Witch's Canyon

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  Next, Juliet snatched up the shower curtain and took a few steps toward the startled beast. Opening the curtain, she sailed it over the animal's head and back. She didn't think it would choke out the flames, but hoped it would hold the bulk of fiery cotton against the wolf's shoulder where it had landed. Confusing the wolf would be a good fringe benefit.

  It seemed to do both. The beast batted at the curtain with its paws, shook its massive head, but couldn't dislodge it. It might have been trying to roar, but it had always been silent, and that held true now.

  The shower curtain started to sizzle and melt into the creature's fur. Now she knew, from the way it bucked and writhed under the hot plastic, that she had caused it pain. She allowed herself a fleeting smile.

  Pain wouldn't kill it, though. And while it flailed in the doorway, Stu and Howard were blocked from entering, but she would have to contend with them as well.

  She picked up the shower curtain rod. She still wasn't convinced it was strong enough to do any damage, but she had already been as close as she wanted to be to the thing. She held it in both hands and leaned toward the beast, driving the rod full force into its face, hoping to hit an eye underneath the shower curtain.

  At the last second the animal's head reared up and knocked the rod away before it landed. She tried again, but the wolf opened its huge maw and caught it. The end of the rod collapsed like balsa wood under its bite, and it jerked its head, whipping the weak pole from her grasp.

  Its strength was indescribable. The other curtain rod, heavier but short, still waited on the bed.

  But suddenly her confidence in it as a weapon flagged, along with her confidence in herself. She had intended to survive this. For a time—especially when she discovered that the wolf could feel pain—she thought she had.

  It looked like she was wrong.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Sam outpaced Sheriff Beckett before they had gone ten yards from the dais. He could hear the lawman coming along behind, his duty belt jangling with every step, but he kept his eyes front, threading through the confused and still frightened mall customers like a NASCAR racer slipping through the openings into first place.

  By the time he reached the west parking lot entrance, word had spread to the sheriff's deputies and security personnel guarding it. They had left their posts and were heading into the lot, their steps tentative, since they were charged with securing the doors.

  A couple of them turned around when Sam burst through. Seeing the sheriff close behind him, they froze as if waiting for instructions. Sam heard Beckett grunt something as he neared them, and they let him pass.

  He found the other security people, and one sheriff's officer who had responded more immediately, out past most of the ranks of cars parked in the lot. They were huddled behind the last line of cars, guns in their hands. One officer lay bleeding from a vicious stomach wound. Bitter smelling gun smoke hung in the air.

  On the other side, where they must have come out of the woods, were their opponents. At least a dozen spirits stood there, flashing and sputtering like lightbulbs on a faulty circuit. They were the usual types: soldiers, Native Americans, and settlers or ranch workers of different eras. A couple of animals, a bobcat and a black bear, stood among them. The humans were male, except for one woman in a long dress and apron, a bonnet tied under her chin. All the human spirits carried weapons of some kind.

  The woman led Sam with a long-barreled flintlock rifle. He threw himself to the ground behind a BMW just as the muzzle erupted in smoke and fire. The sports car's windshield shattered.

  "You loaded with rock salt?" he asked the sheriff's officer—the only other person on the scene so far with a shotgun.

  "That's what the sheriff ordered."

  "Good. Regular bullets won't help against these things."

  The mall security people had handguns, no doubt loaded with those useless regular bullets. One of them rose up over the hood of a car and fired a shot. Wasting lead, Sam thought. At best it might give the attackers pause, keep them back away from the mall while Beckett and his reinforcements came.

  Sam followed suit, showing his head and shoulders above the BMW just long enough to fire a blast of rock salt at the spirits. When he dropped back down, the deputy took a turn.

  Beckett and the others jogged up and took positions of their own behind the parked cars. Beckett went straight to the wounded officer, a Navajo man with a powerful build. "Benally!" he said anxiously. "You hang on, buddy, we'll get a medic right out here."

  "I've already called for paramedics," the deputy next to Sam reported. "They won't come over here until the situation's under control."

