by Catie Rhodes
Mohawk glanced around at them, smiling. "You see the power you could have?" He walked toward me. "It’s all right there in that book. Everything you need to do. You’d be a goddess on earth."
"Admit I’ve fulfilled our bargain. Release me." That commanding voice came out of me again. It shook inside me.
Tanner glanced at me with his eyebrows raised, his intense gaze unsure for once.
"Ahh, Gregorius Witch. I cannot release you." Mohawk, or whatever his real name was, had taken on a more formal speech pattern. He had adopted something almost like an accent, but its rhythm was unfamiliar.
My daddy’s words came back to me. Use his power on him. How could I do that? I checked the mantle and found it fully charged. It had enjoyed Loretta Nell’s spirit in a way that scared me. Use his power on him. I drew on what was left of Loretta Nell, easily finding the magic of the book, and let it flow through me. I raised my head to stare at Mohawk.
"I command you to concede I have fulfilled our arrangement." My voice shook the ground.
Mohawk laughed. "I cannot. The book was once Loretta Nell’s to control. Now it is yours. You must either make use of it or give it to someone who will." He cocked his head at me. "This is what I told you from the beginning, if you’ll remember."
But he’d lied about so many things. How was I supposed to predict which ones were true or not true?
He came closer. "Would you like me to advise you on finding a successor?"
"Are you going to try to cheat me?" My hand darted out for Tanner’s, but I pulled it back. I had to do this myself. I was the Gregorius Witch, whatever that meant.
He shook his head and held out one long, skinny hand. "If you wish to be free of me, Gregorius Witch, let me help you."
I tried to climb off the truck. My abused muscles let out a scream. Tanner put his hands under my armpits and lowered me. Mohawk reached for me. I recoiled but then reconsidered. I had control of this situation now. I put my hand in Mohawk’s, the hair on the back of my neck standing up like a dog’s hackles, and let him lower me to the ground.
Tanner slid off the truck and pulled me away from Mohawk.
"Tell us how to get rid of the book." I spoke in the same commanding tone but heard the thunder fading from my voice.
Mohawk sniffed the air and made a face. "The two of you smell terrible. I can’t deal with you like this."
He motioned to a man made unrecognizable by the blood covering him head to toe. The guy came without hesitation.
Mohawk spoke to him in a dismissive tone. "Find them clean clothes and a place to wash themselves. Get me someone who can cook and open the diner. We’re all hungry."
The man stared at Mohawk, swaying back and forth, eyes glazed.
"Now, now, now," Mohawk screamed.
The bloody man jumped into action, grunting and gibbering at other gore-streaked people. I tried to understand the words they said to each other and couldn’t. They’d regressed to language not quite human.
A woman missing one eye stumbled over to us. She grunted something and motioned us to follow.
Tanner and I exchanged a glance. We clasped hands and followed.
The woman led us up some stairs at the back of one of the buildings and showed us an apartment. A framed picture on the wall showed the same woman, perfectly normal and smiling with her arm around a cute guy wearing a baseball cap. One night, and all that was over for her. She led us through the apartment and pointed out a bathroom with a shower stall. Grunting and gibbering to herself, she left.
I turned to Tanner, wanting to put my arms around him and rest my face on his chest but stopped as I remembered the way he’d feared me back at Dwight’s makeshift podium.
"You scared of me now?" My voice had lost all semblance of command. Now I was just a squeaky little woman, afraid of the future, afraid of having her heart broken.
Tanner closed the space between us and put his hands on my waist. "You know you’ve got the right woman when you’re a little scared of her."
He pulled me to him and brushed his lips against mine. I kissed him back because I wasn’t sure who I was right then and needed everything to feel normal. We got in the shower together.
Our touches, tentative at first, asked the big question: Are we still okay? But as our breaths sharpened and our pulses sped up, the need to make sure we were both still alive blotted out any other concerns.
When we got out of the shower, two sets of folded clothes lay on the floor outside the bathroom. On top of mine lay an unopened box of wound-closing bandages. I found some rubbing alcohol in the bathroom, and Tanner dressed my wound.
