Trickster s Girl - By Hilari Bell Page 0,39

be much faster.

She was hoping to trip a speed sensor - s he wanted the police!

Although ... What had happened to those people? It was as if she was invisible. Except for the trucker, or whatever he really was.

She shuddered at the memory of the indifference in those round, animal eyes.

***

She passed four side roads before turning onto the fifth, and she rode down it for several miles before pulling off into a thick glade where she should be safe - if the bikers were all she had to fear.

"You said they couldn't attack me!"

Raven's grip on her waist changed to a comforting embrace as the bike slowed to a stop, but Kelsa was too tense, too terrified for comfort. She knocked down the stand and leaped off the bike, out of his arms. She took off her helmet and threw it at him.

"Where the hell were you? You said they couldn't attack me. And why ... What in the..."

She was crying. She'd been crying for some time. She pulled out a tissue and wiped away the snot and tears.

"I'm sorry," Raven said. "I didn't think they could get here, and get anything set up so quickly. But that's no excuse."

His shirt was fastened with two buttons, and he hadn't taken the time to put on his shoes. He hadn't had time to put on his shoes.

A wave of shivering swept over her, and her stomach began to churn. Kelsa wrapped her arms around herself.

"One of them was a shapeshifter. At least one. Were they all your enemies, in that restaurant?"

"No," Raven told her. "The bikers who went after you had to be human, according to the rules, and I'd bet most of the others were human as well. Describe the shapeshifter you saw."

"He was big." She could see him clearly in her memory, see more details than she'd noticed at the time. "Big, with shaggy brown hair, and hair on his arms and hands. His eyes were all dark, like a pig's or a dog's. Like brown marbles. He ... he poured a whole pot of syrup over his pancakes."

It sounded silly, but somehow that seemed more alien than all the rest. She shivered again and began to pace.

"That was Bear," Raven said. "He's not an enemy, he's one of the neutrals. He was probably there to observe, to make sure no one on either side broke the rules."

"Killing me isn't against the rules?" Or had they intended to rape her? Or both? Kelsa shuddered.

"No." Raven's voice was gentle. "Not if they use the tools of this world to do it."

The need to think, to understand what he was saying, slowed her racing heart. Her furious pacing slowed too.

"So the bikers, they were human?"

"Yes."

"And the rest of those people ... What was the matter with them? It was like I wasn't even there!"

That had been one of the most terrifying parts of it. Not the most terrifying.

Raven sighed. "It takes power. It takes power, concentration, and skill, but it's not impossible to cloud human minds. To make them see what they expect to see. Hear what they expect to hear." He snorted. "You sometimes do that without any help from us."

"And those bikers? They were just doing something expected?"

"Ah, that's a bit different. With them the ... molder, call it, found a spark of desire to act that way and fanned it. Suppressed their inhibitions, the fear of the consequences that would ordinarily have stopped them."

"So anyone I meet could suddenly attack me?"

"Not really. Not unless it's something they might do anyway. It's all but impossible to force something to go against its nature, against its own will. It's only if the will to act is already there that you can use it."

The thought that dawned then was so horrible it froze Kelsa in her tracks.

"Have you been manipulating me that way?"

"No," Raven told her. "I haven't. Even if I could, it would be against the rules. And the healing of the ley wouldn't work without your uncorrupted will behind it. Of course, you only have my word that those things are true."

He said nothing more, watching her with wary dark eyes. Human-looking eyes. He had lied to her, by omission at least, many times. And she'd certainly been acting strangely this last week! But the decisions she'd made felt like her decisions. He was using her for his own ends. But he'd never made any pretense of anything else, not from the start.

And she had her own world