by Tom Deitz
“Yeah,” Calvin sighed, as he fell back into Sandy’s arms. It was a moment before he realized that the pattering against the aluminum shell was no longer beaks, but rain.
“Saved by the rain,” Brock giggled nervously.
“Or damned,” Okacha countered. And fell silent.
Chapter XXI: On the Fly
“How’d you find us?”
Calvin had to yell to make himself heard above the thump of windshield wipers set on HI, the rumble of tires across a road surface somewhere between dirt and gravel, and the low thunder of exhausts that was a counterpoint to the real thing tormenting the sky. At least there were more no birds, the rain having driven them to earth—as it was on the verge of doing to Liz’s pickup if conditions didn’t improve pronto. What had begun as a summer evening thunder-boomer was now on the ragged edge of hail.
Intent on seeing more than a dozen yards beyond the Ranger’s hood, David didn’t turn. “What?” he called back. “I can’t half hear you.”
Calvin stuck his head inside the cab, narrowly avoiding braining Alec, who had turned just then. “I said, ‘How’d you find us?’ How’d you just happen to show up right in the nick of time?”
“Ask Alec,” David gritted. “It’s takin’ all I’ve got to stay on my side!”
Calvin rotated his head forty-five degrees to the right. “Okay, Mach-One, spill it!”
Alec puffed his cheeks in a sour grimace. “I…used the ulunsuti.”
Calvin gaped incredulously, then his lips quirked into a tired grin. “Way to go, man! We’ll make a wizard outta you yet!”
“No way!” Alec shot back, wide-eyed. “David made me do it—not that I wasn’t concerned about you guys, or anything. It’s just— Well, you know how much I hate using that thing.”
“Which is why I appreciate it,” Calvin replied honestly. “So what’s the scoop? You still haven’t said when or where.”
“When was every six hours after you guys left,” David broke in, having relaxed a tad. The rain had slackened minutely—enough to show that they were approaching the open place among the overhanging trees that marked the intersection with Lebanon Church Road—which was, at least theoretically, paved. “Or sunset, sunrise, noon, and midnight, to be more accurate,” he continued. “And sometimes it was Alec, sometimes Alec and me or Liz. Today it’s been all three ’cause we could kinda feel things coming to a head.”
“Mostly mine,” Alec grumbled. “It hurts like a son-of-a-bitch, let me tell you—which is one reason I don’t like to use that thing. I much prefer hangovers.”
“It saved our asses, though,” Calvin assured him. “I gather you checked in at sunset and just happened to spot us?”
“You got it,” Liz nodded from the passenger seat. “We saw you pop in, and as soon as you said Jackson County, we hit the ground running. We saw some interesting things, too, all along. You’ll have to tell us sometime.”
“Preferably not in a thunderstorm with a wizard on our butts,” David added.
“Witch,” Calvin corrected. “There’s a difference, at least the way my folk use it.”
A scrambling behind him was Okacha crawling forward. Calvin withdrew his head from the cab to check on her. Her face was grim. “Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news,” she announced. “The good news is that Snakeeyes seems to have gone to ground back there—probably until the rain lets up, since he can’t fly in it nor shift shape while his feather cloak’s wet.”
“How do you know?” Sandy wondered.
“’Cause when he’s usin’ his power I can feel it drawin’ on me, and he’s not doin’ that now.”
Sandy scowled. “Why couldn’t you sense it before the attack, then?”
Okacha frowned in turn. “I did—but I really wasn’t looking for him here, so I thought it was just me being tired from travel, and world-hoppin’, and all. By the time I decided it wasn’t, it was too late.”
“Okay,” Calvin inserted to fend of a confrontation he could sense building. “So what’s the bad news?”
Okacha looked as serious as Calvin had ever seen her. “Your friend said he used an ulunsuti to check on you, right?”
Calvin nodded carefully. “Yeah, why?”
“Where is it now?”
Alec stuck his head through the window. “I’ve got it with me. It’s in my backpack.”
Okacha’s face was a mask of despair. “Christ!”
“I didn’t exactly have time to stash it!” Alec protested hotly.
