Ghostcountry's Wrath (19 page)

Once again, and closer, came the thunder.

Chapter XI: Scene of the Crime

(east of Whidden, Georgia—Monday, June 18—midmorning)

“Are you
sure
you can
still find the place?” Sandy yawned as Calvin braked her Bronco to a halt at the end of an almost-overgrown logging road—one of the hundreds that threaded the pine forests of Willacoochee County like fracture lines in a slab of green glass. The look she fixed on him was his least favorite: the subtly doubtful/delicately superior one she affected in lieu of reminding him outright that she
was
older and more educated than he—and that, just possibly, she saw his back-to-nature/live-off-the-land resourcefulness more as testosterone-enhanced, ego-surfaced adolescent male braggadocio than true, gut-level competence. Granted, he hadn't suffered that look in a while; but what on earth had awakened it now? God knew they'd lived together for nearly two years, never mind the camping trips, the hikes in the woods, even that one foray into Galunlati. Surely she should trust his woodcraft after all that.

And if not…well, he'd just have to live with it. He could bitch, or he could prove her wrong. And in any event, the last thing he needed on a day when he wanted to play things calm and careful was an argument. Still, he couldn't suppress a scowl as he flicked off the lights and wipers, turned off the ignition, and opened his door.

Sandy saw it, bit her lip. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I oughta know better, oughtn't I? It's just that—well, I guess your stress is rubbing off on me, or something.”

Calvin shrugged with deliberate nonchalance and hopped to the ground. Heat bit at him, and blood-warm stickiness that wove through the remnants of morning drizzle, all legacy of the storm that had escorted them from Athens less than twelve hours before. “No big deal,” he muttered, wiping his forehead.

Sandy shut her door and joined him at the back of the vehicle, hunched over, as was he. The sky was gray-white, the trees silvered, the air still, save for the soft rattle of rain on pine needles and palmetto fronds. They were already sweating.

Calvin grinned ruefully as he commenced off-loading a pair of backpacks. (He'd reluctantly left the cycle in David's custody.) “Well, gee, I guess I oughta be glad
something's
rubbin' off,” he said, “seein' as how I really need to abstain until this is over.”

Sandy retrieved the smaller of the two packs and hoisted it onto her shoulders. “Now
that
might make an interesting experiment!”

He secured the other pack and slammed the door. “What?”

“To attempt a precisely controlled ritual or bit of magic at different intervals after sex.”

“I'll keep that in mind.” He laughed, with another grin, as he joined her on the damp ground beside the road. “It'll give me something to look forward to.”

Sandy yawned again. Calvin did, too. They caught each other, snickered. Tension was disarmed. “Told you you should've let me drive,” she said—and yawned once more.

“I was too wired. 'Sides, I've had more sleep than you the last day.”

“And you've pushed yourself a lot harder.”

“Any coffee left?”

“I'll check.”

Whereupon Sandy returned to the driver's side of the Bronco, opened the door, and rummaged around on the console. An instant later she returned with a thermos, the cup already unscrewed from the lid. Calvin held it while she poured, took a long, grateful sip. It was good stuff: the last of the batch they'd brewed in the motel room up in Hinesville where they'd spent the night—morning, better say—after their five-hour, rain-plagued sprint from Athens. The four hours of sleep they'd grabbed there at Sandy's insistence had helped a lot, too (she'd suggested, rightly, that whatever he was about was better served with him fresh than stiff and sore from sleeping in the truck or the woods, and that she'd be better company that way as well). But he still felt like he was hitting about a cylinder shy of all eight. It wouldn't do to let that show, though; wouldn't be cool to let Sandy know he was less than perfectly confident.

One final pause to toss back the now-lukewarm coffee and to pull the hood of his army surplus raincoat over his head, and he caught her eye. “Well, old lady, I reckon we'd better get goin'.”

“Well, old man,” she echoed, “I reckon we had.” And followed him into the woods.

*

“At least it's stopped rainin',” Calvin noted absently a quarter of an hour later, as he paused to divest himself of his raincoat. Sandy mirrored him, set her pack on a fallen cypress log, and shucked out of her top layer of clothing, to stand sweating in jeans, hiking boots, and Black Crowes T-shirt. Calvin was identically clad save that he wore Frye boots and a black T-shirt emblazoned with a diving falcon.

“How much farther?” Sandy wondered.

Calvin studied the sky, then the surrounding landscape. The clouds were scudding away to the east—rapidly, though the forecast was for more and harder rain that night. Meanwhile, the air had a new-washed feel to it, with the sun lancing hot and clear on leaf and trunk alike. He could almost hear the woods steaming—God knew
he
was: his bandana was soaked through, and not with rain. The pines had shifted to a mix of hardwoods, mostly oaks and poplars; there were fewer palmettos, and more dogwoods, oleander, and wild black cherry. The breeze brought two dominant odors: the sickly sulfur-sweetness of a pulp mill somewhere to the north, and the more subtle scent of coastal marshes not far eastward.

“We're close, I think. I didn't see this part in daylight much, but it looks pretty familiar. There were some sites I wanted to…avoid, 'cause of their vibes, so I've kinda taken a roundabout way. But unless I miss my guess, we oughta be no more than a quarter mile west of Iodine Creek, which is where I camped. Once I hit that, I can scout both ways until I find my old campsite.”

“Or we could
each
take a direction, which would be quicker.”

“Have it your way,” Calvin said, and soldiered on.

*

Fifteen minutes later, Calvin eased between a particularly large mass of palmetto fronds and the glossy leaves of a wild magnolia, and breathed a sigh of relief. “How's
that
for dead reckoning?” he asked Sandy as she panted up behind him. “Spot-on, first time out.”

