The Ledberg Runestone

by Patrick Donovan

  I knew who it was.

  Bec.

  Lysone lifted my head again and I could hear the blood, my blood, spatter against the stone.

  She’d killed me. My body just hadn’t caught up to that fact just yet.

  And then I had a thought.

  I had no idea if it would work, but I figured I was dead already, so what the hell. I touched my broken hand to her face, to one of the bleeding stings, and put forth a final, last ditch effort of focused intent.

  Shamans have long been regarded as healers, able to cure maladies, both physical and spiritual. Anyone in the know knew that we could take another person’s pain, injuries, and ailments into ourselves. It’s how Gretchen had been able to heal my father. For obvious reasons, it wasn’t something I did often. I was too self-centered to suffer for someone else. What most people in the know weren’t aware of was where we could place that pain. With effort, we could take those same injuries, those same maladies and transfer them to someone else. Every single punch I’d taken. Every single kick, cut, bruise, fracture, and tiny tidbit of nuclear pain I’d received over the last few days, I gave every last one of them to Lysone.

  Almost immediately I was greeted with a feeling that I can only compare to an opiate high. It was like floating, like warmth, pain simply sliding off my body. I could hear the sound of bones snapping, both back together and apart. Somewhere, Lysone was screaming. I could hear Kari screaming, too. The sound of blood stopped.

  Lysone’s face, where my own was cut, split open. She dropped me, and I could see her hand, the fingers snapping back at odd angles even as I felt my own knit and snap back into place.

  After that, images came in flashes. There was Lysone falling next to me, her eyes open, lips slightly parted, a small line of blood sliding down over her cheek. I felt a building of power, heat against my chest where I was holding the tablet, and then something cold. A frigid, arctic cold spreading out over my chest. I saw the sky, a lance of lightning the same color as the energy Lysone had been manipulating, shoot towards the sky.

  I heard words, far away and distant. Kari’s voice.

  “You did it. You’ve set him free.”

  After that, everything went dark.

  Chapter 37

  When I came to, I was in the hospital. Again.

  I was alone, the lights were dim, and outside a pale full moon was casting bars of bluish white light over the bed. I laid there like that for a long time, staring up at the ceiling tiles. The only bit of pain I experienced was the dull throbbing in my leg, a gentle thudding ache that, since it had been with me for years, was almost comforting.

  I wasn’t sure what time it was when the nurse walked in, but the sun was starting to break over the mountains.

  “Nice to see you’re awake,” she said, her accent decidedly Northern.

  “Uh, what day is it?”

  She pointed towards a little white board stuck on the wall. I read it.

  “Thursday?”

  “Mhm.”

  I read the board again.

  “So that would make you Amy?”

  “In the flesh. How are you feeling?”

  “Tired. Very, very tired.”

  “Makes sense, you were dehydrated, exhausted. When was the last time you slept?”

  “Day or two,” I said.

  “Must’ve been a tough couple of days,” she said, checking a few more things around the room.

  “You have no idea.”

  “Alright Mr. Heywood. Your wife and in-laws are in the hall. I’ll send them in.”

  She was out the door before I had a chance to voice my rather sudden surprise, or extraneous objections, for that matter.

  A moment later, Mama Duvalier walked in with a girl, who, until she walked in the room, I thought had been a corpse. For a dead woman, Maryse looked like she was in pretty good shape. I sat up on the bed, trying to make as much distance between myself and Mama Duvalier as I could. Adrenaline hit my system and the heart rate monitor started bleating out a staccato repetition.

  Mama Duvalier and her daughter didn’t seem the least bit perturbed. Mama grabbed a chair and slid it over to the foot of the bed, sat down, and lit up a Marlboro Light. I had a strange feeling that the World Health Organization, the Surgeon General, and the American Cancer Society could all walk in at this very instant, see that, and not a single one of them would have the stones to tell her to put it out. Maryse leaned against the chair at her right shoulder.

  “You’re supposed to be dead. I saw it,” I said, eyeing Maryse.

  She gave me a look that told me I was absolutely insane.

  “You ain’t figured it all out yet, have ya?” Mama Duvalier asked.

  “Uh, not exactly?”

  Mama Duvalier sighed.

  “You’re pretty, I’ll give you that,” Maryse chimed in. “You ain’t very smart, but you’re pretty.”

  Mama Duvalier took a slow drag off her cigarette.

  “Baby,” Mama Duvalier said, turning over her shoulder to look at Maryse. “You mind openin’ a window?”

  Maryse nodded, walked over to the window, and pushed it open. Air, far too cold for the season, rushed in. My skin broke out in goosebumps.

  “Feel that?” she asked. “How cold it is?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Mhm,” she said, as if that should explain it all. Obviously, it didn’t.

  “What?”

  “Just the start. You kicked off something big,” Mama Duvalier said.

  “Such as?”

  “I ain’t rightly sure, honestly. Big, whatever it is. You can feel it in the air, and I ain’t just talking about a cold snap.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You know that girl you were having a tussle with?” Mama Duvalier continued.

