Charlotte Boyett-Compo - Prince of the Wind

Bainbridge, Georgia, 2000

The world was shutting down on Riain Cree.

Suzanna was somewhere behind him in the gathering darkness. He could hear her calling his name in that wicked purrpart caress, part curse, a whisper of evil that chilled what soul he had left.

"Riain."

God, how he hated her voice. Hated everything about her. Not even the thunderous deluge of icy rain through which he stumbled could drown out that horrible voice and all that it promised.

Overhead, lightning flared, but he barely noticed. The light in his world was nothing more than a far-off tunnel toward which he struggled, a pinpoint of hope he needed to reach before she caught him. He moved toward that saving light as fast as his dying body could take him.

He hoped he would make it this time.

"Riain."

A whimper of stark terror escaped him. He looked back, knowing she was gaining on him as his strength failed.

"God, please. Not this time," he begged and strove all the harder toward that blessed light.

But he sensed God was not with him this night. He knew the Divine Being had turned away His face long, long ago.

Riains foot caught on an exposed tree root. He fell to the ground, landing face down in the thick red mud. It was all he could do to lever himself out of the suffocating stench, coming to his knees in an unconscious attitude of prayer as he looked to the heavens.

"Why?" His soul ached for a salvation that would not come. "What did I do wrong this time?"

For a moment, he knelt, too heartsick and weak to do anything else. He could feel his life ebbing away, feel the cold settling deep in his chest, the warmth draining from his body. His life would soon be over. Why was he bothering to run? What more could she do to him?

She can put her filthy hands on you one more time, he thought with a shudder of revulsion. The image of her cold, white hands on his flesh spurred him to his feet.

"Riain?" Her voice came at him through the night like the searching tentacle of something hell-born.

She was closetoo close.

He could smell her, and her scent drove him mad with fear.

To his left, Riain could hear the gurgle of the river. He staggered toward itaway from the redeeming lightand felt only a momentary tug of resistance as that last contact with possible redemption faded away.

Vast, spreading live oaks draped in Spanish moss sheltered him from the rain as he made his way from one thick trunk to anotherfeebly hanging onto the rough barkin an effort to stay on his feet. Pine needles and decaying leaves crunched underfoot. Occasionally, a night creature scurried furtively away at his stumbling approach. He would beas he always had beenalone in his dying.

"You cannot escape me!" Suzanna called.

But he could try.

Again.

The smell of the Flint River was sharp in his nostrils. He moved toward it, ignoring the blackberry brambles that tore at his jeans and drove vicious barbs into his flesh. He waded through the bushes and gasped with pain as he came up against a waist-high barbed wire fence. He snatched back his hands, the palms cut and stinging, and almost screamed his frustration.

There was always something to block his freedom.

Always something.

"Riain!"

He recognized all too well the threat in her tone. How many times through the centuries had he heard his name snapped out in that way? As it had many times before, it drove the fear of her deep inside him, making him nearly oblivious to the wicked wire spikes driving into his palms as he scrambled madly over the fence, gouging deep furrows in his arms and thighs.

There was a slight descent leading from the fence. It took what little reserve of strength he had left to keep himself erect and move away from the barbed wire, putting it between him and Suzanna.

Maybe just this once

The roar of the river came to him up ahead. He groaned. If there was a roar, there had to be rapids of some sort and quick-flowing water. Running water. Water that was as much a barrier as a stone wall. But if he could just follow the river, find a bridge

One moment he was moving steadily toward the rushing water, the next he was sliding down a steep, slippery embankment, his arms cartwheeling as he tried to stop the rapid descent. He cried out as his heel skidded over something hard and threw all his weight to his right ankle. The joint twisted inward. Sharp, excruciating pain shot up his leg. He began to tumble, rolling sideways, trying desperately to grab something to break his fall, but the small roots and dead grass he snatched pulled free of the mud. When a fallen log arrested his downward momentum, he rolled one last time, over the waterlogged tree, and slid into the frigid January waters of the Flint river.

He came to rest on his back, up to his waist in the murky water. The shock of the ice-cold river, filling his ear canals as it lapped up his back, brought an anguished gasp. He somehow managed to snatch up his head and roll to his belly.

"Water!" he whimpered. "No!"

He was frozen by his fear of the lapping death spreading over him. The cloying mud seemed to suck him into the liquid death.

Rain pelted his back, dripped down his sodden hair and along his cheek. He was growing weaker by the moment and knew he had to get up, had to try one last time.

Wearily, he dug a boot into the silty river bottom and pushed himself out of the water. He scrambled up the bank with his hands and left knee, dragging his broken right foot. But the effort took its toll on what little stamina he had left. He collapsed at the top of the incline, unable to go on. His left cheek pressed into the mud, while his fingers dug deep into the dark red Georgia clay.

Tears joined the rain washing down his face. It was over, he thought. He had failed again.