by Hunt, S. A.
No signal. Shit.
He pushed it into his pocket and closed the door, his head tilting back in exhaustion. The Frontier slowly maneuvered into a series of barrel rolls and he sat up straight again, saliva pooling in his mouth.
The smoke roiling out from under the hood had stopped. Might as well give it a try while I’m in here.
He took the ignition in one bear-paw hand and twisted it. The engine gave a sick grunt and chugged a few times, but refused to turn over. He tried it again. Still nothing. He sat back and rested. Thought about puking again, but he didn’t have anything left. He rolled down the window and spat, and in the side mirror he caught a glimpse of a vehicle coming down the road. Ashe squished himself down, his knees pressed against the dash, his balls at six o’clock on the steering wheel.
The driver drew even with the Frontier and slowed, rubbernecking at the crash. Whoever it was honked the horn, two quick Morse-code toots, and then put it in park and let the engine idle.
Ashe thought about getting out, asking for help, but something about it seemed wrong—why would they simply honk their horn and sit there instead of getting out to go look for survivors? His forehead throbbed and his skull felt like it’d been cracked down the middle like a walnut. Drowsiness crept in around the edges and he clenched his fists, trying to will himself awake. Come on, man, keep it together.
The slam of a car door. Someone walked around to the Frontier. Ashe kept his eyes closed, held his breath, and pretended to be dead, which was easy, as he already had the disguise down, with the gash running along the part in his bloody hair.
“Nice shootin, Tex,” said a hoarse voice right next to the open window. The man coughed and got back into his vehicle, pulling away.
Ashe peered over the windowsill, catching a glimpse of a red pickup and what appeared to be an airbrush painting of a Valkyrie with big boobs, catching a giant snake by the tail. He watched through the arch of the steering wheel as the pickup dwindled down the lonely highway.
Grrrrowl, chugga-chugga-chug. He tried the key again. Grrrrowl, chugga-chugga-chug. He coughed, spat blood out the window, and turned up the radio. Lynyrd Skynyrd told him to be a simple kind of man.
29
FOR A CHILD TO whom every experience under the sun is new, time is a long and stately thing, passing with a gargantuan battleship slowness. An hour in a doctor’s waiting room, restlessly leafing through magazines and studying the walls, becomes a hobby in itself. Every school day is a lifetime.
Wayne thought the walk up the Lazenbury’s chalky dirt driveway felt like a death march, like a convict’s trip to the gallows. He carried a bottle of steak sauce in one hand and a bottle of Ranch dressing in the other. The iron sky roiled slowly like a dying snake, threatening rain. Thunder mumbled to itself somewhere in the east, disconsolate, testy, as if the storm had gotten lost on the way.
Robin walked alongside him, staring up at the sky. “I should’ve brought umbrellas.”
The bottles felt like offerings. Something about the way his sneakers scuffed across the packed dirt made Wayne think of a western, of outlaws and high-noon duels. “Be on your best behavior,” said his father. Leon carried the steaks in a glass casserole dish.
When am I not? Wayne wanted to ask, feeling vaguely offended. What he said was, “Are they going to turn us into frogs?”
“No.” Robin had turned the GoPro back on, but instead of wearing it herself, she’d made Wayne the designated cameraman, and he wore it on his chest with the nylon harness. The camera’s red eye burned like a cigarette cherry in the darkening daylight. “Witches don’t do that,” she said, “it’s a fairytale. Love potions, flying on brooms, talking mirrors, that’s all Disney stuff.” Her lips twitched as if she were about to say more, but she didn’t. He wondered what it was.
The hacienda seemed to grow as they approached it, beyond the aspects of perspective, as if it were swelling, lengthening, rising, and suddenly he realized how very tall it was, and how much of the property was bound by the adobe privacy wall. The facade towered over them at three stories (when had it become three? he thought), and then another six or seven feet for the bell’s arch.
Gothic wrought-iron spikes rimmed the top of the wall, and weeping willows on the other side of the wall obscured most of the front porch. “It looks so out of place this far north, doesn’t it?” asked Leon. “Like a Mexican fort. Bigger than I thought it was. It’s less of a house and more of…of a compound, I guess you could say.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence. As they approached the house, Wayne spotted an expensive gas grill standing out on the patio, and flames licked inside, visible through a gap in the lid.
