Dark Of The Woods

huge, furry Alaskan survival coat that would come down below his knees an inch or two but which came to her toes. "It'll be all right."
    He loaded the car, helped her down the rickety stairs since she could not fly while wearing the survival coat, and got her in the car. He wore the fall coat he had, plus several shirts, and he was not too cold—though he wondered whether a day or two spent in the open would have him as warm.
    "Trouble," he said as he pulled the grav car out onto the lane which the snow had obscured.
    "What?" she asked.
    He pointed to the radio. "The bulb has stopped blinking. Which means they may have decided their rep is in trouble."
    The snow whooshed up around them, obliterating the forest on either side as the grav plates' field disturbed the powdery stuff. Davis drove the car back the lane, toward the Sanctuary, until Leah directed him to the best point of entrance into the woods for the journey to the mountain called Tooth and the fortress that might or might not be there. He angled across open fields at her insistence, which meant the speed of the grav car had to be reduced. He kept anxiously studying the road in the rearview mirror, certain the dark shapes of police vans would glide into view at any moment. It was a good four miles through the rising, sparsely vegetated foothills, always rising, disappearing from the highway for short moments, then reappearing again as they started up the slope of the next hill which was higher than the last. In ten minutes, they arrived at the edge of the woods where he drove the car between the trees, scraping the paint from it, tearing off a strip of chrome, but effectively concealing it from anyone down there on the lane who might chance to look up and see the dark gleam of metal.
    "It's on foot now," he said. "I'm going to give you an injection of adrenalin and a few c.c.s of a speedheal restorative. Roll up your sleeve."
    She struggled with the bulky garment, finally managed to oblige, and didn't protest when the needles punctured her slim arm. Two little marks of blood were left behind, but she had bled enough recently not to be bothered by that.
    "I'll carry a rucksack on each shoulder and switch the suitcase from hand to hand until you've built enough energy through those drugs to lend me support."
    "I can do it now," she said.
    "Yeah. Maybe for ninety seconds. Come on, love. I know you're a brave girl and a strong girl, but let's be honest with ourselves. When we're tired, we rest. If we don't make that rule, we'll collapse before we're a third of the way to this fortress of yours."
    They got out, Proteus immediately behind, and Davis loaded up with the gear. As he was picking up the suitcase, both rucksacks firmly on his shoulders, Leah gasped and said, "Look! Down at the Sanctuary!"
    He looked back down the rippling landscape at the temple and the Sanctuary, which was only partially visible on the other side of the religious structure. Perched on the hilltop around the ugly place were four grav vehicles much too large to be anything but police vans. Even as they watched, the things began moving away from the Sanctuary, down the lane toward the aviary where he had been doing his research. Their headlights were like the luminous eyes of giant moths, slicing down the darkness that had begun to descend. In minutes, they would find their prey had fled. And, Davis noted miserably, the grav car had left a perfect trail up the foothills to the forest, a trail a blind and noseless bloodhound could follow. The only thing that might possibly yet save them was the night which was rapidly settling over the land.
    "Come on," he said to Leah. "I'll break the trail." He stomped off into the trees, trying not to look as frightened as he was…

Chapter Six
    If it wouldn't have been for the snow and the bitter cold, Davis would have praised their luck and thanked every god he had ever heard of. They climbed on through the dark hours without being molested, trusting to the faint gleam of the snow cover whenever that was possible and breaking out a hand torch when the trees grew too thickly to allow natural light in—what little of it there was—and they could no longer trust to put their feet down before them, unable to make out the lay of the land and any obstacles or pitfalls that might be present. There was no sound of pursuit, no voices on the slopes below, no copter blades overhead. The mountainside was often steep, but never so sharply angled that climbing