  "Then we'll have to get Benally to them," Beckett said. "Can he be moved?"

  "Don't... don't worry about me..." Benally managed. "Just take out those sons of bitches."

  "Don't worry about that," Beckett said, his face grim. "That's the whole idea."

  A couple of the spirit attackers fired shots at once. In spite of the fact that they had no cover, they kept advancing, perhaps counting on their near invulnerability to conventional weapons to protect them. So far it had worked. Soon they'd be able to reach over the cars and pick off the defenders one by one. At Beckett's command, the sheriff's officers, all armed with shotguns, rose and fired, then ducked again. Bullets chunked into the cars or spewed window glass, but the spirits' weapons were old and not made to shoot through steel. Sam waited until the cops were down and the return volley over, then risked another shot. The attackers' ranks had thinned—the bear, the woman, and four of the men were gone. But more seemed to be materializing behind them, in the woods, a kind of shadow army becoming flesh as he watched.

  "Sheriff!" he called when he ducked back to safety. "We have a bigger problem than we thought!" He jerked a thumb over the BMW.

  Beckett rose up to look, then dropped down again. "Appears as if you're right, Sam."

  "You have more officers on the way?"

  "Six more," Beckett said. "All carrying shotguns with rock salt shells. And if I didn't say it before, thanks for that little piece of advice."

  "But there are still people watching the other sides of the building, right?"

  "Our people are on that," one of the mall security guards said. She was a woman with an athletic build and short red hair. "I wish we knew about the rock salt ahead of time, though."

  "I tried to tell Carla," Beckett said. He winced, as if he hadn't meant to reveal even that much, but then must have figured he'd already stepped in it. "But she didn't want you folks toting shotguns. Worried about how it'd look to the customers, I guess."

  They could have made dumdum bullets like Baird had, Sam knew, but that was a time-consuming process, carving each one individually in a vise. Even if Beckett had tipped off Carla about that, her people wouldn't have had time to make very many.

  Sam took another look at the new force gathering at the tree line. It looked like thirty or more of the spirit people and animals. Better to look bad than be slaughtered, he thought. He almost said it out loud, but decided that Jim Beckett and Carla Krug were going to have enough trouble once this was all over—if they lived through it—without him adding to it.

  He fired a round, almost without aiming. There were enough spirits out there that he could hardly miss.

  Two whining bullets slammed the BMW as he was ducking back behind it. Whoever owned that car was going to be very unhappy.

  But maybe alive, Sam thought. If we can hold this line.

  "Let's go," Dean said, shoving the EMF reader into his pocket and breaking into a sprint. Passing the red SUV, he saw a body in the driveway, a man whose chest had been torn open. Entrails had been tugged from it and spread around, huge pink worms trailing on the snow. Closer to the house was another man in similar condition. Whatever had been happening here was seriously bad news.

  The front door was locked. Already panting from the dead run, Dean backed up a step and aimed a hard, sharp kick just below the knob. "Oww!" he complained. The
door was solid, heavy wood. He gave it one more shot, without success.

  "Window!" he called to Baird, who had almost caught up. Most of the glass was already smashed out of it. Dean dashed to the window, put his hands on the frame and vaulted over it. His ankle, already hurting from the two kicks into the unmovable door, nearly buckled on landing, but he ignored the shooting pain and ran deeper into the house. From upstairs he could hear the sounds of a ferocious struggle. "Ma'am?" he called. "I'm here to help you!"

  Only the crashing and thumping answered him. He hit the stairs at a run, aware that Baird was behind him, crawling with some difficulty through the broken window.

  Before he reached the top of the stairs, he knew at least part of what was going on. Two men started toward him, spirit men, blinking between material and not. He recognized them—mostly by their wounds, gaping and familiar—as the men whose bodies he had passed outside. He was surprised they could have risen so fast, since most of the spirits he'd seen in town looked like those of people who had died during the nineteenth century.

  This close to the witch's presumed burial ground, though, inside Witch's Canyon and maybe right on the site of her cabin, who knew how much power she still wielded?

