by Harvey Click
“The demon didn’t see me,” Shane said. “It only saw Mary, and Sandoval knows that the woods belong to her brother, so there wasn’t anything suspicious about her being there.”
Neoma glared at him and said, “He also knows that somebody killed the mazzikin. Anybody who knows how to kill a demon with a sanctified sword won’t appear innocent to Sandoval. Understand?”
Shane didn’t reply, and Neoma continued. “Colby and Kate say that Sandoval has at least twenty men working for him, maybe twenty-five. When you subtract the coven, that leaves at least eight, and I think he’ll want most of them to be guarding the house and the factory. Maybe he’ll spare a couple to watch the woods, or maybe he’ll send Dilkens and his thugs. If he doesn’t have any men to spare, he has plenty of demons. So that’s the situation with the woods. I’ll be there to protect the snipers, and Mary will have to be there because she knows the terrain. That leaves just eleven of you to attack the house and factory.”
“This makes a whole fucking lot of sense,” Nyx said. “You and some newbie who doesn’t know shit are gonna protect the snipers from demons and Dilkens and who knows what else, but you’re gonna send eleven of us to attack eight assholes in a house. I mean, that’s just fucking brilliant.”
“The house and factory won’t be easy,” Neoma said. “As you know, they’re like fortresses. As for the woods, if the demons get too thick in there the snipers will also have swords.”
“Yeah, right, like they’re gonna kill demons with one hand and shoot rifles with the other,” Nyx said. “This has stupid written all over it in big letters.”
“Watch your mouth,” Red said. “But she does have a point, Milady. The important thing is to kill Sandoval and his coven. They’re bound to be his twelve best men.”
“I want to clean out this whole nest one hundred percent,” Neoma said, “and my plan is the only way to do it. Our only possible opportunity to take the house is when Sandoval and his coven are away, leaving just a few behind to guard it. That’s why we have to break into two groups and execute two simultaneous attacks. We can bring one extra person to the woods if you insist.”
“Is the house really that important?” Red asked. “The men he leaves there will probably just be lackeys. The Lost Society can replace them in a minute, but they won’t be able to replace Sandoval and his twelve best very easily. I think we should focus our full effort on them, and if we’re able to kill all of them, then we can always head over to the house for some more fun if we want to.”
Neoma found a chair to sit on and rubbed her forehead. She probably wasn’t used to having people disagree with her, especially Red.
“By then the men in the house will be alerted,” she said. “If nobody in the field is alive to call them, Sam Ebbing will.”
“Then we’ll kill that fucker too,” Bloody Joe said.
“Besides, I don’t think we can move everybody into the woods without being noticed,” Neoma said. “Shane found a back way in, but it’s through a farmer’s field and all those cars coming in are likely to be spotted.”
“I think we can do it,” Shane said. Neoma glared at him, but he continued. “The farmhouse is empty, the fields are rented out. You can get in from Wellman Road without having to go past Sam Ebbing’s house. Sixteen people can squeeze into three cars, four at the most, maybe one car every half hour or so.”
“I’m not sitting on nobody’s fucking lap,” Nyx said.
“You’re sure as hell not sitting on mine,” Bloody Joe said.
“Maybe this is a stupid question,” Amy said, “but isn’t it time to call in some reinforcements? I mean, don’t the Unseen have a headquarters anywhere nearby? Can’t they send us some help?”
Everybody stared at her for a few seconds, and then Nyx said, “Man, your brain’s really stuck on pig-ignorant.”
“Mary, we are the Unseen,” Manda said.
Bloody Joe chuckled and said, “Yep, that’s us. A few damn fools sitting around in a hot barn talking shit.”
“Well, I just thought…” Amy said. “I mean, the Lost Society is supposed to be so big.”
“It is big,” Bloody Joe said. “But they’re not as fucking crazy as we are, so they don’t have a chance.”
A few people laughed uneasily, but only a few.
“Well, if all the chit-chat is over maybe we can get back to business,” Neoma said. “Apparently some of you don’t like my plan. Those of you who think all of us should go to the woods together and lose our one and only chance to take the house, please stand up.”
