“You wanna take point?”
I snorted. “Are you kidding? I have no freakin’ clue where we are. It’s all you, little brother.” I couldn’t be sure in the darkness, but I think Cole rolled his eyes at me.
Making our way back to the cabin was easier said than done, even with Cole’s uncanny directional sense to guide us. Marty was limping worse than I’d realized, and face it, the guy was short but he sure wasn’t light. It was a struggle for him to hold on to Duke and lean heavily on my brother at the same time. Cole kept his flashlight trained ahead of us, and I brought up the rear, watching for the ambush I just knew had to come.
Why haven’t they attacked yet? The eerie, nonsensical calls came from all around us, and every one of them tugged at some place just in front of my spine, a place in my gut that churned with nausea. The worst ones were the children’s voices, and one of them kept wailing out “I’m a little teapot” over and over and over again. It might have been funny, in another time, another place, but here in the near pitch darkness, there was a wheedle to it that was simply horrifying. It was a tiny urge, a subtle entreaty to go galloping off into the wilderness, just like Marty had. I bit my lip as hard as I could without drawing blood and kept moving.
Now, I was no navigational expert, but it seemed to me that we were drifting conspicuously uphill in our path, and I didn’t recall coming that way on my blind rush into the trees. The more I thought about it, the less certain I was that Cole was leading us in the right direction. Before I could comment on it, I nearly stumbled into the trio when they stopped abruptly. “What’s up, guys?”
Since I’d been walking pretty much backward, I dared a glance back to see Cole shaking his head, trying to clear it. “It’s like they’re in there, in my head. I’m getting a little muzzy.”
“How muzzy, little brother?” Face it, I was never a Boy Scout. If Cole couldn’t find our way back, we were well and truly humped.
He hesitated a moment, then said, “I think we’re good.”
About ten yards and an eternity later as we worked our way around deadfalls and thorny vines, Cole brought them to a stop again. “No, no, we’re not good. Shit, I have no idea which way we’re headed. My head’s reeling.”
Oh hell no. I was not gonna die out here, probably within yelling distance of safety. More importantly, I wasn’t going to let either of those two idiots die either. I couldn’t.
I moved to grab a handful of Cole’s short hair and yanked his head up to make him look me in the eyes. The flashlight beam cast his face in dark shadows, hollowing out his eyes and cheeks into a skeletal mockery of his actual face. My face, too, we looked that much alike.
Up close like that, he reeked of fear sweat, that particularly pungent aroma brought on by massive doses of adrenaline. We all did. Except maybe Duke. He just smelled like dog. “Listen, little brother. You are gonna get your shit together, and you’re gonna get us out of here. And you’re gonna do it with a smile on your face and a spring in your step, you got me?” It took him a moment, but he finally swallowed and nodded. “That’s my boy.” I butted our foreheads together lightly, just enough to give us both a good thump.
Only then did I realize the voices had fallen silent, and I had approximately two seconds to wonder why. That was the moment they chose to spring, of course, with all of us sufficiently distracted. And they took out the most dangerous of us first.
The thing must have been just above our heads the whole time, waiting in the branches like some kind of gruesome spider, and it dropped down onto Duke’s back like one of those monkeys at the rodeo. The dog whirled with a savage snarl, trying to get at the tormentor clinging to his shoulders, and nearly knocked Marty sprawling in the process. Mastiff and minion went brawling into the brush and out of sight.
“Duke!” Marty lunged to go after his pet, and Cole and I both grabbed for his shoulders to stop him.
“Duke can take care of himself. We have to get out of here.” Even as Cole said it, another of the creatures darted out of the bushes, slamming into my brother’s right arm. The flashlight strobed as it went spinning into the darkness, and the creature vanished into the night again. The third one clipped Marty in the back of the knees, but the solid bastard was just too stubborn to fall. The minion bounced off those tree trunk legs and into the bushes again in a crackle of brush. Somewhere a few yards distant, Duke was still going at it with his new special friend. From the sounds of the snarling, the dog was winning.
