Caroline shivered. Part of it was the damned whipsaw between Arizona heat and Maine frost, part was the gloom under ancient spruce and pine and oak at dusk. Old trees, old road, old land, old stones that barely remembered people. Aunt Kate's trees and road and stones and people. Not Naskeag magic. Caroline couldn't touch it, but she felt it building to a low-pitched hum around her.
This was getting complicated.
How would the Hunter fit into this? She was another part of the shiver; Caroline could feel that Generic Indian riding in the truck cab with them. So could Kate, apparently. They both sat scrunched away from the middle of the bench seat, both unwilling to set butt or arm or hand into that space. The so-called "obeah" rode behind the seat, safely veiled and padded in a nylon duffel, but it didn't, She didn't, seem to want to stay there.
Too many variables, not enough equations. How the hell did I get into this mess?
The answer seemed to be, she'd been born a Haskell. And then Aunt Jean and Aunt Alice had laid hands on her soul, found it fit to certain kinds of crime. Maybe Mom had had some kind of precognitive flash, understood what this generation would need, choosing ol' Tomcat Ben to father a Haskell girl.
Complicated.
Aunt Kate seemed so calm and concentrated, driving down this road to blood and death. Grim as a grave, maybe, but calm. The sort of calm you associated with the early Christian martyrs, sure of resurrection and a place at the right hand of God, facing a real bad day at Nero's office but no worse than a pin-prick compared with the reward.
Or maybe that was the same calm that Caroline mimicked, a mask hiding the shivering seething fear underneath. How could you tell? Maybe even Aunt Alice was an Oscar-class actress, not all-knowing, all-seeing, always seeming to have everything under control. God, that thought scared Caroline.
The truck rolled across a stone bridge, deep in the dark cedar-smelling hollow between two knolls, and Caroline could feel the clean cold water flowing under her. Spring-fed. Strong. Calling to her nature. Too many kinds of magic — stone and water and air and fire, Welsh and Naskeag and Satapai, Inca and Maya. Aunt Alice would know what to do, how to weave this basket with so many different powers under her fingers. What form it should take, what burden it should carry.
Aunt Alice lay sleeping, next thing to a coma, and wasn't available for weaving baskets. Or blankets. Time for Caroline to earn her keep. Apprentice turned journeyman. She shivered again and concentrated on her breathing, concentrated on not hyperventilating. Scared.
The truck climbed out of the hollow, slow, quieter than Caroline ever remembered, headlights boring through the gloom under the forest's arch pressing in thick and close on either side, the new muffler and engine smooth and strong. Caroline had never ridden in it since the rebuild, and it felt both strange and familiar, new and ancient. Like the world. And then there was the box Kate had slipped behind the seat, next to the Hunter in her shroud. That box radiated age and strength and faith and hope. Caroline had looked a question at Aunt Kate and got "Later" for an answer.
If "Later" remained as an available option.
Kate eased the truck to a stop behind a big white Ford Explorer, switching the engine off to creaking silence, blocking escape for a trespasser in Kate's temple — on this single-lane road, even that SUV couldn't sneak past without some major logging. But it shouldn't have been able to find and follow the road at all. Unless you believed Aunt Alice, believed in an Inca brujo wearing a Rowley body, carrying Rowley blood. Rowan-lea blood.
Kate sat for a minute, shoulders and eyes tense, staring through the windshield at that big inscrutable SUV. Nothing happened.
Caroline pulled her Glock, Aunt Alice's Glock, really, since her own was back in Arizona, shoved a magazine in the butt and chambered a round, and reached for the door. "I'll check it out for you."
Kate shook her head. "She's my daughter. Grew in my belly, sucked on my breasts. I raised her. If it comes to killing, I'm the one who has to kill her. Maybe the only one who can. At least in this place."
They'd talked about it, all afternoon. Chewed on it, had about as much effect as a puppy with a rawhide toy. The only plan they'd been able to come up with was come out here and wing it. That scared Caroline as much as anything. She wanted a script.
Aunt Alice's voice whispered in Caroline's head, "A time to kill and a time to heal," one of her favorite quotes from Scripture. God, Aunt Kate looked bleak, worse than Aunt Alice in the depth of one of her Edith Piaf depression phases. No question, Kate had cause. And then Kate pulled a huge Colt revolver from under the seat, a long-barreled Dirty Harry .44 magnum, and loaded it from the cartridge box Aunt Alice had just given her. Silver bullets. Enough raw power there to drop a were-moose in its tracks.
Caroline climbed down on her side of the truck and crouched behind the open door. An extra added attraction of the rebuild was fiber ballistic panels in the body, doors and firewall and cab back, that were heavy enough to stop slugs from an AK-47. Where the hell had Aunt Alice scrounged those? Caroline kept her Glock aimed through the Explorer's rear window, backup, ready to blast off an entire magazine if all hell broke loose.
