Remy glanced down at Susan’s hand often as he drove, to make sure he was still on target. We had passed out of the town proper and were now heading towards the mountains. After a few minutes we drove past the Coachman’s Rest. The lot was empty under a thick blanket of snow, the building festooned with yellow police tape. I wondered if it would ever open again and found that I didn’t really care.
“It’s going to be tough going back, isn’t it?” Susan said. “Now that you know.”
“No,” I said. “It’ll be all too easy.”
“I can tell when someone’s lying,” Remy said.
“I thought your magic wouldn’t work on me.”
“I’m not using magic.”
“Turn here,” Susan said, pointing up a small dirt road.
Remy obeyed. The unpaved road jounced me around more than I liked, but I didn’t complain. We went about a mile up the road, passing occasional homes and a single farm, before he pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. I looked over Susan’s shoulder. The straw pointed to the right, straight up the side of the mountain.
We left the warmth of the car for the bite of mountain air. The temperature was climbing. It was in the high thirties, so I opened my jacket. Remy Danaher, accustomed to Louisiana heat, shivered in their parkas as we went to the back of the truck. Susan seemed perfectly comfortable despite the less than temperate climate.
“How are you going to kill this thing?” I asked.
“His name is Oliver,” Remy reminded me.
“You call him what you want, I’ll call him what I want. Just tell me how you’re going to kill it.”
“Fire is the most reliable method,” Susan said.
“I’m partial to decapitation,” Remy said. He had gone around to the back of the truck and opened a black industrial lock box that was fixed to the frame. From inside he drew a large, medieval style axe. Medieval in style but modern in craft, made from a polished black metal that gleamed in the moonlight, with delicate looking script carved into the cutting edge. It looked heavy as hell, but he shouldered it easily enough. A thoughtful look crossed his face, and he handed it to me.
I took the axe by the grip and almost dropped it. The thing must have weighed twenty pounds. “Jesus,” I groaned, almost straining my shoulder to give it back to him.
“It’s enchanted. Light as a pillow to everyone in the world but you. Makes it easier to swing. I haven’t yet found the monster that could take losing its head.” He was looking at me like I was a challenging puzzle he’d just come one step closer to solving.
“Burning’s better,” Susan chimed. She was pulling on a thick pair of leather gloves that didn’t come off any assembly line. When she turned them over I could see iron pentacles had been worked into the palms. “The fire purifies, and ashes can’t regenerate.”
“True, but name one monster that’ll agree to stand still while you burn it.”
Susan reached into the lock box and pulled out a thick nylon belt. I could see a dozen flares in webbed pockets lining it. Next, she drew a sleek flare gun and slipped it into a waiting holster in her belt. “Fire,” she said.
“Axe,” Remy answered.
I slouched against the bumper of the truck. My arm was now throbbing, and their Nick and Nora impersonations weren’t helping. “So, what do I use?”
“You use us,” Remy said.
“Remy and I can summon and bend energy, and we have spelled weapons that we can use. You have no magic yourself, and apparently even magical items become normal in your hands. You stay between us and let us do the work. You’re only here to watch, remember.”
Grudgingly, I agreed. I wished for a moment that I had even my service piece with me, then I remembered how well it had served me last time. The Danahers double-checked their gear, and when they were done the three of us stepped into the woods.
It started snowing again as we walked. Giant, powder-soft flakes wafted between the trees like errant whims, the absence of wind allowing them to drift about without guidance. They made whispery sounds when they finally settled on something uncovered – a leaf, tree bark, an insulated orange jacket.
“There’s a reason hunters wear these things in the woods,” I said, indicating the jacket. “They stand out. He’ll see us coming a mile away.”
“No, he won’t,” Remy said. “Wendigos see in infrared.”
“Then we shouldn’t be here at all.” I waved at the snow. “Out here, in thirty-degree air? We’re basically lighthouses.”
