“Someone turned him,” he said. “And not long ago, by the looks of things. Maybe as recent as an hour ago, or whenever he went to the window. It looks like they spread it across the trim, here. At his height, he wouldn’t be able to help breathing it in.”
“Likely Richard,” Kane said. “He’s the only one who has the powder. There’s no telling when he put it there.”
“Then that means he’s been watching us,” Anderson said. “This whole time…Jesus.”
“So that’s what does it?” Kane asked, wincing again as the larger part of the cut closed under Tabitha’s ice. He looked down, saw that it wasn’t much more than a bad scratch, and waved her off. “Stop, it’s fine. Save your energy.”
Tabitha nodded reluctantly and stepped away, breaking the spell.
“It’s a powder made of hellish things,” Nick said as he pulled a rag from his pouch and wiped his finger off. He tossed the rag into the fireplace and looked at Anderson. “Make sure you burn that at some point.”
“Do it now, Private,” Anderson said, motioning to Wilson.
“Ma’am,” Wilson said as he dutifully went to the fireplace and pulled a lighter from his pocket.
Nick moved closer to Kane.
“We need to find Wil.”
Kane nodded and stood.
“Okay.” He turned to Tabitha. She glowered at him, pursed her lips defiantly, and crossed her arms in front of her chest.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said.
Kane sighed.
“C’mon, let’s move.”
* * *
Malachi snorted underneath Kane, likely still irritated that his evening grain had been interrupted. Wilson had strapped a feed bag onto him while Benson tacked him up, but Kane couldn’t blame Malachi for wanting to eat in peace.
Tabitha tightened her grip around Kane’s midsection, her body loose as she let her legs dangle on either side of the horse. She’d never ridden before. Her sense of balance was better than his, though, so it hadn’t taken her long to adjust to riding an animal.
They’d left the city a good hour ago, heading toward the shore to an area Anderson called Folly Beach. Nick knew the way, expertly guiding them through the wetlands and into the dense woods, the smell of the marsh growing stronger with each minute, the sun setting as the cicadas began to whir all around them. The sky turned a deep orange. Kane tried to adjust his hearing, listen for Wi, but the cicadas’ song was too overpowering. He needed a single point of focus so he could tune them out.
“So loud,” Tabitha said from behind him. She gave him a squeeze around the midsection with her arms. “It’s soothing.”
“Yeah,” Kane said absently, still glancing around for any sign of the Marsh Witch.
“You’re so grumpy,” Tabitha said. “This is romantic, Kane. Riding on the back of a big horse, the sun setting, just you and me.”
“And a Voodoo Priest,” Kane said over his shoulder as he raised an eyebrow. “And a Mambo with a mean streak. And a horde of zombies that want to kill us.”
Tabitha grinned, scrunched her nose flirtatiously, and shrugged her shoulders.
“See! That’s the spirit!”
Kane looked back to the front, shaking his head.
“This isn’t going to end well.”
“Kane, be positive for once, will you?”
“I’m positive this isn’t going to end well.”
“She’s near,” Nick called from ahead. He brought his brown Quarter Horse to a halt. Kane pulled back slightly on the reins, and Malachi stopped obediently.
The area was dead quiet.
Where were the cicadas? When had they stopped?
Malachi’s ears began to twitch, moving around as if he was trying to find the source of something making noise. Kane opened his hearing. No birds. No insects. Nothing.
Except for a quick, sharp huff followed by Wil’s voice, her tone thick with anger.
“You bring that chicken-fucker to my marsh?”
Tabitha’s grip around Kane’s waist tightened. Her body trembled against his back as the woods around them grew darker, the shadows creeping over the trees, thickening the canopy of branches and leaves above them. Nick turned his horse, looked at Kane.
“Stay on your horse,” he said. “Don’t move.”
The woods went to pitch. Tabitha buried her face in Kane’s back. Malachi stirred, uneasy. Kane gave another gentle tug on the reins, rubbed the horse’s neck to try and calm him. It was all by feel. Kane reached up, his hand in front of his face.
Nothing. It was as if his eyes were closed.
