Choice of the Cat (Vampire Earth 2)

"I don't know if I'd call Richard the Third a moldy English play, but you're welcome," he said, taking the folded green cloth. He untied the twine around it and unfolded a long riding overcoat.

"Sorry some of the buttons don't match, but you know how it is. I used wooden pegs at the stress points-they hold up a little better."

Valentine held it up and then tried it on. It was a faded, slate-colored green, reversible to black like Duvalier's natty relic. It hung to just above his ankles, and was split up the back for saddle use, including loops for his legs to go through. There were pockets galore, and a built-in muffler that could strap around his throat and closing heavy collar. A hood hung neatly down the back, cut so skillfully it looked like decoration. "So you weren't taking my measurements for 'statistical reasons' a month ago, huh?"

"Guilty. Keep out of sight, would you, Valentine? It'll keep out the wind, but not bullets. The damn Bears grab all the Reaper cloaks, you know."

"You going to cry or thank her, Val?" Duvalier asked.

"Thanks, Dix. I really appreciate this."

"You'll appreciate it even more the first rainstorm you walk through. Wear it in good health, Ghost."

They opened the heavy front door and stepped out into the morning light. A pair of roan horses browsed amongst the grass and weeds of the front lawn. As Ryu followed the Cats out the door, the horses raised their heads and nickered.

"A farewell gift," Ryu explained. "This pair is out of a very wily herd of wild horses that runs the mountains. I called and they came."

"They won't do us much good, then," Valentine said. He had spent some time training wild horses to pull timber in Minnesota. "It'll take days to break them properly."

Ryu patted Valentine on me shoulder. "That will not be necessary, David. I imprinted the two of you on them, if that is the proper expression. They should take to you quite readily. Try it."

The horses, as if listening to Ryu's words, walked up to the pair.

"I'll go grab some oats out of the kitchen," Dix said. "That'll last you until you reach a border fort for supplies."

Valentine looked at the mare a trifle dubiously, but she looked calmly back at Valentine from her white-freckled face as if she had known him her whole life. She gave the collar of his new overcoat an experimental nibble. He grabbed a handful of mane and slipped onto the horse's bare back. He pressed against the horse's side with his calf, and it sidestepped to face Ryu and his ethereal companion.

"We have some saddles and blankets in the outside shed, do we not?" Ryu asked.

Duvalier looked over at the little outbuilding next to the smokehouse. "Yes, I think we can rig something up. Thank you, sir-this means a lot to us."

Ryu turned his piercing eyes to Valentine. "Seventy-one days ago, you accused us of using you. At times I think my people take you humans for granted. We share the same war, but you do most of the dying. Some hold that if we do too much for you, you will become dependent on us and cease growing. I sympathize with that belief, but arguments over not interfering with a civilization become moot when the Kurians have already reordered your world to suit their purposes. So if I can help my children with a simple trick, I do it.

"Speaking of simple tricks, I have one for you, David. A small gift," he said, holding out his hand. In it a tiny, triangular glow bulb glimmered faintly in the daylight. " 'May it be a light to guide you in dark places, when all others lights go out,' " he said. Or did he? The quotation seemed to drop into Valentine's brain, a windfall from the abundant orchard of his reading, without benefit of the Lifeweaver's lips moving.

"You know how to charge it, I believe," he said, again speaking with his voice.

"Leave it in the light," Valentine said, taking the little pyramid-shaped object.

"In the Old Days, we had ones that generated heat, as well, which would be far more useful. But that Art, like so many others, is lost to us in the here and now."

Ryu and Ura exchanged a long look, making Valentine wonder if in that time they shared the mental equivalent of an evening's discussion.

"Alessa, follow your spirit when your mind falters. David, if you keep an open mind, you will find friends un-looked for," Ryu said. He drifted up off the ground, touching their foreheads, first Duvalier's and then his, with his fingertips and spreading his arms before them as if in benediction.

"Go, the two of you," Ura added, imitating the gesture. "Turn away this old evil, and in doing so, change evil fate into good fortune for our Cause."

While you are at it, find King Solomon's mines and a splinter of the True Cross, the contrarian part of Valentine's mind added. He looked over at Duvalier, standing next to her newly appointed horse with a rapt expression on her face. She looked hypnotized. Did she know more than he, or was she just more gullible? Evidence of the Lifeweavers' special abilities stood quietly between his legs at that moment, or were the magically appearing horses some kind of elaborate put-on?

He could not argue with his enhanced senses, from vision to balance. He could spend most of the day running, but not be exhausted. There was no question that they had awakened something inside him, but did they create it, or just ring the alarm clock?

Duvalier and Valentine bowed in thanks and left their horses to see if they could find bridle and saddle in the jumble of odds and ends housed in the outbuilding.

Valentine looked at the Hall one more time. He remembered something his mother used to tell him: There are two kinds of people in the world-those who look back and those who look forward. She also said that most people in their youth look forward, and a sign of advancing age was looking back. Always look forward, David, she'd told him.

Being atop fresh horses and under the summer sun felt fine. The Kurian Zone was far away; if it were not for the July humidity, the day would have been ideal. After an easy stretch to warm them to travel again, the well-shaded old highways of the Ozarks guided them back up to the Missouri borderlands in a second hard day's ride. Duvalier showed her usual flair for finding discreet shelter in a pre-Overthrow ruin.

Valentine always bedded down in the old homes and businesses with a certain amount of trepidation. He would sometimes find an old weather-stained family picture and stare at the carefully combed and braided hair on the children and wonder what the fate of this or that family member was. The Ravies plague that swept the world in 2022 took the majority; war and upheaval claimed the rest. He had seen enough death at close hand to wonder how any of the old-timers had come through it with sanity intact. The population in the first years of the Kurian rule was thought to be somewhere around 10 to 15 percent of its pre-2022 height, with the urban areas suffering the worst losses. Valentine once passed through the nuclear blast site in Little Rock on a trip up the Arkansas River, where nature had returned but not man. Trees now grew amongst the naked girders and piles of rubble, but people shunned the site as if it lay under a curse.