Ghostcountry's Wrath (44 page)

“Galunlati!” Okacha breathed. “Hope.”

“Despair!”
another voice howled—and then the room was a glitter of flying glass as a man-sized gray-and-white shape hurtled through a suddenly shattered pane.

Calvin felt himself cut again, a dozen times over, but scarcely noticed, for already he was shielding the ulunsuti, vaguely aware that it was drinking even more blood. “Liz—the gate,” he shouted.

“Gate, hell!”
came that awful voice. And Calvin's senses finally settled enough to see Snakeeyes rise up from where he'd landed on the floor.
Must've shifted to human right before he impacted the window,
he decided dimly. And had no more time for thought as the witch leapt toward him, feather cloak swirling about him like a blizzard of gray-white snow. The flame on the counter flickered.

“No!”
David yelled, and launched himself at the man—only to be hurled into a table by a casual sweep
of wiry arm. From their places by the doors Sandy and Brock flung themselves forward—but they would be too late. A second from now, Snakeeyes would extinguish the fire, and that would be it. He'd have Okacha to draw on, and with that accomplished, getting the scale and the club and the ulunsuti would be no problem. Calvin felt utterly outclassed.

“Don't tell
me
no, white boy!” Snakeeyes snapped. But Calvin stepped before him, inserting himself between the witch and fire. Alec joined him, so did Liz.

And Okacha…

Calvin had never seen a woman move that fast. No, he corrected, never a
human
move that fast. One instant she was beside him tense as a spring, the next she had leapt a quarter way across the room and grabbed something from the table nearest the sink, the one where they'd left their assorted packs.

What?
he wondered. And then he knew.

Before he could do more than register the idea, however, Okacha acted. With blinding speed, her arm flashed out—the arm that wielded Calvin's war club. A glimpse at her eyes made him shudder, for little of humanity showed there.

“Bitch!” Snakeeyes spat, and whirled around to face her.

Okacha's lips drew back in a snarl. Calvin wondered if her teeth were pointed, or if that was a trick of light.

“Asshole!” she shrieked—and swung again, even as she leapt forward. Snakeeyes dodged, but the club caught a corner of his cloak and tore a hole in it. The witch gasped, eyes bright with hate. Birds began to fly through the broken window. The air was suddenly full of shrieks and caws and flapping wings. But the flame behind Calvin held steady—as did his grip on the ulunsuti.

Okacha swung the club again: a figure-eight pattern in the air between her and her adversary. Snakeeyes backed away, but kept his hands before him—not in defense, however, but to—

—grab! Which he did. He caught the club in mid-swing, stopped it. He yanked—hard. Okacha did not pull back; instead, she pushed.

Unbalanced, the witch staggered back—and in his effort to catch himself, loosened his grip. Okacha did pull then.

Snakeeyes staggered again and almost fell. And those few seconds of awkwardness were enough. One blow from Okacha struck him square on the shoulder (and would have shattered his skull, had he not flinched to block it). A second impact smashed his forearm. He shrieked in pain as the limb flopped limply to his side.

Okacha wasted not a second. One moment she was facing the witch, the next she had spun around and was leaping forward—straight toward Calvin. He saw her coming and acted as fast as he ever had in his life. Not even sparing time to grit his teeth, he thrust the ulunsuti into the now-wavering fire. Birds flew at him; beaks flashed at his eyes. He beat them off with his free hand and saw through slitted lids the crystal flare bright as it drank blood and fire and pain—and then the landscape of Galunlati, and then Okacha leaping through. “I made it!” she shouted. “Here, you need this worse than I do!” Whereupon she flung the atasi back through the gate.

Somehow, Calvin managed to catch it with his free hand, even as he yanked the other from the fire and tumbled the whole apparatus into the sink. He fumbled at the faucet, but Alec—or someone—was there ahead of him. Water quenched the flames, cooled the blood—and the gate blinked out like a candle.

“You son-of-a-bitch,” came an almost bestial growl behind him. Calvin turned wearily, too dazed to think straight. But his head cleared instantly as he came face-to-face with the witch's cold yellow glare.