A small campfire started in between Malachi and Nick’s horse. The flames flashed green, billowed slightly before settling down into a warm orange. It looked inviting, cozy. Kane saw Wil sitting calmly. She looked at him smiled sweetly.
Spiders were known to be rather welcoming to prey.
Wil reached over the fire, dropped a fistful of powder into the flames, the light giving her a ghostly appearance. She sat on a log, casual as if she’d been camping there the whole time. She looked up at Kane, her eyes hard with anger as she looked from him to Nick.
“You ain’t welcome in my marshlands, Voodoo-man,” she said, her tone acidic.
Nick gave a tight grin.
“Good to see you too, Wil.”
She grinned evilly at him, reached out with a beckoning finger.
“Come down off that beast and warm yourself by this fire.”
“I’ll stay on, thank you,” Nick said quickly. “Jacks is quite warm enough.”
“The fire looks nice, though,” Tabitha said. She spoke to Wilhelmina. “Do you have marshmallows?”
“Setting foot on the Earth gives her the advantage,” Nick said. “She’s hexed the area around the fire. Our feet touch the soil, we belong to her.”
Tabitha gave Kane a squeeze.
“I’ll just stay up here, then.”
“We’ve got questions,” Kane said. “I’ll start. You told me that shit you made me drink would keep the Wendigo away. It tried to make me eat Tabitha earlier.”
Tabitha giggled behind him. Kane shot her a look over his shoulder, then looked back to Wilhelmina.
The witch turned her wicked grin to Kane.
“I said it would keep the beast away,” she said. “I say nothin’ about it bein’ able to torture you. I can wave off the physical. Torment is a whole ‘nother story. You didn’t do what you think you did, but you damn sure feel it in your mind.” She shifted on her seat, picked up a stick, and stirred the burning wood in the fire a little. “You got a terrible affliction, Kane Shepherd. I try to help, and you return kindness with bringin’ a sonofabitch into my marshland.”
“I see you’re still angry about things,” Nick said. “How is Agatha? Have you seen her?”
Wilhelmina shot to her feet, her face twisted in fury, her eyes wide with hatred as she glared at Nick.
“You don’ get to speak her name! She too good for you, Nicodemus! And it your fault she slave to that bastard, Douglas!”
“I figured you would’ve looked in on her,” Nick said. “Waited until the time was right to free her.”
Wil spat at him. Jacks glanced down as it landed just shy of his hooves.
“You profess love for her,” she said hotly. “You claim to protect her, yet you let a nigger-hatin’ white man take her! You a bastard, you a sonofabitch, and I hate your whore mother for givin’ birth to you and causin’ me the trouble with you in the first place!”
“Shut. The hell. Up!”
Nick and Wilhelmina both looked toward Tabitha. Nick looked surprised for once, and Wil looked as if she might claw someone’s eyes out. It took Kane only a second to realize that Tabitha been the one who had told them to can it.
“Both of you,” she said. “Odin’s beard, no wonder you two can’t keep Charleston protected. You fight like a couple of children!”
Kane glanced back at her.
“Good one.”
She gr
inned.
“Oh, good! I thought it might’ve been too much.”
Kane sighed and looked back at Wil, then to Nick.
“Okay,” he said to the Priest. “You owe us an explanation. Start talking.”
“I was Agatha’s lover,” said Nick. “We were soul-mates. We bed together, walked the marshlands and woods together, and we were building a union of Voodoo and Hoodoo. A union that the remaining Confederates like Douglas could never combat. Not even with his Shadow Wraith.”
“Such a union is hellish and unforgivable,” Wilhelmina said. “Bein’ educated on other paths of magic is one thing. Two practices of the Earth as one is incestuous. Evil. And Douglas? Him bring in that Shadow Wraith to fight us because he know we after him.”
“What do you mean he ‘brought in’ Richard?” Kane asked.
“Him come from the North somewheres. A land up there where they see dark for months, then light for the same, though them days don’t last as long. I hear tell of it, but nevar go ther myself. Hell with that nonsense.”
