Widdershins (65 page)

Keep this up and it’s going to end anything but pretty, I think. I don’t know what he plans to do, but it’s painfully obvious from what happened earlier that if they go at it again, the buffalo war chief’s going to pound Joe into a lot of little pieces. Cassie’s right. There’s no need for this kind of posturing crap anymore. The army’s gone and maybe Minisino’s big and tough, but all we’ve got to do is stand together, and we can take him down. Just Jack and Joe and me, if it comes down to that.

I give Jack a meaningful look, but he shakes his head.

Let this play out
, he tells me.

C’mon, Jack
, I tell him.
He’s going to kill Joe
—
just out of spite.

You don’t know Joe like I do. He’s got resources he can call on. Ones he couldn’t use when he was trying to be diplomatic.

Diplomatic?
I repeat, remembering the things Joe told the war chief earlier.

Yeah, diplomatic. The one on one was for the benefit of the army. But now the army’s gone and Joe doesn’t have to play fair anymore. I figure he’s about to let Minisino see his real face . . .

I have no idea what Jack’s talking about, but then I look back at where the pair of them are facing off. There’s something wrong here. Minisino had towered over Joe, but now they’re about the same size. No, Joe’s bigger, and he’s still getting bigger as I watch.

I sense the crackle of power in the air—an old, dark power.

“Joe,” Raven says.

There’s a warning in his voice, but he sounds nervous, too. I look at Walker and Ayabe and they’re both backing up a little. Walker motions to the humans for them to move further back as well.

What the hell’s going on here?
I ask Jack.

Joe’s a bit of a wild card
, Jack says.
Everybody talks about him being the clown crow dog. They point at his mixed blood, like it makes him less, but it only makes him more.

I still don’t get it.

Joe’s got something old inside him, something that came down from the long ago through the mixed blood of a red dog and a black crow. Wake it up too much and you could have some serious world-shaking on your hands.

But—

Yeah, I know. Look at him most of the time and he’s just some raggedy cousin with crazy eyes. But it’s like all the old powers.

He starts counting them off on his fingers.
Raven and Ayabe here. Cody and Grandmother Toad. Old Man Hummingbird and you don’t want to forget Turtle, who bears the weight of us all. They don’t walk around with that old power hanging from them like a cloak for anybody to see, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

I remember that moment in Raven’s study, when he was suddenly
more
.

And the thing is
, Jack adds,
if Joe plays this right, he doesn’t even have to kill Minisino. He just needs to take it to where that cerva knows that he’d better be walking the straight and narrow in the future, or he’ll have
that
on his ass, looking for the reason why.

He nods with his chin, and I look over to see that Joe’s the one towering over Minisino now.

I have to give it to the cerva. He knows he’s screwed, but he’s still not backing down. Or maybe he isn’t brave. Maybe he’s just stupid, because I sure as hell would be trying to smooth things over right about now. Either that, or running like hell.

That feeling of some old, dark power’s continuing to build. It’s like we’re standing in the middle of an approaching thunderstorm that’s about to let loose a torrent of rain on the back of a swath of lightning bolts that’ll be as thick as the old redwoods back home. One of those wild storms that has no conception of friend or foe. It just takes down everything in its path.

Isn’t this . . . dangerous?
I ask Jack.

Sure it is. Why do you think Raven and Ayabe are so nervous?

But you’d think the two of them would be enough to keep Minisino in check.

Jack shrugs.
If it was only about power. But you know them. Like most of the old spirits, they just stop paying attention to the world after awhile. But Joe’s always
in
the world.
Jack shakes his head and smiles.
And you know what’s funny? He won’t even remember this when it’s over. He’ll just remember Minisino backing down
—
or at least I hope that moron’s going to back down. But that won’t stop Joe from taking that buffalo man down hard if he forgets and tries any of this crap again.

We never get to find out which way it’s going to go, because Anwatan speaks then. I guess she doesn’t know what’s going on, the way Raven and Ayabe do, or the way I do now, since Jack’s just explained it to me. She’s been standing there like her father and the humans, knowing that something bad could be coming down, but not knowing exactly what. And since no one’s speaking up, I guess she decides it’s up to her to defuse what looks like a real bad situation.

“There’s something else,” she says.

For a moment it seems as though no one’s going to listen to her. Then slowly Joe changes again. He’s back to his own size and turns from Minisino to look at Anwatan. None of us seem to know we’ve been holding our breath until we let it out in a collective sigh. There’s some foot shuffling as people adjust their weight. One of the humans—I think it’s the guitar player from Lizzie’s band—coughs.

“What’s that, darling?” Joe says, sounding more like Cody than himself.

I guess it’s the widening of her eyes that warns him. I never saw it coming, and it seems no one else was looking either. Only Anwatan. But we all see it now: there’s Minisino taking a swing at his head with a weighted club he’s pulled from his belt.

Joe turns, but he’s not quick enough. The business end of that club catches him in the back of the head—hard—and he goes down.

The rest of us aren’t much quicker than Joe in our reaction times. Cassie got out a late warning cry, but too late. The other cerva and humans don’t seem aware of what’s happening until it’s over. Raven and Ayabe stare, motionless, too surprised to immediately respond.

I understand perfectly.

There are a lot of things I don’t admire about Minisino, but the last thing I expected from him was such a cowardly attack.

Only Jack’s instincts are good. He doesn’t think, he just acts.

