He leaned in and bit down, pulling back. I struggled, my screams filling the echo cavern of my head. They were going to hold me here the whole time while he did it. I wondered how much of me he would leave on my carcass. My stomach heaved.
I tried to shake him off my leg. It hurt so much. Tears streamed out of my eyes and I was drooling and sweating. I couldn’t get free. I rolled my eyes to one side, saw my hand held motionless out beside me, clutched in the grasp of a bogey but not close enough to reach into its body.
Dimly, I remembered I didn’t have to.
Moving some of my life force into the bogey felt like trying to throw a bowling ball. I smelled ozone as the creature was unmade. My arm, suddenly unfettered, snapped wildly into the air. I reached into my pocket for one of the gravestones. Another bowling ball thrown, and my other arm was free. I wrenched myself forward toward the feral possessed boy.
With every ounce of my waning strength, I hit him in the head with the gravestone.
It surprised him enough to knock him back a few inches. The remaining bogeys rushed to try to restrain me, but I wriggled and thrashed and hit the boy again, knocking him into the dirt. My leg flared in agony as I pulled myself to my knees. I grappled a bogey and thrust my hand into it, grasping for the stone within it and pulling it out.
I hesitated. The skinny figure on the ground was so young. But he lunged at me, barely missing as I threw myself to one side. He leaped up again, and then fell back, clawing at his face as it was hit with a stream of water.
Cherry’s face appeared over me. I think she was saying my name. She held out a hand to help pull me up, and turned to shoot more water at another bogey.
I got my feet under me and pushed myself upright. “This way!” I half-ran in a limping, loping sort of way as the demon kid came after me and Cherry trailed us both.
The wooden fence seemed so far away, like I’d never get close. I could feel them all snapping at my heels, reaching for me and for Cherry. They would swarm us if we slowed. But Cherry caught up to me and grabbed my shirt and pulled me behind her, shoving her pistol into my hands. I shot another stream at the demon boy as she braced her feet in a wide stance, closed her eyes, and made wide gestures with her hands. She looked like she was shouting something.
The bogeys and possessed people who chased us slammed to a stop, crashing into each other. The bogeys’ forms steamed. Cherry turned and pushed me toward the showers again.
And then we were there, the gap in the fence looming before us, and I pulled the boy by his too-big shirt after me into the shower. I shoved him hard down onto the concrete floor and threw myself against the wall, reaching for both faucets and turning them on.
I saw it leave the boy. I saw him open his eyes and look around in confusion, touching the blood on his mouth, before he collapsed. Cherry looked outside the fence and beckoned me, frantic. I wanted to help the boy, but for now he’d be safe under the water.
Our pursuers had broken through whatever invisible wall Cherry had thrown up, and headed for us again. Enough. I had enough stones, or at least it was going to have to be enough. We had to get to the yurt--and hope Tamar and Dionne had put up defenses there.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I shivered from being soaked as I headed toward the yurt. My legs shook with cold and too much effort and wouldn’t obey. I stumbled, turning my ankle and hitting the ground hard, catching the impact on one hand. Cherry was faster than I was, too far ahead to notice that I’d fallen. I whimpered, the breath knocked out of me, and forced myself to crawl forward. Like an inchworm, gathering myself to try to stand, taking a step, falling to the ground, dragging myself a few more steps, repeating it all.
The hand on my shoulder made me flop onto my back in alarm, tensed to fight with what little I had left. A face emerged out of the silhouette as it drew closer to me, and I recognized Teo. I think I said his name.
He was talking to me. I shook my head, waving one tired hand, and clawed at the congealed goop in my ear. It felt waxy and a little sticky, but I dug enough of it out that I could hear a blur of chaotic noise again. “What?”
“Let me help you.” He slung my arm over his shoulder. I leaned on him as he pulled me up, uttering a choked cry as I stepped on my bitten leg. “Where?”
“Yurt.” I gestured somewhere in the right direction, and we limped off together at a clumsy pace. He smelled of sweat and wood smoke and his solid lean frame was comforting in its realness.
