He was left with one arm with long bloody scratches on it, swelling sores on his throat, and scraped knuckles on the other hand. But he didn't waste time counting his injuries. He had to make it out of there; the branches were stirring again and he didn't want to wait to see whether it was wind.
There was only one way. The ditch.
He put the car in drive and floored it. He headed for the ditch, hoping that it wasn't too deep, hoping that the tree wouldn't somehow foul the tires.
There was a sharp plunge that made his teeth clash together, catching his lip between them. And then there was the crunch of leaves and branches under the car, and for a moment all movement stopped, but Matt kept his foot pressed as hard as he could on the accelerator, and suddenly he was free, and being thrown around as the car careened in the ditch. He managed to get control of it and swerved back onto the road just in time to make a sharp left turn where it curved abruptly and the ditch ran out.
He was hyperventilating. He took curves at nearly fifty miles an hour, with half his attention on the Old Wood - until suddenly, blessedly, a solitary red light stared at him like a beacon in the dusk.
The intersection with Mallory. He had to force himself to screech to another rubber-burning stop. A hard right turn and he was sailing away from the woods. He'd have to loop around a dozen neighborhoods to get home, but at least he'd stay clear of any large groves of trees.
It was a big loop, and now that the danger was over, Matt was starting to feel the pain of his furrowed arm. By the time he was pulling the Jaguar up to his house, he was also feeling dizzy. He sat under a streetlight and then let the car coast into the darkness beyond. He didn't want anyone to see him so rattled.
Should he call the girlsnow ? Warn them not to go out tonight, that the woods were dangerous? But they already knew that. Meredith would never let Elena go to the Old Wood, not now that Elena was human. And Bonnie would kick up a huge noisy fuss if anyone even mentioned going out in the dark - after all, Elena had shown her thosethings that were out there, hadn't she?
Malach.An ugly word for a genuinely hideous creature.
What they really needed was for some official people to go out and clear the tree away. But not at night. Nobody else was likely to be using that lonely road tonight, and sending people out there - well, it was like handing them over to the malach on a platter. He would call the police about it first thing tomorrow. They'd get the right people out there to move that thing.
It was dark, and later than he'd imagined. He probably should call the girls, after all. He just wished his head would clear. His scratches itched and burned. He was finding it hard to think. Maybe if he just took a moment to breathe...
He leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. And then the dark closed in.
Chapter 18
Matt woke, fuzzily, to find himself still behind the steering wheel of Elena's car. He stumbled into his house, almost forgetting to lock the car, and then fumbling with keys to unlock the back door. The house was dark; his parents were asleep. He made it up to his bedroom and collapsed on the bed without even taking off his shoes.
When he woke again, he was startled to find it was nineA.M . and his mobile phone was ringing in his jeans pocket.
"Mer'dith?"
"We thought you were coming over early this morning."
"I am, but I've got to figure outhow first," Matt said - or rather, croaked. His head felt twice its usual size and his arm at least four times too big. Even so, something in the back of his mind was calculating how to get to the boardinghouse without taking the Old Wood Road at all. Finally a few neurons lit up and showed him.
"Matt? Are you still there?"
"I'm not sure. Last night...God, I don't evenremember most of last night. But on the way home - look, I'll tell you when I get there. First I have to call the police."
"Thepolice ?"
"Yeah...look...just give me an hour, okay? I'll be there in an hour."
When he finally arrived at the boardinghouse, it was closer to eleven than to ten. But a shower had cleared his head, even if it hadn't done much for his throbbing arm. When he did appear, he was engulfed in worried femininity.
"Matt,what happened ?"
He told them everything he could remember. When Elena, with set lips, undid the Ace bandage he had wrapped around his arm, they all winced. The long scratches were clearly badly infected.
"They're poisonous, then, these malach."
"Yes," Elena said tersely. "Poisonous to body and mind."
"And you think one of these can getinside people?" Meredith asked. She was doodling on a notebook page, trying to draw something that looked like what Matt had described.
"Yes."
For just a moment Elena's and Meredith's eyes met - then both looked down. At last Meredith said, "And how do we know whether one is inside...someone...or not?"
"Bonnie should be able to tell, in trance," Elena said evenly. "Even I might be able to tell, but I'm not going to use White Power for that. We're going down to see Mrs. Flowers."
She said it in that special way that Matt had learned to recognize long ago, and it meant that no argument would do any good. She was putting her foot down, and that was that.
And the truth was that Matt didn't feel very much like arguing. He hated to complain - he'd played through football games with a broken collarbone, a sprained knee, a turned ankle - but this was different. His arm felt in danger of exploding.
Mrs. Flowers was downstairs in the kitchen, but on the family room table were four glasses of iced tea.
"I'll be right with you," she called through the swinging half-door that divided the kitchen from where they were standing. "Drink the tea, especially the young man who's injured. It'll help him relax."