Everybody stood up immediately except Siliang. He sat with a blank expression on his face for maybe twenty seconds and then joined the others.
“All right,” Neoma said. “I’ll accept your decision even though I disagree with it. We don’t need sixteen people in the woods making a lot of noise, so I’ll tell Colby and Kate to stay where they are and keep their eyes on the house. Okay, Nyx, you get your wish—with that many people we can afford four snipers, so get your rifle sighted in. Shane, will our phones work out there?”
“They should,” he said. “It’s close to Blackwood, and phone connection is good there.”
“Good. Then Colby and Kate can call me when they see cars leaving the house. With fourteen people we’ll need three SUVs so we’ll have room for weapons and quicklime and other supplies. If for some reason we end up having to leave a vehicle in the woods, it’s going to cause serious law problems for whoever owns it. Ivan’s vehicle isn’t properly registered, so that can be one of them.”
Ivan nodded, and Bloody Joe said, “My Santa Fe can’t be traced. We can use it as long as you don’t ask me how I got it.”
“We can use my Explorer,” Lucky said. “From a technical point of view it doesn’t exactly belong to me.”
“Okay then, we’ve got our three vehicles,” Neoma said. “Tonight or tomorrow morning load all the other cars with your valuables, and burn absolutely anything you’re not going to take with you. Scrub fingerprints off every surface you may have touched. Be sure to clean up every strand of hair, every fingernail, anything that has your DNA, and burn everything in your vacuum cleaners when you’re done.
“Tomorrow I’ll go in the first car with Mary, Leo, Siliang, and Bloody Joe. Half an hour later the snipers will come in the second car along with Shane. The rest of you come half an hour later in the third car. Shane, make sure they know where the turnoff into the field is. Bring full camouflage but don’t put it on till you get to the woods—I don’t want to draw anyone’s attention with carloads of people dressed in camo. For your faces you can use masks or paint, whichever you prefer. And don’t forget to tie a protection bag around your neck to repel demons. In fact, make that two bags—I like redundancy.”
“Won’t do any good,” Bloody Joe said. “Demons laugh at that cheap Chinese crap.”
“Does anybody smell Limburger cheese?” Manda asked.
Bloody Joe sniffed the air and said, “What you smell is Nyx.”
“I’m serious,” Manda said, and she sniffed the air several times. “Does anybody else smell it?”
“Nope,” Shane said.
“Me neither,” Lucky said. “It’s just nerves, Manda.”
“Half of you search every corner of the barn including the haymow,” Neoma said. “The rest of you search outside with me.”
Amy hurried outside with Neoma and a few others, but if there was anything out there nobody could find it. After a while they went back in, and Lucky said, “Nothing in here. I told you it’s just nerves, Manda. When I was in Afghanistan I had a buddy who always heard ‘MacArthur Park’ playing very loudly in his head before a fight broke out.”
“I’d rather smell Limburger cheese,” Bloody Joe said.
“Make plenty of protection bags, get them up around the perimeter before nightfall, and make enough extras that everybody can wear two tomorrow,” Neoma said. “Any questions?”
A strange hush seemed to hang over the camp for the rest of t
he day. It hung over the group in the barn making protection bags, and it was so thick that when Lucky made a couple attempts at wisecracks nobody even seemed to hear them. It followed Amy, Brook, and Leo as they walked around the perimeter hanging bags, and later when she rested for a while at the picnic tables she found it hanging over the small group that sat there playing poker.
It seemed that Amy was the only person at the camp who wanted to talk, and she wasn’t sure what she’d say. Everything had happened too quickly, and she wasn’t ready for this. Maybe the others were warriors, but she wasn’t and she wanted no part of it. They had been preparing for this and thinking it through for a long while, but she had been too busy and confused for the past week to think about anything very clearly.