  Something was going on behind the spirit men, but he couldn't tell what. It involved a lot of thrashing and banging, and he thought he saw what looked like a dog's bushy tail, but then the men blocked his view again, both with empty hands grabbing for him, like they wanted to do to him barehanded what something had done to them.

  Dean whipped the shotgun up and fired twice in rapid succession. The echo of the weapon in the narrow staircase rang in his ears, and the smoke stung his nostrils. When he blinked it away from his eyes, the two men were gone.

  "Ma'am?" he said. The screaming voice he'd heard had definitely been female, and he thought he heard it again just as he pulled the trigger, shouting curses that would have impressed Dad.

  The thrashing had quieted somewhat, although it hadn't stopped. "Ma'am!" he shouted again, louder. "I'm coming up!"

  "Come on ahead," a woman called back. "Just be careful! It's not dead, but I think it's hurt!"

  It? Dean pumped another shell into the chamber and climbed the remaining stairs more cautiously. Behind him, Baird called out, "What the hell's going on up there, Dean?"

  "I'll find out and let you know," Dean promised. At the top of the stairs he saw a woman standing inside a bedroom. In the doorway, a furry, bloody lump was covered in plastic, twitching and clawing at her. It was a canine of some kind, like a big German shepherd, with black markings on a coat of silver. A terrible stink of burned hair and plastic and God knew what else filled the hallway.

  "It's a wolf," she said, and Dean realized it was Juliet Monroe, whom he and Sam had met at the Grand Canyon rim their first night in the area. Her dark curls were everywhere, and blood flecked her face and her sweat-drenched, tattered clothes, but she didn't appear to have suffered any major injuries.

  "Juliet? It's me. Dean."

  It took her a moment to place him. He couldn't help being upset by that. She's been through a trauma, he thought. And it's not over yet. "We met at the Canyon."

  "Dean. Right, I'm sorry. This has been—this has been a strange few days. You wouldn't believe it."

  "You might be surprised."

  The big animal on the floor in front of her twitched again, trying to rise. Dean couldn't be certain through the half-melted plastic sheeting stuck to it, but it might have vanished for a split second.

  "That's a wolf," he said, her words just sinking in. "But not a real one."

  "I don't think so."

  The spirit animal shook its big shaggy head and tried to snap at Juliet. "What did you do to it?"

  "I set it on fire," she said. "Then I hit it with this."

  She showed him a metal rod about four feet long, with arrow points on the ends. One of them was crusted with blood and tufts of fur.

  "Is that iron?" he asked.

  "I think so. Wrought iron."

  "Iron's a powerful weapon against magical creatures," he said. "So is fire. If you had salted it, you probably could have destroyed it altogether."

  "Magical creatures?" She lowered the rod again and blinked at him. "And you're some kind of expert on that? How did you happen to come by here, anyway?"

  "Let me finish this thing off first, then I'll tell you all about it," Dean said. "We have one other thing to take care of, which we need to do fast. Are you really attached to your ground floor?"

  "What?"

  He didn't answer, just shoved the muzzle of his shotgun under the plastic sheet, pressing it against the big wolf's flank. "This is gonna be loud," he said. Juliet turned away, plugging her ears. Dean squeezed the trigger.

  The gun roared, flame spitting rock salt into the animal. It reared and bucked once, then vanished. All that remained was the melted plastic sheeting. Even the blood disappeared from the floor, the walls, and Juliet's clothing.

  "It's all gone," Dean said. "Now, about that floor..."

  THIRTY-NINE

  The parking lot had become a war zone. Most of the cars in the back row were trashed, their windows and lights blown out, fenders knocked off, tires flattened, bodies riddled with holes. Spent shell casings littered the ground behind them, where the sheriff's officers, security guards, and Sam sought shelter.

  At the forest's edge, the scene stayed relatively pristine, because the spirit army's soldiers just disappeared when they were destroyed, taking with them every sign of their existence.