“What is this?” His voice was laced with fear and disbelief.
“It’s...bad.” I would have tried to say more, but just past his shoulder, in the shadows of the tents, I saw something huge and dark move through my peripheral view. I tried to focus on it but couldn’t see anything. Just as I flicked my gaze away, I caught the sense of movement again. Whatever it was, it was keeping pace with us.
“It’s like everyone is crazy,” he said. “The things I saw...”
“I know.”
“Can we get away?”
“No. Dunno,” I said. “Don’t need to. I hope. We’ll get to the yurt. Going to fix it. I hope.”
“Just a little farther.” He shifted his arm to pull me up a little higher and take more of my weight on himself.
Light spilled out of the flap of the yurt, soft and golden on the grass. I wanted to cry with joy. Then I saw that the chair in front of it, the chaise where I’d expect Vivi to be, was empty. I hoped they’d just taken her inside.
But she wasn’t there. Joe and Sara cried out with worry as Teo half-carried me inside, and made him set me down in the same chair I’d occupied--was it just the day before? It felt like years. I pulled stones out of my pockets and filled their hands with them. I thought there were nine of them. I didn’t really care. It was what Dionne had asked for.
“Can you do just a little more?” Dionne straightened up from where she and Tamar were marking something on the floor. “We need all of us to make this happen.”
Before I could answer, Vivi rushed into the yurt and stopped abruptly, almost recoiling. Her head swung around, and she came toward my chair, but her steps faltered and she backed up toward the door in confusion. Tamar put an arm around her shoulders and spoke to her in a low voice. I wondered if they knew where she’d been. I meant to ask them, but I was having trouble holding onto thoughts, and I forgot.
“We gotta move,” Dionne said. “Can we get started?”
I’m not sure if I answered. I stared at the signs they had chalked onto the walls, my eyes struggling to focus, thinking that the blurring and sharpening made it look like the designs were breathing and pulsing. I guess it was close enough to a “yes” for her, though, because she herded us to the circle.
Tamar arranged the gravestones around the circle, with one in the center. Dionne positioned all of us around the circle between the stones, checking us against the symbols they’d drawn. Even Teo was roped into this part. He was wary, but didn’t argue. Dionne found a couple of markers and she and Tamar went around to each of us, putting marks on us in different places.
She drew something just below my collarbone and placed her hand over it. “All you gotta remember is when you feel me connect with you, reach out to Tamar from here and let yourself open up. You’re a conduit, not a source, right? Real important. Hear me?”
It felt like it took a very long time for her words to travel through my brain, but finally I nodded. She threw me a worried glance as she moved on.
“It’s time,” said Tamar.
“Everyone take a big swig of this.” Dionne unscrewed the cap from a bottle. “It’s strong and it’s trippy, but it’s gonna boost our mojo.”
“Are you kidding me? Absolutely not.” Tamar balled her hands on her hips. “No one drink that.”
“Now? You’re still on this now? The fuck you think I’m about?” Dionne chugged from the bottle. “See? Not gonna poison no one.”
“We didn’t talk about this. We gotta keep these kids safe, for gods’ sakes.”
Dionne shot her a look. “Safe like the people out there? You want this to work or not?”
I felt the hairs on my neck stirring and I caught a whiff of smoke and roses. Rosa’s voice was in my ear. “Drink it, girl.”
“Give me that.” I snatched it from Dionne and drank before Tamar could stop me.
“We asked Dionne to come here and help,” said Cherry. “I’m in.” She took a drink as well.
“Let’s get this done.” Joe took the bottle from Cherry.
One by one we all drank, and turned to Tamar. She pressed her lips together, but took the bottle and swigged it.
Aside from the projector light, the space was lit only by the strings of tiny white lights high above us and candles in glass jars spaced on the floor in the circle. Tamar capped the bottle and started the sound recordings, the eerie beautiful noise of sound waves from space played against the music from rings of a slice of tree on an old-school record player. Colors began to bloom on the walls all around us. It was the projection show that went with the sound, but it took me a moment to be sure it was real. Fractal patterns, spirals, kaleidoscopic images that grew and burst and fragmented and transformed. It was like being pulled deep into the heart of the universe and rocked there.