"I dislike the idea of giving that book to someone who'll use it," I said as Tanner used the strips to pull the wound together.
"The conundrum of adulthood." Concentrating on his task, Tanner's voice was little more than a husky whisper.
"Huh?" I tried not to wince as Tanner slapped a larger bandage over the strips holding the knife wound closed. Tanner sat back to look at me.
"Life is rarely pure black or pure white. The choices we make day to day are mostly gray. We allow some bad stuff to exist in exchange for what we deem most important." He took my hand, his meaning clear.
"Is this living out loud?" I tried on the words for size. They might have been a little big, but I could get comfortable in them. I'd chosen Tanner and me over martyring myself to stop an evil that could never be stopped.
Tanner kissed my hand. "We did the best we could."
I leaned in and brushed a kiss over his lips. "And we're leaving together."
"That's what's important." He kissed me, really kissed me, and I let the argument be over for right then.
An hour later, we sat in Phil’s, Home of the World Famous Monkey Burger. The maddening smell of frying bacon came from somewhere in the back. Tanner and I held hands on top of the table. Mohawk sat across from us sipping coffee as though he wasn’t a monster who had caused a massacre and killed a few hundred innocent people.
He watched me over the top of his mug and set it down on the table with a clunk. "You don’t look like the Gregorius Witch any more. You look like a scared little girl again."
I glanced at the book, which sat at the far end of the table on top of a plain black tote bag, the key attached to the one of the lacy silver corner caps with a bit of yellow string. It radiated wrongness. Chill bumps marched over my skin.
I pointed at it. "How do I get rid of that? Do I have to banish Loretta Nell?"
"There is no banishing. She’s part of you now." Mohawk held up his coffee cup.
Phil approached. He had a broken nose. Several missing patches of his hair revealed a bloody scalp. Three of his fingers were gone. Teeth marks covered his hands. He filled Mohawk’s coffee cups, eyes rolling, gibbering madness.
Mohawk motioned him away and spoke to me. "I should charge you for the information."
"Suck it. You got exactly what you wanted out of this whole fiasco." I sipped at my coffee, which was actually quite good, considering the circumstances.
"I want a halfling with you." Mohawk sat back to allow the woman who’d let Tanner and me use her apartment deliver our plates.
We all got the same breakfast. Three slices of bacon, three sunny side up eggs, two pieces of toast. Tanner stared at his. Mohawk and I dug in, glaring at each other.
"Not happening. Ain’t paying you either, not if I have to find someone else to bestow that walking nightmare on." I jabbed a piece of toast dripping egg yolk at the book.
Mohawk’s features flattened, his face widening. He let me see fang.
"And don’t even show me your snake face. Right, baby?" I elbowed Tanner.
He jumped but pulled himself together. "Absolutely. We’ve had enough. You said you had some ideas. Let’s hear them."
I gave him an approving smile. He took the first bite of bacon.
Mohawk rolled his eyes. "Love is overrated. You know that, right?" He leaned forward. "Six million dollars for the halfling. I’ll get you a condo on the
beach. Or the mountains. In your name. We’ll never have to talk again."
"Tell me how to get rid of the book." I ate a piece of bacon like I had this conversation every day.
Mohawk sat back, lips set in a pout. He stuck his fork under his eggs and slung some at me. It landed on my clean shirt. I narrowed my eyes at him and tossed the remainder of my coffee in his face.
"Tell me how to get rid of the book." I leaned over the table and growled.
Mohawk dug several napkins from the metal dispenser on the table. "I should kill you for that." He mopped off his face and tossed the soggy napkins onto the table.
Glaring at him, I dipped a napkin in my ice water and dabbed the egg off my shirt. I tossed the dirty napkin on his and sat back in my seat.
Mohawk let out a hissy giggle. It quickly deepened into full-chested guffaws. He reached inside his leather jacket and took out a tattered slip of paper. It fluttered to the table. "These are just suggestions."
I opened the paper and found three names and addresses, all nearby. "Who are these people?"
"Who cares?" Mohawk ate his eggs and stared at the wall over my shoulder. "They’ll do whatever they’re going to do, and the next person will get the book."