Somehow she had lulled herself into believing that they were one small unit of a large organization with resources and the sort of legitimacy that comes with size. Instead, they were just “a few damn fools sitting around in a hot barn talking shit,” as Bloody Joe had put it. Even learning that some of them drove stolen vehicles had come as a shock: these people were vigilantes, desperadoes, criminals.
And yet Manda, Brook, Shane, and some of the others seemed like good and decent people, not crazy criminals. But even if what they were planning to do was morally right, tomorrow Amy would be aiding them in a major criminal conspiracy, and if she survived she would be a fugitive for the rest of her life.
The strange hush followed her into the house, where she, Neoma, Red, and Ivan ate their dinner in silence, except when Red asked if they should burn their mattresses tomorrow or leave them for the landlord. The others emptied their plates, but Amy’s stomach was churning with so much anxiety that she could swallow only a few bites.
Even Nyx kept her mouth shut on patrol that night, and instead of moseying along in front of Amy she moved at a quick pace, grabbing the hilt of her sword whenever she heard a rustle in the brush. No whistles blew, but when the second shift relieved her at 11:20 Amy felt more exhausted than if she had been fighting demons all night.
Exhausted, but she didn’t believe she’d be able to sleep. She showered, and when she came into the bedroom she was relieved to find the lamp on and Neoma still awake. Amy was naked from her shower and aware of Neoma’s eyes on her body, but she didn’t mind. Right now she was hungry for attention of any sort. Neoma was sitting up in her bed, the covers down to her waist, her breasts bare and beautiful.
Amy got onto her mattress and sat there propped on her elbows, both women staring at each other in the dim room and saying nothing.
“Are you frightened?” Neoma asked after a while.
“Yes. I’m scared half to death.”
“I’m sorry,” Neoma said. “Maybe Shane didn’t do you any favors bringing you here.”
“Are you scared?” Amy asked.
“Yes, but not for myself. I don’t care very much about what happens to me, but I’m worried about the others. All this was my idea—I put the group together and whatever happens to them is on my head. All of them have good reasons to hate the Lost Society, but if I hadn’t collected them together like this they’d probably live with their hatred and not try anything like this. I’m their commanding officer, and if my decisions are wrong they can all get killed.”
“You shouldn’t think about it that way,” Amy said. “You’ve been doing your best.”
“Have I? There’s been too much responsibility, too many worries, even worries about bills and petty crap like that, and it’s affected my judgment. If a leader’s judgment is bad, then everything can go bad.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean Red was right, even Nyx was right. It would be stupid to divide the group in two and attack the house. Even Nyx was thinking more clearly than I was.”
“But you backed down,” Amy said. “How many commanding officers are able to do that?”
“I shouldn’t have been thinking so stupidly in the first place. If I was wrong about that, how many other things am I wrong about? I’ve been lying here thinking about it. You may think I’m a bossy bitch, but I’m really not cut out to be ordering everyone around like this and making all the plans—it’s just that somebody has to do it. I’ve led a couple skirmishes in the past, and they went well enough, but they were nothing on this scale. The trouble is that doing it has made me feel bigger than I really am. It’s a kind of megalomania. I started thinking too big, I got to thinking that I’m as big as Sandoval and I could crush him and all of his men in one fell swoop.
“So that’s why I’m scared. I’m afraid I’ve been thinking out my ass and I might get everyone killed.”
Amy wasn’t sure what to say. The night before a battle, she didn’t want to hear her commanding officer saying that she had been thinking out her ass.
“I think we’ll be all right,” she said. “To be honest, I’m not as scared about tomorrow as I am about what happens after that. After tomorrow I’ll be a criminal.”
“Yes, but probably no one outside our circle will ever know that,” Neoma said. “That’s why I rather rudely snatched your car away from you. Sandoval thinks you’re out of the picture, and in the eyes of the law you were kidnapped and are now missing. If you ever want to re-emerge as Amy instead of Mary, you can think up a story and tell it after enough time has passed and the cops have stuffed whatever happens tomorrow somewhere in the back of their filing cabinets.”
“Maybe,” Amy said, but she didn’t really believe it.