“We can’t afford to wait any longer,” Susan said. “These storms have kept him pinned down in this general area, but the weather’s been clearing up more every day. If he becomes able to travel the only way we’ll be able to track him is by the trail of bodies.”
I walked in silence, digesting this. My arm was throbbing, and I was starting to sweat. Whether it was too much effort after too much damage or the fever was climbing again I couldn’t tell. Didn’t seem to matter which, the result was the same.
We tromped deeper into the woods. Well, I tromped. Remy and Susan didn’t so much as sink into the snow, walking on top of powdered drifts without leaving as much as a footprint. Remy was holding his axe in a light, two-handed grip. Susan used her right hand for balance, leaning against the trees as she passed, while she was steadying out her left palm and the gently spinning straw it carried.
“How will we know when we’re close?” I asked.
“Tough to tell,” Susan answered. “Usually you tell from the dead things around it. Trees, plants, small animals. The smell of their victims is a giveaway, too, but in the cold and snow it’ll be hard to spot the clues.”
“Plus, they can be excellent hiders. Depends on the wendigo. Some of them like to go out on an active hunt. Some like to ambush from cover. They’re kind of like spiders in that regard. They’re all very talented at setting up traps, even using a little bit of magical talent sometimes. Some monsters are like that.”
Another quarter mile, and we were all sweating now. The straw kept us going in the right direction. I wondered if they had another trick to find our way back to the road. Suddenly Remy’s right arm shot up, fist clenched. We stopped short, looking.
We were ten feet away from a pair of birch trees. Dead leaves and snow had been windblown against their trunks, settling against it in a small drift. The Danahers looked at it expectantly. I looked at Susan’s palm. The straw was pointing straight at the small drift between two snow-piled trees.
“He’s in there,” Susan whispered.
“In where?” I asked.
“In that cave,” Remy whispered, annoyed.
I looked at the trees. “What cave?”
They had a moment to share a panicked glance, then the small snow bank at the foot of the birch trees exploded and a slender, nightmarish shape smashed into us.
We flew in three different directions. I rolled awkwardly back down the hill, jarring my arm and making me cry out. I flattened myself out to stop the roll and scrambled to my feet.
When I was standing I saw the Danahers had joined the battle. Remy was swinging the axe like a lumberjack on speed, always missing by inches as the monster sprung about through the trees. Susan, still lying on her side, had her palms out towards the wendigo. Whenever it gained some small distance from Remy the iron pentacles in the palms glowed red and everything around the monster instantly caught fire, forcing it to move closer to Remy again. When it did she stopped, unable to use her weapons with her husband in such close proximity.
I clawed my way back up the hill, amazed at what I was witnessing. Keeping an eye on the monster I moved towards Susan, who still hadn’t regained her feet. Once I was close she saw me coming.
“Ian, get back!”
At the sound of her voice the wendigo’s head snapped around, noticing me for the first time. It moved through the trees in a blur, heading straight for us. Susan held both arms out and a row of trees burst into flame as if they’d been coated with napalm, and for a se
cond the beast was lost to view behind a curtain of fire. I reached down and hauled Susan to her feet while Remy ran our way, holding the axe in a two-hand grip.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem…”
The monster came out of nowhere, charging around the flaming trees only a few feet away from where Susan and I were standing. It lunged at us, claws grasping, and before I could stop her Susan flung herself in between me and the monster.
Her back was to me, but I could see the wendigo land in front of her, both arms lashing out, and I saw her body jerk as the claws stabbed deep into her torso. Somewhere in the distance I heard Remy’s scream, but Susan didn’t make a sound. The monster’s arms pulled wide in a single, violent spasm, and a horrific spray of blood and flesh flew from them, a shocking contrast against the virgin snow. Without a sound, her body fell in an untidy heap between it and me.
We stood facing each other, the monster and I, with Susan’s body on the ground beneath us. It looked at me for a moment, then down at the blood gushing from her ruined body. It licked its lips.
