by D. J. Butler
Michael checked for more wolves following him. None were, or at least not that he could see.
“So I survived the Blót. Does that mean I’m going to be lucky and rich? Let’s hope so. Michael, my friend, you need help.”
Here was the crux of the problem. “The Sheriff is a wolf, as are his deputies. So I can’t go to the local police. Gudmund and Clem are wolves too, and Gudmund is the son of a bitch in charge. Sorry, God. Go easy on me. I meant it literally.”
Michael’s mind continued to work. “If I drove up to Green River, not much there in the way of policemen, and my best bet is Price. I know Carbon County has a sheriff.” Michael knew at least one friendly policeman in Helper, too, and likely some miners who would help. But that was what, a couple hours up, and a couple hours back? By that time, his pap might wind up inside a werewolf’s belly.
“No, this is happening tonight, the eclipse, Jupiter moving into the third decan of Scorpio. Which brings us to those knives, I bet Gudmund’s knife is going to be full of power tonight. Green said that one of the hunters was going to be damn near impossible to avoid during this Tithe. Yeah, that would be Gudmundson, the First of Fang.”
Michael had Lloyd Preece’s knife, the murder weapon. He’d picked it up when Preacher Bill had dropped it, wanting to examine it, and he’d tucked it up inside the seat of the Double-A. He hadn’t told his father because he didn’t want to implicate his pap in obstruction of justice, which sounded very serious.
The knives were supposed to channel power, but not just to anyone. They worked for someone born at the right time. Gudmundson’s knife was inscribed with the sign of Aquarius. Michael knew from reading the tables of star-data that Jupiter would next enter Aquarius in December 1937. Since Jupiter was in a constellation for roughly a year, he could count back twelve years at a time and see if he, Michael, was born when Jupiter was in Aquarius. He could do this rough math while driving, no problem, and if he got a near hit, he could confirm the precise dates when he stopped.
Subtract twelve and you got 1925, when Michael was already seven. Which made the next year of Aquarius before that about five years before Michael’s birth. Nuts.
What about Preece’s knife? Preece had the sign of Taurus on his knife, and Michael started to feel excited. Jupiter entered Taurus next in 1940, didn’t it? Which meant that maybe it was in Taurus in 1918, when Michael was born, so the dead man’s knife would be good for Michael?
Michael stopped the truck. With the engine trembling beneath him, parked by the side of the road, he leafed through the widow’s astrology book by the glow of a flashlight.
And found that, on his birthday, Jupiter had been in the constellation Gemini. A near miss, only a couple of months away from Taurus, but still a miss.
The knives were going to be of no use.
He needed an ally.
He put the truck in gear again. “Okay, Michael, who do you know in Moab who could help, and who isn’t already a prisoner?”
It was a short list. Almost every one of the men he’d met was part of the Blót. Howard Balsley wasn’t, but how could Michael find him? And would Balsley help him? And what could he do? Rex Whittle was way out in Spanish Valley, and didn’t seem especially formidable.
“The Udalls might want justice for the men who killed their kid,” Michael said. Of course, they might not. He and his pap hadn’t thrown Moses Udall’s name into the clay balls—what if he was out running in the Tithe? And even if he wasn’t, Michael wasn’t sure Moses could be much help.
Michael was left with only one person, and that person definitely wasn’t part of the hunt. Because Diana Artemis might have helped kill Lloyd Preece, but she was a woman, and according to Erasmus Green, that meant that she couldn’t participate.
She was a flimflam artist, no doubt. On the other hand, she had useful books, and, as Pap had said, just because she had lied about the falling-sickness cure, it didn’t follow that she had no craft. And what had Erasmus Green said about her—that she’d do anything for money?
Would she help rescue Pap for money?
Michael hit the intersection and stopped. To the right was the road to the Monument. To his left was the dirt strip that led into town.
A plan formed in his head. He turned left. In the end, he would only need Diana to drive. Surely, she could drive. If she knew any actual magical spells, so much the better.
Sudden summer rain slashed across the truck’s windshield, and lightning cracked over Moab.
