I slipped to one knee, gasped for air through a throat that still felt raw from coughing and choking. In the midst of that unexpected pause, I depressed the release on the revolver, thumbed the cylinder out into the slightly cupped fingers of my left hand. Smooth, cool, deadly steel. I bent my head, blew. Six bullet casings, six primers, touched now, as Lily directed, by the breath of a heaven-born soul.
Time to go, to still the maddening itch within my body. I rolled the cylinder back into the frame, turned it one chamber to click it into place, then sucked in wind and began climbing hard again through thinning trees.
Two steps more, and I stopped abruptly. Before me, upon the burn-scarred mountain stretched an ancient lava flow from the rounded summit, as if the peak had grown a new and harder skin in centuries past. A younger manmade fire had burned across the flanks, stripping it of splendor and leaving behind the charred remains of skeletal pines.
Like Shemyazaz, the pines had lost their beauty long before, reduced to blackened wreckage. But here had come newer growth in the wake of fire, here was resurrection in the quaking aspen and grass and foliage following close upon the burning.
The mountain was sacred. Gods walked upon it. But there was a taint here, a wash of red in the corners of my eyes. It wasn’t yet a domicile and maybe never would be, if the katsinam held their ground. But I smelled the odor not of trees, of rain, of stone and earth, or even the sulfur of stories, but the oversweet, cloying, throat-closing fragrance of what Remi had called kyphi, an ancient, powerful incense.
Unerring, now, I turned toward the source. Toward Remi and the creature.
Bare-headed, Remi squatted in thin wild grass and deadfall. One knee rested against the ground, a boot heel tucked up under his butt at the foot of three close-clustered aspens. Using merely a thread of voice, he asked, “See it?”
Indeed I did. Neither man nor woman, neither black dog nor ghost. As the gray of the clouds moved apart, permitting a glance of fitful sunlight, the camouflage of tree trunks and foliage withdrew, leaving behind a clear view. Brown, focused, feral eyes; the sleekness of tawny pelt; pointed, triangular ears on alert. Parted mouth displayed an arcade of powerful teeth.
“Not what it looks like,” Remi said quietly. “A smidge more than cat.”
Cougar, puma, mountain lion, catamount. A plethora of names for a single big cat.
And something more inside. Dangerous on its own. Deadly hosting a demon.
I did not move. Kept my voice barely above a whisper. “We will talk about this, you know.”
“I ’spect so.”
It was a standoff between cowboy and demon, plain and simple. I had no idea why Remi was squatting with a knee on the ground, as the posture placed him at a disadvantage.
Something nagged. An itch settled between my shoulder blades. “You hurt?”
“Scratch.”
“Thought so.” Primogenitura, again. I knew it better, now. I could lift the wound from Remi, take it into myself, but for now I had another task. I drew back the hammer on the big pistol, felt it click into place. “I’m going to shoot.”
“Figured you might. Get to it, then.”
“The thing may be quicker than a normal cat.”
“It is.”
“How fast can you duck?”
“Been duckin’ and dodgin’ bulls, son. I’ll manage this.”
Our entire exchange had been quietly conversational. The cat had not even flicked an ear. Not even blinked an eye. Even with me present, its attention was all for Remi.
It’s best to shoot from a familiar stance, especially with a big gun, from a comfortable positioning of feet, weight balanced to aid accuracy, hands joined as one cupped the heel of the other on gun butt. But this was neither the time nor place nor situation to depend upon a specific physical posture. We weren’t at a range. I needed to shoot the thing dead no matter what it took and as quickly as possible.
One-armed, one-handed, I raised the big revolver, welcomed reflexive instinct. The cat, as expected, leaped.
It came not at Remi, but me.
On a heavy, echoing report and a recoil up the arm that stirred echoes of aches in my shoulder, a single breath-blessed .357 Magnum round entered the cavern of the cougar’s open mouth, blew through the back of its throat, exited the skull in gouts of skin and brain and bloodied chunks of bone.
