Snow Fright

by Kaye Draper

  Tess growled. "Of course they were. Fucking hunters."

  Cloud gave her a warning look. "To the hunters, it looked as though she was with the creatures. She was defending them, so she was an enemy. And with their paranoia running so high thanks to all the pressure from the council... some of them posed the theory that she might not be purely witch. That she might be a cross of some sort... or at risk of becoming infected by her association with the creatures."

  Cloud ran a hand through her hair, reliving the desperation she had felt the moment she realized the hunters were about to kill a young human. "I tried to stop them. She set one on fire," Cloud smiled faintly in memory. "You say she was soft, but she wasn't then. She was fierce. She was defending what she believed in. She would have grown into an amazing woman."

  She rubbed her hands on her pants, then made herself stop fidgeting and maintain her calm. She had seen death many times. It wasn't new to her. But sharing the grief was new.

  "I killed two of the hunters. Surprised them. They didn't even think that I might turn on them. I cut them down to save her." Her hands twitched, wanting to feel her tomahawk in her grasp. "But one of them came from behind and... I wasn't fast enough."

  "I didn't kill your daughter," she whispered, not knowing why it was suddenly so important to defend herself. Cloud had never felt it necessary to justify her actions. She acted with precision and without hesitation in every situation. She was a warrior. It didn't matter if anyone else understood why she did what she did, so long as she did her duty. "I tried to save her and failed."

  Tess stood, running a hand through her newly short hair. She took a half-step toward Cloud, then seemed to realize what she was doing and stopped herself, turning the motion into the illusion that she had intended to approach Caldwell, who stood by Cloud's chair. "See," she said. "We all fuck up occasionally. Monsters, little witches who want to do good things, even stick-up-their-ass hunters."

  "The bigger problem," Tess said, glaring up at the man as if she had no fear. "Is what the hell your eldest son is up to and how we get Tommy back, so I can put him together again." She slanted a glance toward the mother. "We'll talk about Elana later. I don't think all the witches in your family are so firm on that no sharing secrets rule, mother dearest. Cal told me about his special training."

  Cloud frowned at that. Tess might know what was going on, but she hadn't shared with Cloud. That hurt more than she cared to acknowledge.

  Suzie went and put an arm around the teen, who had finally stopped crying. "Cal told us to come see you," she said firmly, as if she had been there when he issued the advice. "The hunters who are supposed to be protecting us from the monsters have redrawn the line. It seems like it's not only the man-eating bad guys who are on their hit-list."

  "We need the covens to stop working with the hunters," Cloud said, her eyes meeting the older woman's.

  Cloud glanced at Tess to find her grinning. "Fucking hunters," she breathed, gluttonous blood-lust radiating off her in waves.

  And why did Cloud's shiver of fear feel more like eager anticipation?

  Chapter 6

  I walked faster, finally breaking into a run as we reached the edge of the forest. My forest. Cloud hadn’t been too keen on my request to come back home. But I finally managed to convince her that even if someone suspected Cal hadn’t killed me, they would hardly expect me to stay around here.

  Besides, the towns weren’t any safer. And we couldn’t just leave the state. We had dodged hunters on two separate occasions on our way back to the forest. They might not be looking for me specifically, but they were still out there hunting.

  I dashed through the forest, breathing in sharp, cold air, reveling in the scents of pine needles and moss. I felt the pull of my creatures, hidden away deep in the forest.

  Cloud was a quick shadow at my back, following me over every obstacle. And here and there, I caught glimpses of Ahanu gliding through the trees above.

  I slowed to a stop in the center of a small clearing. It was over a mile from where my home had once stood. Once upon a time, I had banished my smelly aniwye friend here, not willing to harm him, but also not wanting to smell like skunk for the rest of my life.

  The smell had dissipated. I hadn’t seen the aniwye since the day Tommy was killed and snatched. I hoped it was hiding, not dead or caged in a research center somewhere.

