Last Exit

by Catie Rhodes

  Tubby leaned forward in his seat, gaze steady on Linus. “What’s the catch?”

  “They’ll want payment,” Linus said.

  “Do you know what they’ll want?” Paying them worried me. These beings asked for things that would keep someone connected to them. I didn’t want that.

  Linus flushed. “In the past, I’ve traded them peyote buttons and high grade marijuana. Or methamphetamine.”

  “What kinda stuff do you ask them in exchange for the dope?” Tubby still stared at Linus, almost menacing in his seriousness.

  Linus let out a sigh. “Nothing as big as what you’re about to ask.”

  Tubby turned to me. “I say no. Let’s do our own thing.”

  We had no time for that. Oscar would be back. It was just a question of when.

  I met Linus’s gaze. “I’ll do it. When do we leave?”

  “Now.” The older man stood from behind the desk, went to a closet, and took out a thin jacket. “Ride together or you two follow me?”

  “We’ll follow you.” Tubby stood.

  Linus saw us out the front door and disappeared back inside the house to get his car out of the garage. I followed Tubby out to the Cutlass.

  “He’s gonna get us into trouble,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Then you don’t have to go with me. Linus will take me. You can either go back to Gaslight City or to where Cecil and my family are.” I stopped a few feet from Tubby’s car.

  Tubby swung around and rushed into my face, shaking one bony finger. “The fuck you think this is, girl? Date night with Sheriff Dean? I ain’t just walking off and leaving you to whatever monsters this Linus feller has lined up.” He leaned so close our noses brushed. “We friends. I stay until it’s over.”

  A lump rose in my throat. Tubby wasn’t perfect, but there wasn’t another one like him.

  I nodded my understanding and tried to explain. “We have to do this. Oscar will be back. The next attack might kill us.”

  Tubby stilled for several seconds. “You’re right.”

  He got into the car and started it. The door to the garage began to rise. My RV could have fit inside it twice. Linus backed a deep green Lexus onto the street and led the way out of his fancy subdivision. The guard had a look of relief on his face as we passed his shack.

  11

  We left the city and drove west, into the great wide empty. Linus Bramwell drove like the old man he was, but that didn’t bother me. After living and riding with Tanner for several months, not riding with someone who drove like he was racing for a checkered flag was a nice break.

  I spent the time on the phone, first with Cecil, then with Hannah.

  “This place is weird,” she hissed. “Everybody’s huddled up and whispering, but nobody will tell me what’s up. Where are you and Tub?”

  Hannah was calling him Tub now? When had that happened?

  “Somewhere Linus Bramwell knows. He said these people deal in information, and they aren’t human.” I hoped this didn’t turn into a shit show but sort of knew it would.

  Hannah made a worried humming sound. “You know how those beings are. They all want something.”

  “I don’t have much to take. Not even my dignity.” My night of passion with Wade had dampened that part of me I’d worked so hard to build up, took me right back to tramping around for a night of carnal satisfaction that left me feeling empty and lonelier the next day.

  “What are you not telling me?” Hannah’s voice dropped to a near whisper. “Did something happen with Wade?”

  Everything. But I couldn’t talk about it with Tubby next to me. My tryst with Wade had made Tubby feel like a pile of monkey poop. He was a true friend and didn’t deserve that.

  “I’ll take that silence as a yes. I’ll also take it to mean it’s over now.” She muttered something under her breath.

  “What’d you say?” I wanted to get angry, to let that hissing wildcat that had controlled so much of my life out to play.

  “I said, ‘I’m not too surprised.’ Wade Hill has a big heart, but lives under a cloud of self-destruction.” Her voice had the flat tone it always took on when she remembered her tenure as a Six Gun Revolutionaries groupie.

  Not for the first time, I tried to imagine what she’d seen Wade do, what he’d said to her. Just to know him from an outside point of view. I swallowed the questions. Hannah might say stuff I didn’t want to hear.

  The trauma she’d suffered had changed her, had taken away the lighthearted kindness she’d given away the way some people drop pennies into the tray next to a gas station cash register. This new Hannah told the truth, even the hurtful truth.