“Shit . . . Backs together, boys.” The three of us took up positions, shoulders pressed together as we waited to see where they’d come from next. But really, what were we going to do? I was the only one armed, and Marty was half gimped.
One darted forward, almost at Cole’s feet, then retreated when my brother lashed out with a vicious kick. “What they hell are they doing? Why aren’t they just attacking?”
The next one dropped out of the branches above us again, and only the snapping of twigs warned us in time for Marty to lurch to the side. The thing landed on all fours on the forest floor and paused to hiss at us before leaping back into the brush. Damn, it was fast. I couldn’t even get a decent swipe at it with my katana.
“Pack tactics.” Marty got back into position, closing the gap in our circle. “Like a wolf pack harrying an elk. They’re trying to wear us down.”
“They’re smarter . . . unh! . . . than they look!” Cole paused in midsentence to kick at another one that darted in and out of the trees in front of him, taunting.
“They’re not. It’s him.” The Yeti was dancing his little puppets on their strings, trying to scare us into recklessness, trying to tire us out. And it wasn’t lost on me that the nasty things hadn’t made a single lunge toward me. That pretty much told me all I needed to know. The Yeti didn’t want me dead. He wanted something much worse.
What he wanted, I could use against him.
“Hey! Hey, ugly!” My voice bounced up and down the hillside, echoing. Ugly! Ugly! Ugly! The forest fell silent, even Duke’s unseen battle dying down. After a moment, the mastiff’s big square head poked out of the bushes, and he limped back to Marty, favoring his right hind leg but otherwise all right. “C’mon, stinky! Show yourself!”
“Jess, what are you doing?” I shushed Cole with a wave of my hand. Believe it or not, I knew what I was doing. Pretty sure. Maybe.
After a long moment of waiting, a branch above us creaked, and we looked up to find one of the minions hanging upside down from it, like a wingless bat. It was the female, the one with the missing hand. Her clawed toes and remaining fingers sunk into the bark to give her purchase, and her head twisted at a bizarre angle to look at us right side up, the blackness of her eyes glowing from within. Tendons in her neck creaked audibly in protest at the unnatural position.
“Hey there, ugly. You in there?” He was. I could feel him watching.
The thing’s mouth opened, but her lips didn’t move. Instead, the voice emerged from her throat, like through a loudspeaker. “I see you.” It was his voice, the Yeti’s voice. I would never forget that guttural rumble, coated with oil-slick taint.
“I just bet you do.” I stepped forward, separating myself from the guys, ignoring Cole and Marty’s whispered protests. “Shame on you, skirting around the rules like this. You’ll never get what you want this way.”
The minion’s head twisted almost full circle the other direction, still focusing those eerie black eyes on me. “And what do I want?”
“You’re too big and ugly to be coy. Let us go. Or you’ll never have it.”
Behind me, Cole whispered, “Never have what?” and I swatted at him without looking.
The Yeti chuckled, but his speaker never moved. “And just how do you propose to stop me?”
“Because if you don’t let all of us go, right now, when I get back to that cabin, I’ll blow my own fucking brains out, and that’ll be the end of that.”
“Jesse!”
“Shut up, Cole!” I smacked at him agai
n, and kept my eyes on the Yeti’s little pet. “You know me. You know the samurai believed in ritual suicide. Don’t push me.” I wouldn’t, of course. The samurai may have believed in ritual suicide, but I believed very strongly in me-not-being-dead. But I was hoping the Yeti wouldn’t call my bluff. Really, really hoping.
Suddenly, the Yeti was no longer amused. The handless female’s claws shifted on her branch, unsettled in her master’s anger. “You will not. I will devour them all.”
“Then it seems we’re at an impasse, aren’t we?” And this was the tricky part. How to deal with a demon, without really dealing with a demon. Take lessons, kiddies. “How about we talk this out, once everyone’s back on safe ground? Say, tomorrow?”
She scuttled closer, the branch dipping under even her slight weight until her gaunt and filthy face was level with mine. “You will swear this. To willingly present yourself.”
“If you let us go now. All four of us. Let us get back to the cabin untouched, and without any of your choir boys singing out.”