  I stood in the center of the clearing, heart racing pleasantly from my run, senses on high-alert as the forest rearranged itself around me. I felt them come, drawn out of hiding by my nearness. I knew that quite a few of them had died when Cal’s force swept through the area. But as they came to me, I realized the numbers hadn’t dwindled. In fact, there were more of them now. They were still gathering here, even though the hunters and witches had made the sanctuary a battle ground.

  Cloud hung back, hovering under the shelter of a jack pine while the unseen spirit creatures came out to say hello. A magnificent silver stag with antlers of every conceivable shape came to me, its horns trailing Spanish moss and flowers. Welcome it whispered in my mind, its voice silvery and wise.

  I trailed a hand over its silky coat, the touch making me feel stronger somehow.

  A stork-like creature with scaly humanoid hands and feet ambled forward. Its voice in my mind spoke with more difficulty, struggling with human-speak. Our human-thing.

  I smiled, surprised when tears trembled in my eyes. “Hello,” I said stupidly.

  I was surrounded by things that others couldn’t see. Strange and sometimes terrifying creatures butted up against me. Patted my head, plucked at my pant leg, nudged up close as if seeking comfort. How could the stupid hunters see these things and think they all needed to die?

  A black, crocodile-shaped thing with fur and wings slithered up to me and licked my hand, flashing needle-sharp teeth. I gave it a stern look. Okay, so I understood why the soft, fleshy hunters might fear some of this. But all of it? To hunt the little mushroom creatures that danced by my feet with the same prejudice as the nasty, creeping black shadows that preyed on humans?

  Fucking hunters.

  My own hunter said something, and I glanced back to find her trying to get Ahanu off her shoulder. The bird grabbed a hunk of her hair in its mouth and yanked, earning himself a swat. “What is wrong with you?” Cloud demanded.

  I frowned and extricated myself from my creature welcoming committee. “Ahanu?”

  The bird croaked and stopped pestering Cloud. Because he decided to move on to pestering me. He fluttered about my head, then finally settled on one of the stag’s antlers.

  The stag’s voice was amused in my head. Your spirit requires the hunter’s attention.

  I glanced between the bird and Cloud, confused. “Well, he has it.”

  Ahanu made a massive effort to turn into a ghost boy again, winking in and out as he had before. He spoke, but this time I couldn’t hear his voice on this plane of existence.

  “It’s getting worse,” I breathed.

  The bird lapsed back into raven form and stood there, feathered chest heaving with effort, as if he had just flown for miles.

  Belief is important to spirits like this one, the stag offered.

  I looked at it. “And he wants Cloud’s attention?”

  The deer creature nodded. Ahanu let out a croaking caw.

  I sighed. I was no good with this spiritual crap. Kwan had been good at it. I wished for the millionth time that he was still here to balance us all out. He had always been the reasonable one…right up until being unreasonable got him killed and all.

  I’d like to have a word or two with his ghost right about now. But he had clearly passed on to be with his lover…wherever it was spirits went.

  Cloud frowned at me. “Why are you making those faces?” She tilted her head. “Are you…can you talk to them or something?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. She was not going to be happy about this. “I can hear them. In my head. I’ve been able to talk to them for a while now.
Like…maybe since I was turned wendigo?”

  She scowled. “You didn’t think that might be useful information to share?”

  I shrugged. “You are a hunter Cloud. You made it fairly obvious up front that my getting any more monstrous would be a death sentence.”

  She sighed and her shoulders drooped. “I was a hunter,” she said. “Not anymore. And…I’m sorry I made you feel so…well, I’m sorry.”

  What? Cloud was apologizing? I didn’t like it. I could tell she was questioning everything she’d ever done for the last couple hundred years. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said, throwing up my arms.

  Cloud glanced at me, her beautiful eyes widened in surprise.

  “You are bossy, bitchy, and hard-headed. If you make a mistake you pretend it was part of your plan. You don’t mope. You don’t apologize to a monster. Who body-snatched my hunter?”