And if she turned into a wolf? Well, he had the shotgun and the bolt-action rifle. He’d shoot her and run.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hiram regained consciousness in a splash of cold water. His vision swam. His cheek was chafed by sandpaper.
“You can call it Jupiter all you like,” a man’s voice snarled. “I know Satan when I see him! An asshole is an asshole is an asshole! Tell your master, Kaiser Roosevelt, that I said hello!”
“Surely, this is some kind of practical joke,” a second voice said. This voice, too, belonged to a man, but it had a refined, vaguely English sound to it. “I pledged at university, I understand. What do you need me to do, run a mile naked or drink a gallon of milk or something?”
Not sandpaper, but sand.
Hiram raised his head and then dropped it again from the sheer weight. His temples throbbed.
Rain battered him.
He knew the voices. He tried to focus and think through what he was hearing. He saw blurred charcoal smudges moving against deeper darkness.
“This is no joke.” This voice was definitely Gudmund Gudmundson’s. Who had killed Lloyd Preece, and was now going to kill Hiram. “You are not being hazed. This is a hunt, in deadly earnest, and I do not think that you, Mr. Rock, are going to survive.”
Rock. Davison Rock. The uranium prospector. With the fancy accent.
And the other voice belonged to the Reverend Majestic, Earl Bill Clay.
Boots. Hiram saw the toes of boots, pointed at him and barely visible in dim light. He was outside, and lying on sand. On the Monument somewhere? Was this how the Tithe began?
It was raining. Lightning flashed, illuminating a distant red ridge.
Hiram hoped that Michael was still at large. He didn’t want Michael to rescue him, he wanted Michael to run far away. To Harvard or Stanford, or some other magical place where smart young women would talk to Michael, and he would become a geologist or a botanist or lawyer or spaceship pilot or whatever he wanted. Where no one would ever threaten Michael’s life, by means natural or supernatural.
If Hiram lived through the night, Mahonri Young was going to kill him.
Means natural and supernatural. Gudmundson had killed Lloyd Preece with his own knife. That struck Hiram now as a curious detail, as grays and silver began to bleed into his vision and the men about him slowly took visible form. Why with Preece’s own knife? It seemed too specific to be a coincidence.
Was it a symbolic act? Was Gudmundson showing that the First of Fang was superior to the First of Hoof by using Preece’s own talisman?
Or, more likely, was it a tactical choice? Had Preece been vulnerable to his own weapon, in a way that he wasn’t vulnerable to others? Hiram hadn’t been able to pierce the bishop’s skin with his clasp knife—maybe the Jupiter knife overcame the wolf-man’s thick hide?
Or by surprising him and taking his weapon away, had Gudmundson removed from Preece the power effectively to strike back?
The knives channeled the strength of Jupiter into the men for whom they were made. They were not unlike Hiram’s ring in that regard, which channeled the power of Saturn. But where Saturn gave dreams and insight and melancholy, Jupiter gave wealth and rule.
Wealth to the deer-men.
Rule to the werewolves.
Had Lloyd Preece’s Jupiter knife made him wealthy? Was the possession of a Jupiter dagger what made Gudmundson as strong as he was? Hiram was well-muscled from his farming work, but Gudmundson had flung him about like a rag doll.
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“My name’s not really Rock,” the prospector said. “I call myself that to avoid attracting attention, especially when I’m out here on the Monument all by myself, but my name is Rockefeller.”
A round of raucous laughter. Lightning flashed. The rain was already letting up, brief summer storm that it had been. Hiram saw men’s legs in a circle, surrounding him, Rock, and the Reverend Majestic.
“As in John D. Rockefeller?” Rock pressed.
More laughter.
“Listen,” Rock continued, “I don’t understand the game here, but what I’m telling you is that my family has money. A lot of money. I have cousins who could pay for Moab with the cash they have lying around the house. They’ll bluster, and you’ll have to duck a P.I. or two, but I’m confident they’ll ransom me. I can give you an address, just have one of your number here send a telegraph from Salt Lake—”
“Shut up,” Jack Del Rose said.
“I don’t think this one is hardly even worth the eating.” That voice belonged to Clem.
“Any man is worth the eating,” Bishop Gudmundson said. “Some men are merely appetizers, and others are a main course.”