Kate moved like a TV cop, her weapon in both hands, crouched low below the windows of the Explorer and then snatching looks where her truck headlights shone in through dark tinted glass. She smashed the driver's side window with the butt of her Colt, tempered glass exploding in a rain of tiny cubes, reached inside, and popped the electric locks. To hell with little things like search warrants, that was Kate all over. She opened each door and finally the tailgate, weapon at the ready. Stepped back.
"Empty. We're too late." Now she really looked bleak. Stone-faced.
Caroline checked her watch. "Moon won't rise for another hour and a half. Jeff's still safe."
"Says who?"
"Says Aunt Alice. A place like your circle will be strongest under the full moon. It's not a question of lining up stones or gaps at solstices and equinoxes; those are calendar marks to aid the farmers. For power and focus, the moon is the key. And the brujo needs all the Power he can draw. If he can get enough Power all at once, he can heal the damage and erase those scars. Right now, he's just holding even. Blood sacrifice on the altar at the rising of a full moon, that's the kind of Power he needs. He won't take chances with anything less."
Caroline hoped that speech had convinced Aunt Kate. Aunt Alice hadn't written it — Caroline had extrapolated and expounded on a theme, stuff her aunt had said before they'd even been sure about the brujo, much less Jackie. Some of it was stuff that hadn't even been about Kate's circle.
And it had to be the right blood sacrifice, someone dear to Rowley blood if not actual Rowley blood. That would draw the greatest Power. But Caroline didn't mention that.
It sounded a little thin and conjectural from her end, something that would never pass muster as an oral defense of her doctoral dissertation. Her hands shook, and she set the Glock's safety with extra care. She didn't want to duplicate Jane's goof.
Kate switched off the truck's headlights to avoid drawing moths or curious eyes. Working by the dome light, fixed for the first time since as far back as Caroline could remember, Kate pulled a speed loader from under the seat, emptied the standard cartridges from it, and replaced them with Lone Ranger specials. Snapped its carrier onto her belt. Did the same with a second.
Three full cylinders from a .44 magnum. God, is she planning to fight a revolution?
Caroline shrugged. Well, she could play Pancho Villa with the best of them. She slung a canvas bandoleer across her chest and pulled the ancestral shotgun from Kate's gun rack, hooks where the big woman usually carried a builder's level. It was a trench pump gun from The Great War, the bluing worn off the steel, the finish worn off the wood, and walnut black with the sweat and oil of generations of Haskell hands waiting in the dark for trouble to come calling. Caroline started pulling shells from the bandoleer and stuffing them into the long tubular magazine. The gun took a lot of shells. Weapon of war, nothing sporting about it.
Aunt Kate reached across, long body and long arms stretching the full width of the truck, and caught Caroline's hand in a gentle gesture that asked permission. Then she took one of the shells.
"Brass shotgun shells?"
"Yeah. Antiques, old as the gun. You can reload them damn near forever, and they hold their shape against the magazine spring."
Kate hefted the shell, as if comparing it with others in her memory. "Don't tell me, let me guess. Alice reloaded them, right? A few other things besides lead shot?"
Aunt Kate had known Haskell Witches all her life. No, she wouldn't miss that.
"Silver birdshot, like those bullets she gave you. Sea salt crystals. Pellets carved from an orca's teeth. Wood flechettes soaked in fugu toxin, apple wood from our orchard trees. Herbs." Caroline shivered at a thought, cross-cultural thing from her studies. "I don't think she puts any bone beads in them. Human bone. Anyway, she loads a different mix in each shell, along with enough double-ought buckshot to rip a man's heart to hamburger. She wears surgical gloves and a mask when she's reloading."
Aunt Alice usually wrote a personal message on the top wad while she was at it. She could be damned nasty when she felt it was needful.
Or damned nice. Holding one of the shells felt . . . comforting. As if Aunt Alice stood behind her, supporting hand on her shoulder, offering advice and strength. The House's blessing went with the shotgun and with whoever handled those shells. Caroline hoped that extended to Kate and the .44 Mag reloads.
Weapons loaded, Caroline pulled out the Hunter's satchel and they shut the truck doors. The dusk and shadows settled around them, and they stood for a few minutes letting their eyes adapt.
Something glowed, green and orange, on the left collar bone of Aunt Kate's shirt. Caroline stared. A rowan branch with berries, a brooch she'd never seen before. It made her eyes prickle, just to look at it, and she felt the hair stand up on the back of her hands like she was about to grab hold of a live wire.
Kate noticed her stare, even in the gloom, as if she'd suddenly grown owl eyes. "Grandmother Rowley used to wear it. It hasn't been out here in a generation. Seems grateful."
They walked up the road, feet crunching gravel, ears twitching at the evening noises rustling dry leaves in the forest to either side, road turning into a gray streak under the trees as her eyes adapted and caught the last of the twilight. An orange glow lit the horizon, off to the village. No, left of the village, east, out on Pratts Neck.
