by Sam Witt
Joe took a swig from Stevie’s bottle of bitter herb juice. Drinking the stuff was like gargling battery acid, but it sliced through the remnants of his hangover the sassafras tea hadn’t banished like a butcher’s knife through hog fat. He threw the empty plastic bottle into the pickup’s bed.
“Not trying to be sneaky.”
“That’s good, because, you know, you aren’t.” Al pressed Joe’s bloodstained bandana to his nostrils and breathed in deep. Then he lifted his head and let his nostrils catch the wind. His black hair ruffled in the breeze, and his eyes drifted closed. “It’s not far.”
Joe didn’t want his son out here working with him, but he couldn’t see any other options. Walker and Zeke, the two men with their ears closest to Pitchfork’s darker side, had been less than helpful. Without Al, finding whoever half made that girl would take forever, and there was no telling what shenanigans they’d get up to while Joe was chasing his tail. Al was a natural tracker, though, able to follow scents and pick out paths no one else would ever find. As it was, they’d spent the last of the morning and the better part of midday running around the backside of Pitchfork County, chasing one dead trail after another.
He just hoped relying on Alasdair’s strange abilities wouldn’t stir up the darkness in the boy. That was a shadow Joe could do without.
Joe took a moment to strap his shotgun scabbard to his back. This was rough country, and a simple sling wouldn’t keep the weapon secure. “Lead on,” he said and followed his son up the steep hill next to the pickup. “Try not to run off without me.”
“Whatever,” Al said and put his long legs to use.
Joe kept up, but only just. This late in the year, the sun never found its way this far up Bleacher’s Canyon, and the air was cold and moist. Despite the chill, Joe was slick with sweat after a few hundred yards of chasing Al’s back through the thickening forest.
“Hold up,” Joe panted. Al stopped and turned back to his father with a wolf’s grin splitting his face. He looked so much like his mother, despite his dark hair and black eyes. Joe wanted to take back all those missed years, the lost time he should have spent raising his boy.
“Tired?” Al looked like he could keep going for another few hours without breaking a sweat and a few hours more after that before he’d need a rest.
“Just need to get the lay of the land.” Joe pretended to survey his surroundings while he caught his breath.
“You know what’d really help you out?” Al asked. “Not drinking yourself stupid every night.”
“Such a bright young man. Thank you for the advice.” Joe wished he could quit the whiskey. But the thought of Stevie so near, without booze to dull the siren's call of their curse, made his stomach heave. Easier, and safer by far, just to keep drinking.
“Mom says you need to slow down. She says you’re killing yourself.” Al looked away when he spoke about his mother.
“Your mother doesn’t know everything.” Joe mopped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “You sure we’re going the right way?”
Al flared his nostrils, and a dark shadow passed over his eyes. He stomped away from Joe, long strides chewing up the hill with ease.
“Goddamnit,” Joe cursed and took off after Al. Talking to the boy was a minefield of old wounds and flaring egos. Maybe if Joe had stayed in Pitchfork, maybe if Stevie had told him he had a son before Al was more than half grown, then Joe wouldn’t feel like he was always at war with the boy.
Joe pushed his way through the scrubby pines and lifted his feet over their grasping roots. The hill was determined to stop him, one way or another. He staggered and almost fell on a patch of exposed scree that shot out from under his feet like a burst sack of marbles. A moss-covered rock, still beaded with slippery dew, sent his left foot skidding out to the side. Joe fell back against a gnarled cedar and caught himself on its knotted branches.
Angry at his careless slip, Joe wrenched himself away from the tree and nearly plunged headlong into an old mineshaft, its mouth hidden by heavy brush. Cool wind gusted up from the pit’s black depths, stinking of sulfur and rust. Joe stared down into the abyss for long moments. The deep blackness called to him, a vertiginous drop that wanted him to take one. More. Step.
Joe shook his head and eased back from the edge.
