“I want to wake up now.”
I hoped I said it aloud, but neither Banana Buddha nor Damon seemed to hear me. I’d checked out of their conversation and didn’t bother trying to catch up. It all seemed like too much work at the moment anyhow.
Maybe a dip in the really cold water of the river would revive me. The frigid ice-melt ran right off the high peaks. But that would mean either climbing over the rocks blocking off the pool or swimming through the tunnel that let water pass between. Both seemed too enormous to contemplate, especially given the fact that I had as much strength right now as a dead octopus. Maybe less.
Of course, it wasn’t exactly strength I was lacking. My muscles were fine. At least, I thought so. The problem was sheer fatigue. But I’d been tired before. Climbing the rock wall with water cannons shooting at me. Running ahead of the electric prods. Swimming for hours and hours in an endless pool so I didn’t get chewed up by the steel jaws spinning just below me. I’d never given up. Never let my mother win. Today was not the day to start.
I drew seven deep breaths to oxygenate my blood.
“She breathing better,” Damon said.
“Good for her, but you need a cursebreaker if you really want to help her. Voodoo witches are good for that. So are the native types, but not a lot of them around the area.”
I didn’t wait to hear Damon’s answer. I wasn’t waiting around for someone to come rescue me. I’d rescue my own damned self, thank you very much.
I twisted out of Damon’s gentle hold. At some point he’d gone back to a relaxed grip. Good thing too. I’d have had to fight my way clear of him otherwise, and I wasn’t exactly a kung fu master. I also didn’t know how to do the turning into mist thing on purpose.
I managed to land facedown in the water, and I wriggled and kicked to go down. Even sluggish, I managed to dive. I scissor-kicked and knocked against Damon. He was trying to grab me. I made myself kick harder, pulling my arms around in a hard stroke. I couldn’t let him stop me.
The temperature of the water dropped faster than I did. I followed the deepening chill to the eye-shaped entrance to the river access tunnel. I’d been through it before. I fit but it was a squeeze. More like a scrape. I grabbed a hold of the rocks and pulled myself inside and instantly whacked my head on the ceiling. I gave a little gasp and lost half my air.
I used my feet to push myself along, snaking my hands up under me and out in front to help pull myself. A protrusion scraped my forearm. The passage was longer than fifteen feet and made a little S curve near the end. I’d have to turn on my side for that.
My lungs ached. I was used to that, so it didn’t worry me. Yet. I wriggled through the tunnel, still fighting exhaustion. Maybe if something about me screwed the curse up this much, I could kill it altogether somehow.
I felt the pull of the river current tugging on my fingers. I gripped the edges of the tunnel and dragged myself out.
Bad news.
The current was supersized, thanks to a recent hot spell in the mountains along with unexpected storms. It snatched me in its jaws and raced off with me. I didn’t fight it. I could defy my mother, but Mother Nature was a whole other kettle of worms.
Who keeps kettles of worms around anyhow?
I could and did kick hard to get myself to the surface. I gasped and choked when my head broke the surface. I was facing the opposite side of the river. I twisted to look ahead just in time to see how I was going to die.
Devil’s Jaw wasn’t over near the right side of the river like it was supposed to be. The water had risen so high, it was nearly in the middle now, and I was shooting right for it. I didn’t have time to do anything more than pull my legs against my chest and press my face into my knees while covering my head with my arms.
Ajax.
I screamed anger.
I separated from myself. It felt so weird. I was like thousands of starlings all flying together as they danced the salsa in the air. Or bees. Or maybe a horde of fish all darting in the same direction, turning and gathering and flowing and bunching. I was split apart into a million molecules, yet I could feel every part of me.
I’d never experienced this trick of mine like that before. Maybe because it usually was over within a few seconds. This time I didn’t solidify. After Devil’s Jaw came the Teeth. A mile-long stretch of white water with a narrow channel you had to follow if you wanted to go through safely. Most of the teeth were under water with the swelling of the river. They waited underneath like icebergs.