I tossed the paper back on the table. "No deal."
Mohawk rolled his eyes. "Hanson Shadix is a seventeen-year-old boy who likes setting fires and killing animals. He’s ripe to do more and will make a great disciple." He stopped speaking, dipped his toast in the portion of eggs he hadn’t thrown at me, bit it off, and chewed. "Hanson will be good for a school shooting or maybe a mass poisoning."
"He’s a kid. He needs help, not encouragement." I pushed my plate away, wishing I hadn’t eaten as much as I had. The greasy food tossed in my suddenly tender stomach.
Mohawk shrugged. "William T. Buckmeyer has a ranch near the Mexican border. So far, he’s kidnapped one hitchhiker and plucked out her eyes for being a prostitute. He’s looking for one to stone to death. He’ll be a great serial killer."
The idea of someone, probably a woman, being stoned to death made the food I’d eaten grow heavy. I took out my antacids and crunched one between my teeth.
Mohawk watched, smiling. "Danna Donahue is a schoolteacher. Very popular with her coworkers, the parents, and even her students. There’s darkness in her she doesn’t even know about yet. She might have a cruel social experiment in her." Mohawk wiped his last square of toast over his plate and popped it in his mouth. He chewed with his mouth open.
Sitting there in the soft morning sunlight, with his punk hairdo and punk clothes, he looked like a kid who’d spent all night partying. Not an ancient creature who got off on directing murder and mayhem. Then I noticed the pattern of snakeskin right under his human skin.
No, not human and not a kid. Make your decision carefully, Priscilla Herrera’s voice whispered in my ear.
I didn’t want to give any of these three people the book. The first two might already be evil, but helping them become more evil went against my nature. The idea of hurting that last lady made me hurt. Left alone, she might never hurt a fly.
"That’s wrong," Mohawk said. "She’s got it in her. The book doesn’t work unless the evil’s already there."
"That’s horseshit." Tanner balled up his napkin and tossed it onto the table. "That book made us almost kill those dumbasses."
Mohawk grinned, showing off flat short teeth. "Look deep inside yourself, Tanner Jackson Letts. There's evil. Most of you never do anything about it. That’s why I’ve handpicked these three. They’ll be the easiest to turn."
I shook my head. "I can’t hurt anybody like this."
"Then you become my slave." Mohawk shrugged. It was win-win to him.
Tanner spoke to me as though we were alone. "Years ago, I heard about an artifact auction here in Texas. Supposedly someplace in San Antonio."
"The book will still find the right person." Mohawk used his napkin to scrub the grease off his mouth. "Don’t you want to know whose life you influenced?"
I didn’t know what to do. Back at that apartment, with Tanner dressing my wounds, it had all seemed so simple. Choose myself. Choose Tanner. Live out loud. But with it right here in my face, I saw people and hurt. Any exchange of the book would cause misery beyond what I wanted on my karma score sheet.
Tanner spoke into my ear. "If you do the auction, the book will be chosen. Anybody who chooses that thing…"
"They’re still going to do bad stuff with it.” I lowered my voice. “Hurt people."
Tanner nodded. He’d lost his first family because of another driver’s carelessness. He knew all about how people can hurt each other, even when they don’t mean to.
"If you sacrifice yourself to this thing—because that is what you’ll be doing—is the book going to be taken out of play?" Tanner didn’t wait for me to answer. He turned to stare at Mohawk.
The monster wearing the young punk’s skin lowered his chin and looked up at us. A smile grew on his face, and his eyes changed from human to snake eyes. He laughed. It was answer enough.
As usual, Tanner was right. I could give myself to Mohawk, and he’d give the book to someone, or I could put the book back into play myself and stay free.
Tanner leaned close. "Live out loud. Survive."
I hated spreading evil. Sure I did bad things, made bad decisions. We all did. But the deliberate spread of mayhem? I couldn’t get comfortable in it.
Tanner put his arm around me. "I’m with you. Whatever you do, I’m with you."
I twisted to face him. "Can you find out how to get the book in the auction?"