He never should have brought Al up here. The canyon was littered with dead holes like this one, deep, dark throats that would gulp up the careless without a sound. Joe’s heart skipped a beat when he thought of his boy at the bottom of one of these holes, broken, bleeding, ruptured. Dying.
“Al,” Joe shouted, his voice echoing through the canyon. Mocking silence returned.
Joe left the empty mine behind and headed up the hill. He wasn’t in the same league as Al, but Joe grew up in these hills and knew how to follow a trail. He found a broken twig, followed it to a muddy footprint, then to a torn patch of lichen.
The sun was rising, but the forest grew darker as Joe moved up the hill. The canopy thickened overhead, snaking limbs winding around one another, blotting out the light.
“Al,” Joe called again. His scalp tingled, and his thumbs twitched.
There was something in the forest with them.
Joe hurried after his son, hoping he hadn’t lost the track, praying he wasn’t chasing some wandering deer's trail. A branch snapped to his left. Something heavy crashed through the undergrowth to his right.
“Joe?” Al called from somewhere ahead. “Is that you?”
The Night Marshal drew his shotgun from the scabbard between his shoulders. He pushed his way through a knotted mass of tree limbs. The brush exploded, and something slammed into his chest.
Joe’s feet shot out from under him. He crashed onto his back, hard enough to click his teeth together through the very tip of his tongue. He kept his grip on the shotgun but held it far out to the side to avoid blowing his own head off if the weapon went off.
Someone was on top of Joe. He bashed them aside with the barrel of the shotgun and rolled away. He came up against an old oak and pressed his back tight to the trunk, shotgun stabbing out in front of him like a spear. Angry red runes glowed like dying embers along the weapon’s length.
“Don’t shoot,” Al screamed, and Joe let the gun's barrels drop into his lap. The adrenaline surge washed out of his veins, leaving behind a dull, tingling ache. He spit the blood from his mouth and rubbed the wounded tip of his tongue against the back of his teeth.
“You okay?” Joe asked.
“Something’s here,” Al said. He pulled Joe to his feet, and they turned in a slow circle, back to back. “It smells.”
Joe could smell it, too. A funk that clung to the hairs in his nose, clogging his nostrils with its heavy stink.
“I can’t smell the girl,” Al said and gagged on the ammoniac reek.
“Shit,” Joe cursed. Something stirred in the forest around them, a rustling that seemed to come from the very earth. “We have to get out of here.”
“Yeah,” Al agreed. “Which way?”
The leathery noise grew louder; the trees around them shook with it. The shadows grew thicker, clotting around the branches, filling the spaces between the leaves.
“Al,” Joe said. He could feel the danger gathering its strength, coiling to strike.
“Yeah?”
“Get down.”
Joe shoved his son to the ground with one hand. He swung the barrel of the shotgun toward a surging cloud of shadows with the other.
Then the bats came, and the forest was filled with teeth.
CHAPTER 7
JOE SQUEEZED THE shotgun’s triggers, and both barrels roared into the oncoming swarm. Dense, black smoke, lit from within by venomous green flames, erupted from the weapon. A special blend of lead shot, powdered silver, and iron shards carved a bloody swath through the flapping cloud. Shredded meat and batshit rained down onto the forest floor.
“C’mon,” Al yelled. He scrambled to his feet, pulling at Joe’s shoulder. The
surviving bats spiraled up into the forest canopy, screeching to each other, regrouping for another attack.
“Wrong way,” Joe shouted, his ears still ringing from the shotgun’s thunder. Joe shrugged Al off and pointed up the hill, at a big shadow disappearing into the woods. “He’s getting away.”
Joe didn’t wait to see if Al was following. He hustled through the forest, trying to watch the ground for pitfalls while keeping an eye on the shadow flitting through the trees ahead of him. Whoever it was, they were fast and knew the woods well.
Joe slowed to shove a pair of shells into the shotgun. His eyes darted overhead where the bats were gathering into a cloud once more. Thoughts of rabies and plague swirled in his head; he wanted to be ready if the flying rats took another shot at him.
“Which way…” Al started, but Joe cut him off.