After that came the Tongue. It was a section around a half mile long that was just fast rapids channeled between great lumps of rock. In a raft, it wasn’t too bad to navigate—not like the Teeth—but swimming wasn’t advised. The current would churn you under and grind you into hamburger as it beat you against the rocks.
Past that, the river widened and normally slowed a little, though the high water meant the current would stay fast. I’d be safe there, though, I’d have time to swim to shore.
It took a few seconds for me to realize that, all exploded as I was, I could actually see the curse. It didn’t lose shape with me. It was a tangle of gray barbs, like razor wire or blackberry brambles. It was almost beautiful in its ugly complexity.
It had lost its grip on me because I wasn’t tangible as smoke. I figured it would grab me again when I solidified. Not if I had anything to say about it. I smacked at it with my magic, and holy shit if it didn’t spin away. Of course, it came right back like one of those paddle balls on a rubber band.
I grabbed it, only it was more like looping a little bit of my cloud around it. I blasted it with magical energy. I wanted it to burn. It flared orange, then went blue, then white, and I kept feeding magic into it. Abruptly it poofed away like ash.
I was so startled and pleased that my body turned solid again. A little too soon. I banged into a rock and pinballed into another before the rapids dumped me into the relative calm of the swift-running waters. My thigh slammed into a rock and my shoulder into another. Both hurt like hell. I screamed or yelped and got mouth and nose full of water. I sputtered and gulped and coughed as I rolled through the torrent. Finally I got myself right side up. The current was sweeping me along fast. I was close to the middle. I started swimming toward the left shore.
It’s lucky I’m a very strong swimmer used to working against and through pain. The devastating fatigue was gone, but my right arm and left leg kept screaming at me to get some painkillers and fast. Every kick and every stroke of my arms was pure misery. Plus, I was cold as hell.
I must have drifted another mile or more before I found footing on the river’s bed. I was still chin deep and feeling like a popsicle. I lurched forward, banging my shins and stepping on sharp stones. I swear I was going to need a wheelchair once I got out.
I didn’t let myself think about how I was going to get back to the sanctuary pool or home. Instead, I wondered what Damon had done when I disappeared. He never would have fit through the tunnel. I couldn’t imagine he’d climb over the rocks and jump in the river after me. That would be insane, and Damon certainly didn’t seem to be crazy.
I remembered I was naked when I got halfway out and the breeze hit my skin. The sun was shining, but it didn’t do anything to warm me. Who’d have thought there could be a windchill factor in summer? I didn’t see anybody else around, which didn’t really make a lot of sense for a Saturday in mid June. At least—I thought it was Saturday. I couldn’t remember much since I went home and collapsed in bed.
I staggered out of the water and clawed my way up the rocky bank. I looked up at the twenty-foot wall I’d need to climb before I could go anywhere else and decided I needed to rest a while first.
There were bits of grass growing in pockets of soil and in the cracks of the rocks, but mostly I was exposed. I shivered and my teeth started to chatter. I went behind an outcropping to get out of the wind. The sun had warmed the stone, and I pressed against it, moaning gratefully at the heat it gave off.
I stayed like that, turn
ing over when the sun had warmed my back. After a while, my shivering became less violent and my teeth stopped clacking together. I sighed, eyeing the rocky wall. Normally I could climb it in my sleep. Today was not normal. I supposed I could blast foot and toe holds in it with magic. When I tried, a pathetic little cloud of sparks danced on the surface of the stone. I made a face. I was out of juice.
Since I couldn’t sit there forever, I started climbing, digging my fingers and toes into the cracks and niches. My shoulder and thigh kept giving up, and I’d end up dangling from one arm, or swinging with only a hand and foot holding on. All the same, I didn’t have any choice, so I kept moving.
Once I pulled myself over the top, I sprawled in the grass, disturbing the bees and a couple of grasshoppers. My entire body throbbed, and exhaustion was creeping up on me. Not the mind-melting fatigue of before, but more the what-have-I-done-to-myself-am-I-insane variety.