“Sounds like Alaska,” said Kane. Alaska was a territory of the Northern Union. They hadn’t been a part of the Civil War, but several Native American tribes lived there. Some had taken refugees during Andrew Jackson’s Presidency. His genocidal approach to the natives had almost driven the people to extinction. Those who couldn’t escape lived in hiding, scattered throughout the more Northern states like Montana and Dakota. Those who did found either safe harbor with the Iñupiat tribes, or death from the merciless, frost-drenched frontiers of Alaska.
“I can vouch for Nick, Wil,” Kane said.
“I know him longer,” Wil said, defiant. “Man a horse’s ass.”
“Nick healed Tabitha with his milk,” said Kane. “He tried to give me some. He’s trying to help.”
Wilhelmina gave a harrumph not unlike Antonia Boudreaux.
“And I spelled that boy to bump your arm and make you drop it. I didn’t know what might be in it, knowin’ this piece of shit. For all I knew, him the one doin’ all the zombien’. Jar could’a been full of that powder he do.”
Nick raised an eyebrow at her.
“I have nothing to gain from creating zombies of our allies. I created that powder as a weapon against The Master. Besides, it won’t work on magic users.”
“Would it have gotten rid of the Wendigo?” Kane said quickly before Nick and Wil could launch into another shouting match.
They looked at each other, then back at Kane.
“No,” Nick said. “It would’ve healed any wounds you had, including spiritual.”
“The Wendigo ain’t no spirit,” Wil said. “Him a demon from Hell. Thing live inside and devour. Crave flesh, it do. Cannibalism. You a dead man walkin’, Kane Shepherd, cursed to feed on the living. It’s only a matter of time.”
Kane felt Tabitha’s hand in his, her fingers interlacing and squeezing.
“So what do I do?”
“You got to end the one who curse you,” said Wilhelmina. “That bowl of bile I give you was the first step. It weaken the beast, make him hide. But it don’t last. You got not much longer before he come back strong as ever, and your time up. Be comin’ with a vengeance, too. Gonna be ten time stronger, and a hundred time meaner. Him angry. You not feed, you not let him out.” She leaned forward, smiling as if she were telling a big secret. “But you feed, Kane Shepherd, even now while he weak, and there ain’t no return for you. And it hunger most for that which you love most.”
Kane felt his stomach slump. There was no telling who’d cursed him. He didn’t even know how it’d happened.
“There is another way,” Nick said, moving his horse forward. Wilhelmina looked up at him as if she might spit at him again. “But it won’t be easy.”
“Is anything in this damned place easy?” asked Kane. “Talk.”
“It requires the power of three magic users. Three different practices working together on the same spell.”
“Bullshit,” Wil snapped. “You a damn liar, Nicodemus! Killin’ the one who curse that man is the only way. You know that! You gonna sit up on that mule and fill him fulla hope he don’t need to be havin’!”
“It’s the truth,” Nick shot back at her. “Ask Agatha.”
Wil started to speak and stopped. She closed her mouth, her eyes locked on Nick.
“Start talking,” said Kane. “Tick-tock, Nick.”
“Agatha and I were working on different spells,” said Nick. “Combining our powers, our knowledge. The Wendigo was one of the curses we came across in our studies. Wil is right. Killing the one who cursed you will rid you of the Wendigo. But, it can also be pulled from you. Stripped away. Separated. We tried some similar curses on small animals. It worked with just the two of us, but some of the more advanced ones failed because it wasn’t enough to have just two.”
“Sounds painful,” Tabitha said from behind Kane.
“Hellishly painful,” Nick replied. “And it requires sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice?” said Kane. “What do you mean?”
Wilhelmina stepped forward, her eyes widening in horror.
“I know where you goin’ with this,” she said to Nick. “Stop this. It a terrible sin to that poor man.”
Nick looked at her.
“It has to be done. “It has to be done. I need you to do it. Voodoo. Hoodoo.” He turned and looked at Tabitha. “Magician.”
Tabitha squeezed Kane around the midsection. Kane looked at Nick, the priest’s eyes suddenly on him.
