Wake of Vultures

by Lila Bowen

  “Will you talk now?” the creature asked, as if they were chatting about the weather.

  “I don’t got the answers you want, but if you’ll take me up off this spike, I’ll try.”

  “Tsk, tsk. No. Talk now. Where have you been?”

  The spidery hands lowered her enough to let the spike just pierce her skin through her shirt, and Nettie yelped, “Here. Durango. Border town called Gloomy Bluebird.”

  With an irritable snap of its beak, the creature muttered, “Among the white men. Perhaps that’s why.”

  “Yeah, with the white man!” Nettie shouted, skin crawling away from the spike. “And it was goddamn miserable, so don’t feel too bad about it. Might as well have let you eat me for all the good it did me. Bought myself years of bullshit. What did you expect?”

  The huge eyes were suddenly right up in Nettie’s face, the long fingers pressing into her flesh like drills. “Expected to find you with your tribe, with any tribe. Been looking. Wanted to know how you escaped. Can’t have it happen again.”

  Nettie stared, unblinking, breathing through her nose. Below her, Winifred whimpered and reached a hand up to barely touch Nettie’s shoulder.

  “Don’t know how I escaped. I was too small. Nobody ever told me where I came from.”

  The creature clicked at her, its fingers tightening around her sides. With sudden force, it shoved her down onto the spike, and Nettie screamed as the silver metal pierced straight through her back and punched out to the side of her belly button. The world became a hell of fire and pain and snakes and white explosions behind her one good eye.

  “I killed your village. I took the children. All stacked up on the spike, nice and juicy. But you escaped. You were different. Different color, different meat. I know your scent. I know the taste of your fear.” One long finger reached out to swipe a tear from Nettie’s cheek and deliver the dab of wetness to the creature’s beak, a slender black tongue poking out to test it. “I ask again. What are you?”

  “I don’t… I don’t know.” Nettie moaned and put hands to her belly, to the wet place around the spike. As much pain as she’d known, she’d never known pain like this. And she remembered feeling it once before, long ago and far away like a dream, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember how she’d gotten there or how she’d escaped from it.

  “You were a baby. Too young to walk. Cradleboard and clean moccasins.” The long fingers left Nettie’s sides, and she slipped down the spike another inch. One by one, the claws curled around her face, thoughtfully probing the soft parts, up into her nose, deep into her ruined eye. “You’re something different.”

  “Well, no shit!” Nettie shouted, driving the bone knife from her boot deep into one of the giant, yellow eyes and slashing sideways. The Cannibal Owl reared back, screaming, as its eye slit open like an egg over easy and gushed white and red gunk. The knife clattered to the ground.

  Without its claws holding her up, Nettie had nothing to support her, nothing to keep her from slipping farther down the spike toward Winifred’s body. The hole in her gut—it was the size of her own arm, the red-smeared silver poking up as high as her face. She could feel her guts trying to knit—and failing. Poor Winifred, below her, was pierced even more deeply and moaning. With nothing to hold on to, there was no way to slide off the spike, and she figured she’d just keep cutting on the Cannibal Owl every time it got close. It was across the fire now, clicking and clucking and smoothing bony fingers over its own ruined eye.

  Nettie smiled, a tiny thing. Eye for an eye, the preacher feller always said.

  Or maybe that was the sheriff. The past had a way of running together.

  She slid down the spike a little farther and closed her good eye, trying to get beyond the pain. She’d heard one of the Ranger fellers say that when you were dying, your life flashed before your eyes, and that had to be what was happening. She saw Hennessy’s face, grinning in the firelight. Dan’s hands breaking stones and holding an arrow’s feathered tips to her cheek. Punching Winifred and seeing her dead twice and touching her long, brown foot. Killing the harpy, killing the vampire. The Captain and Monty and Chuck and years and years of ducking away from Pap’s fists and Mam’s broom and days spent breaking horses she’d never be able to afford and feeding brown grass to an old mule. That first, fine moment of pride as Boss Kimble offered her a job, a way out, that moment when anything had been possible.

  And then things got right peculiar, a fuzzy riot of flashes both familiar and strange.

