The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [121]
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
SEAN
I wake to the sound of crying. I got back too late; it took sleep too long to come to me. For a moment, I just lie there. Exhaustion makes me unwilling to fully wake, and yet: the crying.
The sound resolves itself into an agonized keening, and I am awake. I am awake and I have my jacket and my boots and I am in the stairwell with my flashlight.
The stable is dark, but I hear the sounds of movement, not from the aisles, but from the stalls. The horses are awake. Either the sound has woken them, or someone has been here. I keep my flashlight switched off and make my way in the dark.
The moaning grows louder as I creep down to the main floor. It’s coming from Corr’s old stall, the one I just put Edana in.
I slide down the aisle as quickly as silence allows. The crying has gone silent but I’m certain now that it’s Edana. In the darkness, I can barely see inside the stall. The night outside throws some dark blue light in, just enough for me to press myself against the bars and look in.
When she keens again, I start back. She’s right by my face.
Her head lies against the bars, neck pressed against the wall, nose pointed toward the ceiling, jaw cracked open.
I whisper her name and she cries back to me softly. My eyes follow the line of her neck to her sloping withers and the slanting line her hips make low to the ground. I’ve never seen a horse stand like this. There’s a sick knot inside me as I pull open the door and step into the stall. Now, her body silhouetted against the light of the window, I see that she leans against the wall with her head and neck, sunk down onto her haunches like a dog. Her back legs splay out as if the ground is slippery.
I touch her shoulder; it’s trembling. I have a terrible feeling rising inside me. I run the flat of my hand from her withers down her spine, and then, crouching to keep searching, around the curve of her twitching haunches, and down toward her hamstring. Edana whimpers.
My hand comes away soaked. I lift it toward my eyes, but I don’t need it any closer to smell the blood on it. I snatch my flashlight from my pocket and flick it on.
Both of her hamstrings have been sliced.
The top edge of the wound curves up like a ghastly smile, and blood pools around her hocks.
I go to her head and she struggles, trying to get her legs under her. I stroke her forelock and whisper in her ear. Be still. Don’t be afraid. I wait for her breathing to become easier, for her to believe me.
She’ll never walk again.
I can’t understand it. I don’t understand who would mutilate Edana, a horse that wasn’t in the races, a horse that was no threat to anyone. And like this, this savage cruelty — I was meant to find her and be sickened. I can think of only one person who would want to hurt me like that.
I think I hear a rustle somewhere in the depths of the stable.
I flick off the flashlight.
In the dark, in his stall, Edana’s bay coat looks very much like Corr’s blood-red one. It would be very easy to mistake them if you were expecting Corr and were concentrating on getting into the stall without getting hurt.
There’s movement again, farther away in the stable.
I scramble out of the stall and into the aisle. I stand and wait, listening. My heart has already raced ahead of me. All I want is for the sound to be from anywhere but the back seven stalls. All I want is for Mutt Malvern to have guessed wrong when he went looking for Corr. There are five other stalls equipped for the capaill uisce. He could have gone looking in any of them after he discovered Edana was the wrong horse.
I hear the commotion again.
It’s from the back seven stalls.
Now I