Sandy squeezed around him, and together they surveyed the location.

Yep, this was it, all right: the secluded creek bank, screened by palmetto and oleander to the west, with a low bank to the north giving way to a gentler slope here on their end. The creek itself was maybe ten yards across and head-deep (he
knew
from experience) at center; the opposite shore overhung by red cedar and live oaks, the latter bearded with Spanish moss. Marsh began a short way beyond them.

And right there was the huge live oak beside which he'd made camp when he'd stopped here a year ago, hoping to get his head straight about magic, never imagining that Spearfinger was already in his world, tracking him and leaving corpses in her wake. He'd slept
there,
built his
asi—
his sweat lodge
—yonder—
Were those bare sticks lodged in that palmetto what remained of it? Probably not, given that the area had caught at least one hurricane last season.

But where was Brock? The kid had been very specific: they were to meet at this place (because it had power), today (because it was the anniversary of their first encounter), this time (ditto). So where
was
he? Nowhere in sight, that was for sure. Calvin hunkered down, scanning the earth beneath the tree in search of the footprints he was certain the boy would not have thought to hide.

Nothing.

Sandy joined him.

Still nothing.

“How long do we wait?”

“I'll give him till dark,” Calvin replied. “Then I'll ask you to stay here while I go back to the Bronco for the rest of the gear. We'll camp here for two days—or I will. After that, I'll leave him a note and split, obligation fulfilled. Then I'll
—Shit!”

Calvin slapped a hand automatically atop his head, where something hard and sharp had smacked it from above with sufficient force he half-expected to find blood. But even as he touched his hair, an object bounced to the ground. He laughed ruefully when he saw it: an acorn. “Damned squirrel!” he gritted.

Another hit. A very precise one.

He looked up, squinting into the green gloom of the leaves.

And saw the elf.

Or that was his first impression of the slim boy he could just make out lounging along a nearly horizontal limb fifteen feet above his head. Certainly there was a definite feralness about the white skin, the jet black hair, the full and very merry red lips. Nor was the effect lessened by the lad being barefoot and shirtless.

“Took you long enough,” a clear adolescent voice called, with a hint of British lilt overlying a southern drawl.

“Brock, you asshole, get down here!” Calvin snapped, feigning anger.

“Yes
sir
, sir,” the boy replied promptly—and rather than climb down, simply slid off his limb and dropped the whole distance. He landed in a springy, bent-kneed crouch an arm's length in front of Calvin. Calvin reached out to steady him, even as he hopped back reflexively.

“Well, you've sure changed,” Calvin observed as Brock rose, grinning.

He had, too. Though still small for fourteen—he barely came up to Calvin's collarbones—Brock had grown inches in the year since Calvin had seen him, and was now less a skinny kid than a wirily graceful young man. Nicely made, too, as his shirtlessness revealed. But what had changed most was his…style. His “look” when they had first met had been pseudo-punk: lots of clothing, most of it black; lots of layers, lots of pockets and zippers and tabs; spiky hair, earring. All that was gone. Oh, he was fashionably pale—doubtless a side effect of British weather—but the thick hair that
had
been sunburn-blond was now jet black and sprawled unbound to his shoulder blades like a tattered black silk flag. As for the minimal rest, he wore low-slung tight black leather pants that had probably cost a fortune and would have looked more at home on a concert stage than in the Georgia woods—and nothing else. The pants had been torn into artful tatters about the calves, and the whole effect truly was otherworldly. Totally inappropriate for the locale, of course, but otherworldly.

“You look…different,” Calvin told him.

“You don't—much.”

“I assume you have other clothes?”

“You don't like these?”

“Not for here.”

“I shucked the rest when it started raining. They're in my pack. It's behind the tree. You didn't look there for prints. And I didn't come out here to leave any.”

Calvin tried not to smirk. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”

Brock raised a black eyebrow into an inky forelock. “I kinda hoped you would be.”

Calvin grimaced resignedly and reached out to give the boy a brief but firm hug, then backed away to lean against the tree, arms folded. Brock beamed, full of himself as always. Sandy looked bemused. Calvin introduced them, noting appreciation and possessive resentfulness flit across the boy's face in quick succession as he bowed rather than shook hands. Calvin shrugged at her where Brock couldn't see. “So,” he said, to save Sandy having to make small talk, “is that what the well-dressed young wizard is wearin' in Britain these days?”

Brock's face brightened, as if the sun had lit on it. “Does that mean you're gonna
do
it? Gonna live up to your promise?”

Calvin gnawed his upper lip. Might as well get it over with. “I made it, therefore I have to…but I'd really like to talk to you about some stuff first.”

Brock shook back his hair, revealing small ears Calvin half-expected to be pointed. “I got time.”

“And I've got an expensive vehicle parked by the side of the road two miles away,” Sandy inserted, with a knowing glance at Calvin. “What say we pick it up and go into town for lunch?”

“You go,” Calvin told her. “What me and Brock-the-Badger No-name need to talk about's better done right here.”

Sandy puffed her cheeks in frustration. “Okay then, you guys build a fire. I'll bring lunch—but I
hope
we can sleep in town.”

“Cool,” Brock cried, grinning like a fool.

Calvin cuffed him on the shoulder. Sandy rolled her eyes and pushed back into the woods. Calvin wished he'd remembered to remind her to be on guard against owls.

*

“Fire,” Calvin said, as he rose to pace out an area midway between the tree and the river. “We need a fire.”

Brock looked apprehensive and shifted his weight, but made no other move. His expression all but screamed,
Yeah sure! In
this
heat?

“To cook on,” Calvin prompted. “And to discourage other influences”—he aimed a reflexive look at the still-blue sky—“and to cheer up the day if the rain comes back, which it's supposed to.”