in the final stages of healing, itched and stung. She dropped her arms and stepped down to the gravel rooftop, duster rustling and hat pounding like a drum from the fat raindrops.
The crow flapped its wings as if irritated at what she had done, and glared at her balefully. If a flesh and blood bird had given her such a look, she would have cursed at it and blown all its feathers off.
A car approached on the highway now, and Jane stepped forward and crouched at the edge of the roof to watch. Light poles were few and far between on this stretch of road, but the vehicle slowed as it passed underneath one, in front of the saddler’s, and she got a clear look at it. It was a brown van, hammered as only the van of a bottom-feeding rock and roll band can be, and she knew instantly who was inside. She was impressed, though, that they’d caught up with her so quickly. The van killed its speed and then its lights, and then it disappeared in the shadow of a small copse of trees.
She needed Azazel’s hoof to bait the trap for the renegade angel, but that was surely what the band must be after. Jane considered her course of action for brief seconds, and then jogged down the stairs.
She needed to hurt them, slow them down, keep them out from under her feet. And she had no fire left in her ka.
The Mare stayed where she had hitched it, razor teeth bloodied by its contented grazing on chilled beef. She pulled the beast away, earning an irascible snort of protest, but no more—decades ago, she and the animal had had it out over which one of them was to be mistress, and they both knew that Jane was the rider and the Mare was her mount.
She left the lights in the plant on. If the band really was following the hoof, they wouldn’t believe she was still in the building. But maybe, if she left the lights on, the band would think she was trying to lure them into an ambush. That might at least keep them off balance.
She led the Mare out the back door of the plant and swung into the saddle easily. She kicked the beast into a canter and headed for the edge of the lot, where the boundary between the meat packing plant parking lot and a furrowed field of tall, storm-quaking sorghum was marked by a rail fence.
The Mare easily jumped the fence, plunging into the tall cultivated grass without fear or hesitation. Jane watched the road as she progressed, trying to spot the musicians’ van—trees cut across her field of vision ahead of her, shading a lane through the planted space, and she thought a creeping darker-than-dark mass under the trees might be the van. Whoever was driving, slow as they were going, must have great night vision. Jane bent low over the Mare’s neck and looked for an appropriate tool.
She found it quickly, where the crops gave way to a flat, hard aisle of dirt. There was a medium-sized tractor, and the sight of it gave her momentary pause.
It had been several millennia since she had tilled the soil, but the scent of a moist, broken clod, or the sharp, fertile promise of a gleaming agricultural tool, still pierced her to the center of her heart. For an instant she was again Qayna of the young earth, who loved plants and taught them to love her back. The tall sorghum grass could have been the barley or emmer of her youth, and under the clouds and rain the land around her could have been practically anyplace, including the valleys to the east of Eden.
A flash of lightning on the horizon, and an answering glint in the trees ahead that might have been a reflection on metal, brought her back to herself.
Jane dismounted beside the tractor, whistling to the Mare an instruction to stand in place. She unscrewed the gas cap on the tractor’s tank and soaked a spare shirt in the flammable liquid. Tearing the gas-reeking cloth in half, she stuffed one half into the open tank, letting it drape wetly down the side of the tractor. The other half she wrapped around a fist-sized rock she picked up off the ground.
Through the glass of the tractor’s cab, she saw the brown van pull to a stop under the gloom of the trees. Its door opened and men