A heavy-set woman stepped outside to greet them. “Well, hello there!” Her olive skin contrasted richly against the starch-white of her festive peasant dress, which was trimmed in a sort of lace and edged in red and blue. Gold jewelry lay across her dark cleavage. “My name is Theresa,” she said in a Louisiana drawl. “Theresa LaQuices. And you must be Mr. Parkin.” Mistah Paaaahkin. “It’s so nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” said Leon. “This is my son, Wayne.”
Theresa pressed a hand to her pendulous bosom, flashing a fistful of gaudy rings. “Oh, I know who this little gentleman is. Why, I’m the one that carried him from the fairgrounds out to the road where the ambulance could get to him. We are already well-acquainted, even though he don’t rightly know it.”
That’s the one…? Wayne couldn’t imagine being carried by this country-fried behemoth, but he could very easily see the strength in her thick arms. She looks like a Mexican Paula Deen. Her fists were small and clubby like dolls’ hands, but her forearms were dark hamhocks, her shoulders sloping like mountainsides. She seemed implacable and constant, a fixture in the earth.
Gesturing toward Robin with the steak dish, Leon began, “And this is my new friend—”
“Oh, I’m well aware of who this young lady is.” Well awaya, she was. “I didn’t expect to see you here, I’ll admit. Little Miss Martine. I ain’t seen you in a dog’s age. You ain’t here to start no shenanigans today, is you?” Theresa put her fists on her considerable hips and peered from under her thick black Esmerelda eyebrows. “It won’t come to nothin, mind you, but all the same I’d really rather not have to put up with it. This ain’t nothin but a friendly Sunday dinner between neighbors.”
Robin shook her head. “No. I’m just here to eat and talk to Marilyn. I feel like we’ve got too much history for me to bust in guns blazing.”
“A dinner truce, eh?” The old woman squinted, assessing her, then turned and trundled across the driveway toward the house. “Be sure you keep it that way. I been puttin together a mighty nice repast, and I’d hate to see it ruined by a jackass.”
Jack-ayass. Leon wheezed Muttley-like laughter.
Wayne marveled at how easily the old woman seemed to walk across the jagged gravel as if it wasn’t even there. Theresa had on a pair of slippers like nothing more than dainty satin bags on her feet, and the stones she trod on seemed no more consequential than cotton batting. Tough tootsies, his Aunt Marcy would have said. Sorry, kiddo, she said in her Chicago accent, No ice cream without dinnah. Tough tootsies.
Crowding into the kitchen, Wayne was overcome by extravagance. Every surface, stone or steel, was polished to a high gleam. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think he’d stepped into a showroom at a home improvement store.
His dad whistled, leaving the casserole dish on the counter. “Nice place you got here.”
“Thank you much,” said Theresa. She cracked the oven door open to check on something and closed it up again. She headed back outside to the grill with the steaks and opened it. Gray charcoal glowed subtly in the evening light. “Marilyn’s in the garden if you want to visit while I knock the hooves off this beef.”
Robin hesitated, taking Leon and Wayne aside. “You two drew your algiz like I told you to do, right?”
“Yep.”
“Yeah,�
� said Leon.
Theresa snorted, smirking as she laid the steaks over the coals with her bare hands. Do what thou wilt, she seemed to be thinking, for all the good it’s gonna do ya.
The patio occupied the top of the driveway, a large area about the size of a basketball court that separated the back of the house from the two-car garage. The garage was a big adobe knot in the side of an adobe privacy wall like the one that ran around the front garden, but this one ran clear out to one side all the way to the treeline some eighty or ninety yards out. A tall wooden gate allowed them into the back garden. Inside the wall, they were greeted by rows and rows of trellis fences crawling with sickly ivy.
Grapes withered in clusters. “A vineyard,” said Leon. “Man, I could go for some wine.”
Marilyn Cutty and Karen Weaver sat at a table to the east, a large one with a white linen tablecloth thrown over it. Marilyn slouched down in a chair with one elbow on the table, nursing a glass of what looked like iced tea and staring out into the pinewoods.