His target was already slipping away and becoming just one more shadow in a forest full of them. This was his lead, the best chance he had to crack this case open and put it in the ground where it belonged. He just had to get his hands around the motherfucker’s throat.
He knew he would never catch the runner. But Al was as quick as a wolf and as sure-footed as a goat. The boy could chase the bad man down with no trouble. But then what? The last thing Joe wanted was his boy tangling with some warlock without so much as a knife.
No, that wasn’t true. The last thing he wanted was to let one of the assholes who’d dared bring dark magic into his county get away.
“Don't let him go. Get ahead of him, drive him back to the east.” Joe pointed into the trees. He offered up a silent prayer he wasn’t sending his son off to die, that his plan would work.
Joe watched Al disappear into the forest, amazed at his son’s natural feel for the woods, the way he slid under branches and leapt over deadfalls and slipped around boulders. Al flowed like water through the wilderness, and Joe watched him go with equal parts admiration and envy.
Their quarry fled up the hill, crashing through the trees like a spooked deer. He was fast, but Al was faster. Joe could sense more than see them and grinned when he heard his son driving their prey back toward his position.
He pushed hard through the brush, breath rasping in and out of his lungs, fires burning in his muscles. Joe battered the forest out of his way, smashing tree branches and dangling vines aside with his shoulders to get into position to intercept his target. The forest came to an end, and Joe hugged a tree for cover, staying out of sight.
A tall man burst from the trees and skidded to a stop, halted by the trap Joe had laid for him. He was standing at the edge of a ravine, a quarter-mile long slash that carved away a chunk of the hillside. He turned to face Al, who’d come out of the trees with that wide grin splitting his face. The runner held his ground, shoulders pumping up and down with each deep breath. He clenched his fists and ground his teeth, ready for a fight.
Joe emerged from his cover, shotgun leveled at the big man’s chest. “Watch your step. Nasty drop-off back there.”
“Go home, Marshal.” The man’s face was obscured by a drooping mop of greasy, black hair. The wind coming off the ravine carried the ammonia stink of bat guano from his skin, but also the distinctive chemical perfume Joe had come to associate with meth cooks. “This is out of your hands now.”
“Boy, this is my county. Nothing here is out of my hands.” Joe kept the shotgun trained on the man. “Get your hands up where I can see them.”
“Last chance, Marshal.” The man’s voice was thick and slow, like it had to work its way up from some hidden depths to be heard. “We’re going to finish what we started. No sense anyone getting hurt.”
“No one except a few more girls?” Joe raised the shotgun until it was pointed at the man’s face. “I don’t think I can stand aside for that.
“Get down on your belly.” Joe stepped forward, shotgun centered on the man’s gut. He was less than five yards away. At this range, the shotgun would tear even a big man into ragged halves. They’d be picking his scraps off the side of the hill for the rest of the day if it came to that.
“No, Joe.” The man whipped his hair back out of his face with a sharp jerk of his head. His sunken cheeks were red with weeping pustules, and his lips were bloody and ragged. But the man’s eyes were deep and still, sober and intense. “Put your gun down.”
There was a metallic click five feet behind Joe’s left ear, the sound of a pistol’s hammer locking back. An icy drop of fear ran down his spine.
“You think this ends with me?” Joe let the shotgun droop until the barrels were pointed at the ground a few feet in front of him. “You kill us out here, others will come poking around to see what happened. Whatever you’re up to out here, it’s over.”
From the corners of his eyes, Joe could see more men coming out of the forest. Two behind Al, another to Joe’s right. At least five to two; he did not like those odds.
“No one will come, Joe.” The man took a few steps closer to Joe. “You’ve had your way here for years. We think it’s time to try something different.”
The big man’s hand was empty, and then it wasn’t. A wicked antler-handled blade appeared in it as he lunged forward, closing the distance to Joe’s heart so fast the Night Marshal almost didn’t have time to react.
Almost.
Joe swung his head to the left and swung his shotgun up at the same time. The knife was closing on his belly, its glinting tip whistling through the air like a diving raptor. Joe let the shotgun rip.
