The light came to rest on him. Cormac squinted into the beam, only able to see a silhouette approach, a ghostly shape moving toward him. He felt worse than helpless, on the ground, looking up, barely able to move and no weapon to hand but a stupid knife.
Finally, as he came around to face Cormac the man lowered the flashlight, revealing himself: Elton Peterson.
“You’re dying, aren’t you?” Peterson asked, oddly toneless. “Starving. Just like they were. You can’t stop it. Now you know how it feels. Now you understand them.”
One thing at a time. This wasn’t over yet. Cormac said, “You hated Weber because he blocked your access to the park. Tried to keep you away from the Donner sites. Because you’re a nuisance. Bellamy—wouldn’t acknowledge your expertise.” And he hated Cormac just for hanging around. “What do you want, Peterson? What’re you doing all this for?”
The corona from the flashlight shone up, painting skull-like shadows on his face, like he was starving, too. “The usual reason. I want to live forever.”
Cormac chuckled. “Need a vampire for that. I know a couple who’d oblige. Or maybe not. They’d have to put up with your bullshit for eternity.”
Peterson sneered. “A vampire? Only awake at night, drinking other people’s blood? That’s not living. I said I want to live.”
“And you had a plan.” Statement, not a question.
“Yes. I will make myself a god.”
Well, Cormac hadn’t expected that. “I don’t get it,” he said, unable to hide his confusion. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but he was losing hold of himself.
“What happened here a hundred and fifty years ago was a stupid tragedy, the end of a long string of stupid mistakes—and yet everyone knows the name Donner. Everyone knows what happened here. And why? The fear. The power of it. Starvation is horrible because it’s slow, because you see it coming. And yet people die of starvation every single day. A whole country starves and a bunch of celebrities sing a song about it! That’s power! That power will make me a god. But it’s more than that, more than just going hungry—there’s what people will do to avoid it when they have to. A boat is lost at sea—did they do it? A plane crashes in the Andes and we all want to know—did they do it?”
Cormac coughed at the pain welling in his gut. “You want to be the god of cannibalism?”
“Of hunger,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “Of starvation. The thing that has the power to make people do the unthinkable.”
Ask him a question, if you will.
“What question?” he murmured, and Peterson looked at him strangely.
Ask him if the power he seeks to wield was already here, at Donner Pass, or if he had to raise it from scratch?
Cormac tried to think of a simpler way to ask this, and couldn’t, so just repeated it. “The power—was it already here at Donner Pass, or did you have to raise it from scratch?”
Peterson looked away. Chuckled, a bit madly. “That was the funny thing. I thought. . .all that pain, all that hunger—the place was famous for it. Here, here is where I would stake my claim, I would draw that power, that despair all to myself—”
“But?”
“There wasn’t any. There’s just. . .the bronze plaques and the tourist shops and the badly named restaurants. The tragedy didn’t leave a mark. Not a supernatural one.”
Ah, Roland did his work well. He’d be so pleased!
“So I had to do it myself. Make my own mark.” He grinned. “Shouldn’t be long now. You’re almost there. Thank you.”
“Yeah, fuck you too.”
There is one more symbol to etch, Cormac. The summoning isn’t finished. There’s more to this than Peterson.
She showed him the sign, a medieval hermetic symbol for strength, for truth. Carefully, line by line, he drew it in the earth at his feet.
“What are you doing?” Peterson asked.
Cormac ignored him. A vertical line, a widdershins curve—
“Stop that.” The man stepped forward like he might actually try to stop Cormac. Wouldn’t take much; he could probably just push him over. But Elton Peterson held back, acting like someone who’d lit a fuse and wasn’t sure what the explosion was going to look like.
Two more marks, dashes over the first line. Amelia murmured arcane words, and much like with other battles they’d fought together, he felt their spirits twist together and become something stronger than the sum of their parts. Her knowledge and age, his physical being anchoring them to the world—it shocked him every time. The first time they’d come together like this, back in prison, he’d almost flinched away, afraid of losing himself—and afraid of what he might accomplish. But he hadn’t. He’d reached out to Amelia, she’d grabbed hold, and they’d become powerful. Like they did now. A summoning went out, a flare without light. And then it was gone, finished.
Again, a pause, stillness.
Peterson gripped the flashlight hard and looked up and around like he expected to be attacked by a swarm of wasps. “You can’t stop this,” he declared in a tight voice. “You’re already dead! There’s nothing you can do to stop it, the power of your death is already mine—”
“Wait for it. . . .” Cormac murmured. He didn’t know what was going to happen but he expected it to be good. By some definition of good.
Right. . .about. . .now, I think.
There was a soft groan, then a rushing sound, a growing breeze blowing through the pines, which creaked at the pressure, the sound increasing until the breeze turned into a gale, tightly focused, whirling in a space with Cormac at its center. He ducked his head, and Peterson put up his arms to protect himself. The flashlight fell out of his hand and broke when it hit the ground. Somehow, though, the spot of forest remained lit by an indistinct glow.
