pride and prejudice and zombies:: dreadfull ever after

Part 20

CHAPTER 20

No matter how many times Darcy asked, Anne wouldn't tell him where she'd learned the tree trick.

"Actually, I had no idea any dreadfuls were even in that cave," she said as they walked back to the house. "I just thought you'd look smashing with branches."

"Anne, please. I really would like to know."

"Oh, it's simply a parlor trick some friends taught me. And that is all I care to say about it at present."

"Fine. If you feel you don't owe me a serious explanation after what we've just been through...."

"I am being serious. Or don't you think I could have friends?"

"No, no!" Darcy said. "That is, yes, yes! Of course, you could. That's not what I meant."

Anne finally lost the smile she'd been wearing for the last ten minutes. "I didn't, you know. Have friends of my own. Not for the longest time. All I had was Lady Catherine. Do you think that should have been enough?"

"No. I don't."

"Good. So it wasn't just me."

Darcy looked into his cousin's eyes as the two of them kept walking side by side. Night had fallen, yet he could see Anne more clearly—and pick his way through the forest with more ease, it seemed—than when the sun had been shining down through the trees.

Before he could speak again, a loud thumping sound drew Anne's attention, and he followed her gaze to find a hazy radiance moving toward them. As it neared, it grew sharper, gained definition, until Darcy could see his aunt riding toward them on one of her enormous Scottish-bred chargers. To his eyes, both glowed with a dull light that cast no shadow, and he found himself wishing to bask in it, bathe in it, wallow in a warmth that wasn't even there.

Lady Catherine stopped her horse before them. Her mount seemed nervous, stamping its heavy hooves and dancing in a semicircle. As its great haunches turned, Darcy could see a cluster of oval shapes strung to its side like an enormous bunch of grapes.

Anne stiffened beside him.

The shapes were freshly severed heads. Darcy recognized among them the puffy black face of the putrid unmentionable that had tried a taste of him not a quarter hour before.

"What do you think you're doing?" Lady Catherine snapped. "You know it's dangerous out here this time of year."

She was looking at her daughter.

"Oh, there was nothing to worry about. We were perfectly safe. Weren't we, Fitzwilliam?"

She wrapped her arm around Darcy's.

"Yes," he heard himself say. "Perfectly."

Her Ladyship kept her gaze on Anne. "Your cousin is not well. It is foolish to take him so far from the house."

"DARCY COULD SEE A CLUSTER OF OVAL SHAPES STRUNG TO ITS SIDE LIKE AN ENORMOUS BUNCH OF GRAPES. THE SHAPES WERE FRESHLY SEVERED HEADS."

So far from me, Darcy suspected she really meant.

"It seems to me," Anne replied, "that Fitzwilliam will end up going further faster if he is not limited to the confines—and the close company—of Rosings. A little more fresh air and freedom, and who knows how quickly he might come 'round as we'd like?"

Lady Catherine narrowed her eyes and jutted out her jaw and flared her nostrils. It was a look Darcy knew well. He'd seen battle-hardened soldiers wither under it like an ant burned by the hot focused light of a magnifying glass. He'd only been its locus a few unhappy times in his life; he'd never seen it pointed at Anne. To his surprise, she withstood it without blinking or looking away.