Oh God, I can't do this. That's my baby. I don't care what's happened to her, what she's threatening. That's Jackie standing there.
"You will please to drop your weapons."
Kate struggled to focus on the shape behind the altar. It glowed like everything else in this night of fire, red edges, red eyes, vibrating against the green night-sights of her Colt searching for a gap, for a target. Her hands shook and tears blurred her eyes.
Livid scars shone through the glow, a small spot on Jackie's forehead, a little higher than her eyebrows and to the left of her nose, and then a broad hairless patch above and behind her left ear. Kate stood close enough to see them clearly. Entry and exit wounds, her cop training murmured, trajectory says assailant was level with the target, in front and to her right. The slug tumbled after bone impact, or it was an expanding high-velocity bullet.
Then pictures followed, dotted lines tracing the expanding damage through frontal lobe and parietal lobe, convolutions and fissures, straight out of Alice's nursing texts. Kate gagged and swallowed sour vomit at the images blanking her sight, images formed by the House's magic but so real in her head, memories of skull fragments and clotting blood and spattered brains and the stink of shit and piss.
She saw Jackie there behind the altar. How could she move and see and speak after that wound? Fading in and out, an FX movie overlay, she saw the brujo as she'd known him last June with his flattering lying Spanish-phrased English and courtly ways, she saw scales and long jaw and teeth like some kind of upright crocodile. She saw a skull, gray and stained and weathered as if it had lain dead in the sun and rain for a century or more.
She felt weird. Time expanded, until such a chain of disjointed thoughts could fill an hour between two beats of her heart. She heard mice rustle in the dry autumn blueberry leaves, a flying squirrel whisper through the air between trees in the oak wood below the field. Even in the darkness, moon yet to rise, her eyes picked out the finest detail, like the scalloped chipped keen edge of the obsidian knife Jackie held against Jeff's neck. She smelled Jackie, the shared chemistry of Rowley blood between them.
Not Jackie. That's Antonio Estevan Francisco Juan Carlos da Silva y Gomes. AKA "Tupash," AKA "El Indio," AKA a whole bunch of other names he puts on and takes off like a shirt in the morning. "You can call me Tony" when he's in seducer mode. Peruvian drug lord and ancient Inca sorcerer, psychic cannibal, ghost. How many times do we have to kill the bastard?
I can put all six slugs from this beast into a two-inch circle at twenty-five yards. I'm maybe twenty-five feet from the fucker, and I can see his entire forehead. Why can't I hold this damned pistol steady?
Besides, if I shoot, his hand will jerk and he'll cut Jeff's throat. And she's my baby.
"No. Put the boy down."
He shook his head, Jackie's head. "But Señora, if you do not put down your weapons, both of you, I will kill this child."
The voice sounded like Jackie, but the phrasing wasn't her. And Kate's heart felt like stone in her chest, cold stone but glowing and pulsing like the gems in the Rowan brooch on her shirt. She saw Caroline move, circle to the left, stop at a flanking angle where the blast from that shotgun still would miss Kate, all seen clear and sharp even though it was peripheral vision without taking her focus from the brujo's forehead and the sights.
She saw things she couldn't have seen. She had no eyes in the back of her head, yet she saw another woman standing at the arc of stone between her and Caroline. A stout dark woman shrouded in gray rags and glowing black, an absence that sucked in light and radiated darkness, dear God in heaven, impossible as that seemed.
"And if the Rowan's Daughter and the Child of Bright Waters put down their guns, you will kill anyway. Let the child go. Let him go, and you can leave this place still living. Shed his blood and you will die."
It was her own voice, her own throat and tongue and breath turned hollow-sounding and an octave lower. Kate felt the air and the vibration, but she hadn't spoken. She took a step forward, two hands now holding the sights steady on her enemy's forehead, and she hadn't willed that move, either. Fire burned in her veins and along her tendons, relaxing them, quieting the shakes. Her eyes had gone weird, she could hold rear sight, front sight, target, all in sharp focus at the same time. She'd never seen like that before.
He'd thrown illusions at her the last time, and she'd fired where she thought he was, and he wasn't there. Missed. Twice. Illusions wouldn't work in this place, in this time. She knew it, though she had no way of knowing why or how. What she aimed at, she'd hit.
Kate felt him look to the east, to the edge of orange light breaking the horizon. More weirdness, fog and low clouds offshore every night for the last week, yet there sat the moon split by the sea, rising in broken layers like a sectioned orange from mirage refraction. Seen without turning her head.
The humming of the earth grew around her and she could pick out every leaf of every rowan and every blueberry bush, every stone and pebble and blade of grass. She had become the field, the rowans, the stone circle, the altar, the power flowing here. Kate felt as if she had been shoved off into a corner of her own head. And that corner was screaming, weeping, begging Jackie to put Jeff down. Anything to save him, save both of them.
Her voice, the Stone's voice, echoed again, firm, nothing of her tears in it. "If the moon springs free from the water before you let the child go, you will die."
