by Celia Roman
Riley’s lips pressed together, real tight. “In the last day or so.”
Maybe while Fame was still alibied, but even then, there might be a non-supernatural cause. “Anybody know what of?”
“I don’t know.” Riley glanced around, then lowered his voice. “There was a lot of blood, Sunny. Do you think it was that thing you and Dad saw?”
I didn’t even have to think twice. My instincts took to buzzing so loud, they near about drowned out the speculation passing from mouth to ear around the company. “Yeah, I do.”
His hand lashed out and wrapped itself hard around my upper arm. “I know that look, and I’m telling you flat out, you’re not going after it, not tonight.”
Anger stiffened my spine and I opened my mouth to protest. He rolled right over me with a hissed, “You’re not even healed yet from that fight with your grandmother.”
“I know that,” I snapped, and yanked my arm hard, what good it did me. He clung to me like a burr to cloth. “Somebody’s gotta stop that thing before it kills again.”
“Yeah, sure, but why you?”
A series of memories flooded me then, of Henry’s innocent face smiling up at me, of the day I sent him into the deep wood on an errand I shoulda run myself, of his blood splashed across the trail. Sorrow sprang into my heart, softer now, but still potent for all the days between this hour and that’un.
“You know why,” I said, more gentle’n I meant to.
Riley’s expression softened into his own brand of heartache. “How many times are you going to avenge his death, Sunny?”
The words hit me hard, knocking a response right outta my head, and hurt joined the sorrow. How could he say that? How could Riley, him what knowed me as well as anybody could, not understand why I did what I done?
“He wouldn’t want you to kill yourself,” Riley added. “And I don’t want you to either. Doesn’t that count for something?”
I shook my head amidst the fierce ache filling me from head to toe. “I won’t.”
“You can’t promise that.”
He huffed out a sigh and pulled me into a hug, surrounding me in that solid way he had. I was safe here, and if not loved, then cared for in a deep and abiding manner. That’s what I felt ever time Riley held me like he was doing now, and that’s exactly why I had to go. I had to protect him, had to protect what was left of my family and all them people wandering around in the woods, unsuspecting of the monster hungering for their blood. If not me, then who?
“Let me go with you,” he said.
I shook my head against his chest and uttered a muffled, “No.”
He held me for a while as Bing Crosby crooned about dreaming of snow for the holiday. Finally, Riley said, “Take Trey, then.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t think. Do.” Riley’s sigh puffed into the crown of my head. “I’m of a good mind to take you home and tie you to my bed.”
The grumpy note in his voice touched off humor in me. “You can try.”
“I’m still bigger than you,” he said, kindly gruff. “You’re not going out there tonight.”
Now, that was something we could both agree on. Only a fool’d hunt down a critter in the dead of night ‘less he had to, and my mama didn’t raise no fool. “In the morning.”
“Good. I was afraid you were going to miss the white elephant part of the evening.”
I tilted my head back and grinned up at him in spite of the solemn situation. “That’s why you kept the car keys, ain’t it?”
“You bet your sweet hide,” he said, and pecked a kiss to my mouth. “Come on. They’re about to start.”
I grumbled a little, but along I went, hand in hand with the man what was sweet enough to worry over me, and the warmth that rarity filled me with.
Chapter Twenty-One
I woke up the next morning with two clear thoughts in my noggin. First, no way in aitch ee double hockey sticks was I involving anybody else in this, so calling Trey and inviting him along was out.
Second, if I didn’t learn how to control that danged ol’ voice in my head, I might have to shoot myself just to get rid of it. All night long, it crooned to me in Bing Crosby’s smooth sing-song, calling forth images of blood and death and stone, intermingled oddly enough with memories of my boy.