Kate grunted. "Fire, Pratt guesthouse. Arson, fierce as hell and some toxics burning, ammo popping. The chief backed the boys off. They're just trying to keep it from spreading to the woods. Plus explosions underground and a hell of a lot of smoke venting from some strange places. The Cop radio is hopping off the shelf, but I haven't answered. Off duty. Don't want to get called out there."
Morgans, twenty to one bet. Or hundred to one, maybe, and no takers. Why does Gary get all the fun stuff?
They turned into the high field, stars showing, there was the Dipper with its pointer stars; the ridge ran east-west and she was facing due north. And the sky mirrored the fire down in the village, curtains and rays, sheets, apocalyptic clouds of red and green. Aurora. Sunspots, coronal mass ejection reported on the news, the FEMA boys were worried about the power grid and satellites and aircraft radios. A green shaft seemed to stand up from the ridge in front of them, almost like a spotlight, pierced by the glow of Polaris.
Kate grunted again, shaking her head. "I could do fine without the dramatic lighting. That's right over the altar stone."
Now the heather matched the sky, soft green-edged red glow of the autumn blueberry and raspberry leaves, faint yellow tinge to the bracken clumps, orange on the circle of rowans that echoed Kate's brooch. Patches of exposed ledge took on a sheen of blue washed with silver where water flowed thin from under the moss and lichen. The field buzzed, like it was alive with bumblebees. Caroline wondered if any civilians would see it, hear it, or just Earth Goddess priestesses and witches.
Witches. Goddesses. If the Hunter was going to fit into this scheme somehow, Caroline had better bring Her out, give Her a chance to get used to the static charge building up around them. The air smelled of flint sparks and every hair on Caroline's body stood up — even her pubic hair, and she felt heat and moisture in her crotch, and tightness in her nipples that remided her of some of the raunchier Earth Goddess legends.
And now she was going to die. Didn't want to admit it, but that was where she stood. Kate had just barely found her place, her power, never had a chance to grow into it, never had a teacher. The brujo, now, he'd had centuries. He knew what he was doing. Even Aunt Alice hadn't actually defeated him. They were going to lose.
And the Hunter simply wouldn't care. Caroline could hear that voice already: "Whiteskin corpses? Whiteskin problem. Has he killed any People yet? Didn't Grandmother Walks teach you anything?"
All She wanted out of this was a free plane ride back to the Arizona deserts. Back to Her people, who didn't even get along all that well with their First People neighbors. Like Hopi with the Navajo and Apache. Bet She's never met any Pan Indian activists.
But Caroline knew she had to try. She set the shotgun down on a low mattress of blueberry bushes, muzzle pointed safely out into darkness, and reached for the zipper of her satchel and pulled it open.
She looked up at Kate. "With the lights and engine noise, you might as well have tooted the horn when we pulled up. Damn sure the brujo knows we're here. And if we cut loose with all this firepower, I think we're going to face a few questions from Tom Wheeler or the other wardens. You got a good excuse for night-hunting?"
Kate shook her head, turning slowly, watching the edge of darkness around them. "Tom's a Stonefort boy. There's no way he's going to poke his nose into a shooting up on this ridge, full moon at Samhain."
Samhain. Kate's voice sounded funny. Caroline stopped her own scan of the shadows and stared. Kate had grown. Caroline was used to feeling big, five-eight-plus and one-sixty, bigger and stronger than a lot of men. Now she felt like a midget. She felt like Aunt Alice must, every day of her life.
Kate had always been a moose. Now she'd turned into Godzilla. Aunt Alice had told her how Kate used to piss the refs off when she was playing basketball, a woman doing slam dunks in high school. Now she looked like she could dunk the ball flat-footed. And she glowed. Gold skin, gold clothing, with a greenish tinge.
Too many variables, not enough equations. How the hell did I get into this mess?
She was repeating herself. Get a grip, Haskell. Find a target, blast it, cook up an alibi. What's complicated about that?
That target scares the shit out of Aunt Alice. That's what's complicated. A little over an hour to moonrise . . .
It'll be over, one way or another. Either we win or it's someone else's problem, 'cause we'll be dead.
Caroline started to shiver, adrenaline rushing though her blood but no action to soak it up, sweat cold on her back and down her sides under her armpits.
"He should not have come into my land." Kate had moved up to loom beside Caroline, still scanning the darkness around the clearing. Her voice sounded like echoes in a cave.
Possession? Maybe they'd survive this, after all.
"I underestimated you once. I swore I would not make that mistake twice."
Caroline spun toward the voice and looked up, to the crown of the ridge just above them and the soft pulsing light of the stone circle. The brujo stood there, tall over the altar stone, Jackie Lewis in Frankenstein makeup. Caroline snapped the shotgun to her shoulder and sighted, but couldn't fire.
The brujo held a naked body slung over his shoulder, her shoulder, head down and legs behind, a human shield. Jeff Burns. To shoot the brujo, you'd have to go through Jeff's body first. And the brujo held something glittery to Jeff's throat with his free hand, her free hand.