  Tubby’s voice cut into my thoughts. “That Hannah? We’re going right past where she is. She wanna join us?”

  I thought it over before I said anything. Asking Hannah to come would put her in whatever danger Tubby and I were walking into, but this new fierceness she possessed might help us get out. That made up my mind.

  “Tubby says we’re going right past where you are. Want us to pick you up?” I glanced at Tubby to find him grinning. Interesting.

  Hannah’s lighter scraped as she lit a cigarette, and she inhaled. “Yeah. There’s a farm road about a mile from here. I’ll meet you there.” She rattled off the road number.

  I called Linus to let him know what we were doing. Ten minutes later, we picked up Hannah. True to her word, she stood on the roadside, purse slung over her shoulder, red hair blowing in blustery wind. Tubby swung to the roadside, got out, and held the front seat down for her. She took his hand as she climbed in. Even more interesting.

  “Smells like blood and death in here.” She tossed her purse on the seat next to her and rifled for her smokes.

  “What did my family say about you leaving?” I twisted in the seat, earning a howl of pain from my still tender midsection.

  Hannah watched with interest but didn’t ask how I was. She wasn’t that woman any longer. You either lived, or you didn’t.

  “I didn’t tell ’em. They’re now having a big powwow about the Wanderer.” The hard lines around her mouth deepened with her words. “Anybody who doesn’t have Gregg blood is out.”

  “What do they think they can do?” Nobody could talk chthonic beings into doing things they didn’t want to do. You either bargained or accepted their decision. Were they bargaining? Surely not. None of them were that foolish.

  “They’re just scared…” Hannah trailed off and leaned forward, her brows rumpling, and pointed.

  Linus had pulled into a driveway with a closed gate. Lined up on the fence posts were animal skulls. Somehow I just knew we were in the right place.

  A very white-skinned man with a crop of ginger hair on his chest strolled out, opened the gate, and motioned us through. This guy looked like a bad album cover from the 1970s. He wore his hair short on the top and sides but long in the back. His jeans hung almost to his pubic bone and belled around his ankles.

  “Dear God,” Hannah whispered as we passed.

  I looked to see what she meant. Ginger Chest Hair wore a big smile, showing off a mouth overcrowded with pointed teeth. Oh dear.

  We passed through some of the fragrant juniper trees native to the Texas Hill Country, rolling slowly down the rough rock and dirt driveway.

  “Peri Jean, look back.” Hannah’s voice carried a note of urgency.

  Ginger Chest Hair jogged behind our two-car caravan, still smiling that creepy smile. The hair on the back of my neck rustled and stiffened. What had Linus gotten us into?

  Tubby tilted his head to watch the man in the rearview mirror. “Got my .45 and bullets, it goes bad.”

  “I’ve got my Walther PPK,” Hannah said, never taking her eyes off our pursuer.

  Great. We were going down like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

  The trees ended abruptly and opened up to a line of three houses. All three of the houses made Wade’s converted storage shed look fancy, with their uneven porches, peeling paint, and sagging
roofs.

  A thick woman wearing too-tight pants came out holding a rifle of some sort. Her dirty blonde hair spread down her waist in greasy clumps. She walked toward our car, muffin top jiggling over her pants.

  Linus got out of his car and said something to her.

  She smiled, showing a mouthful of the same jagged teeth as the man who opened the gate, the one who now stood a short distance behind our cars, grinning. The two must have been family of some form or fashion.

  Another man, also shirtless, with dark, swarthy skin and greasy brown hair came out of the center cabin. Right behind him followed a woman who would have been normal looking if she hadn’t been wearing tight jeans and nothing else but a pink bra. They crowded around Linus.

  Linus motioned us to get out of the car. Tubby, Hannah, and I glanced at each other.

  Tubby said, “We here. Ain’t much else to do.”

  That got me to open the door and climb out. I halfway expected the weirdos to run over like a pack of ignorant yard dogs, excited to see someone different. To my relief, they just stared.