As they came shushing across the close-cropped grass, Weaver stood. “Hi there!” Then she noticed Robin. “Oooooh, it’s you. I told you to vamoose.”
“I’m hard to vamoose.”
Wild-haired Weaver had on a rather witchy petticoat that looked as if it were made out of a hundred silk scarves of as many dark colors, all tied together. It might have been ragged were it not so artfully arranged. She pushed up her sleeves. “Was the illusion not enough? I can conjure up some real flies, you know.”
“Excuse me?” said Leon.
“I assume our self-proclaimed witch-hunter here has taken it upon herself to unload all her knowledge on you, including her ghastly internet videos.”
“A man once said in one of my favorite books, ‘First comes smiles, then come lies, then comes gunfire,’” said Robin. She put up her hands to demonstrate that they were empty. “For the sake of transparency and trust, I think it behooves all of us to skip the polite make-believe. I’m not here to fight. Just to talk.”
“A palaver, eh? The hunter comes to parley?” Cutty folded her arms. “Yes. Well, the truth will out, I’ve always heard, so there’s no reason to tell lies when we can keep it at smiles, and I think we could all do without the gunfire.”
“I’ve been told what you are, yes,” said Leon. “I’m still not sure I believe it one hundred percent, but I am informed. And after what happened Friday night and yesterday morning, I’m also not convinced that violence is necessary, so consider me the dove of peace in this here scenario, yeah? I really appreciate what Miss Weaver here did for us, and I’d like to avoid bloodshed.”
Her hands still raised like Madam Mim, Weaver looked back and forth between them. “Truce, then?”
“Truce,” said Cutty.
“Truce,” said Robin. “For today.”
“For today.”
The witch in the ragged petticoat lowered her hands dejectedly. Wayne remembered to breathe.
“I guess I knew you were going to come eventually.” Weaver sighed, shaking down her sleeves. The bracelets and beads around her wrists rattled. “I’d hoped you’d ha’been smart enough not to.” The three of them took a seat at the table, and Weaver sat back down with what was probably a mojito, judging by the lime wedge.
Thunder mumbled again to the east. The evening was darker than it ought to be for six o’clock, although a hard blue luminescence lingered on the western horizon. Humid air made soft halos around the candle-flames, like lamps in London fog.
“I’m surprised you guys want to eat outside,” Leon said, studying the sky. “Looks like rain.”
“Nah,” said Weaver.
“How do you know?” He fidgeted, a coy smile on his lips that betrayed the anxious look in his eye. “Did you see it in the knuckle bones, or tea leaves, or something?”
“Nope. The Channel Six Action News five-day forecast.”
She smiled.
30
AFTER A COUPLE HOURS of running on pine needles and rocks, Joel’s feet felt like hamburger, but he had nothing on Fisher. His brother’s shoulder looked like someone had taken a bite out of it, and blood ran down his elbow. His face had gone from a dark brown to a sort of charcoal-purple, and his lips were almost lipstick violet.
The stitched-up bullet gash in Joel’s thigh hurt like hell—the Tylenol had definitely worn off by now—so he could only imagine how Fish was faring. He’d never been in so much pain in his life.
They emerged from the woods into a huge gravel clearing furrowed with dry ruts. To the far right was a small collection of unfinished buildings, all naked studs and skeleton roofs. Building supplies lay rotting in the elements. A low stone bluff lay on the other side of the gravel, topped with a crown of longleaf pine, and a cave some twenty feet tall led into the depths of the bluff.
At first, he wanted to hide in the unfinished building, but he realized it would only be a matter of time before Euchiss found them there. “Come on,” he urged Fish, mincing across the gravel. “We’ll hide in the cave.”
The cave floor was smooth dirt, burning his feet with cold, but it was much better than pine needles and gravel. Anemic white sunlight filtered in through a dozen holes in the wall, revealing enormous rooms with flat, cracked ceilings. Graffiti spraypainted on the jagged stone declared long-dead relationships and cryptic utterances. BRAVERY IS NOT THE ABSENCE OF FEAR. ED BRIGHAM WAS HERE (AND SO WAS ARDY) 1976. FRODO LIVES!
“I dunno,” said Fish.
Thunder broke outside, and a bullet whip-cracked against the lip of the cave, flicking chips of rock at him. Fish ducked and ran for the cover of the mine.