  She let out a startled laugh. “Your hunter?”

  I waved the question away. “Not important. The point here is, I think you’ve been a superhero for so long you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be human. Humans fuck shit up all the time. We’re idiots. We make wrong choices. We believe things that are completely unfounded in fact. We mess up like ninety percent of our life choices.” I grinned. “Welcome back to the club.”

  She gave me a more genuine smile that time. “Noted. But for the record, I only mess up ten percent of the time. Not ninety.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Sure. Whatever, Cloud Princess.”

  Ahanu cawed loud enough to make my head ring.

  “Okay, okay. Geesh!” I beckoned Cloud closer and held out an arm for the bird to perch on.

  Cloud came to us and ran a finger over the bird’s head. “I’m sorry you are distressed,” she said to the raven.

  I smirked.

  “What?” she said, her golden-brown eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  I shook my head. “Stop being cute. Hunters don’t care about distressed birds.”

  She stuck out her tongue. I bared my teeth.

  The bird croaked.

  “Yeah,” I said. God Tess, stop flirting and focus. “Okay, so. Cloud, do you believe in ghosts?”

  She looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Yes,” she said slowly. “The spirits of our ancestors guide us through our lives.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “That sounded like you were quoting a line from the Ojibwe version of a bible or something. Do you think it’s true?”

  She blinked at me. Then she started to look pissed. “What does this have to do with anything, Tess? We have things to do.”

  She tried to turn away. I yanked her back around to face me, making Ahanu dig his claws into my forearm to stay on his perch.

  “Answer the question.”

  She sighed. “Yes, I think it’s true. Sometimes. Or…I used to.”

  I raised my eyebrows at her. “And how do you feel about God?” I asked in my best psychologist voice. How does that make you feel? Do you want to lie on the couch?

  She glared daggers at me. “Is there a point to this?”

  I nodded. “Yep.”

  She was rigid. Her shoulders thrown back defiantly. She tossed her hair out of her face and glared down her nose at me in that imperious, I-am-the-boss-of-the-world way of hers. Then she glared at the bird.

  “All my life I’ve done everything I can to protect people. To lead. To do the things that no one else could—or would—do. I’ve prayed to the ancestors. I’ve walked the night drenched in blood, exhausted and hurting.” Her voice was a whisper now, soft but deadly, like the growl of a wounded animal. “And where was the Great Spirit? Where were the ancestors then?” Her eyes glistened and I thought she was holding back tears. “Where were they when my family and my lovers and everyone I held dear were slaughtered? Where were they when I spent hundreds of years protecting, serving, suffering?”

  I swallowed. My own eyes had started to overflow with sickening emotions.

  “You’re killing him,” I said firmly.

  Cloud’s remembered rage seemed to subside as she looked at me, puzzled. “What?”

  I hiked a thumb over my shoulder toward the stag. “The deer told me that belief is important to spirits like Ahanu.” I shrugged. “I believe in him. I think it’s you he needs to talk to.” I put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “I’ve wondered about this before… I don’t really think he’s here for me.”

  She was silent at that. Dividing a look between me and the bird. “But…he’s your guardian.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. But he sure as hell bailed on me when you left.”

  The bird pecked my arm and I jerked. “Ouch! Asshole.”

  He fluttered to the ground and tried to turn boy again, sparking magic and smoke. I heard his voice like a hallow whisper in the brief seconds he was able to maintain his little boy form. “…you…that I had to help…before…not what you thought….” He grimaced and grew agitated again, his long hair waving in a wind that we couldn’t feel. His little fingers tugged at the necklace of bone and feathers where it lay on his bare chest.

  Cloud paced closer to the blinking spirit and knelt down on the ground, her posture formal, regal. She put a hand over her heart and bowed forward, then sat up again, still kneeling but tall. “Tell me what I need to do to help,” she said simply.

  Ahanu calmed down a bit, and his image seemed to steady, staying longer before it winked out and back in. “I knew you….”

  She nodded. “I want to understand.”