“You Satanic bastards!” the Reverend Majestic yelled. “I’ve eaten bigger shits than you for breakfast!”
“Yeah,” Del Rose said. “From the smell, I’m guessing you eat shit for breakfast on a regular basis.”
Hiram tried to stand, had a hard time balancing, and was hauled roughly to his feet by hands he couldn’t see. He patted down his pockets—he had the bogus Uranus cross, the chi-rho medallion, and his Zippo lighter, but that was all. His revolver and even his clasp knife lay on the desert floor.
It took him a moment to remember that he had given the bloodstone to Michael.
How far was he from his truck?
“You’re remembering now that we threw your gun away,” Del Rose told him. Was it the starlight, or were the man’s teeth elongating?
There were perhaps fifteen men surrounding Hiram. He saw Clem and Russ and the sheriff, and other faces he knew but couldn’t connect to a name. Was this the entire…Fang? Pack? Or might there be more of them? Hiram took a deep breath to steady himself and found Gudmundson in the circle.
“It’s not too late to repent,” Hiram said. “God is still ready to extend His mercy to you.”
“God-Yahweh is ready.” The bishop smiled. “And God-Hiram Woolley. But God-Jupiter and God-Gudmund Gudmundson have something entirely different from mercy on their minds.”
“Satan!” Clay punched Russ Pickens in the jaw. It took the man by surprise and knocked him down, but then the others pushed Clay back and filled in their ranks.
Hiram nodded. “You were warned.”
“So were you,” Gudmundson said.
The crowd parted at one end and Hiram saw that he stood atop a knuckle of stone that looked dark brown in the light, but was probably a shade of red. A steep, sandy path now firmed up by the brief squall led down through the parted men to a flat-bottomed canyon, spotted with dark blotches that might be prickly pear. On the far side of the canyon rose a ridge of stone, and standing on that ridge, Hiram saw a herd of deer-men. They were tall and man-shaped, and antlers rose above their heads they turned toward the men. Was he fooling himself, or did he see a crumpled ear on one of the beasts?
“The hunt begins when your feet touch the stone of that ridge,” Gudmundson said.
“Where are we?” Hiram asked.
“We’re on the Monument,” Davison Rock said. “I’ve seen this rock before.” He pointed toward the horizon with both hands, in two different directions. “My campsite is that way. The Schoolmarm’s Bloomers, if you know the Monument at all, are over there.” The Bloomers were beyond the ridge full of deer-monsters.
Gudmundson was quiet.
“If we refuse to go, you’ll just kill us here,” Hiram guessed.
He heard the snicker-snack of a bolt action. “Damn straight,” Jack Del Rose said.
“You’ll lose the magic of the hunt,” Hiram pointed out.
“The magic of the kill,” Gudmundson corrected him. “And you will lose the chance, however slim, of escape.”
“The deer are faster than we are,” Hiram said.
“Hard to be the slow ones in the herd.” Gudmundson shrugged.
“There’s poor little Erasmus Green.” Clem laughed, a guttural, ugly sound. “He’ll be slowed a bit on account of his leg.”
“And Jimmy Udall?” Hiram asked. The boy had died eight months earlier, which would have been about the time of a hunt. “Did you have to hobble him, too, or were you able to run down a ten-year-old boy without that advantage?”
Gudmundson nodded. “An accident. Jimmy was taken in the Tithe. It happens. The Fang takes not only from the Hoof, but from all the animals that live on the Monument, including man. Jimmy should have been home earlier that night.”
“Is that what you said at this funeral?” And was this why Jimmy was a ghost—his own trusted bishop had murdered him, and then presided over his graveside service.
“Angering me will not make me go any easier on you, cunning man.” Gudmund Gudmundson shrugged out of his shirt, pulling his arms through the sleeves. Starlight glinted off a hard wall of chest muscles.
Other men kicked off their boots and began unbuckling belts.
Hiram started walking. Reverend Clay followed with him immediately, stumping from his good foot to his bad with surprising alacrity, and then Davison Rock—Rockefeller—jogged to catch up.
