A light snow drifted down around Big Ben Loving as he pushed his mare through a thinning woodland of ice and mud.
Back to the north where the Kansas River cut its east-west line, he could hear the bedlam on the water, the faintest din of shouting. From the sound of things, the Marsh Bane he’d scattered at the riverbank was accomplishing the Reverend’s orders to finish the children. He smiled.
High above the leafless canopy, a small number of the Master’s harbingers circled below the whirling clouds. The crows had warned Big Ben to ride without delay. Danger was approaching from the north, an enemy of great power on his trail, and Big Ben’s connection to the Prime was too weak to protect him at the moment. He needed to rest and stretch his aching back. But he wondered how much rest the Reverend Rose would afford him. Because he was a Harvester of the most powerful chaos magics on Earth, Big Ben had vast energy at his fingertips and, therefore, the Reverend would not tolerate talk of discomfort and malaise.
The Reverend’s missions of late were growing difficult for Big Ben. Periodic rations of the Prime restored pieces of his vitality, but every new assignment, every pursuit, cumbered his aging body like anchors on his bones. Terrible twinges had set up in his fingers and back, turning even mundane tasks into feats of pain and frustration. The folks in these parts believed that if you put a teaspoonful of salt in your boot, the creaks in your bones would soften. But that business was nonsense. Only the Prime restored vigor, but each time the Reverend gifted him with more power, Big Ben felt his mind harden and grow callous.
There was always a dark trade involved with dark magic.
Big Ben slowed his horse when he spotted a stand of bluish boulders, a stone jumble that marred the gentle rise of the landscape. A curious scent rode on the wind there, a mix of copper and pain. The smell of blood.
Disquieted by the odor, Big Ben’s mount grunted nervously.
As he walked the mare around the boulders, the snowy forest on the other side revealed a slender beast bristling with a coat of spear-sharp spines. Its breath rattled from its snout in a dense mist. The animal hunkered on two clawed feet over a large boy lying on his back in the snow. When it saw Big Ben, the creature dropped to all fours and bowed its head in deference.
Big Ben drew rein and met the fierce gaze of his pet, a member of the ancient Shifter pack known as the Chamelia. Stories had it they were the first creatures to slip through the Dead Rift in the First Age of Man. Unfettered from the Underworld itself, they had scattered over the countrysides, mingling their forms with the animals of the desert and forest.
“The boy looks sick.”
A vicious bark escaped the Shifter, a noise of both fear and intimidation.
Big Ben lifted his palm, revealing the Reverend’s charred symbol, a warning that he would use the brand to make the creature suffer. “I’ll abide no back talk from you.”
The Chamelia loped off a short distance to lurk in a stand of brush. The barbs along its back fluttered and sank inward, its flesh turning into murky scales. Big Ben chortled at the change; he knew the creature too well. When it felt threatened or surprised, the Chamelia tended to shift serpentine, a more cold-blooded demeanor, to cover its mammalian shame and despair.
His back burning with discomfort, Big Ben dismounted and stomped through the mantle of snow till he stood over the boy’s body. Shadow painted the kid in a bluish pallor, making him look like a corpse.
The tips of the boy’s fingers were black with frostbite. Ice caked the lad’s clothing. Not only had the Chamelia dragged him through snow, it had also crossed the Kansas River with the boy in tow. It was impossible the youth still lived.
Yet he continued to breathe.
Big Ben then noticed a pool of crimson beneath the kid’s body. “You scratched him, didn’t you?” He lifted the boy’s leg with a boot to get a better look. A dark ragged bloodstain across the lad’s hip made the answer obvious enough. “You foolish thing. The Reverend said unspoiled. I should take your head.”
Big Ben took a second to study the boy’s fingers and realized he wasn’t looking at frostbite after all. “Look at what you did! You infected him.” He put a finger to the kid’s top lip and pushed upward, exposing a gum line full of protruding ridges.
“I suppose it don’t matter. We can still set the trap even if he is infected.” He would have to slow the change. Doing so wouldn’t help the ache of Big Ben’s own exhausted body, but there was no choice. If he still wanted to deliver a normal boy to Wisdom, he would have to expend the energy.
Big Ben jogged back to his horse, retrieved one of the pigskin conjure pouches stowed inside his saddlebag, and dug his fingers into a white powder. The pungent scent of rotten cabbage mixed with floral hints of jasmine crinkled his nose.
Under his breath, Big Ben began a steady chant, words from the Black Verse that were meant to focus his mind, expand his inner senses, and activate the powers of the white medicine. He allowed the itch in the back of his throat to grow.
The primordial energy that Big Ben knew only as the Prime stirred within him. Sprouting from a pea-size glow in the center of his head, the power sent electricity down his aching spine and wrapped around his veins, till the energy infested his entire being.
Only after each of his muscles purred with the Prime did Big Ben cease the chant of the Black Verse. He opened his eyes and clapped his hands together. When he drew his palms apart, the grains had altered their form. Strands of glowing white threads stretched between his fingers, like a spiderweb woven from lightning.
Big Ben lowered his hands to the infected boy.
The webbing dripped light onto the lad’s chest and face. As the substance touched the kid, it gathered into pools, a pattern of glowing puddles that spread across his cheeks, his neck, his forehead.
Once the last of the white webbing had dripped free, Big Ben clapped again, and the noise activated the material. The white pools moved, a living liquid that skittered across the boy’s skin toward his eyes and mouth, diving into the openings, disappearing under the flesh.
Big Ben rose to his feet. The energy would hold the boy on the verge, a lock impeding his physical change. For now, at least.
Perched on the branch of a nearby oak, one of the crows screeched. Big Ben approached the tree, his arthritic back screaming in pain. The creature flapped down and landed in the snow before him. The Reverend liked to call these things the P’mola, but they had nothing to do with the Abenaki lore of old. Rather, they were the Master’s creations, perverse beings spawned from the Reverend’s own blood.
Big Ben knelt to one knee slowly and bowed his head.
“I have the boy, Reverend.”
You’ve done well, Ben. Hurry him to Wisdom.
“Yes, Master.”
Once there, gather your strength and be ready. Coward is waiting to set the trap, but he will need you at your strongest.
Big Ben hesitated to speak about the pain in his body—but there was no need to voice the concern anyway, for the Reverend could read the thought as easily as Big Ben could read a Kansas map.
You will have more of the Prime soon.
Big Ben said, “What of my Chamelia?”
The crow made a chattering noise, as though laughing at the question. Keep the beast close. There will be need for it again soon.
With an Ack!, the crow took to the air and sailed into the cold morning to join its brethren.
Big Ben whistled to the Shifter. A boggy stench reached him before he caught sight of the thing, hunkered low between two crooked pin oaks not far away.
The Chamelia slunk forward. Along the way, it shifted again, abandoning the scales and bulky length to become smaller, hairier. The beast that now approached was closer in size and appearance to a coyote.
Big Ben scowled. “Go, beast. Be alone if you wish. Stay in the shadows and remain close enough to hear my call.”
The Chamelia turned and leaped into the canopy of a nearby oak. It sprang from branch to branch, the bare limbs swaying under its sleek weight.
Big Ben returned to the unconscious boy. Stooping, he slid an arm beneath the lad’s back and lifted him off the ground, wincing as he did. He carried the slumbering boy to his horse and heaved his body over the mare’s croup.
Big Ben paused as his prize groaned. A whispered word escaped the kid’s lips.
“Papa?”
Big Ben punched the boy. The knock caused the youth to slump across the horse.
“Back to sleep, boy. I need you alive, but I prefer you stay silent.”
Without another word, Big Ben Loving mounted his bay and rode south toward Wisdom.