  Linus motioned me to stand next to him. “This is the young lady I told you about.”

  The swarthy guy, who’d been playing with a pair of black lacquered sticks, which I now saw were pieces of a fishing rod, came over to greet me.

  I held out one hand, but he crowded into my space, sniffing my neck. Tubby let out a menacing growl and put one hand on the butt of the pistol tucked into his pants.

  The guy drew back and spoke to the others. “She’s what Bramwell said. Witch. Maybe more, just like Pappy.”

  It was then I saw his teeth for what they were. A scream built in my chest, but I knew better than to let it out. The man who’d sniffed me had two rows of teeth, all jagged with pointed ends, just like shark teeth. I held as still as I could. Hannah crowded close, one hand shoved in her purse, fingers probably wrapped around her pistol.

  Linus said, “Peri Jean is having trouble with…”

  “Oscar Rivera.” The thick woman moved closer, rifle still propped on her shoulder like a soldier getting ready to march.

  “We done heard.” The guy with the ginger chest hair had crept up on us without a sound and now brushed past, his skin warm and rough against mine.

  “What you want from us?” The thick woman came forward. She shifted the rifle to lay flat across her shoulders and propped her arms on it. She hadn’t shaved her armpits.

  “Oscar separated his soul from his body in an immortality bargain…” I began.

  “We know about that too,” the skinny woman with the pink bra cut in.

  “Yep. He left it at the final gateway. Near the last river.” Ginger Chest Hair came close for another sniff of me. It took everything I had not to flinch away.

  “Not anymore,” I said. “I made a mistake and gave him power to move it. Now it’s somewhere else.”

  Ginger Chest Hair cocked his head, more curious than shocked.

  “And you need to know where that soul now is,” said the swarthy man.

  I nodded.

  “We can probably…” Ginger Chest Hair began.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” the thick woman cut him off. “You’re not giving away our services just because she’s pretty and you want to impress her. Only way these women would touch you with a ten-foot pole is if you forced ’em. Then they’d scream the whole time.”

  Hannah stood a little straighter, the arm inside her purse tense. She’d go out fighting. I would too.

  “We can pay.” Linus leaned over and dug in his car. “I have more peyote buttons and some medical grade marijuana.”

  Pink Bra came forward to stare into Linus’s car, as though checking to see what else he had. She sniffed the air, nose wrinkling. Just when I thought she’d agree, she said, “That ain’t enough. We want more’n that.”

  “Yep. This is big shit.” Thick Woman hadn’t moved from her spot.

  It was big shit all right. Big enough that these people might decide to turn us away. Now that I saw them—and smelled them—I wouldn’t protest too much. Maybe it would be better just to get in our cars and get out of here. If it wasn’t too late.

  “Linus, we might be asking too much of these nice people,” I said from my position of safety between Hannah and Tubby.

  “Didn’t say we couldn’t find out.” Pink Bra made her way toward me, double rows of teeth flashing as she spoke. “Just saying it’s worth more’n some dope.”

  “What do you want?” It might not be worth it.

  “Wanna know who you are, is one thing.” She lunged forward to sniff at my neck, her cold nose rubbing against my skin.

  I jumped away, heart hammering and adrenaline pumping. “Who I am?”

  “You smell like the other side.” Pink Bra sniffed near my armpits.

  I backed away, muscles jumping with revulsion and fear. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They surrounded Tubby, Hannah, and me before we could take even a step toward the Cutlass. Ginger Chest Hair leapt forward, grabbed me, and dragged me away from Tubby and Hannah. Hannah stormed after me, gun already drawn.

  “I’ll kill you, I swear.” She jacked the slide and chambered a bullet.

  “You kill him, and I’ll kill you.” Thick Woman pointed her rifle at Hannah.

  Swarthy rushed forward and put a small, sharp-looking knife to Tubby’s throat. My old friend went still but showed no other sign of fear. Linus, both hands up, scooted away from the fight.

  “Stop it, all of you.” My voice had more than a little Priscilla Herrera in it.