With an agonized cry Remy charged, the axe overhead. He swung without forethought, and with alarming ease the monster caught the shaft of the axe, twisted it from Remy’s grip and hurled it into the woods. Then it grabbed the man by the shirt and the belt, picked him up as if he were a child, turned him sideways in midair and brutally smashed his back against a tall, old oak.
Then it did it again.
And again.
Finally it tossed the unconscious, broken man aside, where he landed in a tangle of unnatural angles. Through it all I’d stood there, shocked beyond thought or action, unable to process what was happening. Even when the monster turned back to me I couldn’t move, couldn’t get my thoughts to line up. Everything was frozen in my mind, time had ground to a stop. All that my mind was producing was images, pictures. Jason. Zack. Susan, alive. Susan, dead. Remy.
Becky.
Time started moving again, as I came up with a last, desperate plan. Even as the monster turned I lunged at Susan’s body, grasping frantically at her belt. The wendigo walked forward now, contemptuously slow, seeming to savor my panic. When it was only a few feet away I finally grasped my prize and pulled it free, dropping back into a kneeling shooting stance.
The flare gun’s muzzle pointed directly at the monster’s chest.
I fired, and the explosion at such close range was a nightmare. Blinded, face scorched, I fell backwards, thoroughly stunned. Lying in the cool snowbank I shook my head ferociously, clearing the cobwebs, and sat up.
The monster, the wendigo, Oliver, was completely engulfed in flame, hissing like a steam engine as it tried to put out the fire with its claws. It was burning like a Roman candle, sparks flying off every which way, and as I watched its movements began to visibly slow. It staggered, stumbled, rolling in the snow in an attempt to smother the fire. It was too much, though; the body burned faster than the snow could quench it. Finally it fell backwards into the blazing trees, twitching. Then it just lay there and burned.
I sat there, coughing, head pounding. I grabbed a handful of snow and wiped my face and neck with it, soothing the heat left from the flare’s blast. As I tried to stand I heard a new noise.
A man crying.
Remy was dragging himself through the snow, clawing frantically at the powder, his legs dragging uselessly behind him. His face was twisted, distorted by agony as he crawled over buried logs and through sodden heaps of leaves. He didn’t stop moving, relentlessly forging ahead, fueled by superhuman willpower and crying out with each movement with a pain that sank far, far deeper than his shattered spine.
I staggered to my feet and moved to help him, but with a savage cry and a violent slash of his hand he sent a torrent of snow crashing into me with the force of an avalanche. I went flying down the hill, crashing to stop twenty feet away from where I started.
Coughing, spitting out snow and bits of leaves, I fought my way out of the pile of debris and rose to a sitting position. Up the hill from me Remy had finally reached Susan and was draped over her body, cradling her lifeless form against him. His racking sobs echoed through the forest before being swallowed by the pitiless winter.
“I’m sorry this happened,” a flat voice said next to me, startling me. I lurched to my feet and found Mr. Pale standing there, silhouetted by the drifting snowflakes. None of them settled on him.
“We have to help him,” I said, beginning the long trudge up the hill.
“Leave him be,” Mr. Pale said quietly. I stopped.
“I’ve called for transportation already,” he said. “The Danahers will be taken in for treatment.”
“But you can fix them, right?”
Silence for a moment as Mr. Pale focused his attention on Remy. At least, it seemed like he focused on him. Even now, in the middle of nowhere with not a light around for miles, he didn’t remove his sunglasses. I wondered if he could.
“He’ll live. Whether that’s saving him or not only he can say.”
The sobs were fading now. Remy was crying softly, his face buried in Susan’s chest.
“You can’t cast a spell or something on him? Isn’t that how this whole thing works?”
“His back is broken. There is no magic strong enough to repair that kind of damage. We can save his life. That’s it.”
“Susan,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
Mr. Pale shook his head. “I’m sorry. She was a good woman.”
