by Celia Roman
Hang it all. I hated admitting Teus was right, but he nailed it in one. Which sorta suggested to me that maybe he shoulda been more explicit in the dadgum details instead of making me and David sit through a monster sighting. A little more intel and we coulda stayed home and had ourselves a picnic at the kitchen table.
Or planned the fall party David reminded me of on his way out the door and home.
I picked up my resident critter’s cage and set it on the sofa beside me. Its eyes was huge and glimmering, and maybe a little sad. Shoulda had it figured out by now. It’d been in that cage too long for health and well-being, no matter what it was.
I flicked a finger gently against one of the bent wires. “I’d let you outta this thing if you told me what you was.”
Which was the God’s honest truth. If it was a good critter, it could go free long as it kept its nose clean and off my radar. If it was bad, well. It’d be outta the cage, anyhow.
It blinked them big eyes and sniffed, and I thumped my head against the back of the sofa, too tired to drudge up an ounce of concern one way or t’other. Let the stubborn cuss hold its tongue. Weren’t no never mind to me.
My cellphone buzzed, startling me outta sleep. I yawned and scrubbed the heels of my palms across my face, then checked the notification.
Another text from Riley.
My heart flipped over as I thumbed into the message. Maybe he had time to talk for a while ‘stead of just texting. Don’t get me wrong. Texting was as good a way of communicating as anything, far as I was concerned, but weren’t nothing like hearing somebody’s voice, ‘specially somebody you missed.
And dang his hide, I sure did miss the ol’ coot.
I shook my head and read the text message, and froze where I sat.
Your time has come, Sunshine Walkingstick.
Oh, no. No, no, no.
I fumbled the phone and dropped it, dug it outta the water colored shag carpeting with trembling fingers. Three times, I tried to text back, and finally give up. I thumbed in a call and placed the phone to my ear.
The critter shifted in its cage. “No,” it croaked, and I swung around and stared. It wrapped its tiny hands around two bars and pressed its crooked nose to the space in between. “Bad mojo, sun girl. Baaaaad.”
What the devil? I been trying to figure this critter out for a coon’s age, and it chose now to open its craw and speak?
A female voice drifted to me through the phone, sounding ancient and smooth, like wind whispering through the lonesome deep. “You love this boy.”
Betty Walkingstick, ten to one. My hand tightened around the phone of its own free will. “What’ve you done to him?”
“He’s safe enough.”
“How long is he gonna stay that way?”
She laughed, a rich, rolling chuckle what shot icy fear bone deep, and I took that as answer enough.
“When and where, old woman?” I said.
The laughter cut off abrupt as it begun. “Why do you ask questions you already know the answers to?”
Silence clicked against my ear. I yanked the phone away and stared blankly at the red call ended strip as my breath stuttered in and outta my lungs. Betty Walkingstick had Riley. Holy mother of God, what was I gonna do?
“Baaaad mojo,” the critter said.
“That ain’t helping me,” I snapped, and cringed. Weren’t its fault Riley was knee deep in trouble, was it?
‘Bout that time, hard footsteps bounded up the porch, then the front door opened and Trey burst through, his chest heaving on every breath. “We got a serious problem, Sunny.”
I shoved myself off the couch and thrust my phone out at him. “Well, I got a more serious’un. Riley’s done gone and got himself kidnapped.”
“Yeah, about that.” He sucked in a gulp of air, blew it out again. “There’s a mess of painters up at the trailer. One of ‘em turned human and said as how I best come get you or we was all dead.”
I muttered a curse under my breath. I guess that answered one question, anyhow. Like as not, them painters was sent by my gramma, the scheming hag, and danged if I’d let one loose without it leading me straight to her.
Looked like she was right about one thing. Somebody’s time had come, though I couldn’ta sworn whether it was hers or mine.
