Night Terrors (Sarah Beauhall Book 4) (31 page)

I got into Crescent Ridge fifteen minutes early, so I sat in the parking lot in the back by the Dairy Queen and waited for the Tae Kwon Do school to open. The school parking lot turned into a circus as dozens of cars cruised around—parents dropping off their kids mostly. I lost count of the cars and didn’t always have a clear view of the doors, so I didn’t see Megan show up. More the better, means I didn’t risk seeing da either.

The school was doing a good business. There were at least two different classes going on at all times, and by the look of the parent-parade, they would be pretty full.

Megan was supposed to teach today, so I was hoping to catch her. I walked into my old dojang at straight up four-thirty. Sa Bum Nim Choi, the chief instructor was leading a class of young kids, six to eleven year olds and didn’t notice that I entered. I remembered that class from when I taught. Not the same kids, though I was pretty sure I would run into some I knew if I hung out long enough. They’d be a lot older now.

“Good evening,” a male voiced said through my haze of memory.

I looked over to see this young boy, fifteenish, sitting at the front desk manning the phones. “Anything I can help you with?”

God he was young. But the black on his belt let me know he knew his stuff. Sa Bum Nim Choi didn’t promote you unless you were damn good and ready to move up.

“Mind if I watch the class?”

He shrugged and turned his attention back to the computer on the desk. At least his return to being a bored teenager wasn’t that far from the surface.

I slipped out of my boots, bowed past the desk, and crept down the aisle between the wall and the railing, along the long row of benches. Butterflies battled in my abdomen, and the runes on my calf itched. I was totally wired to run. Being back in the school after all these years was nerve-wracking. I had a lot of history here, so much respect and reverence. Yet another place I missed.

I sat on the bench, cross-legged, and watched the kids go through their forms. My muscles ached to be out there. After a few minutes, Sa Bum Nim Choi noticed me and paused in her counting. The class faltered and turned around to follow her open-mouthed stare. The old woman didn’t move for a full thirty seconds, then clapped her hands, calling her assistant instructor over to lead the children through their first Ki Bone.

“Ms. Beauhall,” Sa Bum Nim said, her voice as thin as her lips. That was not the face of joy.

I stood quickly and bowed. “Sa Bum Nim. How are you?”

She looked me up and down, starting and ending at my hair.

“I see you have taken on a new look since I saw you last.”

Damn, it was like I was fifteen all over again, being tested for a belt.

“Times change, people change.” Not my wittiest, but the woman made my brain freeze up.

She walked toward the front of the school and bowed off the floor, then she came and sat beside me, watching her class. “You have been missed in this school.”

We watched the class for a few minutes in silence.

“Where’s Megan?” I asked.

She turned her head to look at me. I never realized how old she was. The lines around her eyes and mouth spoke of more years than I was prepared to ever see. The face was kind, that much I remembered. Firm and supportive.

“Ms. Beauhall, the younger, has called in sick once again,” she said, the ice in her voice a familiar enough sound. “I fear she has not been keeping up her obligations as of late.”

That was odd. Megan adored this school and that boy who’d given her a ride home said she was well thought of here. Her home away from home. Why was she ditching? Unless she was really sick or something?

“What happened to her?” I asked, my heart leaping into my throat. “She’s not hurt or anything, is she?”

Choi shrugged her thin, bony shoulders. “Not to my knowledge. Your mother stopped in this afternoon to pay her tuition and she seemed to be unconcerned.”

Ditching then. That was totally uncool. I never ditched teaching. “Must be something pretty bad if she’s called in sick,” I said, hoping she’d agree.

She didn’t. “Megan has struggled more than usual these last few months. Her behavior has grown more erratic and her temper has become a bit of a problem.”

“Worse than me?” I asked.

She studied me for a moment and patted me on the arm. “Sarah, you always put the training first and foremost in your life. Even when you warred with your father, you did not allow that to interfere with your responsibilities.”

So, Megan was distancing herself from the school.

“I was hoping to see her tonight. I saw her last week, did she tell you?”

“Oh, yes.” She got up, stepped to the rail and corrected two of the students, showing them the correct hand position for the form basic they were practicing.