  The rump of a paint horse, swinging back and forth below her. Bodies dancing by a fire, high up on a mountain. Laughing at birds, clutching at feathers. Fear and darkness and a promised monster. Freedom and the feeling of floating. A hawk’s sure talons and the world spinning. The ground rising, hard and brown, and a dirty white face grinning at something that looked like luck.

  Nettie swallowed hard and forced her eye to stay shut. She was so, so close.

  Claws dug under her eyelid, forcing her good eye open.

  “Tell me,” the creature said, one eye weeping as it loomed over her, face to face.

  “I don’t owe you nothing.” Nettie spit in the Cannibal Owl’s remaining eye, and when the great orb blinked closed, she whipped the silver knife out of her other boot and slashed it across, too.

  She was still stuck on the spike, but it felt damn good to blind the monster whose minion had taken one of her eyes first. It sat back against the cave wall to yank out the knife and throw it in the fire, keening with its knees clutched to its chest.

  “You will pay for that,” it said, unfolding to stand.

  The Cannibal Owl’s head was unnaturally big, even with the eyes destroyed, and now it came at her gushing blood with claws curled and crowned in sticky feathers, beak opening to show a row of human teeth, and inside that, another row of fangs.

  Nettie ripped her shirt open and dug around inside her bindings for the last shard of rock she’d hidden there. The spike’s piercing pain in her belly never lessened, never calmed, but she reckoned it would hurt about the same whether she fought or gave up, and Nettie Lonesome wasn’t one to give up. If the Cannibal Owl was dead, she could figure out a way off the spike, even if it was just hollering her fool head off until Dan found a way up the mountain. She was a monster, somehow. She could survive that much.

  The Cannibal Owl kicked the basket, jarring Winifred and making her groan as Nettie clutched the bone knife hard enough to draw her own hand’s blood. It was her last shot, and the creature was completely blind and utterly bloodthirsty and all the nightmares her mother had ever warned her about but she’d never had a mother but oh yes she had and she sucked in a deep breath and felt long fingers scrabble for her tear-wet face as the beak rose over her, sharp as glass and full of teeth and hungry for what it had been denied.

  Just as Nettie was pulling back her knife and aiming for where the critter’s heart should’ve been, Winifred shifted below her. Warm hands found Nettie’s shoulders, one foot curled against her rump. A wet, hot stump of bone dug into her hip—Winifred’s sheared ankle. Nettie gritted her teeth in understanding and waited.

  “Fly,” Winifred said, and with one mighty push, she shoved Nettie right off the spike and into the air.

  CHAPTER

  29

  In the air, everything felt good. For a long moment, Nettie floated, the pain of the spike already disappearing as her body healed itself. And then bony fingers scraped against her arm, and she twisted away and landed hard on the cold, stone floor of the Cannibal Owl’s cave with a sliver of white quartz cutting into her palm.

  The Cannibal Owl dove for her, and she rolled away, right into the fire. It was not like the ghost woman’s fire—it was real and hotter than hell. Her clothes caught, but so did the monster chasing her, and she rolled through to the other side and smothered herself against the stone. The blind beast staggered toward her, lit up like a goddamn torch and shrieking like a dying rabbit, and Nettie stood and stabbed it smack in the thr
oat with the stone shard.

  “Nettie…”

  Winifred’s whisper pulled her attention away long enough to let the Cannibal Owl grab her wrist and snap its beak around her forearm, clamping down like a goddamn river turtle. Nettie screeched and tried to shove it off, but it wouldn’t let go, and the layers of teeth inside tested her, chewed through her with a strange delicacy. The knife in its throat didn’t slow it down one dang bit, and Nettie was all out of weapons. Across the fire, the silver knife glinted, pretty as a creek to a dying man in the desert and just as far out of reach.

  “Please…”

  Nettie spun around to face the basket and the spike and the girl sunk down deep in a puddle of blood. When Winifred had pushed Nettie off the silver blade, that meant Winifred herself had been pushed farther down on it, the hole in her gut as big as a mule’s hoof now. But the Cannibal Owl wouldn’t let go of her arm, and Nettie didn’t have a knife, and Winifred took up crooning to herself in her own language.