Me and Trey grabbed guns outta my stash, him a shotgun, me my 1911 and a Glock 26 9mm to balance each other out. I only slowed down that long ‘cause Trey made me. If I’da been on my own, I woulda raced out the trailer in a blind panic, chasing my heart right into a hornet’s nest of sharp claws and sharper teeth.
Damn Riley’s stubborn hide. Next time, maybe he’d listen to me and stay home where he belonged.
Last thing before we left, I checked my daddy’s hunting knife, made sure it was situated just right against my ankle in case I needed it in a sudden hurry. Trey borrowed my spare and strapped it to his waist in Daddy’s old scabbard. Thank the good Lord above I was sentimental enough to hang on to ever scrap of my daddy I could.
Less than five minutes after he come busting through my front door, me and Trey was back out it again, heading up the trail as fast as we could manage in the light of the flashlights we each carried, augmenting the thin moonlight filtering down on us through emaciated tree limbs. The deep wood was silent around us, holding its breath while we chugged up the trail toward Fame’s, like it was wondering what mess we was gonna find, same as me.
I could near about feel the eyes of something not quite right on my skin, watching me and Trey run. No need to wonder what nature of critter it was, but I sworn, the skin on my nape crawled and jittered the entire time, all the more seeing as how not a single dead leaf rustled along the forest floor. I knowed they was there, pacing us. Stalking us, like Betty Walkingstick done me when she come after me in painter form.
Two-natured critters. Who’da thunk I’d ever find myself descended from a monster?
When we approached the final bend, Trey held out a hand, slowing me to a near walk without laying a finger on me. He motioned ahead and shot me a scowl, and I didn’t need a single word to hearken his meaning. Going in hot and heavy might surprise the painters, though I doubted it, good as their hearing likely was, but it’d also rob us of a chance to survey the scene.
And we needed ever advantage we could muster.
So slow and easy it was, each step accompanied by a ragged, foggy breath and muscles burning under the strain of sprinting uphill. Trey flicked his flashlight off and tucked it in his back pocket, then shouldered his shotgun, barrel pointed low in the direction of Fame’s trailer. I played the beam of my flashlight along the ground, lighting his way and mine, and palmed my 1911 with my free hand. Its weight was heavy against my flesh, reassuring. Calming even, in a way nothing else could be.
Two painters stepped outta the woods onto the trail ahead of us. One glanced over its shoulder, eyed me real hard, then padded on like we was about as important as an ant was to a grasshopper. T’other didn’t even bother to look around. It joined the half dozen or so painters arrayed in front of Fame’s trailer, sliding in between two sleekly muscled cats dark as midnight and oil.
Fame and Missy and Gentry was standing on the front porch, backlit by bright light spilling through the open door behind ‘em. Each held a gun, Fame and Gentry hunting rifles, and Missy a shotgun.
Bless her, but she never could hit the broad side of a barn.
I was never so relieved in all my life to see ‘em holding their own like they was. My relief was kindly short lived. An old woman stepped around the side of the trailer, bracketed by two folks I knowed all too well, my grampa Johnny and my cousin Libby. All three was nekkid as the day they was born, and I didn’t need two guesses to know why.
Weren’t them what concerned me in that moment. Nope. Was the dozen more painters sliding outta the black night behind ‘em what held my attention. Too many critters, not enough guns. I lowered mine a mite and waited for my long lost grandma to say what she come to say.
; It didn’t take her long.
She stopped even with the end of the porch, haloed by the circle of light cast by a security lamp, and swung her head up toward Fame, shifting the long gray hair hanging loose around her round, ageless face. “You should’ve left her to die.”
My heart cringed at those words. Whatever misguided hope I held that me and this woman could someday look on each other with kindness shriveled up and died.
Fame spat onto the wood holding him above the painters. “Fuck you, old woman.”
I swallowed past bitter regret and a longing I only just discovered, and said, “Where is he?”
“Safe enough,” Betty said.
I lifted the 1911 and aimed it straight at her heart. “That ain’t the answer I was looking to hear.”
