XxXxXxXxXxXxX Chapter Twelve XxXxXxXxXxXxX "Scully." He greeted her as a blind person would do, tracing her eyes, her face, her lips. "Are you okay?" The weight of his hands seemed to push her into the ground, and she pulled away. "I'm fine." Her bare feet burned from the hot rock. She walked to the edge of the ravine, glanced down at Carl's battered body, then yelled across to Amelia. "Amelia, help is coming! Hang in there!" Mulder's body blocked the breeze as he moved to stand behind her. "She's alive?" Scully didn't turn. "She's alive." "Quentin shot Grenier back there in the trees. I don't know how bad." Scully clawed the hair out of her eyes and looked skyward. In the distance, she could hear the buzz of the helicopters. "We need to get help quickly. Can you radio them?" "Grenier had the radio. I'll go try to find it and see how he's doing." Scully nodded and felt him move away. Just then, the acrid scent of burning wood wafted across to her. "Wait!" A thin trail of smoke curled out of the large rocks on the other side of the canyon. "She did it! She lit the fire!" Within a minute, the gray puffs had doubled in size and frequency. The signal fire did its work, and the rhythmic slicing of the helicopter blades grew louder. Trees bent under the force of the approaching wind. Mulder ducked, covering his eyes with his arm. Only Scully stood still in the noise and the dust, her arms loose and her eyes closed, her face tilted upward into the wind. The thunder beat inside her; the air took her breath away. She was free. XxXxXxX Mulder led the paramedics up the mountain to where Grenier lay barely breathing in the brush. The bullet had pierced his left lung but missed his heart. "On three," the young man in the white shirt said to his female companion, and then counted out the numbers. Their muscles bulged as they hoisted the stretcher from the ground. Mulder brushed Grenier's cool hand as they walked past him. Hang in there, Adam, he thought. He followed them back down to the clearing, where a chopper waited to rush Grenier to the nearest hospital. Scully and Amelia were already inside. There was no room for Mulder. "You're sure you're all right, Sir?" The female medic shouted at him over the rush of the helicopter blades. Mulder could see Scully watching him through the window. "I'm fine!" he yelled back. "I'll catch the next one!" Scully pressed her palm to the glass, and he raised his hand briefly in answer. The chopper lifted, hovering a few feet from the ground. He heard the engine pick up, felt the grit assaulting him, but did not close his eyes. He watched it fly away, Scully's face growing smaller and smaller in the sky. XxXxXxX By the time they hoisted Carl Quentin out of the canyon, the mountainside was swarming with law enforcement personnel -- every one eager to say he had been a part of the bust, every one pushing for just one peek at the creature whose killings spanned twelve years and three thousand miles. Mulder stood apart from them, his toes lined up at the very edge of the rocky gap; one slight sway and he would go tumbling down. He didn't need another look. All those years he'd hoped for the slightest clue -- a face, a hair, a footprint in the dirt -- and now he feared he knew too much. He still felt Carl's breath in his ear, the press of his boot at his back. His enemy now had a face, a feel, a scent that clung, an image that burned. "Bring 'er up slow now! That's it!" The rescue team had almost finished their excavation. Mulder saw the stretcher make inching progress up the side of the mountain. "Be a shame if they just dropped him again," a nearby cop said. "Too good for him," his buddy answered. "They oughta line him up somewhere and let the families take turns at him." "Agent Mulder!" Sam Nesbith's voice made him turn, and he felt the heavy clap of a hand on his shoulder. "You did it. The sonofabitch has grabbed his last woman. He'll fry for sure." Prison, Mulder thought. Years of the same drab shoes. No women in sight. That would be the best punishment. "They're going to take him to County now," Nesbith continued, "and you've got a seat on that chopper if you want it." "Is that where they took Scully, Grenier and Russell?" "Yeah, I think so. What do you say? The docs would really like a look at you." "I'm fine," Mulder answered distractedly. He stared through the crowd at the stretcher being loaded into the helicopter. "Is he conscious?" Nesbith shifted his weight and scratched his head. "Yes. He's hurting pretty bad, though. I heard them say he might lose his foot from where you caught him with the axe." Some unintended irony, Mulder thought. Aloud, he said, "All right, let's go." Threading his way through the black uniforms, he reached the helicopter and climbed inside. Quentin's eyes locked with his immediately, bulging from his sweaty, fevered face in a silent challenge, but the oxygen mask over his face prevented any words. Mulder knew others spoke of evil as a palpable thing, a force that could knock you down or slither under your skin when you least expected it, but he'd always felt evil like a vacuum, defined by everything it sucked away. Carl Quentin had managed to subtract fourteen women from the world, and Mulder could feel him still pulling for more. It was a terrible kind of imbalance, an equation that would never be right. Mulder held Quentin's fierce gaze for a minute, letting the other man track him to his seat. His knees cracked as he sat, a reminder of how long a journey it had been. Quentin arched his neck backwards in an effort to prolong their wordless confrontation. Acknowledge me. Answer to me. This is not over. Mulder looked away, focusing out the window. It was over. XxXxXxX End Chapter Thirteen. Continued in Chapter Fourteen. syn_tax6@yahoo.com