“I really need to get back to my class,” she said, shooing the children back to their group. “With Megan skipping out tonight, I’m down an assistant.”

“Sure,” I said, shrugging. “Thanks for talking to me.”

I stood, but Sa Bum Nim took me by the elbow and followed me to the front of the school. “Sarah, I worry about you. There are things in the news, rumors of dangerous people, and now I see you ride a motorcycle.” She pointed to the helmet I’d left on the seats by the front door with my boots. “Your behavior is reckless. Are you doing okay?”

I loved this woman, trusted her with every fiber of my being. But how did you tell your old Tae Kwon Do instructor you killed a dragon? Would she really understand? There had been nothing I couldn’t tell her when I was growing up.

“You should come back to the floor,” she said, patting me on the arm. “You could do with a bit of discipline in your life. An hour or two a week where the mind settled and the body relaxed into the flow of the form.”

I started to say something, but I couldn’t find the words. Crescent Ridge was over an hour from home, and further if we moved north.

“I can’t,” I started, but she shook her head and smiled.

“You left me once already, I don’t need to relive those moments.”

I felt the heat flashing up my neck and across my face. I hated leaving here, this was the one safe place when home was unbearable.

“Megan will follow you sooner than we all expected,” she said. “You need to speak with her, go see your family.”

I shrugged, fighting with the words that stuck in my throat. I couldn’t, and she knew it. Knew the things I fled from.

“He’s a good man,” she said, stepping away from me. “He is frightened and lonely. You do not know how deeply he grieves for your distance.”

Did she talk to da? They never did when I lived at home. Or did she?

“Your mother told me that you have some nice friends in your life, and that you are seeing someone.”

“Yeah,” I said, a small smile breaking some of the ice in my throat. “Katie. She’s the best.”

“I would wish no less for you.” She stepped forward and hugged me. The action was so quick, I barely had time to squeeze her back before she was bowing back onto the floor.

“Holy crap,” the fifteen year old said from behind the desk. “Who are you?”

I glanced back at him, shrugging.

“No one,” I said, sitting down to put on my boots. “I trained here a long time ago.”

He tapped on the computer a bit then looked up at me, startled. “You’re Megan’s sister, right?”

I nodded, tying my Docs as fast as I could. I needed to get out of there.

“Damn,” he breathed, looking at me with a totally different gleam in his eye. “You’re Sarah Beauhall. Did you know we use your creative form from your black belt test as one of our regular forms now?”

I looked up quickly. “No, seriously?” That was news.

“Sa Bum Nim added it last spring,” he was looking at me like I had two heads. “First time in the school history they added a new form. I had to learn it for my belt.” He stood, stepped around the desk and held up the loose ends of his belt. “First degree requires that form in addition to the normal stuff.”

I looked out on the floor, and Choi was demonstrating the proper foot position for a front kick to several students. She honored me way beyond anything I’d ever imagined.

“What did she call the form?” I asked, remembering I’d called it something like
Angry Woman
form. Choi hadn’t liked that name, said while it fitted the student, it was not in keeping with the school’s goals.

“Dragon Warrior,” he said

I nearly dropped my helmet. “Seriously?”

“Totally,” he said, holding out his hand. “Megan is awesome,” he smiled, a little color flushing across his cheeks. “I wish I was as good as her.”

“She’s a good kid,” I said, shaking his hand.

“I’ll tell her you came by,” he said. “Sorry she’s sick. If you swing by the house, tell her that Josh was asking about her. I’m covering her five-thirty class tonight since she’s sick.”

“Yeah, absolutely.”

I found myself out in the parking lot, putting on my helmet, and starting up the bike. She used my form. And Megan was ditching. No wonder she was competing against me or worse the memory of me. I was a shadow she had to live under here. That had to totally suck.

I started the bike and cruised down toward our house. I almost turned into the court, but da’s truck was in the driveway.

Not today.

But soon. I had to face him. I know I was being a coward, but inside I was a scared kid. I hated that. I cruised out of town, making sure to keep the bike under the speed limit. Didn’t want any trouble here.