At least I was alive, and I was back to being myself.
“Take that, you fucking bitch.” I raised my middle finger toward the sky. I had no doubt that my mother had cursed me as her last act on earth.
Chapter 14
From where the sun hung in the sky, it was at least a couple of hours past noon. The road couldn’t be far. If I went out to it, somebody was bound to pull over and either call the police or toss me in their trunk to pass around as a party favor later. More likely everybody would just keep driving past the bruised and—I lifted my head to look down at myself—very bloody, very battered naked woman wandering down the shoulder.
My head dropped back to the grass. Things were definitely starting to hurt. Who was I kidding? It had been hurting all along. I’d just been too cold then too busy to notice. But I was noticing now, and I really wanted some serious drugs to put me out of my misery.
After lying there for five minutes or so, I told myself to get up off the ground and to get walking. After another ten minutes, I managed to get myself up on my knees and then my feet.
I headed for the little rabbit track that cut through the grass and went up along the slope. The ground was reasonably smooth, but it didn’t really matter. My feet were hashed with cuts and purple with bruises. They were going to hurt no matter what I walked on.
I went uphill. When the track forked, I went in the direction of upstream. I’m not even sure why. Down was closer to home, and up relied on Damon to be waiting for me. I was pretty sure that the Banana Buddha didn’t have a phone or a car, though picturing him on the back of a Harley made me laugh. Which made my ribs ache and I started coughing, which only made things worse.
You’d think that a naked woman walking outside would automatically draw attention from everywhere. That satellites would shift in orbit and the whole world would get to see my humiliation. Weirdly, that didn’t happen. In fact, I heard nobody and saw nobody. I didn’t even hear the rush of cars on the road. Of course, if I hadn’t wanted to be seen, then a hundred people would have popped up out of nowhere. Murphy’s Law.
I came to a spot where a scree blocked my passage and I had to backtrack and hike up a steep ridge to go around it. That gave me a good view of the river. I’d gotten back up parallel to the Teeth. So I guessed I was around two miles from the sanctuary pool. The road was closer, but I’d have to finish hiking to the top of the ridge and then get down the other side. If I remembered, there was irrigated pastureland between the bottom and the road, not to mention several barbed-wire fences to cross.
I decided to just start walking and concentrate on the next ten feet, and then the next ten feet, and then the next.
The mosquitoes in the pasture ate me alive. I don’t even know why they bit me. They could have stuck their stupid straws into the leaking blood, but no, they had to make even more holes in me.
I got through the fences without raking myself too hard with the barbs and then waded through an irrigation runoff ditch full of cattails. That left me a five-foot embankment to the road. That, too, was more work than it should have been. I was shaking, the bank was steep, the grass was slick, and I was like a sasquatch just learning to walk. I finally made it.
Standing there, I felt idiotic. I had to look like something out of a horror flick. Bloody Beck. Say my name three times, and I’d fall asleep on top of you.
The first couple of cars whizzed by like I was invisible. The third, a beat-up blue pickup truck, flashed past then hit the brakes and skidded to a stop. The driver thrust open the door and ran back to me, leaving his truck running in the middle of the road.
“Are you okay?” he asked, coming to a stop a few feet away and looking like he was afraid he’d scare me. “I mean, do you need help?”
“I’d take a ride to the hospital,” I said.
“Come on.”
He reached out to help me and then blushed bright red. He wasn’t that old. Barely old enough to drink. He was wearing jeans covered in white plaster splatters and a blue button up shirt with the name “Liam” stitched in red on a white oval on his chest. He had hat hair, his brown curls stiff with dried sweat.
“Got something I could put on to wear?” I asked. “Or a blanket?”
“Oh, sure.”
He ran back to the truck and dug behind the seat, returning with a gray T-shirt.
“Thanks,” I said, taking it and pulling it over my head. It managed to just barely cover my crotch.
By this time, another couple of cars had stopped and were gawking. A woman rolled her window down. “Do you need help? Should I call 911?”