  Fed up and numb and alive and done beyond all reason, Nettie yanked the Cannibal Owl along with her, dragging it step by aching step across the cave, feeling it swallow a chunk of her arm meat and open its mouth for another bite. When the blind, hungry thing tripped on its small feet, she shoved it right on top of its own goddamn spike.

  CHAPTER

  30

  The silver spike slipped into the Cannibal Owl like a fish sliding into a river, smooth and slick and sure. As the creature had fallen sideways, the blade lodged under its armpit, in that soft place above the ribs, and stuck. Its beak snapped open to scream, and Nettie backed away, rubbing her chewed-up arm and full of hate and white-hot fire.

  “Who were my people?”

  The Cannibal Owl’s beak clicked, its teeth gnashing, its suit on fire, but it said nothing.

  Nettie put her hands on its shoulder, pushed just a little bit, just as it had done to her.

  “I said who? Who was my father? What village did you steal me from, you goddamn bastard?”

  With a squeak, the Cannibal Owl’s screams turned to laughter.

  But still it didn’t answer.

  Teeth bared and expression full of flame, Nettie put two hands on top of its shoulder and shoved as hard as she could. The spike scraped against something hard, and Nettie pushed harder.

  And then the Cannibal Owl exploded into sand.

  CHAPTER

  31

  Nettie nearly lost her other eye as the monster disappeared suddenly under her pressing hands. Pulling her face back from the bloody spike at the last possible second, she coughed and staggered away from the basket. Her mouth was full of sand.

  “Please, Nettie.”

  She shook her head and reached into the basket, pulling the flaming black suit off the spike and tossing it into the fire. The silver was smeared with black as her fingers found Winifred’s shoulders. The girl had the good sense to put her foot down on the bottom of the woven reeds and press up as Nettie pulled her, gently and slowly, off the spike. At the end, Nettie had to slip a hand under Winifred’s knees and shoulders and lift her, nekkid and shivering, off the silver tip. It was all she could do to stay standing, and she staggered sideways into the wall. Her shoulder hit hard, and she slid down the cold rock, cradling Winifred like a baby. The girl grunted when her stump dragged on the floor, a painful reminder of the Cannibal Owl’s legacy.

  “Can Dan put your foot back on?” Nettie asked.

  Winifred shook her head, breathed deeply, and let her head fall against Nettie’s shoulder.

  “I don’t know. Just hold me. Get me out of here. Please.”

  Without meaning to, Nettie’s hand was stroking Winifred like a spooked colt, and it seemed to work a little. The skin of her belly twitched as it knitted back together, and when the hole was finally sealed over, Winifred sighed deeply and relaxed back against Nettie’s chest. Nettie was suddenly aware that all of her senses were full of a beautiful, blood-smeared nekkid girl, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that, so she cleared her throat and gently slid Winifred away, hoping the girl was decent off enough to stand on her own. Because that was what Nettie needed to do: Stand up and get on with life.

  The cave held nothing new: just a handwoven basket with a deadly silver spike firmly attached to the bottom. The goddamn thing looked like an elephant’s tusk Nettie had once seen in a fancy leather book that Mam and Pap had received in payment and quickly traded away, but it was shining and silvery and taller than her waist. The only thing she knew for sure was that she never wanted to see it again. So she threw the basket in the goddamn fire, which seemed like a good idea. Until thick smoke filled the cave.

  “Idjit,” Winifred muttered. “Now we’re going to asphyxiate.”

  “Or choke to death, either one,” Nettie said. “Can’t you turn into a coyote and sniff a way out of here?”

  “I was already on my way,” Winifred snapped, curling over and sprouting tan fur.

  The coyote limped around the cave on three legs, sniffing every bit of stone and coughing from the smoke before hurrying back to Nettie and whimpering.

  “No other way out, huh?”

  The coyote yipped, pointed her nose at a single small smoke hole in the rock overhead, shook her head, and limped toward the tunnel. Nettie got on her hands and knees, where the smoke was thinner, and scrabbled on the floor for her silver knife before following the sound of the coyote’s panting down the pitch-black tunnel.