The air filled with smoke and fire and shotgun thunder. At that range, the man with the knife should have been cut in half, his guts turned to a fine red vapor.
Instead, the shotgun blast tore into a seething cloud that swarmed up over the edge of the ravine to form a living shield between Joe and the big man.
More fucking bats.
Something hot and red slashed down the side of Joe’s neck, a searing pain that knocked him to his knees. His empty shotgun skidded out of his hands, clattering across the rocky ground. Liquid warmth ran out of his neck and onto his hands. His eyes blurred, but he could still make out the life draining out of him.
Al was shouting something, but Joe couldn’t make any sense of his words. His ear wasn’t working on one side, and his head felt like it was filled with cottonweed. Joe crawled toward the shotgun. If he could just reach the weapon, he could fix this. He’d kill them all.
A cloud of bats beat him to the shotgun. They crashed onto the weapon like a screeching shroud, wings slapping against one another. Their scything fangs slash the air, keeping Joe from the weapon. They shriek toward Joe, forcing him to press his face to the dirt and cover his bleeding neck with his hands.
When they’ve passed, Joe lifts his head to see the big man standing just a few feet way, holding Joe’s shotgun in his left hand.
“Bring them in,” the slow voice said.
Al’s shouts were cut off by a meaty impact.
Joe crawled forward.
Not like this, he thought, not like this.
A wedge of pain drove itself into the back of Joe’s head and everything turned white.
Then the world went away.
CHAPTER 8
SOMETHING WITH NEEDLES for teeth was gnawing on Joe’s right side, just above his hip. The chewing ripped him from the cold, painless depths of unconsciousness to a world filled with jagged torment. “Motherfucker,” he grunted and tried to shake the creature off his hip.
Except his arms didn’t work, and neither did his legs. His hands were trapped against his chest by his knees, and something wet and cold was wrapped tight around him. Something hard and heavy pushed against the back of his head, forcing his chin down. Joe pushed against his restraints, but all he earned was a shooting pain along the side of his neck, a reminder of the injury he’d suffered up on the ridge. The Night Marshal’s badge came with a certain amount of supernatural resilience, but Joe knew he was going to need more than a little time to heal from that wound.
His eyes w
ere glued shut by something thick and sticky. Joe forced his right eye open, but the goo clung to his lashes and made his vision red and blurred. He could see he was lying on his left side, atop warped and charred floorboards littered with cigarette butts and empty Sudafed boxes.
Whatever was wrapped around his body was pale and leathery and covered with interwoven spirals of runes. They reminded him of the symbols he’d seen on the church girl.
From somewhere below him, Al screamed, a raw, pained explosion of sound that made Joe start.
The teeth sank into Joe’s side again. The biter yanked its head back and forth, wrenching a hunk of flesh loose.
The pain burnt away the last of Joe’s daze. He imagined a big rat, tearing its way into his innards. Maybe a possum. Something ornery and toothy. “That’s enough of that shit,” Joe growled.
He pushed out with his knees and wriggled his left hand off to one side, ignoring the pain in his back and shoulders the effort caused him. His whole arm was wooden and tingly, dead asleep from being trapped in the same posture for God knew who long. Joe flexed his fingers, clenching his fist again and again to try and pull blood back into his arm.
Al screamed again. Joe tried not to imagine what would make the boy raise such a ruckus. Was something eating his son, too?
Joe wriggled his arm up toward his chin, and his outstretched fingers found the edge of whatever was wrapped around him. It was smooth and greasy on one side, rough and dotted with short, bristly hairs that bit into his fingers on the other.
He hooked three fingers over the edge of his prison and pulled down while he pushed out with his knees. His spine creaked with the effort, and spitting sparklers burned across his vision before his hand worked its way loose. He kept on pushing, forcing his arm up and out.
With his arm no longer pinned, Joe found his prison had loosened just a bit. Enough for him to worm his left leg down, freeing up a little more breathing room.