I stopped near the cutoff to Mt. Rainier and got off the bike, leaving the helmet on the seat, and walked off the breakdown lane into the chest high scrub that lined the road. Once I was through the bracken, I had a clear view of Rainier looming above me, stark and imposing. You could see the bones of the earth here, ragged mountains peaks and miles of deep green forest. I especially loved the way those colors crossed into the deep blue of the sky.

Not like Kansas when I was a kid. There the sky seemed to go on forever. It was so large, it seemed to swallow the ground whole. I used to think if I went far enough in any direction that the world would just cease to exist, like I’d walked off the edge of a painting or something.

Now with all I knew about the world, I couldn’t help but imagine loud hungry things living in those mountains. Maybe Katie was right. Maybe Tolkien’s work was more history than fiction. If it were me, I’d rather hang out with the hobbits than the goblins any day.

I stood there, letting the cool of the early evening soak into me, letting the sun fall toward dusk. There was something in the air, a smell maybe. More the memory of a smell I think. I thought back to the way Katie smelled and how much it excited me. How Jai Li smelled and how it made my belly hurt in a way I’d never expected.

Then I thought of the dragon fire, the giants and the trolls. The memory of their smells triggered different feelings. Part of me wanted to hide, to run away and crawl in a hole, but another part of me, that part that set aside the fear and did what needed doing. That part of me purred a little. Thinking about the sharp scent of blood and the acrid stench of burning tickled the lizard brain. That set the adrenaline to running and the endorphins to kick in. Then I was ready to charge forward toward the chaos, a war cry on my lips and Gram in my fist.

I walked back to the bike, my shoulders aching from the tension in them. I stretched a bit, swinging my arms in wide circles and twisting my torso from side-to-side.

I leaned against my bike and closed my eyes and thought long and hard about who I’d become.

And that woman—killer of dragons and trolls, giants and necromancers—was a child still, afraid to face her parents, afraid to go to her sister and make amends for seven years of abandonment.

That smell I was used to. That was the smell of shame and defeat.

Forty-seven

I was pulling through Kent when I decided to stop by the apartment on a whim. I wanted to grab the mail, see how things were. I parked on the street on the rare occasion that there was actually a space. Wasn’t much of one, but I could slide the bike in. The huge ass pickup that was taking one and a half space wouldn’t mind. I grabbed Gram, slung her over my shoulder in her normal and natural position, grabbed my saddlebags and helmet and headed into the building

Going into the vestibule was strange. There was a note from the super that said we had a new neighbor, and that she’d been complaining about the noise, could we stop by and check on things. He knew that Katie had been in the hospital, so he wasn’t being weird. At least I didn’t think so until I got to the top of the stairs.

The door to our apartment had a great white cross painted on it. All along the doorjamb there were burned out candles, at least a dozen. Two were actually still burning. What the fuck? I had my keys out and was going to unlock the door when I noticed someone had jammed a key in the lock and broken it off. Damn it. It would take a locksmith to get that out, or I could break the door down. And that was a heavy-duty door. We’d had them replaced last year after I kicked it in looking for Katie before I found out the dragon had kidnapped her.

I must’ve sworn out loud because some mousy gal poked her head out of the apartment across the hall and looked around. So, this was the new neighbor? We’d been neighbor free the entire time I’d known Katie.

“You new here?” I asked, leaning against the wall. I was pissed, but I was learning it’s better not to yell at strangers.

“I’ve been here a few days,” she said. She wasn’t very pretty, with lank, greasy hair and eyes that flitted everywhere but on me when she spoke. Nervous sort.

“Well, welcome to the neighborhood. I’m Sarah.” I stepped over to her to shake her hand, but she backed up, pulling the door mostly closed and peeked out the crack.

“The super said that a girl named Katie lived there,” she said, talking louder than was normal for the situation. “I’ve called him several times. There are weird noises coming from inside.”

I looked back at the door. “Did you paint the cross?”

She gave a curt nod.

“And the candles?”

“Protection,” she said, quietly. “I can feel something inside there. It’s hungry. I can feel it through the wall in my bedroom. Like it wants to come and get me.”