The Walking (22 page)

He dropped the cigarette, ground it into the cement with his shoe, and turned, reaching for the door handle. He tried to slide the door open, but it was stuck, and though he wiggled it back and forth, jerked it with all his might, the door remained closed, almost as though someone had locked it from inside.

This was it, he realized. This was the night he was going to die.

He wanted to cry out, but his throat was constricted, and instead he tried to run around the house to the side yard. If he could just get out to the front, he could dash over to one of his neighbors' houses.

Or get in the car and drive away.

But he had not even gotten off the patio before another apple flew out of the darkness. This one did not roll across the lawn but came sailing through the air, hitting him on the side of the face. His head was rocked back by the impact, and the stinging pain made his eye immediately tear up. He looked down at the apple, and it split open at his feet. The individual pieces wriggled off the cement and onto the grass, burrowing into the dirt.

His heart was thumping wildly in his chest. He had to get out of here before she showed herself, before she emerged from the shadows and attacked him.

She? How did he know it was a she?

Because it was a she, just as in his dream, and he thought of the woman's voice harassing him over the phone

I'll pull your cock out through your asshole

--thought once again that he ought to know who she was, that he should understand why this was happening and why she was coming after them.

The laughter came again, and though it was an evil, unnatural sound, he recognized it as definitely female. He held a hand over his burning left eye and dashed across the grass, past his bedroom window, toward the side of the house.

She floated toward him out of the darkness.

She came from the spot toward which he was running rather than the area that had been the source of the apples, and he stopped dead in his tracks. Both eyes were teary now,

but still he saw how truly terrifying the woman before him was. She was naked, her considerable attributes on full display, but there was nothing even remotely sexy or arousing about her. Her skin was white and dead-looking, and the harsh angularity of the bones in her arms and legs struck him as horribly wrong. Her head did not seem to match her body precisely, and even through his tears he could see the horrible cast of her features, the unearthly anger and rage that had somehow been twisted by will into a mirthless smile. He experienced an immediate abhorrence of her, and he staggered backward, instinctively trying to move away.

But she kept coming.

She held in her hand an apple, but she did not offer it to him, did not even speak. Instead, chuckling slyly, she glided directly up to him and shoved the fruit as hard as she could into his mouth.

His head was slammed back by the blow, and he both heard and felt several of his front teeth shattering and breaking off.

He dropped to his knees, screaming with the pain, swatting her hand away, spitting out blood and teeth and the small pieces of apple that had been dislodged.

He looked up at her. He still did not know who she was or why she was doing this, knew only that it was because of what had happened back in Wolf Canyon, and he started crying, blubbering. "It wuth an ack-thident! We didn't know! No one knew!"

Even as he cried out the words, he understood that they were incomplete, not the whole story. True enough, they hadn't known people remained in the town when they let loose the water, but they knew afterward, and still they did nothing. None of them had stepped forward to take responsibility, and the government had never held any of them accountable for what happened. The whole thing was covered up and forgotten about, and he'd known even then that it

was wrong. He understood that that was why he was being made to pay now.

Who was she, though?

He was not going to find out. He was going to die not knowing.

Her touch was a cold breeze against his face, and the coldness moved through his bleeding mouth and settled in his throat.

He could not even scream as he was forced across the lawn into the darkness of the night.

Jeb stared hard into the mirror, concentrated.

Nothing.

He sat back down on the bed, his head hurting. Something had happened to his power. It was as if it was draining slowly out of him---or being drained out of him. He'd noticed it over the past few months, but only in the last week had the effects become obvious enough to be worrisome.

Now he could not even conjure a simple alternate scene in a mirror.

Next to him, Harriet roiled over. She opened one eye and smiled lazily, pulling down the covers to expose her naked body. He looked down at her large lolling breasts, at the tangle of thick black hair between her ample thighs.

"Get back under here," she said. "You paid for the whole night, you might as well take advantage of it."

Jeb forced himself to smile back at her and lay down, resting his head on the pillow, allowing her to pull the covers over both of them. He never had found a wife or a woman of his own, but since prostitutes had set up shop in town, he had seldom been without companionship when in the mood.

And he was often in the mood.

Both he and William had been surprised at the range of occupations followed by those of their ilk. In the beginning there had been only settlers: hardworking men and women willing to do anything in order to get this community started

and establish new lives for themselves. Back then their conception of the future town had been an idealized one, filled with selfless, caring, dedicated witches like themselves, all of them ready to be assigned the specific tasks and duties that would make Wolf Canyon a real community. But it took all kinds to make a world, and soon the people arriving were not so dedicated, not merely the peaceful and persecuted who were interested in creating an alternate society.

Now there were drunks and whores and gunfighters and swindlers. The world of witches was no more egalitarian than the world of normal people, and though they were all welcome and accepted, all granted residence by virtue of what they were, it was clear now even to William that some were not as desirable to the community as others.

Jeb rolled onto his side, feeling Harriet's magic hands grab his manhood and once again bring it back to life. He was never sure if it was her power that reinvigorated him so quickly or if she simply drew the power from him, but whatever the source, her hands were able to arouse him faster than any other woman in town. In fact, faster than any woman since... Since Becky.

Only Becky hadn't needed to touch him in order for him to become aroused. Just seeing her, just being next to her, just talking to her had excited him in a way that was at once animal simple and spiritually profound.

"Come on," Harriet said. "Get it in."

He rolled on top of her, she guided him, and he began moving, circling his hips, grinding against her, gradually increasing the speed. Soon the magic was flowing back and forth, from her to him, from him to her.