A low growl uttered from the skeletal creature’s chest, but in the end the Yeti agreed. “I will see you on the morrow, champion.” The light in the minion’s eyes went out like a snuffed candle, but she didn’t move. Her head slowly rotated back the other direction, keeping us in her hungry black gaze.
“Guys . . . start walking. Slowly.” I didn’t know if those things were like most predators, but I didn’t want to take the chance that running would trigger them into pouncing. I didn’t believe the Yeti’s promise of safe passage for a moment. I just hoped it would buy us a bit of time.
“Jess . . . what have you done?”
“Just walk, little brother. Keep walking, and don’t stop for anything.”
Cole got us pointed in the right direction—I’d been right, they’d been luring us the wrong way—and we started picking our way through the thick underbrush.
The creatures shadowed us all the way back. Duke’s constant rumbling growl was indicator enough, even if we hadn’t been able to see them slipping through the branches like demonic spider monkeys. Every once in a while, we’d round a fallen tree or a pile of dead limbs to catch one of them leaping silently out of our path. They kept their distance, and there were no more eerie calls to scramble our brains.
It was hard, once we could see the clearing through the trees, not to just bolt for safe ground, but I had Cole’s shirt knotted in my fist, and he held Marty’s, and the three of us calmly and slowly crossed those last few yards. “Walk,” I kept murmuring to them. “Just walk.”
The tingle of Cam’s consecration spell never felt so good, as we crossed that invisible line of safety.
I could breathe again.
12
Will was waiting for us on the porch, with Cole’s handgun. My brother made a big show of taking it back from him and unloading it, glaring at me all the while. I glared back. If he didn’t know me well enough to know I’d been bluffing, that was his problem.
And of course, the damn voices started up again the moment we were inside. “Ain’t he a dandy!” “I’m bored, are we there yet?” “I’m a little teapot!”
“I swear, if I never hear ‘I’m a little teapot’ again,” Cole growled, and I was inclined to agree with him. The song was forever ruined. “We’re never gonna get any sleep if that keeps going on.”
We tried, at first. Those who weren’t on watch tried muffling the calls with their sleeping bags pressed tightly against their ears, but nothing seemed to drown out the wheedling, entreating pleas. I could feel it like a mosquito whining in my ear, and any time I started to let my guard down, to try to sleep, it was there, trying to lure me out the door. So long as they were calling out there, we were all in danger of dashing off to our deaths, and I had the feeling they intended to call all freakin’ night.
I briefly entertained the idea of trying to negotiate better terms with Big Ugly, but deep down, I knew the Yeti wasn’t going to bargain twice in one night. Besides, he was well on the way to getting what he wanted from me already. I had nothing left to offer.
Zane had a bad night too, but it seemed to be more from the pain in his arm than the eerie voices in the dark. He tossed and turned, whimpering quietly in his sleep, but as I watched him closer, it didn’t coincide with the calls from outside. Even Cameron, who was borderline unconscious, twitched and flinched in time with every pleading voice in the darkness. But Zane was definitely sleeping, even if it was unsettled.
“Hey, little brother?” Cole was propped up in the corner, half dozing, but he opened his eyes when I called to him. “Watch the kid.”
“He’s not hearing them,” Cole concluded after a few minutes. “Why is he not hearing them?”
“The poison, maybe? The brand? Protecting Ugly’s property?” Or maybe . . . Cameron had prayed over the kid. He’d anointed Zane with the blessed water. And while I still wasn’t sold on this whole “god” thing, I did believe in the power of will. “Look at his arm.” There, where Cameron had traced his mysterious symbols, the creeping blackness had hardly advanced at all. It wasn’t healing the damage, but it was at least slowing it. If it could stop the poison, maybe it was stopping the magic in those voices, too.
Cam’s glass was still sitting on the mantel, half full, and when I dipped my fingers in, they tingled. Hmm. “Cole, c’mere.” I gestured at his forehead with my wet fingers. “Cross or pentacle?”
“What?”