Cormac knew this sound, these smells. The fierce, unnatural wind that suddenly whipped by, bending trees at dangerous angles, snapping branches. Dust rising up in a whirlwind, obscuring sight. The smell of something unnatural burning to death. This was a doorway from somewhere else opening up before them. Any moment, they would see what demon came through to their world.
Times like this, he missed his guns, even as he knew that none of them would help here. Instead, he wished for holy water and wooden stakes, silver bullets and crosses of gold. Anything.
Faith, Amelia whispered. Have faith.
Faith in what?
Faith that whatever is about to appear isn’t here for us.
A ritual sacrifice had three components: the person making the sacrifice, the thing being sacrificed—and the god or being the sacrifice was offered to. One figure in this tableau was still missing. Peterson had forgotten something important—he thought he was making sacrifices to himself. But power like that attracted attention.
Cormac missed the moment when the thing took form. The wind and swirling dust became a shadow, and the shadow gained mass. A huge animal came through the trees, stepping toward them. A medieval war horse, pitch black and massive, with steps that shook the ground. Its eyes, peering out from behind a thick fall of mane, were glints of obsidian, and it studied them with disturbing intelligence. Measuring them.
The rider was cloaked, billows of thick fabric falling around his saddle and legs, draped over his shoulders, as if he had come from a very cold place. Leather gauntlets on his hands, a close-fitting bronze helmet settled over his head. A bearded chin was all that was visible of his face, apart from another set of black, glinting eyes. In one hand he held the horse’s reins; in the other, a sword, but where the cross guard should have been was a set of antique scales. He could hold the sword vertical and measure the world in those bronze bowls.
Amelia quoted: And lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
“That’s the Book of Revelation,” Cormac said softly. And this was the Third Ho
rseman. Famine. What did it mean, that Famine should come to this place? “You have some kind of spell that’ll protect against this?”
If she had been standing beside him, she would have shaken her head slowly.
Peterson stood aghast, his eyes wide, arms spread. He seemed frozen, in shock. Then, incredibly, he laughed. The look of joy spreading over him seemed hideous.
“I’ve done your work! Haven’t I done it well?” he demanded of the figure.
Cormac somehow found the strength to prop himself up. Not quite standing, but enough to lean toward Peterson and point at him in accusation. “You wanted to be a god. You came up with some fucked-up ritual to do it, but you needed dead bodies. Starved bodies. What the hell kind of god did you think that would make you?”
“Famine,” Peterson said simply. Cormac was taken aback. “Famine, here, just like this, yes!” He was still smiling, with such a look of triumph.
“No,” a voice said. A deep, resonate voice, much like the clomp of a giant hoof on soft forest ground. At that, everything went still. The wind vanished, trees stilled. Cormac held his breath. He could feel Amelia with him, close as she’d ever been, with a mental gesture that was much like gripping his hand.
Peterson, gormless as he was, had the nerve to chuckle, confused, and ask, “What?”
Famine tapped his mount with his heel, and the horse stepped forward, closer to Peterson. It was such a human gesture, such a normal set of movements, Cormac was startled. That the Four Horsemen of Biblical legend might actually exist didn’t shock him—he’d seen some unbelievable shit in his time. What shocked him is that they—or at least this one—should be so human-like. With weight, with physicality. The fabric of the cloak rustled as the Horseman moved.
Peterson’s ecstasy seemed to be fading. The back of the horse was taller than he was, and the rider loomed over him. He maybe didn’t quite realize the powers he’d been messing with until just this second. Like the Donner Party, when the snow began falling.
“I. . .I thought it was just a myth. A story. I mean, it’s the Bible, no one takes it literally. . .do they? I was going to turn myself into the story—”
Peterson grappled with his pockets a moment, turning out some familiar items—matches, string, a piece of slate. Charms and scraps of spells. A couple of pieces of rib bone. Famine ignored them all.
“You think this suffering belongs to you,” the rider said in that rumbling voice, like a trumpet sounding from far away. “It doesn’t.”
The historian stammered, “I. . .I only wanted. . . .”
The Third Horseman grabbed Peterson by the throat. The man didn’t have a chance to cry out before he began to shrink, to desiccate. Skin turning bloodless, cheeks growing hollow, skeletal. Peterson clawed at Famine’s arms with increasingly bony fingers, but had no effect on his captor. His movements slowed, slackened, stilled. His shirt billowed over a gut that had gone concave. The fabric of his clothing disintegrated, fell away until the man was naked. The same curse, the same progression—starving, happening here in seconds. The pain must have been dire. He was gulping for air like a fish.
When Famine let go, the historian was a skeleton with a covering of skin, his hair dried up and falling away in clumps. He might have been dead for years and mummified.
But he still moved. Ghastly, yellowed eyes still blinked. The laddered rib cage drew in air. A leg twitched. A shaking arm reached. Somehow, Peterson was still alive, imploring his god and idol.
Peterson had tried to make himself something from a powerful legend, but he hadn’t believed enough to recognize: The job was already taken.
Offhand, Cormac wondered what the Fourth Horseman, Death, could do just by holding someone by the throat.
The black horse snorted, stamping a front leg a couple of times—right on top of Peterson’s body. That ended him, collapsing the rib cage, smashing the brittle skull. He lay still, a pile of bones and dried-up skin. He was done.