Damn big gun. Damn big round. Damn dead demon.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The cat was dead. No question of that. Not much head left. But I waited anyway, gun at the ready. The cat was dead—was its hijacker?
The reek was horrendous. It was the kyphi, the ancient, powerful incense smell; the smell of demons. It spread out like a miasmic aerosol, an odor that stung nostrils and eyes. I tasted it in the back of my throat, swallowed convulsively to keep my belly down where it should be.
Rotten eggs, a natural gas leak, the stink of plain sulfur would be easier to deal with. I spat once, twice, then girded my loins, so to speak, and walked closer to the body, prepared to shoot again.
Upon inspection, I lowered the revolver. In the mess of brain, blood, and bone, I saw glittering insectoid carapaces, the sheen of bodies that resembled cockroaches. Feelers, multiple legs, wing-like structures. It was hell’s Rorschach test, an amoebic spread of remains.
And then a wave in the midst of the glittering dark sprawl heaved itself upward.
I swore, lifted the revolver, heard Remi say something urgently about not shooting, about another way. Then he was beside me. I saw blood on his shirt, saw him yank back a sleeve, ripping it, and press a folded blue-and-white bandana against his forearm. Blood stained the white areas, spread dark across the cloth, and then he dropped it into the midst of demon remains. Remi recited the Latin words of exorcism, the Rituale Romanum. The cockroaches—or whatever they were; we really needed a name for them—caught fire.
I’d heard it before, in the Zoo. It was like corn popping, and the splitting open of dark bodies. As one, Remi and I took long steps away, both of us pressing the backs of our hands against noses and mouths. More popping, more stench, and bursts of flame.
I couldn’t restrain a hard grimace. “God, this is foul!”
Remi nodded, expression disgusted as he stared at the tiny burning corpses. The blood-stained bandana was gone, burned to ash. I saw again the torn sleeve, the stains on his shirt, and before I even thought about it I’d moved, was close to him. I set down the revolver on a stump, reached out for his arm and demanded, with an insistent gimmegimmegimme gesture of fingers, to take a look.
Remi refused at first, said he was fine, but I guess something in my tension and urgency got through to him. He lifted his arm, let me take it into one hand while I pulled back the torn sleeve with my other.
It was indeed a real live slice from a mountain lion claw, and it was long, running halfway between wrist and elbow. It didn’t go deep enough to separate the multiple layers of muscle, but stitches were needed, I was sure.
“He jumped me,” Remi said as I inspected. “I had no clue he was there. I heard him, spun around just as he leaped, and I ducked down—well, most of me ducked.”
We had no water to wash out the wound. “Damn lucky.”
“Said I was used to ducking bulls, didn’t I? You get bucked off of one of those sons of bitches, you’d better be ready to dodge. And be damn good at it to boot.”
I felt a chill skate down my back. Tried to shake it off. “That’s it, though? This wound? No others?”
“That’s it.”
I tried for levity. “You want me to spit on it?”
He stared at me in consternation. “Why would I want you to spit on it?”
“Well, I breathed on a bullet that killed a demon, and we know our spit in water changes it to holy water, so—”
Remi decisively removed his arm from my grip and took a step away, guardin
g the limb while apparently weighing my sanity.
“—I thought maybe it might act as heavenly antibacterial,” I finished. I rolled my shoulders, tried to dissipate tension that was building, not fading. “Look, we need to go back to the RV, let Lily clean this up.”
Remi didn’t dismiss me outright, but he clearly saw no reason for haste. “It’ll keep for the time being. I’m wondering if we need to explode this body.”
“That’s to clear a domicile,” I said. “You know, where a demon has set up housekeeping. This is different. These mountains here, these peaks—they can’t be a domicile. They’re sacred lands to Native American cultures, and have been so for centuries.”
“They got here first, huh?”
“Yup. Sanctified it in their ways.”
“Then churches? Chapels?”
I knew it, clear to the bone. “Safe.”
“Holy ground, huh?” Remi said. “Like TV’s Highlander? No immortal can challenge another for his head on holy ground?”