She smiled. For all the world, it was a beautiful smile, sweet and kind, topped by the rosy apples of her plump cheeks and filled with small, white teeth. Her eyes, on the other hand, glittered cold as the stars speckling the night sky above us.
I hadn’t noticed the cold ‘til then, but when I did, it seeped into my skin, chilling me straight to the bone. Sweat froze on my skin under my clothes, felt like, and the next air I sucked into my lungs hurt, it was so cold.
And them three was standing out in it wearing nothing but their skin. Human skin at that.
Libby stepped forward, capturing my gaze. “Do you challenge this woman?”
The painters shifted uneasily between us. Some glanced back at me, others snarled at Libby, growling soft and dangerous. She never blinked, just looked at me steady like she was trying to impart some hidden message to me.
The only message I got was that she coulda told me she was my grandma’s right hand painter, so to speak. The betrayal was lost in the icy numb surrounding my heart. The only thing I could do now was hope she hadn’t lied about ever thing else when she brung her young’un to my trailer and showed me what she was.
What I shoulda been.
My spine went poker stiff. Weren’t no shoulda beens about me. I was who I was, the half-breed daughter of a stone cold killer and a man what run off to be with another man. My mama and daddy made me what I was from the time I was born up to that very moment, and this old woman standing so serene in front of me, she shaped ‘em both with her own cruel mindset.
In a way, I reckoned she had a hand in who I become after all, didn’t she?
“I got questions,” I said. “You know, before we get down to this challenging business.”
Libby nodded solemn like. “Three may be asked.”
I speared my grandma with a look I hoped was as empty of care as was her own. “Why now?”
Betty’s smile widened, revealing sharp incisors. “You are vulnerable now in a way you haven’t been in a very long time, and since then, have been protected.”
Was I vulnerable because of Riley? Was that why she took him, to weaken me now so she could do away with me or whatever her intent was tonight? What protection was she talking about? Weren’t nothing different now’n there ever was, far as I could tell, but what did I know?
I was almost afraid to ask one of them questions, afraid I’d need the extra query before the matter was said and done. “What do you want from me?”
“From you? Nothing.” She shook her head, and her stick straight hair writhed around her bare shoulders. “Of you? Only one thing. For you to die the death of she who should never have been born.”
I flinched against the coldly spoken words, and my eyelids slid shut, blocking the sight of a woman what’d never wanted me. A dozen voices arose in the silence of my mind, echoing into one another in a reminder of ever slur and disparaging remark directed at me ‘til I learnt how to hold my own.
Worthless. Scum. Half breed. Red skinned bitch. Whore’s daughter.
If kids could think it up, I’d heard it.
That was behind me now. Words could only hurt if I let ‘em, and I decided long ago not to bow under their weight.
My eyes popped open and my gaze filled with the placid expression of my grandfather and of my cousin and of my grandmother, so little variation from one to t’other, they might as well be cut from stone.
That trait musta passed me by and then some.
“You coulda killed me a long time ago, old woman,” I said in a voice too soft to be mine.
“Your father.” The words ended abrupt like, and that smooth expression twisted for the barest moment into genuine grief. “He loved you.”
And she couldn’t bear to hurt him by killing me. It was there in her voice, in the longing she held to see him again.
At last, something me and her had in common.
My daddy was long gone. Weren’t no getting him back, but there was somebody out there what needed getting. I swallowed down my love for him and said, “I challenge you, what’s gonna happen to my kinfolk and Riley?”
Libby answered in Betty’s place. “As long as they don’t interfere, no harm will come to them. You have my word.”
I bit my tongue against the instinct to call her out then and there. I only had one fight in me tonight, though, and I was nigh on certain I was gonna need ever ounce of my strength for it.
“So be it,” I said. “I reckon you got rules or something.”
“One weapon,” Libby said.
“Each?”
“For you.” My cousin backed up a step, away from Betty into the painters waiting still and quiet around us. “She needs none.”