“No…of course you didn’t,” Okacha replied more calmly. “It’s just that… Well, basically that means that all four things that bastard wants are here in one place.”
Calvin felt his heart skip a beat. Okacha’s eyes were huge. Sandy’s hand found its way into Calvin’s and squeezed.
Alec merely looked confused. “What d’you mean?”
Calvin told him. David and Liz listened in as best they could. In the back of the bed, Don simply stared. “Uh, who is this Snakeeyes guy?” he asked softly.
Calvin explained that, too.
“Shit!” David swore under his breath, when Calvin had finished.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” Okacha asked, her voice rising to counter the pounding of the rain on the roof, which had increased in intensity.
“I’ll let you tell me,” Calvin replied. “But I doubt I’ll like it.”
“It means,” Okacha said wearily, “that as soon as this storm ends where he is, Snakeeyes is gonna be after us with all he’s got—and I may not be able to resist him.”
“Shit!” From Calvin and Sandy together.
“As in deep-type, one each,” Brock added from the corner he had wedged himself into.
Okacha nodded. “Which means I’ve gotta get as far away as I can as fast as I can—preferably before the rain lets off.”
“We’d better hope it continues, then.” David sighed. He was slowing for a stop sign now. The turn signal was flashing right.
“Yes and no,” Okacha murmured wearily.
“Why?” Liz asked, crowding in beside Alec at the cab window.
Okacha sighed in turn. “’Cause on the one hand, it keeps Snakeeyes off balance, though I’m sure he knows the formula for turning storms—assuming he chooses to use it since it takes energy he may not want to spend. But it also—”
“Oh, gosh,” Brock interrupted, scooting up to join them, “it also turns you into a panther!”
“In which form it’s easier for Snakeeyes to draw on me, ’cause I have to use more of my will power to remember that I’m human.”
Calvin gnawed a finger. “It works that way for you, too? But I thought—”
“I should’ve said ‘the good things about being human.’ The intellect stays in full force, but I become more like Snakeeyes: more a creature of will and instinct. It’s like I have human wants and needs, but cat reflexes. I get mad easier, things like that.”
“And you don’t want to piss off a cat,” Sandy chuckled grimly. “Even a small one.”
David grimaced as he made the turn onto Ga. 129—and got a windshield full of tractor-trailer spray for his trouble. The Ranger hydroplaned on runoff. And the rain came harder, pounding so fiercely conversation ceased. David kept going, but at a crawl.
“We’ve gotta call Don’s mom,” Sandy reminded them eventually.
“Soon as we get to town,” Calvin agreed, then checked the windshield again. It was a good thing David had Second Sight, ’cause he doubted he could see anything with his regular vision. The world, as best he could tell through slapping wipers, was silver-white.
And then, very suddenly, it wasn’t.
The rain ended, as though cut off with a knife, maybe half a mile south of where they’d last turned. The pavement ahead was still wet, still sheened with standing puddles, and the sky was lavender-gray with patches of scudding crimson-edged clouds.
“I hoped it’d do that,” David breathed, as he began to pick up speed again. “It usually rai
ns hardest at the edge of a front, and I saw this one on radar earlier today.”
“You mean it’s not magic?” Brock cried. “But it came along so convenient-like, I just figured—”
“Not unless the gods planned well in advance,” Alec inserted. “This time of year you can usually count on a boomer late in the day.”
David slowed for a dawdling car he didn’t dare pass because of a hill. “So what’s the agenda now?” he asked. “You guys wanta go back to the dorm, or where? I mean, it’ll be tight, but we can hang out there until we get our act together. Or we’ve got some friends who’ve got houses.”
Calvin surveyed the company huddled in the pickup bed. “Let me check with the crew and get back with you, okay? We’ve still got a couple minutes, don’t we?”
“Food!” Don called abruptly. “Can we please stop for food?”
“Good point,” Calvin acknowledged. “I could sure wrap myself around a burger or three. But in the meantime… Well basically, what are our options—’Kacha-wise, I mean? I mean, assumin’ we all agree that gettin’ her somewhere Snakeeyes can’t draw on her oughta be our number one priority.”