  Three of the defenders were wounded now, and Sam had begun to think that Benally wouldn't pull through. At a crouch, he skittered over beside Beckett. "We need to get Benally to the paramedics," he said. "He's looking bad."

  "I know," Beckett said. "But they've really got us pinned down. If we lift him—"

  "I know," Sam echoed. "I'll take the chance, if there's someone who can help me."

  "I will, sir." It was the redheaded security guard. "I'll take his feet if you take his shoulders. I think we should keep him as flat as we can."

  "Agreed," Sam said. He turned back to the sheriff. "You guys be okay without us for a few?"

  "Get Benally some help," Beckett said. "We'll be just fine."

  A bullet tore into the vehicle they were hiding behind, spraying window glass over them, as if to put the lie to Beckett's words. Sam thought the bullet was more right than Beckett was. The attackers kept coming, more all the time, and had started moving to flank the line of parked cars.

  Dean, I hope you're there, he thought for about the hundredth time.

  "Come on," he said to the security guard. He crab-walked over to Benally, and she went with him.

  "We're going to get you some medical help, Benally," he said. Benally blinked a couple of times but didn't answer. He hadn't spoken for a while.

  Sam squatted behind the officer and shoved his hands beneath him, lifting him by the underarms. The guard grabbed his ankles. Together, they managed to lift the heavy officer several inches off the ground. Carrying him while hunched low themselves was harder than if they'd been able to stand up, putting enormous strain on their backs. But standing would have meant being shot.

  Sam gave a grunt and started walking backward, still at a crouch to keep his head below the protective wall of vehicles. Even so, a bullet whistled past him, a near miss, fired between two trucks. He almost dropped Benally, then firmed up his grip. "I can go faster," the security guard said.

  "Okay," Sam said. He was heading backward blindly, not sure how much faster he could go. But he was willing to try.

  Benally had the upper torso of a bodybuilder, and Sam realized that he was doing the lion's share of the hauling. He didn't object, but he hoped he'd be able to walk upright again once the task was done. Sam saw that more uniformed security guards had taken up stations at the door to the mall, keeping people from wandering out into the battlefield. So rather than carrying the wounded man through the mall, they took him around
the corner to the south side, where ambulances waited at the loading docks. Paramedics rushed to help, relieving them of their burden and setting to work immediately on Benally. Sam stretched to work the kinks out of his back. Fully extended, he was far taller than the redheaded guard, who topped out at less than five and a half feet. She popped her back with a loud crack and gave him a bashful grin. "Thanks for helping," he said.

  "No problem," she replied. She was about to say something else, but then her face took on a serious demeanor as she listened to her earpiece. Although she had been flushed from the exertion, the color drained from her face. "It's Ms. Krug," she said. "She and the mayor are cornered in her office."

  Sam didn't wait for more details. So far the trouble had largely confined itself to outside the mall, with that one initial exception. He had hoped it would stay that way. Dad always impressed upon his sons the necessity of keeping the things they hunted secret. To do otherwise, to publicize them, would terrify the general public. And it would turn the world's accepted knowledge on its head, for no useful purpose. It might even strengthen the bad things, some of which fed off people's beliefs and fears.

  If they had gotten inside the mall, while most of the law officers and security guards were outside... then it was up to him to deal with them.

  He'd left his bag of weapons back at the cars, intending to go straight back after delivering Benally. He had tucked his sawed-off into a deep inside jacket pocket and had a couple of extra rock salt shells on him, but that was all.

  The redheaded guard had less than that, though—just the Beretta she'd been issued that morning.

  Sam took off at a run without waiting for further elaboration. The guards at the exit were focused on keeping people out, but one saw him coming and opened a door for him. He sprinted through, reversing his previous course, and took the stairs three at a time.

  People still milled around the mall, although the sounds of happy, expectant shoppers had been replaced by those of virtual prisoners complaining about being locked in. Smoking was forbidden inside the building, but apparently that rule wasn't being enforced, and Sam raced through pockets of cigarette smoke. As he did, he heard arguments that threatened to turn into outright brawls. These people had to be let out soon or the bloodshed would be strictly human on human.