Dionne chanted, a steady stream in a singsong cadence, and Tamar answered her now and then. The lights from the projection only increased my sense that the sigils were moving, breathing. I sank deeper into that soft lovely bliss, the edges of my awareness melting into it. I couldn’t see my friends anymore, not as they were. Strange shapes and patterns formed and drifted in my vision, the walls of the yurt liquid and very far away. I couldn’t tell where my body was. One by one, symbols lit the space my friends occupied, white and crackling like Fourth of July sparklers. That strange plaintive song of trees and space filled my ears, harmonized with the tumbling current of Tamar and Dionne’s chants.
Things were gathering outside the yurt, angry and howling, beating at the canvas, scratching at it, unable to get in. They pressed against the walls made by our circle, shimmering energy bulging in the shapes of horrible faces and clawed hands. The space trembled with the effort of standing against them. I couldn’t stop staring at those distorted places. I heard the wind picking up, the night sky rumbling and growling. If we failed, they would tear the yurt apart to get to us. If we failed, they would swarm in, scores of them attracted here by what we were doing, and they would crush us, devour us. If we failed, there would be nothing else here trying to contain or stop them.
Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Where were my arms, my legs? Why couldn’t I move? The colors and sounds and energy were an undertow and I was drowning. I had no voice to cry out for help. The monsters. They would break through. I wouldn’t be able to stop them. They would carry me away, rip me apart, give me to Murmur, drag me down to his eternal hellish prison. Oh god. Oh god.
Something nudged against my consciousness, gentle and insistent and familiar. Dionne’s strong, reassuring presence filled my mind. It reached out to me. I reached back. The connection was firm as a handclasp. I clung to it. I sensed rather than heard her. You’re safe. I got you. Reach for Tamar. l felt for Tamar, my energy outstretched like another limb, and there was a subtle shift as she answered my wordless call.
As though a photo was developing, my awareness of each of the others deepened, my friends coming one by one into focus. The chain of connection we created closed its loop, and we were together in a way that was soulful, intimate. We were flowing together, my thoughts and memories and emotions tumbling amid theirs and mingling in the current. It was hard to say whose was whose, and yet I knew them all so much better, sharing in the countless things that had shaped them and experiencing the essence of them that was the result. It was painful and sweet, warm and so imperfectly human, and I wanted to live there and soak in it. I felt less alone than I had in years, so held and understood.
At the same time, a rising tide of raw power surged up from below me while shocks of blazing inspiration struck down from above. Be a conduit, Dionne had said. I tried hard to absorb both forces, to be something clear and conductive. I could sense the boundaries of the container formed by the circle, a container that held us all within it and that was steadily filling with vibrant energy. The air around me hummed with it, the deep rich fertility that could push magma or water or young trees up through the earth, and the crackling nuclear fire of celestial forges shaping galaxies; the randomness of infinite possibility shaped by elegant patterning into reality. It was spilling from me, from us, like spigots in a fountain, filling the spaces between us, pushing at the walls of that magical container.
Hands on my face, gentle; Rosa’s eyes meeting mine, crinkling at the corners. I sensed others joining us, majestic beings who moved close to the human who called to them. We were all so loved. A tall and elemental king even knelt before Vivi. Were we ever truly alone in this world?
On and on it poured into us and flowed out, so much, too much, it was unbearable and marvelous and I was screaming or keening, I think, my body jerking and twitching and shaking. The colors around us were like living things, the symbols flying from the walls and circling us in swooping arcs.
And they were coming, all the monsters drawn to this place and furious, they were pushing through the flap and crawling under the canvas and I felt the shudder of too-hasty defenses collapsing here and there as the things broke through. They were throwing themselves against our container, half-material bodies slapping against the thin membrane of power that protected us. They howled and shrilled, horrible torturous noises. I couldn’t see them clearly, their faces just pallid smears through cloudy glass.