It seemed like hours before the others showed up. They melted out of the shadows, three of them, short and squat and thicker than seemed right. They wore black BDU’s, and each carried a heavy looking bag. They settled in over the Danahers, working busily, their jerky movements just off of human. One of them waved a short chunk of rock over Remy, who instantly stopped moving. Two of them then hefted Remy, whose body was as rigid as a railroad spike, between them and carried him into a shadow. The third lifted Susan’s body with a gentleness I wouldn’t have expected given its bulk, then they, too disappeared, leaving me alone with Mr. Pale.
“Are you able to drive?”
I remembered Remy leaving the keys in the truck. Now that the fight was over the adrenaline that had been keeping my fatigue at bay was ebbing and I was tired right down to the bone, more tired than I thought it was possible to be. The winter cold was sleeping in and my left arm was pulsing horribly. “I’ll manage.”
“Good. Go home and pack.”
“I intend to. Wait a minute. Pack what?”
“Your things. I’ll send a car to pick you up. I’d take you with me, but I think we’ve proven that you can’t travel the same way I do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re coming with us, of course. I watched you tonight. You did well. You’re brave, competent and… unique. I am satisfied that you will be able to handle the job. Your interview is over.”
“What interview? What job? What are you talking about?”
He heaved a tired sigh. “There are many strange things in this world, Ian. Some would do terrible things if given the chance. These creatures are predators, and their prey are the normal, everyday folk who don’t even know that they are there. Things like Oliver, and many that are worse. To them, humans are cattle. Less than cattle. Humans have no defense against them. Unless we provide it.”
He looked at me, and I could feel the weight of his stare through the sunglasses. “You want to help people. That’s why you put that uniform on. You can do that by staying here, going back to your police job. You can point them through traffic, write accident reports for insurance companies. Maybe you’ll even deliver a baby once, or catch a mugger. All these things will help people, but you have it in you to do so much more. To balance the scales for people who can’t do it themselves. To shield them from the terrors they don’t even believe it, let alone defend against. That’s why you’re here tonight. And, unless I’ve misjudged you completely, that’s what you’ll continue to do.”
He regarded me silently, then he leaned in close to me, his colorless face mere inches from mine. His head dipped as his hands rose, smoothly removing his sunglasses. Then he looked back at me.
His eyes were solid white, without pupils or irises. They hummed with a necrotic pulse, gelatinous and pulsating, with an almost palpable energy seeping below their surface like a drowner not quite ready to float. I screamed at the sight, repulsed, horrified. I kept on screaming as he donned the glasses and gave me his back, striding down the hill, tossing a final comment over one shoulder before he vanished.
“Congratulations. You’re hired.”
Twenty
The house is dying, and all I can do is lay there.
Waves of heat lash the air, distorting my vision even further, and the burning timbers fill what’s left of the air with hideous groans. My world turns to ash around me, choking me with soot and smoke. Lost in the confusion, still reeling from the blow to the head, unable to breathe and unable to even tell which way was up, I can’t even tell where safety is, let alone try to fight my way there. I lay there, sprawled on my back, with only one realization firm in my mind.
My life has finally caught up with me. I’m going to die.
I’m so divorced from reality that I don’t feel the hands on me at first. Only when they slide under my arms and I’m lifted hard enough to raise my head off the floor do I begin to catch on to what was happening.
“Jamie,” I croak. “I thought you were dead.”
One of the grips loosens and I feel a gentle cuff on the back of my head. Then the ghost re-secures his grip and begins to haul me bodily away from the fire. And all this time I didn’t think he could lift anything heavier than a teapot. With a jolt Jamie props me up against the front door and I manage to roll my knees underneath me. I rise on them, taking stock of my situation.
By now the entire living room is engulfed, the walls painted in fire and the ceiling a sheet of roiling flame. My collection of mementos is falling victim along with the house. My Arctic landscape is already gone, consumed by the sickly green fire, and I can see the wall frame holding the magic wand I’d taken from the first sorcerer I’d taken down blacken and pop from the heat. I hope that won’t cause any magical leakage. “Jamie, my hands. Can you untie them?”
Swim Like Hell: A Visit to Superstition Bay Page 21