The saw-tooth stone blade shifted a hair, and Kate smelled blood. Not possible, blood had very little smell, and the cold evening breeze flowed past her to the altar. But she smelled it, and felt hunger for it. The Stone had waited alone for many years. No one had brought it gifts.
"And would you kill the child of your body, Señora? To save the life of your peon? Even to save your own life? Your daughter lives because of me, because of my powers, my skills."
"I would kill both of my children, to cleanse my stone and soil of your touch." Kate screamed silently at the words her own mouth was forming.
The brujo looked to the space between Kate and Caroline, to the third woman, the third witch who had formed out of the night and shadow. "¿Por que? Mother of the Stones, I speak to you. I offer these to you. I will give you these, first this child of your land and then the priestess who abandoned you and then the daughter of the waters that flee from you to the sea. Gifts to your power, blood to your hunger." He paused and smiled. Kate saw those crocodile teeth again.
"I am not a Christian, great lady. My people have taken the Spanish Christ and the Spanish God and made them new names for the powers we always served. I know you better than these children of a younger age, know what you need. I can serve you far better than they will. I ask little in return, por favor. A small thing compared to the great power you will drink from them and others to come."
The woman chuckled, and the sound raised hairs on the back of Kate's neck. She'd thought every hair on her body was already standing straight on end. Whoever, whatever, that woman was, she wasn't the stone circle made flesh. Kate knew that, no matter what the brujo thought.
"What is this small favor that you ask, man of bone and dust?" The woman's voice sounded like dry bone and dust, itself.
"Señora, I ask little. Only the merest trace, un poco, a hint of the power this blood will bring to you. Enough to heal this body the witch forced my soul to wear, enough to stop the pain . . ." And his voice turned ragged into a gasp, Jackie's body trembling and sweat sheening her brow under the red glow of power.
Kate jerked two steps forward, her gun lowered, mother's care for her suffering daughter burning through the circle's hold for an instant. The brujo straightened, Jackie straightened, and his hand, Jackie's hand sought Jeff's throat. The glass blade nicked his throat again, and Kate's hands, the circle's hands, brought her sights back on target.
Puppets. All puppets. Who pulls the brujo's strings?
Can Jeff feel that cut? Is he conscious? Does he hear us wrestling for his life?
The brujo half turned to Kate, as if he read her thoughts. "No, he does not feel pain, Señora. He dreams this. I am not cruel. The jaguar god, the one your thieves sell and sell and sell again, that one is cruel, born of a different land and time. But I only do what you have forced me to do."
Psycho, everything he does is someone else's fault. He was forced into it. He holds the knife but refuses to accept any of the guilt sliming it.
And then he gasped again and his hand lifted to the side of his head, gesture of pain, and her hands and finger twitched and the .44 Mag blasted the night silence and the stone knife and the hand holding it into splinters. Jackie twisted away from the blow, Jeff falling free of her shoulder, and she screamed and stared at the bloody ruin at the end of her right arm and Kate fired and fired and fired again, sights bouncing with the recoil and then landing again rock-steady on their target and then bouncing once more without thought or conscious aim.
She heard, she felt, answering booms from Caroline's old shotgun and saw her daughter's body jerk to right and left as slugs and shot tore into it. Kate's pistol clicked, empty, and she kept it aimed at the empty space where Jackie had stood and clicked and clicked again. The roar and thunder of gunfire echoed away through the night into smoke-tainted silence.
She stood, a stone graveyard statue, empty gun in her hands, until other hands took it from her and stowed it in her shoulder holster, still loaded with dead cartridge cases. She should reload. Basic doctrine, never carry an empty weapon. God only knows when you'll need it next. Caroline remembered. She reloaded before she moved.
Cold darkness walked up beside her, past her, past Caroline, past Jeff sprawled groaning in the heather, on to the altar and the body lying there. The dark shrouded head looked down. "Your teachers and the teachers of your teachers came on my people living at peace in their canyons. The skinwalkers killed and ate my people, ate their flesh, boiled their bones, cracked their skulls and marrow for the sweetness hiding there. Ate the lives of farmers to stretch the lives of killers. You will not eat another soul."
The black form bent down and lifted black smoke from the body, molded it into a long snake-roll like soft clay, pinched it between her fingers, tore it into shreds and poured it in fragments from her hands. The smoke faded into night air and vanished.
The dark woman turned to Caroline and seemed to stare into her rather than at her. "It is good that you warned me about the second shape you carry from your father. It is good that you warned me that the ways of the sea are not the ways of my canyons. Standing here in the light and shadow of great power used for evil, it is good that I know these things. I now see what had been hidden from me, when we stood far from your waters. I might have judged you as I would judge one of my people."
And then she nodded from Caroline to Kate. "I now see why your people mixed their blood with hers." And she vanished like smoke herself.
Damn-all notion of what that meant. Kate still felt as if she'd been turned to stone, with a stone's slow thoughts and cold heart. I just killed my daughter. I don't feel a thing. I just killed my daughter to save the boy who should have been my son.
