looked toward the cage door.

 

Nobody there.

 

Stryker and the others must’ve run when the arrows flew. Probably to their bus. It was stopped about twenty-five feet away, its engine running, its headbeams bright in my eyes.

 

The cage door was shut.

 

Lee, conscious now, was braced up on her elbows. Except for her shirt, she was naked. Her shirt was mostly off. It covered her left shoulder, and that was about all. Face scrunched, she scowled through the rain at Valeria’s body.

 

“You okay?” I called to her.

 

She looked at me, frowning. “What happened?”

 

“I guess Slim happened.”

 

“Jeez.”

 

I hurried over to the sodden rag of Lee’s shorts and snatched them out of the mud. They were white in front, filthy in back. I turned them over and the rain sluiced off some of the dirt.

 

When I got back to Lee with them, she was on her feet and leaning back against the bars. I handed the shorts to her. “Thanks,” she said. She shook them open. As she raised a leg to put them on, I turned away and tried to spot Slim.

 

I figured she must’ve shot her arrows from somewhere under the bleachers where I’d been sitting earlier. Because of the headlights on me, though, I couldn’t see very well into the darkness. If Slim was crouched beneath the bleachers, I sure couldn’t see her.

 

I could see through them, though. To the back of the BEER-SNACKS-SOUVENIRS shack, to the area that had earlier been crowded with parked cars and trucks. There, all the headlights and taillights were gone. The field was dark except for the thin, moving beams of six or eight flashlights.

 

Stryker’s crew.

 

Apparently unaware of what had just happened in the cage, they seemed to be checking on the abandoned vehicles and other things they found interesting in Janks Field.

 

“Damn,” Lee said.

 

I looked at her. She was bending over, shoving the shorts down her legs.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

“Can’t get ’em on.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Too tight.” With a kick of her right foot, she sent the shorts flying. Then she ran toward the other side of the cage. She slid to a stop, bent down and plucked Valeria’s red leather skirt out of the mud. Stepping into it, she said to me, “Try the door.”

 

I hurried over to it. There was no handle. I grabbed the bars and shoved. The door rattled in its steel frame and stayed shut.

 

On the other side was a hasp and a padlock.

 

Groaning, I turned my head. “We’re locked in!”

 

Lee came running over. The red leather skirt was so short it hardly covered her groin. She’d straightened her shirt, but only fastened one button, down near her belly.

 

“Let’s see,” she said.

 

I stepped out of her way. Lee studied the situation, then reached through the bars, grabbed the lock and jerked at it.

 

“Oh, boy,” she muttered.

 

“What’ll we do?”

 

“I don’t...”

 

“Hey!” Slim’s voice. It seemed to come from the area of the bleachers.

 

Lee and I both started to turn.

 

“Don’t look.” She sounded a little strange, her voice tight like someone talking through pain. “They’re in the bus. Probably watching you. Fiddle with the door or something.”

 

We turned again to the cage door.