At the instant the club connects with Joe’s skull, a big grey coyote is already closing the distance between himself and Minisino, launching himself at the war chief’s throat. Minisino manages to turn just enough to protect his throat, but the coyote gets a hold of his shoulder and his weight throws Minisino off-balance. The two go down. Minisino closes a big hand around the coyote’s throat and raises his club.

But that’s as far as he gets.

We’ve all started forward, but Raven gets there first. He just picks Minisino up, like the big buffalo has no more weight than a child, and gives him a shake. We all hear the sharp crack as his neck snaps.

Raven drops the body and turns to Jack. The coyote’s gone and Jack gets up, brushing dirt from his clothes.

“How’s Joe?” Jack asks.

We turn to find Cassie kneeling beside him, cradling his head on her lap. She has her hand on the open wound and blood streams from between her fingers.

It might look worse than it really is, I try to tell myself. Head wounds always bleed a lot.

But his brown complexion’s got a grey cast to it and there’s a bad feeling in the air. I reach out to send him some positive thoughts, but they just dissipate in the air because there’s nothing there to receive them. Like there’s no one home.

Cassie lifts her head to look at Raven.

“Do something!” she cries.

He lifts his head and roars the word into the sky: “Healers!”

I put my hands on my ears, but it doesn’t diminish the howling call because he’s sending a thought demand that’s louder than the physical cry.

“Oh, crap,” Jack says at my side. “This doesn’t look good.”

Jilly

I make my way toward the old house
, step by reluctant step, pushing through the tall weeds, circling around the tangled thickets that are too dense for me to negotiate. I know why I’m dragging my heels. I want to get this over with, sure, but I don’t know that it’s actually going to happen—at least, not in a way that will make things any better for me. But hope springs eternal and all that, and whatever else I might be, I’m so not Quitter Girl, though right now I’m certainly Pokey Girl.

It’s hot in this field, but not like it was back on the mesa where I left the others. The air’s humid and close here. It makes my hair frizz and my skin feel damp and sticky under my clothes—in other words, typical Tyson County summer weather, which is pretty much my least favourite. But why should the weather be any more pleasant than anything else here? This whole place seems to have been designed to make me as miserable as possible, and so far—between the last visit and this one—it’s been doing a pretty good job.

But at least no one else has to suffer this time. There’ll be no mouthless Lizzie, no Geordie getting killed. No chance of Honey getting shot. Nobody else will get hurt because it’s only me in here and either I finish this, or I stay here. Either way, Del won’t be able to hurt anyone else again.

Okay, so that’s all it’s got going for it, and everything else is just a horror show, but it’s enough. And who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky. Maybe I’ll figure out how to circumvent this hold Del’s got over me. Maybe I’ll actually beat him, instead of just running away like I did when I was a kid.

But I don’t know where to start.

I will not let anyone have power over me
, Honey told me.

I know exactly what she means. Ever since I got off the street, I haven’t backed away from either a problem or a bully. It didn’t matter if I was in the hot chair, or if it was somebody else—I stood up and dealt. I made the same vow Honey holds to, and I’ve stayed true to it.

So what’s the problem here? What’s the hold Del has on me besides fueling the occasional nightmare that I still wake up from in a cold sweat? Those days—the days when I was just a kid and he was in control—are done and gone. Del’s just a fat old drunk living in some trailer park now. I know that for a fact because Raylene tracked him down a couple of years ago, looking for payback for what he’d put her through, but when she finally found him, she decided he just wasn’t worth the bother. Instead, she came away with a lost soul that needed her help—taking up the rescuing of strays just like her big sis.

So it’s not Del. It’s me.

You’re supposed to forgive yourself for thinking you were to blame for what he did to you
, Honey told me.
For thinking you deserved it.

Except I honestly don’t believe it’s that. I’m not stupid. I
know
I wasn’t to blame. I was just a little kid being hurt by someone who was supposed to be protecting me. I didn’t deserve it—no one does—and I don’t think that. So what’s to forgive?

But Honey seems to think it’s still sitting here inside me, and she’s not alone. All those healers Joe consulted, back when I first had the accident, they all said the same thing. That I have something inside me that needs to be fixed before they can help me with my physical problems.

I guess that something is this place, with Del ruling the roost. Del in control again, only amp that up a hundredfold because the old Del, the brother I grew up with, didn’t go around wielding magical powers. He was just a redneck pedophile—bad enough for any kid to deal with, of course, but nothing like what he is here.

Which brings me back to, what am I supposed to do?

If this is all in my subconscious, then I need to find some way to tell my subconscious that it’s over. Del’s not god. He’s not even the devil. He’s just a loser that
I’ve
managed to raise to these huge supernatural proportions, here, in this world that sits inside my head.

I actually have to smile then, because that gets me thinking: If this world’s inside my head, then what’s inside my head when I’m here, physically in the world inside my head? It’s a confusing piece of Escher logic—or illogic, depending on how you view that kind of thing. Me, I appreciate the odd riddling mystery it provides. It’s like holding a mirror up to a mirror where the reflections get smaller and smaller as they go on into infinity.

It’s a once upon a time, and if you can have that, then you can still have hope, because however a fairy tale turns out in the end, the once upon a time beginning at least sets you up with the hope of a happily ever after. In a world of angst and irony, that’s actually a precious thing. At least it is to my way of thinking.

How would my story go?

Something like:

Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived in an old house in the middle of the woods . . .

I realize I’ve come to a full stop at the fence between this field and the one that runs up to the back of the house. I study the windows, trying to see if there’s any movement in them. Looking for Del’s face to be staring back out at me through the dirty panes.