Behind them, Hiram heard the sound of chanting. It was a chant unlike any he’d heard before, part wail and part rhythmic surge, the two parts seeming to intersect modally at some impossible, inaudible point, and then blend to give the impression of hungry hunting beasts, surging forward in a pack.
He shuddered. Sweat chilled on his lower back.
“This is all pantomime, right?” the prospector asked. “Play-acting? They’re letting us go, but now we’re supposed to have…learned a lesson or something. Received a warning. What was it, did I trespass on someone’s land? This isn’t about that child, is it? No one thinks I killed Jimmy Udall, or Lloyd Preece?”
“No one thinks you killed anyone,” Hiram said. “I’m betting the cult thinks you know more than you do. Maybe because you were out here in February, or perhaps from just talking to me.”
Which would make Davison Rock’s death Hiram’s fault.
“False words and shallow comfort,” the Reverend grumbled. “He isn’t innocent. We’re all murderers, every man jack of us. I was born a murderer and a whoremonger and a cheater at cards, and so were you two. The only path to redemption is the spiritual and saving grace of money! O Benjamin Franklin, rain down thy grace upon us!”
“Cult?” Rock bellowed. “Cult?”
“Cult,” Hiram said. “Human sacrifice cult. Cannibals, I think, or at least, sort of cannibals. Who did you believe we were dealing with, the Kiwanis?”
He regretted that jibe immediately. It was the sort of thing Michael would say, but it wasn’t really Hiram’s style of wit.
He hoped Michael was safe.
Rockefeller snorted several times, high pitched sounds that reminded Hiram of a horse. “Don’t these people realize what my family is capable of? The Pinkertons will be down here by tomorrow morning!”
Hiram looked back over his shoulder and saw the silhouettes of the hunters standing on the knuckle of rock. “We need to locate weapons as soon as we can,” he said. “And we need to stake out a defensible position. I’d love to find a high overhang, or a ledge with only one entrance, or better still a cave, but I don’t know this place and it’s dark. How about it, Mr. Rock…Rockefeller, that is? You’ve been prospecting around here for months. Do you know any good places to hunker down and defend ourselves?”
“Hunker down?” Rockefeller squeaked. “Are you serious? This is a nightmare. This can’t be happening.”
Preacher Bill laughed heartily. “We shall prevail, my friends, for a �
�Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth.’”
An actual Bible verse coming from the Reverend Majestic made Hiram smile, but he couldn’t let himself get sidetracked. “Davison, Bill, come on, is there a cave where we can hide?”
“Who do you think I am?” Rockefeller squealed.
Hiram, slightly ahead of the other two, was just about to step onto the sandstone of the ridge. Above him, he saw deer antlers tremble in anticipation. He wished he had a gun, but if the hunters were as hard to injure as the deer-men…a few bullets might not make a difference.
“If we can block ourselves in somewhere, find some dry wood, maybe we can get a fire started,” Hiram suggested. “Fire is a good basic countermagic, most dark and evil things are afraid of fire.” But had the hunters left him the Zippo because they had no fear of the power of fire? Hiram climbed the ridge, and the Revered Majestic climbed with him. “I don’t suppose you have a stashed gasoline can anywhere near here? I’d give a lot for a gallon of gasoline.”
Rockefeller stopped. “No. I’m calling this bluff. I stop right here, this is all nonsense, and I’m not going to budge. They can ransom me and I’m sure my family will pay, but I’m not going to give into this ridiculous story, because you’re only saying these terrible things to make me afraid. You’re one of them, Mr. Woolley.”
Hiram looked down at Rockefeller’s feet; the man was standing on stone.
He looked up again, at the men on the knuckle of rock. They were all naked now, and they swayed back and forth and shuddered, the gesture reminding Hiram uncomfortably of the seizures he sometimes experienced. Then one of them leaped forward—was it Clem? hard to tell in the poor light—and when he hit the ground, streaking down the rock, he was no longer a man. A wolf-like head sprouted above massive, shaggy shoulders, and long limbs ending in claws. From a distance, he seemed as large as a pony.
“Run!” Hiram shouted.
Earl Bill Clay burst into a shuffling lope, sometimes touching the stone with his hands as he stooped to rush up the rock.