By the time the cold light of day hit my bedroom window, I was up and at ‘em, and well down the road toward where I figured that poor girl’s body was found. Hazy remnants of them dreams spurred me on as I drove, pressing at me ‘til my booted foot near about flattened the IROC’s gas pedal to the floor. I kept easing off, attempting a sane speed, then next thing I knowed, that itching started up under my skin again and I was hauling sweet ‘shine around the curves, running from whatever had haunted me in the night. Henry, dear sweet Henry, and the blood, all that red, red blood, and somehow in my mind, the blood was his and he was Spearfinger, a monster and a victim, not an innocent no more, but some strange, sinister melding of both.
I parked close as I could to the latest crime scene, or where I thought it’d be. No cops out, not today, and weren’t that an odd’un? I shook it off, tried to anyhow, but my heart beat hard and fast against my sternum, and my breath was high and light. Hurry, that voice said, hurry move go, and I had to. I had to scramble outta the car into the frosted air, had to fumble with the flashlight I brung, had to pull my knife out of its scabbard, shing, like it was a shiny sword instead of a bone-hilted hunting blade passed from father to daughter by death’s greedy kiss. Had to, had to, had to, just to satisfy it, that thing inside me composed of the ache to make it right, the strange voice guiding me, and an instinct honed by years of hunting, all rolled up into one.
One whiff of the December woods and there it was, the scent what’d teased me since the minute me and Riley first stood near Lily and Ferd’s bodies in the cemetery that day: moss and dirt, stone and the unclean, and death, willful, needy, gleeful death and his reaping scythe just waiting for me to find him.
My feet shuffled along the ground without being bidden to, carrying me around the IROC and over the forest’s verge into raw, unbroken woods, following a trail I could neither see nor ken except by the smell clogging my nostrils. Blood hummed through my veins, waking me to the world, and my senses with it. The woods was bright around me. Shoulda been shadowed. The sun hovered just over the mountaintops. Its light scarce reached the treetops, let alone the forest floor, but there it was, ever leaf and limb, ever trunk and pine needle, ever place my gaze touched shone like new copper pennies.
I dropped the flashlight, ignored the heavy thump of solid metal into leaf debris, and took off at a run, pumping my arms and legs hard as they’d go.
My heart picked up the beat, thud, thud, and my chest expanded under ever breath, and it was good and right. Sanctified.
I was a hunter. Spearfinger was my prey. Nothing could stand between us.
The scent twisted and turned through the woods, ebbing and flowing like water trickling along a river bed. I lost it once in the middle of a flat clearning, plumb outrun it, I think, and had to double back, but I never lost the certainty, never doubted that I’d find it again, find it, track it, run it down, then kill it so it’d never bleed anybody out again.
Almost by accident, I stumbled upon the outcropping of rocks where me and the sheriff and Harley Jimpson first seen her. One good sniff and I knowed she was gone from here.
But she was close, so close. My skin prickled and writhed, and I could near about feel her.
I opened my mouth wide and yelled, “I’m coming for you, U’tlun’ta.”
In the distance, rock grated against rock, and I lowered my head and smiled. My body moved of its own accord, following it, that conglomeration my insides become, and the winter still trees parted for me, seemed like, easing my path.
I lost track of time after that, lost track of ever thing but the hunt and the need.
The scent shifted in my nose. Damp, strong, rock, hard, and her.
That weren’t no rock after all. ‘Twas Spearfinger, the man killer. She pointed one of her granite-like arms at me, and I grinned real big.
“It’s just you and me now, U’tlun’ta,” I said. “Let’s see what you make of that.”
I leapt toward her, knife raised high, and it weren’t ‘til I was right on top of her that I remembered something I shoulda had topmost in my head. Johnny Walkingstick never told me how to kill this particular monster, but it was too late for worrying on that. I swept her arm aside, avoiding the killing finger, and smacked the butt end of Daddy’s knife into her rough, rock-like face.
Crumbs of rock spattered into the air. Spearfinger roared at me, spraying me with her fetid breath.
“Oh, yeah?” I said, and roared back, only mine come out half growl, half crazy.
Her arm swung around, quicker’n it should’ve, and hit me in the shoulder hard, knocking me sideways and off of her. I splatted into the soft ground, hitting my head in the landing, jarring me good from head to toe and ever where in between.