Sandy stared at him solemnly. “Sounds like you’ve resigned yourself to fighting him.”
Calvin could only shrug. “I don’t see how I can avoid it now. Even if we got ’Kacha gone somewhere he can’t draw on her, he still wants my scale and the club and the ulunsuti. Shoot, with her gone, he’ll probably want ’em more than ever, to make up for what he’s lost.”
“Which still doesn’t tell us what to do about ’Kacha,” Sandy observed tersely.
Calvin turned toward the panther-woman. “Okay, so where can we hide you that Snakeeyes can’t get at you?”
“She knows how to get to the Darkening Land,” Brock piped up before Okacha could reply. “And she knows how to get there by herself—so why not that?”
Okacha took a deep breath. “First of all, I only knew how to get there ’cause my mother told me, and her mother before, and she only knew because her ancestor who was a wikatcha told her how. But I guess I’ve found out that it’s not a place living people are supposed to go—as you well know. Oh, I suppose I could hang out on the fringe for a while—on that beach where we first made landfall, maybe. But you saw that: would you wanta spend any time there? Plus, I don’t know how long they’d let me stay.”
“Not long,” Don supplied in a low voice. He still hadn’t moved from his corner. “I think they let me in ’cause I was with Mike an’ he kinda vouched for me an’ said I was tryin’ to help him, an’ then I was asleep. But you saw the old woman: she found you guys an’ threw you out. From a few things I heard, she does that other places, too. I bet they wouldn’t let you anywhere near Usunhiyi, never mind Tsusginai. And—”
“—And if they caught you too soon and tossed you out before Cal can deal with Snakeeyes, he’d be in deep shit,” Brock broke in.
“Which sounds like that’s out,” Calvin concluded, looking back at Okacha. “Which is too bad, ’cause you can get there on your own.”
“It’s a shame we can’t access Faerie,” Liz called from the cab. “Trouble is, the border seems to be closed again, since we haven’t seen hide nor hair of any of the folk from there in over a year. And of course the only way to get there’s via the Tracks—and we don’t know how to activate them.”
“We’ll file that for reference, though,” Calvin replied, noting absently that they’d now reached the fringe of civilization—if more than one convenience store visible at a time was civilization. Up ahead and to the left a set of silos loomed like a concrete castle.
“So what does that leave?” Sandy wondered.
“It leaves,” David volunteered from the cab, “one of the island Worlds like that one Cal and me rescued Finno from, or like that one our friend Myra Buchanan talks about that overlaps out at Scarboro Faire.”
“Or Galunlati,” Alec finished for him. “Which we should’ve thought of first.”
Calvin nodded. “That’s a possibility. On the other hand, it’s obvious—maybe too obvious.” He looked at Okacha. “Is there any way Snakeeyes could get to you in Galunlati?”
She gnawed her lip. Then: “I don’t know of one, but I do know he’s real interested in that kind of thing—which may be one reason he wants Cal’s scale—or the ulunsuti. But I suspect that if he keeps on like he is, he’ll get there anyway.”
“He’ll get more than he bargained for, too,” Alec snorted.
“But it’s too much of a risk—both for Galunlati, if he gets there, and for everybody else if he gets back.”
“Which means it’s best not to give him any more reasons for going there than he’s already got,” Sandy observed dully.
“There’s another problem too, folks,” Calvin reminded them. “In case you guys don’t remember, we were forbidden to return there until a year’s elapsed—and that won’t be up for a couple of days yet. And if we do send ’Kacha there, one of us probably oughta go with her to make introductions, and all. Or at least we oughta check with Uki before we start sendin’ folks there.”
Sandy nodded sagely. “Yeah, from what I’ve seen of him, it wouldn’t do to dump unexpected visitors on him, plus, we don’t want to bring trouble to someone who’s not involved.”
“On the other hand,” Alec broke in, “it’s a big place—which means Uki might not find her for a while. And if she’s only looking for a place to hang out temporarily…”
“Yeah, but then Usunhiyi would do just as well,” Brock countered.
“Except that we could send her there a lot faster,” Calvin told him. “All we’ve gotta do is light a fire and burn an uktena scale—which can be done in a car if we have to. I mean, Dave and me zapped there from one once.”
