Dark. Everything was dark.
Something was tickling her face. Tiny little gnats, maybe, or feathers floating on the wind. She raised one hand to brush them away and felt two sensations at once: something moving, velvety, on her cheek, and a searing pain up her fingers and through her arm.
If she could just go back to sleep for a little while . . .
But some kind of noise kept blaring in her ears, wailing like a banshee. An alarm clock? She moved to shut if off, but the pain came again—in her hands, her arms, her neck, her back, inside her head. Her skull felt as if it might explode; white-hot lightning forked through her brain in agonizing throbs.
All right, all right, I'm getting up, she thought, but when she went to say the words aloud, she found her tongue swollen and stuck to the roof of her mouth. She couldn't swallow. Couldn't get her eyelids to open.
She flung out one arm, searching for the clock, groping for the snooze button. Still the alarm went on, howling high above her. Her hand reached out, gripped something. But it wasn't a clock. It was alive. And it moved.
With great effort Amber pried one eye open to see what looked like a slender tree trunk, covered in shaggy, chamois-colored wool. Her mind wrapped groggily around the image. It was a foot. Attached to a leg. An enormous llama foot.
She gasped in a lung full of air and began coughing. Smoke stung her eyes and made everything swim, but she raised her head to see Lloser standing over her, his neck stretched to full length, caterwauling madly.
Then she remembered. The barn. The man silhouetted in the doorway. The smell of gasoline. The fire.
She attempted to get up, but her head reeled. For a moment she thought she was going to be sick. Then her mind cleared, aided by small splashes of cold water dripping on her face. She peered upward into a yawning chasm above her. Part of the barn roof had fallen in and lodged in the rafters overhead. Rain was pouring in.
Holding onto Lloser for support, Amber struggled to her feet and looked around. Some of the flames, apparently, had been doused by the rain, but on the far side of the barn, fire still licked up the posts and consumed whatever dry wood it found. It had reached her sculpting table. She watched as it curled upward, dancing around the broad wooden legs, up over the top, further up toward the shelves that stretched between the posts, toward the sculpture of the man in the chair, toward the plaster cast of. . .
The Two Sisters.
Amber's breath caught in her throat. Jorgensen had already sold the sculpture; she had to get that cast.
Before her, the flames seemed to be gathering strength, leaping higher toward the shelf. At her back, Lloser was still screaming. She staggered forward a couple of steps.
She turned and looked over her shoulder, past the llama, past the rain-soaked circle where she had lain. The barn door stood open, beckoning her away from the fire, into the night, into the rain, into a place of safety.
It only took a split second to make up her mind.
Twojoe sat bolt upright in bed and strained his ears. His heart pounded as if he'd been running. There had been a noise, something.
Sometime during the night, rain had begun to fall, but that wasn't it. It was more like a shriek, an ear-piercing call. He stared at the silent telephone, then at the clock on his bedside table. The luminous dial indicated that it was a little after two. The house was quiet. He must have been dreaming.
Twojoe punched his pillow into a ball and started to lie back down when the noise came again. A strident bellow. But this time he was wide awake. He had heard the sound before, a year or two ago, when three wild dogs had gotten into the pasture. It was the alarm call of a male llama.
He thrust his legs into his jeans, grabbed his boots and jacket, and slammed open the door that led from his small apartment into the main part of the house. By the time he got to the front door, Meg was downstairs in her pajamas.
"What is it?"
"It's Lloser, I think. An alarm call. Something's in the pasture."
Twojoe pulled on his boots and jacket and flung open the door. Amid the misty rain, a pall of thin, gray smoke hung over the front yard. The acrid scent stung his nostrils and made his eyes water. "Call the fire department!"
Meg went for the phone. Twojoe grabbed the flashlight that hung on a hook next to the door and set out on a dead run toward the pasture. The bawling continued, growing louder by the minute. When he finally came around a bend in the path, he flashed his light around to see the cause of the disturbance. The barn door yawned like an open maw, and above, from the hayloft, black smoke billowed into the dark night. Beyond the barn, he caught a glimpse of the gate standing open. That earsplitting shriek came not from the pasture, but from inside the barn.
Twojoe covered his eyes with his arm and fought his way into the barn.
The doorway was so thick with smoke that his flashlight could barely penetrate three feet ahead of him. Then suddenly the smoke cleared; he saw light. . . and movement.
He took it all in with a single glance: the blackened barn, the hole in the roof, the huge llama standing with his feet planted on the floor, sounding the alarm. The flames racing across Amber's sculpting table, consuming the studio corner of the structure. And the silhouette of someone headed directly toward the fire, lurching unsteadily, falling to her knees, then reaching upward.
"NOOOOOO!" The scream came up from somewhere deep inside of Twojoe, louder than Lloser's bellowing. He lunged after Amber, pulling her back, dragging her roughly over the charred floor.
She fought him, clawing at his sleeve with hands that looked like burnt steak. "Let me go! Let me—I have to—" Then, just as he got her to the door, she lapsed into unconsciousness.
He laid her on the wet grass outside the barn and knelt down beside her. Lloser, apparently satisfied that his job was done, had followed them out and stood quietly gazing down at her.
"Stay with me, Amber," Twojoe urged. "Breathe!" His face was wet from the rain, maybe, or from his own tears. He did a few CPR compressions, then placed his mouth over hers and exhaled into her. In the distance he could hear sirens drawing closer and he muttered a fierce prayer under his breath that they would get there in time.