I shook my head, winced when the world sorta reeled around, and happened to catch a rough carved foot bearing down on me outta the corner of one eye. I rolled outta the way, though not far enough. The ball of her foot, or what woulda been the ball if she was anything near human, glanced off my hip. The toes scraped along my stomach through my shirt, tearing it, then landed in the leaves cushioning me from loamy dirt.
I kept a-rolling ‘til I was outta reach, ignoring the bruises already forming on my hip and the blood seeping outta my tummy.
Spearfinger, being a mite brighter’n I give her credit for, lumbered toward me. Her strides was half again longer’n mine, which didn’t give me much time a’tall. I scrambled to my feet, brushed my unraveling braid over my shoulder, and fell into a clumsy fighting stance, left hand forward, knife hand reared back for the strike, and all my weight on my right foot, saving my left side from throbbing anymore’n it had to.
She pointed that finger at me, and danged if it didn’t pop out another foot on its own, growing faster’n Pinocchio’s nose. I sidled to one side, scuffing leaves with my boots, and jabbed hard with my knife. It swished right by her hand, missing by a scant inch. I jabbed again, aiming for her wrist, and the knife’s tip glanced off stone, slicing a chunk outta her arm.
Missy’s ring warmed against my skin where it hid beneath my t-shirt. I sucked in a great heave of air as a hazy What the hey? popped into my noggin, and ducked just in time to miss Spearfinger’s swift jab.
Instinct took over, shoving ever thing outta my head ‘cept the fight. The woods brightened around us, taking on that new penny glow, and my focus sharpened to a laser fine point as time stuttered and slowed to a crawl. The fine flaws in Spearfinger’s craggy skin redefined themselves under my gaze, morphing into a series of miniature mountains and ravines.
Her finger flew toward me like a hawk gliding on the air, deceptively slow. I reared back, brushed the arm aside, and reveled in the loose limberness of my own body. The pain was gone, the bruises no more’n a prickle under my skin, and the blood sliding down my stomach one drop at a time was of no consequence. One urge ruled my heart. Kill the beast.
I was the hunter. Killing is what I done best.
Spearfinger lurched toward me in fits and starts, looking for all the world like one of them old horror movies skipping beats. One minute, she was six feet away, the next, she was right on top of me, closer’n I liked anybody to be. She swung her arms together in a grim parody of a hug, attempting to clap me between ‘em, I reckoned. I was about to step back when something on her palm caught my eye.
It was dark and odd-shaped and throbbed ever so often.
A nigh on forgotten passage of a book popped into my head. Spearfinger only had one vulnerability, and that lay protected by her closed fist.
Her heart.
That voice inside me crowed its triumph, and I throwed back my head and howled it into the morning air, even as my body remembered to evade the danger of her touch, and did. I knowed what I had to do now. I knowed how to kill her dead.
She caught me as I was lowering my head, not with a poke or a mock hug, but with a good shove of her granite fists. My feet lifted off the ground, and I sailed through the air, flying over the stream back first into a stalwart oak.
Something cracked inside me as the air whooshed outta my lungs. I flopped onto the ground hard as I hit the tree, knocking myself woozy again. The forest dimmed around me, collapsing into a dim pinpoint of light, and I become oddly aware of water gurgling in the stream, of wind sifting through the leafless trees, of frost tingeing the air, and of the crunch of steps bounding toward me.
I shook my head, nearly collapsed under the pain assaulting me, and struggled to breathe. Move, that voice said, and somehow I found the energy to set my trembling arms under me and shove myself off the ground and upright. The tree was right behind me, still standing tall after our run in. I put my back to it, being right careful where I placed my boots along the roots parting the dirt. This is where I’d make my stand, and God help me.
Spearfinger splashed into the creek and out the other side. Two steps later, she was right in front of me, arms reaching for me like scraggly tree branches.
My vision tilted and blurred, and for a minute, weren’t her tree-branch limbs reaching toward me, but Henry’s, sweet, dear, ghostly Henry with his gaunt face and bloodied hands.
