Nightwitch (31 page)

“
Brad Peters,” she said in her best school teacher voice.

“
Miss Sadler, what are you doing here?”

“
No, Brad, I’m the one that asks the questions. Remember?”

“
Yeah, sorry,” the boy said.

“
I’d really hate to think you two boys were coming up here to get into some kind of mischief.”

“
Not us,” Brad said.

“
Over where, Brad?” Sarah said.

“
What do you mean?” Brad said.

“
You said, ‘Over here,’ what did you mean?”

“
Nothing,” Brad said.

“
You didn’t mean that there was a tent over here, did you?”

“
No.” Brad said.

“
Did he, Ray?”

“
Yes, ma’am,” Ray Harpine said, without thinking.

“
I’d hate to think you boys were going to be sticking your noses into tents that don’t belong to you,” she said.

“
No, ma’am,” Brad said.

“
And I’d hate to have to call your parents and tell them I thought that. You wouldn’t want me to have to do that, would you, Brad?”

“
No, ma’am.”

“
Then go home. It’s getting late and this is no place for boys to be playing after dark.”

“
We play in the woods all the time at night,” Brad said.

“
Not tonight you don’t. Tonight you go straight home. Unless of course you want me calling your parents.”

“
No, ma’am. We got studying to do, so we’ll go to my house,” Ray said.

“
When?” Sarah asked.

“
Right now,” Ray said.

“
Then get going,” she said. She watched as they turned and crossed the clearing, heading for the path.

“
Stupid,” she heard Brad say to Ray, just before they reached the path and left her sight.

She laughed to herself. Then she heard laughter of a different kind, a primitive, high pitched, staccato laughter that froze her to the bone. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. Then she thought of the boys, so soon out of her sight, and she shivered again, because she knew they were in great danger.

John Coffee had been telling the truth after all. She had been so blind, not wanting to accept what she couldn’t understand. She had seen his eyes, and they radiated truth, yet still she refused to believe. The wolf, the bear, the old woman, and still she refused to believe. But this, this could not be explained away. She had spent too much time in Africa.

She dropped to her knees and dove into the tent, shooting her hands under the duffel back and coming out with the forty-five. She ejected the magazine and started pulling clothes out of his duffel, until she got to the two boxes of shells at the bottom, and with frantic, fumbling fingers she started popping shells into the magazine, ramming them home with her thumb.

Once full, she slammed it into the weapon and jammed a full box of shells into her hip pocket. Then she saw the spare magazine at the bottom of the duffel. She checked it, found it full, and shoved it in her pocket along with the shells. She didn’t know if a normal, lead forty-five slug could stop a soucouyant, but it damn sure could stop a hyena.

Again the hyena’s laughter ripped through the night, reminding her of the Kenyan bush. Normally the hyena preferred to feed off another’s kill, scavenging what the lion or cheetah was willing to leave, but they were not above killing themselves, and their specialty was the very young among the East African plain. Zebra colts, gnu calves, lion cubs and children. The hyena played no favorites. It was an equal opportunity baby killer.

She had to get to those two boys.

She ran across the clearing with the forty-five clutched in her hand, charging toward the path like a mother racing to save her young. And in a way they were hers. All those kids were hers, and no old woman, wolf, bear, witch or hyena was going to harm them as long as she was alive and able to raise a hand against it.

She fled out of the clearing, onto the path, without slowing her stride, her hiking boots scrunching leaves, pine needles and twigs, waking up the forest to the fact that a desperate human was charging through.

The overhead branches killed most of the remaining daylight, but there was enough for her to see and dodge the rocks and the low branches. She leapt over a fallen log, and in mid air she saw it, a black charging object. She skidded to a stop and dropped to her knees, raising the gun to fire.

She had her finger on the trigger.

The animal was bounding up the path the children had just gone down.

That meant they were dead.

She started to squeeze the trigger. Slow and easy. She didn’t want to miss.

The animal barked.

She relaxed her finger, and sighed, as Condor plowed into her side, covering her face with his wet, slurpy tongue.

“
Get up you silly dog,” she said. Every animal lover in town willing to get down and play had to deal with Condor’s slippery kisses. The big dog had been her friend ever since she’d moved to Palma. Binky Bingham had bought him as a watch dog for his pharmacy, and at that he had been an abysmal failure, but he was a huge success as Palma’s ambassador of good will. Sarah never would have been able to forgive herself if she would have hurt him.

Again the laughter swarmed through the night, seeming to come from everywhere. The dog stopped his playful tongue lashing and moved off Sarah, allowing her to get up. He growled low and pointed with his eyes to a place behind her. She scrambled back up to her knees, following the dog’s eyes with her own, and she saw it, standing less then twenty feet away, eyes blazing red, lips curled, fangs bared, snarling.

She wrapped her left hand around the dog’s neck and could feel the heat of him as he growled low, baring his own fangs and snarling back, something Sarah didn’t think the gentle animal was capable of. She raised her right hand to fire, as Condor broke free and charged the hyena with a roar that rumbled like a jet on take off, but the dog’s snarling fangs met only the trail of hot fire, because the hyena turned into a mass of flame, shooting skyward as a flash of lightning bolted across the sky, followed by the barrel boom of thunder and a slight drizzling rain.

Then the fog started to move in. Slow, steady, creepy.

“
Condor,” she called. The dog barked and came back to her.

“
Stay with me,” she said, not sure if she should go back to the tent or continue down the path. She opted for getting out of the woods as quickly as possible. She started to stand, when she heard something coming.

“
Stay,” she whispered to the dog. She was still on her knees. She raised the pistol.