Snakeeyes glared at him as he rose to his full imposing height and drew the feather cloak around him with a flourish of his functioning hand.

“Be in the woods where we met at sunset tomorrow,” he hissed. “Or wonder where I am for the rest of your life.”

And with that, he closed his eyes, grimaced for an instant—and was an owl.

Calvin tried to scramble atop the counter to block access to the window, but talons raked his face—perilously close to his eyes. Reflex won. He felt a brush of feathers, and then the witch was gone. The few remaining crows and starlings followed.

David blinked at him wearily as he picked himself up off the floor. A bruise already discolored the angle of his jaw. “Could be worse,” he managed, reaching out to right a fallen stool. “You guys help me clean up in here. If I'm real lucky, I can blame the broken windows on the hail.”

“And if not?” Calvin sighed as he returned the ulunsuti to Alec.

David giggled nervously. “I'll be in almost as deep shit as you are.”

“I'm hungry,” Don grumbled, yawning, having evidently slept through the whole brief battle.

Calvin rolled his eyes. “Okay,” he told the boy.

“We'll feed you, and anybody else who's hungry. Me, I've gotta fast until tomorrow. And then…well, I guess I'll know then, won't I?”

“Deep shit,” Alec muttered. “Deep shit indeed.”

Sandy's only response was to hug him.

Chapter XXIII: Vigilantes

(Jackson County, Georgia—midnight)

Calvin nudged a limb further into the fire with a bare foot and leaned back again, resting bone-tired shoulders against the larger log that built an implicit barrier against the night. Across the low-burning flames, Brock was methodically peeling a twig, his pointy features rendered atypically flat by being bottom-lit. The boy wasn't saying much—
hadn't
said much in the two hours since they'd come here. Rather, he seemed content to gaze at the fire and dream. Calvin wondered if he'd had enough of magic.

Or if he even knew he was up to his eyeballs in it right now!

The fire occupied the center of a Power Wheel Calvin had sketched in a patch of bare ground at the western edge of the meadow where they had encountered Snakeeyes earlier that day—and where he would meet him again in less than twenty-four hours. In fact, the boy straddled the eastern spoke, with a red-painted limb from a lightning-blasted tree stuck in the earth two yards beyond the log that braced his shoulders.

Similar constructs marked the other directions, and the larger circle that connected them beyond the ring of back-rest logs was strewn with cedar boughs. He hoped they'd be sufficient; God knew he only had Snakeeyes's word for the time and place of their confrontation. And how good was the word of a witch?

Neither David to his left, the north, nor Alec in the south to his right, had spoken lately, either. No one seemed to have anything
to
say—or maybe too much. For himself, he was so wired and nervous and scared he was practically numb—which manifested in the real world as a superficial calm that those who knew him well would recognize as cause for concern indeed.

Eventually David mirrored his movement and likewise scooted a limb further into the fire. There were four of them: four staves of four kinds of wood that met in the middle, that followed the spokes of the wheel out to where Calvin and his best friends sat vigil. As the center was consumed, more was eased in. It was a comfort, but a small one: the reliability of ritual.

Calvin's stomach growled, testament to another part of the preparations for his impending trial. David caught his eye and smirked, then tried to suppress it.

“This
isn't
a funeral,” Calvin grumbled. “Nor a wake—at least not yet. Talkin'
is
allowed. It's just food we—that is, I—can't have.”

David rolled his eyes and patted his belly, then reached to a flat, plate-sized rock placed deliberately close by the fire. An iron pot perched there, heavy with dark, steaming liquid. “Sounds like you need more black drink, Fargo, m'man.” Without awaiting reply, he dipped a gourd into the brew and lipped it, wincing at the strong herbal flavor, then passed it on to Calvin. “If this is all you're allowed, you'd best drink deep.”

Calvin took the long handle carefully, sipped cautiously—and still nearly scalded his tongue. Which might be just as well, given how the stuff tasted. “Good thing I saw those
Ilex
bushes earlier,” he murmured offhandedly.