But only for a minute. The superimposed image faded quick as it popped up and all I saw in front of me was the monster I sworn to kill.
I regripped my knife, trying real hard to ignore how shaky my hand was, how weak my own limbs. My breath hitched in, finally easing the lack of air ‘til a sharp stitch ripped through my right side.
Slow and easy, I shifted the knife to my left hand and tucked my right elbow next to my body, right up against cracked ribs. My heart thudded in my chest on a niggle of doubt and I swallowed hard, nearly choking as saliva wet my parched throat.
Spearfinger raised that hand again and here come her finger, reaching toward my heart.
Beyond her, a pale, translucent figure emerged from the woods, her bare feet silent on the forest’s floor.
Lily.
She lifted her hand, mimicking the monster in front of me, and sliced it to the side. My hand followed hers on instinct, and the knife’s blade knocked against Spearfinger’s digit, cutting it clean off.
Spearfinger roared agony into the wind and spread her arms wide. I was ready for her this time. In her hands come, straight for my head, and up my knife went, and in spite of the awkward angle, it struck true, piercing the dark organ planted in the palm of her hand as she brung it in for a killing blow.
The knife stuck, moss green fluid sprayed away from it. Spearfinger’s roar cut off in mid-howl. She staggered back a single step, gasping out an ugly hiss of stone scraping stone, and in her pain, she lashed out. Her left hand hit my temple, my head slammed sideways, grazing the tree, and down I went in a heap onto the roots and the dirt.
My eyes fluttered closed, but before they shut for good, I watched Spearfinger sink to her knees, her gaze caught on the knife speared through her heart as her lifeblood dripped onto the leaf strewn ground.
Chapter Twenty-Two
An icy hand shook me awake. I peered up at Lily’s ghost through blood coated eyelashes and attempted a smile. A million words tumbled into my throat, how Trey and Gentry missed her like crazy them first few months after Fame caught her in bed with his brother and run her off. How he done right by ‘em, as right as a man could, and how when Missy come along, things was better. Safe. They was loved, I wanted to tell her. They was good men, and they
forgive her for leaving ‘em like she done.
What come out weren’t nowhere near that.
“I got her, Aunt Lil,” I croaked out. “You and Ferd can rest in peace now.”
Her blonde hair fell over her shoulders as her mouth curved into a sweet smile. She bent over me like she was gonna brush a kiss over my cheek, but when she spoke, weren’t her voice I heard, but another’un, one I hadn’t rightly wanted to hear again anytime soon.
“Cry out, Sunshine,” Old Mother said in that hoodoo voice of hers. “The third must come.”
Spearfinger musta knocked me straight, ‘cause I actually understood what Old Mother was a-saying.
“No phone,” I said, and my voice was as rusty as a nail left out in the weather. “In car.”
Something hard pressed into my hand and she continued like I hadn’t said a word. “Cry out to the third, mother of the spirit, then return to the light. The light knows who you are. The light knows your true nature.”
Faint humor welled up inside me and I closed my eyes. Old Mother surely had the worst timing on the planet, if she thought now was a good time for relating one of her foretellings.
“Trust the light,” she murmured, and her hands roamed over me, plucking at the pain invading ever inch of my body, numbing it somehow.
I fumbled with the phone, peeked open a single eye ‘til I found Trey’s number, and dialed. Three digital rings later, he answered and barked out a snarled, “Where the hell are you?”
“Woods.” Old Mother hit a raw spot, and I gasped out the next word. “Spearfinger.”
“Well, that don’t tell me diddly,” he muttered.
Later I really couldn’ta said how long it took, but over the next few minutes or hours, or maybe days, I related where I left the IROC and how he could find me, if he was of a mind, then finished with a raspy, “Bring your truck.”
I opened my eyes long enough to thumb outta the call and spotted Old Mother hovering over me. She saved me, she did, what with bringing me my cellphone and whatever it was she was doing to ease some of the hurt Spearfinger inflicted on me. It felt good to be saved.