Whatever it was stopped. Then she knew what it was, and it was down there on the edge of the fog, waiting for her. Not eager to pounce, happy to wait. Then Sarah remembered what John had said, about how the soucouyant would hunt a young woman, until she was crazy with terror before it attacked. It needed the fear as much as it needed the blood.

“
Come on, boy,” she whispered into the dog’s ear, drawing strength from his tense shoulders and bared fangs. “We’re going up,” she whispered, more to herself than to the dog. She looped the fingers of her left hand through the dog’s collar, so he couldn’t get away from her again.

She squinted her eyes, trying to peer through the fog, as she stood up. She started backing up the hill, one hand holding onto the collar, the other with the forty-five pointed toward the rustling sound coming from the fog.

“
I will not be afraid. I will not be afraid. I will not be afraid,” she mumbled under her breath, like a mantra, as if saying it would make it so.

She had covered half the ground back toward the clearing, when she heard it blundering in the fog, not even trying to be quiet. The hyena stayed out of sight, but not out of the dog’s scent. The hairs on Condor’s back were stiffened, like an agitated cat’s, and the low rumble growl was constant as she tugged on his collar. Maybe Condor wasn’t such a bad watch dog after all, she thought, because all traces of his fun loving self were wiped out as he tugged against her. He wanted to attack whatever it was out there in the fog.

She started to backtrack faster when she reached the clearing, until she reached the center of it, and realized that she had no place to go. The flimsy tent wasn’t going to offer any protection. She stopped, dropped to her knees, to offer a smaller target, in case the hyena leapt at her through the fog, the way the wolf came flying in her front window, and waited, still mumbling her mantra, “I will not be afraid, I will not be afraid.”

Then as magically as the fog had appeared, it started to clear as the drizzling rain started to pick up.

And laughter shot from the hyena to her soul, knifing through her body like cold electricity. Condor barked an angry response as she caught a glimpse of the glowing eyes through the dark. She had the gun up with her finger ready to squeeze the trigger, but the eyes flashed out. She held her fire. She had learned early that there was no use shooting at what you couldn’t see. But she didn’t have to see to know that it was gone. The hair settled on the dog’s back. He retracted his fangs, and best of all, he turned toward her and ran that slurpy tongue across her cheek.

“
Sarah,” she heard his voice, coming through the clearing fog. She stood up and faced the rain, letting it wash the fear from her body, and as quickly as it had come, the rain was gone.

“
Over here,” she shouted, and then he was there and she was in his arms, showering him with kisses.

“
What happened?” he said.

“
I’ll never doubt you again,” she said, hugging him close. “And I’ll never, never let you go.” Then with a rush of words, she told him about the hyena and everything that had happened since he’d been gone, and she knew that if she lived through this night, her life was never going to be the same, because she was in love.

“
It knows we’re here. We have to move,” he said, but once again that staccato laughter filled the night and when they turned to the sound they saw the hyena half in and half out of the two man tent, glaring at them with its flaming eyes.

Condor moved like a silent wraith, gliding like a missile over the cool ground, as he charged the hyena, mouth open, fangs bared.

Chapter Eighteen

“
The witch that can’t die. I guess that means she’ll never get a home over there,” Carolina said, looking across the cemetery, as they walked away from Harry’s.

“
Everybody dies.” He looked over at the tombstones and saw a freshly dug grave through the patchy fog, and wondered if it was for the man who was killed with his father. Did that man have a home and children? Did they miss him? Or were they happy he was gone and better off without him? Everybody dies.

“
Not the Nightwitch,” Carolina said.

“
Even the Nightwitch,” Arty said.

“
Mr. Lightfoot said?” she shivered.

“
No, that’s not what he said. He said you can kill it with salt and hot pepper. Remember? They scratch themselves to death and burn up.”

“
Even if you do that there still won’t be anything left to bury. It’s kinda sad, she’ll be gone and there won’t be anybody to remember her.”

“
Nobody’s gonna wanna remember her,” Arty said.

“
If she can’t die, except with the hot pepper, and we can’t find her skin, then it’s impossible for us to stop her. Harry’s right. We should go home and stay there.”

“
Harry knows a lot of stuff, but even he doesn’t know everything. Nobody knows everything.”

“
But if he’s right, then the silver shotgun bullets you made won’t work.”

“
They have to work. Harry said that silver made it weak, remember? He said people used a silver cross to keep it away, didn’t he?”

“
Yeah,” she said.

“
I think he was only trying to keep us from messing with the Nightwitch.”

“
He said he would take care of it,” she said.

“
But it’s not coming after him. It wants you. And I know why.”

“
Why?” she asked, turning away from the sunset and sticking out her lower lip.

“’
Cuz you got her magic locket and she wants it back.”

“
What?”

“
The one your dad gave you. That has to be why it keeps coming around your house.”

Carolina reached up to her neck, but the locket wasn’t there.

“
Yeah,” Arty said, “You put it behind Sheila’s name tag. I bet that’s the only reason you’re still alive. It looks in your window. It probably watches when we go to school and we would never know, because it can be anything it wants. It’s waiting to find out where the locket is, and when it does, that’s when it’s going to kill you, and me, too, ’cuz now I know.”

“
No, you’re wrong,” she said. “My dad would never give me something like that.”

“
What if he didn’t know?”

“
If he didn’t know, maybe?”

“
So we should go to my house and get the shotgun.”

“
But Harry said we should stay home.”

“
We will, but we’ll get the shotgun, just in case.”

“
That makes sense.” So instead of turning right to Carolina’s, they turned left to Arty’s house.