Cormac wasn’t sure if Famine had seen him. He wanted to run—he really ought to get the hell out of here. But he also didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He waited. . .waited. . . .
The rider shifted the reins; the black horse turned, pivoting on hind legs. The pair paused a moment, appearing to study this stretch of forest. Cormac couldn’t be sure; he couldn’t see the rider’s eyes. The horse wuffed a breath as if he’d smelled something he didn’t like.
Barely breathing, Cormac remained still, thinking over and over, he had nothing to do with this. He meant nothing to the Third Horseman. They could go their separate ways, no harm. Maybe it wasn’t magic, some kind of spell to turn away the evil eye. But maybe the hope would be enough.
Amelia added to the hope. Please, look away.
And then, they did. The horseman gave another nudge with his heel, and the horse moved off at a jog, weaving through the trees and vanishing in what might have been fog, or light, or a crack in the air, or nothing at all.
Cormac heaved out the breath he’d been holding. It echoed among the trees, dead quiet in the still air. His next inhalation smelled of pine, thick with vegetation and life. It was a good smell.
Peterson’s body lay crumpled, not ten yards away. Cormac looked away.
I think the sun is rising.
Looking up, squinting past the canopy of trees, he tried to see what she was seeing, and sure enough, the sky was the muffled gray of predawn. He hadn’t been paying any attention. But this—this was hope. In the growing light he held up a hand, turned it this way and that to study it. It wasn’t gaunt. It didn’t hurt. He tested more movement, pushing himself to his knees, pausing to take stock. Then, he stood, without dizziness, without trembling.
How do you feel? Amelia waited tensely for the answer.
“I feel. . .tired. But normal tired.” Not dying tired. He knew the difference now.
His stomach rumbled. He was still hungry. But not starving. That could wait, though. “We’ve got to find Annie,” he murmured.
But first, they scattered the remains of their spell, all trace of magic at the cabin. At Amelia’s direction, he went around the clearing, taking down all the bits and pieces of her spells, kicking dirt over the symbols etched into the dirt, burning the last bits of string and sage, then stomping out the ashes. He left Peterson’s body where it was—let that be someone else’s problem.
No one else would starve on Donner Pass. At least not like this.
He charged his phone and made calls as they roared down the mountain in the Jeep. Domingo’s phone still wasn’t picking up. But Trina’s was.
“Trina. You get ahold of Domingo?”
The girl sounded exhausted. “Yeah, yeah. I’m sorry, I tried to call but you weren’t picking up your phone.”
“Never mind, is she okay?”
“She’s okay. I mean, she was in bad shape when we got here, but she’s okay now.”
“I told you not to go near her.”
“But we had to, she was sick.”
Trina. Fluffy, happy, gossipy, heroic Trina. God. “You with her now? Tell me where you are.”
She gave him the address. He raced on.
Trina was making soup in the cozy, trim kitchen of Annie Domingo’s own Forest Service cabin, down near the visitor center. “My grandma’s soup,” she said, smiling. “Good for anything.”
The plain chicken broth was the perfect food for people who’d been starving.
Domingo had been struck after Cormac. She collapsed, and Trina and her neighbor found her curled up on the floor, groaning. And then. . .it had gone away. Cormac found a piece of rib bone on her front porch and smashed it under his heel.
Now, the ranger sat at her small kitchen table, wrapped in a blanket, regarding Cormac with confusion. Her cheeks were gaunt, her skin ashen, but growing more flush and lively by the moment. “I don’t understand.”
Neither did Cormac, really. He could explain what he’d seen, explain to her what she’d experienced. But that didn’t mean the explanation ma
de any sense. Not to someone in a uniform who had to write a report about it.
“If you’re looking for a culprit, it was Peterson. If you’re looking for a cause of death—call it poisoning. Whatever it is, it won’t happen again.”
“You sure?”
“I’m not real sure about anything these days. But yeah, I think it’s done.”
“Wow,” Trina said from the sink, pausing in the middle of washing dishes. “That’s wild.”
Domingo smiled weakly. “Trina hon, you probably shouldn’t go telling this story around to everybody.”
She huffed. “Yeah, I know. Who’d believe it?”
Domingo scrubbed her hands over her face and sighed. “I don’t know whether to be relieved or disgusted. Peterson? Nebbish annoying Peterson? For God’s sake, why? Why would he want to kill anyone?”
“He wanted this,” Cormac said, gesturing around the cabin, and by extension to the land outside, the visitor center, all the bronze plaques and pine forests, the creeks and mountains around them. “He was obsessed. He wanted to be a part of it. Take some of the glory for himself.”
The ranger stared. “There’s nothing glorious about the Donner Party. What they went through—it was five months of hell.”
“But can you name a more famous set of settlers?” She pressed her lips together; she couldn’t. Very few people who knew about the Donner Party could name any of the other tens of thousands of people who’d made that journey west. However horrible their ordeal, it and the sensational reporting of it after had made them famous. “He thought their fame made them great. And he wanted it.” He’d made a mistake so many made: no one could understand this thing as well as he did, therefore it ought to be his.
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