  They all froze and turned to stare at me. Tubby took the opportunity to elbow Swarthy in the stomach. Swarthy, caught by surprise, lowered the knife for an instant. It was all Tubby needed. He hurried to me, hand on the butt of his pistol. I held up both hands.

  “Tell me what you want in exchange for the information. If I can pay it, I will.” These people—or whatever they were—could save us some time.

  “Like my sister said, we wanna know who you are and what you are.” Thick Woman still had her rifle pointed at Hannah.

  “I’m a spirit medium and a witch. I’m descended from the Gregorius Witch.” A little pride tingled in my chest when I said those words, as did some curiosity.

  The two men, Swarthy and Ginger Chest Hair, stared with open desire. Pink Bra and Thick Woman watched them, anger growing on their faces.

  “You know what? I can’t stand girls like you.” Thick Woman set down her rifle and took slow steps toward me.

  I backed away.

  “You’re the kind all the men want. The kind they’ll walk away from a woman like me just to have a chance with.” Her eyes heated with hate. “And you run around acting like it ain’t a thing.”

  I kept backing up, testing my strength with each step. “So what do you want to do? Cut off my face?”

  She snorted like a pig and rolled her eyes. “I wanna see what you got other than that pretty skin and that face.”

  No way. She outweighed me by at least fifty pounds. Hurt as I was, she’d beat me like a dirty rug.

  “Not with your fists, idiot, with magic.” She pulled a crooked wand from her back pocket, polished it with her hand, and pointed it at me.

  I stood there, both hands up, feeling like the world’s biggest idiot. I had no idea how to fight like this. Did we shoot spells at each other? I didn’t have any prepared. My witching supplies had burned up in the Snake Creek Hotel. Lost forever.

  “You want to know where your enemy’s soul is so you can beat him?” Ginger Chest Hair spoke up. “This is the only way.”

  My stomach woke up then, crackling with electric fear. The muscles still ached and trembled from my healing injury. I wasn’t in shape for this. But I was out of options. I had to fight Thick Woman with magic if I wanted to get the jump on Oscar. I tried to agree to the duel. Nothing came out but a weak croak.

  Thick Woman snickered. That pissed me off. Anger was better than fear any day and twice as good on Sundays.r />
  I cleared my throat and spat. “What do we do? How does it work?”

  “We magic each other until one of us hollers for mercy.” Her wand dangled from one hand. Magic radiated off it. What kind of damage could she do with that thing?

  I nodded. “Fine. Let’s do it.”

  Fear of losing took over my mind. I tried to plan, tried to center myself to call a circle.

  Priscilla’s voice spoke up in my head. You don’t need spells. You’re descended from the Gregorius Witch. You have a raven familiar.

  Before her words even faded, a fluttering heat moved in my chest. My consciousness moved backward until I was staring inside myself. The mantle glowed red from behind the scar tissue spell. The sphere of magic pulsed, expanding and contracting the now-thin membrane separating me from the full measure of my power.

  Wisps of it leaked out of the scar tissue. They connected with the slam of an electric shock. The black opal heated against my chest, magnifying the magic. Each pulse jolted my entire body.

  Thick Woman raised her wand like a pistol, one she obviously knew the ins and outs of using as well as she knew her name, and said, “Burn her down, baby.”

  The fire started at my feet, not more than a prickle of discomfort. Thick Woman stretched out her wand arm and bared her rows of teeth, straining to push as much of her power at me as she could. Blackness slipped over her eyes, making her look more inhuman than ever.

  “Burn her,” she rasped.

  In an instant, the prickle in my feet turned to unbearable, invisible flame. I jumped and screamed. The fire went out.

  Thick Woman dropped her wand, giggling. Pink Bra joined her. Ginger Chest Hair and Swarthy cawed out screechy laughter. They danced a quick hoedown. Swarthy actually leapt up and clicked his heels together.

  “You shut up,” Tubby yelled at them, pulling his gun.

  Hannah gave me a puzzled glance. Of course she didn’t understand what had happened. Thick Woman had burned me from the inside out. Made me jump around and squeal like an idiot.