“Anyway, that’s what I wanted to talk about earlier today when you were in such a hurry to get downstairs,” Neoma said. “You’ll be coming with me, of course.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m going in the first car with you tomorrow.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean after the hurly-burly’s done. Ivan and I have a place near Greensboro. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s safe and comfortable. I promise you that I won’t twist your arm into ever doing anything like this again. We’ll be the two witches of the west, Mary, and with our powers linked there’s a lot we can do to harass the Lost Society without ever breaking a law or using a gun.”
Amy didn’t say anything for at least a minute, and then she said, “Shane has made me the same offer.”
“Dammit, I knew he was going to pull something like that!” Neoma said. “Okay, fine, I know he has a dick and I don’t, but he can’t protect you the way I can. Shane’s a bartender, for Christ’s sake, what does he know about the Lost Society or anything else? Mary, don’t you understand how important your gifts are? Do you think Shane can help you unlock them? Only I can do that. If you let me help you, you can have whatever you want in the world, you can do whatever you want, you can be rich if you want and you can stop a lot of slimy bastards from doing slimy shit if that’s what you want. Shane can’t help you do any of that, but I can. And without me, your gifts will fade like a dream.”
Amy had already made up her mind, but she didn’t want to say so right now, while Neoma was feeling miserable.
“I dunno,” she said. “Let me sleep on it.”
Neoma patted her mattress and said, “Then sleep on it in my bed. I’ll help you make up your mind.”
Amy wanted to say yes. Neoma looked beautiful in the dim light, her nipples erect with excitement just as Amy’s were. Twice today, while they had chanted together, Amy had experienced a deeper intimacy with her than she had ever felt having sex with a man. And now she was seeing Neoma as she had never seen her, frightened and vulnerable, and she wanted to climb into bed with her and comfort her with her mouth and her hands. She knew that the fear she was feeling herself would dissolve in the sweat of their coupling, and they would both face battle tomorrow with the confidence and good cheer that comes from lovemaking.
But there was Shane. He had invited her to live with him, and she had said yes. She barely knew him and didn’t know if they would work out as lovers, but she believed they might. If things went well between them, they would probably live as an ordinary couple. Maybe in thei
r old age they’d have snapshots of babies and teenagers and grandchildren, but they wouldn’t be the two witches of the west moving objects without touching them or reading each other’s minds or flying through the night air on the wings of owls. It would be a mundane life of bills and diapers and PTA meetings, and she wondered why she would want that.
“Maybe another night,” she said.
Neoma sighed and shut off the lamp.
Chapter 16
“What do you see?” Neoma asked.
“Nothing,” Amy said. “No activity.”
She was perched in the fallen tree on the knoll, gazing down into Sam Ebbing’s neatly mowed field in the valley.
“Explore the whole perimeter of the woods,” Neoma said.
Amy flew north. While the eastern edge of the woods looked down a gentle slope into the flat valley where the sacrifice had taken place, the northern edge ended at a steep hollow that divided Billy’s property from the next. Wade Creek ran through it before meandering north and then east again past Blackwood. When she and Billy were children they had scrambled down the steep ravine a few times, but clambering back up was always an ordeal of thorns, loose rocks, and skinned knees.
She described what she was seeing, and Neoma asked her who owned the land to the north. She didn’t know. Even as a child she hadn’t known who, if anyone, owned the hills on the other side of the hollow. Her childhood home sat at the edge of wilderness, where the terrain became too steep and rocky to be of any use to anyone except moonshiners.
“Go across and have a look,” Neoma said.
Amy flew across the chasm and saw nothing but trees and thick bramble. “There’s nothing here,” she said. “Not even a still.”
“Okay, then check out the west side,” Neoma said.
Beyond the west edge of Billy’s property the hills were even higher and steeper. No one had ever lived on this land, and as Amy flew through it she saw that it was just as desolate as it had been when she and Billy used to explore it. In those days they had pretended they were in a haunted forest of Transylvania, and it hadn’t required much imagination to believe that.