It was like buying meat in a grocery store. Some animal had suffered greatly so that the clean, cellophane-wrapped package could be there for me to buy. But I hadn’t had to see the animal’s suffering.
Was it the more honorable choice? No. Tanner had called it the adult conundrum. There was no honorable choice. There was choosing myself and living out loud or dying in every way but the one that would free me. I chose the auction because, for the first time in a long time, I wanted my life, especially the part of it that entwined with the man beside me.
Tanner motioned for me to let him out of the booth, dragging out the fancy phone I paid for him to have. He walked a few booths away and sat down.
Mohawk smiled at me. "Young love."
"Eat dog turds, snake man," I snarled at him. "What happens to this town? The people in it?"
"I’ll clean it up." Mohawk made a sweeping gesture at the plate glass window. "Other than you having ingested Loretta Nell, it’ll be like the last three days never happened. Tanner’s truck is beyond repair. I’ll have it destroyed so it's never traced back to him. I got you something to drive out of here. Look for a convertible in front of the dentist’s office a few streets over. " He rose in his seat and leaned toward me. "Drop the scared little girl act. Let me see the Gregorius Witch again."
I recoiled from him, not sure what he wanted. But when he said that name, something flared inside me. It felt a lot like the satisfaction of eating Loretta Nell Grimes’s spirit. The thing inside me grew bigger. The lights in the diner flickered, and a little breeze moved the wadded napkins on the table.
Mohawk leaned forward, nostrils flaring. “Leave with me.”
I raised my middle finger. The lights flickered again and buzzed.
Mohawk laughed. “You’re a fool not to marry your fortune to mine.”
I turned away from him.
Tanner rejoined us, much happier than the situation warranted. He almost glowed. He’d enjoyed stepping back into his old life for a few moments. What did that mean? I shook off the thought. Save it for another day. Tanner put his arm around me and kissed my cheek.
He whispered in my ear, "Everything’s going to be all right." He drew back, mischief sparking in his eyes.
I jabbed him in the ribs. We wrestled, both of us laughing, and I let the stress of the moment slip away.
A bell dinged. I turned away from Tanner to find the seat
across from us empty. The slip of paper with the names was gone.
Mohawk walked across the parking lot, staring out at the demolished cars and the smoking buildings. He waved both arms and shouted a word in another language.
It was as though a light switch flipped. Gunfire popped in the distance. A woman screamed, loud and long. A truckload of people holding garden implements careened around the corner. They slowed in front of Mohawk but then burned rubber trying to get away from him.
18
Tanner and I walked to the dentist’s office still holding hands. The woman who’d tried to kill us the night before, but ended up killing herself, still lay in the parking lot like someone’s forgotten trash. Nearby sat the convertible we’d seen the night before when it had been full of kids driving around looking for trouble. The keys swung from the ignition.
"I don’t know how I'm going to pull my camper," Tanner said as he slid behind the wheel.
"Let’s figure it out far away from here." I buckled my seatbelt, got out my phone, and typed in the address Tanner’d gotten for the auction. The auction was in China Grove, Texas, a small town right outside San Antonio.
Tanner cranked the engine and got on the road. The last of the hellish summer heat hung in the wind combing through our hair. But like everything else in my life, it hung on the cusp of change. The brilliant blue sky had already shed its white haze of summer humidity. It spread clear and cloudless over us. The gorgeous day ate at our gloom and eventually swallowed it whole.
We talked and laughed like a couple going to a picnic. The car’s radio played all happy songs. We sang the words, even though neither of us could really sing. But the passing miles gave my worries time to sneak back in. I stared out at the passing landscape more and sang less. Finally I turned down the radio and spoke aloud what bothered me about all this.
"Don’t you think it’s a little coincidental that they’re having an auction when we need it?" It might not bother Tanner, but I wanted warning if this was going to turn into some kind of brawl.
Tanner stared at the highway stretching out in front of us and licked his lips. "This auction isn’t…" He stopped speaking and seemed to rethink. "This auction is run by a guy like Mohawk. It goes on all the time. Dave, my friend, said to go to this address and give them the password."