He could sense her excitement reaching its peak, and he began thrusting hard, ttempting to hasten the culmination of his own pleasure.

She thrust back in return, pressing herself tight against him, and that simple act of greedy desire made him explode.

He spent himself inside her, spurting with abandon until his loins were emptied, and she held him in, obtaining her own gratification, before finally allowing him to pull out.

She let out a sigh, looked over at him, smiled. "Maybe I oughta pay you instead."

He fell asleep happy and contented, and it was only in his dreams that his worries once again reasserted themselves.

He dreamed that he was freezing, in the snow, and a pile of sticks was front of him and he could not even conjure a fire.

In the morning, he rode out to the mine, where work had stopped due to a dispute over wages. He thought of the early days, when there had been no wages, no money. Everyone had contributed to the community, and everyone shared equally in the community's bounty. They'd come a long way since then, but he was not sure this was progress. There seemed to be too many factions now. The selfless spirit that had once united them had degenerated into a selfish individualism which threatened to undermine the common goals of the townspeople.

Jeb hopped off his horse, tethered it to a cottonwood tree. Outside the entrance of the mine, several men were arguing, one burly, bearded fellow shaking his list at another man who removed his hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead. William had chosen Jeb to settle the dispute because of his good relationship with most of the miners, and indeed the argument abated as he approached up the pathway. This close, he could see that the bearded man was Lyle Siddons and the other man was Wade Smith.

"All right," he said. "Let's settle down. Ain't nothing here we can't work out if we just talk things out in a reasonable way In fact, finding a solution turned out to be easier than he thought. The major bone of contention was that the drill operators felt they should be making more money because their

job was the only one for which it was not feasible to use magic. The heavy-duty tunneling could be done only with the help of traditional mining equipment, and they felt that they should be compensated for their manual labor. Jeb agreed, and over the protests of some of the others who considered the use of magic in their respective positions to be equally draining, he declared that a standard wage would be i received by all, with those required to perform extra duties getting additional pay. The definition of "extra duties" would be ironed out later, and he did not role out the possibility that it would refer to heavy use of magic as well as physical labor; but for now, he told them, the wage demands would be met and everyone should get back to work.

There was some minor grumbling, but the drill operators were ecstatic and the complaints from others seemed to be voiced mostly out of obligation. The truth was, they all thought they were performing

"extra duties," and they could all see the prospect of increased pay in their future, and Jeb left the miners much happier than he had found them.

Returning to town, he stopped off to tell William. He was starving and could use a drink, but he knew William would want to hear the outcome as soon as possible and to discuss it with the vendors who sold the ore to the government.

As he rode up to William's house, he saw Isabella, digging in her garden. She waved to him as he passed, smiling against the sun.

He tipped his hat, nodded.

He'd never admit it to William, but he'd felt a small surge of pride and the faint seductive tickle of revenge as he'd watched Isabella take care of those three strangers in front of the saloon that day. They were probably not bad men, not in the ordinary sense, but they were ignorant and intolerant, belligerent bigots, the type of people who had for years been persecuting their kind, and it was nice to see them finally get a taste of their own medicine.

William, of course, had been shocked and outraged, torn in his reaction despite his unwavering devotion to his wife. That's what made him William. But Jeb was more ambivalent, less sure of the morality involved, and while he'd offered his friend a sympathetic ear as always, secretly he'd supported Isabella's actions.

William's wife was growing on him. He hadn't liked her at first, he could admit that, but unlike most of the other people in town, he had come to appreciate her unusual charms. He supposed it was because he and William were so close. He was the only other person who had really gotten to know her, and he now understood what his friend saw in Isabella. She was not only beautiful but intelligent, and she was not afraid to speak her mind or act on her impulses. He admired that..

Most of the others did not see it that way. To them, she was a usurper, a temptress who had seduced their friend in order to achieve her own nefarious ends. The way she had dispatched those three strangers and had gotten off scot-free, without even a reprimand, when William's policy had always been to attract no outside attention, proved that.

Jeb could understand their concern. The fact was, however, she hadn't done anything else to engender any mistrust or suspicion in the townspeople. They simply did not like her, resented her because of how close she and William had become in such a short time, and he could not help thinking that they were behaving just as people had always behaved toward them, with prejudice and a reckless disinterest in the truth.

Maybe it was inevitable. Maybe that's what happened when people lived together. Hell, maybe they'd all be better off if they just spent their lives moving from one place to another, living a nomadic existence as they had before.

Jeb hopped off his horse, tethered it to the porch rail. "William!." he called out.

A tap on the window of the den captured his attention, and behind the glass William motioned for him to come inside. Jeb nodded and walked in the house, traipsing through the parlor and into his friend's room.

William was standing next to his desk, waiting for him, and Jeb told him how he'd gone out to the mine to see what was what, and how the drill operators wanted compensation for work that involved manual labor rather than the use of magic.

The use of magic.

For the first time since last night, his attention was brought back to the fact that his own ability to use magic seemed to be slipping away.

He paused for a moment in his narration, and William looked at him quizzically, waiting. Jeb was suddenly tempted to tell him about the strange and gradual diminution of his power. He looked into William's face and knew that his friend would understand, that he might even be able to come up with a solution for it. He was about to broach the subject, but then he heard the front door open and close, heard heels on wood, heard Isabella's throaty voice ask if either of them wanted anything to drink, and decided against it. The situation was probably only temporary. He was wrong to panic. His magic would probably come back on its own. Hell, for all he knew, this was a natural occurrence.