Body. She should check the body. Caroline was helping Jeff. Kate forced herself to check the body.
It lay bleeding, Jackie lay bleeding, dark stains flowing without a pulse from massive wounds, more wounds than Kate could count. Bleeding on the stone, on the altar. The blood ran only a little way before it vanished. Soaked in. Blood wouldn't soak into that kind of stone and vanish. Wouldn't glow blue, wouldn't shimmer with silver highlights, wouldn't hum with power like a high-voltage transformer.
Jackie's body melted into that light and flowed and faded, leaving nothing, not even ash. The stone had eaten it. Kate stared at the altar, frozen, shaking, the world turning dark around her.
The stone circle had been holding her upright, moving her, using her voice and hands, her gun. It left her. Her knees failed, and she pitched forward into that darkness.
*~*~*
Black sky. Stars. Full moon hanging low above a fogbank offshore. Shadows and silver light, natural light, somehow seemed strange. Kate stared up at the sky. Her head hurt and cold tears leaked across her cheeks.
Full moon. Lying in a field, high on a ridge, blueberry barren, her field, the stone circle.
She was lying down, feet higher than her head, same as after Alice had found her trembling and cold from the shock of finding that body out here weeks ago. She ached all over, like she'd unloaded a ton of Sheetrock yesterday. By herself, by hand, and hand-carried it up three flights of stairs. Jeff must have taken the day off.
Jeff.
Kate struggled to sit up. Something held her down, a weight on her chest. A strong hand, with strong shoulders behind it. She focused. Caroline's face above the hand and arm and shoulders, ill-met by moonlight.
"The circle. Moonrise. Jeff."
Caroline looked puzzled, face in full light. "Jeff's safe. We killed the brujo. It's over."
The aurora had faded. Kate remembered the aurora, red and green fire overhead, apocalypse sky. Death riding a pale horse, and the rest of the crew. Her head hurt more, thinking about it. She lifted one hand and poked at her skull, wincing. Caroline didn't stop her from doing that.
"You fell and hit your head. I don't know if you hit one of the rocks or just the ground. No blood, so I'd guess dirt. Try moving your feet."
Kate moved bits, hands and feet, fingers and toes, and everything seemed to work when and as she told it to. Caroline let her sit up. Kate's head spun, and the moon seemed bright enough to make her squint. She moved to sit on one of the stones, one of the circle, not the altar. Still, she felt strength flowing into her from the rock underneath her, from her land, her soil and stone and water, and the pain eased. Her brooch, Grannie Rowley's brooch, glowed faintly in the moonlight, orange and green, colors in the moonlight, she'd never seen that before.
Caroline circled the stone circle, spiraled around it actually, out and out and out, checking the ground. Witch-sight or sharp young night-vision, she walked like a cop searching for clues at a crime scene. Which was probably just what she was doing. Kate was sure they'd just committed some kind of crime, so picking up the evidence sounded like a good idea.
Kate sat on her rock and watched, not involved in the scene. Dissociated, Alice would call it. For a wonder, her hip and shoulder didn't hurt. At least not any more than the rest of her. Her head took that prize. Kate shrugged it off and staggered to her feet. And stayed there, even if the horizon did a couple of strange moves.
Just do the next thing, and the next, and the one after that. Even if it hurt. Straight ahead, Kate Rowley's philosophy of life. Not smart enough to go around an obstacle.
"Jeff? You say he's safe?"
"I found his clothes and took him down to your truck. He's cold, needs the heater, so I gave him your keys to start it up. He's got a couple of cuts and bruises. Nothing worse."
Heater. That sounded real attractive. Kate felt cold herself, sweat chilling her shirt and hair, no jacket, Maine autumn evening with the breeze coming in off the water. Cold and sore and very, very tired. She looked around. She was standing outside the stone circle, stones bright in the moonlight against the dark blueberry heather, maybe brighter than old gray lichen-crusted stone ought to be. She needed to learn more about this place.
Caroline walked over to her and bent down to pick up one of the gleaming brass shotgun shells. Empty. Kate could still smell burned gunpowder in the air, and the Colt felt light under her left armpit. She checked the pistol. All six cartridges fired. She reloaded from one of her speed-loaders, and tucked the empties in her pocket, don't leave evidence behind. Sniffed her hands, found powder smoke there. She'd fired those rounds, without leaving any memory.
"What happened?"
Caroline paused from gathering shadows out of other shadows. Must be nice to have young eyes. "What's the last thing you remember?"
Kate puzzled over that. Her brain seemed as if someone had stuffed it with old rags. She didn't like the feeling. "Driving down the ridge road. Parking. Checking out that white Explorer. Walking into the field. The aurora. That's it."
Caroline sat down on one of the stones, in the classic Thinker's pose, her elbow on one knee and chin in her hand, maybe a minute, maybe more. Then she stood up and shook her head. "We killed the brujo. Guaranteed dead this time. Jeff's safe. Anything more than that, I'm going to talk with Aunt Alice before I tell you. Please trust me on this."
Damned Haskell Witches.