“Cross or pentacle, they’re the only ones I know.” Hey, just because I didn’t have any magic of my own didn’t mean I was above using other people’s.
“Um . . . cross, I guess.” I drew an invisible cross on Cole’s forehead with the blessed water, while my brother raised a skeptical brow at me. We both stared at each other for a few seconds, and then Cole finally nodded. “I think . . . that helps. It’s still there, but . . . not as bad.”
“Not as bad is good enough for me.” I went through the house anointing everyone else, including the dog. Out of sheer perversity, I painted a pentacle on the sleeping priest’s forehead. Almost immediately, the tension started to fade from the room.
Luckily, once we’d broken out of the lure, it seemed easier to resist. We bedded down as best we could, still taking turns at watch, and tried to salvage what was left of the night.
There was one nasty tussle with Will around two a.m., trying to keep him from walking out the door. It never occurred to me before how much heavier he is, and he packs quite a wallop when he puts his mind to it. It took Cole and me both to put him down, and then Marty dumped the last of Cam’s blessed water over his head. He came out of it spluttering, soaked, and embarrassed as hell. I came out of it with a healthy new respect for my buddy’s strength, and a bruise across my right cheek that was gonna be a shiner by morning.
Marty was up most of the night too, watching out the window. They say there’s nothing so dangerous as a man with nothing to lose, but I don’t think that’s true. Men with nothing to lose go out in a blaze of glory—big, but quick. When you have everything to lose, when you know what you’re fighting for, that’s when you’re a truly dangerous man. That’s when you take out every single motherfucker in your path, calmly and cleanly. That’s what I saw in Marty’s eyes. All he wanted was to get back to his wife and his unborn child. They almost got him once, and nothing out there in the dark was going to stop him now.
Close to morning, Zane started running a fever. I remembered that fever, so bad I’d hallucinated in full Technicolor and surround sound. Even thinking about it made my mouth dry and parched, and I drank sparingly of our small water supply. Poor kid was in for worse.
Oscar tried to stay up and care for his son, but in the end even he drifted off. I felt for the guy, really I did. If that had been Anna there, gnawed on like that . . . I understood the need a father has to protect his child, even if he had no idea how to go about it. Oscar was doing all he could, and hating himself every moment because it wasn’t more. I knew.
Thankful
ly, the voices vanished at dawn, though it would be a couple of hours before the sun would be high enough to peek over the treetops. I didn’t believe for a moment that those things were gone, but if the light was going to chase them away for a bit, I’d take it and be happy.
Besides, I had stuff I needed to do, and a promise to keep no matter how badly I didn’t want to.
I picked a moment when the guys were all mostly dozing. Only Duke raised his head to watch me slip quietly out of the cabin with my sword belted on.
Palm out, I followed the brown, crusty trail of Zane’s blood toward the trees, feeling for the edges of Cameron’s consecration spell. I found it about halfway across the cleared area, the point where the tingling on my skin ceased, like a switch turned off. The holy ground was shrinking fast. I dug a line in the dirt with my scabbard at that point, and took two big steps back.
For a moment, I eyed the forest around me, too quiet by far. Nothing was stirring, no birds were singing. As if I needed more proof that I wasn’t alone.
“Hey! Ugly!” My shout echoed off the mountain, bouncing back to me mockingly. I winced a little, knowing that it was going to rouse the guys, and I so didn’t want them to interfere with this.
Almost instantly, one of the creatures appeared at the edge of the forest, clinging to a tree trunk about eight feet off the ground. This one didn’t even have a nose, something black and gooey trickling down its face from the gaping hole. “Not you. Other Ugly. Go get your master.” The Yeti was watching through those black eyes. I could feel his gaze on me, even by proxy, but I was done dealing with lackeys.
The minion never moved from its spot on the tree, but there was a rustling farther back. Three more of the little pets clambered spiderlike through the tree branches above us, but they found places to settle and moved no more. Not like the white-furred behemoth shouldering his way into view. He didn’t even bother with the human illusion, this time, smashing saplings flat as he passed like they were so many blades of grass.
A Shot in the Dark Page 14