  “Not alone….”

  She reached out as if she could touch the ghost. I had felt his touch before. It probably wasn’t as comforting as she expected. But it was something. There, but not there at the same time.

  Her hand drifted through him. She frowned, frustrated. “You are here to guide Tess, aren’t you? You can’t leave her now!”

  The boy stomped, turned raven and cawed, then turned boy again. “…both!”

  I went to kneel by Cloud. “Calm your pants,” I told the ghost-bird. “I’d tell you to breathe, but I don’t think you can.”

  The ghost blinked at me.

  I smiled. “We are listening, oh Wise and Great Spirit of Someone’s Ancestors. Impart thy wisdom. Or some shit.”

  He bent over, laughing. His little-boy giggle echoed hollowly. I stretched out a hand. I met some sort of cool, almost there resistance when my hand reached his ghostly head.

  He straightened and got himself under control.

  “Hey,” I said, poking at his stomach. “You aren’t blinking anymore.”

  The ghost, who was all of seven or eight years old, gave me a look that would put an adult to shame. “Tess, you are always avoiding things.”

  I shrugged. “Sure, but I waded into that existential bullshit for you guys so you owe me one.” Ahanu still had a tendency to fade in and out, but it was a hell of a lot better than it had been.

  Cloud snorted, and I glanced over to find her shaking with silent laughter. “That…” she gasped, “is not how you speak to the ancestors. Tess, he’ll ruin your crops. Or…I don’t know, curse your children or something.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “No crops. No children left. There’s not much he could do at this point.”

  “I could pull out all of your hair with my beak while you sleep, wendigo.”

  I stared at the ghost-boy. “Did you…Ahanu, did you just make a joke?”

  He shook his head, face serious. “Ghosts don’t tell jokes.”

  I snorted.

  He reached out two little hands and placed one on the top of my head and one on Cloud’s, his touch cool and insubstantial as fog. “I don’t know why the Great Spirit sent me here. Only that there was someone who needed my help. You seem to think of me as attached to one particular person, however…I knew you both the first time I saw you. I felt a…pull…that said this is it. Help her.”

  Cloud let out a slow breath. “How long? How long have you known me?”

  He tilted his head in a bird-like
gesture, setting his long dark hair to fall over one skinny shoulder. “There is no time here.”

  I shook my head. “I tried to ask him how old he was once. He has no idea.”

  She sighed. “I just wondered. I thought…. It doesn’t matter.”

  “I watched over you before Tess came.” He frowned, considering. As if he were trying very hard to see something that was just out of sight, to recall something that was long ago forgotten. “You had long ceremonial braids in your hair. And you danced with a tall man and a plump woman. And you smiled. You smiled so much it was blinding.”

  Cloud’s shoulders shook again, but this time it wasn’t with laughter. I put an arm around her and pulled her against my side, stroking my other hand over her hair as she sobbed.

  “Thank you, Ahanu,” I whispered.

  He had given her what she needed. To know that she had never been alone all that time, not really. Because whenever that had been, it had been long ago. My Cloud’s smiles only came once in a while, for a short time. And she certainly never danced.

  I thought maybe she was starting to heal something inside her, and the thought made my heart ache with joy. I made a gagging gesture, finger down throat. “Are we done with this sickening Disney bullshit now?”

  Cloud snorted, but her eyes still held some of her inner conflict. Normally, I’d say fuck the gods. Sadistic bastards. But for some reason when it was Cloud, it scared me. It seemed like an immortal monster hunter could use the godly backup. What if the gods got just as mad at us mortals as we were with them?

  Once our little spiritual counseling session was out of the way, Ahanu got down to business.

  The creatures still pressed around us, taking turns touching me. Avoiding Cloud with sort of wariness that was fear and awe combined.

  “They are scared,” Ahanu said, calm and serene as he usually was, now that he wasn’t about to wink out of existence. “And angry. This isn’t the way the world is supposed to be. Things are…out of balance.”