“And got lost, too,” David muttered. “Don’t remind me.”
“Yeah, but it still sounds like our best bet.” Calvin sighed. “What d’ you think, ’Kacha?”
The panther-woman frowned thoughtfully. “Well, given that I can’t stay here, and would probably get thrown out of Usunhiyi before I would Galunlati, I’d have to agree—much as I hate to admit it.”
Calvin nodded grimly. “You guys do have scales, don’t you?” he asked those in the cab. “I’d volunteer mine, but they have to be treated if you’re gonna use ’em to world-hop, and mine hasn’t been; it’s only good for shapeshifting—and I’m not sure how many of them it’s got left.”
David pounded the steering wheel. “Doesn’t matter anyway,” he groaned. “We don’t have any.”
Calvin rolled his eyes and slapped the fiberglass bed-liner. “Well that’s just dandy!”
“Sorry!” From Alec.
“Hey, but wait!” Calvin cried suddenly. “You guys don’t have scales—but we could still open a gate. Remember how we used the ulunsuti to open one back at Stone Mountain? To that place they had Finno? And then again down at Cumberland?”
“And we’ve got the ulunsuti!” Liz added excitedly.
“Yeah,” David grunted as he brought the car to a halt at the first traffic light, still a mile north of Athens, where Jefferson River Road turned off to the left. “But you need the blood of a large animal to prime it.”
“True,” Calvin admitted. “And that’s gonna be hard to get in a hurry—unless we use our own, which I’d rather not do. Trouble is, it’s not huntin’ season, or anything.”
Okacha looked thoughtful. “Does it have to be one large animal?”
Calvin shrugged. “I dunno. That’s how I learned it. At the very least it has to be warm, and there has to be enough of it to soak the ulunsuti when you put it in a bowl.”
“Hmmm,” Okacha mused, glancing toward the back of the truck, where a clump of dark-feathered bodies still lay. “Well, those guys are probably still warm—and I bet there’s at least a couple of cups of blood in ’em.”
“We could stop at a grocery store and buy some,” Brock suggested, with a touch of sarcasm.
Sandy shook her head. “M
ost carcasses are drained before they’re shipped for butchering, even when it’s finished in-house. Plus, it’d be cold too. Plus ’Kacha couldn’t go out in the rain—which it’s doing again, if you count drizzle. Which means we’d have to split up, which I don’t think is a good idea.”
“Which blows that,” David groaned. “At least in the kind of hurry we’re in.”
“And it still leaves the small problem of when and where to do this ritual,” Okacha noted. “Now that the rain’s slackened, Snakeeyes’ll be after us pronto.”
“I doubt he’d confront us openly on campus, though,” David countered.
“Except that I can’t be open on campus,” Okacha shot back, “not while there’s this much wetness.”
“Good point,” Sandy acknowledged. “But, uh, what exactly do you need, anyway?”
Calvin counted on his fingers. “You need the ulunsuti, which we’ve got. You need a bowl to put it in, and blood to fill it. You need at least a small fire. You need a bunch of herbs, some of which I’ve got, some of which—”
“What herbs?” David called. “I’ve seen it done, but I’ve forgotten.”
Calvin told him.
David scowled thoughtfully. “And that’s all? You’re sure?”
Calvin nodded. “I’ve got the rest—I think.”
“Good.” David grinned as he gunned the Ranger across the bypass and onto Prince Avenue, “’cause I may know just the place. But we’ll have to hurry.”
“We already are,” Brock observed dryly. “Or haven’t you noticed?”
“Hush,” Calvin told him. “Don’t forget that you’re a large animal, too!”
Chapter XXII: Lab Test
“Hey, that’s Ilex vomitoria!” Calvin cried, as David braked Liz’s pickup to a halt in the parking lot behind one of the older brick buildings on the University of Georgia’s north campus—Baldwin Hall, it was called: seat of the anthropology department. He’d been there once before, on his previous visit. Fortunately, only two cars were in evidence at the moment: a newish red Isuzu pickup and a pristine black ’61 DeSoto—the last year. He hoped this wasn’t his last year.