  It took as long to go out as it had to go in, and Nettie figured this had to be what the preacher’s Hell was like, just endless smoky darkness with nightmares at either end. For hours and hours, it seemed, she crawled toward the daylight. The first shred of sunlight was a blessing, the weak lavender light nearly blinding to her one good eye. Soon she saw the coyote standing at the lip of the cave, whining.

  “Quit bellyaching, you girl,” she muttered, sitting down beside the coyote and letting her legs hang off the edge.

  For now, being out of the Cannibal Owl’s lair and in the sunshine was good enough.

  Far below, tiny skulls sparkled with dew. Across the river and even farther away, the dark figures of the Rangers moved around the butte in some confusion. The harpies were gone from the trees, whether because their leader was gone or there wouldn’t be any more leftovers for them to crunch on. Coyote Dan was noticeably absent, but when Winifred tipped back her muzzle and howled a mournful tune, another coyote voice answered, somewhere in the distance.

  “Turn back, would you? A nekkid woman’s better than a crying dog.”

  The coyote stuck its tongue out and sat back on its haunches. Moments later, Winifred was a girl again, all warm, brown skin and tangled black hair. And Nettie went prickly all over and kind of wished the girl had stayed a coyote.

  “We can’t get down, Nettie. The cliff face has no handholds.”

  “The Rangers will figure it out.”

  Winifred snorted and tossed her hair. “I doubt it. The best we can hope for is that Dan can find a long rope or maybe sweet-talk some nicer harpies.” The girl couldn’t seem to get comfortable, what with being nekkid in a stone cave and missing a foot, and all her shifting around and grunting was making Nettie feel like jumping might be a good alternative.

  “Did the Cannibal Owl ever say anything to you about my people?” Nettie asked.

  Winifred shook her head. “The Cannibal Owl wasn’t one for words. Mostly skittered around, muttering about the one that got away and sweet babies and the time is soon, and… ugh.”

  “Are there lots of monsters like that?”

  Leaning back against the stone, Winifred watched the men scurrying below and tried to comb the snarls out of her hair with dirty fingers. “There’s a reason animals live in groups and people live in tribes and cities. When we get off alone, we start to go a bit crazy. People need to be touched and talked to, they need to know somebody else in the world cares. You take that away, and you have a monster. Not a shifter or a vampire. A real monster. You get somet
hing like the Cannibal Owl. A thing apart.”

  “I didn’t have a tribe,” Nettie muttered.

  Winifred stilled her with a hand on her arm. “You did. Once. You were loved. And you lost it. But surely you had kindness, somewhere along the line?”

  Nettie smiled and stared into the clouds. “Wrangler named Monty was nice to me. Put me on a horse when I was just a little thing. All I ever wanted was to be like him. I reckon everything else I ever loved was an animal of one kind or another.”

  “Then you found a tribe. Who knows what the Cannibal Owl used to be, or might’ve been? Point is, it doesn’t matter what tribe you came from. You can make your own.”

  A shout down below had them both leaning over the edge, staring at Dan’s dark hair and waving arms. The ground was so far away that he was just a brown blot among the skulls.

  “We’re looking for rope!” he shouted.

  “No good. Nothing to tie it to,” Nettie shouted back.

  “Well, you need to get down somehow!”

  “No shit, Dan!”

  Even from a mile away, she heard him chuckle.

  Nettie settled back down against the wall to wait it out, as exhausted as she’d ever been. Winifred leaned up against her, more for support than anything else, her head on Nettie’s shoulder and her legs sticking out in front of her. Nettie wished to hell she had some kind of clothing to offer the girl, but the only spare piece of cloth she possessed was a bandanna covered in dried eyeball. She gingerly poked a finger around the wound, but it had sealed over smooth. No eyelid, no eyeball. Just flat skin.

  “Goddammit.”

  “What happened?” Winifred asked.

  “Delgado surprised me. Shot me in the eye. Reckon it must’ve been silver, probably laced with acid spit or poison. Dan took out the bullet, but it was too late.”

  Winifred reached out, taking Nettie’s face in gentle hands and turning her this way and that in the sun. Her scrutiny was so intense that Nettie closed her other eye.