“‘There can be only one,’” I intoned dutifully, then continued, “Remember the Chapel of the Holy Dove?” He nodded. “It had been deconsecrated. Demons could have walked right in, made it a home.”
“But we reconsecrated it.” Remi resnapped his shirt cuff, even though a flap of cloth hung down and flesh was bared. Wounded flesh.
My skin, from the nape of my neck all the way down my back, twitched. I felt my hair stand up. A large part of me wanted to shout at him, but I clamped my mouth closed, turned my back, walked away.
“Say it,” Remi called out. “I reckon you need to.” He paused. “And I reckon I might do the same, wearin’ your boots.”
I turned back to face him across eight feet of wild grass, weeds, wildflowers. Stuck out my arms from my sides. “What the hell was that?” Self-control deserted me as my words began to run together in my haste to get it all said. “What the hell made you take off running like that without knowing where you were going? Neither one of us knows what’s out here—” His brows ran up and I saw his point, altered course in mid-rant. “—okay, so we sort of know what’s out here, now, but still, what the hell? Remember the whole mutual grip-the-ring-thing the other night, that Grandaddy called ‘sealing’? It’s two of us, McCue. It’s both of us. You don’t leave me behind, and I don’t leave you behind.”
I ran out of breath on the last sentence. Damn, I needed to acclimate to altitude in a hurry if I was going to be running up mountains.
But I’d said that before, that last sentence. A couple of years before. To my brother, not a stranger. ‘You don’t leave me behind, and I don’t leave you behind.’
Remi gazed at me as I sucked in air. “You done?”
The adrenaline surge was dissipating, along with the drive of primogenitura. I felt both pouring out of me, and what remained of me was more than a little shaky.
He was safe. He was whole—well, mostly whole. I felt myself settle, like a dog’s hackles going down. I closed my eyes, let my breathing level.
Remi said, unevenly, “It was my daughter.”
My eyes popped open. “What?”
He looked away from me, staring hard into the trees. “I heard my daughter’s voice.”
That’s right; I’d forgotten he had a kid back home in Texas. I considered saying nothing, then decided to be honest. “You know it wasn’t—”
He overrode me. He kept his tone level, but the expression in his eyes was raw. “She called out for her daddy.”
That stopped me dead. I forcibly bled every last bit of accusation and tension out of my voice. “It was the demon. You know it was. Had to be.”
His eyes were steady. I saw neither anger nor denial. “I know that. Now. But in that instant, in that moment, it was all reflex.” He shrugged. “You’d do the same.”
My head felt heavy on my neck as I nodded, sat myself down on the stump next to the revolver. I watched Remi put his back against an aspen and let it take his weight. Demon-infested or no, he’d been attacked by a wild animal. Probably he was running low on adrenaline and high on the realization of how close he’d come to death.
Butt planted on stump, I spread my legs, leaned my weight through elbows into my thighs. Damp hair fell forward to hang against my collarbones. “Okay,” I said, “now we know they can get inside our heads. We’ll have to be ready for that. We’ll have to learn how to shut that shit down. Because yeah, I’d have done the same. Exactly the same.” And I had, more or less, for my younger brother, when I killed a man to save him. “I have to ask you to do something, then. Okay?”
He was examining his sliced arm again, raised his eyes to meet my own. To wait.
“Trust me, Remi. Just—trust me. There’s something . . . something that’s hard to explain. It’s just . . . it’s in me.”
“What Grandaddy talked about. That you can sense the vibes of places, good and bad.”
That’s right, he’d been present for the explanation. I grimaced. “Yeah. Look, I’m not planning on being a nursemaid, or a nervous mother—”
He rode right over my words. “But it’s all reflex.”
I knew what he meant. He’d said that about his daughter. Maybe it was all the explanation required. “Yeah.”
Remi looked over at the body of the sprawled cat. “You’re going to have to ground me, then. If that happens again. We have to figure this out—find the means to deal with this. No one’s going to hold our hands. Not Grandaddy. Not anyone. If anything, they’ll pat us on the back to wish us well, then shove us out of the airplane without a parachute.”