“I’m gonna take her to the hospital,” my rescuer said. He looked at me. “Did someone do this to you? Should we call the police?”
I shook my head. “I fell into the river. Went through Devil’s Jaw and the Teeth.”
Liam gaped, clearly awed that I’d lived. Lucky thing, too, because he didn’t ask how I happened to fall in or why I was totally naked.
“Here. I’ve got a throw.” The woman pulled a lap blanket out of her back seat and brought it over to me. I wrapped it around myself, feeling a bit less awkward.
“Thanks.”
“You really should get to the hospital. You look pretty bad.”
Liam glanced down at my feet. “Do you want me to carry you?”
“Thanks, but I think I’d be better off on my own.” I smiled and from the look on my two helpers’ faces, it was a scary expression.
I hobbled around to the passenger side of the truck, with both Liam and woman hovering in case I needed help.
I got up inside and settled back against the seat with a sigh. God but it was good to sit down.
“You want to put on the seat belt?” the woman asked.
I shook my head. “I’m good.” I looked at her. “What’s your name? How do I get this blanket back to you?”
“Cammie Pilts, and don’t worry about it. Just get yourself better. God bless.”
With that, she swung the door shut, and then my other savior hopped into the driver’s seat.
“Your name’s Liam?” I asked.
He startled like I’d pinched his ass. “How did you know that?”
“Your shirt.”
He flushed and looked down at his name tag as though he’d never seen it before. “Right. Yeah. That’s me. We’d better go.”
The drive didn’t take long. He pulled in to the emergency drive-up entrance and came around to help me out. I guess I looked pretty bad because I was barely out of the truck when an orderly in green scrubs whipped up with a wheelchair and gave me a ride inside.
After that, it was that annoying hospital game where they see how many times they can jab you with something sharp. I had an MRI and a CT, blood tests, shots, an IV with antibiotics and another with blood, seventy-three total stitches, and they made me stay overnight. They kept asking me what had happened and didn’t seem to believe my story whatsoever. Through it all, I kept wondering about Ajax. I hoped Damon was taking care of him. What if he’d dumped the poor dog at the pound? What if Ajax had run off?
Whe
n I got the chance, I called Lorraine. I got her voicemail and left a message telling her where I was. I tried Stacey, but she didn’t answer either. She was probably at work. Last I called Jen.
“What happened to you?” she asked. “I thought we were going to go hike Overland Trail today. I waited for you, like, two hours.”
“I’m in the hospital.”
A beat of silence. I could hear her grabbing control of herself and the carefully articulated, “What?”
Someone knocked on the door. I looked up. My two favorite detectives stood in the doorway. Or rather, they knocked and walked in without any invitation at all.
“I’ve got company. Bring me some clothes, would you? Something loose. And maybe some slippers. They’re keeping me overnight, but I don’t have anything to wear home.” I hung up. “What do you want?”
“The hospital called in a potential battered woman. When we heard your name, we figured we’d come check in on you,” Jeffers said blandly.
His eyes were all over me, cataloging every stitch, bruise, scrape, and who knew what else. Ballard wasn’t any better. She’d come around to the other side of the bed, so I was between them, and was giving me the same scrutiny. I felt like a bug under a microscope.
“What happened to you?” Ballard asked.
I grimaced. “Like you care. Here’s what you really want to know. Nobody attacked me. This had nothing to do with my mother.” Well, except for her curse. “I went to the river to lay out in the sun and fell in. Got banged up on the rocks. Then I managed to get out of the water and walk to the road for help.”
Neither one of them appeared to have bought my story. Fuck them. Most of it was true, and they sure as hell wouldn’t believe the part about me being cursed or the bit where I transformed into a cloud.
Ballard had whipped out her notebook and pen. “Go over that again. Start with where you went to sunbathe. Was anybody with you?”
I sighed and looked up at the ceiling as I relaxed back into my pillows. “You know what? I’m really tired. I’d like you to go away.”
Putting the Fun in Funeral Page 10