“There’s something you have to do, Kane Shepherd. Something you don’t want to do. But you must understand that there is no other way.”
Kane tensed his grip on Malachi’s reins.
“Nick, what the hell is it?”
Nick looked back at him, his expression grave as he spoke.
“You must give into the Wendigo. Let it take you over. We don’t actually take it out of you. We take you out of it.”
A siren rang out in the night, long and loud. Kane looked back in the direction they’d come from.
Back toward Charleston.
“Something’s wrong,” he said. He looked back at Wilhelmina and Nick.
“The horde,” said Nick. “They’re here.”
Chapter Eighteen
Tabitha gripped Kane tight around his middle, holding on for dear life as Kane drove Malachi faster, the horse’s gallop large and smooth. The trees whipped by, the sound of hooves on Earth thunderous in Kane’s ears. The trees opened up, and Kane squeezed with one leg, pulling the opposite rein to steer Malachi onto the road, the thudding of hooves on dirt replaced with the loud clopping of metal horseshoe on stone.
Kane reached out with his hearing, focused up ahead as Charleston appeared in the distance.
Screaming. Fall back. Don’t shoot them. My husband. That’s my husband.
A gunshot sounded, scattershot from a blunderbuss. More screaming.
Kane brought his hearing back in as Tabitha shouted in his ear.
“Kane, look!”
Kane already saw what she was talking about. A group was attacking the stables. He jerked Malachi to the left, barreled toward the men as they released a horse. Tabitha cried out in horror as one of the men drove a spear into the horse’s neck, the others raising machetes and scythes, butchering the poor animal as it screamed and fell.
The men stopped and looked up. A few went back to the stables for the next horse while the others turned and began to move toward Malachi. Kane brought him to a halt. He saw their faces, the blank expressions and distant eyes.
Zombies.
“Tabitha, blast them,” he said quickly over his shoulder. “Just enough to scatter them. Don’t kill anyone. Go!”
“Draugalega Ferðast!”
Tabitha was gone, the burst of power cold on Kane’s back. She reappeared in front of the group of men and clenched her fist.
“Draugalega Sprengia!” Ghostly Blast!
She brought her fists together in front of her, t
hen whipped her arms out to either side. A pulse blew out from her in every direction, blowing back dirt as it panned out. The blast was small, but it was still enough to send the group of men flying back. One smacked into the stable wall hard enough to crack the boards. Kane swung his leg around and dismounted Malachi in one motion as the men Tabitha had blasted began to get back up.
“Aethereum Ignus!”
His hands glowed. He didn’t take the moment to be thankful that the spell actually worked, hurling a fireball at the nearest zombified man running at him with a machete. Kane spun and plowed his elbow into the face of another coming up behind him. Tabitha had cast her Ghostly Frost, hurling balls of energized ice at the men rushing her. Kane heard a shout, saw Nick riding Jacks hard into the fight as more zombies closed in. The priest pulled a sack out of his saddle bag and hurled it at the ground, the explosion sending three of them flying in the air.
“Nick, keep those coming,” Kane shouted. “Tabitha! Get the horses loose, we’ll cover you!”
Tabitha nodded and made for the stalls, the two horses still living pacing back and forth and snorting in fear, their eyes wide. Kane spun and smacked an approaching zombie in the chest with a fireball, sending the man flying into a group. He swung a right backhanded punch, connected with the cheekbone of another man, and launched another fireball with his left. He’d given that one a bit more juice. The fire hit the ground, blasting dirt and zombies into the air.
Kane glanced to this right, saw Nick dismount Jacks and tackle two to the ground. He relieved one of his pitchfork, broke the head off over his own knee, and wielded the handle like a staff. He swung, caught one in the face, came around with the back end and planted it in the stomach of another.
Nick turned to Kane while the group of fallen began to rise again.
“We can’t keep this up, Kane,” he said. “We need salt water!”
“Why won’t they stay down?!”
“They don’t know pain,” Nick shouted, clocking another in the skull and sending him to the ground. “They know what they’ve been told. Down!”
Gaslit Armageddon (Clockworks of War Book 2) Page 19