I felt, rather than heard, the command.
Now.
Dionne and Tamar leaped to their feet, shouting in unison, their hands trailing phosphorescent brightness as they wove gestures as smooth as katas, as fierce as a knife fight. What I did at that moment was a split second of instinct. I can’t describe what it was, or what my body did, but together we ignited that power that swirled around us and poured off of us. The stones went first--one in the center, then each of the ones around the edge of the circle, hot neon energy glowing through fissures in each rock as it shook and jumped, then a flash of color and pattern as it exploded. For a moment the pressure of the air around me was so intense that I felt like I’d be crushed, and I sensed the walls of our container straining and bowing with it. And then the container blew open, and the power surged outward in all directions with such force that the sudden vacuum left me dizzy and gasping for breath.
I saw that wave hit some of the nearest bogeys, saw them simply disintegrate like burning flash paper, vanishing under that force. It rolled out past the walls of the yurt. I heard the shrieks and howls of the bogeys that failed to outrun it. The jerry-rigged tree trunk record player let off a wailing SKREEEEEE and fell silent as the projected images flickered and stalled and one by one blinked off. The tiny white string lights had already gone out and the force had extinguished the candles, leaving us all there in darkness, sitting or lying on the scattered rugs that covered the floor. Our guardian spirits were gone. Outside I could hear the distant thumping of a heavy bass rhythm and the hiss of high wind through leaves.
I flopped down and put my head on the rug, rolling onto my stomach and stretching my aching limbs. It felt so good. I closed my eyes and savored the sleepiness that surged through me. So tired.
“Come on.” Tamar sounded as spent as I felt. A hand, maybe hers, shook my shoulder and I shrug-swatted it away. “We gotta...got to go walk around. Look to see if anyone’s hurt. Or still has...is still...if they’re possessed.” She dug around to fit words together like puzzle pieces.
I knew she was right. But frustrated tears burned my eyelids and I curled up. I couldn’t take the thought of standing. It was too much.<
br />
“What do we do if they are?” Cherry’s voice was rough, her words a little slurred.
“Get them to the showers.” Dionne exhaled a heavy, weary sigh. “Tamar and I...we’ll deal with it there. More important to look for injuries and get help. Anyone’s freaking out, help them find their camp. Get them some water, something to eat. Hopefully we’re just mopping up now.”
It was darker outside than I’d expected; the stars overhead were blotted out and I couldn’t see the moon. Many of the lights in camp were out. The wind whipped past, carrying a hint of chill. We divided up into pairs and split the camp into smaller areas to search, agreeing that when we’d covered our ground, we’d meet up at the communal showers.
Teo came with me. I wondered what he thought of all this weirdness he’d been pulled into, but if it bothered him, it was losing out to his concern for me. I was still limping, though not as badly, and he gave me his arm to lean on. Together we went to search the main field and pavilion areas.
I was glad he was there. Everywhere we went, I was sure I would see Murmur rise up vast and terrible, and my stomach twisted with fear. He’d be angry. He was out there. He knew it was at least partly my doing. He was going to punish my friends, everyone I loved, because of it. I just had to hope we’d driven him into a temporary retreat, long enough to buy me the time to figure out how to keep fighting him, long enough to let me sleep and recover some strength.
We walked down the dirt road without talking. We passed a couple arguing, the man gesturing angrily and saying emphatic things we couldn’t hear and the woman crying, her voice cracking as she pleaded, “...but I didn’t! I don’t know what you’re talking about!” At a small sound camp, a lone DJ sat behind his table, headphones flanking his head as he stared into his lap. The looping electronic noise trickling out of his speakers reminded me of a skipping record; only two people made a stab at dancing in the grass in front of him, giving each other a wide berth, their shuffling feet and languid waving arms bathed in rotating colors of light. A golf cart buzzed past us, its driver muttering into a radio, a flag with a red cross on it fluttering from the back of the roof like a superhero’s cape.
MetamorphosUS: Book 1 of the Mythfit Witch Mysteries Page 41