Alec snorted, almost giggled. “Yeah, and I'd
really
like to be a fly on the wall when young Mr. Sullivan here tries to explain that little bit of impromptu pruning as hail damage!”

Calvin raised an eyebrow—as much good humor as he could muster—then cast his gaze beyond David's increasingly cynical buddy to the woods beyond. The trees were tall here, where the oaks and hickories made a crown around the meadow that balded the knoll. Above them he could see stars and a bit of moon. Cygnus, Corona Borealis. Even the white trail of the Milky Way that his people called
Gili-utsunstanunyi:
Where-the-Dog-Ran. He wondered if he'd ever see them again.

No!
He wouldn't think about that—or like that. He was who he was: Calvin Fargo McIntosh, a warrior of the Ani-Yunwiya, called in Galunlati
Nunda-unali'i, and in this, the Lying World, Utlunta-Dehi. And who else of his people numbered a demigod among his friends? Who else had met the Red Man of the Fast and the Black Man of the West and the White Man of the South and the Blue Man of the North? Not Snakeeyes, that was for sure. Snakeeyes had power—obviously. And he had the warped strength that meanness wrought. But his powers were all of this world. And though few in the Lying World would have believed in them or used them, Calvin knew that he had a few things on his side Snakeeyes did not have—or so he thought. But he didn't dare let the witch get them, either. And that was the risk. With either his uktena scale or Alec's ulunsuti in a witch's power, who knew what would happen?

Who indeed?

Finally, when the gourd had made the circle and they were all as full of the stimulant as they could stomach for a spell, Calvin spoke.

“I just wanta thank you guys for stickin' by me,” he said softly. “We've done it before, for each other, and it's always worked out okay—though we didn't always know it was goin' to. But this time…I don't know. I have the terrible feelin' that I'm in
way
over my head. And I'm…afraid, I guess. And the trouble is, I know that shouldn't be the case. I mean, Jesus, guys, I've fought Spearfinger, I've helped kill an uktena, I've been to the Darkening Land and returned—and this is just me against another guy—yet I'm freaked as hell about it. Oh sure, I've got some things I can draw on—but so does he. Except that I suspect he knows a shitload more about what my limitations are than I know about his—and no, Alec, I'm not gonna ask you to consult the ulunsuti to find out. I don't think it does things like that.”

David reached over clap him on the shoulder. “Hey, guy, what're friends for?”

“Not for riskin' themselves like you guys are,” Calvin snorted. “Not for lyin' out in the woods when you've got finals to study for, not for bein' hungry when there's no need. Not for—”

“Not for keeping people they care about from going through trials alone?” Alec interrupted with a vehemence that surprised him. “That's bullshit, man, and you know it. Shoot, when you first met us, you barely knew us—yet you helped us. More than once you did that, even when it put you at risk both for yourself and for what you wanted. Oh, sure, you fucked up some—but so have me and Dave—a lot, in fact, and we're probably gonna do it again. But the point is, we're where we wanta be tonight. School's fun, sometimes; gaming and drinking and going to clubs can be real cool. But what makes 'em cool isn't the fact of 'em, it's who you do 'em with. Stuff's no good without friends, Cal. And experience is pretty flat without someone to share it with—so let's cut the crap about you owing us for this, okay?”

Calvin grinned. “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”

Brock blinked up from his staring. He too shifted a limb closer to the center. “He's trying to psyche you, isn't he? Snakeeyes, I mean.”

Calvin shrugged. “Part of the game, I guess.”

“Making you wait…yeah.”

“I know that's some of it,” Calvin acknowledged. “But he
was
hurt, don't forget. We just don't know how bad, or how long it'll take him to heal. I guess he figures that if he waits too long, we might come up with something major to do against him—I mean, he
knows
we've got supernatural connections! On the other hand, if he strikes too soon, we might beat him, too. So he has to find the point when
he's
strongest. Which is at sunset, which is a
between
time. But also goin' into night, which is when
he'd
have the advantage.”