  “Lysone?”

  “Yeah, but that ain’t her name.”

  “Okay? I’ll bite. Who was she?”

  “She was a housewife, from Maryland. Been missing for a while. That other one, she played you.”

  I sat there for a moment, staring between the two of them, letting the pieces fall where they may in my head. Finally, the light bulb went off. Maryse wasn’t dead. Lysone’s aura. The stone’s reaction to Lysone’s death. Kari standing over me when it was all said and done. Those last words before I passed out. Kari had been the one pulling the strings the entire time. She gave Lysone the illusion of power. Killing Maryse, that had been another bit of trickery. I wasn’t sure who she was, but Mama Duvalier was a match for most anyone. Kari’d cut me off from an ally that I hadn’t even considered. I didn’t know to what end. Obviously, to get the stone, but other than that I wasn’t sure of much of anything. Maybe it was the pain medication, maybe I wasn’t smart enough to see all the pieces, I had no idea. That said, I’ve been in the game long enough to know, I’d gotten played.

  “You killed that poor girl in the circle,” Mama Duvalier said, keeping her voice pitched low.

  “I finished the spell,” I said quietly.

  “Mhm.”

  “So what now?”

  “Well first off, a thank you would be nice.”

  “For?”

  “Coming and getting your sorry ass and making sure you didn’t die on the side of that damned mountain.”

  “You brought me here? How did you even…?”

  “I kept tabs on you. Wasn’t hard. Besides, you got a debt to pay off. You stole from me. Can’t have you vanishing on me.”

  Mama Duvalier stood up, snuffing out her cigarette on the arm of the chair and dropping the butt on the floor. She stood up, put her hands in the back pockets of her jeans, and stared at me.

  “We’ll talk soon enough. You get yourself better,” she said. “You got yourself in a heap of trouble, Jonah. You need to be in fighting shape, given what you’ve done.”

  “What have I done?” I asked.

  Mama Duvalier stood and turned, walking out, Maryse in tow.

  I checked myself out of the hospital the next morni
ng. I found my truck in the parking lot, just outside the emergency room door. I climbed in and sat for a few minutes, happy to be in familiar surroundings. I didn’t like the idea of being in debt, this time to someone who made the Carvers look like schoolyard bullies, but I was glad to be alive.

  The craving for a drink came a few minutes later, while I was driving through Asheville towards World Coffee. It started out as a nagging urge, but by the time I’d driven a few blocks it was a full-blown roar, tearing through my brain and consuming thoughts at random. It took an almost physical act of will to turn my truck in a direction opposite of Jack of the Wood, but I managed.

  Instead, I went home and packed a bag and grabbed another cane. For a minute, I contemplated calling Melly, but in the end decided it was better to just let that dog lie. Instead, I drove to my father’s house. It wasn’t even eight o’clock in the morning, but he was in the driveway, half buried under the hood of some old muscle car. I dropped my bag on the driveway and walked over to stand beside him, peering down at the massive eight-cylinder engine.

  He didn’t look up, perfectly content to continue tinkering with the carburetor, fine tuning with a small screwdriver.

  “Start her up,” he said, finally, shoving the screwdriver in his back pocket.

  I got in the car, and turned the key. The engine kicked over once, then roared to life. He leaned over and adjusted something else, smoothing the idle out to a dull rumble.

  “Give it some gas,” he said.

  I hit the pedal a few times, listening to the massive big block’s battle cry.

  “Alright, kill it,” he said, wiping his hands on a rag.

  I got out of the car and walked over to him.

  “You look good,” he said, eying my face. There was a trace of suspicion there, at the fresh pink scars, but whatever he was thinking, he didn’t voice it. Typical for him, really.

  “You ready to go,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “Yeah. I am.”

  He nodded once, and I saw something flash in his eyes.

  The old man was proud of me.

  Acknowledgments

  I don’t think anyone writes a book inside of a bubble, though a lot of the time us writer types like to think so. It’s a collaborative process, so it’s only fair that they get the props they deserve.

  So, here goes.

  My students, for constantly making me be better than I am. My Padawan, despite her constant reminders that I’m really not much more than a grumpy old man. My brother, Josh, who has this weird way of keeping me in check, whether I need it or not. He really is the best of all of us. Jason, who taught me more about work ethic than probably anyone. To Jonah’s first fangirl, since that at least gives me a little reassurance that at least one person will buy this. To the authors that keep inspiring me—Butcher, Hearne, Wendig, King. To my editor Mallory, and the rest of the folks at Diversion, for unprecedented levels of awesome. All the folks I didn’t get a chance to mention and all the folks that read the words I put down, you’re the awesomest.

  About the Author

  PATRICK DONOVAN is the author of the Demon Jack urban fantasy series and the Jonah Heywood urban fantasy series. He currently lives in North Carolina, where he divides his time between teaching, writing, and pursuing a doctoral degree in Special Education. On the off chance he gets a few free minutes, he enjoys fishing, a good cigar, and better coffee.

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