“Which they’ve already done.” I looked up at the roiled sky, the flutter of lime-green leaves against deepening gray, the soft-shouldered highest peak of the lava-crusted mountain not far above us. “Or maybe it’s that they give us some ripstop nylon, some paracord—and we have to fashion our own chutes in mid-fall.”
Remi nodded. “Kind of a steep learning curve, though.”
“Guns,” I said. “We’ve got to keep guns on us. Knives’ll do, but we’ll need guns, too. Always.” His belt was empty of clip-on holster, as my shoulders were empty of straps. I dug at dirt with a boot heel, frowned at the earth I overturned. “All those other things in Lily’s RV: stakes, oils, powders, silver, holy wood, water.” I tipped my head back, stared directly overhead, wondering what really lay beyond the stars. Form and void? Chaos? A literal Armageddon? “I think, to be honest . . .” I put out my hand, palm-down. It shook a little, until I tucked away the trembles inside a hard fist. “I think I’m scared as hell about all this.” I met Remi’s steady eyes, saw agreement in them, acknowledgment of the magnitude of what we faced. “I gotta learn me some Latin and Aramaic.”
Remi smiled a little. “Just the phrases that count.”
I opened my mouth to say something more, only to physically startle when I heard a woman’s voice speaking before I had a chance to.
“Who shot that cat?”
Remi straightened up from the tree even as I rose abruptly from my seat upon the stump.
My initial impression was of slenderness, of dark hair in a long braid threaded through the back of a faded blue ball cap, a two-piece rainsuit, pants and jacket, hiking boots.
And in the next moment I registered that although her right arm hung loose at her side, a gun was in that hand.
CHAPTER NINE
I chanced a glance at Remi, hoping his sixth sense, or whatever it was, could indicate whether the woman with a gun was a demon, or just a woman with a gun.
Remi darted a glance at me, twice twitched his brows upward just a little, but I wasn’t certain if that meant she was a demon, or if he just thought she was attractive and was sharing that opinion the way guys usually do with one another.
But since the revolver was sitting next to me on the stump, and the mountain lion was clearly dead, and the report of a .357 would have be
en heard quite some distance away, I saw no reason whatsoever to deny shooting the cat. So I copped to it. “Yeah, I shot it.”
She nodded, tucked the gun somewhere behind her back as she lifted the hem of the unzipped rain jacket. Beneath it I could see a blue shirt. The jacket hood lay bunched across the back of her neck, hiding most of the single braid. “Okay. Well, it’s not illegal in Arizona, but I’d appreciate it if you filed a report.”
“Filed a report?” I echoed.
She broke into a blurt of laughter, face reddening. “Sorry, I forgot to say. I’m a Park Ranger.” She spread out both arms and made a gesture encompassing the entire area. “This is my office.” As she let her arms fall she glanced to the cat with its pool of glittering cockroach remains, cremains—hell, maybe even demonic excrement. Her expression was baffled as she stepped to the cat to take a closer look. She picked up a tree branch, began to stir it through the remains. “What is this stuff?”
Remi and I looked at one another. I knew he was recalling the same memory: a demon wearing a cop’s body in the Zoo’s parking lot, telling us he was going to gather up the demon remains inside because, he’d said, ‘Everyone comes home.’ And once returned to hell, the bits and pieces were somehow reconstituted.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said.
Remi and I exchanged another glance. He shook his head a little, shrugged.
Then she slipped out of her straps, set aside the pack, squatted down to more closely examine the burned bits of demon parts. The unzipped jacket shifted and I saw the SIG Sauer tucked into a slim holster designed for the small of the back, snugged against her spine and held in place by a braided leather belt.
“I need to get samples of this.” She stood up, tossed the stick aside, met my eyes. Hers were blue. “Would you mind filling out a report? The ranger station isn’t far from here. I mean, it’s not illegal to kill a mountain lion in Arizona, so you’re not in any trouble, but we do like to keep track of the ones living up here in the Peaks. And, you know—legal matters.”
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