I handed my guns and flashlight off to Trey and dug Daddy’s knife outta its ankle scabbard. A gun was no good at close range, but a knife? Well, I knew firsthand what this ol’ hunting knife was capable of when the going got a little too close for comfort.
“Is that it?” I asked.
“It’s the only rule.”
Libby sank onto the ground, and between standing and lying, she morphed into a painter indistinguishable from the ones around her.
Son of a gun. After watching her transform slow and easy at the trailer, seeing her do it so quick startled me.
Betty Walkingstick shook herself from head to toe and that saccharin sweet smile returned, sharper now. “It was foolish of you to send the boy alone into the woods that day.”
What breath I held froze solid, the only reaction I was allowed. She took a half step toward me and leapt, and before I could squeak out my surprise, a painter was sailing through the air at me, its front claws extended for the kill.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Sunny!” Trey yelled.
I swung toward him on instinct. Quick as a flash, he wrapped a strong hand around my upper arm and yanked me outta the way. Betty thudded into the ground behind me, and I whirled around, dislodging Trey’s hold. She was standing about ten feet away, head lowered, green eyes sparkling at me. Waiting, I guess, though for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why.
My brain was kindly numb anyhow, filled to the brim as it was with all the questions buzzing around inside it. Questions about Riley and his safety, questions about why Trey weren’t down on the ground after helping me.
But mostly, it was Henry what occupied my noggin. What did my estranged grandma know about his death that I didn’t?
I shook all them questions off before they could take root and do the damage I knowed darn good and well Betty’d intended. If I wanted to make it outta this in one piece, my attention best stay on her.
The knife’s hilt dug into my palm. I flipped it around blade down and waggled the fingers of my other hand at her in a deliberate taunt.
Two could play at this game.
She yawned, a slow curl of feline lips around glinting white teeth. The painters around her shifted in and outta the circles of light pooling on the ground around the trailer, cast by the moon and security lights and the flashlight Trey’d let fall to the ground. It was a surreal tableau. Me facing off against my grandmother in painter form amongst a coupla dozen of the two-natured. My grandfather standing stark nekkid where Betty left him, surrounded by a cone
of light. And the rest of my family, my real family what’d loved me when nobody else had, parked statue still in the space between.
Somebody shoulda took a picture.
Betty’s back haunches bunched up and she sprang at me, but this time, I was ready for her. I waited ‘til the last minute, waited ‘til her claws was less than a foot from my throat, and swung my free arm around, knocking her front legs aside. At the same time, I twisted the knife’s blade up and stabbed into her gut. The tip caught her belly and slid along it, then bounced spine first off her rear leg.
I scrambled outta the way and fell into a defensive posture, free hand out, knife held up, body turned sideways, minimizing my breadth.
She landed and half-skidded, half-pranced through a thin layer of fallen leaves, and when she turned around facing me, her manner weren’t playful no more. It was mean and serious as death itself.
Good. Maybe that’d learn her to underestimate we puny humans.
I wrinkled my nose and sniffed loud. “Is that blood I smell, old woman?”
Fame’s quiet voice drifted to me through the oddly quiet night. “Don’t tempt fate, Sunny girl.”
Trey snorted, but it was Missy’s words what caught my attention. “Be wary, darling. The objects you carry hold only so much protection.”
I didn’t have even a full breath to wonder what she meant. Betty launched into a run straight at me. I stumbled back a coupla steps. One foot slid along the ground and I lurched to the side, off balance. Her front paws landed on my thighs, shoving me down with little more’n her natural weight. My hand dropped automatically, bracing for the fall. The knife sank into the soft ground, burying half the blade. My hand slid down the rawhide hilt, stinging my palm, and hit the knife’s guard, and my heart thudded double-time in my chest.
Oh, crap, was I in trouble now.
Claws dug into my skin through denim, drawing blood and pain and panic. I yanked the knife outta the ground and slashed sideways, aiming for her side. Betty released me and danced outta the way, and I rolled over and clamored to my feet, terrified she’d leap on me and pin me down.