The main shaft drove straight into the heart of the mountain, side-tunnels branching off at constant intervals into side rooms. The air was thick and close, wet, musty. Moisture speckled Joel’s face. It didn’t take long to lose nearly all light, stranding them in a void of darkness traced only by the distant star of the cave opening behind them. He could cover it with one hand.
Euchiss stepped into the void’s only sun, a tiny silhouette. He slipped a flashlight out of his patrol belt and turned it on, shadows capering at his feet. “I know you’re in here,” he called, his voice a flat, raspy echo. “There ain’t no other end to this mine. You’re trapped; might as well save us all a headache and give up now.”
Go to Hell. Joel stepped out of the faint light into a side room and into abject and total darkness. Fish followed, clutching his shoulder.
“You go to the other side,” Fish whispered.
“Why?”
“You get a rock or something. Hide in the dark. I’m gonna come out with my hands up and distract him. You come up behind him, hit him with the rock.”
“That sounds like crap. That’s a crap plan. He’s going to shoot you.”
“Do you have a better one?”
He didn’t. Joel crossed the river of light again and into the dark, shuffling around, his hands fluttering across the floor. No rocks, but there was a metal bucket with a rope attached to the handle, a heavy coal bucket with a thick bottom. The rope was spongy and wet, but intact. He carried the bucket to the edge of the shadow and held it aloft like a flail. As he waited for the cop to get close, something occurred to him. What if Euchiss happened to point the flashlight this way before he could spot Fish? What if he shot Fish on sight?
His lungs itched. He needed to cough; every breath he took seemed more and more congested until he was shuddering. What’s wrong with the air in here? It’s like suckin in sawdust.
The flashlight came closer, the floor swimming with blue-white light, throwing stones and ripples into sharp relief. Euchiss’s Oxfords scuffed across the hard-packed dirt. Come on, come on. Joel extended his arm back, bracing for action, getting ready to swing the bucket at the cop’s face. Euchiss came around the corner into view, his Maglite a cone of hard white. He’d slung the rifle over his shoulder by a strap and drawn his own service Glock.
No! The flashlight was wobbling in Joel’s direction! The circle
of light swept back and forth, and brushed his toes.
“Hey,” said Euchiss almost casually, and flashed him in the eyes. Joel flexed, started to step forward, but Fisher coughed. The beam of light swung in the other direction and revealed Fish standing in front of a long wooden table, his hands up, squinting. “There you—” Euchiss began to say, the pistol in his hand following the flashlight.
Joel lunged blind, swinging from the side with a right cross. The bucket cut an arc through the air and missed completely.
Euchiss flinched and snorted laughter, but Joel followed through, swinging the bucket around his head, and hit him on the second go-round. The bucket whipped the redheaded killer square in the face, burying him in a cloud of black soot.
The Glock flashed, BANG!, and the flashlight’s beam danced across the ceiling. The bucket hit the floor and left Joel holding a rotten rope.
“Run!” shouted Fish.
He considered grabbing the light, but the pistol made him think twice. He ran after his brother’s fading footsteps and they fled headlong into the silk shadows of the cave.
31
DINNER WAS AMAZING. KENWAY’S trick with dry-aging the steaks had worked perfectly, and to her chagrin, Robin found the witches’ side dishes more than adequate: potato salad with tender little chunks of boiled egg, dusted with paprika; garlic-buttered corn on the cob; bundles of asparagus spears, each wrapped in a piece of bacon and fried; French bread smeared with bruschetta; and to cut the savory, sweet-potato casserole topped with toasted marshmallows and crushed pecans.
They ate at the table in the garden, the lowering dusk kept at bay by citronella tiki-torches that smelled like grapefruit. It occurred to Robin that Kenway probably couldn’t see them inside the garden because of the wall.
That felt like bad news, even though she was probably more capable of defending herself against the coven than he was. I wonder if he’s even observing. When I decided to go to dinner I didn’t fill him in on an alternate plan. She couldn’t communicate with the earpieces like she’d planned. Hers was still in her pocket. No doubt Heinrich is out there, though. Probably in a tree with a directional microphone, knowing him. Her eyes scanned the dark forest, raking the pines for a glowing cigar-tip.